The famous funny man of the Burlington, Iowa, Hawkeye, was born at
Greensboro, Pennsylvania, on the 30th of July, 1844. At the early
age of seven months he went West with his parents, to grow up with
the country. They settled in Peoria, Illinois, where at the age of
eighteen Robert enlisted as a private, in 1862, in the Forty-seventh
Illinois Infantry. He served through the war as a private, was present
at the siege of Vicksburg, and was a member of the famous Red River
expedition. He showed himself to be a brave and fearless man on various
occasions, especially at the battle of Corinth.
Robert J. Burdette, at the close of the war found life’s struggle
rather severe. He was the oldest son of a family of nine, and aided
them as best he could. In after years he made the remark: “As the
oldest son I saw it was my duty to help pull the others through.” His
facilities for acquiring an academic education were limited, and his
ambition to enter college has never been gratified. While on a visit
to New York he penned several letters from that city to the Peoria
Transcript, and the publication of these letters betrayed his natural
inclination for the journalistic life. Upon his return to Peoria he
secured a position as proofreader on the Transcript. In the meantime he
wrote numerous sketches for the different New York magazines, but few
of which were published or even accepted.
Burdette says of his life from this time forward: “After a while I
started a paper of my own--the Peoria Review. I ran it two years. It
was a comforting sort of a paper. It brought to me a few cares but no
uncertainty. I knew every Monday morning that on the next Saturday
night I would not have money enough to pay the hands. During my career
as editor of that wretched sheet it never disappointed me in that
particular--not once. Finally the sheriff took me into partnership,
and there was a glorious increase of activity. He was an enterprising
man, very. He realized more in an hour than I had done in two years.
Presently the partnership dissolved, and I looked around for something
to do. I thought I would try and get on the Burlington Hawkeye. It was
a sober, staid old paper, financially solid. I was young and active.
Thought I, ‘I think I can do that paper good. If I can get on the staff
I am sure it will do me good. Well, I was thinking of going over there
when one day its manager, Mr. Wheeler, came to see me, and offered me
the position of city editor and reporter. Well, if I live ten thousand
years it will not be long enough time for me to be sufficiently
thankful that I accepted the offer, and, besides that, I am very proud
of the fact that they sent for me. It gave me an independence of
personal satisfaction that I have never recovered from. I don’t try to
be funny in my writings. I have an idea, occasionally, and when I get
it loose people laugh. Then I review the remark and shake it out to
find the fun. My perception of a joke is not hung on a hair trigger.”
In 1870, Mr. Burdette became affianced to Miss Carrie Garrett, of
Peoria, Illinois. She was a frail and delicate young lady, and on
visiting her one afternoon, Robert was met at the door by her friends,
who announced that she was lying at the point of death. The situation
was a grave one, but in fifteen minutes’ time he had procured a
marriage license from the county clerk’s office, and Miss Garrett
became Mrs. Robert J. Burdette at a time when her responses could only
be made by a slight motion of the eyes and a faint pressure of the
hand. But little hope was entertained for her life, but she passed
the ordeal, and after some length of time rallied sufficiently to go
with her husband on a short bridal tour to their quiet home in a
neighboring street, in Peoria. Mrs. Burdette has been an invalid all
her life, and the genial humorist has been a patient attendant and
companion for her in her dreary hours of life. The major portion of the
rollicking humor that Burdette produces, is written at the bed side of
his invalid wife.
It was soon after his marriage, when he was doing editorial work on the
Peoria Transcript, that Burdette began his humorous writing. He tells
of it in his own words as follows: “When I was on the Transcript, I
would try to think of something pleasant to tell the folks when I went
home at night--something that would make a tea-table lively. And when
nothing of a funny nature occurred, I would make up something, such as
one of the burlesques concerning the Middle Rib Family. They seemed to
be enjoyed around the tea-table, and finally Mrs. Burdette urged me to
write them up. I told her that they would sound as flat as dish-water
in print--that it was nothing but tea-table chatter, and that she
must not be so highly impressed by my nonsense. But she persisted,
and so I would occasionally write in a light vein for the Transcript.
The sketches seemed to take, and then I plunged into deep water.”
Afterwards Burdette said of his humor: “You see, I don’t know how I do
say things people think funny, and sometimes I am in a state of mind
bordering on insanity to know why people think they are so. I certainly
had no school except the wide world, from which to learn the lesson
of fun; and, now I come to think of it, perhaps the page was the most
instructive that could have been placed before me.”
From 1874 to the date of his joining the editorial corps of the
Burlington Hawkeye, Mr. Burdette rose rapidly as a humorist, and after
his writings and the Hawkeye both had become famous, he entered the
lecture field. His first lecture was decided upon and written by the
promptings of his wife. This little episode Robert tells as follows:
“One day when she was lying helpless, she said she believed that I
could write a lecture and deliver it successfully, and so she sat me
down to write that lecture; and from time to time I rebelled with tears
and groans and prayers. I told her that I was too little, that I had
no voice, that I couldn’t write a funny lecture, anyhow. She kept me
at it, and in due time we had a lecture on our hands:--‘The Rise and
Fall of the Mustache.’ That was all right enough; now how to get the
audience. I thought I would try it first at Keokuk. If I delivered it
first in Burlington, even though it were tame, tamer, tamest, I thought
they might pat me on the back. But Keokuk hated Burlington. I thought
that if it was flat the Keokuk folks would tell me so. Mrs. Burdette
said that, as she was responsible for that lecture, she was going to
hear it first delivered. So I carried her aboard the cars. We went down
to Keokuk, and they pronounced it good.”
The whole of the United States have since agreed with Keokuk. Burdette
has lectured in about every State in the Union to delighted audiences.
Taking his age into consideration, Mr. Burdette is very youthful in
appearance. He is short in stature, easy in manner, and affable in
conversation. He has a low, broad forehead, a black mustache, rounded
chin, and dark, yet bright, penetrating eyes. When writing at any
considerable length, he scarcely ever has a definite plan for his
effusion, and lets it take its own free way from the point of his pen.
He has written much in verse and prose, but his humorous descriptions
and pen pictures of those he meets in every-day life, are the most
readable of his productions. It is natural for him to be funny, and in
speaking of the most common-place things he expresses himself in the
most humorous way.
Burdette has published two books: The Rise and Fall of the Mustache,
and Hawkeye Glances, both volumes commanding a large sale. He has
written much for the literary weeklies, and his pen is never idle.
Among his attempts and successes in poetry nothing equals his touching
tribute to