Charles Farrar Brown, better known to the public of thirty years ago
under his pen-name of Artemus Ward, was born in the little village of
Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834. Waterford is a quiet
village of about seven hundred inhabitants, lying among the foot-hills
of the White Mountains. When Browne was a child it was a station on the
western stage-route, and an important depot for lumbermen's supplies.
Since the extension of railroads northerly and westerly from the
seaboard, it has however shared the fate of many New England villages in
being left on one side of the main currents of commercial activity, and
gradually assuming a character of repose and leisure, in many regards
more attractive than the life and bustle of earlier days. Many persons
are still living there who remember the humorist as a quaint and tricksy
boy, alternating between laughter and preternatural gravity, and of a
surprising ingenuity in devising odd practical jokes in which good
nature so far prevailed that even the victims were too much amused to be
very angry.
[Illustration: Charles F. Browne]
On both sides, he came from original New England stock; and although he
was proud of his descent from a very ancient English family, in
deference to whom he wrote his name with the final "e," he felt greater
pride in his American ancestors, and always said that they were genuine
and primitive Yankees,--people of intelligence, activity, and integrity
in business, but entirely unaffected by new-fangled ideas. It is
interesting to notice that Browne's humor was hereditary on the paternal
side, his father especially being noted for his quaint sayings and
harmless eccentricities. His cousin Daniel many years later bore a
strong resemblance to what Charles had been, and he too possessed a
kindred humorous faculty and told a story in much the same solemn
manner, bringing out the point as if it were something entirely
irrelevant and unimportant and casually remembered. The subject of this
sketch, however, was the only member of the family in whom a love for
the droll and incongruous was a controlling disposition. As is
frequently the case, a family trait was intensified in one individual to
the point where talent passes over into genius.
On his mother's side, too, Browne was a thorough-bred New-Englander. His
maternal grandfather, Mr. Calvin Farrar, was a man of influence in town
and State, and was able to send two of his sons to Bowdoin College. I
have mentioned Browne's parentage because his humor is so essentially
American. Whether this consists in a peculiar gravity in the humorous
attitude towards the subject, rather than playfulness, or in a tendency
to exaggerated statement, or in a broad humanitarian standpoint, or in a
certain flavor given by a blending of all these, it is very difficult to
decide. Probably the peculiar standpoint is the distinguishing note, and
American humor is a product of democracy.
Humor is as difficult of definition as is poetry. It is an intimate
quality of the mind, which predisposes a man to look for remote and
unreal analogies and to present them gravely as if they were valid. It
sees that many of the objects valued by men are illusions, and it
expresses this conviction by assuming that other manifest trifles are
important. It is the deadly enemy of sentimentality and affectation, for
its vision is clear. Although it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport,
its world is not a chaos nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based
on keen perception of truth. There is no method--except the highest
poetic treatment--which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and
hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the _reductio ad
absurdum_ of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous
sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing
which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood.
But just as poetry may degenerate into a musical collection of words and
painting into a decorative association of colors, so humor may
degenerate into the merely comic or amusing. The laugh which true humor
arouses is not far removed from tears. Humor indeed is not always
associated with kindliness, for we have the sardonic humor of Carlyle
and the savage humor of Swift; but it is naturally dissociated from
egotism, and is never more attractive than when, as in the case of
Charles Lamb and Oliver Goldsmith, it is based on a loving and generous
interest in humanity.
Humor, must rest on a broad human foundation, and cannot be narrowed to
the notions of a certain class. But in most English humor,--as indeed in
all English literature except the very highest,--the social class to
which the writer does not belong is regarded _ab extra_. In Punch, for
instance, not only are servants always given a conventional set of
features, but they are given conventional minds, and the jokes are based
on a hypothetical conception of personality. Dickens was a great
humorist, and understood the nature of the poor because he had been one
of them; but his gentlemen and ladies are lay figures. Thackeray's
studies of the flunky are capital; but he studies him _qua flunky_, as a
naturalist might study an animal, and hardly ranks him _sub specie
humanitatis_. But to the American humorist all men are primarily men.
The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to him, because in each
he finds similar incongruities between the man and his surroundings; but
in England there is a deep impassable gulf between the man at the table
and the man behind his chair. This democratic independence of external
and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to
American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions
in America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material "in
sight" but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in the
humorist's mind a basis of reverence for things and persons that are
really reverend, it gives a breadth and freedom to the humorous
conception that is distinctively American.
We put Clemens and Browne in the same line, because in reading a page of
either we feel at once the American touch. Browne of course is not to be
compared to Clemens in affluence or in range in depicting humorous
character-types; but it must be remembered that Clemens has lived thirty
active years longer than his predecessor did. Neither has written a line
that he would wish to blot for its foul suggestion, or because it
ridiculed things that were lovely and of good report. Both were educated
in journalism, and came into direct contact with the strenuous and
realistic life of labor. And to repeat, though one was born and bred
west of the Mississippi and the other far "down east," both are
distinctly American. Had either been born and passed his childhood
outside our magic line, this resemblance would not have existed. And yet
we cannot say precisely wherein this likeness lies, nor what caused it;
so deep, so subtle, so pervading is the influence of nationality. But
their original expressions of the American humorous tone are worth ten
thousand literary echoes of Sterne or Lamb or Dickens or Thackeray.
The education of young Browne was limited to the strictly preparatory
years. At the age of thirteen he was forced by the death of his father
to try to earn his living. When about fourteen, he was apprenticed to a
Mr. Rex, who published a paper at Lancaster, New Hampshire. He remained
there about a year, then worked on various country papers, and finally
passed three years in the printing-house of Snow and Wilder, Boston. He
then went to Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin
Advertiser, went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857.
Thence he went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer.
Here appeared the humorous letters signed "Artemus Ward" and written in
the character of an itinerant showman. In 1860 he went to New York as
editor of the comic journal Vanity Fair.
His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, 'Artemus Ward, His
Book,' was brought out in 1862. In 1863 he went to San Francisco by way
of the Isthmus and returned overland. This journey was chronicled in a
short volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Travels.' He had already undertaken a
career of lecturing, and his comic entertainments, given in a style
peculiarly his own, became very popular. The mimetic gift is frequently
found in the humorist; and Browne's peculiar drawl, his profound gravity
and dreamy, far-away expression, the unexpected character of his jokes
and the surprise with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a
combination of a delightfully quaint absurdity. Browne himself was a
very winning personality, and never failed to put his audience in good
humor. None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without
tenderness. In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as popular
there as lecturer and writer for Punch. He died from a pulmonary trouble
in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite thirty-three years old.
He was never married.
When we remember that a large part of Browne's mature life was taken up
in learning the printer's trade, in which he became a master, we must
decide that he had only entered on his career as humorous writer. Much
of what he wrote is simply amusing, with little depth or power of
suggestion; it is comic, not humorous. He was gaining the ear of the
public and training his powers of expression. What he has left consists
of a few collections of sketches written for a daily paper. But the
subjoined extracts will show, albeit dimly, that he was more than a
joker, as under the cap and bells of the fool in Lear we catch a glimpse
of the face of a tender-hearted and philosophic friend. Browne's nature
was so kindly and sympathetic, so pure and manly, that after he had
achieved a reputation and was relieved from immediate pecuniary
pressure, he would have felt an ambition to do some worthy work and take
time to bring out the best that was in him. As it is, he had only tried
his 'prentice hand. Still, the figure of the old showman, though not
very solidly painted, is admirably done. He is a sort of sublimated and
unoffensive Barnum; perfectly consistent, permeated with his
professional view of life, yet quite incapable of anything underhand or
mean; radically loyal to the Union, appreciative of the nature of his
animals, steady in his humorous attitude toward life: and above all, not
a composite of shreds and patches, but a personality. Slight as he is,
and unconscious and unpracticed as is the art that went to his creation,
he is one of the humorous figures of all literature; and old Sir John
Falstaff, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle Toby, and Dr. Primrose will not
disdain to admit him into their company; for he too is a man, not an
abstraction, and need not be ashamed of his parentage nor doubtful of
his standing among the "children of the men of wit."