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“The Babes in the Wood”: Artemus Ward's “Double Health” to Mark Twain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Edgar M. Branch
Edgar M. Branch*
Affiliation:
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
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Abstract

In his legendary lecture “The Babes in the Wood” (1863–64), Artemus Ward wanted to “go in for fun,” and he artfully structured the talk to exemplify his credo: “We better stay in the sunshine while we may, inasmuch as we know the shadows will come all too soon.” Mark Twain heard Ward speak in Virginia City and later wrote that “The Babes” was “the funniest thing I ever listened to.” This article reproduces a reasonably accurate speaking text of “The Babes” and considers it in relation to Mark Twain’s theory and practice of lecturing and to his early written humor. Its comedy offered Mark Twain, among other things, a demonstration of (1) complex rhetorical strategies and (2) a sophisticated burlesque of the serious lyceum lecture. To clarify its burlesque dimension, “The Babes” is then compared to Emerson’s lecture “The Law of Success” (which Ward had heard and reported).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 93 , Issue 5 , October 1978 , pp. 955 - 972
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1978

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References

Notes

1 “That Lecture,” Camp Douglas Daily Union Vedette, 10 Feb. 1864, p. 2.

2 “Biographical Notes,” Artemus Ward's Best Stories, ed. Clifton Johnson (New York: Harper, 1912), p. 14.

3 Edward P. Hingston, The Genial Showman (Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, 1971), p. 104.

4 “About-Home Matters: Artemus and the Ghosts,” Boston Post, 10 Oct. 1863, p. 2.

5 Enoch Knight, “The Real Artemus Ward,” Overland Monthly, 2nd ser., 18 (July 1891), 58.

6 Handset Reminiscences (Salt Lake City: Century Printing, 1915), pp. 142–43.

7 Quoted from the Enterprise in “An Inapt Illustration,” Virginia Evening Bulletin, 28 Dec. 1863, a clipping preserved in Notebook 4, Carton 3, Grant H. Smith Papers, Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

8 Fred W. Lorch, “Mark Twain's ‘Artemus Ward’ Lecture on the Tour of 1871–1872,” New England Quarterly, 25 (1952), 336.

9 Mark Twain to “Dear Sir,” an undated letter quoted in Will M. Clemens, Mark Twain: His Life and Work (San Francisco: Clemens Publishing, 1892), p. 135.

10 In addition to Mark Twain's “How to Tell a Story,” see John Q. Reed's comprehensive dissertation, “Artemus Ward: A Critical Study,” Univ. of Iowa 1955, and Reed's valuable articles based upon it; David E. E. Sloane's excellent dissertation, “Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian: The Heritage of Artemus Ward in the 1860's,” Duke Univ. 1970; James C. Austin, Artemus Ward (New York: Twayne, 1964); Paul Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit (Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1960); Fred W. Lorch, The Trouble Begins at Eight (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1968); Paul C. Rodgers, Jr., “Artemus Ward and Mark Twain's ‘Jumping Frog,’” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 28 (1973), 273–86; Robert Rowlette, ‘“Mark Ward on Artemus Twain’: Twain's Literary Debt to Ward,” American Literary Realism, 6 (1973), 13–25; Edgar M. Branch, “‘My Voice Is Still for Setchell’: A Background Study of ‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,‘” PMLA, 82 (1967), 591–601.

11 “Low,” Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, 27 Jan. 1858, p. 3.

12 “Vale,” Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, 10 Nov. 1860, p. 3.

13 Charles F. Browne to Charles Brown, 5 June 1864, in Don C. Seitz, Artemus Ward (New York: Harper, 1919), p. 234.

14 “Artemus Ward in London,” Spectator, 24 Nov. 1866, pp. 1306–07.

15 J. W. Watson, “How Artemus Ward Became a Lecturer,” North American Review, 148 (1889), 521.

16 Mark Twain in Eruption, ed. Bernard DeVoto (New York: Harper, 1940), pp. 214, 224.

17 For approximately two months audiences at several New York and Boston theaters and Barnum's American Museum had flocked to see “spectral illusions.” These were ghostlike reflections of behind-the-scenes actors that, having been projected onto plate glass, were visible onstage during the course of a play. See, e.g., “Amusements,” New York Times, 3 Aug. 1863, p. 5; advertisement for Wallack's Theater, New York Herald, 13 Aug. 1863, p. 7; advertisements for the Boston Opera House and the Howard Athenaeum, Boston Courier, 4 Sept. 1863, p. 3.

18 [27 Nov. 1871], The Love Letters of Mark Twain, ed. Dixon Wecter (New York: Harper, 1949), pp. 165–66.

19 “Artemus's ‘Piece,‘” Daily Missouri Democrat, 23 March 1864, p. 4.

20 “Artemus Ward's Lecture,” Daily Missouri Republican, 28 March 1864, p. 3.

21 Other evidence supports this belief. For example, Mark Twain commented, in his lecture on Artemus Ward, that Ward “said that some people found fault and slurred at him for not saying things like Edward Everett. ‘Why are they so one-sided?’ he asked; ‘Edward Everett ought to be slurred some, I think, because he can't make a speech like me’” (Lorch, “Mark Twain's ... Lecture,” pp. 341–42). Both the Post and the Republican texts contain the passage on Everett summarized by Mark Twain. The reporter for the Daily Union Vedette noted that Ward's lecture on “The Babes” included satirical comments on army contractors, the follies of fashion, and the public press; those three topics are woven into the text reprinted here. Again referring to the lecture, the same reporter wrote that Ward's “main ‘goak’ evidently referred to New England”; that judgment is supported by the number of words in the present text devoted to New England characters and experiences. See “That Lecture,” p. 2.

22 The allusion is to the song “Rock Me to Sleep” by Elizabeth Akers Allen.

23 In his 1861–62 lecture “The Children in the Wood,” Ward advised lovers who proposed marriage: “If you get the mitten, do not despair, but charge gallantly elsewhere for another mitten. You may as well have a pair of mittens” (John Q. Reed, “Artemus Ward's ‘The Children in the Wood’ Lecture on the Tour of 1861–1862,” Journal of the Midcontinent American Studies Association, 4 (Fall 1963), 58–69. “The Children” touched on a number of topics that, it is now apparent, Ward carried over to “The Babes” of 1863–64: Bull Run, corrupt army contractors, sensational journalists, England, and Lafayette.

24 Control of the Mississippi River from Cairo to New Orleans by Union forces came with the fall of Port Hudson on 14 July 1863.

25 Probably “Roll on thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!” from Childe Harold iv.179.

26 The Gosiute Indians of Utah and Nevada. Compare Mark Twain on the Goshoot Indians in Roughing It, Ch. xix.

27 Everett lectured widely before and during the Civil War. On 19 November 1863, some four months before Ward spoke in St. Louis, Everett delivered his oration at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

28 “Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the Gods themselves.” From “Civilization” in Society and Solitude.

29 John B. Floyd, President Buchanan's secretary of war, was charged with using contracts for government construction projects as a means of bestowing political favor. In 1860 he was implicated in a major scandal involving the firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, army contractors. Before the attack on Fort Sumter, Floyd antagonized Northern opinion by ordering guns transferred from the Pittsburgh armory to Texas forts and by arguing in Cabinet meetings for the removal of all Federal troops from the Charleston forts.

30 Dr. George Barker Winship was a pioneering advocate of weight lifting and, in the 1860s, a popular lecturer on physical culture. During an 1861 lecture he lifted a platform holding twelve men, weighing 1940 pounds in all—a demonstration he repeated in later appearances.

31 At this time Napoleon ill's armies were strengthening their hold on large areas of Mexico. They were opposed by Juarez guerrilla forces operating from headquarters near the United States border. Maximilian would soon sail for Mexico for his coronation.

32 Andrew Jackson's toast at Jefferson's 1830 birthday celebration is said to have been: “Our Federal Union! It must be preserved!”

33 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, visited the United States during September and October 1860. On 14 September 1860 Artemus Ward traveled to Brentford, Ontario, to see him.

34 In John P. Ordway's “Let Me Kiss Him for His Mother,” a Southern matron kisses a dying Union soldier: one of the several responses in song to the numerous Civil War ballads in which a dying soldier longs for, or dreams of, a mother's kiss.

35 The refrain in Thomas Haynes Bayly's ballad “I'm Saddest When I Sing.”

36 The first two lines of Thomas Haynes Bayly's “Welcome Me Home” are “Gaily the Troubador / Touched his guitar.”

37 Charles Carroll Sawyer wrote the popular sentimental war ballad “Who Will Care for Mother Now?”

38 From st. 4 of “John Brown's Body”: “John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back, / His soul is marching on.”

39 In a letter of 3 March 1861 to William H. Seward, made public in October 1862, General Winfield Scott outlined four options open to Lincoln, at the start of his presidency, with respect to the growing conflict. Option 4, Scott wrote, was “Say to the seceded States—Wayward Sisters, depart in peace!” See Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D., ii (New York: Sheldon, 1864), 625–28.

40 The verse that Ward parodies has not been identified. The sentiment and meter of his lines recall the beginning of Canto vi of Scott's “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Much the same idea expressed in Ward's lines occurs at the end of Wordsworth's “The Old Cumberland Beggar” and in the Norwegian song “Blandt aile Lande” ‘Of all the lands,‘ words by O. Vig.

41 Charles Stratton, known as General Tom Thumb, Barnum's famous midget, married Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, thirty-two inches tall, on 10 February 1863 in New York City's Grace Church before a distinguished assembly. The couple went on tour and, the following September, appeared for several days at Boston's Tremont Temple, one month before Ward lectured there.

42 “For they shall gnaw a file, and flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, whar the lion roareth, and the wang-doodle mourneth for its first-born”: from “Hepsidam?—a Sermon,” in Cole's Fun Doctor (London: Routledge, n.d.), pp. 133–35. This burlesque sermon contains puns and mispellings and is attributed to “American Paper.”

43 “None knew thee but to love thee”: from st. 1 of Fitz-Green Halleck's “On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.”

44 The point of the reference to Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, is obscure. In “Artemus Ward in Washington” (Vanity Fair, 5, 26 April 1862, p. 199; rpt. Charles F. Browne, Complete Works [London: Hotten, n.d.], pp. 324–28) Ward satirized Welles as a fatuous, timorous incompetent, a note sounded earlier in Vanity Fair (“Important,” 5 April 1862, p. 164).

45 “I never nursed a dear gazelle, / To glad me with its soft black eye”: from “The Fire-Worshipper” section of Thomas Moore's “Lalla Rookh.” In Ch. lv of The Old Curiosity Shop Dickens parodies the passage in dialogue given to Mr. Swiveller.

46 In 1864 Pierce Egan's sentimental and platitudinous novel Such Is Life was serialized and widely read in the United States.

47 Ward's earlier allusion to the “perfectly harmless” Army of the Potomac suggests that he may be referring here to its succession of commanders, all major-generals: McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade. As recently as October, in a much publicized incident, Major-General Rosecrans had been relieved of his command of the Army of the Cumberland following Union reverses at Chickamauga.

48 The final stanza of Longfellow's “The Day Is Done” reads:

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

49 “Artemus Ward,” Times Literary Supplement, 26 April 1934, 290.

50 “Triflers on the Platform,” Scribner's, Feb. 1872, p. 489.

51 Essays at Home and Elsewhere (London: Macmillan, 1882), pp. 35–36.

52 “Artemus Ward, the Baldinsville Showman,” Littell's Living Age, 177 (1888), 302.

53 Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), p. 251.

54 “Emerson's Lecture,” Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, 21 Jan. 1859, p. 3.

55 “Success,” Society and Solitude (Boston: Houghton, 1888), p. 290.

56 Emerson the Enraptured Yankee (New York: Harper, 1930), p. 277.

57 American Humorists (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883), p. 146.

58 “Emerson the Lecturer,” My Study Windows (Boston: Houghton, 1886), p. 379.

59 See David Mead, Yankee Eloquence in the Middle West (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1951), pp. 32–51.

60 “Beauty,” Daily Cincinnati Gazette, 2 Feb. 1857, p. 2.

61 “Ralph Waldo Emerson's Lecture on ‘Success,‘” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, 4 Feb. 1860, p. 2.

62 “The Show Business and Popular Lectures,” The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (London: Chatto and Windus, 1922), p. 83.

63 Concord Days (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872), p. 26.

64 Robert H. Hirst alerted me to an entry in Mark Twain's notebook of late 1906 or early 1907 that provides humorous but startling support to the notion that the lecture styles of Emerson and Artemus Ward had pronounced similarities. The entry is based upon an anecdote that Emerson's son Edward Waldo Emerson told Mark Twain, possibly in April 1882: “Emerson, beeming sweetly on his audience & losing his (scrap) scraps & his place—emptied the puzzled house; they thought it was Artemus. He followed them out & heard them say ‘He's tolerable funny, but my, he ain't up to his reputation.‘ (His) E's son told me this” (Notebook 48, TS, p. 10, Mark Twain Papers, Univ. of California, Berkeley.). Clemens obviously relished the image of a bored and disappointed audience, the victims of some mix-up, walking out on the cultivated transcendentalist under the impression that they had been listening to the popular favorite Artemus Ward. See also Frederick Anderson, Lin Salamo, and Bernard L. Stein, eds., Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975), ii, 510.

65 See “Concerning the Answer to That Conundrum,” Calif ornian, 1 (8 Oct. 1864), 1, and “A Protest,” MS. #DV324, March 1870, Mark Twain Papers, Univ. of California, Berkeley.