The Restrained School.—Less noticeably imitative of foreign work, the whimsicalities of Oliver Wendell Holmes, of James Russell Lowell, and of Charles Dudley Warner have been deemed sufficiently important to make each the subject of a chapter in more than one English work vainly endeavouring to analyse and classify that subtle something which makes American humour funny. With apparent gravity Holmes could ask the startling question, “Why is an onion like a piano?” and in answer convulse his readers with the atrocious pun, “Because it smell odious!” His characterisation of an afternoon reception as “Giggle, gabble, gobble, git,” is worthy of frequent quotation; and one passage in his “Music Grinders” is of perennial value. Wearied by the discordant tunes issuing from a hurdy-gurdy, the distracted poet at last exclaims:
“But hark! the air again is still
The music all is ground,
And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”
The man who has had the experience here set down, appreciates both the pathos and the humour of a passage like that. Lowell’s humour is akin to that of Holmes. It breaks out in nearly every essay that he wrote, and almost runs riot in some of his poems. Speaking of the destruction of a certain hill that a city street might be improved, he remarked in “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago” (1854): “The landscape was carried away cart-load by cart-load, and, dumped down on the roads, forms a part of that unfathomable pudding which has, I fear, drawn many a teamster and pedestrian to the use of phrases not commonly found in English dictionaries.” There is much humour in Lowell, more stirring than this, but the quotation exhibits the readiness with which he would give an unexpected turn to a sentence, or throw in an unlooked-for reference or expression, too delicate to be shocking, too subtle to arouse loud laughter, but capable none the less of sending a ripple of amusement over the calmest gravity. For work professedly humorous throughout, we must turn to “A Fable for Critics” (1848) or to “The Biglow Papers” (1848). Both contain much good hard common sense, but the humour instead of being a mere accident of expression is the real reason for the existence of the greater part of each work. More closely allied to Lowell, perhaps, than to either Irving or Holmes, Warner produced no work exclusively funny. Still there is hardly a page of “My Summer in a Garden” (1870) or of “In the Wilderness” (1878) which does not have at least one laughable sentence. For this reason Warner defies quotation: his chapters must be read in their entirety rather than in chance snatches.
The Professional Humourists.—Turning now from those writers of humour who have been looked upon by some critics as forming an “imitative school” and by others as constituting what they have more happily termed a “restrained school,” we come upon a widely extended group of writers who profess to have no higher calling than the awakening of mere laughter. If we call them collectively the “professional school of American humourists,” we need not feel ourselves debarred from regarding them as falling naturally into several classes, to each of which we may give some special name, such as “the milder school,” “the women humourists,” “the boisterous group,” and the like. We must not forget, however, that no hard and fast dividing lines can be drawn between the different classes, since the fact that a writer is a woman does not necessarily prevent her writing boisterous humour, or that a man who is generally almost clown-like may not sometimes produce a rare and refined piece of fun. Furthermore, it happens that the very naturalness with which the humourists fall into groups and classes prevents their being discussed in chronological order. The milder fun-makers have existed side by side with their hilarious brethren from the beginning, so that one must ignore, except in the slightest way, the order determined mainly by accidents of birth, or dates of publication.
The Women Humourists.—Politeness demands that we speak of the women humourists first: in the fore-front of these we must place Mrs. Frances Miriam Whitcher (1811–1852). She made her first appearance as a writer in Neal’s Saturday Gazette about 1845, and to that paper contributed a long series of articles purporting to come from the pen of “the Widow Bedott.” From the first she attracted attention, and interest in her work has never wholly ceased. Such was the demand for her writings that after her death two collections of articles from her pen were made and published as “The Widow Bedott Papers” (1855), and “Widow Sprigg, Mary Elmer, and Other Sketches” (1867).
Closely related in form and content to “The Widow Bedott Papers” was a book published in 1873 with the title “My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s.” Although immediately popular, it was for many years supposed to be the work of its professed author, Samanthy Allen; but by the time “P. A. and P. I. or Samanthy at the Centennial” appeared, in 1876, the secret had leaked out that “Josiah Allen’s Wife” was the pseudonym of Marietta Holley (born in 1844), a native of Adams, New York. A contributor to Peterson’s Magazine, The Christian Union, The Independent, and other periodicals, and the author of numerous books, she has gained considerable renown. Her earlier works are her best; for as time went on she diluted her skill in fun-making by permitting her interest in the temperance question, the woman-suffrage movement, and negro education to interfere with the power of her wit. Miss Holley’s work has attracted some attention abroad, and has been translated into several foreign languages. Merely pausing to mention Mary Abigail Dodge (1830–1896), a native of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who, forming her pseudonym from a part of her own name and from that of her birthplace, made herself famous as “Gail Hamilton” in work both grave and gay; and stopping only to call attention to the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Old Town Folks” (1869) gave us an unusually funny book, we may choose from the host of women who are moving us to laughter the most industrious of them all, Carolyn Wells. As a writer of the verse form called the limerick she has more than once equalled Edward Lear, and as a parodist she shocks a reader to silence by her audacity.
The Milder Humourists.—In what may be called the milder school of American humourists Seba Smith (1792–1868) was the leader in point of time. Graduated from Bowdoin College in 1818, Smith began almost immediately to contribute editorially to the papers of Portland, Maine. In addition to more serious works, he wrote, under the pen-name of “Major Jack Downing,” a series of political articles in New England dialect, thus anticipating Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” by several years. Smith was the author of a number of books, the best known of which are probably “Way Down East” (1853) and “My Thirty Years Out of the Senate” (1859), the latter a homely and vigorous parody of Senator T. H. Benton’s “Thirty Years’ View of the American Government.” Writing not long after Seba Smith, John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) early sprang into fame. The author of a considerable amount of prose, he attracted far wider attention by his verse. In the latter he showed the working of a strong English influence; indeed, it is not too much to say that had there been no Thomas Hood, there would have been no Saxe. Born at Highgate, Vermont, and graduated from Middlebury College in 1843, he soon became interested in both journalism and politics; but he is now best remembered by his work in verse. His “Humorous and Satirical Poems” (1850) fairly bristle with puns from beginning to end, and the surprising fact about them is that they are so good and so well set in their places that rarely does a reader feel inclined to accuse Saxe of overstraining his powers.
Leland, Field, Riley, and Harris.—Merely mentioning in passing the name of Saxe’s contemporary, Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (1818–1869), author of “The Sparrowgrass Papers” (1856), we call attention to Robert Henry Newell (1836–1901), whose “Orpheus C. Kerr Papers” in three volumes (1861–1869) contained presumably funny comments on the Civil War, and to David Ross Locke (1833–1888), who, writing under the pseudonym of “Petroleum Vesuvius Naseby,” wittily supported the administration of Lincoln, and attacked that of Johnson, in newspaper articles afterward collected into a book entitled “Divers Views, Opinions, and Prophecies of Yours Truly” (1865). These three men, although deserving mention on account of the position they once held, are now little read, but their contemporary Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) seems to have established something like permanent renown for himself. Graduated from Princeton in 1846, he became prominent in various fields of journalism and authorship. His best-known work is “Hans Breitmann’s Ballads,” of which a collected edition appeared in 1895. These poems are written in the dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch, and relate the exploits of their clownish hero in various exigencies and circumstances. In this same school of mild humourists we may class also a number of writers most of whom are still in the prime of life. From the host we select three as typical. Eugene Field (1850–1895), whose untimely death cut short a career of promise already blossoming into fulfilment, may be mentioned first. In addition to much serious work, he published “The Tribune Primer” (1882), a mock imitation of a child’s first reading-book, and “Culture’s Garden” (1887), a series of clever skits directed against those who make a pretence of ultra-refinement. With Field for some reason James Whitcomb Riley (born in 1853) has always been popularly associated, possibly because both wrote poems having childhood as subject-matter. Mr. Riley’s humorous work is scattered through his several books, of which “Rhymes of Childhood” (1890) and “Home Folks” (1900) are typical, if not the best. An author of a series of books which appeal at once to students of popular tradition and to general readers whether young or old is found in Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908). Publishing a book in 1880 on Afro-American folk-lore under the title “Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings,” Mr. Harris found to his surprise that he had an audience who listened to him with mirth instead of gravity. It is improbable that more than a mere handful of his readers suspect for even a moment that the several stories put into the mouth of Uncle Remus are a real contribution to anthropological data. In his later years, Mr. Harris wisely threw all his reports into literary form, with the result that there was a steady rise in his popularity as he gave us successively “Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883), “Mingo, and Other Sketches” (1884), and “Daddy Jake, the Runaway” (1889).
The Boisterous Humourists.—Turning now to the “boisterous school” of American humour, we may dwell for a time upon the chief characteristics exhibited by members of the group. In the first place, most of them have forgotten how to spell. There is something ludicrous in the appearance of the word “through” masquerading in the garb “thru,” whatever may be the plea of the society of spelling reformers to the contrary; and certainly no one, except a school-teacher, can be other than amused to see such common words as “laugh,” “feel,” “funny,” and the like making their bows as “laff,” “feal,” and “phuny.” Laughable as this may be, however, it is not too much to insist that, if the appeal is only to the eye, if the wit evaporates when the words are not seen but merely heard, then the humour is not of very high order. In the second place, most of the members of the boisterous school, along with their loss of power as spellers, have also forgotten how to tell the truth. “This inclination towards outrageous exaggeration,” said Lowell, “is a prime characteristic of American humour.” “There is,” he says elsewhere, “something irresistibly comic in the conception of a negro so black that charcoal made a white mark on him, or in the idea of a soil so fertile that a nail planted in it becomes a railroad spike before morning.” This example of untruthfulness might also be taken as an illustration of the third trait of the group now under discussion—that of producing the most absurd paradoxes and of bringing into juxtaposition the most diverse uses of the same word. This is more than mere word-play; it is rather what might be termed the apotheosis of the pun. It underlies the majority of jokes that are found in the American newspaper, and is at once the admiration and the despair of those who try to analyse or to imitate the subtlety of our humour.
Josh Billings.—With these three characteristics in mind we may now give some brief attention to the humourists themselves. Of the “boisterous school” the earliest were Henry Wheeler Shaw, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, and Charles Farrar Browne. If by chance these names seem quite unfamiliar, the strangeness will disappear when attention is called to the fact that the three men respectively wrote under the noms de plume of “Josh Billings,” “Mrs. Partington,” and “Artemus Ward.” Shaw (1818–1885) was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and died in Monterey, California. To complete his formal education he entered Hamilton College in Clinton, New York; but tiring of the life there, he went on to the West and spent a number of years undergoing the many experiences offered by frontier life. Returning East in 1858, he became an auctioneer in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he also began to contribute to various magazines and newspapers. He attracted little attention until he invented an amusing system of phonetic spelling supposed to represent his homely method of pronunciation. His chief works were his “Farmer’s Allminax” published annually between 1870 and 1880, “Every Boddy’s Friend” (1876), and “Josh Billings’ Spice Box” (1881). A quotation or two will exhibit both the thought and the form which characterise the contents of his several volumes of writing: