"Dogs are not vagabones bi choise and luv tew belong tu sumbody. This
fac endears them tew us, and i have alwas rated the dog az about the
seventh cusin tew the human specious. Tha kant talk but tha can lik yure
hand; this shows that their hearts iz in the plase where other folks'
tungs is.--JOSH BILLINGS."
Thus it was that I first heard of _Josh Billings_. In the course of my
voyage from Aspinwall to New York, while seated on the deck of the
steamer, listening to the drolleries of a group of very convivial
passengers, and gliding along the coast of Cuba in the brightness,
sheen, and splendor of a tropical night, I heard many of his best things
recited, and his name frequently quoted as that of one who had already
taken his place in American literature. Oliver Wendell Holmes I had
known for years, Artemus Ward was a household name in California, James
Russell Lowell had become a familiar acquaintance through the "Biglow
Papers;" but who was _Josh Billings_? I asked my _compagnons de voyage_,
but all they knew of him was that he was a very clever fellow who had
written some very clever things. Whether he lived in New York State,
Pennsylvania, Vermont, or Missouri, no one could tell me, nor could I
get any satisfactory information as to the journal in which his articles
had first appeared, what his antecedents were, or whether the name
attached to his writings was that of his parentage and christening, or
merely a whimsical _nomme de plume_.
Long after my arrival in New York the mystery remained unsolved. I
applied to literary friends for its solution, but all they seemed to
know was that various smart things had run the round of the papers with
the signature of "_Josh Billings_" to them, but in what paper they had
originated or by whom they were written none could give me information.
My friend George Arnold, a well-known wit of the _New York Leader_, knew
of my anxiety. Meeting me one day at Crook and Duff's Restaurant, the
mid-day rallying point of most of the genial spirits of New York, he
drew me aside and gravely asked--
"Have you found out yet who _Josh Billings_ is?"
"I have not," I answered. "Do you know?"
"Yes; but keep it dark. Only five of his friends have been let into the
secret. It would not do to let the world know. His position would be
damaged."
"Who is it?" I demanded eagerly. "Is it Hosea Biglow under a new name?"
"No; somebody better known."
"Horace Greeley?" I suggested, interrogatively.
"No. A still greater man. Can't you guess?"
"Really, I cannot. Don't keep me in suspense. Tell me."
"The author is ----" and my friend paused--"the author of _Josh
Billings_ is none other than--President Lincoln!"
My informant made the communication so gravely, that for the moment I
believed it; especially as some few days previous, being down in
Washington, I had occasion to know that Barney Williams, the actor, was
summoned to the White House on a Sunday afternoon, that he spent some
hours with the President, and that on his return in the evening to
Willard's Hotel he assured me that the President had beaten him in
telling funny stories, and had said the drollest things he had heard for
many a day. That my information was nothing more than a hoax the reader
will readily suppose; but I felt bound to "pass it on" to my
acquaintances, with a like injunction to secresy, until at length I had
the amusement of hearing that it had reached the ears of Mr. Lincoln,
who laughed heartily at the joke, and pleasantly observed that his
shoulders were hardly broad enough to bear the burdens of the State,
without having to carry the sins of all its wits and jesters.
Time passed on and business called me to take a trip one day up the
Hudson River to the pleasant little town of Poughkeepsie. What a quiet,
charming little town it is, those who have visited it can well remember.
I selected the steamer _Armenian_ for my trip up the river. The Rhine of
America never was seen to more advantage than it was on that bright
summer's day, and Poughkeepsie never looked fairer than as I saw it from
the middle of the stream. I landed at a town on the left bank, crossed
the river, went down to Poughkeepsie by rail, and arrived there late in
the evening, I knew of only two staple products of the place, and they
were--whiskey and spiritualism. The whiskey I tasted, and the
spiritualism I went in search of in the person of Andrew Jackson Davis,
the Swedenborg of the United States, whose books on the unseen world
have been introduced to the British public by Mr. Howitt. A kindly
Poughkeepsian volunteered to conduct me to where the great mysticist had
lived; but I found, to my disappointment, that he was then absent from
the town. To console me for my ill-luck, in not being able to see so
great a celebrity, my guide soothingly observed that there was another
great writer resident in and belonging to Poughkeepsie.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Why, _Josh Billings_!" was the reply.
Eureka! I had found him. I had unearthed my game at last and discovered
my eremite in his mystic seclusion. I lost no time in inquiring who
_Josh Billings_ was and where he lived.
"His name is Shaw--Henry W. Shaw. He's an auctioneer, and I'll show you
the way to his house," volunteered my friendly guide.
We went to the house; but like Mr. Davis, Mr. Shaw was not at home. All
that I could then learn about him was that he belonged to Poughkeepsie,
that he had been _the_ Auctioneer of the town for many years, that he
was by no means a young man, that his address for the general public was
"Box 467" at the Post-office, that he was a very business-like person,
and that he wrote articles for the newspapers, as well as sold property
by auction and acted as agent for the transfer of real estate. The
reader will therefore fully comprehend how much Mr. Shaw felt himself to
be in his element while writing the chapter headed "Advertizement," in
which he offers
"To sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars a pallas, a sweet
and pensive retirement, lokated on the virgin banks of the Hudson river,
kontaining 85 acres. Walls ov primitiff rock, laid in Roman cement,
bound the estate, while upward and downward, the eye catches far away,
the magesta and slow grander ov the Hudson. As the young moon hangs like
a cutting of silver from the blue brest of the ski, an angel may be seen
each night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green. (N. B. The angel
goes with the place)."
Better fortune led me at last to meet Mr. Shaw in New York City. We were
introduced to one another at Artemus Ward's Mormon entertainment on
Broadway. I found a man rather above the middle height, sparse in build,
sharp in features, his long hair slightly turning gray, and his age
between forty and fifty, reserved in manner, a rustic, unpolished
demeanor, and looking more like a country farmer than a genial man of
letters or a professed wit and a public lecturer on playful subjects. I
can vouch for his geniality, for, on the evening of our first meeting,
we adjourned from Dodworth Hall to the St. Denis Hotel opposite, and, in
the company of a few friends, spent a mirthful hour or two. The night
was bitter cold; but warm sherry, excellent Bourbon, and jovial spirits
made the bleak wind which whistled up Broadway from the Bay, as
melodious as the music of lutes.
Mr. Shaw informed me that he was born in the State of Massachusetts,
town of Lanesboro, county of Berkshire, and came from Puritan stock. He
said that his father and grandfather both had been members of Congress,
and each one had left so pure a political record, that he himself had
never dared to enter the arena of politics. His first literary efforts
in the comic line were published in the country papers of New York
State; many of them first attracted attention in the columns of the
_Poughkeepsie Daily Press_. In America a popular author has much more
scope for gaining publicity and popularity than he has in England. The
newspapers of the Union are always ready to receive pithy paragraphs
from clever men, and to attach the authors' name to them. The great
secret of the popularity of _Artemus Ward_ and of _Josh Billings_ is
simply that which the late Albert Smith of England so well understood
years ago, never to publish any article, however trivial or lengthy,
without the signature or the initials of the writer to it. A smart,
terse, pungent paragraph inserted with the author's real or assumed name
attached, in one of the journals of the United States, soon finds its
way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence
to the Gulf of Mexico. With comparatively little trouble, except to
worry his brains for comic ideas--no slight trouble, nevertheless--the
wit of the Western world soon gains notoriety, if not fame. His racy
article of a few lines is copied into paper after paper, until his name
becomes familiar in all the cities of the Union. This accomplished, a
new field of enterprise opens up. Some speculative man in New York or
Boston thinks what a good and profitable enterprise it would be to
engage the funny man whose printed jokes circulate everywhere, engage to
give him so much per month for a year or two, have some large woodcuts
engraved, some showy posters struck off, some smart advertisements
written, halls taken throughout the country, and the man of many jokes
made to retail them all over the land at an admission fee varying from
one dollar down to twenty-five cents. Only a few years ago the business
of joking in public--the joker himself appearing before the
audience--was pretty well confined to the clown of the circus and the
"middle-man" and "end-man" of the negro minstrel troupe. Things change
rapidly across the Atlantic, and at the present day the clown in motley
and the minstrel in burnt-cork have their vocation superseded by the
facetious lecturer, dressed in evening costume, travelling with gaudy
show-bills, and having a literary as well as an oratorical reputation.
Not a single writer on "Punch" or "Fun," if he had been trained in
America and had written there, but would have thrown the desk aside for
the rostrum long ago. Simply to write is not excitement enough for your
ardent American, if he can enjoy the applause of an audience, and make
dollars at the same time, merely by being the mouthpiece of his own
jokes.
Bowing to the fate of nearly all comic men in his native country, Mr.
Shaw was ferreted out in his Poughkeepsie home, and urgently solicited
to accept an engagement as a public lecturer. He tried the experiment in
the AthenA|ums and Lyceums of his own State, and succeeding, followed up
his new calling until now he is recognized as an established,
legitimate, and lucrative "show," having his proper value in the market,
and is assigned status on the rostrum. He travels over the United States
with his Lectures, entitled, "_Hobby Horse_"--"_Specimen
Brix_"--"_Sandwiches_"--"_What I kno about Hotels_"--etc., and is making
money more rapidly than ever he did with the hammer of an auctioneer.
Many good stories are told of him. One is that being in Washington, and
asked by a politician there relative to his opinion of Thaddeus Stevens,
of Pennsylvania, who opposed President Johnson so hotly in the
Government, and who figured as a thoroughly ultra-radical, Mr. Shaw
replied, "Give me leave to recite a little dream I had last night. I
fancied that I was in the lower regions, and while engaged in
conversation with the proprietor, an imp announced that Thad Stevens was
at the door desiring admission. Old Nick promptly and emphatically
refused him entrance on the ground that he would be continually
disturbing the peace and order of the place. The imp soon returned,
saying that Thaddeus insisted on coming in, declaring that he had no
other place to go to. After much deliberation, Old Nick's face suddenly
brightened with a new idea, and he exclaimed, 'I've got it. Tell the
Janitor to give him six bushels of brimstone and a box of matches, and
let him go and start a little place of his own.'"
Having described who _Josh Billings_ is, it may be fitting to add a few
words relative to his writings and their position in the comic
literature of America. Fun is indigenous to the soil, it wells up from
the Western prairie, sparkles in the foam of Niagara, springs up in the
cotton-fields of the South, and oozes out from the paving-stones of the
cities of the North. The people of the United States are fun-loving and
fun-makers. Of the peculiar character of the fun a word or two may be
written presently. There is always some popular man wearing the cap and
bells, and reflecting the humor of his land. At one period the author,
whom all the papers quote, is Sam Slick, Doesticks, then John Phoenix,
then Major Downing, then Artemus Ward, then Orpheus C. Kerr, and then
Josh Billings. As fast as one resigns the position, another takes his
place--"_Uno avulso non deficit alter_." During the war, joking went on
at a faster pace than ever, and even those who did not esteem President
Lincoln for his patriotism valued him immensely for his jokes. The
jingle of the bells in the hand of Momus and the clank of the sabre
attached to the waist of the modern sons of Mars, were ever mingled
throughout the long and fiercely-contested conflict.
Take a little of Martin Farquhar Tupper, and a little of Artemus Ward,
knead them together, and you may make something which approaches to a
_Josh Billings_. That Mr. Shaw aspires to be a comic Tupper is evidenced
in the various chapters headed "Proverbs," "Remarks," "Sayins," and
"Afferisims." That he has had Artemus Ward before him is demonstrable by
comparing the chapter in which "_Josh Billings Insures his Life_," with
Artemus Ward's celebrated paper, entitled "His Autobiography."[*] But
Artemus is great in telling a story, having an imaginative power to
conceive an accident, plan the action of a piece of drollery, invent an
odd character, and describe his creation with infinite humor and force.
The talent of Mr. Shaw is of another kind. He is aphoristically comic,
if I may use the phrase. He delights in being ludicrously
sententious--in Tupperizing laughingly, and in causing an old adage to
appear a new one through the fantastic manner in which it is dished up.
He is the comic essayist of America, rather than her comic story-teller.
* "Artemus Ward, His Book," p. 316.
His first book was issued May 19, 1866, in New York, by George W.
Carleton, the publisher of Artemus Ward's Works, and was entitled "Josh
Billings, His Book." This volume had a large sale, and was followed in
July, 1868, by a new work entitled "Josh Billings on Ice." But his
greatest success, in a literary line, was the publication of