A dozen years or so ago, when Mr. Bangs faced at home an audience, which had gathered to hear his address on "The Evolution of the Humorist," he said:
"I was born in and have resided in Yonkers for a number of years; I have braved the perils of life in this community, and have endured, without a murmur, the privations common to all of us."
A modest biography, and withal an illustration of Mr. Bangs's philosophy. He takes things as they come—and leaves his imprint on them. Comparisons of skill aside, no man could do more.
John Kendrick Bangs was born in Yonkers, New York, in May, 1862. His father, Francis N. Bangs, was a prominent New York lawyer, in fact, one of the most prominent lawyers the New York bar has ever known. His grandfather was the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., the first historian of the Methodist Church in this country, the first editor of a Methodist paper, and for many years president of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
In 1883, after receiving such an education as any New York boy of a well-to-do New York family receives, young Bangs was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy from the School of Political Science of Columbia University, New York. For a year and a half afterward he studied law in his father's office—studied at "long range," as he has said himself. But all the time he was impatient to go into literature. "I was more of a fighter," he says, "and it seemed to me that a man has enough battles of his own to wage without rushing after the battles of other people." Gradually his inherited fondness for literature smothered his zeal as a student of law. While contributing in his undergraduate days to the college paper, Acta Columbiana, he had enjoyed a taste of literary glory. So, between dips into his father's dry volumes, he wrote little sketches in his characteristic vein. These tentative works introduced him favorably to the managers of Life, and, late in 1884, he became associated with Mr. Mitchell in the editorship of that entertaining periodical. In addition to his editorial work he undertook to maintain the attractive "By the Way" page, and to this valuable feature of Life he contributed an extraordinary amount of original matter. What would not have been asked of many other men was requested of the new humorist in the most casual manner, for he quickly proved that, besides possessing a keen literary instinct and that kindly and delightful insight into human nature which, brought together, double the value of a comic paper, he also possessed remarkable energy and power of application.
In 1887, while still connected with Life, and shortly after his marriage, young Bangs went abroad, and during this absence from editorial work his first book, "Roger Camorden, a Strange Story," was published. It was an unusual and very promising tale of hallucination, and its success was encouraging. That same year, in collaboration with his friend and classmate, Frank Dempster Sherman, he produced a series of satirical and humorous pieces, which were put into a volume under the title of "New Waggings of old Tales." Soon afterward he resigned from Life, in order to devote more time to larger work.
The first product of the rising author's independent career was a travesty on "The Taming of the Shrew" called "Katherine," which he wrote for a dramatic association connected with the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard. It followed the Shakespearean construction rather closely, and, with its many quips and gags and jolly songs, made a first-rate libretto for a comic opera. The popularity of the travesty advertised the fame of Bangs from one end of Manhattan Island to the other. The following year, for the same organization, he wrote another travesty, "Mephistopheles, a Profanation"; and this, too, won much popularity and further brightened its author's name.
The happy results of his experience as the father of three boys were noticeable in the book which Mr. Bangs published in 1891, "Tiddledywink Tales," the first of a series of amusing stories for children. The other divisions of this series are "In Camp with a Tin Soldier," "The Tiddledywink Poetry Book," and "Half Hours with Jimmie-Boy," books that have endeared their author to half the grown-up children in the land. It was by means of these books that he became a most welcome contributor to Harper's Round Table and to the juvenile departments of various literary syndicates. A novel, "Toppleton's Client," appeared in 1893, and in that year also appeared his first widely successful work, "Coffee and Repartee," a collection of Idiot papers, which has been described, and with good reason, as a mixture of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bill Nye. Those were not, compared with the present time, enthusiastic literary days, and yet in a few years fifty thousand copies of the little book were sold. "Coffee and Repartee" was followed at regular intervals by "The Water-Ghost," "The Idiot," "Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica," and by the other books whose names have at some time, been on every liberal reader's tongue.
One of the most entertaining of the New Yorker's books is "Ten Weeks in Politics," behind the writing of which is a story worth telling. In 1894 Mr. Bangs was nominated by the Democrats for Mayor of Yonkers. "No candidate, I sincerely believe," says his friend Mr. Corbin, "ever entered a political campaign with greater seriousness or with a more strenuous desire to devote himself to the public good; and except for any one of half a dozen accidents he would have been elected. To begin with, one of the cleverest of New York newspapers, the editorial policy of which has been suspected of personal prejudice, appeared to bear a grudge against Mr. Bangs, and persecuted him in prose and in verse with the implication that he was making a farce of politics. But the real cause of his defeat, as he explains with a quiet smile, was the fact that he refused one midnight to turn his house into a beer garden for the benefit of a local German band that serenaded him; and in point of fact the votes of the musicians and their heelers were enough to turn the scale. Though Mr. Bangs is always willing to laugh at the figure he cut as a politician, he has never lost the sense of his duty as a citizen. His victorious rival had the magnanimity, which in such cases is scarcely to be distinguished from political wisdom, to offer him a subordinate position in his administration—on the Board of Education, I think. Mr. Bangs had the magnanimity, which could not have contained the least scruple of policy, to accept the position and to fill it to the best of his ability, even while he was writing his 'Ten Weeks in Politics.' This episode is thoroughly characteristic."
Mr. Bangs has spoken of that defeat as the greatest blessing that he ever met. "In later years," he says, "when I saw how I would have been forced to abandon my chosen profession for politics, when I learned that the mayoralty would have taken every moment of my time, I was glad that I had been defeated. I saw, for the first time, the truth in the saying that a man can do more to bring success within his grasp by standing by his original proposition, even if it be a humorous one. And politics and humor do not mix, unless you happen to be a cartoonist."