pathos and the humour of a passage like that. Lowell’s humour is akin
to that of Holmes. It breaks out in nearly every essay that he wrote,
and almost runs riot in some of his poems. Speaking of the destruction
of a certain hill that a city street might be improved, he remarked in
“Cambridge Thirty Years Ago” (1854): “The landscape was carried away
cart-load by cart-load, and, dumped down on the roads, forms a part
of that unfathomable pudding which has, I fear, drawn many a teamster
and pedestrian to the use of phrases not commonly found in English
dictionaries.” There is much humour in Lowell, more stirring than this,
but the quotation exhibits the readiness with which he would give an
unexpected turn to a sentence, or throw in an unlooked-for reference
or expression, too delicate to be shocking, too subtle to arouse loud
laughter, but capable none the less of sending a ripple of amusement
over the calmest gravity. For work professedly humorous throughout,
we must turn to “A Fable for Critics” (1848) or to “The Biglow Papers”
(1848). Both contain much good hard common sense, but the humour
instead of being a mere accident of expression is the real reason for
the existence of the greater part of each work. More closely allied to
Lowell, perhaps, than to either Irving or Holmes, Warner produced no
work exclusively funny. Still there is hardly a page of “My Summer in a
Garden” (1870) or of “In the Wilderness” (1878) which does not have at
least one laughable sentence. For this reason Warner defies quotation:
his chapters must be read in their entirety rather than in chance
snatches.
_The Professional Humourists._--Turning now from those writers of
humour who have been looked upon by some critics as forming an
“imitative school” and by others as constituting what they have
more happily termed a “restrained school,” we come upon a widely
extended group of writers who profess to have no higher calling
than the awakening of mere laughter. If we call them collectively
the “professional school of American humourists,” we need not feel
ourselves debarred from regarding them as falling naturally into
several classes, to each of which we may give some special name, such
as “the milder school,” “the women humourists,” “the boisterous group,”
and the like. We must not forget, however, that no hard and fast
dividing lines can be drawn between the different classes, since the
fact that a writer is a woman does not necessarily prevent her writing
boisterous humour, or that a man who is generally almost clown-like may
not sometimes produce a rare and refined piece of fun. Furthermore, it
happens that the very naturalness with which the humourists fall into
groups and classes prevents their being discussed in chronological
order. The milder fun-makers have existed side by side with their
hilarious brethren from the beginning, so that one must ignore, except
in the slightest way, the order determined mainly by accidents of
birth, or dates of publication.
_The Women Humourists._--Politeness demands that we speak of the women
humourists first: in the fore-front of these we must place Mrs. Frances
Miriam Whitcher (1811-1852). She made her first appearance as a writer
in _Neal’s Saturday Gazette_ about 1845, and to that paper contributed
a long series of articles purporting to come from the pen of “the Widow
Bedott.” From the first she attracted attention, and interest in her
work has never wholly ceased. Such was the demand for her writings that
after her death two collections of articles from her pen were made and
published as “The Widow Bedott Papers” (1855), and “Widow Sprigg, Mary
Elmer, and Other Sketches” (1867).
Closely related in form and content to “The Widow Bedott Papers” was a
book published in 1873 with the title “My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s.”
Although immediately popular, it was for many years supposed to be the
work of its professed author, Samanthy Allen; but by the time “P. A.
and P. I. or Samanthy at the Centennial” appeared, in 1876, the secret
had leaked out that “Josiah Allen’s Wife” was the pseudonym of Marietta
Holley (born in 1844), a native of Adams, New York. A contributor to
_Peterson’s Magazine_, _The Christian Union_, _The Independent_, and
other periodicals, and the author of numerous books, she has gained
considerable renown. Her earlier works are her best; for as time went
on she diluted her skill in fun-making by permitting her interest
in the temperance question, the woman-suffrage movement, and negro
education to interfere with the power of her wit. Miss Holley’s work
has attracted some attention abroad, and has been translated into
several foreign languages. Merely pausing to mention Mary Abigail Dodge
(1830-1896), a native of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who, forming her
pseudonym from a part of her own name and from that of her birthplace,
made herself famous as “Gail Hamilton” in work both grave and gay; and
stopping only to call attention to the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe
in “Old Town Folks” (1869) gave us an unusually funny book, we may
choose from the host of women who are moving us to laughter the most
industrious of them all, Carolyn Wells. As a writer of the verse form
called the _limerick_ she has more than once equalled Edward Lear, and
as a parodist she shocks a reader to silence by her audacity.
_The Milder Humourists._--In what may be called the milder school of
American humourists Seba Smith (1792-1868) was the leader in point
of time. Graduated from Bowdoin College in 1818, Smith began almost
immediately to contribute editorially to the papers of Portland, Maine.
In addition to more serious works, he wrote, under the pen-name of
“Major Jack Downing,” a series of political articles in New England
dialect, thus anticipating Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” by several years.
Smith was the author of a number of books, the best known of which
are probably “Way Down East” (1853) and “My Thirty Years Out of the
Senate” (1859), the latter a homely and vigorous parody of Senator
T. H. Benton’s “Thirty Years’ View of the American Government.” Writing
not long after Seba Smith, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) early sprang
into fame. The author of a considerable amount of prose, he attracted
far wider attention by his verse. In the latter he showed the working
of a strong English influence; indeed, it is not too much to say that
had there been no Thomas Hood, there would have been no Saxe. Born
at Highgate, Vermont, and graduated from Middlebury College in 1843,
he soon became interested in both journalism and politics; but he is
now best remembered by his work in verse. His “Humorous and Satirical
Poems” (1850) fairly bristle with puns from beginning to end, and the
surprising fact about them is that they are so good and so well set in
their places that rarely does a reader feel inclined to accuse Saxe of
overstraining his powers.
_Leland_, _Field_, _Riley_, _and Harris_.--Merely mentioning in
passing the name of Saxe’s contemporary, Frederick Swartwout Cozzens
(1818-1869), author of “The Sparrowgrass Papers” (1856), we call
attention to Robert Henry Newell (1836-1901), whose “Orpheus C. Kerr
Papers” in three volumes (1861-1869) contained presumably funny
comments on the Civil War, and to David Ross Locke (1833-1888), who,
writing under the pseudonym of “Petroleum Vesuvius Naseby,” wittily
supported the administration of Lincoln, and attacked that of Johnson,
in newspaper articles afterward collected into a book entitled
“Divers Views, Opinions, and Prophecies of Yours Truly” (1865). These
three men, although deserving mention on account of the position
they once held, are now little read, but their contemporary Charles
Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) seems to have established something like
permanent renown for himself. Graduated from Princeton in 1846, he
became prominent in various fields of journalism and authorship. His
best-known work is “Hans Breitmann’s Ballads,” of which a collected
edition appeared in 1895. These poems are written in the dialect known
as Pennsylvania Dutch, and relate the exploits of their clownish hero
in various exigencies and circumstances. In this same school of mild
humourists we may class also a number of writers most of whom are still
in the prime of life. From the host we select three as typical. Eugene
Field (1850-1895), whose untimely death cut short a career of promise
already blossoming into fulfilment, may be mentioned first. In addition
to much serious work, he published “The Tribune Primer” (1882), a mock
imitation of a child’s first reading-book, and “Culture’s Garden”
(1887), a series of clever skits directed against those who make
a pretence of ultra-refinement. With Field for some reason James
Whitcomb Riley (born in 1853) has always been popularly associated,
possibly because both wrote poems having childhood as subject-matter.
Mr. Riley’s humorous work is scattered through his several books, of
which “Rhymes of Childhood” (1890) and “Home Folks” (1900) are typical,
if not the best. An author of a series of books which appeal at once
to students of popular tradition and to general readers whether young
or old is found in Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908). Publishing a book
in 1880 on Afro-American folk-lore under the title “Uncle Remus, His
Songs and His Sayings,” Mr. Harris found to his surprise that he had
an audience who listened to him with mirth instead of gravity. It is
improbable that more than a mere handful of his readers suspect for
even a moment that the several stories put into the mouth of Uncle
Remus are a real contribution to anthropological data. In his later
years, Mr. Harris wisely threw all his reports into literary form, with
the result that there was a steady rise in his popularity as he gave
us successively “Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883), “Mingo, and Other
Sketches” (1884), and “Daddy Jake, the Runaway” (1889).
_The Boisterous Humourists._--Turning now to the “boisterous school” of
American humour, we may dwell for a time upon the chief characteristics
exhibited by members of the group. In the first place, most of them
have forgotten how to spell. There is something ludicrous in the
appearance of the word “through” masquerading in the garb “thru,”
whatever may be the plea of the society of spelling reformers to the
contrary; and certainly no one, except a school-teacher, can be other
than amused to see such common words as “laugh,” “feel,” “funny,” and
the like making their bows as “laff,” “feal,” and “phuny.” Laughable
as this may be, however, it is not too much to insist that, if the
appeal is only to the eye, if the wit evaporates when the words are
not seen but merely heard, then the humour is not of very high order.
In the second place, most of the members of the boisterous school,
along with their loss of power as spellers, have also forgotten how to
tell the truth. “This inclination towards outrageous exaggeration,”
said Lowell, “is a prime characteristic of American humour.” “There
is,” he says elsewhere, “something irresistibly comic in the conception
of a negro so black that charcoal made a white mark on him, or in the
idea of a soil so fertile that a nail planted in it becomes a railroad
spike before morning.” This example of untruthfulness might also be
taken as an illustration of the third trait of the group now under
discussion--that of producing the most absurd paradoxes and of bringing
into juxtaposition the most diverse uses of the same word. This is more
than mere word-play; it is rather what might be termed the apotheosis
of the pun. It underlies the majority of jokes that are found in the
American newspaper, and is at once the admiration and the despair of
those who try to analyse or to imitate the subtlety of our humour.
_Josh Billings._--With these three characteristics in mind we may
now give some brief attention to the humourists themselves. Of the
“boisterous school” the earliest were Henry Wheeler Shaw, Benjamin
Penhallow Shillaber, and Charles Farrar Browne. If by chance these
names seem quite unfamiliar, the strangeness will disappear when
attention is called to the fact that the three men respectively wrote
under the _noms de plume_ of “Josh Billings,” “Mrs. Partington,”
and “Artemus Ward.” Shaw (1818-1885) was born in Lanesborough,
Massachusetts, and died in Monterey, California. To complete his
formal education he entered Hamilton College in Clinton, New York; but
tiring of the life there, he went on to the West and spent a number
of years undergoing the many experiences offered by frontier life.
Returning East in 1858, he became an auctioneer in Poughkeepsie,
New York, where he also began to contribute to various magazines and
newspapers. He attracted little attention until he invented an amusing
system of phonetic spelling supposed to represent his homely method of
pronunciation. His chief works were his “Farmer’s Allminax” published
annually between 1870 and 1880, “Every Boddy’s Friend” (1876), and
“Josh Billings’ Spice Box” (1881). A quotation or two will exhibit both
the thought and the form which characterise the contents of his several
volumes of writing:
“Fallin’ in luv is like fallin’ in molases--sweet but drefful dobby.”
“Yu can’t tell what makes a kis taste so good eny more than you kin a
peech. Eny man who kin set down wher it is cool and tell what a kis
tastes like hain’t got eny more taste in his mouth than a knot-hol hez.”
_Mrs. Partington._--Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814-1890) was influenced
by Sheridan even more strongly than was Saxe by the elder Hood. Mrs.
Partington is America’s Mrs. Malaprop. Her misuse of the English
language Shillaber recorded in three books bearing the several titles,
“Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington” (1854), “Partingtonian Patchwork”
(1873), and “Ike and his Friend” (1879). Mrs. Partington’s likeness to
her English predecessor, or, as she would undoubtedly have said, her
“predecessoress,” may be seen in her chance remark: “I am not so young
as I was once, and I don’t believe I shall ever be, if I live to the
age of Samson, which, heaven knows as well as I do, I don’t want to,
for I wouldn’t be a centurion or an octagon and survive my factories
and become idiomatic by any means. But then there is no knowing how a
thing will turn out till it takes place, and we shall come to an end
some day, though we may never live to see it.”
_Artemus Ward._--Charles F. Brown (1834-1867), the third of the
humourists writing about the middle of the last century, was born in
Waterford, Maine, and lived in various parts of the United States as
his newspaper work called him first to one town and then to another.
He made extensive lecture trips, and finally went in 1866 to England,
where he died in March of the following year. He had the distinction of
being the first American contributor to _Punch_. He published during
his lifetime a number of books, among which were “Artemus Ward: His
Book” (1865), “Artemus Ward: His Book of Goaks” (1865), and “Artemus
Ward in London” (1867). Undoubtedly his best single work was a lecture
giving an account of his visit to the Mormons. Learning from Brigham
Young that he was married to eighty wives and sealed to as many more,
Artemus remarked that the prophet was “the most marriedest man” he ever
saw. Ward then went on to say: “In a privit conversashun with Brigham I
learnt the follerin’ fax: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He
don’t do it only onct a year and sez it’s wuss nor cleanin’ house. He
don’t pretend to know his children, there is so many of ’em, tho they
all know him. He sez about every child he meats call him Par and he
takes it for granted it is so.”
_Later Writers of Boisterous Humour._--Taking up now the writers who
were born in the decade immediately preceding the turning point of the
nineteenth century, we may regard as worthy of special mention Charles
Heber Clark, Charles Bertrand Lewis, Robert Jones Burdette, and Edgar
Wilson Nye. Of these, all save one are still living and still writing.
Mr. Clark was born in Berlin, Maryland, in 1841. For many years he has
been the editor of _The Textile Record_, published in Philadelphia,
to which he has contributed a number of articles on economic themes.
He is best known, however, by two books of humour: “Out of the Hurly
Burly” and “Elbow Room,” both written under the _nom de plume_ of “Max
Adeler.” Mr. Lewis (born in 1842) is best known by his pseudonym, “M.
Quad,” a title drawn from the parlance of printers. Mr. Lewis’ earlier
work was much more spontaneous than that which he is producing now.
Connected with _The Detroit Free Press_, he contributed to it a steady
stream of character sketches of great variety. Collecting them later,
he published them under various titles. Of these volumes the best are
“Brother Gardener’s Lime-Kiln Club,” “Quad’s Odds,” and “Mr. and Mrs.
Bowser.”
Edgar W. Nye (1850-1896), best known as “Bill Nye,” was born in
Shirley, Maine, and died near Asheville, North Carolina. Educated
in Wisconsin, he first turned his attention to the study of law.
Abandoning that pursuit after having been admitted to the bar, he
dabbled in several different occupations, and finally became a
newspaper correspondent. For a short time he travelled with James
Whitcomb Riley, the two giving a series of entertainments which
proved widely popular. Nye’s published works were many, but they have
little chance of permanent life. As good as any are “Bill Nye and the
Boomerang” (1881), “A Comic History of the United States” (1894), and
“The Railroad Guide” (1888), the last written in partnership with Mr.
Riley. Mr. Burdette, the last of the quartette here mentioned together,
was born in Greensboro, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and received his
schooling in Peoria, Illinois. During the Civil War he was a soldier
in the Union Army. At the close of the struggle, Mr. Burdette returned
to Peoria, where he was connected with first one and then another of
the newspapers published there. Finally, failing in a paper issued
under his own proprietorship, he went to Burlington, Iowa, and became a
member of the staff of _The Hawkeye_. While engaged in newspaper work,
Mr. Burdette began to write funny things to amuse his invalid wife; and
these, published later in the columns of the paper, have made him known
throughout the United States. He was licensed as a Baptist preacher in
1887, since when he has signed himself Robert Burdette, D., on the
ground that the abbreviation _D._ is the next thing to that of _D.D._
Mr. Burdette’s best humorous work may be read in “The Rise and Fall of
the Moustache and other Hawkeyetems” (1877) and “Chimes from a Jester’s
Bells” (1897).
_Mark Twain._--Of American humourists “Mark Twain,” known in private
life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is readily placed foremost by critics
and admirers both at home and abroad. He has the right to be considered
the Nestor of our writers, for, born in 1835, he began to produce his
earliest work when Irving was in his prime, and has therefore seen at
least one phase of every school in our literature. His younger years
were those of the decline of the Knickerbocker writers; he saw the
rise and fall of the Concord group, the Cambridge poets, and the New
York writers; and now he is present at the general upward movement
all over the country, including the South and the West. His relation
to our literature is not unlike that of Fanny Burney to the novel;
she was born before Richardson published “The History of Sir Charles
Grandison,” and did not die until twelve years after the birth of
George Meredith, thus being contemporaneous with the greatest English
novelists from the first to the last. Mr. Clemens was born in Florida,
Missouri, and when scarcely thirteen years old was apprenticed to a
printer. Barring a few years spent as pilot upon the Mississippi,
he has devoted his life to literary work. His writings include “The
Innocents Abroad” (1869), the humorous record of a trip in the
countries of the Eastern Hemisphere; “The Gilded Age” (1873), a novel
written conjointly with Charles Dudley Warner; “The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer” (1876), and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884),
both books about boys whose exploits are interesting to young and old
alike; “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (1889), a
cruel parody of Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”; and “Christian Science,”
an attempt, despite all the fun it makes, to report sincerely upon a
careful investigation of the claims of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and her
disciples. It is unfortunate for Mr. Clemens that he is a humourist,
for he has had to suffer the lot long ago mentioned by Holmes as the
fate of the fun-producer: no one can ever take such a man seriously;
no one can believe that he ever has any other purpose than to tickle
our fancy or awaken our laughter. Yet it is not impossible that future
critics may come to regard “The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and
“The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc” (1896), two serious and
dignified pieces of writing, as Mr. Clemens’s best work.
Within recent years Oxford University has conferred the degree of
D.C.L. upon Mr. Clemens in recognition of his contributions to
literature. This action by a great institution of learning has filled
many minds with surprise, nor have all of them quite recovered their
mental equilibrium yet. Some, indeed, are still asking the old
question, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” and can hardly believe
their ears when they receive the answer, “Yea, verily!” Humour at last
seems to be coming to its own. Said Mr. Meredith a few years ago:
“Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the
Muses. She was in her origin, short of laughter, the loudest expression
of the little civilisation of men.” While it must be admitted that
when he wrote this the greatest English writer now living had in mind
something much more delicate, much more refined, much more subtle,
than anything yet produced in America, it is not beyond thought that
even he would let us classify the fun-makers of this country as true
humourists. They deal little in satire, little in irony, but they have
much in common with those to whom Mr. Meredith said: “If you laugh all
round a person, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop
a tear on him, own his likeness to you, and yours to your neighbour,
spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it is
a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”
V. THE ORATORS AND THE DIVINES.