From "A Century of LARP" by Miriam Jung, (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Except for William Bucher, none of the members of the Set was married when "Clarence" first ran in 1903 at the Cleveland Hotel. Surprisingly, the group has been relatively overlooked, though of course Marsden is famous for his later work with Expatriate Austro-Russian LARP author Mikhail Jung, and Cooke is fairly well known for her subsequent work with Margaret Sanger.

The generally authoritative biography on Marsden was written in 1957, and is thus somewhat dated. There has never been a biography of any of the other writers, though Thaddeus Walker published his own somewhat confused "Anonymous Confessions of Thaddeus Walker," in 1946, shortly before his death from heroin addiction.

Henrietta Wallace was lampooned mercilessly in Mikhail Jung's "The Woman who Came to Dinner," and filed a lawsuit against Jung after his inaugural run of the game at the Waldorf Astoria in 1931. The suit was dropped after an out of court settlement and it is thought that Wallace's agent induced her to drop the suit in order to avoid adverse publicity for her then popular play-by-radio LARP which aired over WNBC. Wallace enjoyed a fairly lengthy career and died in 1952 of a spastic colon. Her epitaph, supplied by her ex-husbands reads "Died Sept 3, 1952, not one day too soon." Wallace's immense body of LARP work was preserved by her literary executor Fred Woodley, and her name is given to the "Wally" an annual award for best character performance by a taciturn non-larping girlfriend.

William Bucher would end up at odds with the rest of the staff, particularly King, against whom he participated in an armed conflict. Bucher, who had an American Mother, was Prussian by birth, serving as a Military Attache at the German Embassy in Washington D.C. Bucher returned to Germany in 1915 to assume an active field commission with the Imperial German 13th Infantry Division, 55th Regt., and earned an Iron Cross at Le Hamel 4th April, 1918, before his leg and arm were blown off by an Australian Shell, 4th July 1918. He subsequently served as administrator of a Prisoner-of-War camp. He was never again highly active in LARP, however he served on the German General Staff, and was credited with being one of the major influences in Operation 'Marita' the German Battle Plan against the Soviet Union. He died in an Allied interment camp while awaiting indictment for crimes against humanity, on February 12, 1946.

Horatio King left the field of LARP in 1911 after the abject failure of his one and only attempt at a solo game, "Being Horatio King." King climaxed the Dead Dog, at which he revealed the many secrets that his players had failed to discover, with announcing his withdrawal from the field of LARP, "because players are just too stupid, and LARP not important enough for me to bother with." Several different individuals are credited with saving King's life after the announcement, which culminated a three hour wrap in which he explained over sixty plots which were nowhere documented in the written materials of the game, of which there were in fact, according to period accounts "a paucity."

In many ways King is perhaps the tragic member of the group. King had recently returned from serving with the U.S. Army in the Phillipines, and upon the outbreak of the First World War managed to arrange an officer's Commission. His short biography in "Who is Who in Interactive Literature" (1967, Knopf), says that he was killed when horses pulling a caisson trod upon him, however it is generally acknowledged that he was shot in the back by his own men. His contemporary in the artillery said that Bucher was possessed of a "Unique combination of a strong self assurance, and a complete absence of any understanding whatsoever of even the most basic fundaments of gunnery." Friends would remember his ability to explain every single detail of every battle of the American Civil War, and his ability to turn almost any conversation to the subject.

It would have surprised most players of "Clarence" to know that Abraham Marsden would go on to write over a hundred and twenty LARPs, including sixteen which received Academy Prize nominations, and marry in succession Henrietta Walker, Dolores Cooke, and in 1951 a twenty year old model who he met in California. Marsden died in 1971 of heart failure at his home in Santa Monica. At the time of Clarence, Marsden was a confirmed virgin, and was dropped from the group before their abortive attempt at a sequel game in 1904 because his writing was "substandard." Horatio King suggested that Marsden was incapable of writing a character sheet more than twenty eight pages in length, and Henrietta Wallace concluded that his spelling was "Abysmil."

The contribution of Thaddeus Walker has been poorly understood by historians. Certainly Walker was an inspiration, and he would go on to produce several works, which generally received critical, rather than popular, acclaim. However, he was often best defined by his co-writers, and his attempts in the 1920s to launch solo productions resulted in financial disaster, culminating in his bankruptcy in 1932. He produced no work for several years, before coming together with Marsden to write the "Film Noir Game" in 1943. Due to wartime paper shortages, and prop rationing, the game was not produced for the public until September 1946, though it ran very successfully at a Long Island USO Club in 1945. Walker borrowed heavily against his rights in the game, and apparently borrowed a great deal of money privately from Marsden. He was hospitalized and attempted to go off Heroin in January 1946, taking a trip to Florida with Dolores Cooke. His health had been ruined, and there is evidence that he began using Heroin again in May, and he died in August at the Mount Sinai Hospital, leaving nothing to his six children by two wives and three lovers other than debt.

Despite Abraham Marsden's famous quote that "the estate of Thaddeus Walker was acquired by Henrietta Wallace, who promptly burned it," much of his work was owned by Marsden's publishing concern, LARPham House, which produced 'the complete Thaddeus Walker' in 1954. In the preface, Marsden wrote:

"Thaddeus Walker was certainly a womanizer, and there are those who said he drank. Most of us did not bother with stating the obvious. I am offering Walker's work to the public not because he is a great example of moral conduct, but because he was a good writer, a friend, and moreover because he died owing me a debt equivalent to the entire income of several small South American Republics."