ARTEMUS WARD

Evening Star, Issue 21748, 16 June 1934, Page 2

ARTEMUS WARD

A CENTENARY TRIBUTE There was once a distinctive humour which we called American. Thanks—some may say small thanks —to the cinema, the jazz band, and the musichall, most of our popular humour today is of United States origin; but that is not the same thing. The “ American humour ” of the nineteenth century invariably . worfe quotation marks when in England, as though apologising for the intrusion. Its earliest missionary among us was Artemus Ward, who was born on April 26, 1834. .The real name of Artemus Ward was Charles Farrar Browne, and his birthplace was Waterford, a village in .Maine. He was not quite thirty-throe years old when lie died at Southampton. His humorous lecture on the Mormons had been given for the first time in London in November, 1866. Celebrities flocked to the Egyptian Hall to hear him. While in England he had also written some articles for ‘ Punch ’ at the invitation of Mark Lemon —articles compounded of characteristic mis-spollings and droll phrases. They set all England laughing, wc arc told. He became a member and the shining star of the Savage Club. A penny edition of his writings appeared in London, and a penny- song book celebrated him in ballads, one with tho chorus:— Oh, dear, rackety oh, Just take a peep at Artemus’s show. These were his last successes. Already a sick man when, he reached England, he lectured for the last time in January, 1867, and consumption killed him on 'March 6 of the same year. Twothirds of a century have passed since then, and to most English people Artemus Ward is now only a name; yet the name persists. The personality that once clothed it, like the. broad fun tho man dealt in, belongs to a bygone ago and its enthusiasms. It was none the less a very lively and entertaining personality. . To his audiences, as to his readers, ho was Artemus Ward. The posters announcing his lectures bore tho simple words: “ Artemus Ward will Speak a Piece.” To Edward P. Kingston,'tho Englishman who was his business agent and friend, be was always “ Artemus. But there were two distinct Artemus Wards. Tho one was an uneducated American showman with a wife called Betsy Jane and exhibits which included

three moral Bares a Kangaroo (an amoozin little Rascal —’twpuld make you larf yersolf to doth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal), wax Aggers of G. Washington Gen. Taylor John Banyan Capt. Kidd and Dr ■Webster in the act of killiu Dr Parkman, besides several miseellauyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts & murderers, &c., ekallecl by few <fc exceld by none. This character, which he assumed in most of his writings, was his own invention; the derivation of the name has been variously accounted for. The other Artemus Ward was the lecturer —and moreover a bachelor. Those.who came to listen witli preconceived ideas derived from '.reading him were apt to look surprised, sometimes disappointed, when, he stepped bn, the platform. He was tall and spare, with a. very prominent nose, a largo’ moustache, and Tair hair that owed its, undulations to. the, curling tongs—a less heinous offence in bis dav than in this. His lecture about his visit to Salt Lake City was illustrated by a panorama, and in New York he used either a fishing rod or aii old umbrella as a pointer. At the Egyptian Hall be twiddled a riding whip. At intervals bo would disappear bemud the panorama to commune with the pianist or to “ work the moon” himself, with eccentric results. It was admittedly not much of a panorama:. “ not much to be commended as works of art,” ‘The Times ’ said when Artemus Ward first appeared in London. But the same journal advised connoisseurs not to imagine that in detecting the shortcomings of. some of the pictures they had discovered “ a flaw in the armour of the doughty Artemus That astute gentleman knows their worth as well as anybody else, and while he ostensibly extols them, as a showman is bound to do, ho every now and then holds them up to ridicule in a vein of the deepest irony. In one ease a palpable error of' perspective, by which a man is made equal in size to a. mountain, has been purposely committed, and the shouts of laughter that arise as soon as the ridiculous picture appears are tremendous. But there is no mirth in the face of Artemus; he seems even deaf to the roar; and when he proceeds to the explanation of the landscape he touches on the ridiculous point in a slurring way that provokes a. new explosion.

The lecturer’s, like the actor’s, is a fugitive art. The text of Artemus Ward’s Mormon lecture was afterwards carefully edited by his friend Kingston to give an idea of the manner of its delivery; but divorced from the living voice it seems a poor thing. In part it was a more or less serious description of the then notorious ,community of the Latter-Day Saints, whose polygamous way of life had aroused indignant curiosity among the orthodox. The rest was a string of miscellaneous jokes uttered with a gravity that made them doubly effective. There can he no doubt that his London hearers in general were captivated, though it is on record that John Bright listened with grave attention, lightened only by a rare smile, and afterwards observed that many of the young man’s statements appeared to bo overdrawn and open to question. The career of Artemus Ward in America was a picturesque progress from commonplace beginnings. He was still Charles Browne for some years after he began to write. His first article was published in the ‘ Carpet Bag,’ of Boston, just before his eighteenth birthday, while he was working on that small- journal as a compositor. He wandered from one newspaper office to another learning his craft as a printer in the eastern States, combining it with reporting in Ohio and picking up knowledge of cities and men and affairs in his careless way. In 1857 he was invited to Cleveland to join the ‘ Plain Dealer’ as a reporter. There his quill pen was kept busy. He heard and passed on anecdotes and quips, submitted himself to two rival fortunetellers and- compared their findings, attended a mystifying seance with one of the Davenport brothers, and wrote brief essays on subjects like ‘ Popularity,’ ‘ Editing,’ and ‘ Hunting Trouble.’ He’ told the story of the boy who, having murdered his parents, begged the judge to consider the feelings of a poor orphan. And one day he wrote a letter to the editor and signed it “ Artemus Ward.” That letter and a second were boiled down into one—-and thereby improved—for rcpublicatiou in ‘ Arteinua Ward: His Book,’ which appeared in 1802; and it is this later version that

us quoted here. “ I’m inovin along—slowly along—down tords your place,” the letter begins. “ I want you should rite me a letter, sayin how is the show bizniss in your place.” There is a description of the exhibits, and an exchange of business favours is proposed. I shall have my hanbills dun at your offiss. Depend upon it. 1 want you should git rny hanbills up in flamin stile. Also git up a treiiienjus oxcitemunt in yr. paper ’bowt my. onparalleld Show. ... If you say anythin abowt ray show say my snaiks is as hannliss as the new born Babe. What a interest!)! study it is to see a zcwological animil like a snaik under perfeck siibjecsliun! My kangaroo is the most larfable little cuss 1 ever saw. All for 15 cents. lam anxyus to skewer your infloounce. I repeet in regard to them hanbills that 1 shall git ’em struck orf up to your printin office. My perlitercal- sentiments agree yith yourn exackly. I know they do, becawz 1 never saw a man wboos didn’t. Respectively yui;es, A. Ward. P.S.—You scratch my back and lie scratch your back. American papers of the period throve to a large extent on each other’s washing: and the showman’s first letters, copied widely, had an immediate success. i , .

Most of Artemus Ward’s writings were first printed in either the ‘ Cleveland Plain Healer ’ or ‘ Vanity Fair, and it will bo convenient here to consider them together. His showman has no doubt owed much of his popularity to tho primitive humour of _ erratic spelling—incidentally, he is critical of Chaucer because be “ couldn’t spel but he is in his own way a gay and original companion. With the “ onparaleld Show ” he pays imaginary visits to many places, meeting and making candid comments _on such 'diverse people as President Lincoln, tho Quakers, spiritualists, the Prince of Wales (then visiting Canada), of whom he speaks kindly, politicians on both sides in the Civil War, and the Fenians. From time to time he returns to his home at “ Baldinsvillc in Injianny ” and a not uneventful domesticity with Betsy Jane . His output was uneven in quality, and in form almost as untidy as the manuscript, strung together from clippings and seribblings, which Carleton, his publisher, had to organise somehow into Artemus Ward’s first book. Some of it was just high-spirited clowning, and wc may wonder a little to bear how Abraham Lincoln laughed over 1 High-handed Outrage at Utica ’ when he read that facetious anecdote to his colleagues at a Cabinet meeting during the war! “Then with a sigh,” it is said, the President opened and read the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was to free' the slaves of the South. One of Artemus Ward’s mannerisms transferred the “ aside ” from the stage to literature; he was fond of parentheses like “ (All tho foregoiu is sarcasum),” or, more elaborately; “ (Notiss to bizniss man of ‘ Vanity Fair ’: Extry charg fur this larst remark. It’s a goak.—A.W.).” Such gambols are not thought so funny nowadays as they evidently were to the humorist’s own generation. But, after all, there is virtue in liveliness. Artemus Ward abounds in . good fun and good jokes, and the situations he burlesques are shrewdly observed. When the- showman writes to congratulate tho Prince of Wales on his marriage to Princess Alexandra he offers this advice:— . , ~

There’s varis ways of managin a. ■ wife, friend Wales, but the best and only sate way is' to lot her do jjst. about as she -"Wants to. I ’dopted that there plan sum time ago, and it works like a charm. He visits Lincoln'-soon after his election as President, and finds him in the midst of a swarm of office-seekers. Old Abo lookt up quite cross & sez, “Send in yer petition by & by. I can’t possibly look at it now; ' Indeed 1 can’t. It’s onpossible, sir!” “Mr Linkin, who do you spCct I air?” sed 1. “A orfice-seoker, to he sure! sod he. “ Wall, sir,” sed I, “ you’s never more mistaken in your life. You hain’t gut a orfis I’d take under no circumstances. I’m A. Ward. Wax Jiggers is my perfeshun. I’m tho father of Twins, and they look like ■ me—both of : them. ‘I cum to pay a • friendly visit to the President eleck of the United States. If so be you • wants to see me, say so—if not, say so, & I’m orf like a jug handle.” “Mr Ward, sit down. I am. glad to see you, sir.” “ llepose ill Abraham’s Buzzuin!” sed one of the orfice-seekers, his idee hein to git orf a goak at my«expense. “ Wall,” sez I, “ ef all you fellers repose in that there Buzzum thare’ll be mity poor inissin for sum of you!” whereupon old Abe buttoned his weskit clear up ami 1 hlusht like a rnaidin of sweet 16.

Artemus Ward’s editorship of ‘Vanity Pair ’ lasted only a few months, though he continued writing there intermitteiitly. By the end of 1861 ho was embarked on a new career as lecturer. From the theory ho thus passed to the practice of showmanship and became his own exhibit. He christened his first lecture ‘ The Babes in the Wood.’ Asked why he did so, he said: “It seemed to sound the best. I once thought of calling it ‘ My Seven Grandmothers.’ ” The title he used was very nearly as irrelevant, but he did mention the Babes twice—at the beginning and in his peroration. The lecture was, in fact, a burlesque of a lecture—unrelieved nonsense; and Artemus Ward was the first man in America with the enterprise or the courage to take the platforms in a one-man comic entertainment owing nothing to the trappings of the stage. With this and succeeding orations, in which- numbers of the same witticisms did duty again, though the titles were new, Artemus Ward travelled over the greater part of America. Preceded by Hingston as advance agent, he went to California by way of the Atlantic, the Isthmus of Panama, and the Pacific. The public of San Francisco were notified that Artemus Ward would “ trot out his Babes in the Wood ” on a certain day at Platt’s Music Hall, and the takings on that occasion were over 1,600d01. The money box was carried away by the pressure of the crowd. Hats had to bo used instead, and the crown of one gave way under the strain. Artemus Ward lectured in western mining camps, in theatres, churches, barrooms, and billiard saloons. From California and Nevada he journeyed inland to Salt Lake City, Utah, by stage coach and sleigh, a bleak and trying experience in the depth of winter.’ He was rewarded for the exertion by a friendly welcome, and the Mormons nursed him through a serious attack of fever. Brigham Young gave him- an audience and was affable and talkative, though bis library contained the book in. which Artemus Ward had described Salt LakeCity as “ a 2nd Sodclum & Gcrmorrcr.” The return to New York was made overland by stage and railway, and the lecture which Artemus’ Ward delivered in London was the fruits of this round journey of more than 10,000 miles. It

ivas launched in New York with consummate shpwmanship. Quaint posteis were devised by the humorist hunseli, complimentary tickets were inscribed Admit the Bearer and One Wire, and a dozen Irishmen, hired in the Bowery and dressed and painted as Indians, paraded New York with bows and arrows and tomahawks aiid with white umbrellas, on which was the legend “ Artemus Ward —His Indians Dodsworth Hall.” Bamum himself could scarcely have done better. And so to London and the untimely end. But one is unwilling to take leave of him before recalling with gratitude the.service he did Mark Lynn during his journey to Salt Lake Lily. Like Bret Harte (whom Artemus Ward met in San Francisco), Mark . Twain was then a young western journalist with no more than a local public. Artemus Ward found him working op the ‘ Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, Nevada. The two made merry together and swore friendship; and the lesser man had insight enough to discern the uncommon quality of the other and to urge him to shoot at a bigger mark than had so far contented him The outcome was the birth m Mark Twain of ambition. When Artemus Ward was about to publish the book of his travels he wrote from New York to ask Mark Twain,to contribute a western sketch to the volume. The contribution arrived too late for its in-, tended purpose, but the publisher passed it on to the ‘ Saturday Press ■md there it appeared on .November 18, 1865 It was the story of •' The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,’ with which Mark r J wain ftrst non national recognition.—Condensed from 1 The Times Literary Supplement.’