In 1874 a reporter of the Boston Daily Traveler was sent to Waterford to find the living neighbors of Ward’s family and write a sketch of the village and people. In the report the barest mention was made of Maude Myrick. It stated that a cousin of Ward’s remembered that his early infatuation for a girl in the adjoining township “broke him all up” when she was accidentally drowned at the inlet of Norway Lake. Search for her genealogy at this late date seems vain. Ward appears never to have mentioned her name but once after her death, and that was on his own dying bed. The only allusion possibly concerning her that he ever made was a brief note in an autograph album, preserved in Portland, Maine, in which he wrote: “As for opposites; the happiest place for me is Tiffin, and the saddest is a bridge over the Norway brook.”
If the historian could be sure that the vague rumor was fact and that the country lass and the farmer’s son were lovers, that the place of her sudden death at the bridge over the inlet to Norway Lake, halfway between their homes, was their trysting place, it would make clear the chief reason for Abraham Lincoln’s tender interest in Artemus Ward. That fact would also account in a large degree for Ward’s eccentric, inimitable humor. All the great humorists from Charles Lamb to Josh Billings were broken-hearted in their youth. Great geniuses have often been developed by the same sad experience. It often costs much to be truly great.
Previous to his sixteenth year the life of Charles Farrar Browne was that of a New England country boy with parents who were industrious, honest, and poor. The family needs were not of the extreme kind which are found in the slums of the city, but existence depended on incessant toil and the most critical economy. Squire Browne, the father of the future “Artemus Ward,” was a farmer who could also use surveying instruments with the skill of New England common sense.
His mother was a strong, industrious woman of the Pilgrim Fathers stock. She encouraged home study and made the long winter evenings the occasion for moral and mental instruction. The district school was of little use to her children, as they could “outteach the teacher.” But Charlie was educated beyond his years by the books which his parents brought into the home. At fifteen years of age, his father having died two years previously, he was sent to Skowhegan, Maine, to learn the trade of a printer in the office of the Skowhegan Clarion.
His parents had not intended that he should be permanently a printer; the inability to care for the growing boy at home evidently induced them to seek a trade for him by which he could earn a living while studying for the ministry. But the tragic events or the unaccountable mental revolution of those unrecorded years turned away all the hopes of his parents and sent his soul into rebellion against such a career. Nevertheless, a deep good nature remained intact and the altruistic qualities of his disposition proved to be permanent. He wrote to Shillabar (“Mrs. Partington”) of Boston that “the man who has no care for fun himself has more time to cheer up his neighbors.” The only thing that ever cheered Ward into chuckling laughter was to meditate by himself on the effect of a squib or description he was composing on “some old codger on a barrel by the country grocery.”
Ward was never contented or fully happy. He traveled about from place to place, often leaving without collecting his wages. He was a typesetter and reporter at Tiffin, Ohio, at Toledo, and at Cleveland. When Mr. J. W. Gray of the Cleveland Plain Dealer secured Ward’s services as a reporter, Ward was twenty-four years old and thought to be hopelessly indolent by his previous employer. He soon became known as “that fool who writes for the Plain Dealer”; and his comic situations and surprising arguments were soon the general theme of conversation in the city. He was famous in a month.
It was there and then that he assumed the pen name of Artemus Ward. He began to give his humorous public talks in 1862 and was successful from the first evening. His writings for Vanity Fair, New York, and all his lectures were clearly original. He could never be accused of plagiarism or imitation. Indeed, no one on earth could repeat his lectures with success or equal Ward in continual fun making. He often assumed the role of an idiot, but at the same time made the wisest observations and the cutest sarcasms. His appearance on the stage even before he made his mechanical nod was greeted with loud, hearty, and prolonged laughter. The saddest forgot his sorrow, the most sedate gentleman began to shake, and the crusty old maid broke out into the Ha! Ha! of a girl of sixteen.
We may read Ward’s writings and feel something of his absurd humor when we recall his posture as he stated solemnly that his wife’s feet “were so large that her toes came around the corner two minutes before she came along”; but to feel the full force of the absurdity one needs to see Ward’s seeming impatience that anyone should take it as a joke or disbelieve his plain statement.
Some cynical persons saw in Lincoln’s friendship a move to secure Ward’s influence as a popular writer for the help of his political party. Now that Mr. Lincoln is more fully understood, no one would accuse him of any such a hypocritical or unworthy motive. He would have been frank with Ward even though the latter was needed to aid the sacred cause of human liberty.
Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, writing on Artemus Ward’s death in 1866, said, “Ward is said not to have seen a well day after the death of President Lincoln.” It was a true friendship, beyond a doubt.