University of Virginia Library

ARTEMUS WARD AS A LECTURER.
PREFATORY NOTE
BY EDWARD P. HINGSTON.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the pleasant city beside the lakes,
Artemus Ward first determined to become a public
lecturer. He and I rambled through Cleveland together
after his return from California. He called on some old
friends at the Herald office, then went over to the Weddel
House, and afterwards strolled across to the offices of the
Plaindealer, where, in his position as sub-editor he had
written many of his earlier essays. Artemus inquired
for Mr. Gray, the editor, who chanced to be absent. Looking
round at the vacant desks and ink-stained furniture,
Artemus was silent for a minute or two, and then burst
into one of those peculiar chuckling fits of laughter in which
he would occasionally indulge; not a loud laugh, but a

shaking of the whole body with an impulse of merriment
which set every muscle in motion. “Here”—said he—
“here's where they called me a fool.” The remembrance
of their so calling him seemed to afford him intense
amusement.

From the office of the Cleveland Plaindealer we continued
our tour of the town. Presently we found ourselves in front
of Perry's statue, the monument erected to commemorate
the naval engagement on Lake Erie, wherein the Americans
came off victorious. Artemus looked up to the statue, laid
his finger to the side of his nose, and in his quaint manner
remarked, “I wonder whether they called him `a fool' too,
when he went to fight?”

The remark, following close as it did upon his laughing
fit in the newspaper office, caused me to inquire why he had
been called “a fool,” and who had called him so.

“It was the opinion of my friends on the paper,” he
replied; “I told them that I was going in for lecturing.

They laughed at me and called me `a fool.' Don't you
think they were right?”

Then we sauntered up Euclid Street, under the shade of
its avenue of trees. As we went along, Artemus Ward
recounted to me the story of his becoming a lecturer. Our
conversation on that agreeable evening is fresh in my remembrance.
Memory still listens to the voice of my companion
in the stroll, still sees the green trees of Euclid Street casting
their shadows across our path, and still joins in the laugh
with Artemus, who, having just returned from California,
where he had taken 1600 dollars at one lecture, did not
think that to be evidence of his having lost his senses.

The substance of that which Artemus Ward then told
me, was that while writing for the Cleveland Plaindealer
he was accustomed, in the discharge of his duties as a
reporter, to attend the performances of the various minstrel
troupes and circuses which visited the neighbourhood. At
one of these he would hear some story of his own, written a
month or two previously, given by the “middle-man” of

the minstrels and received with hilarity by the audience.
At another place he would be entertained by listening to
jokes of his own invention, coarsely retailed by the clown of
the ring and shouted at by the public as capital waggery on
the part of the performer. His own good things from the
lips of another “came back to him with alienated majesty”
as Emerson expresses it. Then the thought would steal
over him—why should that man gain a living with my
witticisms, and I not use them in the same way myself?
why not be the utterer of my own coinage, the quoter of my
own jests, the mouth-piece of my own merry conceits?
Certainly it was not a very exalted ambition, to aim at the
glories of a circus-clown or the triumphs of a minstrel with
a blackened face. But, in the United States a somewhat
different view is taken of that which is fitting and seemly
for a man to do, compared with the estimate we form in this
country. In a land where the theory of caste is not
admitted, the relative respectability of the various profession
is not quite the same as it with us. There the profession
does not disqualify if the man himself be right, nor the
claim to the title of gentleman depend upon the avocation
followed. I know of one or two clowns in the ring who
are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the
less gentleman because they propound conundrums and
perpetrate jests instead of prescribing pills and potions.

Artemus Ward was always very self-reliant; when once
he believed himself to be in the right it was almost impossible
to persuade him to the contrary. But, at the
same time he was cautious in the extreme, and would well
consider his position before deciding that which was right
or wrong for him to do. The idea of becoming a public man
having taken possession of his mind, the next point to
decide was in what form he should appear before the public.
That of a humorous lecturer seemed to him to be the best.
It was unoccupied ground. America had produced entertainers
who by means of facial changes or eccentricities of
costume had contrived to amuse their audiences, but there
was no one who ventured to joke for an hour before a house
full of people with no aid from scenery or dress. The

experiment was one which Artemus resolved to try.
Accordingly, he set himself to work to collect all his best
quips and cranks, to invent what new drolleries he could,
and to remember all the good things that he had heard or
met with. These he noted down and strung together almost
without relevancy or connection. The manuscript chanced
to fall into the hands of the people at the office of the
newspaper on which he was then employed, and the question
was put to him of what use he was going to make of the
strange jumble of jest which he had thus compiled. His
answer was that he was about to turn lecturer, and that
before them were the materials of his lecture. It was then
that his friends laughed at him, and characterised him as
“a fool.”

“They had some right to think so,” said Artemus to me
as we rambled up Euclid Street. “I half thought that I
was one myself. I don't look like a lecturer—do I?”

He was always fond, poor fellow, of joking on the subject
of his personal appearance. His spare figure and tall stature,

his prominent nose and his light-coloured hair were each
made the subject of a joke at one time or another in the
course of his lecturing career. If he laughed largely at the
foibles of others, he was equally disposed to laugh at any
shortcomings he could detect in himself. If anything at all
in his outward form was to him a source of vanity, it was
the delicate formation of his hands. White, soft, long,
slender, and really handsome, they were more like the hands
of a high-born lady than those of a western editor. He
attended to them with careful pride, and never alluded to
them as a subject for his jokes, until, in his last illness they
had become unnaturally fair, translucent, and attenuated.
Then it was that a friend calling upon him at his apartments
in Piccadilly, endeavoured to cheer him at a time of
great mental depression, and pleasantly reminded him of a
ride they had long ago projected through the south-western
states of the Union. “We must do that ride yet, Artemus.
Short stages at first, and longer ones as we go on.” Poor
Artemus lifted up his pale, slender hands, and letting the
light shine through them, said jocosely, “Do you think these
would do to hold a rein with? Why, the horse would laugh
at them.”

Having collected a sufficient number of quaint thoughts,
whimsical fancies, bizarre notions, and ludicrous anecdotes,
the difficulty which then, according to his own confession,
occurred to Artemus Ward was, what should be the title of
his lecture. The subject was no difficulty at all, for the
simple reason that there was not to be any. The idea of
instructing or informing his audience never once entered into
his plans. His intention was merely to amuse; if possible
keep the house in continuous laughter for an hour and-a-half,
or rather an hour and twenty minutes, for that was the
precise time, in his belief, which people could sit to listen
and to laugh without becoming bored; and, if possible, send
his audience home well pleased with the lecturer and with
themselves, without their having any clear idea of that
which they had been listening to, and not one jot the wiser
than when they came. No one better understood than
Artemus the wants of a miscellaneous audience who paid

their dollar or half-dollar each to be amused. No one could
gauge better than he the capacity of the crowd to feed on
pure fun, and no one could discriminate more clearly than
he the fitness, temper, and mental appetite of the constituents
of his evening assemblies. The prosiness of an
ordinary Mechanics' Institute lecture was to him simply
abhorrent, the learned platitudes of a professed lecturer were
to him, to use one of his own phrases, “worse than poison.”
To make people laugh was to be his primary endeavour. If in
so making them laugh he could also cause them to see
through a sham, be ashamed of some silly national prejudice
or suspicions of the value of some current piece of
political bunkum, so much the better. He believed in
laughter as thoroughly wholesome, he had the firmest conviction
that fun is healthy, and sportiveness the truest sign
of sanity. Like Talleyrand, he was of opinion that, “Qui
vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.”

Artemus Ward's first lecture was entitled “The Babes in
the Wood.” I asked him why he chose that title, because

there was nothing whatever in the lecture relevant to the
subject of the child-book legend. He replied, “It seemed
to sound the best. I once thought of calling the lecture
`My Seven Grandmothers.' Don't you think that would
have been good?” It would at any rate have been just as
pertinent. Incongruity as an element of fun was always an
idea uppermost in the mind of the western humorist. I am
not aware that the notes of any of his lectures, except those
of his Mormon experience, have been preserved, and I have
some doubts if any one of his lectures, except the Mormon
one, was ever fairly written out. “The Babes in the Wood”
as a lecture was a pure and unmitigated “sell.” It was
merely joke after joke, and drollery succeeding to drollery,
without any connecting thread whatever. It was an exhibition
of fireworks, owing half its brilliancy and more than
half its effect to the skill of the man who grouped the fireworks
together and let them off. In the hands of any other
pyrotechnist the squibs would have failed to light, the
rockets would have refused to ascend, and the “nine-bangers”
would have exploded but once or twice only,
instead of nine times. The artist of the display being no
more, and the fireworks themselves having gone out, it is
perhaps not to be regretted that the cases of the squibs and
the tubes of the rockets have not been carefully kept. Most
of the good things introduced by Artemus Ward in his first
lecture were afterwards incorporated by him in subsequent
writings, or used over again in his later entertainment.
Many of them had reference to the events of the day, the
circumstances of the American War and the politics of the
Great Rebellion. These of course have lost their interest
with the passing away of the times which gave them
birth. The points of many of the jokes have corroded,
and the barbed head of many an arrow of Artemus's wit has
rusted into bluntness with the decay of the bow from which
it was propelled.

If I remember rightly, the “Babes in the Wood” were
never mentioned more than twice in the whole lecture.
First, when the lecturer told his audience that the “Babes”
were to constitute the subject of his discourse, and then

digressed immediately to matters quite foreign to the story.
Then again at the conclusion of the hour and twenty
minutes of drollery, when he finished up in this way: “I
now come to my subject—`The Babes in the Wood.”'
Here he would take out his watch, look at it with affected
surprise, put on an appearance of being greatly perplexed,
and amidst roars of laughter from the people, very gravely
continue, “But I find that I have exceeded my time, and
will therefore merely remark that so far as I know they
were very good babes—they were as good as ordinary babes.
I really have not time to go into their history. You will
find it all in the story-books. They died in the woods,
listening to the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.
It was a sad fate for them, and I pity them. So, I hope,
do you. Good night!”

Artemus gave his first lecture at Norwich in Connecticut,
and travelled over a considerable portion of the Eastern
States before he ventured to give a sample of his droll
oratory in the Western Cities, wherein he had earned reputation
as a journalist. Gradually his popularity became

very great, and in place of letting himself out at so much
per night to literary societies and athenæums, he constituted
himself his own showman, engaging that indispensable
adjunct to all showmen in the United States, an agent to
go ahead, engage halls, arrange for the sale of tickets, and
engineer the success of the show. Newspapers had carried
his name to every village of the Union, and his writings had
been largely quoted in every journal. It required, therefore,
comparatively little advertising to announce his visit
to any place in which he had to lecture. But it was necessary
that he should have a bill or poster of some kind. The
one he adopted was simple, quaint, striking, and well
adapted to the purpose. It was merely one large sheet,
with a black ground, and the letters cut out in the block, so
as to print white. The reading was “Artemus Ward
will Speak a Piece.” To the American mind this was
intensely funny from its childish absurdity. It is customary
in the States for children to speak or recite “a piece” at
school at the annual examination, and the phrase is used
just in the same sense as in England we say “a Christmas
piece.” The professed subject of the lecture being that of
a story familiar to children, harmonized well with the droll
placard which announced its delivery. The place and time
were notified on a slip pasted beneath. To emerge from the
dull depths of lyceum committees and launch out as a showman-lecturer
on his own responsibility was something both
novel and bold for Artemus to do. In the majority of instances
he or his agent met with speculators who were ready
to engage him for so many lectures, and secure to the
lecturer a certain fixed sum. But in his later transactions
Artemus would have nothing to do with them, much preferring
to undertake all the risk himself. The last speculator
to whom he sold himself for a tour was, I believe, Mr.
Wilder, of New York City, who realized a large profit by
investing in lecturing stock, and who was always ready to
engage a circus, a wild-beast show, or a lecturing celebrity.

As a rule, Artemus Ward succeeded in pleasing every
one in his audience, especially those who understood the
character of the man and the drift of his lecture; but there

were not wanting at any of his lectures a few obtuse-minded,
slowly-perceptive, drowsy-headed dullards, who had not the
remotest idea what the entertainer was talking about, nor
why those around him indulged in laughter. Artemus was
quick to detect these little spots upon the sunny face of his
auditory. He would pick them out, address himself at times
to them especially, and enjoy the bewilderment of his
Bœotian patrous. Sometimes a stolid inhabitant of central
New York, evidently of Dutch extraction, would regard
him with an open stare expressive of a desire to enjoy that
which was said if the point of the joke could by any possibility
be indicated to him. At other times a demure
Pennsylvania Quaker would benignly survey the poor
lecturer with a look of benevolent pity, and, on one occasion,
when my friend was lecturing at Peoria, an elderly lady,
accompanied by her two daughters, left the room in the
midst of the lecture, exclaiming, as she passed me at the
door, “It is too bad of people to laugh at a poor young man
who doesn't know what he is saying and ought to be sent to
a lunatic asylum!”

The newspaper reporters were invariably puzzled in
attempting to give any correct idea of a lecture by Artemus
Ward. No report could fairly convey an idea of the
entertainment, and being fully aware of this, Artemus would
instruct his agent to beg of the papers not to attempt giving
any abstract of that which he said. The following is the
way in which the reporter of the Golden Era, at San
Francisco, California, endeavoured to inform the San
Franciscan public of the character of “The Babes in the
Wood” lecture. It is, as the reader will perceive, a
burlesque on the way in which Artemus himself dealt with
the topic he had chosen; while it also notes one or two of
the salient features of my friend's style of lecturing:—

“Artemus has arrived. Artemus has spoken. Artemus has
triumphed. Great is Artemus!

“Great also is Platt's Hall. But Artemus is greater; for the
hall proved too small for his audience, and too circumscribed for
the immensity of his jokes. A man who has drank twenty bottles
wine may be called `full.' A pint bottle with a quart of water

in it would also be accounted full; and so would an hotel be, every
bed in it let three times over on the same night to three different
occupants, but none of these would be so full as Platt's Hall was
on Friday night to hear Artemus Ward `speak a piece.'

“The piece selected was `The Babes in the Wood,' which
reminds us that Mr. Ward is a tall, slender-built, fair-complexioned,
jovial-looking gentleman of about twenty-seven years
of age. He has a pleasant manner, an agreeable style, and a clear,
distinct, and powerful voice.

“ `The Babes in the Wood' is a `comic oration,' with a most
comprehensive grasp of subject. As spoken by its witty author, it
elicited gusts of laughter and whirlwinds of applause. Mr. Ward
is no prosy lyceum lecturer. His style is neither scientific,
didactic, or philosophical. It is simply that of a man who is
brimful of mirth, wit and satire, and who is compelled to let it flow
forth. Maintaining a very grave countenance himself, he plays
upon the muscles of other people's faces as though they were piano-strings
and he the prince of pianists.

“The story of `The Babes in the Wood' is interesting in the
extreme. We would say, en passant, however, that Artemus Ward
is a perfect steam factory of puns and a museum of American
humour. Humanity seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which
he digs tons of fun; and life a huge forest, in which he can cut
down `cords' of comicality. Language with him is like the brass
balls with which the juggler amuses us at the circus—ever being

tossed up, ever glittering, ever thrown about at pleasure. We
intended to report his lecture at full, but we laughed till we split
our lead pencil and our short-hand symbols were too infused with
merriment to remain steady on the paper. However, let us proceed
to give an idea of `The Babes in the Wood.' In the first
place it is a comic oration; that is, it is spoken, is exuberant in
fun, felicitous in fancy, teeming with jokes, and sparkling as bright
waters on a sunny day. The `Babes in the Wood' is—that is, it
isn't a lecture or an oratorical effort; it is something sui generis;
something reserved for our day and generation, which it would
never have done for our, forefathers to have known, or they would
have been too mirthful to have attended to the business of preparing
the world for our coming; and something which will provoke so
much laughter in our time, that the echo of the laughs will reverberate
along the halls of futurity and seriously affect the nerves of
future generations.

“The `Babes in the Wood' to describe it, is—Well, those who
listened to it know best. At any rate they will acknowledge with
us that it was a great success; and that Artemus Ward has a
fortune before him in California.

“And now to tell the story of `The Babes in the Wood'—But we
will not, for the hall was not half large enough to accommodate
those who came; consequently Mr. Ward will tell it over again at
the Metropolitan Theatre next Tuesday evening. The subject will
again be `The Babes in the Wood.' ”

Having travelled over the Union with “The Babes in the
Wood” lecture, and left his audiences everywhere fully “in
the wood” as regarded the subject announced in the title,
Artemus Ward became desirous of going over the same
ground again. There were not wanting dreary and timid
prophets who told him that having “sold” his audiences
once, he would not succeed in gaining large houses a second
time. But the faith of Artemus in the unsuspecting nature
of the public was very large, so with fearless intrepidity he
conceived the happy thought of inventing a new title, but
keeping to the same old lecture, interspersing it here and
there with a few fresh jokes, incidental to new topics of the
times. Just at this period General McCellan was advancing
on Richmond, and the celebrated fight at Bull's Run
had become matter of history. The forcible abolition of
slavery had obtained a place among the debates of the day,
Hinton Rowan Helper's book on “The Inevitable Crisis”
had been sold at every bookstall, and the future of the negro
had risen into the position of being the great point of discussion
throughout the land. Artemus required a very

slender thread to string his jokes upon, and what better one
could be found than that which he chose? He advertised
the title of his next lecture as “Sixty Minutes in Africa.”
I need searcely say that he had never been in Africa, and
in all probability had never read a book on African travel.
He knew nothing about it, and that was the very reason he
should choose Africa for his subject. I believe that he
carried out the joke so far as to have a map made of the
African continent, and that on a few occasions, but not on
all, he had it suspended in the lecture-room. It was in
Philadelphia and at the Musical Fund Hall in Locust Street
that I first heard him deliver what he jocularly phrased to
me as “My African Revelation.” The hall was very
thronged, the audience must have exceeded two thousand in
number, and the evening was unusually warm. Artemus came
on the rostrum with a roll of paper in his hands, and used
it to play with throughout the lecture, just as recently at the
Egyptian Hall, while lecturing on the Mormons, he invariably
made use of a lady's riding-whip for the same
purpose. He commenced his lecture thus, speaking very
gravely and with long pauses between his sentences, allowing
his audience to laugh if they pleased, but seeming to
utterly disregard their laughter.

“I have invited you to listen to a discourse upon Africa.
Africa is my subject. It is a very large subject. It has
the Atlantic Ocean on its left side, the Indian Ocean on its
right, and more water than you could measure out at its
smaller end. Africa produces blacks—ivory blacks—they
get ivory. It also produces deserts, and that is the reason
it is so much deserted by travellers. Africa is famed for its
roses. It has the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-rose.
Apropos of negroes, let me tell you a little story.”

Then he at once diverged from the subject of Africa to
etail to his audience his amusing story of the Conversion of a
egro, which he subsequently worked up into an article in the
Sarage Club Papers, and entitled “Conrerting the Nigger.”
Never once again in the course of the lecture did he refer to
Africa, until the time having arrived for him to conclude,
and the people being fairly worn out with laughter, he

finished up by saying, “Africa, ladies and gentlemen, is my
subject. You wish me to tell you something about Africa.
Africa is on the map—it is on all the maps of Africa that I
have ever seen. You may buy a good map for a dollar, and
if you study it well, you will know more about Africa than I
do. It is a comprehensive subject, too vast, I assure you,
for me to enter upon to-night. You would not wish me to,
I feel that—I feel it deeply, and I am very sensitive. If
you go home and go to bed it will be better for you than to
go with me to Africa.”

The joke about the “neg-rose” has since run the gauntlet
of nearly all the minstrel bands throughout England and
America. All the “bones,” every “middle-man,” and all
“end-men” of the burnt-cork profession have used Artemus
Ward as a mine wherein to dig for the ore which provokes
laughter. He has been the “cause of wit in others,” and
the bread-winner for many dozens of black-face songsters—
“singists” as he used to term them. He was just as fond
of visiting their entertainments as they were of appropriating

his jokes; and among his best friends in New York were the
brothers Messrs. Neil and Dan Bryant, who have made a
fortune by what has been facetiously termed—“the burnt-cork-opera.”

It was in his “Sixty Minutes in Africa” lecture that
Artemus Ward first introduced his celebrated satire on the
negro, which he subsequently put into print. “The
African,” said he, “may be our brother. Several highly
respectable gentlemen and some talented females tell me
that he is, and for argument's sake I might be induced to
grant it, though I don't believe it myself. But the African
isn't our sister, and wife, and uncle. He isn't several of our
brothers and first wife's relations. He isn't our grandfather
and great grandfather, and our aunt in the country.
Searcely.”

It may easily be imagined how popular this joke became
when it is remembered that it was first perpetrated at a
time when the negro question was so much debated as to

have become an absolute nuisance. Nothing else was talked
of; nobody would talk of anything but the negro. The
saying arose that all Americans had “nigger-on-the-brain.”
The topic had become nauseous, especially to the Democratic
party; and Artemus always had more friends among them
than among the Republicans. If he had any politics at all
he was certainly a Democrat.

War had arisen, the South was closed, and the lecturing
arena considerably lessened. Artemus Ward determined
to go to California. Before starting for that side of the
American continent, he wished to appear in the city of
New York. He engaged, through his friend Mr. De Walden,
the large hall then known as Niblo's, in front of the Niblo's
Garden Theatre, and now used, I believe, as the dining-room
of the Metropolitan Hotel. At that period Pepper's
Ghost chanced to be the great novelty of New York City,
and Artemus Ward was casting about for a novel title to
his old lecture. Whether he or Mr. De Walden selected
that of “Artemus Ward's Struggle with a Ghost” I do

not know; but I think that it was Mr. De Walden's choice.
The title was seasonable and the lecture successful. Then
came the tour to California, whither I proceeded in advance
to warn the miners on the Yuba, the travellers on the
Rio Sacramento, and the citizens of the Chrysopolis of the
Pacific that “A. Ward” would be there shortly. In
California the lecture was advertised under its old name of
“The Babes in the Wood.” Platt's Hall was selected for
the seene of operation, and, so popular was the lecturer, that
on the first night we took at the doors more than sixteen
hundred dollars in gold. The crowd proved too great to
take money in the ordinary manner, and hats were used for
people to throw their dollars in. One hat broke through at
the crown. I doubt if we ever knew to a dollar how many
dollars it once contained.

California was duly travelled over, and “The Babes
in the Wood” listened to with laughter in its flourishing
cities, its mining-camps among the mountains, and its “new
placers” beside gold-bedded rivers. While journeying

through that strangely-beautiful land, the serious question
arose—What was to be done next? After California—
where?

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
freezing point. 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 3,500 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-coloured,
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 characterized 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 seemin promptu 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-coloured 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 colour 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 trans-atlantic
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 Cæsars 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?”

I answered his questions. He reflected for a few moments,
and then said,

Well, old fellow, I'll tell you what I should like to do.

I should like to go to London and give my lecture in the
same place. Can it be done?”

It was done. Not in the same room, but under the same
roof and on the same floor; in that gloomy-looking Hall
in Piccadilly, which was destined to be the ante-chamber to
the tomb of both lecturers.

Throughout this brief sketch I have written familiarly
of the late Mr. Charles F. Browne as “Artemus Ward,”
or simply as “Artemus.” I have done so advisedly, mainly
because, during the whole course of our acquaintance, I do
not remember addressing him as “Mr. Browne,” or by his
real Christian name. To me he was always “Artemus”—
Artemus the kind, the gentle, the suave, the generous. One
who was ever a friend in the fullest meaning of the word,
and the best of companions in the amplest acceptance of the
phrase. His merry laugh and pleasant conversation are as
audible to me as if they were heard but yesterday; his
words of kindness linger on the ear of memory, and his

tones of genial mirth live in echoes which I shall listen to
for evermore. Two years will soon have passed away since
last he spoke, and—

E. P. HINGSTON.

London,

October, 1868