The Colonel is a farce in three acts by F. C. Burnand , premiered in 1881, based on Jean François Bayard's 1844 play Le mari à la campagne . The story concerns the efforts of two aesthetic impostors to gain control of a family fortune by converting a man's wife and mother-in-law to follow aestheticism. The man is so unhappy that he seeks the company of a widow in town. His friend, an American colonel, intervenes to persuade the wife to return to conventional behavior and obey her husband to restore domestic harmony, and the colonel marries the widow himself. The Colonel 's initial run was at the Prince of Wales's Theatre , for 550 performances, while simultaneously a second company was touring the British provinces with the play. In October 1881, it received a command performance before Queen Victoria , the first play to do so since the death of Prince Albert in 1861. It transferred to the Imperial Theatre in 1883 and then to the new Prince of Wales Theatre in 1884. In July 1887, there was a revival at the Comedy Theatre . This cabinet card depicts Rowland Buckstone as Basil Giorgione (left) and Cissy Grahame as Nellie Forrester (right) reprising their roles in the 1887 revival of The Colonel . The sepia photographic print measures 14.6 cm × 9.9 cm (5.7 in × 3.9 in) and is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum .