The American Claimant

In Short

This novel is a sprawling, comedic meditation on the American character and the obsession with status. It centers on Colonel Mulberry Sellers, an irrepressible inventor and schemer who discovers he is the rightful heir to an English earldom. Simultaneously, the actual heir, Viscount Berkeley, travels to America to escape his own suffocating privilege, only to find himself entangled in the chaotic life of a Washington boarding house. Celebrated for its biting wit and its portrait of the "hopeful failure," the story remains a sharp, enduring look at the dreams that drive people.

The Story

The narrative begins with Colonel Mulberry Sellers, a man of relentless, unfocused vision who manages his "art gallery"—a collection of cheap chromos rebranded as masterpieces—and various fringe-science schemes from a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of Washington. His world is thrown into a tailspin when he learns that, due to the death of a relative, he is technically the Earl of Rossmore. He immediately adopts the title and begins to project his delusions of grandeur onto his modest, impoverished household.

Meanwhile, the actual Viscount Berkeley, weary of the stagnant traditions of England, decides to swap places with the "American Claimant." He travels to Washington under the name Howard Tracy, eager to experience life as a common laborer. Upon his arrival, he takes up residence in a boarding house, shedding his past and attempting to embrace a philosophy of equality. However, his noble manners and strange, romanticized ideas about American "cowboys" make him an object of both curiosity and suspicion to his fellow boarders.

The plot thickens when a hotel fire consumes the belongings of the newly arrived Lord Berkeley. Sellers, believing the young nobleman has perished in the blaze alongside a notorious bank thief, falls into a deep, performative grief. In a bizarre twist of logic, the Colonel decides to "materialize" the missing heir to soothe the father’s loss, despite having no scientific basis for his claims. This leads to a series of comedic misunderstandings as the characters chase ghosts and shadows of one another across the city.

The lives of the two men finally intersect when the Colonel and his protégé, Washington Hawkins, cross paths with the incognito Tracy. Sellers, convinced through his own internal, erratic logic that he has successfully materialized a spectral ancestor rather than the living viscount, struggles with the moral implications of "sweating" a ghost for profit. Through a series of social encounters, Gwendolen—the Colonel’s daughter—and Tracy fall in love, complicating the class tensions that define the story. Ultimately, the pretenses of the claimants are stripped away. Tracy eventually reveals his identity, forcing the characters to reconcile their romanticized ideals of nobility and labor with the messy, mundane reality of their actual lives. The story concludes with the abandonment of the "Rossmore" dream, as the characters find a more grounded, if less grandiose, path forward.

How It Unfolds

The claim is born Colonel Mulberry Sellers discovers he is the rightful Earl of Rossmore and begins to redecorate his home with maps of future Siberian cities and fraudulent titles. Washington Hawkins, his discouraged associate, arrives to witness the Colonel’s transition from a petty claimant to a man who believes he can literally command the dead.

The aristocrat arrives Viscount Berkeley leaves England to live as a common man in America, shedding his title to adopt the pseudonym Howard Tracy. He finds himself in a Washington boarding house, where his attempt to live as a laborer clashes with his ingrained habits of refinement.

The fire and the mix-up A catastrophic hotel fire occurs, leading Sellers to believe the visiting heir has died, along with a notorious bank thief. The Colonel decides to "materialize" the missing nobleman to comfort the grieving father, setting off a frantic search for a body that doesn't exist.

The spectral confusion Sellers and Hawkins encounter the incognito Tracy but convince themselves he is merely a materialized ancestor of a burglar. They struggle with the moral dilemma of whether to exploit this "ghost" for financial gain while the real viscount tries to navigate his new, humble life.

The truth revealed Gwendolen and Tracy’s deepening romance brings the class tensions to a head as the hidden identities become impossible to maintain. The charade of the "American Claimant" collapses, forcing the characters to abandon their delusions of grandeur and face their actual, unvarnished lives.

The People

Colonel Mulberry Sellers is the engine of the story; he is a man of boundless, misplaced hope, whose primary obstacle is his own refusal to acknowledge reality. He views the world through a prism of grand, impossible schemes, yet his warmth and generosity make him oddly compelling. Viscount Berkeley, who adopts the name Howard Tracy, is the mirror to the Colonel. He seeks the "freedom" of labor but is continuously thwarted by his own aristocratic instincts and a naive, romanticized view of American life. Gwendolen Sellers, the Colonel’s daughter, begins as a dreamer but matures into the most grounded figure in the narrative; she rejects the hollow vanity of her father’s title, eventually choosing love over the superficial status that her family desperately chases.

In Its Own Voice

The Colonel’s capacity for self-deception regarding his own home is clear in his description of his living space:

The “mansion”—the Colonel’s usual name for the house—was a rickety old two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time or other, but had nearly forgotten it.

His belief that even his most outrageous financial failures are merely "secret" successes is illustrated here:

Within three days—ten at the outside—you shall see me call the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?—they shall walk forever, and never die again.

Finally, the shift in Gwendolen’s perspective highlights the book’s central theme of moving from shadow to substance:

Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a little while before.

What It's Really About

The book explores the tension between identity and pretension. It asks whether a person is defined by their lineage and status or by their labor and character. The Colonel represents the uniquely American strain of optimism that borders on insanity, where one can simply "will" a new reality into existence. Beneath the humor, there is a critique of how the desire for nobility—or the wealth associated with it—corrupts the spirit. The story argues that the pursuit of a "claim" is a distraction from the reality of the present, suggesting that true dignity is found only when one stops performing for the world and accepts the necessity of honest, unadorned work.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy character-driven satire and appreciate the absurd will find much to admire in this work. It feels remarkably modern in its depiction of how people construct "personal brands" to hide their poverty or insecurity. The prose is sharp, and the Colonel is one of the most memorable "dreamers" in literature. However, modern readers should be prepared for the dense, period-specific dialect and the sometimes erratic pacing typical of the author’s longer fiction. It is not a tight, linear thriller but a meandering, atmospheric exploration of a specific moment in American history. The attitudes toward race and class, reflecting the era in which it was written, are occasionally jarring, though they serve to highlight the rigid social structures the characters are trying to navigate. Ultimately, the book stays with you as a cautionary tale about the cost of living in the future at the expense of the present. It is a rewarding read for those who want to see the American myth of the "self-made man" turned inside out and examined with both affection and irony.