No man could see him without liking him at once.His manner was straightforward and genial, and had in it the dignity of a gentleman, tempered, as it were, by the fun of the humorist.When you heard him talk you wanted to make much of him, not because he was "Artemus Ward," but because he was himself, for no one less resembled "Artemus Ward" than his author and creator, Charles Farrar Browne.But a few weeks ago it was remarked to me that authors were a disappointing race to know, and I agreed with the remark, and Iremember a lady once said to me that the personal appearance of poets seldom "came up" to their works.To this I replied that, after all, poets were but men, and that it was as unreasonable to expect that the late Sir Walter Scott could at all resemble a Gathering of the Clans as that the late Lord Macaulay should appear anything like the Committal of the Seven Bishops to the Tower.Itold the lady that she was unfair to eminent men if she hoped that celebrated engineers would look like tubular bridges, or that Sir Edwin Landseer would remind her of a "Midsummer Night's Dream." Imention this because, of all men in the world, my friend Charles Browne was the least like a showman of any man I ever encountered.
I can remember the odd half disappointed look of some of the visitors to the Egyptian Hall when "Artemus" stepped upon the platform.At first they thought that he was a gentleman who appeared to apologise for the absence of the showman.They had pictured to themselves a coarse old man, with a damp eye and a puckered mouth, one eyebrow elevated an inch above the other to express shrewdness and knowledge of the world--a man clad in velveteen and braid, with a heavy watch-chain, large rings, and horny hands, the touter to a waxwork show, with a hoarse voice, and over familiar manner.The slim gentleman in evening dress, polished manners, and gentle voice, with a tone of good breeding that hovered between deference and jocosity; the owner of those thin--those much too thin--white hands could not be the man who spelt joke with a "g." Folks who came to laugh, began to fear that they should remain to be instructed, until the gentlemanly disappointer began to speak, then they recovered their real "Artemus," Betsy Jane, wax-figgers, and all.Will patriotic Americans forgive me if I say that Charles Browne loved England dearly! He had been in London but a few days when he paid a visit to the Tower.He knew English history better than most Englishmen; and the Tower of London was to him the history of England embalmed in stone and mortar.No man had more reverence in his nature; and at the Tower he saw that what he had read was real.There were the beef-eaters; there had been Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lady Jane Grey, and Shakspere's murdered princes, and their brave, cruel uncle.There was the block and the axe, and the armour and the jewels."St George for Merrie England!"had been shouted in the Holy Land, and men of the same blood as himself had been led against the infidel by men of the same brain and muscle as George Washington.Robin Hood was a reality, and not a schoolboy's myth like Ali Baba and Valentine and Orson.
There were two sets of feelings in Charles Browne at the Tower.He could appreciate the sublimity of history, but, as the "Show" part of the exhibition was described to him, the humorist, the wit, and the iconoclast from the other side the Atlantic must have smiled at the "descriptions." The "Tower" was a "show," like his own--Artemus Ward's.A price was paid for admission, and the "figgers" were "orated." Real jewellery is very like sham jewellery after all, and the "Artemus" vein in Charles Browne's mental constitution--the vein of humour, whose source was a strong contempt of all things false, mean, shabby, pretentious, and only external--of bunkum and Barnumisation--must have seen a gigantic speculation realising shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town--the Stars and Stripes flying over it--with a four-horse lecture to describe the barbarity of the ancient British Barons and the cuss of chivalry.
Artemus Ward's Lecture on the Mormons at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, was a great success.His humour was so entirely fresh, new, and unconventional, it took his hearers by surprise, and charmed them.His failing health compelled him to abandon the lecture after about eight or ten weeks.Indeed, during that brief period he was once or twice compelled to dismiss his audience.Ihave myself seen him sink into a chair and nearly faint after the exertion of dressing.He exhibited the greatest anxiety to be at his post at the appointed time, and scrupulously exerted himself to the utmost to entertain his auditors.It was not because he was sick that the public was to be disappointed, or that their enjoyment was to be diminished.During the last few weeks of his lecture-giving he steadily abstained from accepting any of the numerous invitations he received.Had he lived through the following London fashionable season, there is little doubt that the room at the Egyptian Hall would have been thronged nightly.Our aristocracy have a fine delicate sense of humour, and the success, artistic and pecuniary, of "Artemus Ward" would have rivalled that of the famous "Lord Dundreary." There are many stupid people who did not understand the "fun" of Artemus Ward's books.In their vernacular "they didn't see it." There were many stupid people who did not understand the fun of Artemus Ward's lecture on the Mormons.
They could not see it.Highly respectable people--the pride of their parish, when they heard of a lecture "upon the Mormons"--expected to see a solemn person, full of old saws and new statistics, who would denounce the sin of polygamy, and bray against polygamists with four-and-twenty boiling-water Baptist power of denunciation.These uncomfortable Christians do not like humour.
