Artemus Ward was one of the western world’s first true comedians – and one of the most innovative public performers of the 19^th century. Born in 1834, his real name was Charles F. Browne and he single-handedly changed humour in the mid-1800s.

 

Before the American Civil War, Browne worked as a journeyman typesetter before gradually creating an international reputation as an outrageously hilarious newspaper columnist – the fictitious travelling showman named Artemus Ward.This presented a problem for young Browne. In the late 1850s, when his newspaper columns in the Cleveland Plain Dealer had started to be reproduced as exchange items from Boston to Brisbane, Browne received nothing more than his standard wage as a typesetter.

 

Although ambitious and creative, one of the reasons Ward’s revolutionary contribution to humour and performance is now all but forgotten is that much of Ward’s early written work was created using misspellings and backwoods language – which might at first seem impenetrable to the casual modern reader.  But with a little perseverance and persistence, Ward’s humour can still be enjoyed. A typical example might be one of Artemus Ward's so-called “business letters” from The Complete Works of Artemus Ward …

 

To the Editor of the ____

 

Sir–I'm movin along–slowly along–down tords your place.  I want you should rite me a letter, sayin how is the show bizniss in your place.  My show at present consists of three moral Bares, a Kangaroo (a amoozin little Raskal–t'would make you larf yerself to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal) wax figgers of G. Washington Gen. Tayler John Bunyan Capt Kidd and Dr. Webster in the act of killin Dr. Parkman, besides several miscellanyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts & murderers, &c., ekalled by few & exceld by none.  Now Mr. Editor, scratch orf a few lines sayin how is the show bizniss down to your place.  I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss.  Depend upon it.  I want you should git my hanbills up in flamin stile.  Also git up a tremenjus excitemunt in yr. paper 'bowt my onparaleld Show.  We must fetch the public sumhow.  We must wurk on their feelins.  Cum the moral on 'em strong.  If it's a temperance community tell 'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits arter Ise born, but on the contery ef your peple take their tods, say Mister Ward is as Jenial a feller as we ever met, full of conwiviality, &the life an sole of the Soshul Bored.  Take, don't you?  If you say anythin abowt my show say my snaiks is as harmliss as the new_born Babe.  What a interestin study it is to see a zewological animil like a snaik under perfeck subjecshun!  My kangaroo is the most larfable little cuss I ever saw.  All for 15 cents.  I am anxyus to skewer your infloounce.  I repeet in regard to them hanbills that I shall git 'em struck orf up to your printin office.  My perlitercal sentiments agree with yourn exackly.  I know thay do, becawz I never saw a man whoos didn't.

Respectively yures,              

A. Ward.

P.S.–You scratch my back &Ile scratch your back.

 

In contrast to the above piece, Ward’s “live” lectures throughout much of the 1860s – when he would “Speak A Piece” – were always delivered in crisp measured English, brimming with innuendo, and clearly understood by audiences from New York to London.

 

Among Ward’s trademark mannerisms on stage were the use of the long pause, accompanied by a delayed closer or “snapper” as Mark Twain called the technique. In the 1870s, after Ward's death, Twain conducted a series of lectures about Artemus but Twain was never happy with the result – or the takings. Perhaps Ward’s most disarming stage technique was his ability to be seemingly detached from his humorous and often absurd monologues. Although Ward’s lectures certainly owed their origins to the newspaper character of the travelling showman, we can be sure that Artemus Ward, the lecturer, was a master of performance and perfectly capable of adjusting his delivery to match his audience.

 

Many people arrived at his shows expecting to see a caustic, portly, balding older showman, only to discover that the real “Artemus Ward” was a twenty something hawkish figure of slender build, who was graced with a Romanesque nose, neatly bracketed by a drooping theatrical moustache. Like many modern comedians, Artemus would purposely localise his jokes on stage as much as possible. For example, while delivering his final 1866 lecture series in London at the Egyptian Hall he is reported to have told his audience (which was sweltering in a poorly ventilated auditorium):

 

“I don't expect to do great things here – but I have thought that if I could make money enough to by me a passage to New Zealand I should feel that I had not lived in vain. “I don't want to live in vain – I'd rather live in Margate – or here.  But I wish when the Egyptians built this hall they had given it a little more ventilation”

 

More to Ward than meets the eye

Artemus Ward is truly an enigmatic figure. His sudden death in Southampton England in March 1867 fuelled the public’s somewhat romanticised interest in him. His relationship with Mark Twain, although relatively brief, was complex and is widely considered to have been influential on the nascent Sam Clemens.

 

Artemus Ward’s manager for six years, EP Hingston, wrote a fascinating account of his years with the “Humorist of the Western Plains” entitled “The Genial Showman – Artemus Ward” (Edward P. Hingston, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1870). Hingston’s book suggests the waxworks, snakes and dramatic figures of the Cincinnati Museum in the late 1850s and early 1860s played a formative role in Ward’s humourous writing.

 

Although scholars are divided about the degree of influence that Ward had on Twain, we know that when Mark Twain visited Australasia in 1895, newspaper editorials had been directly comparing the two American humourists for decades. For example, in 1874, a London Spectator review in the New Zealand West Coast Times reported “there was something much more comically childlike, much more serious embarrassment and bewilderment, at the core of the humour of Artemus Ward than in that of Mark Twain” (West Coast Times, National Library of New Zealand, 21 January 1874, p.3). This childlike comical turn was wonderfully illustrated in Ward’s London panorama lecture series …

 

It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as an actor. The play was ‘Ruins of Pompeii.’ – I played the Ruins.  It was not a very successful performance – but it was better than the “Burning Mountain.”  He was not good.  He was a bad Vesuvius. The remembrance often makes me ask – “Where are the boys of my youth?” – I assure you this is not a conundrum. – Some are amongst you here – some in America – some are in gaol. – Hence arises a most touching question – “Where are the girls of my youth?”  Some are married – some would like to be. Oh my Maria! Alas! she married another. They frequently do. I hope she is happy – because I am.

 

[see complete text at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/6ward10.txt]

 

After launching his London lecture series on Tuesday, 13 November 1866 Artemus continued to lecture there for another six successive weeks. However, by the seventh week his health had seriously deteriorated – and death from tuberculosis was but a few months away. His manager, EP Hingston, later wrote that Ward continued to lecture well beyond his physical capacity to effectively perform: “In fact, on many evenings, while the audience were laughing at the jokes of the lecturer, the doctor was in attendance behind the panorama with stimulants and restoratives ready at hand.”

The great American actor Joseph Jefferson met Ward in London in the fall of 1866.  In Jefferson’s autobiography he later recalled how he had warned Ward to avoid the London fogs – and not to allow his friends to love him to death with drinking, late nights and general partying. Advice, it would appear, that Ward either chose to ignore or was fatally unable to resist.

 

Further reading:

Lawrence I. Berkove, ‘Nevada Influences on Mark Twain’, as appeared in A Companion to Mark Twain, ed. by Peter Messent and Louis J. Budd (Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p.168.

 

Irving McKee, Artemus Ward in California and Nevada, 1863–1864, published in The Pacific Historical Review, Vol 20, No. 1, (Feb., 1951), pp. 11–23.

 

John J. Pullen, Comic Relief – The Life and Laughter of Artemus Ward 1834–1867, Archon Books, 1983.

Artemus Ward, Artemus Ward His Book, Carleton Publishers, 1862.

Artemus Ward, Artemus Ward; His Travels, Carleton Publishers, 1865.