The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 1: Essays, Sketches, and Letters

by Artemus Ward

Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme of Artemus Ward not to return from California to the East by way of Panama, but to come home across the Plains, and to visit Salt Lake City by the way. The difficulty that now presented itself was, that winter was close upon us, and that it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra Nevada and scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below freezingpoint. Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a strong man. My advice was to return to Panama, visit the West India Islands, and come back to California in the spring, lecture again in San Francisco, and then go on to the land of the Mormons. Artemus doubted the feasibility of this plan, and the decision was ultimately arrived at to try the journey to Salt Lake.

Unfortunately the winter turned out to be one of the severest. When we arrived at Salt Lake City, my poor friend was seized with typhoid fever, resulting from the fatigue we had undergone, the intense cold to which we had been subjected, and the excitement of being on a journey of 3500 miles across the North American Continent, when the Pacific Railway had made little progress and the Indians were reported not to be very friendly.

The story of the trip is told in Artemus Ward's lecture. I have added to it, at the special request of the publisher, a few explanatory notes, the purport of which is to render the reader acquainted with the characteristics of the lecturer's delivery. For the benefit of those who never had an opportunity of seeing Artemus Ward nor of hearing him lecture, I may be pardoned for attempting to describe the man himself.

In stature he was tall, in figure, slender. At any time during our acquaintance his height must have been disproportionate to his weight. Like his brother Cyrus, who died a few years before him; Charles F. Browne, our "Artemus Ward," had the premonitory signs of a short life strongly evident in his early manhood. There were the lank form, the long pale fingers, the very white pearly teeth, the thin, fine, soft hair, the undue brightness of the eyes, the excitable and even irritable disposition, the capricious appetite, and the alternately jubilant and despondent tone of mind which too frequently indicate that "the abhorred fury with the shears" is waiting too near at hand to "slit the thin-spun life." His hair was very light-colored, and not naturally curly. He used to joke in his lecture about what it cost him to keep it curled; he wore a very large moustache without any beard or whiskers; his nose was exceedingly prominent, having an outline not unlike that of the late Sir Charles Napier. His forehead was large, with, to use the language of the phrenologists, the organs of the perceptive faculties far more developed than those of the imaginative powers. He had the manner and bearing of a naturally-born gentleman. Great was the disappointment of many who, having read his humorous papers descriptive of his exhibition of snakes and waxwork, and who having also formed their ideas of him from the absurd pictures which had been attached to some editions of his works, found on meeting with him that there was no trace of the showman in his deportment, and little to call up to their mind the smart Yankee who had married "Betsy Jane." There was nothing to indicate that he had not lived a long time in Europe and acquired the polish which men gain by coming in contact with the society of European capitals. In his conversation there was no marked peculiarity of accent to identify him as an American, nor any of the braggadocio which some of his countrymen unadvisedly assume. His voice was soft, gentle, and clear. He could make himself audible in the largest lecture-rooms without effort. His style of lecturing was peculiar; so thoroughly sui generis, that I know of no one with whom to compare him, nor can any description very well convey an idea of that which it was like. However much he caused his audience to laugh, no smile appeared upon his own face. It was grave, even to solemnity, while he was giving utterance to the most delicious absurdities. His assumption of indifference to that which he was saying, his happy manner of letting his best jokes fall from his lips as if unconscious of their being jokes at all, his thorough self-possession on the platform, and keen appreciation of that which suited his audience and that which did not, rendered him well qualified for the task which he had undertaken—that of amusing the public with a humorous lecture. He understood and comprehended to a hair's breadth the grand secret of how not to bore. He had weighed, measured, and calculated to a nicety the number of laughs an audience could indulge in on one evening, without feeling that they were laughing just a little too much. Above all, he was no common man, and did not cause his audience to feel that they were laughing at that which they should feel ashamed of being amused with. He was intellectually up to the level of nine-tenths of those who listened to him, and in listening, they felt that it was no fool who wore the cap and bells so excellently. It was amusing to notice how with different people his jokes produced a different effect. The Honourable Robert Lowe attended one evening at the Mormon Lecture, and laughed as hilariously as any one in the room. The next evening Mr. John Bright happened to be present. With the exception of one or two occasional smiles, he listened with grave attention.

In placing the lecture before the public in print, it is impossible, by having recourse to any system of punctuation, to indicate the pauses, jerky emphases, and odd inflexions of voice which characterised the delivery. The reporter of the Standard newspaper, describing his first lecture in London, aptly said: "Artemus dropped his jokes faster than the meteors of last night succeeded each other in the sky. And there was this resemblance between the flashes of his humour and the flights of the meteors, that in each case one looked for jokes or meteors, but they always came just in the place that one least expected to find them. Half the enjoyment of the evening lay, to some of those present, in listening to the hearty cachinnation of the people who only found out the jokes some two or three minutes after they were made, and who then laughed apparently at some grave statements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect lies in their seemingly impromptu character. They are carefully led up to, of course; but they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts, of which the speaker is hardly sure." Herein the writer in the Standard hits the most marked peculiarity of Artemus Ward's style of lecturing. His affectation of not knowing what he was uttering, his seeming fits of abstraction, and his grave, melancholy aspect, constituted the very cream of the entertainment. Occasionally he would amuse himself in an apparently meditative mood, by twirling his little riding-whip, or by gazing earnestly, but with affected admiration, at his panorama. At the Egyptian Hall his health entirely failed him, and he would occasionally have to use a seat during the course of the lecture. In the notes which follow I have tried, I know how inefficiently, to convey here and there an idea of how Artemus rendered his lecture amusing by gesture or action. I have also, at the request of the publisher, made a few explanatory comments on the subject of our Mormon trip. In so doing I hope that I have not thrust myself too prominently forward, nor been too officious in my explanations. My aim has been to add to the interest of the lecture with those who never heard it delivered, and to revive in the memory of those who did some of its notable peculiarities. The illustrations are from photographs of the panorama painted in America for Artemus, as the pictorial portion of his entertainment.

In the lecture is the fun of the journey. For the hard facts the reader in quest of information is referred to a book published previously to the lecturer's appearance at the Egyptian Hall, the title of which is, "Artemus Ward: His Travels among the Mormons." Much against the grain as it was for Artemus to be statistical, he has therein detailed some of the experiences of his Mormon trip, with due regard to the exactitude and accuracy of statement expected by information-seeking readers in a book of travels. He was not precisely the sort of traveller to write a paper for the evening meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, nor was he sufficiently interested in philosophical theories to speculate on the developments of Mormonism as illustrative of the history of religious belief. We were looking out of the window of the Salt Lake House one morning, when Brigham Young happened to pass down the opposite side of Main Street. It was cold weather, and the prophet was clothed in a thick cloak of some green-colored material. I remarked to Artemus that Brigham had seemingly compounded Mormonism from portions of a dozen different creeds; and that in selecting green for the color of his apparel, he was imitating Mahomet. "Has it not struck you," I observed, "that Swedenborgianism and Mahometanism are oddly blended in the Mormon faith?"

"Petticoatism and plunder," was Artemus's reply—and that comprehended his whole philosophy of Mormonism. As he remarked elsewhere: "Brigham Young is a man of great natural ability. If you ask me, How pious is he? I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up."

To lecture in London, and at the Egyptian Hall, had long been a favourite idea of Artemus Ward. Some humorist has said, that "All good Americans, when they die—, go to Paris." So do most, whether good or bad, while they are living.

Still more strongly developed is the transatlantic desire to go to Rome. In the far west of the Missouri, in the remoter west of Colorado and away in far north-western Oregon, I have heard many a tradesman express his intention to make dollars enough to enable him to visit Rome. In a land where all is so new, where they have had no past, where an old wall would be a sensation, and a tombstone of anybody's great grandfather the marvel of the whole region, the charms of the old world have an irresistible fascination. To visit the home of the Caesars they have read of in their school-books, and to look at architecture which they have seen pictorially, but have nothing like it in existence around them, is very naturally the strong wish of people who are nationally nomadic, and who have all more or less a smattering of education. Artemus Ward never expressed to me any very great wish to travel on the European continent, but to see London was to accomplish something which he had dreamed of from his boyhood. There runs from Marysville in California to Oroville in the same State a short and singular little railway, which, when we were there, was in a most unfinished condition. To Oroville we were going. We were too early for the train at the Marysville station, and sat down on a pile of timber to chat over future prospects.

"What sort of a man was Albert Smith?" asked Artemus "And do you think that the Mormons would be as good a subject for the Londoners as Mont Blanc was?"