To many persons it seemed incongruous that there should be any thought,
motive, or taste in common between Abraham Lincoln and the droll Artemus
Ward. Indeed, the great biographers of Lincoln have either ignored the
existence of Ward or have referred to him very sparingly. Yet no visitor
at the White House seemed more welcome than Ward during Lincoln's
administration. Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Stanton, the
Secretary of War, were said to disapprove of Ward's frequent visits, and
it was whispered to Mrs. Ames, correspondent of the _Independent_, that
Lincoln hinted to Ward that it might be best to time his visits so as to
occur when Mrs. Lincoln was not at home. But it was a matter of common
gossip in "Newspaper Row" that there was a strong and true friendship
between the care-burdened President and the fun-making showman, whose real
name was Charles Farrar Browne.
The strange contrast in their abilities, their dispositions, and their
careers puzzled the amateur psychoanalysts of that day. Was it merely an
example of the attraction of opposites? Lincoln was strong, athletic, and
enduring; Ward was weak, lazy, and changeable. Lincoln loved work; Ward
took the path of least resistance. Lincoln was a moderate eater and lived
firmly up to his principles as a teetotaler; Ward drank anything sold at a
bar and sometimes was too intoxicated to appear at his "wax-figger show."
Lincoln loved the classics and was a good judge of literature; Ward seldom
read a classic translation. Lincoln saved money and could carefully invest
it; Ward would not take the trouble to collect his own salary, and never
was known to make an investment. Lincoln laughed often, and on rare
occasions laughed long and loud; Ward never laughed in public and in his
funniest moods never even smiled. Lincoln's sad face, when in repose,
touched a chord of sympathy in the souls of those who knew him best. Yet
Hingston, who was Ward's best friend, said that Ward's cold stare awoke at
once cyclones of riotous laughter in his audiences. Lincoln was a great
patriotic leader of men and wielded the power of a monarch; Ward was a
quiet citizen, who loved his country, but had no desire for power or for
battles. Strong contrasts these. Yet in a deep and sincere friendship they
were agreed.
Of the few cheerful things which entered Lincoln's life in those troubled
and gloomy times, the one which he enjoyed most was Ward's "Show." He
thought this was the most downright comical thing that had ever been put
before the public, and he laughed heartily even as he described it. Ward
had a nondescript collection of stuffed animals which he exhibited upon
the stage; he told the audience he found it cheaper to stuff the animals
once than to keep stuffing them continually. They consisted at one time of
a jack-rabbit and two mangy bears. He had also a picture of the Western
plains--the poorest one he could find. He would say, "The Indians in this
picture have not come along yet."
One always expected him to lecture about his animals, but he never did; in
fact, he scarcely mentioned them. His manner was that of an utter idiot,
and his blank stare, when the audience laughed at something he had said,
was enough in itself to send the whole hall into paroxysms of mirth.
Lincoln said to me that day, "One glimpse of Ward would make a culprit
laugh when he was being hung."
No doubt one reason why Lincoln felt kindly toward Ward was because the
latter was "most unselfishly trying to keep people cheerful in a most
depressing time. He and Nasby," the President said, "are furnishing about
all the cheerfulness we now have in this country." (Petroleum V. Nasby, it
will be remembered, was the pen name taken by David Ross Locke in his
witty letters from the "Confedrit Crossroads.")
The humor of Ward may seem crude to us now, but in the dark days of '64 it
took something more potent than refined wit to make people laugh--just as
it took a series of ludicrous and not overrefined drawings to make England
laugh in 1916; and it must be borne in mind that while Ward's sayings were
homely and sometimes savored strongly of the frontier, they were never
coarse or insinuating.
But after all, the best way to learn what Lincoln really thought of Ward
was to ask him, and I did exactly that. Also, I was careful to give close
heed to his words, that I might be able to write them down immediately
afterward. This, to the best of my recollection, was what Lincoln said:
"I was told the other day by a Congressman from Maine that Ward was
driven partly insane in his early life by the drowning of his intended
bride in Norway Lake. I could feel _that_ in Ward's character somehow
before I was told about it. Ward seems at times so utterly forlorn.
"Nothing draws on my feelings like such a calamity. I knew what it was
once. Yes! Yes! I know all about it. One never gets away from it. I must
ask Ward to tell me all about his trouble sometime. I think that is what
makes him so sad in appearances. Ward never laughs himself, unless he
thinks it is his duty to make other people laugh. He is surely right about
that.
"Perhaps Ward's whisky drinking is all an attempt to drown his sorrow. Who
knows? It is a mighty mistake to go to drink for comfort. I should suppose
the memory of the woman, if she was one worth while, would keep him from
such a foolish habit. I've been right glad that I let the stuff alone.
There was plenty of it about.
"Ward told me one day that he took to funny work as a makeshift for a
decent living; and that he found it to be an honest way to go about doing
good. I would have done that myself if I had not found harder work at the
law.
"I have agreed with many people who think that Ward should be in some
trade or writing books. But I don't know about it. He has a special kind
of mind, and, rightly used, he would make an excellent teacher of mental
science. In one way of looking at it his life is wasted. But if he
refreshes and cheers other people as he does me, I can't see how he could
make a better investment of his life. I smile and smile here as one by one
the crowd passes me to shake hands, until it is a week before my face gets
straight. But it is a duty. _I could defeat our whole army to-morrow by
looking glum at a reception or by refusing to smile for three consecutive
hours._[2] Ward says he carries a bottle of sunshine in 'the other
pocket,' to treat his friends. I like that idea.
[2] The italics are the author's.--ED.
"Ward is dreadfully misunderstood by a lot of dull people. They insist on
taking him seriously. An old lady in Baltimore held me up one night after
I had told some of Artemus Ward's remarks, and she may not have forgiven
me yet. I told his tale of the rich land out in Iowa, where the farmer
threw a cucumber seed as far as he could and started out on a run for his
house. But the cucumber vine overtook him and he found a seed cucumber in
his pocket.
"At that the old lady opened her eyes and mouth, but made no remark. Once
more I tried her, by telling how Ward knew a lady who went for a porous
plaster and the druggist told her to place it anywhere on her trunk. Not
having a trunk or box in the house, she put it on her bandbox, and the
next day reported that it was so powerful that it drew her pink bonnet all
out of shape.
"That was more than the conscientious old saint could stand, and after
supper she called me aside and told me that I ought to know that man Ward,
or whoever it was, 'was an out-and-out liar.'
"That makes me think of a colored preacher who worked here on the grounds
through the week, and who loved the deep waters of theology in which he
floundered daily. One evening I asked him why he did not laugh on Sunday,
and when he said it was because it was 'suthin' frivlus,' I told him that
the Bible said God laughed.
"The old man came to the door several days after that and said, 'Marse
Linkum, I've been totin' dat yar Bible saying "God larfed," and I've
'cluded dat it mus' jes' tak' a joke as big as der universe ter mak God
larf. Dar ain't no sech jokes roun' dis yere White House on Sunday.'
"Well, let us get back to Ward and begin _de novo_. And, by the way, that
was the first Latin phrase I ever heard. But I like Ward, because all his
fun and all his yarns are as clean as spring water. He doesn't insinuate
or suggest approval of evil. He doesn't ridicule true religion. He never
speaks slightingly or grossly of woman. He is a one-hundred-carat man in
his motives. I am often accredited with telling disgraceful barroom
stories, and sometimes see them in print, but I have no time to contradict
them. Perhaps people forget them soon. I hope so. I don't know how I came
by the name of a storyteller. It is not a fame I would seek. But I have
tried to use as many as I could find that were good so as to cheer up
people in this hard world.
"Ward said that he did not know much about education in the schools, but
he had an idea the training there was more to make the child think quickly
and think accurately than to memorize facts. If that were the case he
thought a textbook on bright jokes would be a valuable addition to a
school curriculum.
"Ward's sharp jokes _do_ discipline the mind. Ward told Tad last summer
that Adam was _snaked_ out of Eden, and that Goliath was surprised when
David hit him because such a thing never entered his head before. Ward
told Mr. Chase that his father was an artist who was true to life, for he
made a scarecrow so bad that the crows brought back the corn they had
stolen two years before. Ward believes that the riddles of Sampson, the
fables of Aesop, the questions of Socrates, and sums in mathematics are all
mind awakeners similar in effect to the discipline of real humor."
Knowing that Lincoln had suffered a nearly fatal heart blow in his youth
through the tragic death of his first love, I was interested, years after
this interview with the President, to learn that there had been a
startling occurrence of a very similar nature in the early life of Ward.
This has been almost universally overlooked. Even his most intimate
friends, including Robertson, Hingston, Setchell, Coe, Carleton, and
Rider, make no mention of the tragic death of one of Ward's earliest girl
friends, Maude Myrick, then residing with relatives in Norway, Maine. The
township of Norway adjoins Waterford, where Ward was born, and where he
lived until he was nineteen. None of Ward's biographers give details of
his early life on the farm, and none appear even to have heard of Maude
Myrick.
In 1874 a reporter of the Boston _Daily Traveler_ was sent to Waterford to
find the living neighbors of Ward's family and write a sketch of the
village and people. In the report the barest mention was made of Maude
Myrick. It stated that a cousin of Ward's remembered that his early
infatuation for a girl in the adjoining township "broke him all up" when
she was accidentally drowned at the inlet of Norway Lake. Search for her
genealogy at this late date seems vain. Ward appears never to have
mentioned her name but once after her death, and that was on his own
dying bed. The only allusion possibly concerning her that he ever made was
a brief note in an autograph album, preserved in Portland, Maine, in which
he wrote: "As for opposites; the happiest place for me is Tiffin, and the
saddest is a bridge over the Norway brook."
If the historian could be sure that the vague rumor was fact and that the
country lass and the farmer's son were lovers, that the place of her
sudden death at the bridge over the inlet to Norway Lake, halfway between
their homes, was their trysting place, it would make clear the chief
reason for Abraham Lincoln's tender interest in Artemus Ward. That fact
would also account in a large degree for Ward's eccentric, inimitable
humor. All the great humorists from Charles Lamb to Josh Billings were
broken-hearted in their youth. Great geniuses have often been developed by
the same sad experience. It often costs much to be truly great.
Previous to his sixteenth year the life of Charles Farrar Browne was that
of a New England country boy with parents who were industrious, honest,
and poor. The family needs were not of the extreme kind which are found in
the slums of the city, but existence depended on incessant toil and the
most critical economy. Squire Browne, the father of the future "Artemus
Ward," was a farmer who could also use surveying instruments with the
skill of New England common sense.
His mother was a strong, industrious woman of the Pilgrim Fathers stock.
She encouraged home study and made the long winter evenings the occasion
for moral and mental instruction. The district school was of little use to
her children, as they could "outteach the teacher." But Charlie was
educated beyond his years by the books which his parents brought into the
home. At fifteen years of age, his father having died two years
previously, he was sent to Skowhegan, Maine, to learn the trade of a
printer in the office of the Skowhegan _Clarion_.
His parents had not intended that he should be permanently a printer; the
inability to care for the growing boy at home evidently induced them to
seek a trade for him by which he could earn a living while studying for
the ministry. But the tragic events or the unaccountable mental revolution
of those unrecorded years turned away all the hopes of his parents and
sent his soul into rebellion against such a career. Nevertheless, a deep
good nature remained intact and the altruistic qualities of his
disposition proved to be permanent. He wrote to Shillabar ("Mrs.
Partington") of Boston that "the man who has no care for fun himself has
more time to cheer up his neighbors." The only thing that ever cheered
Ward into chuckling laughter was to meditate by himself on the effect of a
squib or description he was composing on "some old codger on a barrel by
the country grocery."
Ward was never contented or fully happy. He traveled about from place to
place, often leaving without collecting his wages. He was a typesetter and
reporter at Tiffin, Ohio, at Toledo, and at Cleveland. When Mr. J. W. Gray
of the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ secured Ward's services as a reporter,
Ward was twenty-four years old and thought to be hopelessly indolent by
his previous employer. He soon became known as "that fool who writes for
the _Plain Dealer_"; and his comic situations and surprising arguments
were soon the general theme of conversation in the city. He was famous in
a month.
It was there and then that he assumed the pen name of Artemus Ward. He
began to give his humorous public talks in 1862 and was successful from
the first evening. His writings for _Vanity Fair_, New York, and all his
lectures were clearly original. He could never be accused of plagiarism or
imitation. Indeed, no one on earth could repeat his lectures with success
or equal Ward in continual fun making. He often assumed the role of an
idiot, but at the same time made the wisest observations and the cutest
sarcasms. His appearance on the stage even before he made his mechanical
nod was greeted with loud, hearty, and prolonged laughter. The saddest
forgot his sorrow, the most sedate gentleman began to shake, and the
crusty old maid broke out into the Ha! Ha! of a girl of sixteen.
We may read Ward's writings and feel something of his absurd humor when we
recall his posture as he stated solemnly that his wife's feet "were so
large that her toes came around the corner two minutes before she came
along"; but to feel the full force of the absurdity one needs to see
Ward's seeming impatience that anyone should take it as a joke or
disbelieve his plain statement.
Some cynical persons saw in Lincoln's friendship a move to secure Ward's
influence as a popular writer for the help of his political party. Now
that Mr. Lincoln is more fully understood, no one would accuse him of any
such a hypocritical or unworthy motive. He would have been frank with Ward
even though the latter was needed to aid the sacred cause of human
liberty.
Samuel Bowles of the Springfield _Republican_, writing on Artemus Ward's
death in 1866, said, "Ward is said not to have seen a well day after the
death of President Lincoln." It was a true friendship, beyond a doubt.