On Humor Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2020 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/onhumor01unse On Humor The Best from American Literature Edited by Louis J. Budd and Edwin H, Cady Duke University Press Durham and London (C) Duke University Press 1992 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper co Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the last printed page of this book. Contents Series Introduction vii Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor (1930) Walter Blair i The Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists (1931) Walter Blair /j “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California (1936) G. R. MacMinn Tragedy and Irony in Knic\erbocl{er s History (1940) Charlton G. Laird 45 Hank Monk and Horace Greeley (1942) Richard G. Lillard 59 The Humorous Works of George W. Harris (1943) Donald Day 68 Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables (1948) Louise Dauner 8^ The Birth and Death of a Satirist: Eugene Field and Chicago’s Growing Pains (1951) Robert A. Day 99 “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Arkansas (1955) Eugene Current-Garcia 112 The Imagery of George Washington Harris (1959) Milton Rickels 727 The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction (i960) Howard W. Webb, Jr. 742 Aeolism in Knickerbocker’s A History of New Yor\ (1970) David Durant 754 The Text, Tradition, and Themes of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” (1975) J. A. Leo Lemay 168 Tall Tale, Tall Talk: Pursuing the Lie in Jacksonian Literature (1977) Neil Schmitz igo VI Contents Cable’s The Grandissimes and the Comedy of Manners (1980) Robert O. Stephens 211 The Comic Voice in Dreiser’s Cowperwood Narrative (1981) Jack E. Wallace 224 Colonel Noland of the Spirit: The Voices of a Gentleman in Southwest Humor (1981) Lome Fienberg 240 From Whom the Bull Flows: Hemingway in Parody (1989) James C. McKelly 25^ Index 27/ Notes on Contributors 275 Series Introduction From Vol. i, no. i, in March 1929 to the latest issue, the front cover of American Literature has proclaimed that it is published “with the Cooperation of the American Literature Section [earlier Group] of the Modern Language Association.” Though not easy to explain simply, the facts behind that statement have deeply influenced the conduct and contents of the journal for five decades and more. The journal has never been the “official” or “authorized” organ of any professional organization. Neither, however, has it been an indepen¬ dent expression of the tastes or ideas of fay B. Hubbell, Clarence Gohdes, or Arlin Turner, for example. Historically, it was first in its field, designedly so. But its character has been unique, too. Part of the tradition of the journal says that Hubbell in founding it intended a journal that should “hold the mirror up to the profes¬ sion”—reflecting steadily its current interests and (ideally) at least sampling the best work being done by historians, critics, and bibliog¬ raphers of American literature during any given year. Such remains the intent of the editors based at Duke University; such also through the decades has been the intent of the Board of Editors elected by the vote of members of the professional association—“Group” or “Sec¬ tion.” The operative point lies in the provisions of the constitutional “Agreements” between the now “Section” and the journal. One of these provides that the journal shall publish no article not approved by two readers from the elected Board. Another provides that the Chairman of the Board or, if one has been appointed and is acting in the editorial capacity at Duke, the Managing Editor need publish no article not judged worthy of the journal. Historically, again, the members of the successive Boards and the Duke editor have seen eye-to-eye. The Board has tended to approve fewer than one out of every ten submissions. The tradition of the journal dictates that it keep a slim back-log. With however much revision, therefore, the journal publishes practically everything the Board approves. Founder Hubbell set an example from the start by achieving the Series Introduction vm almost total participation of the profession in the first five numbers of American Literature. Cairns, Murdock, Pattee, and Rusk were involved in Vol. i, no. i, along with Boynton, Killis Campbell, Foerster, George Philip Krapp, Leisy, Mabbott, Parrington, Bliss Perry, Louise Pound, Quinn, Spiller, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Stanley Williams on the editorial side. Spiller, Tremaine McDowell, Gohdes, and George B. Stewart contributed essays. Canby, George McLean Harper, Gregory Paine, and Howard Mumford Jones ap¬ peared as reviewers. Harry Hayden Clark and Allan Gilbert entered in Vol. I, no. 2. Frederic I. Carpenter, Napier Wilt, Merle Curti, and Grant C. Knight in Vol. i, no. 3; Clarence Faust, Granville Hicks, and Robert Morss Lovett in Vol. i, no. 4; Walter Fuller Tay¬ lor, Orians, and Paul Shorey in Vol. 2, no. i. Who, among the founders of the profession, was missing? On the other hand, if the reader belongs to the profession and does not know those present, she or he probably does not know enough. With very few notable exceptions, the movers and shakers of the profession have since the beginning joined in cooperating to create and sustain the journal. The foregoing facts lend a special distinction to the best articles in American Literature. They represent the many, often tumultuous winds of doctrine which have blown from the beginnings through the years of the decade next to last in this century. Those articles often became the firm footings upon which present structures of un¬ derstanding rest. Looking backward, one finds that the argonauts were doughty. Though we know a great deal more than they, they are a great deal of what we know. Typically, the old best authors wrote well—better than most of us. Conceptually, even ideologi¬ cally, we still wrestle with ideas they created. And every now and again one finds of course that certain of the latest work has rein¬ vented the wheel one time more. Every now and again one finds a sunburst idea which present scholarship has forgotten. Then it ap¬ pears that we have receded into mist or darkness by comparison. Historical change, not always for the better, also shows itself in methods (and their implied theories) of how to present evidence, structure an argument, craft a scholarly article. The old masters were far from agreed—much to the contrary—about these matters. Series Introduction IX But they are worth knowing in their own variety as well as in their instructive differences from us. On the other hand, the majority of American Literature'% authors of the best remain among us, working, teaching, writing. One testi¬ mony to the quality of their masterliness is the frequency with which the journal gets requests from the makers of textbooks or collections of commentary to reprint from its pages. Now the opportunity pre¬ sents itself to select without concern for permissions fees what seems the best about a number of authors and topics from the whole sweep of American Literature. The fundamental reason for this series, in other words, lies in the intrinsic, enduring value of articles that have appeared in American Literature since 1929. The compilers, with humility, have accepted the challenge of choosing the best from well over a thousand articles and notes. By “best” is meant original yet sound, interesting, and useful for the study and teaching of an author, intellectual move¬ ment, motif, or genre. The articles chosen for each volume of this series are given simply in the order of their first publication, thus speaking for themselves and entirely making their own points rather than serving the com¬ pilers’ view of literary or philosophical or historical patterns. Hap¬ pily, a chronological order has the virtues of displaying both the de¬ velopment of insight into a particular author, text, or motif and the shifts of scholarly and critical emphasis since 1929. But comparisons or trend-watching or a genetic approach should not blur the individ¬ ual excellence of the articles reprinted. Each has opened a fresh line of inquiry, established a major perspective on a familiar problem, or settled a question that had bedeviled the experts. The compilers aim neither to demonstrate nor undermine any orthodoxy, still less to justify a preference for research over explication, for instance. In the original and still current subtitle, American Literature honors literary history and criticism equally—along with bibliography. To the compilers this series does demonstrate that any worthwhile au¬ thor or text or problem can generate a variety of challenging perspec¬ tives. Collectively, the articles in its volumes have helped to raise contemporary standards of scholarship and criticism. This series is planned to serve as a live resource, not as a homage X Series Introduction to once vibrant but petrifying achievements in the past. For several sound reasons, its volumes prove to be weighted toward the more re¬ cent articles, but none of those reasons includes a presumed superior¬ ity of insight or of guiding doctrine among the most recent genera¬ tions. Some of the older articles could benefit now from a minor revision, but the compilers have decided to reprint all of them ex¬ actly as they first appeared. In their time they met fully the stan¬ dards of first-class research and judgment. Today’s scholar and critic, their fortunate heir, should hope that rising generations will esteem his or her work so highly. Many of the articles published in American Literature have ac¬ tually come (and continue to come) from younger, even new mem¬ bers of the profession. Because many of those authors climb on to prominence in the field, the fact is worth emphasizing. Brief notes on the contributors in the volumes of their series may help readers to discover other biographical or cultural patterns. Edwin H. Cady Louis J. Budd Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor Walter Blair I D uring recent years, several writers on American humor have pointed out the important fact that America’s boisterous nine¬ teenth-century literary comedians, writing honestly of the life about them, were significant pioneers in the development of realism in American fiction/ It has not, however, been made sufficiently clear that these humorists attacked the ruling romanticism in still another fashion—by magnifying its absurdities in a flood of burlesques and parodies^ which swept into print during the latter part of the century. The number and the methods of the attacks deserve consideration, for a study of the work of the parodists not only indicates the meth¬ ods of the humorists but also adds a significant detail to the story of the beginnings of American realism. Most of the major humorists employed burlesques frequently. The first book, for example, of George Horatio Derby, Phoenixiana (1855), had as its subtitle, or Sketches and Burlesques, and twelve of the thirty-three sections of the book were burlesques.® The propor¬ tion of burlesques in Derby’s Squibob Papers was only slightly smaller. Artemus Ward wrote a series of burlesque novels, some published in Vanity Pair, nine of which are included in his complete works,^ and two of which have been salvaged by Mr. Seitz;® and his ^ Professor Pattee hinted at the fact in A History of American Literature since 1870 (New York: Century, 1915), p. 43. The point has been made more definitely in J. L. King’s Doctor George William Bagby (New York: Columbia, 1927), p. 62, Napier Wilt’s Some American Humorists (New York: Nelson, 1929), p. xi, and Franklin J. Meine’s Tall Tales of the Southwest (New York: Knopf, 1930), pp. xxix-xxx. * Since no distinction was made between the burlesque and the parody by the humorists, it has seemed wise to follow the authors in using the terms synonymously. 3 "Official Report of Professor John Phoenix, A.M.,’’ "A New System of English Gram¬ mar," "Musical Review Extraordinary,” “Lectures on Astronomy,” “Illustrated Newspapers,” “Sandyago—a Soliloquy,” “Fourth of July Celebration in San Diego,” “Melancholy Acci¬ dent,” “A Full Account of the San Francisco Antiquarian Society,” “Review of New Books,” “Lectures on Astronomy Continued,” and “A Legend of the Tehama House.” * The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (New York: Carleton, 1883), pp. 157-189. ® Don C. Seitz, Artemus Ward (New York: Harper & Bros., 1919), pp. 239-292. 2 Walter Blair works are studded with briefer bits of burlesque writing.® Mark Twain, beginning his career as a humorist for The Californian, wrote seven burlesques for that paper, taking off orations, historical writings, answers to correspondents, and the Sunday School story And burlesques are to be found in Clemens’s later works. He paro¬ died the playbill and dramatic criticism, for example, in Innocents Abroad, the Sunday School speech in The Gilded Age and Tom Sawyer', and the obituary poem furnished a target for his shafts on at least three occasions. And when Bill Nye, the last important funny man of the old school, published his first book in i88i, he parodied the ode, the fictional romance, the campaign song, the ora¬ tion, the political speech, the biblical parable, the lyric, and the newspaper “answers to correspondents” department;® and most of his later books were also sprinkled with burlesques. Most of the comic papers printed burlesques by leading humor¬ ists and by minor figures as well. The first volume of Vanity Fair, to cite one of many publications which might serve equally as well, contained no less than eighteen burlesques, some of them continued through several issues.® Somewhat later, a writer in Vanity Fair hardly exaggerated when he said: To burlesque is now deemed sublime; to be serious is to be ridiculous. . . . We are engaged in a noble work. We are doing for literature what the actors are doing for the stage—we are simplifying matters—stripping them of their ex¬ crescences, and proving that everything is susceptible of being burlesqued.^® ®Notc, for example, op. cit., pp. 52-54 (burlesque oration), pp. 64-67 (burlesque dramatic criticism), pp. 78-79 (burlesque resolutions), and pp. 316-320 (burlesque autobiography). The writings of Mark Twain for the paper are listed in Bret Harte and Mark Twain, Sketches of the Sixties (San Francisco: John Howell, 1926), pp. 219-221. ^ Bill Nye and Boomerang (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1881). ® Vanity Bair, Vol. I, Dec. 31, 1859-June 16, i860, included “Reynard the Fox” (bur¬ lesque fable), p. 5; “Song of the Locomotive” (Hood’s “Song of the Shirt”), 20; “The Message Made Easy” (political -speech), 24; “New Guide to Central Park” (guide book), 87; “Song of the Shirtless” (Hood’s poem), 91; “II Politico” (grand opera), 132-133; “Scene from the Political Drama of Romeo and Juliet,” 157; “Conservative’s Lament” (Tennyson), 181; “Counter Jumps” (Walt Whitman), 183; “The Gentle Shepherd” (Bible), 196-197; “The Doom of the Iron Law” (novel), 212; “Habits of Good Society” (etiquette book), 231, and continued in several issues; “The Counter Jumper Swell” (Aldrich’s “Babie Bell”), 263; “Don’t Give Up the Belt” (poem), 308; “Our Agricultural Column” (hints to farmers): “Punning Made Easy” (textbook on rhetoric), 356, and continued through several issues; “Life of Lincoln (Abraham)” (biography), 389. “The Burlesque Business,” Vanity Fair, IV, 245 (Nov. 20, 1861). The reference to the stage no doubt had to do with the burlesques of Brougham and others, which, as Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton has remarked in The Drama in English (New York: Scribner’s, 1930), pp. Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor 3 These facts indicate, in a general way, the eminence of the parody as a humorous form. A more complete understanding of the ex¬ tensive use of the form, and of its chief devices, may be arrived at by tracing three important and prevalent types of burlesque through the period during which the native school of humorists was most active (C.1830-C.1896). A study of the burlesques of oratory, of his¬ tory, and of fiction shows how the comic writers tilted at fine writing and pseudo-romanticism. II The oratorical style of the period was thus criticized by a hostile critic in 1889: To beautify “elegant” sentiment with “elegant” if elephantine rhetorical frilli- gigs, is the highest delight of the “elegant” orator, who despises “plain” English. His interest in simple words becomes compound when he can use three syllables instead of one.... He thinks it more blessed to “donate” than to give, and more refreshing to bathe in a “natatorium” than in a bath.^^ Naturally such a style was a red flag to men blessed with humor, and the artificialities which the critic denounced were frequently sprinkled over pages intended not to inspire but to amuse. Whole books by minor humorists were filled with hilarious apings of the popular orator. Even sermons were parodied extensively. Joseph F. Paige, writing under the pseudonym of “Dow, Jr.,” pub¬ lished one volume of “short patent sermons” in 1841, and reissued them, with many additions, sixteen years later.*^ Two unidentified humorists put the high-flown words of ministers into Dutch and negro dialect.'^ One of William Penn Brannen’s parody sermons, frequently reprinted, gave a title to a famous collection of humor in 1858.^^ Works other than sermons furnished inspirations for other 230-231, “punctured the pontifical solemnity of the romantic tradition and constantly intro¬ duced a contemporary note.” “Newspaper Americanisms,” The Critic, XIV, 236 (May ii, 1889). Short Patent Sermons (New York: Lawrence Labree, 1841). The second edition was published by Peterson of Philadelphia in four volumes. Several of the sermons first appeared in The New Yorf^ Mercury. Comic Lectures on Everything in General and Nothing in Particular. By Deacon Snow¬ ball and Diedrich Lager-Blatter (New York: Frederick A. Brady, [n.d.]). t*The Harp of a Thousand Strings (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1858), reissued in 1865. 4 Walter Blair parodists. The popular publishers of dime novels, Beadle & Co., issued, in 1863, a Comic Speaker which contains nothing but bur¬ lesque oratory—“A Texan Eulogium,” supposedly delivered by a pompous orator in the state legislature, and testifying to the great¬ ness of the late “Solomon Dill”; “The United States,” in which it is remarked, with flourishes, that ours is a fine country; the spiel of “The Mountebank” with testimonials; “Sermon on the Feet”; “Po¬ litical Stump Speech”; and others. So popular was the oratorical burlesque that two examples crept into Beadle’s Exhibition Spea\er (New York, 1881), where they rubbed shoulders with specimens of the style they parodied.^® Dr. W. Valentine issued two volumes largely made up of burlesque speeches.^® Echoes of the oratorical style found their way into writings of authors who were not primarily interested in parody. Colonel Crockett’s speeches, intentionally or unintentionally, resort to gran¬ diloquence. Major Jack Downing recorded some of the flights of political spellbinders with whom he had contacts. The Biglow Papers, in the “Debate in the Sennit,” which caricatures the bom¬ bastic oratory of the Southern Calhoun, also offers amusing paro¬ dies elsewhere. Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes (1835), Hooper’s Simon Suggs (1845), Baldwin’s ''Flush Times (1853), the Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (1861-2), and Harris’s Sut hovingood (1867) contain brief passages in the conventional style. Artemus Ward’s “The Crisis” and “A War Meeting” quote typically ornate speeches, and one is hardly surprised to hear the illiterate Petroleum V. Nasby roar: “Fellow whites, arowz! The inemy is onto us! Our harths is in danger! . . . Rally agin Conway! Rally agin Higler! Rally agin the porter at the Reed House !”^^ Later Max Adeler, Robert Bur¬ dette, and Bill Nye frequently used the oration as humorous material. One particular variety of the oration was more prevalent and more pretentious, perhaps, than any other during the period—the Fourth of July Address of the type commented on in Cooper’s Home as Found in 1838. The Independence Day orator, a necessary part of “The Orator of the Day” and "The Disconcerted Candidate” show an elegant orator being interrupted by a vulgar audience whose remarks are painfully uncouth. A Budget of Wit and Humor (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald [c. 1857.q) and Comic Lectures and Comic Metamorphoses (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald [n.d.]). '^''Struggles (1871), p. 42. Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor 5 every celebration of the Fourth, felt, as James Bryce said, “bound to talk his very tallest” in order that the eagle might scream while the perspiring audience applauded. Famous orators such as Web¬ ster, Everett, and Sumner, and orators famed only in their own vil¬ lages summoned all their artistry to praise their country. And after the speaker’s thunder had died, the committee, with his permission, embalmed his words in little pamphlets destined to grow dusty on library shelves. As early as 1856, George H. Derby (“Phoenix”) parodied all the elements of the printed pamphlet of this type in his “Fourth of July Oration in Oregon,” which contains the request by the local com¬ mittee that John Phoenix appear and orate, John’s condescending compliance, and, finally, the highly embroidered speech.*® The same day, according to Artemus Ward, the genial showman spoke in Weathersfield, Connecticut, famous “for her onyins and patritism the world over.”*® In 1875, Mose S\inners Centennial preserved an oration which began, auspiciously, “One hundred years ago the spot where we now stand was located elsewhere ....” and in 1881, Beadle’s Exhibition Speaker recorded the remarks of “The Orator of the Day.” Typical as an example of these parodies was the address included in Bill Nye’s “How the Fourth Was Celebrated at Whalen’s Grove Last Year,” delivered by “a self-made man from Hickory township” and embodied in a burlesque country newspaper account.^® The opening words remind one of the beginning of an actual address given July 4, 1824, in New York, in which Dr. Hooper Gumming, the orator, said: Auspicious Morn! which witnesses the noblest declaration that ever issued from the lips of patriotism. Auspicious morn! which gilded the manly brows, and dilated tbe benevolent bosoms ... of ... Jefferson, and Adams, and Franklin ... which heard three millions of freemen exclaim, “The sword of the Lord and of Washington.”^ Squibob Papers (New York; Carleton, 1865), pp. 13-42. The address was pub¬ lished in newspaper form nine years earlier. “Fourth of July Address,” op. cit., pp. 116-119. The article was first printed in The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, July 16, 1859, and later in Vanity Pair, in 1861. Bill Nye’s Chestnuts (Chicago; Belford, Clarke & Co., 1887), pp. 21-29. 21 Quoted by Mr. Edmund Pearson in Queer Book.s (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928), pp. Mr. Pearson’s amusing essay, “Making the Eagle Scream,” in which the quotation appears, gives a brief history of the Independence Day oration and some satires on it. 6 Walter Blair Said Nye’s Hickory township orator: Fellow Citizens; This is the anniversary of the day when freedom towards all and malice towards none first got a foothold in this country. And we are now to celebrate that day. I say that on that day Tireny and uzurpation got a set-back they will never recover from. We then paved the way for the poor, oppressed foreigner, so that he could come to our shores and take liberties with our form of government. ... A moment later, Nye’s orator asked why the country had been blessed as it was: Why are we today a free people, with a surplus in the treasury that nobody can get at.? ... Why are our resources so great that they almost equal our liabilities.? Why is everything done to make it pleasant for the rich man and every inducement held out for the poor man to accumulate more and more poverty.? Why is it that so much is said about the tariff by men who do not support their own families.? Years before, on July 4, 1814, similarly puzzled, Robert Y. Hayne had asked a Charleston audience: In what then, my countrymen, does your superior lot consist.? Does the verdure of your field delight the eye.? The vineyards of France ... display equal beauty. Are your mountains the objects of your admiration.? ... in the glaciers of Switzerland you will behold nature in her grandeur and simplicity. . . . He answered his perplexing question as follows: “The United States ... is the only free country on earth.” ^ Nye’s orator was less considerate; he did not get around to a reply to his question, being, perhaps, too eager to conclude on the note that “whatever may be said about our refinement and our pork, our style of free¬ dom is sought for everywhere. It is a freedom that will stand any climate....” Nye’s system of parody is similar to that employed by others who burlesqued oratory. With the grand style he mingled homely words and phrases, and for the picture book version of contemporary conditions he substituted the realist’s knowledge of facts. Then he ended the speech, not with a hair-raising peroration, but with an ab¬ surd anti-climax. 22 Quoted by Pearson, op. cit., pp. 25—26. Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor 7 III The treatment of history by the humorists presented as much of a contrast to the ornate romantic historical works of the period. Comic treatments were numerous after “A Comic History of the United States” ran through several issues of Volume II of Yankee Doodle (1847-48). At least six books published between 1861 and 1894 were occupied with a recounting of the nation’s story by bur¬ lesque historians.^^ Furthermore, many humorists made briefer ex¬ cursions into historical writing—Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr, Artemus Ward, George H. Derby, and Max Adeler among them. The humorous historians were consistently irreverent; they made historical events comical by stressing foibles of honored leaders; they constantly mingled the realistic with the romantic, the colloquial with the elegant. Washington’s appearance, asserted Derby, might be discovered by looking at “a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, of this great soldier and statesman . . . taken when the general was in the act of chewing tobacco, the left cheek distended. . . Hopkins noted that “Washington crossing the Delaware furnished a very good subject for a very bad painting, which may be seen among other bad paintings in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington ... at first sight . . . mistaken for an advertising dodge of some ice com¬ pany. . . Artemus Ward, his “bossum” heaving “with solium emotions” as he views the spot “where our revolutionary forefathers asserted their independence and spilt their Blud,” is reminded that the sacred ground is “good for white beans and potatoes, but as re¬ gards raisin’ wheat, ’t’aint worth a dam.”^® Mark Twain, writing in about 1870, of “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” remembers with rancor Franklin’s industry, his maxims which “were full of ani¬ mosity toward boys,” his stove “that would smoke your head off in [Willis Hazard], Herod Otis . . . Pictorial History of the United States . . . (New York: Leavitt & Allen, i86i); [John L. Newell], Orpheus C. Kerr’s Smoked Glass (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868), which treated the Reconstruction period: John D. Sherwood, The Comic History of the United States (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870); Livingstone Hopkins, A Comic History of the United States (New York: American Book Exchange, 1880); Bric^top’s Comic History of America (New York: M. J. Ivens & Co., 1893), and Bill Nye’s History of the United States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1894). Internal evidence seems to indicate that Bric^top’s History first appeared in 1876. Squibob Papers, p. 32. Op. cit., p. III. Op. cit., p. 80. 8 Walter Blair four hours by the clock.”The parodists were most joyous when they found a chance to tie up homely material with glamorous figures or romantic moments of history. Often the grandiloquent style affected by popular historians was travestied in anticlimaxes. Gazing upon the figure of Garibaldi, Orpheus C. Kerr passionately told his reader: “Behold him, then, at his tasks”—and then he added a few details—“in a red shirt am¬ putated at the neck, and two yellow patches . . . flaming from the background of his seat of learning.”^® Bricktop painted a beautiful picture of Washington at Valley Forge, “his army reduced by sick¬ ness and desertion.. . . Add to this the terrors of one of the severest winters ever known, and understand that his army was half naked and had hardly any shelter from the winter, and you have only a portion of the picture, for starvation threatened them . . . .” Then the tone changes as the writer adds: “Strip a man’s back and pinch his belly, and you have a very good test of his patriotism if he stands without kicking. The men at Valley Forge didn’t kick—they lacked the strength to.”^® And Nye found a part of a Fourth of July address fitted quite nicely into a history: All over that little republic, so begun in sorrow and travail, there came in after-years the dimples and the smiles of the prosperous child who would one day rise in the lap of the mother-country, and, asserting its rights . . . place a large and disagreeable fire-cracker under the nose of royalty, that, busting the awful stillness, should jar the empires of the earth, and blow the unblown noses of future kings and princes. (This is taken bodily from a speech made by me July 4, 1777, when I was young.—THE AUTHOR.)^® Certainly, if attitude and manner are considered, these playful chroniclers were, in their way, predecessors of modern realistic writ¬ ers on history. In a period when most American histories were writ¬ ten in the romantic tradition and the grandiloquent style, the hu¬ morists worked for realism by looking at the past through worldly eyes and by poking fun at the gilded mannerisms and heightened materials of serious historians. Sketches New and Old (Author’s National Edition), (New York: Harper, 1903), XIX, 211-215. “Life of General Garibaldi,” Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (New York, 1862), pp. 297-304. Op. cit., p. 45. 30 Bill Nye’s History of the United States (Philadelphia, 1894), p. 41. Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor 9 IV But if the humorists found affectations and impossible romanticism in the orations and the histories of the century, they found even more absurdities in the popular novels of the time. Many an impassioned writer of romance in the period, after a few moralizing paragraphs, began his story in something like the following fashion: . . . Surrounded as he (the hero) was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his energies. Soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily on the Indian Plains. . . . The mountain air breathed fragrance—a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that murmured. . . . Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance—eyes which be¬ trayed more than a common mind.®^ Nye, perceiving the excellence of such an opening, thus started his burlesque novel, “Pumpkin Jim; or the Tale of a Busted Jackass Rabbit:” It was evening in the mountains. The golden god of day was gliding slowly adown the crimson west. Here and there the cerulean dome was flecked with snowy clouds. The flecks were visible to the naked eye. Meanwhile the golden god of day, hereinbefore referred to, continued to glide adown the crimson west, with about the same symmetrical glide. It had done so on several occasions previous to the opening of this story.^^ Nye, too, showed a partiality for heroes with noble countenances: a little later. All at once, like a flash of dazzling light, a noble youth came slowly down the mountain side, riding an ambling palfrey of the narrow gauge variety.®® The palfrey unfortunately stumbled and sat down upon the young man. The passage is quoted from a novel which pleased Mark Twain so much with its un¬ conscious humor that he reprinted the whole in The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches—The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant (New Haven, 1845), pp. 7-8. Clemens thought it an unusual book, but it is not difficult to find many which are as amaz¬ ingly bad. Bill Nye and Boomerang, p. 90. Ibid., p. 105. 10 Walter Blair “Curses upon thee, thou base and treacherous mule!” he muttered, brokenly. “By my beard, thou hast poorly repaid me for my unremitting kindness to thee. Ah, alack, alack, alack— This was the proper sort of language for a hero to use. The hero here had another idiosyncrasy: he was Jesse James in disguise. He was therefore good heroic material. In i86i, Orpheus C. Kerr had pointed out that writers of popular fiction had a genius— . . . a power of creating an unnatural and unmitigated ruffian for a hero, my boy, at whose shrine all created crinoline and immense delegations of inferior broadcloth are impelled to bow. Such a one was that old humbug, Rochester, the beloved of “Jane Eyre.” The character has been done-over scores of times since poor Charlotte Bronte gave her novel to the world, and is still “much used in respectable families.” And Kerr had indicated the justice of his criticism in a burlesque, “Higgins. An Autobiography. By Gushalina Crushit,” in which a very innocent woman adores a perfect monsterArtemus Ward had discovered the tendency, and had complimented The Atlantic Monthly because: “It don’t print stories with piruts and honist young men into ’em, making the piruts splendid fellers and the honist young men dis’gree’ble idiots—so that our darters very nat’rally pre¬ fer the piruts to the honist young idiots. . . Ward parodied the despised type of story in “The Fair Inez,”®® the hero of which is a picturesque corsair; in “Moses the Sassy”;®® “Roberto the Rover” and “Red Hand,”^^ wherein elegant desperadoes and “piruts” play important parts. Another type of hero, the lover who “isn’t handsome, but . . . very good,” is the hero of Nye’s “The Lop-Eared Lovers of the Little Laramie.”^ His remarks still “sound so much like reading from a manuscript, that the reader can’t help pitying him,”^ but his elo- Ibid., p. io6. Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, p. 64. Ibid., pp. 66-73. 37 Browne, The Complele IVor^s of Artemus Ward (New York, 1883), pp. 81-82. 3 ® First published in Vanity Fair, Vol. IV (July 27, 1861-August 24, 1861), and reprinted in Seitz, op. cit., 239-276. 39 Vanity Fair, III, 273 (June 15, 1861), and Browne, op. cit., pp. 157-161. ■*9 Browne, op. cit., pp. 169-173. *3 ihid., pp. 173-177. ^3 Bill Nye and Boomerang, pp. 118—126. ^3 Quoted from Bill Nye’s essay, “Fiction,” in Forty Uars and Other Lies (Chicago, 1893), p. 228, first published in 1882. The article shows that Nye had definite critical ideas concern¬ ing the current fiction which he parodied. Burlesques in Nineteenth-Century American Humor II quent elegance makes him no less red-blooded or brave. In “The True Tale of William Tell,”^ another type of hero and another type of story—the historical romance—are parodied. And “Patrick Ole- son” makes light of the deserving and persevering young man who works his way up to great success.'*® Thus Nye burlesqued a fairly wide range of fictional types. In thus making light of the romantic nineteenth-century fiction, Nye was in line with other humorists of the American school. As early as 1858, a collection of humorous skits, The Harp of a Thou¬ sand Strings, had included three examples of parodied popular fic¬ tion.'*® Vanity Fair, during its entire career, had published a steady stream of burlesque tales.*^ Artemus Ward had created not only the parodies treating rascally heroes cited above but also six other bur¬ lesques, two of which held up to ridicule the popular French novels and the choppy style later to furnish capital for Bret Harte. In the three series of Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Newell had included ten burlesque novels of various types, including two parodies of Dickens, and in 1870, he had devoted an entire volume to a parody of Dick¬ ens’s last work.*® C. H. Webb had issued, in two separate volumes, parodies of very popular novels,*® and had later reprinted the two with another burlesque novel and some poetic parodies in one vol¬ ume.®® In 1867, Bret Harte, as much in the tradition as Nye was to be, had published his Condensed Novels. Mark Twain, using some of the tricks which were to be useful in A Connecticut Yankee, in a burlesque novel had poked fun at the medieval romance.®* The ** Ibid., pp. 158-160. Ibid., pp. 75-80. Of course, according to the realistic Nye, Patrick’s perseverance, much to the hero’s surprise, brought him nothing. “The Skeleton in the Cupboard, a Tale of Crinoline’’ (152-155), “Nautical Novel” (227), and “My Elopement” (349—363). Every volume of the magazine between Dec. 31, 1859 and June 2, 1862, excepting Vol. II, contained burlesque fiction. Seven parodies in all were published, four of them continued through several issues. Notable works were two by Artemus Ward, Fitz-Hugh Ludlow’s “The Primpenny Family” (14 installments), McArone’s “Rantanquero de Boom-Jing-Jing; or the Wrath of the Rebel Rival,” and “A Quarter of Twelve” by Orpheus C. Kerr. Orpheus C. Kerr, The Cloven Hoof: Being an Adaptation of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (New York: Carleton, 1870). Liffith Lanl{; or. Lunacy (New York: Carleton, 1866), a parody of Griffith Gaunt, and St. Twel'mo; or, the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (New York: C. H. Webb, 1867), a parody of St. Elmo. John Paul [C. H. Webb], Parodies, Prose and Verse (New York; Carleton, 1876). 'The other parody in the volume was “A Wicked Woman.” “Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance” first published in Marl{ Twain’s Burlesque Auto- 12 Walter Blair humorous periodicals had continued the attack.®^ And Robert Bur¬ dette, in 1877, had mocked the ghost story and the romantic novel.®® The list of burlesque tales might be continued almost indefinitely. The passages quoted from Nye’s mock fiction indicate the method of attack used by all of the parodists of the novel. Like Nye, they exaggerated the unlifelike characterizations, the absurd plots, and the water-color backgrounds which were fashionable, until their ab¬ surdity, thus magnified, became quite evident. They treated the lacy style of novelists as they had treated the unnatural styles of orators and historians, demonstrating its artificiality by mingling with it the natural everyday speech of human beings. An extended con¬ sideration would indicate that other romantic expressions were just as consistently attacked by the rough-and-tumble humorists—the “pious editorial,” the moral tale, the obituary poem which was an off-spring of the graveyard school of poetry,®^ and others. It is evident that the burlesque was an important form in the work of humorists in America in the nineteenth century. It is evident, too, that in an age when recognized critics felt that almost every review of fiction must be laudatory, these unlettered comic men were the most important adverse critics of popular fiction. And their attacks, in the form of burlesques, hit squarely at the worst features of contemporary romantic writing, in behalf of the realism which they practiced and encouraged. biography and First Romance (New York: Sheldon & Co. [1871]), pp. 24-46. Clemens here took off the grandiloquent style and the complicated plot, getting his heroine into such a mess that he could not finish. ^^The Boneville Trumpet (1868-9) was full of burlesques. Puck, was a valiant parodist throughout its career; a volume picked at random—Vol. VIII (1880-1881)—contained eight burlesque novels, three of them serialized, “Fresh as the Dew, by Arthur W. Zola Black Lot,” “N. Dymion, by Penchamin Tisraeli,” and “A 19th Century Boom.” The Rise and Fall of the Moustache (Burlington: Burlington Publishing Company, 1877), pp. 210-249, 173-176. The burlesque obituary has been traced in a sketchy fashion in The Sweet Singer of Michigan, ed. and with an introduction by Walter Blair, (Chicago: Pascal Covici, 1928), pp. xvii-xxiv, where mock obituaries by Clemens (1870, 1883, 1896), Max Adeler (1874), Eugene Field (1880), Knox and Sweet (1882) and Bill Nye (1884) are treated. To the list of parodists mentioned may be added Phoenix, Nasby, Eli Perkins, and Burdette. The Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists Walter Blair J UST HOW popular were the writers of American humor in the years of the last century during which they were most active (c. 1830-C. 1896) ? The question seems worth considering for at least three reasons. An answer will reveal just how true is the impression, fostered by hostile critics of the period, that the great reading public existed on a diet of nothing much except the sugary fare offered by ladies’ books and popular romances. Further, an answer will, per¬ haps, help one understand why Innocents Abroad found thirty- one thousand buyers within six months of its appearance and thus launched Mark Twain’s remarkable career. And finally, if—as his¬ torians have recently held—American humorists were important as predecessors of the realists, data on this subject of popularity will indicate to some extent how these heralds managed to make them¬ selves heard. For these reasons, I have attempted to discover and record some of the facts which show how the nineteenth-century literary comedians recruited an audience. I Several factors, apparently, were important in giving American humor the prominence which it achieved. An early and lasting stimulus to a wide interest in native comic creations, it is probable, was the stage presentation by many actors of humorous American characters. When The Contrast was performed in 1787, the stage Yankee, Jonathan, stumbled into the theater for the first time, spout¬ ing slang, parading his rustic foibles. The play was a pronounced success,* and as a natural result of its popularity, dozens of other dramas portraying similarly vulgar characters followed.^ Not only 1 For details concerning the success of the play, see G. O. Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre (New York, 1888-1891), II, 275-285. 2 A history of such characters is given in Perley Isaac Reed’s “The Realistic Presentation Walter Blair the Yankee but also other figures important in the new humor of America were portrayed. Ralph Stackpole, frontiersman in Nic\ of the Woods, was a successful stage figure. Davy Crockett, come¬ dian of the canebrakes, Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, and other fron¬ tiersmen pleased audiences in New York and the provinces. Min¬ strel troupes offered boisterous blackface jokers who used typical American humor, including some of the jests of Artemus Ward. One play, Eli Among the Cowboys, pictured Eli Perkins captured by plainsmen during a lecture tour in Wyoming.® At least two newspaper paragraphers, J. Amroy Knox and Charles H. Hoyt, be¬ came playwrights whose dramas were successful. Thus, through¬ out the period, humor of the salty native type found its way to the stage. Actors made reputations as portrayers of Yankees or kindred types. Ludlow, dressed in the picturesque costume of a Western boatman, roared out the words of “The Hunters of Kentucky” while rough audiences in showhouses along the Ohio and Mississippi applauded with “a prolonged whoop, or howl_J. H. Hackett was Nimrod Wildfire, Jonathan Ploughboy, and Solon Shingle. Yankee Hill won fame in England as well as America by portraying Yankee types. Joseph Jefferson was applauded as he played the role of Asa Trenchard. Chanfrau triumphed as Mose, the tough fire-boy, and John T. Raymond as Mark Twain’s Colonel Mulberry Sellers in The Gilded Age^ Some actors, in addition to playing character parts, offered monologues—Dr. W. Valentine, Sol Smith, Sol Smith Russell, and Yankee Hill. These monologues, composed by the actors or perhaps in some cases by humorists,® augmented the flood of humorous books, in which monologues were often an important feature.^ And when J. H. Hackett went to The New Yor\ Leader of American Characters in Native American Plays Prior to Eighteen Seventy,” Ohio State University Bulletin, May, 1918, Vol. XXII, no. 26. 3 Eli Perkins, Thirty Tears oj Wit (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1891), pp. 295-296. ^Archer B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), pp. 62-63. ® For a brief account of these actors, see Arthur Hornblow, A History of the Theatre in America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1919), II, 64-65, 68-69. ® Burdette may have prepared some monologues for Sol Smith Russell. See Clara B. Burdette, Robert ]. Burdette: His Message (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1922), p. 126. ’’ Valentine, Smith, and Hill published volumes of anecdotes. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 15 as a journalist, writing lines similar to those which he spoke on the stage, he gave printed humor an impetus his stage career had made possible. II Thus to the theater audiences of the period the new humor became familiar. An even vaster audience, the group interested in politics, found much material in native comic writings to interest it. As Joel Chandler Harris said: First and last, humor has played a very large part in our political campaigns; in fact, it may be said that it has played almost as large a part as principle— which is the name that politicians give to their theories. It is a fact that . . . the happy allusion, the humorous anecdote . . . will change the whole prospects of a political struggle.® A large part of the humor between 1830 and the end of the century dealt with political themes. Major Jack Downing, from the start of his literary career, and the imitators of Jack Downing as well, constantly commented shrewdly upon political struggles. Davy Crockett, with whom Downing carried on some correspondence, was apparently exploited as a political figure; and his writings were necessarily tied up with current contests.® The story of Simon Suggs was written in the guise of a compaign biography, and Major Jones's Travels and Bagby’s Letters of Mozis Addums contain political com¬ ments. W. P. Trent notes the preoccupation of humorists with politics: Lowell being put to one side, there are at least five political humorists of importance belonging to the eventful years 1830-70 . . . Seba Smith, Charles Augustus Davis (1795-1867), Robert Henry Newell (1836-1901), the “Orpheus C. Kerr” whose letters gave Lincoln needed relaxation.... Charles Henry Smith (“Bill Arp,” born in 1826), and David R. Locke [Petroleum V. Nasby]. To these one is almost tempted to add Richard Grant White, whose New Gospel of Peace .,. [was] a clever and very popular parody of the style of the historical books of the Old Testament.'® ^The World’s Wit and Humor: American (New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1906), I, XX. ® See V. L. Farrington, The Romantic Revolution in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927), pp. 172-179. “Retrospect of American Humor,” Century, LXIII, 54-55 (November, 1901). i6 Walter Blair To the list also may be added Artemus Ward, whose political writ¬ ings were, if not numerous, telling. During the years when several of these political humorists were active, one of America’s outstanding political figures did much to focus attention on contemporary humorous works. Lincoln, as Professor Pattee has pointed out, “stood in the limelight of the Presidency, transacting the nation’s business with anecdotes from the frontier circuits, meeting hostile critics with shrewd border philosophy, and reading aloud with unction, while battles were rag¬ ing or election returns were in doubt, from ‘Artemus Ward,’ or ‘Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby,’ or The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi —favorites of his because they too were genuine, excerpts not from books but from life itself.” “ Furthermore, there were few important comic journals which did not battle valiantly in the field of politics. The pages of fohn Don\ey (1848), Vanity Fair (1859-63), (1877-1907), and Judge (1888-) were full of political cartoons and satires. Newspaper comic men constantly carried on political conflicts in the period after the war as before the war: Locke, Peck, “Brick” Pomeroy of The La Crosse Democrat, Bailey, Burdette, and Eli Perkins. It was not a mere accident that one of the most vicious fictional attacks upon industrial control in politics was made by a humorist, Mark Twain, in The Gilded Age. The tradition of the use of political material for humorous purposes was extended through the whole period down to the jestings of Mr. Dooley and Will Rogers about statesmen and demagogues. The nation always has been interested in frank and amusing comments upon political events. Ill The newspapers were active in carrying this humorous material into every part of the nation. Not long after 1830, every paper that could discover a comic writer on its staff was encouraging him to provide amusement for its readers. A few comments indicate how the practice of publishing humor grew. In 1847, Yan\ee Doodle said: A History of American Literature since 1870 (New York: The Century Co., 1917), pp. 27-28. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 17 After the perusal of our exchanges we could not but conclude that the de¬ mand for wit has increased of late to an alarming extent throughout the press of the country, and that as usual the supply has been equal to the demand. The whole editorial corps must have deadly designs upon the community which they propose to accomplish by making it “laugh itself to death” collectively.'^ In 1866, The North American Review remarked, with mock concern: . . . Our own Boston Daily Advertiser—a bulwark of resistance against needless and unauthorized innovations, a host in itself to withstand temptations of levity and trifling—has yielded so far to this demand [for humorous columns in the newspaper] that, though not yet a professedly comic paper, it has intro¬ duced a series of general paragraphs of a nature light and humorous enough to make the old issues turn in their very files for amazement. Far and wide, daily, weekly, and monthly publications issue from the press to face us with at least one feature smiling.'^ Six years later, a historian of American journalism said: Our four or five thousand daily and weekly publications have columns of ‘Nuts to Crack,’ ‘Sunbeams,’ ‘Sparks from the Telegraph,’ ‘Freshest Gleanings,’ ‘Odds and Ends,’ ‘News Sprinklings,’ ‘Flashes of Fun,’ ‘Random Readings,’ ‘Mere Mentions,’ ‘Humor of the Day,’ ‘Quaint Sayings,’ ‘Current Notes,’ ‘Things in General,’ ‘Brevities,’ ‘Witticisms,’ ‘Notes of the Day,’ ‘Jottings,’ ‘All Sorts,’ ‘Editor’s Drawer,’ ‘Sparks,’ ‘Fun and Folly,’ ‘Fact and Fiction,’ ‘Twinklings.’ These are the daily dishes set before our sovereigns. They are the comic departments of the regular Press. We need not count the names of our wits and humorists on the ends of our fingers.... We are a nation full of such characters, perhaps a little thin here and there, but always in abundance and in good humor.. .. Our wit... goes into all the papers.'^ And a year later, in 1873, Edmund Clarence Stedman, one of the old school, a little frightened and somewhat disgusted, was writing to a friend: “The whole country, owing to the contagion of our American exchange system, is flooded, deluged, swamped, beneath a muddy tide of slang, vulgarity, inartistic bathos, impertinence and buffoonery that is not wit.” He blamed Hay and Harte and par¬ ticularly cited Josh Billings and “The Danbury News man” as re- “Witty Paragraphs,” 'ian\ee Doodle, II, 113 (June 19, 1847). Review of Artemus Ward’s Travels in The North American Review, CII, 589 (April, 1866). Frederick Hudson, Journalism in the United States from i6go-i8y2 (New York: Har¬ per & Brothers, 1873), pp. 695-696. i8 Walter Blair sponsible with them for what he called “the present horrible de¬ generacy in public taste.” In 1880, when Nye, the last great figure of the old school, began his career, the paper which did not have a humorous column was exceptional. The Asheville Journal, The Boston Post, The Oil City Derric\, The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Oshkosh Banner, The San Francisco Post, The Ouray Solid Muldoon, and thousands of others purveyed humorous writings which were read in villages and ham¬ lets as well as cities.^® These numerous papers did not stop with the publication of the jests of their own humorists; in addition, they published material picked up from other publications. This practice was widespread, as The Boneville Trumpet (Bridgeport, Connecticut) pointed out at the top of a column headed, “Our Grab Gag”: . . . everybody is informed that GOAKS found in this column never cost this establishment a cent; the Editor having adopted the grab-game (at present so popular with the majority of authors and editors of literary papers), not being able to pay the prices demanded for such by patentees themselves.^^ Giving credit sometimes, often withholding it,^® newspapers and periodicals all over the country passed along the best humorous sketches, anecdotes, poems, and paragraphs discovered in exchanges. Letter to Bayard Taylor, September 16, 1873, in Laura Stedman and G. M. Gould, Lije and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman (New York: Moffatt, Yard and Company, 1910), I, 447. The italics are Stedman’s. A list including only the most popular would name, in addition to the above, Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Every Saturday, Baltimore Sun, Bloomington Eve, Boston Commer¬ cial-Bulletin, Boston Evening Star, Boston Traveler, Boston Transcript, Bridgeport Standard, Brooklyn Eagle, Buffalo News, Buffalo Our Record, Buffalo Times, Burlington Hawk-eye, Cam¬ bridge Tribune, Carson Appeal, Chicago Commercial Advertiser, Chicago National Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Star, Danbury News, Denver Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Elmira Free Press, Erie Herald, Fairfield Times, Galveston News, Huntsville Item, Kansas City Times, Kokomo Tribune, LaCrosse Democrat, Laramie Sentinel, Lowell Courier, Marathon Independent, Marlborough Times, Meriden Recorder, New Haven Register, New Orleans Picayune, New Orleans Times-Democrat, New York Commercial Advertiser, New York Express, New York Graphic, New York Herald, Owego Recorder, Peoria Transcript, Phila¬ delphia Bulletin, Philadelphia Kronicle Herald, Pittsburgh Leader, Portland Courier, Prov¬ idence Star, Quincey Modern Argus, Richmond State, Rochester Democrat, Rochester Ex¬ press, Rome Sentinel, St. Louis Spirit, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco News Letter, Somerville Journal, Southport Times, Steubenville Herald, Syracuse Times, Toledo Blade, Towanda Enterprise, Troy Press. Turners' Falls Reporter, Virginia City Enterprise, Waterloo Observer, Wheeling Leader, Whitehall Times, and Yonkers Statesman. Issue of March 13, 1861, I, 6. Yankee Doodle, The Spirit of the Times, and Puck carried on vehement campaigns against the failure of papers to give credit to exchanges from which they pilfered material. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 19 And since laws allowed exchange copies to be sent without postage, and since newspapers were eager to borrow good material, exchange lists were long; each newspaper sprinkled its pages with quotations from papers of every part of the United States. I was able, with little effort, to compile a list of eighty papers which were quoted in at least two publications in 1880.*® An author with a faculty for writing skits which caught the at¬ tention of editors who, scissors in hand, eagerly scanned exchanges, was soon known throughout the nation. As early as 1833, at least twenty-nine and probably far more newspapers clipped and printed Seba Smith’s Jack Downing letters in cities as distant from Portland, Maine, as Cincinnati, Louisville, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C.^“ As years passed the “contagion of our American exchange system,” as Stedman called it, had spread even wider, B. P. Shillaber could proudly say in his preface to Life and Sayings of Mrs. Parting¬ ton (New York: J. C. Derby, 1854): “Mrs. Partington . . . needs no introduction. In all parts of our land, and over the sea, her name is familiar as a household word.” Eli Perkins boasted that a satir¬ ical letter of 1888 was “copied into thousands of newspapers, and ... read by 10,000,000 people within a week,” and that “it brought back bushels of letters pro and con to the writer, and among them letters from so great a man as James G. Blaine and the two presidential candidates, Cleveland and Harrison.” The newspaper blessed with a witty paragrapher or amusing humorist could win national prominence. In the years before the War of the States, Prentice’s paragraphs, habitually copied every¬ where, made The Louisville Journal known in every section,^^ and when Halpine became a humorist connected with The New Yor\ Leader, “the circulation of the paper increased enormously, and it became a political power.”^ The humorist as well as the newspa¬ per gained national prominence. In 1879, Burdette’s sketch, “The Brakeman at Church,” was published in a paper in the little town All of the publications mentioned in footnote i6 and in the paragraph to which it refers furnished exchange material to two or more humorous columns. 20 M. A. Wyman, Two American Pioneers (New York; Columbia University Press, 1927), pp. 235-236. Op. cit., p. 132. Derby, Fifty Years among Authors, Booths and Publishers (New York, 1886), pp. 419- 420. 23 National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Co., 1929), VI. 27. 20 Walter Blair of Burlington, Iowa. “Its popularity was immediate, and after its publication in the newspaper letter, it was republished ... as a pamphlet, and was distributed by tens of thousands. It was copied by every newspaper of more than the slightest importance in the country . . . and few of the reading public of that generation but had an intimate knowledge of the ‘Brakeman at Church.’ After a few such hits, according to the city editor of the paper. The Bur¬ lington HawJ^-Eye “came to be read not only within the limits of Burlington and Iowa as in the past, but had its circle of readers in practically every state in the Union.” “ While Burdette, soon known as “The Hawk-Eye Man,” thus became famous, Bailey, “The Dan¬ bury News Man,” built up a circulation of forty thousand for the paper employing him, though it was published in a little town in Connecticut.^® Other newspapers prospered. In the words of H. C. Lukens: The Danbury News and Detroit Free Press became household gods that usurped the thrones of Farmers’ Almanacs, and toppled them from their ivy- thatched ‘high eminence’.. .. After 1876 much was heard of such special family visitors, like the Oil City Derric 1 {, on which Robert Wesley Creswell . . . won his editorial, humorous spurs; of the Burlington (Iowa) Hawl^eye, Robert J. Burdette’s auriferous fun mine; of the Yonkers Gazette; Cincinnati Breaf^fast Table, long the profitable mirthy quarry of E. P. Brown; of Pecl(s Sun, a Mil¬ waukee luminary of the Virginia City Enterprise, identified with “Dan De Quille” (pseudonym of W. W. Wright) and Nevada’s ripples of silvered merit. . . IV Perhaps there was much logic in the belief of Hudson that one important reason why comic journals had very hard sledding lay in the fact that Americans were supplied with humor by news¬ papers. Yet in addition to newspapers, periodicals which published humorous materials, in spite of hardships and failures, joined other C. J. Burdette, op. cit., p. 127. 25 p, National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1929), VI, 28. For additional testimony, see J. L. Ford’s article in Munsey's Magazine, XXV, 488 (July, 1901), and Slason Thompson’s Life of Eugene Field (New York and London: D. Appleton & Company, 1927), pp. 60-61. "American Literary Comedians,’’ Harper’s Magazine, LXXX, 791-792 (April, 1890). Only a portion of the list given by Lukens is reproduced. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 21 forces in lifting humor to popularity. Treating the magazines of years between 1825 and 1850, Mr. Frank Luther Mott notes: “Humor is far more prominent in American periodical literature than it had ever been before; all except the most serious now have their ‘Fun Jottings’ or ‘Joke Corner,’ or something analogous.”^® Lewis Gay¬ lord Clark, the editor of The Knickjerbocker, printed the work of Fred S. Cozzens, Charles Godfrey Leland, “Phoenix,” and many another humorous writer in a comic department which, by 1853, occupied a third of the magazine.^® The Southern Literary Mes¬ senger printed the work of Baldwin and Bagby. Harper’s Mag¬ azine, after 1851, in its Editor’s Drawer, and Scribner s Monthly, after its start in 1870, used typical contemporary humor. Shaw, cre¬ ator of Josh Billings, wrote humor of the type that had made him famous over the signature of Uncle Esek in The Century. The most important periodicals, however, from the standpoint of humorists who profited by popularity, were the comic journals. To be sure many of these died at a tender age, after driving editors to despair, and there was some naturalness in the ending of Newell’s burlesque novel. The Cloven Foot (1870), which showed a comic journal editor attempting to hang himself. Nevertheless, whether they survived long or not, comic periodicals were so numerous that Newell, in the novel mentioned, could tell with some accuracy of an undertaker displaying a graveyard full of “projectors of American Punches.” A list of such publications,^® though still far from com¬ plete, shows that at least 116 such periodicals appeared between 1800 and 1900. Most of them lived only a short time— The Wasp, published in New York, two years (1802-1803); The Red Bool^, Baltimore, two A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1930), p. 424. 29 Ibid., pp. 609-610. 29 Mr. Franklin J. Meine and the writer are attempting to compile a complete list. The most helpful sources have been J. Brander Mathews’ “The Comic Periodical Literature of the United States,” The American Bibliopolist, VII, 199-201 (August, 1875); L. W. King¬ man’s “The Comic Periodicals of America,” The American Bibliopolist, VII, 262-265 (De¬ cember, 1875): Frank Luther Mott, op. cit.; and Ernest L. Hancock’s “The Passing of the American Comic,” The Bookman, XXII, 78-84 (September, 1905). The lists given in these works, however, are quite incomplete, and the Union List offers little help. It has been necessary to look for a large share of material in articles and books about the humorists and in comic journals which mentioned exchanges or gloated over rival publications which passed away. 22 Walter Blair years (1819-1821); The Galaxy of Comicalities, Philadelphia, from October 2, 1833 to July 5, 1834; The Picayune, New York, eleven years (1847-1858); The City Budget, New York, a year or less (1853- 1854); The Knapsac\, Philadelphia,. October 24 to November 4, 1865; Texas Siftings, Austin, Texas, probably no more than fifteen years (1882-1897?) in spite of its popularity; The Fat Contributor’s Saturday Night, Cincinnati, about eleven years (1872-1882)—these were fairly typical. “It’s a funny thing, certainly,” said Yankee Doo¬ dle, “that a Humorous Newspaper has concluded its second volume in the United States.” But despite the high mortality rate, which, after all, was hardly higher than that of other American periodicals, humorous publica¬ tions appeared during every part of the century, and there is some evidence that a number achieved rather remarkable popularity. Yankee Doodle, for example, published two Pictorial Yankee Doo¬ dles in 1847 for free distribution to subscribers, and of each of these 100,000 were printed.^^ fohn Donkey, Philadelphia (Jan. i, 1848- July 15, 1848), though it lived less than a year, had at one time a circulation of 12,000.^ This compares fairly well with the most popular magazines of the day, Graham’s (40,000), and Godey’s (150,000); it surpasses The Southern Literary Messenger, whose subscribers numbered 5,500 in its prosperous days under Poe, The Knickerbocker (5,000), and dozens of others.^ The Picayune had at one time a circulation of 35,000,^ although the number fell to 6,500 in 1853.^® At the same time. The Reveille (1853-1854?) was issuing 2,800 copies of each number,®^ and The Pick (i 853 “i ^540 was boasting that it sold 24,000 copies of its first number, 27,000 of its second, and 30,000 of its third.®® Less than a year after its start, the editor of The Pick was proclaiming: “We started with $5 and we have made a property that we would not sell tomorrow for $50,000.”®® And it is probable that, in the period before the war. The Carpet-Bag, Boston (1851-1853), and Vanity Fair, New York Preface to Vol. II (1847). Advertisements in Yan\ee Doodle in most of the issues of 1847. 33 Albert H. Smyth, Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors (Philadelphia, 1892), p. 235. 3 'i F. L. Mott, op. cit. 38 Ibid., Feb. 5, 1853. 38 /^'^., Jan. I, 1853. 33 The Pick., II, I, March 12, 1853. 3 '^ Ibid., Dec. II, 1852. 39 Loc. cit. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 23 (December 31, 1859-July 4, 1863), on which definite figures are not available, surpassed most of these. Though fewer figures are recorded, those which can be discovered indicate that in the years after the war, comic publications reached even greater numbers. Pec](s Sun, in 1882, had a circulation of 20,000 and was “rapidly increasing.”^ Opie Read’s Arkansas Traveler (1883) reached a circulation of 60,000.^^ In 1887, Texas Siftings had a circulation which had “long exceeded 100,000 copies each issue,” and a popularity which was international.^^ Puck (March, 1877-September, Judge (1881- ) and Life (1883- ) were probably even more popular. In the words of }. L. Ford, “It is impossible to estimate the importance of these comic journals in the development and encouragement of American humor. They were read and widely quoted, and they popularized humor to such an extent that many other periodicals found it advisable to maintain departments consisting entirely of original humorous matter.”^ V The writings of humorists were published in books as well as magazines, and again there is evidence of mounting popularity which prepared the way for Mark Twain and his contemporaries. Georgia Scenes (1835) had by 1894 passed through twelve editions, and a writer in 1874 held it had had a larger circulation than any other Southern book.^ According to the publisher, when Shillaber’s Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854, at least 50,000 copies, including a first edition of 20,000, were sold.^^ Miriam Berry Whitcher’s Widow Bedott Papers, after increasing the circulation of the magazine in which they first appeared, in 1855 sold “something over 100,000 copies.”^ By 1855, Major Jones’s Courtship, first issued in 1844, had run through thirteen editions in the United States.^^ And Will M. Clemens, Famous Funny Fellows (New York, 1883), p. 134. W. C. Vischer, “Opie Read,” in Library of Southern Literature (New Orleans: Martin and Hoyt Co., 1909), X, 4358. The Journalist, a Pictorial Souvenir (New York: Allan Forman, 1887), p. loi. “Century of American Humor,” Munsey's Magazine, XXV, 490 (July, 1901). ** Maximilian La Horde, Fiistory of South Carolina College (Charleston, 1874), p. 462. Derby, op. cit., pp. 407-411. Ibid., pp. 413-416. Eclectic Magazine, XXXV, 269 (June, 1855). 24 Walter Blair before Ward had achieved the pinnacle of his popularity, when his first book came off the presses in 1862, “40,000 copies were sold out¬ right, an enormous edition for the time.”^® Huntley’s Spoopendyhc, now completely forgotten, appeared in 1881, and “over 300,000 copies of the work were manufactured and disposed of within three months after its first appearance.” Later several revised and enlarged editions were printed.^® Then, in 1888, Belford, Clarke & Company, in an edition of Nye’s Baled Hay, proudly told of the following remarkable sales of the books by Peck: How Private George W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion. 40th thousand Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa.750th thousand Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2.200th thousand Peck’s Sunshine.125th thousand Peck’s Fun .125th thousand Peck’s Boss Book. 50th thousand Doubtless some allowance should be made for a publisher’s en¬ thusiasm here, but since, by now, train butchers were purveying pa¬ per editions while bookstores all over the country offered other edi¬ tions, and since Peck was undoubtedly tremendously popular, the optimistic figures should not be discounted a great deal. Burdette, Bailey, and Nye were probably about as popular. By the time this announcement was made, humorists were com¬ piling and selling annually almanacs which, like their books, had remarkable sales. Of course, almanacs were not new things; Frank¬ lin and others had published them in colonial times; The Crockett Almanacs (1835-1853.?) had had a large sale several years after the death of Davy Crockett, and before 1842, Robert H. Elton “had gained some little notoriety for his comic almanacks... made up of reproductions of Cruikshank’s and Seymour’s designs, interspersed with humorous sketches.”®® In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the tradition of the comic almanac was revived. In 1870, when Josh Billings published his first Farmer’s Alminax, it sold 90,000 copies; the following year 127,000 copies appeared, and in 1872, some 100,000 were sold. The publication ran through ten years, during each of ^®Don C. Seitz, Artemus Ward (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1919), p. 119. See also Derby, op. cit., p. 242. Will M. Clemens, op. cit., p. 201. L. W. Kingman, op. cit., p. 262. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 25 which more than 50,000 copies were sold.®^ Carl Pretzel of Chicago published an almanac which had “a large and ready sale” during the late seventies and early eighties,®^ and The Danbury News Man’s Almanac (1873) successful as his volumes of sketches.”^^ In addition to the works of the humorists which they themselves published, there were humorous anthologies. As early as 1845, Porter’s famous Bib Bear of Arkansas collection appeared, to be followed by another collection by the same author. Sam Slick’s two anthologies, each in three volumes, were issued in both England and America. In the sixties, three volumes of Yankee Drolleries were compiled by George Augustus Sala. Towards the end of the century, when Eli Perkins and Mark Twain joined the ranks of anthologists, the number increased. American Humorists, edited by the Rev. H. R. Haweis in 1883, had a large sale, though one of many such books. At least 32 collections or new editions of collections appeared during the years 1884-1890,^^ and at least 28 appeared between 1890 and 1894.®® All of these publications stimulated interest and indi¬ cated the popularity of the humor of American writers. VI The literary comedians did not, however, have to depend entirely upon printed works as a medium for spreading their fame. Like motion picture actors and actresses of today, who make “appearances in person” before enthusiastic audiences, humorists went into every part of the land and appeared on lecture platforms. Started in 1825 as a part of the lyceum system, the popular lecture, which before the war had “spread throughout the country from Boston to Detroit and Maine to Florida” and which after the war was exploited by such enterprising leaders as Williams, Pond, and Red- Francis S. Smith, hije and Adventures of Josh Billings (New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1883), pp. 41-44. For additional testimony, see National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 1929), VI, 29, and Derby, op. cit., p. 243. Though the figures are not precisely the same, there is essential agreement to the effect that early issues sold more than 100,000. Will M. Clemens, op. cit., pp. 162-163. National Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI, 28. The American Catalogue 1884-1890 (New York: Publishers’ Weekly, 1891). The American Catalogue 1890-1894 (New York: Publishers’ Weekly, 1895). 26 Walter Blair path, proved a boon to many humorists.®® In 1870, an Englishman said: America is a lecture-hall on a very extensive scale. The rostrum extends in a straight line from Boston, through New York and Philadelphia, to Washing¬ ton. There are raised seats on the first tier in the Alleghanies, and gallery ac¬ commodations on the top of the Rocky Mountains. . . . The voice of the lecturer is never silent in the United States.®^ The Englishman, E. P. Kingston, was well acquainted with the American situation, for he had managed many of the appearances on the platform of the first important humorist of America to ac¬ quire money and fame by giving comic lectures, Artemus Ward. Ward started his career in the field in 1861, taking a hint from Barnum, who had overcome scruples of country folk visiting the theater in his museum by calling it “The Moral Lecture-Room,” and advertising his speech as a “Moral Lecture.”®® Starting modestly by appearing in a few New England towns, the lecturer traveled over widening territory.®® In 1861 he visited New York, Paterson, Corning, Elmira, and other towns and cities. Thereafter “dates fol¬ lowed in thick order,” dates arranged with “bureaus and local com¬ mittees” for appearances at fixed pay. In 1862 he appeared not only on Eastern platforms but also in halls in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Memphis. The following year, on the bustling frontier of the Far West, he entertained the miners and settlers of California, Texas, Utah, and Nevada. In 1864, he appeared during a period of two months in nightly lectures in New York, had a period of two crowded weeks in Boston, and visited other cities in the United States and in Canada. After another successful season in 1865, he went, in 1866, to England, where he had a notable success which not only augmented his fortunes but also caused Americans to look more proudly upon native humorists. And through the years, there was a rather steady increase both in receipts and in the number attending his lectures. For details on the early history of the lyceum, consult G. W. Cooke’s Introduction to The Dial (Cleveland, 1902), I, 42-43, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881), pp. 256-257. For the later growth of the lyceum system, see John S. Noffsinger, Correspondence Schools, Lyceums, Chautauquas (New York; Macmillan, 1926), pp. 99 - 105 - ®^E. P. Hingston, The Genial Showman (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870), p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. ®®Don Seitz, op. cit., pp. 101-222. This is the source for all of the material on Ward the lecturer given here. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 27 Other lecturers followed Ward into a field which offered returns of from fifty dollars to three hundred dollars for each appearance. Josh Billings began to appear on the platform in 1863, and thereafter, for at least twenty successive seasons, he . . . read the lecture in every town on this continent that has 20,000 people, and in hundreds that have not got 1,000 in them; read it in every town in Texas and California, and in all the Canadian towns, and then down South, from Baltimore to Palatka, Florida, and still across to Memphis, and then into New Orleans, reading each season from fifty to over a hundred nights.®** In 1866, Locke (Nasby) began a career as a lecturer which lasted at least five years.®^ Meanwhile A. Minor Griswold had started, in 1865, activity as a lecturer which continued through eighteen years,®^ and which carried him as far as the Puget Sound.®® Other humor¬ ists who had successful lecturing careers included Richard Malcolm Johnston,®^ George W. Peck, J. M. Bailey, Eli Perkins, Bill Arp, Benjamin P. Shillaber (Mrs. Partington),®® William L. Visscher,®® Major Burbank,®^ Dr. George W. Bagby,®® Phillips Thompson,®® Rufus Griswold,™ Eugene Field,^* and others. Among the others were Mark Twain, whose very popular early works were preceded and followed by almost equally popular lec¬ tures, and Robert J. Burdette. Burdette was exceedingly successful from the beginning of his career in 1876 until the end of the century. In addition to presenting “The Rise and Fall of the Moustache,” his greatest success, nearly five thousand times, he gave the following comic lectures frequently: “Home,” “The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man,” “Advice to a Young Man,” “Wild Gourds,” “Woman With F. S. Smith, op. at., pp. 48-55. See also C. B. Burdette, op. at., p. 134, and National Cyclopedia oj American Biography, VI, 29. Interview in The Newar\ Courier, November 19, 1871. National Cyclopedia oj American Biography, VI, 29. W. L. Visscher, Ten Wise Men and Some More (Chicago, 1908), p. 54. ®^ National Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI, 32. ®® Kings of the Platform and Pulpit, ed. Eli Perkins (Chicago: Bedford-Clarke Co., 1890), pp. 275, 239, 194, 437, 425. ®® Ten Wise Men and Some More, p. 100. ®^ James Barr, The Humour of America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), p. 441. ®® J. L. King, Dr. George William Bagby (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), pp. 172-175- ®® American Punch, I, 80, July, 1879. Will M. Clemens, op. cit., p. 114. C. H. Dennis, Eugene Field’s Creative Years (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1924), p. 241. 28 Walter Blair the Broom,” “Dimity Government,” “Sawing Wood,” “Twice Told Tales,” “Handles,” and “Rainbow Chasers”; and he appeared in every corner of the nation/^ Thus the humor of the stage and the humor of politics brought popularity to the American jesters of the nineteenth century, and numerous publications—newspapers, magazines, comic journals, books, almanacs—and lectures as well helped carry the native humor to a growing number of people. VII How, near the end of the century, various forces helped a humor¬ ist to fame is illustrated in the story of the growth of the popularity of Bill Nye (1850-1896). In 1882, a fortunate coupling of humor with politics helped Nye gain attention when, upon being appointed postmaster of Laramie, he wrote a letter to the postmaster general “extending his thanks” and proclaiming: “I look upon the appoint¬ ment as a great triumph of eternal truth over error and wrong . . . one of the epochs... in the Nation’s onward march toward political purity and perfection.” The amusing letter was widely copied; it was commented upon in distant England by The London Daily News. A similar letter in which Nye humorously told the President of his resignation in 1883 was also copied,^^ almost as widely as Nye humorously asserted—“from Japan to South Africa, and from Beer- sheba to a given point.” Later open letters of advice to Cleveland when he entered the White House and political touches in many comic anecdotes and essays continued his appeal to an audience in¬ terested in politics. Newspapers, periodicals, and comic journals augmented Nye’s fame. As early as 1876, a squib in The Laramie Sentinel was quoted in The St. Paul Pioneer Press, and soon after, when he became a contributor to The Denver Tribune, he was quoted by “papers in Omaha and Salt Lake, The Detroit Press, Texas Siftings, Peckfs Sun, and many others.” Then, in 1881, The Boomerang was started, a daily paper with a local circulation of 250, and, in addition. The For details, see C. B. Burdette, op. cit., pp. 121-132. F. W. Nye, Bill Nye: His Own Life Story (New York: Century, 1926), pp. 98-108. The letters were reprinted in Remarks. National Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI, 25. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 29 Wee\ly Boomerang, wherein a whole page of Nye’s humor was in¬ cluded. The weekly, like The Haw\-Eye and The Danbury News, served as a humorous periodical, and although the daily steadily lost money, the weekly, selling in “all parts of the Union,” made a good profit; when Nye left the paper it “soon found its level as a small¬ town daily.” Before he left Laramie, however, the small town’s humorist had been discovered by exchanges. “By 1882,” said Will M. Clemens, “he was widely quoted . . . perhaps more extensively copied than any other humorist of the day.”^® In 1890, Landon said: “Every news¬ paper in the English language is now filled with his writings,” slightly exaggerating, one fears, but little more enthusiastic than Mark Twain, who said in 1888, “His contributions to the press have given him a reputation commensurate with the country.”^® But by 1890, Nye had become associated with papers which had wider fame than his Laramie publication. In 1885, he had made ar¬ rangements for weekly letters with The Boston Globe, and in 1887, he had become associated with The New Yor\ World, then eagerly hiring contributors who would boom the paper’s large circulation. Prior to 1887, some of the writer’s works were sold to a list of news¬ papers, though they were not syndicated until after 1891, when the American Press Association sent out his writings to “one of the lead¬ ing newspapers in practically all of the leading cities.”^® By 1893, English papers had begun to purchase the letters, and The London Sketch of October i, 1893, said: . . . Mr. Nye has become a power in the land; the President himself is not more caricatured. His sayings are quoted everywhere. There is hardly a town with a Sunday paper that does not print his latest column. At the time of Nye’s death in 1896, “about 70 leading newspapers” were using the weekly syndicated article, and later the head of the Press Association, Orlando Smith, asserted that “the success of the Association had been largely built upon the Nye articles and ... Bill F. W. Nye, op. cit., pp. 45-95. W. M. Clemens, op. at., p. 117. Kings of the Platform and Pulpit, p. 306. Mar/( Twain’s Library of Humor (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888), P- 383- F. W. Nye, letter to the writer, February 19, 1930. 30 Walter Blair Nye was the most widely read and highly paid writer in the United States.”®® Magazines as well as newspapers used Nye’s writings— The Cen¬ tury, The Cosmopolitan, The Ladies’ Home Journal, Once a Wee\, Good Roads, The Ingleside, The Northwestern Miller, and the comic periodical, Puc\. In 1891, he published an Almanac. Furthermore, Nye’s lectures in the years between 1883 and 1895 acquainted thousands of people with his comic personality.®^ Adopt¬ ing the gloomy method of delivery affected by Ward and most humorous lecturers, on the platform always he assumed a “solemnity of look and sepulchral voice when he was saying something he knew would be humorous. At such times he had a queer sort of cross-eyed glint leftward.”®^ He began his career by appearing alone. Later, however, during his most successful seasons (1888-1890), he appeared with Riley, who had had some experience in the work before this.®® With little Riley serving as a foil for the tall nonsensical Nye, the two entertained thousands in scores of cities and hamlets and reaped large returns for the Pond Lyceum Bureau. Capacity crowds greeted them everywhere, and in Wyoming the legislature adjourned to wel¬ come Nye. Then, after a break-up with Riley, Nye, under the man¬ agement of H. B. Thearle or the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, and ac¬ companied at different times by W. L. Visscher, Alfred P. Burbank, William Hawley Smith, and Bert Poole, continued lecture work, at least one trip carrying him to California. In 1891, Nye invaded successfully still another field which had been prepared for humorous works—the field of the drama. His play, The Cadi, full of his typical humor, had a run of 125 nights in the Union Square Theater. The story of Nye’s activities as a journalist, as a lecturer, and as a playwright indicates that, like many an earlier and many a con¬ temporary humorist, he built up a remarkably large following. De- 80 Ibid. Bill Nye: His Own Life Story, pp. 128-397, to which I am chiefly indebted, gives a detailed account of Nye as a lecturer. 82 Visscher, Ten Wise Men. .. , p. 96. 88 Marcus Dickey, The Maturity of fames Whitcomb Riley (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1922), pp. 182-184. For details concerning the lecture trips of the pair, see pp. 234-256. Landon has preserved a record of an entire Nye-Riley appearance in Kings of the Platform and Pulpit, pp. 315-325. Popularity of Nineteenth-Century American Humorists 31 tails concerning the publication of Nye’s books seem to offer addi¬ tional evidence. In 1882, Will Clemens noted that Nye’s first book “had a tremendous sale,” ^ and apparently other volumes were equally successful. Boomerang, Forty Liars, and Baled Hay, Nye’s first three books, according to a conservative estimate of Nye’s son, probably sold at least 100,000 copies apiece,®^ and five other works, judging on the basis of the number of editions and Nye’s position, must have been equally successful. Nye’s History of the United States went through eight editions during the first year, and after the plates were sold as late as 1905 to Thompson and Thomas, the company, accord¬ ing to one of the partners, sold 250,000 copies in thirteen years.*® Nye’s son estimates that at least 500,000 copies of the history were sold, and Remarkj was a close second.®^ All of these books, with the exception of the history, were sold not only in book stores but also, in paper-covered editions, at news¬ stands and on trains. The following table, perhaps incomplete, shows the number of editions (including paper-covered)—probably large editions—through which important works passed during Nye’s life¬ time: Boo\ Number of Editions Bill Nye and Boomerang (1881).10 Forty Liars and Other Lies (1882).10 Baled Hay (1884) .10 Blossom Rock (pirated) (1885) . i Remarks (1887). 7 Chestnuts (1887). 8 Cordwood (pirated) (1887). i Thinks (also called Sparks) (1888) . 6 Railway Guide (1888). 6 History of the United States (1894).10 These figures offer interesting evidence that the last of the old school of American humorists, after becoming active in a time when other comedians had cultivated a large public for humorous works, achieved op. cit., p. 117. Letter to the writer, February 19,1930. Loc. cit. Loc. cit. My estimate on the history would be 200,000 higher. It went through eight large editions in 1894 alone. 32 Walter Blair extraordinary popularity. And Nye’s career was more typically that of a humorist of the century than, at first glance, one would be in¬ clined to suspect. Thus when Nye, his predecessors, and his contemporaries prac¬ ticed and preached simplicity and homeliness of language in a day of grandiloquence, realism in thought and in fiction in a day of pseudo-romantic writing, the practical men (including a genius, Mark Twain) who somehow stumbled into writing were assured of a large and attentive audience. And the history of American liter¬ ature testifies that at the end of the century salutary results had al¬ ready begun to appear. “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California G. R. MacMinn A S A SPECIMEN of the American frontiersman the California gold-miner of the 1850’s was a diversified type. He might be noble or base, barbarous or civilized, original or derivative, tragic, pathetic, or comic, fit subject for a chromo, a steel engraving, a wood- cut, or a cartoon. Of the species within the genus, however, one limned itself more distinctively than any other in the actual obser¬ vation and the re-creative imagination of contemporary California writers, and in the reminiscences of various participants in the life of the “Argonauts.” This was the man from Pike County, whether that locality belonged definitely to Missouri, to some other part of the Mississippi Valley, or generally to the rude West. Historians of American literature give the credit for discovery of the “Pike” as a good-sized nugget, as a type of high potential value for fresh, authentic, indigenous picture or story, to the humorist “John Phoenix” (George Horado Derby).^ But the originality attributed to “Phoenix” was not absolute, and the distinction he really earned as a creator of the “Pike” lay in simplifying the type, not in depicting the variety of its facets as these revealed themselves throughout the California frontier. “Phoenix’s” best known description occurs in his burlesque “Mu¬ sical Review Extraordinary” of what he calls “The Plains, Ode Sym- ^ See especially Fred Lewis Pattee, A History of American Literature since i8yo (New York, 1915), pp. 30, 83-85. The gist of Professor Pattee’s finding is as follows: (i) The general type represented by the “Pike” had already been depicted in the South, in Augustus B. Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes (1835) and Joseph G. Baldwin’s Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi (1853); but in this earlier description it was “simply the crude, uncouth Westerner, the antithesis of the man of the East.” (2) Derby discovered the “Pike” in his “California phase,” was the first to give the character the name “Pike” “in any book of moment” {Phaenixiana; or Sketches and Burlesques. By fohn Phcenix, New York, 1855), and launched him as one of the four or five types (the Yankee, the Leather Stocking, the Southern “darky,” the circuit rider) that are “unique, ‘new birth of our new soil’.” (3) But “it was not until 1871 that the name ‘Pike’ and the peculiar type denoted by the name became at all known to the reading public,” with the pieces individualizing this character in Bret Harte’s East and West Poems, and in John Hay’s Pike County Ballads. 34 G. R. MacMinn phonie par Jabez Tarbox,” which first appeared in The Pioneer; or, California Monthly Magazine, San Francisco, in 1854.^ He is quite as much concerned with poking fun at high-flown theatrical pro¬ ductions and effusive frontier journalism as at primitive immigrants of the Gold Rush. His picture of these newcomers presents a train from Pike County, each wagon drawn by thirteen oxen. The men and women, and the numerous children, “running promiscuously about,” are all “butternut colored”; “all are bare-footed, dusty, and smell unpleasantly.” By way of dialect the “Ode Symphonie” in¬ cludes an immigrants’ chorus, the “beautiful ariaf' “Oh! marm, I want a pancake!” and a “touching recitative "—everything in broad caricature. In two other sketches “Phoenix” describes his “specimen of Pike County humanity” as tall, gaunt, yellow-haired; as curious and credulous to a degree; and as prodigiously hungry, with his mouth “opening like the top of an old-fashioned fall-back chaise.”® Again he is evidently thinking of the “Pike,” though he does not so name him, in his description of one Orion W. Mudge. This immigrant has just arrived from Arkansas, bringing with him “four yoke of oxen, seventeen American cows, nine American children, and Mrs. Mudge”; he wears “the national costume of Arkansas, coat, waist¬ coat, and pantaloons of homespun cloth, dyed a brownish yellow, with a decoction of the bitter barked butternut”; and when he takes off his hat his hair “springs up straight like a Jack in the box.” But more significant is his countenance, which “presents a determined, combined with a sanctimonious expression, and in his brightly gleaming eye—a red eye we think it is—we fancy a spark of poetic fervor may be distinguished.”^ This is virtually the sum total of the “Pike” as created by “Phoenix.” But Derby was not attempting to produce a character in the round, he was disciplined by no sense of literary responsibility,® and he cared 2 II, 124, 125 (Aug.). This was reprinted the next year in Phcenixiana (see note above). ^ "John PhcEnix to the Pioneer,” Phoenixiana, pp. 217, 218; ‘‘Phcenix Takes an Affectionate Leave of San Francisco,” ibid., p. 190. * "Melancholy Accident.—Death of a Young Man,” ibid., pp. 129-132. A part of this description is quoted by Pattee, op. cit., p. 30, but without definite reference, and without inclusion of that surprising “spark of poetic fervor.” ® “The Author does not flatter himself that he has made any very great addition to the literature of the age, by this performance. . .” (Preface, Phosnixiand). “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California 35 SO little about originality that he may even have taken his cue for the “Ode Symphonie” from Irving’s Salmagundi^ Individually or in the aggregate, writers other than “Phoenix” in California during the 1850’s were recognizing, and then or later ex¬ pressing, more of the truly distinguishing attributes of the “Pike.” Among these delineators of the character were “Old Block” (A. [Alonzo or Amasa] Delano), “Whittlestick” (H. C. Williston), and “Jeems Pipes of Pipesville” (Stephen C. Massett); divers contributors to The Pioneer and The Golden Era (a literary weekly newspaper); writers of ditties that appeared in Mart. Taylor’s The Gold Digger’s Song Boo\ and Put’s Golden Songster; and such observant visitors to the state as J. D. Borthwick (an Englishman), C. W. Haskins, Pringle Shaw, the Rev. Horace Bushnell, and Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham. The purpose of this article is to attempt a reproduction of the composite picture of the “Pike” as his observers saw him, only in California, and only during the first decade of the Gold Rush. There will be no attempt to follow whatever developments or mutations of the char¬ acter may have taken place in later American literature. Physical peculiarities of the California immigrants are the most obvious basis of differentiation, and often the least significant. As contemporary writers, one or another, see them, the “Pikes” are mostly long, gaunt, narrow-chested, round-shouldered men, with long, straight, light-colored, dried-up-looking hair, small thin sallow faces, with scanty beard and moustache, and small gray sunken eyes, which seemed to be keenly per¬ ceptive of every thing around them. . . . Though large-framed men, they were not remarkable for physical strength, nor were they robust in constitution; in fact, they were the most sickly set of men in the mines... ? But they are not universally weak-chested and stooped. They may be “hugely and squarely built, broad shouldered, [with] very long arms, large coarse hands, lanky legs, with a thigh so long that when they sit down, half a dozen children could squat thereon with ease.” Hair and beard are matted and shaggy. Their feet are of “about the ®In The Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, Feb. 2, 1858, a correspondent points out a resemblance between this burlesque and “The Grand Thaw.” ^ J. D. Borthwick, Three Years in California (Edinburgh and London, 1857), pp. 148, 151. The part o£ the book containing this description was reprinted in Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine, II, 411 If. (March, 1858). 36 G. R. MacMinn size of a small cradle,” and they are unwashed.® These “long, lathy and sallow” men generally have “the shakes”— except, according to one observer, in California.® But from another point of view they are a “fine looking, corn-fed, hardy set of varlets, straight as Indians, and have the aboriginal distaste to aught that savors of drudgery. . . .”^® This representation of the “Pike” as a man who shuns work is general; the notion that his laziness makes him “fine looking” is peculiar. As to the female of the species, one ungenerous but conscientious observer describes her as having “a ‘power’ of feet,” as being “taller than her ‘old man’,” but as showing in her face “the meekness of certain domestic kine.”“ The “Pikes’ ” costume is “always exceedingly old.” They wear old, soiled, snuffy-brown homespun; some of them, coats—“very extraordinary things—exceedingly tight, short-waisted, long-skirted surtouts”—of grayish-blue frieze. Especially they are differentiated by the fact that their costume shows “none of the occasional foppery of the miner.” They wear slouched hats, generally with a hole in the top, “high low” shoes of the largest size, and no socks.^® The woman whom the “California Pilgrim” describes has on “a cap of coarse cotton,” of that peculiar shape “known as ‘calves head’.”^^ ® Stephen C. Massett, "Drifting About," or what "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville" Saw-and-Did. An Autobiography by Stephen C. Massett (New York, 1863), pp. 243, 244. ® Bayard Taylor, “New Pictures from California,” At Home and Abroad: A Sketch-Book, of Life, Scenery and Men, 2nd series (New York, 1862), p. 51. Taylor made these obser¬ vations during his second visit to California, in 1859. Pattee, op. cit., p. 84, quotes a part of Taylor’s description of the “Pike.” 10 Pringle Shaw, Ramblings in California; Containing a Description of the Country, Life at the Mines, State of Society, &c. Interspersed with Characteristic Anecdotes, and Sketches from Life, Being the Five Years’ Experience of a Gold Digger (Toronto, n.d.), p. 30. In Robert Ernest Cowan and Robert Granniss Cowan, A Bibliography of the History of California, Iyio-igso (San Francisco, 1933), the date is conjectured as ca. i860. The Rev. Joseph A. Benton, The California Pilgrim: A Series of Lectures (Sacramento, 1853), pp. 126, 127. The author does not use the name ‘Tike,” but it is clear that he has this type of immigrant in mind. Borthwick, op. cit., p. 147. Massett, op. cit., p. 244. 1^ Benton, loc. cit. The men’s hats, as Borthwick {op. cit., p. 147) sees them, have the shape of a “short extinguisher.” It should be noted that, according to Bayard Taylor’s observation in 1859, some of the “Pike’s” original characteristics in dress and physique disappear “after he has been trans¬ planted for a few years.” “He wears a tan-colored wide-awake; sits in a Mexican saddle; becomes full and ruddy, instead of lank and sallow; and loses his chronic bitterness of spirit as ‘the shakes’ cease to torment him” {op. cit., p. 52). Taylor rides with a skilful stage driver who has a “handsome face, a military moustache, and a rough courtesy in his manners, empha- “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California 37 Much more significant than these details of physical person and dress are the traits of the “Pikes.” So good-natured are these people that they can laugh when jokes are perpetrated by minstrels or cir¬ cus clowns at their expense.^® They are easy victims of snares, often butts of mischief.^® They are incorrigibly ignorant —“Pike’s knowl¬ edge of the ‘Horn,’ the ‘Isthmus,’ or the ‘Nicaragua route’ is but limited and undefined—and he intends it shall remain so, too.”^® Though childishly curious,^® they are suspicious, especially of men in “store clothes.”^*’ They occupy their spare time in whittling and chewing,^^ expectorate vehemently,^^ take to whisky naturally,^ and are adept at poker and “seven-up.”^ They have a strong dislike for salt water, but “travel lightly on the ‘hurricane deck of a mule’.”“ Clannish in the extreme,^® they bring their families with them;” but they have not come to stay—they will go back to Pike County as soon as they have made their “pile.” Now I am resolved to labor and sweat ’Till something I make like a “strike,” And just whenever a raise I may get, This “hombre” will “vamose” for Pike.^ sized with profane words. I should never have suspected him of being a ‘Pike,’ if he had not admitted it” {ibid., p. 63). 1® C. W. Haskins, The Argonauts of California: Being Reminiscences of Scenes and Inci¬ dents that Occurred in California in Early Mining Days by a Pioneer (New York, 1890), p. 120. H. C. Williston (“Whittlestick”), “The Gendeman from Pike,” The Wide West (a literary weekly newspaper, published in San Francisco), vol. I, no. 18, p. i (July 16, 1854). Shaw, op. cit., p. 29; Wdliston, loc. cit. Shaw, op. cit., p. 30. [J. P.] Bogardus’ Illustrated California Almanac for the Year 1837 (San Francisco), p. 13. Borthwick, op. cit., p. 148. 20 Bayard Taylor, op. cit., p. 51; Massett, op. cit., p. 244. Massett, loc. cit. 22 Bayard Taylor, lie. cit. Ibid.; Shaw, op. cit., p. 30. 24 Shaw, loc. cit. 2® Williston, loc. cit; Shaw, op. cit., p. 29. 26 Shaw, op. cit., p. 30. The Pioneer, I, 252 (April, 1854): “His very gospel is but a paraphrase of Titmouse’s poem: ‘Pike, O! Pike, it is my name, Missourer is my nation. Pike County is my dwelling-place, And Pike is my salvation!’ ” 2^ Williston, loc. cit. 28 From “The Pike County Miner,” in Mart. Taylor, The Gold Digger’s Song Boo\ (Marys¬ ville [Cal.], 1856), pp. 26-27. The tide-page describes this collection as “containing the 38 G. R. MacMinn In the theater their preference is not at all for the old English com¬ edies but runs to “wildly poetic” productions like Putnam, the Iron Son of '76.^® In the theater, too, their behavior may be so crude that when one of them, an “American Sovereign,” removes his coat in the dress-circle on a hot night, he precipitates a riotous protest by the punctilious “gods.”®® As for the women of Pike County, they are sometimes notorious for their inconstancy in love.®^ On the other side of the ledger, the “Pikes” are superlatively ex¬ pert with axe and rifle,®® or, more broadly, expert in their knowledge most popular humorous and sentimental songs, composed by M. Taylor, and sung by his original company with unbounded applause throughout California.” 29 Williston, loc. cit. 99 T. A. Barry and B. A. Patten, Men and Memories of San Francisco, in the "Spring of '50" (San Francisco, 1873), pp. iii—112. 9 ^ Note “Sweet Betsey from Pike,” in Put’s Golden Songster (described on the title-page as “containing the largest and most popular collection of California songs ever published”), San Francisco, 1858, pp. 50-52. The opening stanza runs: Oh, don’t you remember sweet Betsey from Pike, Who crossed the big mountains with her lover Ike, With two yoke of cattle, a large yellow dog, A tall Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog. After nine stanzas of vicissitudes on the plains, at Salt Lake, and in Hangtown, the story ends with startling precipitancy: This Pike County couple got married, of course. And Ike became jealous—obtained a divorce; Sweet Betsey, well satisfied, said with a shout, “Good-bye, you big lummux. I’m glad you’ve backed out!” Cf. the well-known song “Joe Bowers,” which “is supposed to be sung by a Missourian in California about 1849-51. It was in existence as early as 1854” (Louise Pound, American Ballads and Songs, New York, 1922, p. 254). Joe Bowers leaves his “gal” Sally at home in “Old Missouri” while he tries his luck in the California mines. After a time he receives a letter from his brother Ike: It said that Sal was false to me— It made me cuss and swear— How she’d went and married a butcher. And the butcher had red hair; And, whether ’twas gal or boy The letter never said. But that Sally had a baby. And the baby’s head was red! {ibid., p. r88). 99 Borthwick, op. cit., pp. 150, 151; Shaw, op. cit., p. 30; The Pioneer, III, 375 (June, 1855). This expertness with the axe, however, has its bad side. Bayard Taylor, op. cit., p. 51, complains that the “Pike” has “an implacable dislike to trees. Girdling is his favorite mode of exterminating them; but he sometimes contents himself with cutting off the largest and handsomest limbs.” “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California 39 of nature: “The Gentleman from Pike” can be the teacher of the gentleman from Oxford in woodcraft and “the great mysteries of Nature that are only revealed to those who have passed long observant years in her wilds.” ^ But their very superiority in marksmanship may make them the more savagely acquisitive in the conflict over good diggings. “Every thing was honorable and safe,” says a Forty- Niner, until the overland emigrants from western Missouri arrived there. They were a different kind of people; more of the brute order. When they saw a party of two or three that had a good claim, and they were the strongest, they would dispossess them. (I suppose the same class that raided Kansas in John Brown’s time.) They became so obnoxious that a respectable man would deny his State.®^ More specifically, Bogardus Almanac depicts with grim humor the Missourian’s harsh treatment of the Chinese miner: Messrs. Pike and Twobitty, having contiguous claims, arrive at a $4,000 nugget simultaneously. Twobitty is of the opinion that the lump belongs to him, but is persuaded by Pike to relinquish his claim to it— at the point of uncompromising weapons.^® In speech the “Pike” is distinguished particularly by a droll ex¬ aggeration,^® generally by a dialect that is freely imaginative and expressive: O, Carolina Betsy’s yaller hair Has laid my heart and innards bare.®’' To one observer he is “extremely loquacious,”®® but to another un¬ communicative or laconic.®® At the most marked by “mannerisms and peculiarity of speech,” the “Pikes” were “almost as distinguished from other Eastern people as were those of Spanish descent.”^ Geographically, the “Pike” is sometimes broadly differentiated by Williston, loc. cit. Daniel Knower, The Adventures of a Forty-Niner (Albany, 1894), p. 74. C£. Bayard Taylor, op. cit., p. 52: "The name ‘Pike’ is a reproach—a disparagement, at least—in most parts of California.” “The West vs. the East,” p. 17. D’Arc, “The Trail,” The Golden Era, vol. II, no. 41, p. 4 (Sept. 24, 1854). A. Delano, A Live Woman in the Mines; or, Pthe County Ahead! A Local Play in Two Acts. By "Old Bloc\" (New York, 1857), p. 18. Shaw, op. cit., p. 29. Massett, op. cit., p. 244. Frank A. Leach, Recollections of a Newspaperman (San Francisco, 1917), p. 47. 40 G. R. MacMinn his California observers. For one the “Pike” and the Yankee are the two main types of the republican character; the “Pike” is the West¬ erner, and to the Westerner all persons who originate east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio are Yankees.^^ For Bayard Taylor the type is particularly a native of Missouri, Arkansas, Northern Texas, or Southern Illinois, but generally “the Anglo-Saxon re¬ lapsed into semi-barbarism.”^ For that enterprising and analytically minded pioneer, Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham, the “Pike,” as a Missourian, represents the whole population of the West, “the characteristics of the Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverene, Buckeye, etc. being very generally merged, and the Missourian elected as the type of all”; but he is distinguished from both Yankee and Missourian by having “a little more churlishness, a little more rudeness, a greater reserve when courtesy or hospitality are called for... .”^ By another’s analysis he is an extra-national abstraction— an embodiment of qualities existent in natives of all countries—a region ex¬ pressly created for those individuals who, living in the midst of civilization, have but a slight idea of its concomitants; to whom a flat-boat is a mighty monster of the deep—a steam engine the embodiment of supernatural power What is most striking about the “Pike” in his California phase is the recognition of his virtues. Although generally, says one of the pioneers, “to charge a man with being from Pike County was an insult to be resented,” yet sometimes the Missourian was a man of “good character.”^® An Eastern clergyman who ranged the state with studious interest defends the “Pikes” as distinctly better men than they are commonly taken to be. For him they are not mere “Border Ruffians.” He admits that they are, for the most part, uncultivated and rough, crude in their notions of religion, and like all such people, coarse in their prejudices; but they have great honesty and frankness, their impulses are strong, and generally magnanimous. They really contain the staple qualities or possibilities of a high character. They have true manhood, which is not to be said of every people.'^® Haskins, op. at., pp. 78, 79. Op. cit., p. 51. California, In-Doors and Out; or. How We Farm, Mine and Live Generally in the Golden State (New York, 1856), pp. 261-262. Williston, loc. cit. Haskins, op. cit., p. 120. The Rev. Horace Bushnell, California: Its Characteristics and Prospects (San Francisco, 1858), p. 22. “The Gentleman from Pike” in Early California 41 In like vein one who had been a boy among the pioneers could say in after years of the Missourians: As a rule they were a whole-souled, generous class whose doors were always open to strangers and friends alike. The adventures, trials, and hardships ex¬ perienced by these people in crossing the plains, beset with Indians bent on murder and plunder, and here and there murderous whites, gave them some¬ thing of a heroic character in my youthful eyes.^^ And this impression is confirmed by The Golden Era when it editorially describes the “Pike” as “that wild, brave, generous and romantic character so common to the mountains of California.” Most elaborate of the tributes to the “Pikes” of both sexes is that paid by “Old Block” in his humorous, sentimental, romantic but also realistic play, A Live Woman in the Mines; or, Pi\e County Ahead! Delano describes his chivalrous hero, “Pike County Jess,” as “a type of an open, generous, off-hand, uneducated, south and western man—copied from a character I met in crossing the Plains in ’49”—but more than that, as a “Poet and Philanthropist.” His heroine, “High Betty Martin,” who marries Jess, is a specimen of back-woods, western Amazonian, such as I have seen, not only in the West, but upon the Plains—who is indomitably persevering, and brave under difficulties, but withal with woman’s feelings when difficulty is over."*® In quality she is cousin to that “Spartan Mother” pictured by an¬ other of the pioneers—that “stately Pike County dame,” some fifty years old, with her long ringlets, and her “bloomers,” who marches with stout independence beside her two-wheeled, covered cart, drawn by a diminutive yoke of oxen.®“ Such a partly romantic but essentially truthful conception of the Leach, loc. cit. Vol. II, no. 35, p. 2 (Aug. 13, 1854). The Era is here announcing its publication of an “Original California Romance,” “Pike County Bill; or. The Maid of the Mountains,” by Robert F. Greeley, “a writer who has attained much popularity as a romancer in the Eastern States,” recently arrived in California. The Era promises that in this story “Western and California life will be sketched in a graphic, correct and humorous manner.” It is worth noting that this romantic representation of the “Pike” appeared at the same time as “Phoenbc’s” burlesque. Prefatory note, p. 3. For full reference see note 37, above. The plot of this little play centers in the hero’s and the heroine’s rescuing other immigrants from the clutches of villainous gamblers. Haskins, op. «V.,pp. no, in. 42 G. R. MacMinn “Pike” as that of “Old Block” was quite foreign to “Phoenix’s” tem¬ perament, but quite harmonious with the imaginative propensities of Bret Harte. The author of “Dow’s Flat” and “Tennessee’s Partner” may well have drawn his tone as well as his material in some degree from what he had read in the California publications of the 1850’s. For many years the “Pike” flourished in Harte’s stories of the “Argo¬ nauts,” and always he remained much the same creature, the peculiar product of Missouri in California during Gold Rush days. But beyond Harte, and beyond John Hay, he lived on as a vivid source of sug¬ gestion in two of the principal lines of national expressiveness taken by American literature of the 1870’s and i88o’s. These were the rude, droll sagacity of the humorists, and the romantic or realistic “local color” that made what has been well called a crazy quilt of the whole country. Tragedy and Irony in Knickerbocker’s History Charlton G. Laird M any years of collecting, ordering, and publishing Irving manuscripts have culminated in Professor Stanley T. Wil¬ liams’s biography,* in which we have the portrait of Washington Irving substantially as it may be expected to stand. Professor Wil¬ liams, always careful not to overpraise his subject, describes him in these words: “Never deeply creative, never the leader in events nor wisely critical of these, he was a sharp-eyed observer. Few signifi¬ cant episodes of contemporary life escaped his pen, and if we tire of him as a minor actor, we do not forget the stage which he de¬ scribed so vividly.”^ Beside this analysis, one might place the some¬ what more picturesque characterization by Professor Parrington, “A born humorist, the gayety of whose spirits overflowed the brim, he was lacking in a brooding intellectuality, and instead of coming upon irony at the bottom of the cup—as the greater humorists have come upon it after life has had its way with them—he found there only sentiment and the dreamy poetic.”^ Professor Parrington adds that as experience dissipated “the purple haze on the horizon of his mind,” he turned to sentiment and “oversweetened his wine.” These estimates do not differ fundamentally, nor would one wish to dissent from judgments which one finds revealing and feels to be essentially just. Not even Irving’s admirers would call him “deeply creative” nor compare the KnicI{erboc\er History with Gulliver's Travels. Yet Irving was not without creative power, and it would be strange if a man who delighted in Homer, Swift, Rabelais, and Cervantes had no sense of tragedy and irony. Even Irving’s admirers may underestimate these qualities, and I wish to raise the question whether they have not done so. I wish to suggest that a brooding intellectuality and a sense of irony and tragedy can be observed in The Life of Washington Irving (2 vols.; New York, 1935). ® Ibid., I, XV. 3 Vernon Louis Parrington, The Romantic Revolution: Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1927), II, 212. 44 Charlton G. Laird Irving at times, and that these qualities are to be associated with his more creative work. The observation of such qualities could be expected to refine somewhat our conception of Irving’s character, to add something to our understanding of the growth or decay of his mind, and to throw some light on the sources of his creative strength. In addition, I believe that the examination will alter the interpre¬ tation of Irving’s principal work, Diedrich Knic\erboc\ers A History of New Yor\^ and may make the dating of its composition a bit sharper. With but few exceptions I shall limit myself to this work, partly because it is his most original and successful production, but more particularly because it offers the best example of tragedy, irony, and creative power in interaction. I The early books need not detain us long. Book I is the salvage from the rather amateurish foolery that the Irving brothers aimed at Mitchill’s guidebook. Book II includes pompous buffoonery and a little good-natured raillery aimed at the founding fathers; Book III shows us Wouter the Doubter, seated upon his providentially ample bottom, smoking his way into the grave. There is pleasant satire here, but neither tragedy nor irony.® Book IV contains the fiercest satire in the History; it shows us William the Testy, a man of learn¬ ing as learning went in a land more devoted to kraut than to philos¬ ophy, but a man with no talent for dealing with hardheaded, two- fisted, shortsighted people. His reign ended in chagrin. Here, surely, was material for tragedy, but the affair was not tragic for Irving. It has been convincingly shown that under cover of William the Testy, Irving was ridiculing that villain of contemporary democracy, Thomas Jefferson;® to our young Federalist, William was an edu- ^ Ed. Stanley Williams and Tremaine McDowell (New York, 1927). ® I am using “tragedy and irony” to describe the kind of writing I suppose Professor Farrington to have had in mind, in which bitterness, disillusionment, and philosophic grief are hidden beneath laughter. Such writing is often associated with satire, but is of course essentially different from it. ® Williams, Life, I, 117; Williams and McDowell, op. cit., pp. Ibt-lxxiii; Edwin A. Green¬ law, “A Comedy in Politics,” Texas Review, I, 291-306 (April, 1916). The treatment ac¬ corded William may well be contrasted with that given Wouter, who has been equated with “the apoplectic little John Adams,” who, though he was a Yankee and no Hamilton-man, was yet a Federalist (Henry Seidel Canby, Classic Americans, New York, 1931, p. 86). Tragedy and Irony in Knic\erboc\er's History 45 cated nonentity, beneath contempt. The chapter is mordant with satire, but of tragedy and irony there is none. We come, then, to the final section of the book, and we may well be a little surprised to find that, while a “volume” had sufficed for a history of the world, for the founding of the colony and for its earlier governors, a second “volume” is required for the reign of Peter Stuyvesant. And there are other changes. The earlier parts of the chronicle had been treated as incidents to be strung along, the author permitting them to dangle as they would on the thread of his narrative. The reign of Hard-koppig Piet, however, is a thing by itself, something having a beginning, a middle, and an end—and an end, furthermore, to which the author looks forward as he writes. The preparation begins with the introduction of Peter: “He was, in fact, the very man fitted by Nature to retrieve the desperate fortunes of her beloved province, had not the fates . . . destined them to in¬ extricable confusion.” At once Irving observes in his Hard-koppig Piet the qualities that are later to make him the sport of these same fates; Peter was “a tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettle¬ some, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous spirited . . . governor . . . very jealous of his personal and official dignity . . . [who] possessed a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people . . . [and] he wanted no other requisite for a perfect statesman than to think always right, for no one can deny that he always acted as he thought-Meanwhile his surroundings encourage him in a self- satisfied paternalism: he takes the government upon himself, “be¬ comes strangely popular among his people,”® is considered a tower of strength by old women; we see him as the genial patron of good hard drinking, as the giver of benedictions and aphoristic advice; we see his large indifference to varlets from New England. And we see him at last with a henchman, a Sancho for his Don Quixote. Antony Van Corlear could jolly and fertilize the women; he could stir an old soldier’s bosom with his trumpet; he could obey orders, and he never questioned matters of policy. And unconsciously he could help prepare old Peter for his fate; Hard-koppig Piet got into a way of relying upon Antony’s doglike devotion as upon his own ’’ Irving, History of New Yor\, pp. 243-246. ® Ibid., p. 336. 46 Charlton G. Laird popularity. As for the popularity, there were already whispers from “factious individuals, who had been enlightened by the political meet¬ ings that prevailed during the days of William the Testy ... the en¬ lightened vulgar . .. who accused him of entertaining highly aristo¬ cratic sentiments.”® And now we come to the final series of events. Peter, home in triumph from New Sweden, found that again the Yankees were threatening, and set out to deal with these presumptuous people. But the wily Yankees merely detained him with entertainment until an English fleet could lay siege to New Amsterdam. He ordered the burghers to defend the city, and stormed blasphemously back across Connecticut to find that the “mob” had talked and boasted, that no troops had been levied, no ramparts raised, that the city lay under the guns of two men-of-war, and that the braggart burgomasters had waddled to their holes, wheezing with “corpulency and terror.” Peter was nothing daunted. He sat him down, “a bitter sardonic grin upon his visage,” to order Colonel Nichols and his English politely out of the harbor. Thereafter he tramped up and down the streets, while his “war-betokening countenance” and his “low Dutch psalm tune” frightened the very dogs.^® Somewhat to Peter’s surprise and chagrin. Colonel Nichols offered the most generous terms, amnesty and freedom from interference. Peter would have none of the terms; he knew how to deal with enemies, and his methods had nothing to do with terms. He took the precaution, however, of concealing Colonel Nichols’s offer, lest the counselors and burgomasters “clamor for a surrender,” and stumped off to the council. He rebuked them for their past derelic¬ tions, “informed them of the insolent summons he had received,” called upon them to do their duty, and swore to “defend the prov¬ ince as long as Heaven was on his side, and he had a wooden leg to stand upon.”^^ Now there was an unprecedented delay—for in Peter’s view it could be no more than a delay. The privy counselors smoked in discreet silence. “But the burgomasters, being less under the gover¬ nor’s control, considering themselves as representatives of the sov¬ ereign people, and being moreover inflated with considerable im- » Ibid., pp. 249-250, 265-267, 337, 381. ^0 Ibid., p. 419. Ibid., pp. 420-422. Tragedy and Irony in Knic\erboc}{er’s History 47 portance and self-sufficiency,” requested a copy of the summons to surrender, Peter cursed them with a good will and a vivid vocabu¬ lary for “traitorously daring to question the infallibility of govern¬ ment,” and added “that they might thenceforth go home, and go to bed like old women, for he was determined to defend the colony himself, without the assistance of them or their adherents He acted, of course, in anger. But he acted also in accordance with his policy. He had been through difficulties before, and he knew what would happen. The people would look in terror upon the English fleet, they would know where lay their protection, and they would come fawning. Then he would lead them, if not to victory, at least to a stout and honorable defense. But they did not come. Instead there came, signed by one of the deposed counselors of William the Testy, “a resolute memorial . . . remonstrating at his conduct.” And now was the old governor filled with wrath genuinely righteous. He ranted; becoming embittered, he proceeded to sar¬ casm,*^ and he ended by determining to defend the city in spite of itself, and by sending the faithful Antony up the river to raise a levy, Peter now rises to something like tragic and ironic proportions. He had been loved and adored, as a kind but firm parent is adored by children, and he had assumed the duties of a parent. He had ruled with a firm hand because he believed that such rule was wise. Now a crisis had arisen when his children needed him, he very well knew, as they had never needed him before. Very well, he would save them against their will, as he had always saved them with it, and they would thank him at last. Antony should raise an army, and meanwhile he would curse these poltroons for what they were! Now a third fate steps in. Two fates had long been at work; the stubborn aristocracy of old Peter, and the growing democracy of Ibid., p. 423. “Nor did he omit, now that his hand was in, to bestow some thousand left-handed compliments upon the sovereign people; whom he railed at for a herd of arrant poltroons, who had no relish for the glorious hardships and illustrious misadventures of battle—but would rather stay at home, and eat and sleep in ignoble ease, than gain immortality and a broken head, by valiantly fighting in a ditch” {ibid., p. 426). This passage is illustrative of an aspect of the History which makes interpretation difficult. One is seldom in doubt as to the side on which Irving’s sympathies lie, but his satire is distributed so generously that one is not always certain how far his fairness of mind, or his Puckish humor, may have led him to appreciate the opposing position. Most modern peace societies, I suppose, would feel that their position is here well put. 48 Charlton G. Laird the “mob.” Now accident appears, the sort of accident that Hard- koppig Piet would have ridden boldly over in his better days. Faith¬ ful Antony, riding north, tries to swim the spirit-troubled waters of Harlem River en spijt den Duyvel, and is drowned. The blow is doubly severe to Peter: there is now no levy from the North and no faithful henchman to raise one; and Peter has lost the only man in his whole despotism loyal enough to obey him. His position reminds one not a little of the state of Macbeth when the death of Lady Mac¬ beth is announced, and if old Peter is not the man to break into a “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech, his condition is tragic and ironic for all that. In fact, the death of Antony Van Corlear is his end, though like Macbeth, he fights to the last. The English have been spreading their propaganda abroad, promising to permit the Dutch to raise as many cabbages and wear as many breeches as they please, and the disaffection that had been as much as anything a protest against old Peter’s stubbornness has grown into an organized opposition. There are exchanges of letters with Colonel Nichols; there is a communi¬ cation from those charming Yankee hosts, advising Hard-koppig Piet to accept the Colonel’s most gracious terms; and while the badgered old man is smarting under these taunts, in marches the “ras¬ cal rabble” and abruptly demands “a perusal of the letter.” It is too much. He tore the letter into a thousand pieces—threw it in the face of the nearest Burgomaster—broke his pipe over the head of the next—hurled his spitting-box at an unlucky Schepen, who was just making a masterly retreat out at the door, and finally dissolved the whole meeting sine die, by kicking them downstairs with his wooden leg.^^ In short, he flies into a temper like the beaten old man he is, and locks himself up in his bedroom, while the burgomasters complete their peace with Colonel Nichols. Outside, on the streets, where a few days before his glance had carried terror, an orator harangues the mob until “there is no knowing to what act of resentment they might have been provoked against the redoubtable Peter, had not the greasy rogues been somewhat more afraid of their sturdy old gov¬ ernor than they were of St. Nicholas, the English—or the D- 1 himself.” Ibid., p. 431. Tragedy and Irony in Knxc\erbocXer s History 49 After that there is little to record but the ignominy of a stubborn patriarch, true to the ideals for which he fought, living among a people too vulgar to cherish his virtues, and too sensible to be in¬ fected with his Quixotic idealism. “In vain did the gallant Stuyve- sant order the citizens to arm and assemble in the public square.” He might “rise, contemptuous, above the clamours of the rabble,” but he could not alter their “singular aversion to engage in a contest, where they could gain little more than honour and broken heads— the first of which they held in philosophic indifference, the latter in utter detestation.” The English, furthermore, raised recruits from the East. The harassed Peter, thus menaced from without and tormented from within—baited by the burgomasters and hooted at by the rabble, chafed and growled and raged like a furious bear tied to a stake and worried by a legion of scoundrel curs. Finding however that all further attempt to defend the city was in vain, and hearing that an irruption of borderers and moss troopers was ready to deluge him from the east, he was at length compelled, in spite of his mighty heart, which swelled in his throat until it nearly choked him, to consent to a treaty of surrender.^® But, even with consent given, the act itself is odious to him. Sign a capitulation without a shot fired } He cannot. He has laid off his armor; he is sulking unshaved in an old nightgown. He meets, grim- visaged, the deputation. Thrice did he seize a little worn-out stump of a pen and essay to sign the loathsome paper—thrice did he clench his teeth and make a most horrible countenance, as though a pestiferous dose of rhubarb, senna, and ipecacuanha, had been offered to his lips, at length dashing it from him, he seized his brass hiked sword, and jerking it from the scabbard, swore by St. Nicholas, he’d sooner die than yield to any power under heaven. And now for two days the rabble howl about his house, while he grouses within. At length comes a solemn procession of all the great of the city. He meets them with a blunderbuss thrust out a window. They doff their hats and beg. It is the meed of honor that this old Lear among Dutchmen has been craving. He testily tells them to hand up the paper, scratches his name, curses them for a “set of cowardly, mutinous, degenerate platter-breeches,” and slams 15 Ibid., pp. 436-437. 50 Charlton G. Laird the window.^® Thereafter he moved to the Bouwery, planted trees to shut out the sight of New Amsterdam, and died one day when he learned that the shouting he heard was celebration of an English victory over De Ruyter. There is a great lot of nonsense in this. Much of the History is what it is because Irving liked to amuse himself and to hope he would amuse other people. But some of it is more than mere amuse¬ ment; the final chapter, for instance, contains foolery, but is largely a serious discussion of American politics and society. It has not more burlesque than has “John Bull.”^^ One is strongly inclined to feel that in Hard-koppig Piet, Irving found a man and a subject that led him deeper into political and personal realities than was his wont, led him in fact to a point where he began to taste some of Professor Parrington’s irony “at the bottom of the cup.” II One inevitably inquires when the History was written, and in what state of mind Irving wrote it. The second question, of course, depends upon the first. So far as I know, no effort has been made to date the various parts of the History. Irving’s papers give us some reason for assuming that the bulk of the work was composed in the early months of 1809, and that finishing touches were added in May and in the following autumn. This assumption seems generally to have been accepted, but it seems to me highly improbable. Perhaps we should examine the evidence. The History was begun in June, 1808,^® as a satire on a pompous guidebook, and material for it was collected sporadically by Peter and Washington Irving during the summer and autumn. The brothers expected to collaborate, but as Irving wrote in his “Apol¬ ogy” some forty years later: Before this crude mass of mock erudition could be digested into form, my brother departed for Europe, and I was left to prosecute the enterprise alone. Ibid., pp. 438-440. Greenlaw has noticed that this is serious satire {op. cit., p. 306). Irving’s journal is the authority. The entry for two years reads; “Jany 1808—went to Canada May ret*! June began Knick winter in Canada 1809 ret*^ Jany Peter gone Mat died in April” (Williams, Life, I, loi). Tragedy and Irony in Knic\erboc1{er’s History 51 I now altered the plan of the work. Discarding all idea of a parody on the Picture of New-York, I . . . molded the mass of citations and disquisitions into introductory chapters forming the first book. . . Clearly, Book I can be dated January, 1809,^” shortly after Irving’s return from Canada, and none of the History as we know it was written before that time. We might note, also, that when Irving wrote his “Apology” in 1848 he thought that material collected in 1808 had been used largely in Book I. The reconceived work did not thrive. Irving said of this period, in a memorial written some fifteen years after the History: “I had begun a satirical and humorous work in company with one of my brothers, but . . . my feelings had run into so different a vein that I could not go on with it. I became low-spirited and disheartened, and did not know what was to become of me.”^^ He had started to write in desperation when a business trip failed, his meager law practice disappeared,^^ and he found himself in love with Matilda Hoffman, but without means of supporting her. He determined to finish off the book and go into business, perhaps in India. At this juncture, Matilda’s father offered Irving a partnership, and eventually his legal practice, as a sort of dowry. The prospective husband was expected to learn a modicum of law, and Irving made what was for him a determined effort. “It was all in vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to study; my mind would not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondence had become for the time incapable of applica¬ tion. I was in a wretched state of doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the work which I was secretly writing, hoping it would give me a reputation and gain me some public employment. In the mean¬ time I saw Matilda every day, and that helped to distract me.”^^ In February, Matilda fell ill. “... she grew rapidly worse, and fell into a consumption. I cannot tell you what I suffered. . . . Her dying struggles were painful and protracted. For three days and nights I did not leave the house.” She died April 26, and Irving was plunged in grief. Much nonsense has been written of his affection for “Mat,” but that he loved her deeply and tenderly can scarcely be doubted, Williams and McDowell, op. cit., p. 473. 20 See Irving’s journal, n. 18, above. Pierre Munroe Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving (New York, 1862- 1864), I, 224-225. Williams, Life, I, loi. P. Irving, op. cit., I, 224-225. 52 Charlton G. Laird particularly after the revealing study that Professor Williams has given the subject.^ At this point we might review the evidence thus far, for the period from January to May is that in which the History is assumed to have been written. Composition was begun in January, with Irving re¬ conceiving the work and molding a “crude mass”—clearly an occu¬ pation requiring some time. Judge Hoffman made his offer, and Irving took up the study of law; he was “low-spirited,” “disheart¬ ened,” and “incapable of application”; he distracted himself by seeing Matilda every day. He returned to the work he was writing in secret, although with daily visits to Matilda and probable gestures toward the law to reassure Judge Hoffman, one wonders if he accomplished much. Meanwhile, Matilda had fallen ill in February—no long time after January—and grew rapidly worse; she died a lingering death in April, while Irving became more and more distracted. We are asked to believe that the young Irving, always tempera¬ mental, never notable for his industry, and now distracted by court¬ ing, the law, and general depression, wrote in some three and a half months several hundreds of witty pages and a wealth of learned nonsense. The assumption seems to me improbable. Let us examine the records of the months following Matilda’s death. Shortly after the funeral Irving must have gone to the home of his friend Judge William P. Van Ness, for he writes from Kinder- hook under dates of May ii, 19, and 20.^^ The first letter is not important, except for the date; the second is a polite note to Mrs. Hoffman, saying that by exercising his mind and determining to be cheerful he is becoming serene. This exercising of his mind evi¬ dently concerns the History, for in the third letter Irving writes Henry Brevoort in New York about some manuscripts that “Jim” (presumably James Paulding) is reading, and goes on to say, “I have almost finished—and in the course of a week hope to be released from my pen. I shall then drive with all possible dispatch to get completely done with the business and once more liberty....” What he means by being free from his pen in a week is rather puzzling. 2* Williams, Liie, I, 83-89;- (ed-). ttotes While Preparing Sketch Boo\, etc. 1817, by Washington Irving (New Haven, 1927), pp. 26-27, 63-72; Modern language Notes, XLVIII, 182-186 (March, 1933); American Speech, I, 463-469 (June, 1926). 25 p. Irving, op. cit., I, 228; George S. Heilman, Letters of Washington Irving to Henry Brevoort (New York, 1918), I, 8-13. Tragedy and Irony in Knicf{erboc\er’s History 53 since after having mentioned coming to New York in “the course of a fortnight,” he adds that the trip would not be necessary should Henry bring him the manuscripts. “If you come up & bring the MSS. that are in Jim’s hands—I will have occupation enough to keep me here some time longer. I wish you would do so.” Nor, ap¬ parently, will he be done even then, for “I wish Jim to save a little of his attention & critical industry for the remainder which I have in hand. I have not been able to do it justice I would wish from not being in full health & spirits—I have done little more than copy off from my original scrawls.”^® Irving left at least one other description of this period, in the memorial which has already been cited: “I cannot tell you what a horrid state of mind I was in for a long time after Matilda’s death. I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me. . . . Months elapsed before my mind would resume any tone. . . . When I became more calm and collected, I applied myself, by way of occu¬ pation, to the finishing of my work. I brought it to a close, as well as I could, and published it... Here, for the first time, the evidence is sharply divergent: Irving did nothing for months, after which he buried his sorrow in work; or Irving was at work within two weeks, and expected to finish “within a week”—although he obviously knew he would not. Some of this evidence can easily be evaluated. In determining the date at which Irving returned to his writing, surely the letter to Brevoort takes precedence over a document written after a fading memory and congenital sentimentality had cultivated Irving’s state of pros¬ tration. Irving was at work before May 20, 1809. On the other hand, the Brevoort letter does not authorize us in supposing, as has generally been done, that Irving finished “within a week.” The letter itself suggests something nearer a month. But did he finish then ? Unfortunately, we have no direct evidence with which we can answer the question. We know that his boat was capsized while he was sailing up the Hudson from New York in the summer, that he joined the Historical Society in October, that he contributed to a reading room in November, and that he was still adding to his Heilman, op.cit., I, 11-13. Charles Dudley Warner, Washington Irving, “American Men of Letters Series” (Boston, 1888), pp. 62-63; P- Irving, op. cit., I, 226-227; Williams, hije, I, 105. 54 Charlton G. Laird manuscript when he was in Philadelphia to superintend the print¬ ing,^® but we have neither journal nor letters from this period. Some evidence we do have. The memorial cited above certainly suggests that Irving later thought he was writing in the summer or the autumn, or both. Now, I consider it very likely that he was right about this, even though he exaggerated the period of his previous debility, for had Irving finished his book in May, I doubt that he would have de¬ layed publication until autumn. He gives evidence of having wished to finish the job and print it,^® and the feverish fashion in which he is adding material in the autumn suggests that he has been occupied with the manuscript during much of the summer. The memorial, furthermore, suggests that a considerable portion of the History was written after Matilda’s death. It reads, “I brought it to a close, as well as I could, and published it, but the time and circumstances in which it was produced rendered me always unable to look upon it with satisfaction.” The “time and circumstances” might refer to the hectic winter and early spring of 1809, but the words are used in connection with Irving’s state of mind after Matilda’s death. Thus, the conventional view, that the History was nearly complete by May 20, rests almost solely on a single sentence of doubtful value in the Brevoort letter. If we accept this view we must accept both of two improbabilities: that Irving wrote most of the book amid the turmoil of the early months of 1809; and that, having finished in May, he did not publish until autumn. As an alternative, I would suggest that Irving wrote only the first few books during the early months of 1809; Book I was com¬ piled from previous “disquisitions,” and Book II, which is similar to Book I, was probably composed. Whether he went on to Wouter the Doubter must be pure conjecture; in any event, Matilda’s illness brought work to an end in March or April. In May, Irving returned to his manuscript, determined to “drive with all possible dispatch to get completely done with the business”; chronologically, he was nearly done, and he probably planned to finish the thing off like a Salmagundi paper. But even as he was saying he would finish in a week, it is clear he knew he would not; and even if he expected to finish in a month, is it not likely that he was thinking of a more 2* Williams, Life, I, 109, 113, 408 n. 13; P. Irving, op. cit., I, 235-236; Heilman, op. cit., I, 14-15; Williams and McDowell, op. cit., p. xxvii. 29 See n. 26, above; Williams and McDowell, op. cit., p. xxvi. Tragedy and Irony in Knickerbocker s History 55 restricted History? He had already changed his plans once; is it unlikely that he changed them again as he worked with his ma¬ terial, and saw larger possibilities in William the Testy and Hard- koppig Piet ? This theory gains color from the character of the individual books. Book I is a digest of old material; Book II is similar in character, but brief. With Book III, dealing with Wouter the Doubter, the treat¬ ment is more expansive, more personal, less rambling. With Book IV the satire becomes dominant and loses some of its genial impersonality. With Book V, Irving becomes so absorbed in the affairs of Peter Stuyvesant that he gives more pages to one man’s reign than to all the previous Dutch matter. Earlier, I have tried to show that the treatment of Stuyvesant contains an organic unity that sets it off from the remainder of the History. Similarly, Irving’s tone in the tragedy of Hard-koppig Piet is not his customary genial banter; the timbre is deeper and richer. One can observe the difference by contrasting a late insertion with the remainder of Volume II. We know that the two chapters^” concerning Peter’s trip up the Hudson and the enumeration of the Manhattoes were written as the result of an idea that came to Irving after an autumn party. He was living the gay life of social Phil¬ adelphia; Matilda Hoffman and the tragic Hard-koppig Piet had gone into other days. Gone, too, is the irony from his style. There is mock-heroic fun of the sort that a clever young gallant who knew his Homer and his Dutchmen might turn out, but tragic implica¬ tions there are not. The bulk of Volume II reminds one of Don Quixote; these chapters suggest The Rape of the Loc\. According to the hypothesis here presented, then, a likely dating of the various parts of the History might be about as follows. Com¬ position was begun in January; Book I, probably Book II, and pos¬ sibly “scrawls” of Book III were completed before Matilda’s death. In May, Irving began again, probably on Book III or IV. As he re¬ covered his poise, as he worked himself into the spirit of the book, and particularly as the tragic and ironic possibilities of Hard-koppig Piet took hold of him, his conceptions broadened and his writing became more trenchant and more deeply creative. Books V-VII 3 ® Bk. VI, chap, iii-iv. See Williams, Uje, I, 113; P. Irving, op. cit., I, 235-236; Heilman, op. cit., I, 14-15. 56 Charlton G. Laird were almost certainly written in this period, during the summer. Late summer and autumn were spent in revisions, additions, and in the details of preparing for publication. Such an interpretation alters our conception of both the time and the nature of Irving’s composition. Critics have previously supposed that Irving’s inspiration was essentially bookish in its source. “It was love of history, after all,” Professor Williams writes, “which carried Irving on to the end of his long book.”®^ I should suppose it was love of history and good fun which got Irving started, but love of satire and an interest in the situation of Hard-koppig Piet that carried him through.®^ Ill If it be admitted, then, that in dealing with Peter Stuyvesant, Irving found himself moved by a theme having a certain tragic grandeur, and came upon irony, let us say somewhere near the bottom of the cup, the work would seem to have been written when life had “had its way” with him, as much as life ever did have its way with that 31 115. 32 Professor Williams’s description of Irving’s late spring and summer is as follows: “So he fought with ill health and lowered spirits, smiling thoughtfully at Jesse Merwin, the homespun wit and future Ichabod Crane, but turning more often to his real anodyne, the history. On May 20, 1809, this was nearly done. “It was Irving’s first experience of work as a solace, and it was good for him. During June he was again in the city, manuscript under his arm. Alien faces still tired him, and he fled at intervals to Hoffman’s summer retreat at Hell Gate. . . . Indeed, his inertia during these months contrasts strangely with the elaborate humor which clarioned Diedrich Knicker¬ bocker to the world. The journeys to the libraries of New York and Philadelphia, the dickerings with publishers, the preliminary jokes in the Evening Post—these were his nepenthe. His beaten route was between the Society Library and that of the New York Historical Society, to whose membership he was elected on October 10” {Life, I, 109; see also p. 408, n. 13). This is a plausible reconstruction, but as we have seen, we do not know how Irving spent most of his time, nor when he finished writing. As for the libraries, as Professor Williams points out, we know that he was a member of the Historical Society by October 10, and that he contributed to the Society reading room opened in November; both dates are too late to help us much. Of the whole composition of the History Professor Williams writes: “Only through this history of 1809 do we really see Irving during the twenty-two months of its composition— chuckling with Peter over their new ‘short’ jeu d'esprit; fleeing to Montreal to shun its terrifying growth; bantering with Ann Hoffman to forget it; returning to it as to a rock in a weary land; and finally, tossing it to the printer in a frenzy, as if it symbolized the chaos of these two years” {Life, I, 114). One could scarcely dissent greatly from this summary, though it places less emphasis on composition in the summer of 1809 than I should suppose advisable. Tragedy and Irony in Knickerbocker’s History 57 genial lover of the picturesque. But the Stuyvesant passages, if they are distinctive, are not unique, for similar matter is sporadic in Irv¬ ing’s writing. One would gladly know whether an inclination to the ironic is to be related to the content or to the chronology of his works, but the question is not easily resolved, since a division of his writings in accordance with their subject matter produces groupings that follow roughly the chronological periods of his life. To the decade and a half following the Knickerbocker History are to be allocated the Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall, and Tales of a Traveller. These collections contain tragic bits, though scarcely a suggestion of bitterness beneath humor. The Spanish period, 1826-1832, includes the Life of Columbus, the Voyages of his companions, the Conquest of Granada, the Conquest of Spain, and the Alhambra. The first three are notably lit by ironic flashes. In them Irving delights in showing us greed, lust, cruelty, and deceit masked behind the unction of the Church and the blessing of an obliging God, and concocts a chronicler. Fray Antonio Agapida, to provide the auto-damnation of Church and State. Here, for example, is the purported comment of a pious official; it is no less than the ironic comment of Washington Irving: “The loss of the Christians in this siege amounted to twenty thousand men, of whom seventeen thousand died of disease, and not a few of mere cold—a kind of death (says the historian Mariana) peculiarly uncomfortable; but (adds the venerable Jesuit) as these last were chiefly people of ignoble rank, baggage-carriers and such¬ like, the loss was not of great importance.” One notices that in these works Irving frequently displays sympathy for the abused of this world, that he is prone to detect bigotry behind protestations of virtue, and that he is aware of the pervading power of avarice. He reminds us, in the sanctimonious phrases of faked chronicles, that the casuists who lauded Ferdinand’s robbings and murders were them¬ selves making a very good thing out of the pillage.®^ Irving’s last period is less unified, but from A Tour on the Prairies, 1835, to the Life of Washington, completed 1859, it is generally American and optimistic. Tragedy is rare in this period and irony almost completely absent. If Irving sensed the tragic and ironic possibilities of the tales of Bonneville, and especially of Astoria, his A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, Bk. II, chap, xxxvi. Ibid., Bk. I, chaps, xxvi, xxxiii; Bk. II, chaps, xxi, xxxi. 58 Charlton G. Laird romantic accounts do not betray him. Did he not know the broad foundation of suffering and debauchery upon which the formne of his friend John Jacob Astor rested ? Was he silenced by the sense of what one gentleman does not say about another? Was he swept along by the desire to please a public who believed that Western ex¬ pansion was the high destiny of America, and that a dead Indian was a good Indian ? Or was he merely growing old ? In dealing with Astor, Irving labored under certain obvious handicaps, but had he seen American imperialism with the same eyes with which he saw Spanish imperialism, had he seen that American commercial hy¬ pocrisy did not differ essentially from Spanish religious bigotry, he could have found ways of expressing his disapproval without traduc¬ ing his loyalties. One must conclude, I fear, that the American scene, growing prudence, reduced metabolism, or some other sedative influence had its way with Irving, if life never did. He had a sense of irony, but it did not mature, and in his later years either waned or was sub¬ merged. In the Knickerbocker History he passed through satire to irony; in dealing with Spanish conquest he somewhat broadened and socialized his sympathies, but his irony is the detached irony of the scholar, not the bitter irony of the literary biographer; in his later writings he has, as Professor Farrington puts it, “sweetened his wine.” And when a sense of irony departed from Irving’s work, part of his creative power departed with it.®® Irving’s sense of irony doubtless changed as part of the whole broad transition of his outlook, from an eighteenth-century background, through a romantic youth, into a middle age colored by Western expansion. Professor Harry Hayden Clark has called to my attention that a similar change can be observed in Irving’s reviews; the whole question of Irving’s political, social, and literary ideas has been studied in a dissertation by Dr. P. K. McCarter, which will shortly be available at the University of Wisconsin. I am indebted to Professor Clark, to Dr. Ernest L. Marchand, and to Dr. H. C. Vedeler for having read this paper in manuscript; they were fruitful in suggestions. Hank Monk and Horace Greeley Richard G. Lillard F or a third of a century Hank Monk^ was one of the best- known stage drivers in the Far West. After he died his fame lived on vigorously for three decades more. As a driver and story¬ teller he no doubt had his equals, but as the center of a cycle of anecdotes and as a popular hero he surpassed in celebrity any of his compeers. His special prominence arose from a single event in 1859 which associated him briefly with Horace Greeley, who was re¬ garded in the Western mining camps as a very great man. The story of their trip across the Sierra Nevadas, widely circulated within less than six months, became “the topic of the entire coast coun¬ try,”^ and popular writers gave it extensive distribution in the East. One can safely say that no other frontier story, true or untrue, has reached a larger audience and amused (or bored) more persons. Two important contemporary writers who retold the Greeley story denied its truth. Albert Richardson claimed it was “apocry¬ phal,” although he did record that certain Californians had given Monk a gold watch in honor of his exploit.^ Mark Twain, who came to despise the story, said in Roughing It, written in 1870-71, that the ride “never occurred” and thus the chief possible virtue of a “worn” and “flat” anecdote was gone.^ Evidence proves, however, that the incident actually took place. ^ Henry Monk was born in Waddington, St. Lawrence County, N. Y., on March 24, 1826. He always had a great fancy for horses, and once drove eight horses abreast in Boston, during a civic celebration. He came to California in 1852 and began to drive stage between Sacramento and Auburn for the California Stage Company. Later he drove between Sacramento and Placerville. In 1857 and thereafter he drove stage for J. B. Cran¬ dall between Placerville and Genoa, Nevada. He continued the run when the line was bought, in turn, by Brady and Sundland, and Wells, Fargo, and Company. He drove Nevada stages for more than twenty years, notably between Virginia City and Carson City for “Billy” Wilson and between Carson City and Glenbrook for “Doc” Benton. He died of pneumonia in Carson City on February 28, 1883 (Gold Hill News, March 28, 1876, reprinted in Sacramento Union, April i, 1876; J. A. Yerington, “Stories of Hank Monk,” Sunset, XII, 24-28, Nov., 1903). * Yerington, op. cit., p. 26. “Albert Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi (Hartford, 1867), pp. 382-384. As a member of the staff of the New York Tribune, Richardson had good reason for minimizing a story that gave undignified treatment to the editor-in-chief. ‘Mark Twain, Roughing It (New York and London, 1913), I, 143. 6o Richard G. Lillard In his correspondence to the Tribune, reprinted the following year, Greeley himself narrated his exciting ride. It began at dawn on August I at an inn fifteen miles west of Genoa. The road went up the headwaters of Carson River, over Luther Pass, up Myer’s Grade to Johnson Pass, and down the American River Canyon to Placer- ville.® Along a mere shelf, with hardly a place to each mile where two meeting wagons can pass, the mail-stage was driven at the rate of ten miles an hour (in one instance eleven), or just as fast as four wild California horses, whom two men could scarcely harness, could draw it. Our driver was of course skillful; but had he met a wagon on suddenly rounding one of the sharp points or projections we were constantly passing, a fearful crash was unavoid¬ able. Had his horses seen fit to run away (as they did run once, on the unhooking of a trace, but at a place where he had room to rein them out of the road on the upper side, and thus stop them) I know that he could not have held them, and we might have been pitched headlong down a precipice of a thousand feet, where all of the concern that could have been picked up afterward would not have been worth two bits per bushel. Yet at this break-neck speed we were driven for not less than four hours or forty miles, changing horses every ten or fifteen, and raising a cloud of dust through which it was difficult at times to see anything. . . . Greeley was glad to find himself in Placerville. It was “a balm for many bruises to know that [he was] at last in California.”® Eight years later in his Recollections of a Busy Ufef Greeley mentioned crossing the double summit on August i, 1859, but omitted all details of his fast ride to Placerville, going on at once to discuss California forests and the Yosemite. His exclusion of a major travel experience is explained by what Joseph Goodman, editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, told Albert Bigelow Paine years afterward. ° Following is a table of distances from Sacramento to Carson City “via Placerville and Carson Valley Road.” Figures indicate miles from Sacramento. Folsom, 22; Shingle Springs, 37; Mud Springs, 44; Diamond Springs, 45; Placerville, 48; Elk Horn House, 55; Sportsman’s Hall, 60; Junction House, 64; South Fork Bridge, 67; Summit Hill, 69; Brockliss’ Post, 75; Peavine Hill, 77; Silver Creek, 84; Valley South Fork, 87; Strawberry Valley, 91; Slippery Ford, 93; Boulder Hill, 94; Summit Sierra, too; Lake Valley, loi; Marlett’s Flat, 104; Hope Valley, 108; Woodford’s, 112; Van Sickles’, 129; Genoa Station, 131; Carson City, 145 {The Sacramento Directory of 1861-1862, pp. 165-166; Guide to Degroot's Map of Nevada Territory, San Francisco, 1862, p. 6). ® Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New Yor/^ to San Francisco in the Summer of /1S59 (New York, i860), pp. 280-282. ’New York, 1868, pp. 379-380. Hank Monk and Horace Greeley 6i When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just before I started. “Mr. Goodman,” he said, “you tell Horace Greeley that I want to come East, and ask him to send me a pass.” “All right. Hank,” I said, “I will.” It happened that when I got to New York City one of the first men I met was Greeley. “Mr. Greeley,” I said, “I have a message for you from Hank Monk.” Greeley bristled and glared at me. “That— rascal.?” he said. “He has done me more injury than any other man in America.”® The “injury” was in the form of a short anecdote that contained undignified dialogue'. The original version was no doubt very close to that in a letter from “Cornish” to the popular San Francisco Golden Era. “Cornish” told of crossing the Sierras with Hank Monk, “a young man of about twenty-five years ... a perfect Jehu— a great ‘whip,’ ” who recounted the trip. Just before I left Strawberry, Mr. Greeley called me one side: “Driver,” said he, “can you get me into Placerville this evening by 5 o’clock, because the committee expect me, and I do not wish to disappoint them; this is the last telegraph station, and if you are not sure I will send them a message; if there is anything I dislike in this world ’tis to be dis¬ appointed, so do not promise unless you are certain!’ “I’ll get you there,” says I, and off we went. I drove him to Dick’s,® eleven miles, in fifty- three minutes. (This part of the road is almost indescribable—down hill and over huge boulders.)^® Just before I got to Dick’s I looked into the coach and there was Greeley, his bare head bobbing, sometimes on the back and then on the front seat, sometimes in the coach and then out, then on top and then in the bottom, holding on to whatever he could grab. Presently some one touched me on the back: “Driver,” said a voice, “I am not particular for an hour or twol” ’’Horace/' says I, ”/{eep your seat! I told you I would get you there by 5 o’clock, and by G—, I’ll do it, if the axles hold!” And I did. When I arrived at Sportsman’s Hall there was the committee, with a carriage and six horses.—Mr. Gree¬ ley had become pretty familiar by this time. “Hank,” says he, “when you get into Placerville call on me immediately. I wish to see you. Of course, I shall proceed from this point more rapidly than you.” “All right!” said I, and away he went. I had a bully team, took a short cut, drove like the d— 1 , and was in a long time ahead. I was standing among the crowd when Greeley arrived. He called the proprietor of the hotel to him and said: “When Hank comes in, be sure and tell him I wish to ® Albert B. Paine, Marl{ Twain: A Biography (New York and London, 1912), I, 303. ® Perhaps Collins’ Station. There is no Dick’s on contemporary maps. Interpolation by “Cornish.” 62 Richard G. Lillard see him.” Says I, “Horace, I’ve been here an hour and a half!” “Young man,” says he, “come with me;” and he took me up street and bought me the best suit of clothes he could find in Placerville.^^ The story, for which this may be considered the original text, spread through the California and Nevada mining camps and along the Western stage routes with all the speed of “a good thing.” If one can believe the evidence in Roughing It, in i86i, when Twain first came West, the Greeley story was one of the hazards of travel. In one chapter^^ Twain has the tale told identically four full times— by a driver near Julesburg on the Platte River, by a Denver man picked up at a Wyoming crossroads, by a soldier at Fort Bridger, and by a Mormon preacher eight hours out of Salt Lake City. A “poor wanderer” near Ragtown, Nevada, is not allowed to finish the anecdote and dies at once from the strain of holding it in. The version they tell introduces a hole in the roof. It keeps the trip on the true route, Carson to Placerville, but begins the conversation at Carson, however, and not at Strawberry. Twain’s fellow travelers all tell what they announce as “a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it,” and then proceed without a pause. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver. Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lec¬ ture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, “Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!”—and you bet he did, what was left of him!^® In repeating this story four times in immediate succession. Twain was obviously satirizing the uncritical repetition of the anecdote in the West. Roughing It appeared in 1872. At least twice before Twain had publicly burlesqued the popularity of the story. In his lecture in Virginia City in 1866 he repeated the story several times to miners already sick of it,^^ and afterwards in a lecture in San Francisco he “did the daring thing of repeating three times the Golden Era, April 15, i860, p. 5. Twain, op. cit.. Chapter XX, “What Hank Said to Horace Greeley,” pp. 137-143. “The particulars of that drive as told by Mark Twain are not all correct” (Hank Monk, paraphrased in Gold Hill News, March 28, 1876). ^‘Virginia City Union, Nov. 12, 1866. Hank Monk and Horace Greeley 63 worn-out story of Horace Greeley’s ride with Hank Monk.” The first time there was no laughter and the audience felt sorry for him. The second time, astonished, they pitied him. The third time he worked the story in they saw his intention and laughed themselves hysterical.^® Twain’s cruel repetition was his own natural reaction to a painful experience. Even if his testimony in Roughing It be greatly discounted, he had heard too often what Hank said to Horace. Twain testifies that in six years he crossed the Sierras thirteen times by stage and listened to the story over four hundred and eighty times—as told by drivers, conductors, landlords, chance passengers, “Chinamen,” and Indians. The same drivers would tell it two or three times in one afternoon. A traveler heard it flavored with cologne, tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers, and whiskey. Says Twain, “I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I smelt that one; never have smelled any anecdote that smelt so variegated as that one.” The traveler would think that the real wonder of the Pacific coast was not the Yosemite or the giant Sequoias, or even Lake Tahoe, but only the trip Greeley had with Hank Monk.^® While in California and Nevada in 1863-64, Artemus Ward learned the story and both modified and extended it. As it appears in Artemus Ward: His Travels and the Complete WorJ^s^^ and the several reprints of portions of Artemus Ward, it is as hilarious as it is truly apocryphal.^® It reverses Greeley’s route, substituting the west-east one that Ward himself followed in his approach to Placer- ville. Late in the afternoon the stage company at Folsom, twenty- four miles west of Placerville, asked Hank Monk to get “this great man” to Placerville by seven in the evening. With abundant detail. Ward tells how Monk drove slow for a while, over roads that were in “an awful stage,” as Greeley exhorted him to hurry. Then, still driving laconically. Monk whipped up his horses to a terrific speed, so that Greeley bounced “from one end of the coach to the other like an india-rubber ball” and eventually managed to get his head out of the window to ask, “Do-on’t-on’t-on’t you-u-u-u think we-e-e-e Paine, op. at., p. 303. ‘“Twain, op. cit., pp. 141-143. "Charles F. Browne, Artemus Ward: His Travels (New York, 1865); The Complete Wor\s of Charles F. Browne, Better Known as "Artemus Ward" (London, n.d.). ‘“Don C. Seitz in Horace Greeley (Indianapolis, 1926), p. 306, says, “Ward’s narrative of the incident has never been contradicted.” Seitz also recalls that in the early 1890’s Monk drove the overland stage for the Wild West show run by Nate Saulsbury and Buffalo Bill. Monk died in 1883. 64 Richard G. Lillard shall get there by seven if we do-on’t-on’t-on’t go so fast?” Finally a frightful jolt forced Mr. Greeley’s bald head through the roof. “Stop, you — maniac!” he roared, but Monk replied with the famous line, “Keep your seat, Horace!” Ward describes an elab¬ orate delegation with a military company, a brass band, and a wagonload of beautiful girls that were assembled at Mud Springs to escort Greeley the remaining four miles to Placerville. Hank slowed down. “Is Mr. Greeley on board?” asked the chairman of the committee. “He was, a few miles back,” said Hank, who looked down through the hole. “Yes, yes, I can see him! He is there!” But Hank would not stop. He cried, “I’ve got my orders!” and dashed on toward Placerville, Greeley’s head ever and anon show¬ ing itself “like a wild apparition, above the coach-roof.” Ward’s fiction corresponds in one detail to “Cornish’s” version: “There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley was very indignant for awhile; then he laughed, and finally presented Mr. Monk with a bran-new suit of clothes.” Ward also states that Monk “is rather fond of relating a story that has made him famous all over the Pacific coast.” Ward’s version of the anecdote was read before Congress. In the House of Representatives on March 29, 1866, Representative Hulburd of New York quoted a Greeley editorial that castigated some remarks of his on a loan bill and advised him and others to bring about immediate resumption of specie payments. Hulburd commented that Greeley was going a little too fast, that he was in as much of a hurry as once on the Pacific coast, and asked the Clerk to read an account of Greeley’s ride with Hank Monk. The Clerk read it while the House laughed. Afterwards Representative Ingersoll of Illinois wanted to expunge the story from the records of the House. It was disgraceful to the body that it would waste “so much time in listening to such balderdash and nonsense.” But the House took no parliamentary action and serious debate went on.^® A quantity of miscellaneous material testifies to the renown that the Greeley episode gave to Hank Monk. A special correspondent of the San Francisco Alta, “Traviata,” told stories of Monk and called him “a celebrity on the stage, almost rivalling Charles Kean.”^ A correspondent of the New York Tribune who was rid¬ ing from Glenbrook to Carson City The Congressional Globe, Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, pp. 1531-1532. ““San Francisco Alta, Nov. 18, 1864. Hank Monk and Horace Greeley 65 asked the driver if he had ever heard of Hank Monk, the famous whip¬ ster who had given Mr. Greeley such excellent advice about keeping his seat when the stage was in motion. I soon found I was talking to the man himself, and I involuntarily raised my hat to the modest hero. Hank is too shrewd a man to throw away the glory that his legend sheds upon him, and so encourages its repetition in detail. Aside from Hank Monk’s facetious fame as Mr. Greeley’s driver, he enjoys the universal reputation of being the most fearless and scientific, as well as the safest reinsman in this Western country.^^ News items about Monk that appeared in Nevada papers were fre¬ quently reprinted in California papers.^ Wild, incredible “reminis¬ cences” by alleged “old-timers” came out in newspapers.^ Monk’s pranks and stories were frequently retold.^* The story of the Gree¬ ley ride was retold or alluded to by numerous writers.^® C. C. Goodwin commemorated Monk’s death with an eloquent obituary that began. The famous stage driver is dead. He has been on the down grade for some time. On Wednesday his foot lost its final hold on the brake and his coach could not be stopped until, battered and broken on a sharp turn, it went over into the canyon, black and deep, which we call death.^® A Carson City paper said: His friend Horace ought to do the fair thing by him and be on hand at the pearly gates with a blazing chariot and a spanking team of angels. Ibid., Sept. 21, 1871. “For example, ibid., Feb. 23, 1878, and Aug. 10, 1881. ” One from the New York Sun was reprinted in the San Jose Pioneer, April 6, 1878; one from the Leadville Democrat, in the San Francisco Call, March 5, 1885. Virginia City Enterprise, reprinted in the San Francisco Aha, July 18, 1874; C. C. Goodwin, As I Remember Them (Salt Lake City, 1913); Wells Drury, An Editor on the Comstoc\ Lode (New York, 1936); William Wright (Dan de Quille), History of the Big Bonanza (Hartford and San Francisco, 1876). In addition to those mentioned in the text, by George H. and Captain William Ban¬ ning, Six Horses (New York, 1930); Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent (Springfield, 1866); C. W. Haskins, The Argonauts of California . . . (New York, 1890); Harvey Rice, Letters from the Pacific Slope (New York, 1870); Frank Root, Overland Stage to California (Topeka, 1901); William Wright, op. cit., Mark Twain claimed that the story was recounted by Ross Browne and Bayard Taylor, but it does not appear in any of their books on the West. Joaquin Miller made Hank Monk the hero of the “poetic” play, “Tally-Ho!” (in foaquin Miller’s Poems, San Francisco, 1910, VI, 123-167). In this murder melodrama Monk retells the incident as occurring on a tally-ho east bound over the Sierras. One twentieth-century error takes the locale of the ride from the Sierras and places it in the Virginia Range, on the steep Geiger Grade from Virginia City down toward Reno (Rufus Steele, “The University and Diversity of Nevada,” Sunset, XXXII, 95, May, 1914; Max Miller, Reno, New York, 1941, p. 65). “’Virginia City Enterprise, March 6, 1883. 66 Richard G, Lillard send Hank spinning over the golden pavements at a speed that would remind the old Jehu of other days.^’^ Many persons treasured pictures of Monk. These showed his curly hair, long moustache, dark beard, straight glance, and keen eye. They were captioned “the noted Stage Driver of the Sierras.” One such picture still hangs in the taproom of the brewery in Carson City. In 1903 the Nevada Exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposi¬ tion in St. Louis displayed Monk’s watch and many other personal possessions and also the coach that Greeley rode in.^® The question rises. Why was the story of Monk and Greeley told with gusto so many thousands of times? There are several an¬ swers. (i) Its personages were important: the great New York editor who advocated the Pacific railroad and other popular causes, and the man of the people who was an acknowledged master of the profession of stage driving, in the days when a driver had all the personal prestige of a pilot on the Mississippi. (2) It was a local story, to be told to visitors and new arrivals from the East, and newcomers were abundant, especially on the Placerville road, which during bonanza days in Virginia City was one of the nation’s lead¬ ing thoroughfares. (3) It was a good story. It had brisk dialogue, action, and point. It invited detailed elaboration. It showed the na¬ tive humiliating the greenhorn, the West outdoing the East. It turned on characterization. Its ending was droll. It dramatized speed, eflBciency, keeping on schedule, daring, and uncanny skill. (4) To make its qualities all the more substantial, it was true. First-hand evidence of what a veteran raconteur of the story thought of it appeared in the Chicago Record during March, 1897, in a feature story^® by Carl Smith. Smith was in Carson City during the training period of fames Corbett and “Bob” Fitzsimmons, prior to their championship prizefight on March 18. According to his account, Smith wished to hire a rig to follow one of the fighters along the road during a workout and went to a large livery stable Quoted in Yerington, op. cit., p. 28. Ibid. One can wonder whether or not the authentic coach was exhibited. A. H. Hawley, who was proprietor of a trading post in Lake Valley, on the Upper Carson River, at the time Greeley crossed westward, wrote long ago that Greeley rode “in a miserable little old four horse team and small mud wagon instead of the high toned outfit that is so much talked about” (“Lake Tahoe—1883,” MS in Bancroft Library, reprinted in Nevada Historical Papers, igiyigiS, Carson City, I, 177). Greeley’s own account specifies four horses only. Reprinted in Carson Morning Appeal, March 23, 1897. Hank Monk and Horace Greeley 67 owned by “Doc” Benton.^” Smith asked Benton what the hire would cost, and Benton said he would have to see what time it was. He pulled a massive gold watch from his pocket and looked reflec¬ tively at it. Ignoring the question as to the price, he started talking about the watch. It had belonged to Hank Monk, who drove for him sixteen years. Some San Franciscans had given it to Monk, and Benton had inherited it. The watch was large, heavy, and elaborate. Inside the case was an inscription that asserted friendship and ad¬ miration for Hank and quoted the line: “Keep your seat, Horace.” Teasingly, Smith asked Benton what it meant, although he had already heard the story “repeatedly and tirelessly,” thirty-two times, since his arrival a week or so before. Benton promptly started to repeat the story. Many times Smith interrupted him to ask irrele¬ vant questions. How far away is Placerville What was the exact speed ? How much horse power was exerted ? What was the exact gradient.? How big a crowd did Mr. Greeley have at Placerville.? Did Mr. Greeley have time to take a bath before appearing? Ben¬ ton stared at Smith and then gazed at the watch in his hand. Pshaw, friend, you don’t seem to understand the point of the thing at all. It ain’t the speed. It ain’t the horses, it ain’t the road, it ain’t the crowd at the opera house—it is just Hank and Horace. There’s the point of it, don’t you see? In Hank and Horace. “Keep your seat, Horace,’’ says Hank, “and I’ll see you through.’’ After more interruptions from Smith, Benton made it clear that to him the story was the most vivid piece of literature on earth. It was a short drama of two strong wills in conflict on a careening stage in the rugged Sierras. The teller identified himself with the trium¬ phant Westerner. He, too, uttered the classic impertinence: Oh, pshaw! pshaw! ... It wasn’t so much the case of the ride, although that’s something, nor speed, as I’ve said, though that was something, too. But it was Hank and Horace, fust imagine Hank looking down and saying: “Keep your seat, Horace! . . .” James M. Benton, proprietor of Livery and Feed Stable, later Livery and Ice Dealers; listed in Nevada Directories from 1868-69 W 1925- The Humorous Works of George W. Harris Donald Day C ritics have noticed that Sut Lovingood’s Yarns (1867) by George W. Harris (1814-1869) is typical in many ways of the humor of the ante-bellum Southwest.^ Yet Mr. Franklin J. Meine, comparing Harris’s work with that of the other humorists, has stated that it is “strikingly different.”^ The purpose of this paper is to see how Harris resembles other humorists of the time and how he differs from them.® The study therefore may be enlightening as a detailed consideration of the claim that “in Sut Lavingood the ante-bellum humor of the South reaches its highest level of achieve¬ ment before Mark Twain.”^ I Harris’s life was that of a typical humorist of the section and of the period. Such a humorist was a man of varied backgrounds and experiences, having some acquaintance with books but usually more with the life that inspired the boisterous humor of the Old South¬ west. Like the rest, Harris was more indebted to experience than to books for his materials. Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (now a part of Pitts¬ burgh), on March 20, 1814, Harris was taken to Knoxville, Ten¬ nessee, when he was still a youngster.® Knoxville, where he lived most of his days, was to some extent shut off until the 1850’s from ^George W. Harris, Sut Lovingood's Yams (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1867). Hereinafter this work will be designated as the Yarns. See Walter Blair, Native American Humor (i 8 oo-igoo) (New York: American Book Company, 1937), pp. 62-101; Franklin J. Meine, Tall Tales of the Southwest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), pp. xv-xxxii. The region designated as the Southwest includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. “Meine, op. cit., p. xxiii. “ The scope of this study does not include Harris’s political satires, which have not as yet been collected in book form. It does not include Sut Lovingood Travels with Old Abe Lincoln, ed. Edd W. Parks (Chicago, 1937). ‘Blair, op. cit., p. loi. ® Information furnished by Mrs. Amanda Pillow Harris Raymond, daughter of George W. Harris, hereinafter designated as Mrs. Raymond. The Humorous Works o£ George W. Harris 69 the bustle and stir of westward expansion by the Cumberland and Smoky Ranges. Yet the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers into the Tennessee furnished not only a connection with the outside world but also the essential conditions of a “river” community. At the same time the mountains, particularly the Great Smokies, offered a magnificently contrasting way of living. Harris, therefore, had ample opportunities for “seeing humanity in all its varieties,” as he states in an early sketch.® Harris’s schooling was meager, probably not exceeding eighteen months, but he learned to be a careful workman in metals by serving an apprenticeship in the jewelry shop of his half-brother, Samuel Bell.^ When he came of age he worked three years as captain of a steamboat plying the Tennessee and Holston rivers;* farmed for an equal period in the foothills of the Smokies;® and then established a metal-working shop in Knoxville which he operated for seven years, making and repairing anything from the smallest screw to a steam engine.^® During the 1850’s he estab¬ lished and managed a glass works,^^ again captained a steamboat,^^ established a sawmill,^* surveyed and managed the Ducktown (Hiwasse) copper mines,^^ served as postmaster at Knoxville,^® be¬ came an important political figure in the state,^® and in the late years of the decade turned to railroading, which held him until the outbreak of the war.^^ After the war he again took up railroading, rising to a position as superintendent of construction for the Wills Valley Railroad.^® This background and experience certainly qualified Harris with enough knowledge of the life of the section to follow the literary manifesto of this “boisterous band of humorists” as set forth by * New York Spirit of the Times, June 17, 1843. Hereinafter this publication will be designated as the Spirit. ’George F. Mellen, “Samuel Bell,” Knoxville Sentinel, Oct. 12, 1916. * George F. Mellen, “George W. Harris," Knoxville Sentinel, Feb. 13, 1909. ® Records of Blount County, Maryville, Tenn., for the years 1839-1842. ’“Knoxville Argus and Commercial Herald, Feb. i, 1843; Knoxville Register, June 26, 1846. Spirit, May 26, 1849; Knoxville Register, Sept. 29, 1849. ’“Knoxville American Statesman, Feb. 10, 1854. ’“Knoxville Standard, Aug. 30, 1858. ’* Information furnished by Mrs. Raymond. Letter from ist Assistant Postmaster General to J. Cleveland Harris, April 19, 1928. ’“Nashville Union and American, March 17, 1859 ff. Ibid., Oct. 2, 1859. Corroborated by Mrs. Raymond. ’* Letter from Ben T. Brock to J. Cleveland Harris, dated June 15, 1928. 70 Donald Day Augustus B. Longstreet in these words: . . the aim of the author was to supply . . . the manners, customs, amusements, wit, dialect, as they appear in all grades of society to an ear and eye witness to them.”^® Throughout life Harris followed the dictum laid down by Longstreet: he had the same interest in showing the life of his region. Typifying his attitude is a statement found in a sketch published in 1843: “I mounted my nag and started for the Knob, having seen some odd specimens of humanity; though such speci¬ mens are to be met with frequently in this mountain region.”®® Earlier in the sketch he describes some of the “odd specimens,” together with the “manners, customs, amusements, wit, and dialect” of the region. When Harris wrote his first full-length yarn, “The Knob Dance,”®^ he took material of the same sort from his experience, organized it, and put it into the mouth of a narrator, Dick Harlan. He also turned to his experience for vivid metaphors which he was to use so effectively in his later writings. His “A Snake-bit Irish¬ man”®® relates an incident which supposedly happened while he was on a hunt in the mountains of Morgan County with a party from Knoxville. The days of his youth, when he “was sent into the upper counties” of Tennessee on “a trip of business,” furnished the background and setting for “A Sleep Walking Incident.”®® “There’s Danger in Old Chairs”®^ records “a most amusing inci¬ dent” which happened “not long since at one of the first class hotels, in a western city.” Certainly by 1854, when “Sut Lovingood’s Daddy ‘Acting Horse’ ” first bodies Sut forth, Harris had encoun¬ tered most of the material which went into his yarns. n Longstreet, in spite of his dictum, depended to a great extent on the Addison-Goldsmith-Irving tradition for his literary form. In this he was followed by other humorists of the South, partic¬ ularly by Joseph G. Baldwin in The Flush Times of Alabama and O. P. Fitzgerald, Judge Longstreet: A Life S\etch (Nashville: Methodist Publishing Co., 1891), p. 164. In a sketch written in 1848 Harris states that what follows “would take the pen of a Longstreet to describe” (Spirit, July 29, 1848). Whether he was familiar with Georgia Scenes during his early writing days is not known. ^'‘Spirit, April 15, 1843. Ibid., Aug. 2, 1845. ^’‘Ibid., Jan. 17, 1846. ** Ibid., Sept. 12, 1846. ** Weekly 'Nashville Union, Oct. 6, 1847. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 71 Mississippi, and to some extent by Harris. In “How to Marry,” published in the Spirit in 1854, Harris wrote a sketch which might have been hatched under the wing of N. P. Willis.^® Although he did not have much formal education Harris evi¬ dently read a considerable number of books. When farming at the age of twenty-five he possessed at least seventy-five books in addi¬ tion to a Bible.^® He was treasurer of a literary society in Knox¬ ville whose library was said to already contain “many Standard works” and was “constantly receiving valuable acquisitions.” Mrs. Raymond stated that her father was quite fond of reading and spent a great deal of time with books. In “How to Marry” there are several allusions to the Bible; the Queen of Sheba is used for a comparison in “A Snake-bit Irish¬ man”; Sut invokes Joseph as the “foredaddy” of the Lovingoods in “Sut Lovingood at Sicily Burns’s Wedding” Harris states in a note to Porter [editor of the Spirit\ that “it is the general impres¬ sion hereabouts that your ‘Spirit’ has played the Dickens with ‘Boz.’ He took the central idea in “Old Skissim’s Middle Boy”^® from The Tic\wic\ Papers, as Sut admits in these words: “Charley Dickins’s son, the fat boy, mout been es ni kin tu him es a secund cuzzin, ef his mam wer a pow’ful wakeful ’oman.” In addition, Harris mentions Byron,®” Burns,Elizabeth Barrett,®® and Long¬ fellow.®® There are also allusions to Mahomet’s coffin®^ and to “Alborax.”®® It must not be inferred, however, that Harris was vitally affected by literary influences. Probably his reference to Longfellow may be taken as a guide. Sut is singing a folk-song when George (Har¬ ris) asks him to stop the noise. Sut replies: There is evidence that he wrote a number of such sketches. Another sketch which is probably his appeared in the Spirit for October 28, 1854, under the tide of “How They Do Things in Tennessee.” Book “Q,” p. 155, Records of Blount County, Maryville, Tenn., Dec. 23, 1840, records an indenture which includes “seventy-five books and a Bible” in a list of Harris’s personal projjerty. Nashville Union and American, April 15, 1858. Spirit, April 15, 1843. ’‘'‘Yams, p. 67. ’"‘Spirit, June 24, 1848. Ibid. Knoxville Press and Messenger, Sept. 29, 1869. Yarns, p. 124. Chattanooga Daily American Union, Nov. 27, 1867. Nashville Union and American, Aug. 10, 1866. 72 Donald Day Well, I be durn’d! Calls superfine singin ove a hart-breakin luv song, what’s purtier by a gallun an’ a ’alf than that cussed fool thing yu wer a-readin, jis’ arter supper ’bout the youf what toted a flag up a mountin by hissef ove a nite, wif ‘Exelcider’ writ ontu hit. . . After more arguments Sut attempts to prove his song is a love song, then adds this illuminating criticism on Longfellow: Now yu’s a cussin at my luv song, I wants tu say a word about that ‘Excelcider’ youf ove your’n, what sum Longfeller writ. I say, an’ I’ll swar tu hit, that eny feller, I don’t keer hu the devil he is, what starts up a mountin, kiver’d wif snow an’ ise, arter sundown, wif nuffin but a flag, an’ no whisky, arter a purty gal hed offer’d her bussum fur a pillar, in a rume wif a big hath, kiver’d wif hot coals, an’ vittils . . . am a dod durn’d, complikated, full-blooded, plum nat’ral born durn’d fool; he warn’t smart enuf tu fine his mouf wifout a leadin string; he orter froze es stiff es a crow-bar, an’ then been thaw’d out by the devil; dod durn him. This passage shows Sut’s and his creator’s preference for the stuff of life rather than that of romance. And it is not surprising that other models of form than those supplied by Longfellow’s poetic creations were followed by Harris in his humorous narratives. Far more powerful in the development of Harris as a humorist was the influence of the oral tale. And since oral storytelling “had an important influence upon the matter of most Western tales and upon the manner of many of them,”®^ his literary kinship with the humorists of his time and his section is best suggested by this fact. The spinning of a tale became an art, and the material for these tales was inexhaustible. Eventually, most of them found their way into newspapers, popular periodicals, and books. The most pop¬ ular humorous journal of the period was William T. Porter’s New York Spirit of the Times, and in almost every case the better humorous stories sooner or later appeared in its columns. Harris gives evidence of this when he asks in the introduction to “The Knob Dance” if “your [Porter’s Mississippi friend “In the Swamp”] . . . was at ‘ar-a-frolick’ while in East Tennessee?” He then promptly answers his own question by saying, “I reckon not or you would have hearn of it before now in the ‘Spirit of the Times.’ ” Yarns, pp. 123-124. Blair, op. cit., pp. 70 ff. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 73 Thus, it was quite natural that Harris began writing humorous sketches for the Spirit and learned much of his technique from writers for its columns. Harris’s wide experience and interests must have constantly thrown him into contact with oral tales. His “ragged, thoughdess boyhood,” untrammeled by schools, kept him among people. His earliest writings were reports of gatherings and experiences where stories were likely to have been encountered. His nostalgic remem¬ brances of later days include “the old stone Court-house,” quarter races, camp meetings, quildngs, cornshuckings, frolics—all gather¬ ings where the telling of stories constituted one of the chief means of entertainment. Harris loved a good story well told, and, according to the evi¬ dence, he was a good storyteller himself. When the “Patlander” in “A Snake-bit Irishman” tells long dry yarns, all having a more or less remote bearing on his own prowess, he is guilty of a definite violation of frontier edquette and hence is suitably and properly punished.®® A correspondent of the Spirit gives evidence that a “story is very good, particularly when you hear it told by S- ^1 [Harris’s pen name].”®® The development of Harris’s technique shows definitely his dependence upon the oral tale. His earliest known humorous writings appear in the Spirit over the pseudonym of “Mr. Free” as “Sporting Epistles.”^® This form of writing, appearing in almost every issue of the Spirit, usually catalogues happenings in various sections of the country and almost invariably includes a transcribed version of an oral tale. Following this form in his writings, Harris gradually reduces the epistolary part and increases the importance of the transcribed oral tale, finally developing a framework or “box¬ like structure” which takes the place of the epistolary part and becomes, in general, an introduction and a conclusion. This per¬ mits him to emphasize the incongruities between the telling of the tale and the fantastic world into which the tale moves. Other writers of pieces for the Spirit mastered the technique, and one at least (T. B. Thorpe in “TTie Big Bear of Arkansas”) is as artful in creating a framework and its contrasting fantastic spirit, Jan. 17, 1846. This version of the yarn must not be confused with the one appearing later in the Yams. ^'‘Spirit, Jan. 17, 1847. Spirit, Feb. ii, 1843; April 15, 1843; June 17, 1843; and Sept. 2, 1843. 74 Donald Day world. But Harris does more in his Sut Lovingood Yarns. An obvious advantage comes from the use of Sut as the narrator and George (Harris) as his “stooge” in a series of sketches. This eliminates the characterization of a new narrator each time and progressively rounds out both Sut and George as characters, thereby moving the reader into the world of fantasy with the maximum of belief (or perhaps suspension of disbelief) A generalized statement of technique, however, will not explain Mr. Meine’s conclusion that Harris is “strikingly different.” Nor will it explain this statement by F. O. Matthiessen; He [Harris] brings us closer than any other writer to the indigenous and undiluted resources of the American language, . . . Harris possesses on the comic level something of what Melville does on the tragic, the rare kind of dramatic imagination that can get movement direcdy into words.^^ The explanation of this well-deserved praise can only come from an analysis of Harris’s writings which will bring to the surface characteristics that are uniquely his. For convenience the analysis will be made under the conventional headings of character, setting, action or situation, and language. Harris’s satirical comments on the foibles of humanity, mixed into his stories like “two pints of bald-face in a quart flask on a hard trotting boss,” will be consid¬ ered in a separate section. in Characters appear in Harris’s yarns on two levels: first, those who are in the framework; and, secondly, those who are in the yarn told by Sut. The connection between the two groups is main¬ tained by Sut; George (Harris) never enters the world of fantasy as a character (except in “Eaves-dropping a Lodge of Free Masons”). The framework characters help Sut get the yarn under way, relieve the monotony of the monologue, underline the incongruity, and then help bring the setting back from the world of fantasy to the world of realism. George, in particular, helps make this “queer looking, long-legged, short-bodied, small-headed, white- haired, hog-eyed, funny sort of a genius,” appropriate for the strange Of course other humorists in the region used a continuing comic character as, for example, Johnson J. Hoop)er’s Simon Suggs. He, however, does not use the “framework” technique. American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. xiii. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 75 tales he is going to relate. Here is how George qualifies Sut to tell his famous shirt story: “Why, Sut, what’s wrong now? You look sick.” “Heaps wrong, durn my skin—no my haslets—e£ I hain’t mos’ ded, an’ my looks don’t lie when they hints that I’se sick. I is sick—I’se skin’d.” “Who skinned you—old Bullen?” “No, boss, a durnder fool nor Bullen did hit; I jis skin’d myself.” “What in the name of common sense did you do it for?” “Didn’t du hit in the name ove common sense; did hit in the name, an’ wif the sperit ove plum natral born durn fool.”^® When the yarn is under way Sut operates in situations on three levels, each of which demands a different type of character: first, in situations dealing with his Dad’s world of “fooldom” (from which Sut stems) in which Sut helps his Dad to merited punishment; secondly, situations in which Sut gets out of his “nat’ral born fool” occupation and thereby comes to grief; and, third, situations in which “Sut’s nat’ral born durn’d fool” endowments are pitted against supposedly respectable and intelligent members of society who are in reality hypocrites and whose intelligence cannot save them from his devastating punishment. “Sut Lovingood’s Daddy ‘Acting Horse,’ ” as it appeared in the Spirit, November 4, 1854, the first of the Sut yarns, deals with Dad’s world of “fooldom” and gives to Sut the following significant kinship: Well, thar we was—Dad an’ me (counting on his fingers)—Dad, and me, and Sail, an’ Jake (Fool Jake we called him fur short), an’ Jonass, an’ Phineass, and me, and Callime Jane, and Sharlotteean, an’ Simeon Saul, an’ Cashus Henry Clay, an’ Noah Dan Webster, an’ me, and the twin gals, an’ Cathrine the Second, and Cleopatry Antony, an’ Jane Lind, and Tom Bullion, an’ the baby, an’ the prospect, an’ mam herself. . . . Obviously, this kinship, presided over by Dad, the “king fool” of them all, is tremendously important in the characterization of Sut. Significantly, Harris places this sketch first in the Yarns and then ends the book with another story of the same sort, “Dad’s Dog School,” in which Sut insists that it 43 Yarns, p. 29. 76 Donald Day happen’d ur ruther tuck place apupus, in our famerly; hit cudn’t a-been did by eny urther peopil on this yeath but us, fur hit am plum clarified dam fool, frum aind tu aind. Dad plan’d hit; an’ him, an’ mam, an’ Sail, an’ Bent, an’ me—oh, yas! an’ the pup.^* Sut describes his first effort to leave his proper sphere in “Sut’s New-Fangled Shirt.He errs by following the advice of Betts Carr, who is “the cussedes’ oman” he ever saw “fur jaw, breedin, an’ pride.” She persuades Sut to put on a “pasted” shirt and in getting out of it, after he has perspired and the shirt has dried, Sut loses a goodly portion of his skin. He swears “never again,” but in “Blown up with Soda”^® George says: Sut’s hide is healed—the wounds received in his sudden separation from his new shirt have ceased to pain, and, true to his instincts, or rather “a famerly dispersition,” as he calls it, he “pitches in,” and gets awfully blown up by a wild mountain girl. Obviously, the supporting characters in the first two types of yarns are those suitable for bringing about a merited punishment for Sut’s Dad or for Sut. In the third type the chief character (always a hypocrite) is to be punished and is given characteristics which merit that punishment. These characters are usually intro¬ duced by Sut in thumbnail descriptions such as that in which Par¬ son Bullen is designated a “durnd infunel, hiperkritikal, pot-bellied, scaley-hided, whisky-wastin, stinkin ole groun’-hog” who preaches like this: He tole ’em how the ole Hell-sarpints wud sarve em if they didn’t repent; how cold they’d crawl over that nakid bodys, an’ how like ontu pitch they’d stick tu ’em es they crawled; how they’d rap thar tails roun’ thar naiks chokin dost, poke thar tungs up thar noses, an’ hiss intu thar years. This wer the way they wer tu sarve the men folks. Then he turned ontu the wimmen: tole ’em how they’d quile intu thar buzzims, an’ how they wild crawl down onder thar frock-strings, no odds how tite they tied ’em, an’ how sum ove the oldes’ an’ wus ones wud crawl up thar laigs, an’ travil onder thar garters, no odds how tight they tied ’em, an’ when the two armys ove Hell-sarpints met, then. . . Mrs. Yardley is put “ahine a par ove shiney specks,” and Sut warns that such a woman “am dang’rus in the extreme” because she is “ yarns, p. 277. Ibid,, p. 29. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., pp. 52-53. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 77 “a great noticer ove littil things, that nobody else ever seed” such as “that yaller slut ove a hen, a-flinging straw over her shoulder” of which she promises: I’ll disapint her see ef I don’t; I’ll put a punkin in her nes’, an’ a feather in her nose. . . . An’ sakes ahve, jis’ look at that ole sow; she’s a-gwine in a fas’ trot, wif her emty bag a-floppin agin her sides. . . . what a long yearnis grunt she gin; hit cum from way back ove her kidneys. . . . sich kerryin on means no good.^® As a usual thing Sut works alone in his punitive endeavors. However, at times, he has assistants. Bake Boyd is a good helper because “thar wur durn’d little weevil in his wheat, mity small chance ove warter in his whisky, and not a drap ove streakid blood in his veins.” But it is Wirt Staples, directly out of the rip-roaring frontier tradition, who is the best. Wirt brags: I’s jis’ a mossel ove the bes’ man what ever laid a shadder ontu this dirt. Hit wilts grass, my breff pizens skeeters, my yell breaks winders, an’ my tromp gits yeathquakes. . . . An 7 htn spit a blister ontu a washpot ontil the flies blow hit.*^ And Wirt is just about that good. Sut says that if the state fair will begin to give prizes for men, as it does for jackasses, he will enter Wirt and win the prize every time. In Sut’s fantastic world animals assume human characteristics. Squire Haney’s horse wer ove a pius turn ove mine, ur ole Haney wudn’t a keep him a day. Nobody ever see him kick, gallop, jump a fence, smell uther bosses, ur chaw a bridil. He wer never hearn squeal, belch, ur make eny on- sightly soun.®® Ole Mill’s bull, with “fat, an’ stumpy, an’ cross-grained Old Burns” clutching tight to his back and with his teeth clamped onto his tail, reasons like this: Ole Mills [the bull] dident begin tu onderstan’ what wer atop ove ’im; hit were sumthing sartin what hed bof claws an’ teeth, an’— painter, flash’d ontu his mine wif all the force the bill holt ontu his tail cud give hit. Dredful, dredful, tho’t! His pluck wilted, an’ he jis’ turn’d tail tu the battil groun, an’ went aimin fur North Caliney. . . ** Ibid., pp. 135-136. ** Ibid., p. 250. ^'‘Ibid., p. 288. Ibid., p. 103. 78 Donald Day These few examples give a hint as to the dazzling array of char¬ acters found in Harris’s yarns. As has been shown, they operate in two worlds, one quiet and peaceful and the other teeming with action. Certainly, Harris faces a difficult problem in making the peaceful setting of the framework blend with one for his fantastic world so that his stories will not bog down in descriptions. He does this with such consummate artistry that his settings hardly seem to exist. The necessary accompaniments for Sut’s telling a story consist of a flask well filled with whiskey, a place to lie flat in the shade, or a log to sit on. The framework setting, then, may be “among a crowd of mountaineers” at “Pat Nash’s grocery” or “beside a cool spring.” Often the story is told to a group gathered around a campfire or while George is waiting for his “fool chain kerriers.” The setting for Sut’s oral tale is seldom more complicated. Harris’s criterion seems to have been to keep the setting down to an absolute minimum. With his uncanny facility for noting de¬ tails, he could have described elaborate and minute settings, and in some of his stories (particularly “Bill Ainsworth’s Quarter Race”) he does so. He seems to have operated on a formula: the more fantastic the tale, the simpler the setting. For example, here is the setting for “Mrs. Yardley’s Quilting”: The morning cum, still, saft, sunshiney; cocks crowin, hens singin, birds chirpin, tuckeys gobblin—jis’ the day tu sun quilts, kick, kiss, squeal, an’ make love. All the plow-lines, an’ clothes-lines war straiched tu every post an’ tree. Quilts purvailed. Durn my gizzard ef two acres roun that ar house warn’t jis’ one solid quilt, all a-sunnin, an’ tu be seed. They dazzled the eyes, skeered the bosses, gin wimin the heart-burn, an perdominated. . . Note how little of this passage is actual setting and how much of it performs other functions. It is particularly important to note that these quilts are to be combined later with action to create a situation around which the story is built. Sut, operating behind them as a screen, prepares for a general “momoxing” of things by fixing a horse so he can break loose, then he Ibid., pp. 139-140. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 79 tore off a palin frum the fence, an’ tuck hit in bof hans, an’ arter raisin hit ’way up yander. . . . fotch hit down. . .. an’ hit acksidentally happen’d tu hit Wall-eye, ’bout nine inches ahead ove the root of his tail.®® The resulting situation must be read about to be appreciated. In other cases Sut uses situation merely for the humor which emerges from its incongruities. Old Burns, after an “onspeakabl bull ride,” is thrown by the bull, his saddle gets caught on a limb, and Old Burns’s feet, still in the stirrups, suspend him in midair so that he foun his sef hung up by the heels like outer a ded hog, an two bulls a fitin round im, his voice wer changed mitely, fur his guts (and he hed a few ove em) bore down towards his hed, and hit sounded like he wur down in a well, ur hed a locust in his throat. He bemoaned his condishun powful, cussed ... an talked orfull about shot guns, clubs, grave yards, and the brimstone works onder the kere ove the devil. I tell yu hit were tremenjus, cumin frum a man ove family hung up by the heels tu a tree, whar two dredful ole bulls wer at war. Wun got a running go onter tuther an backed him again Ole Burns at the rate ove pidgin flying, an toted the ole feller way out tu wun side, es fur as the ropes let em; an tu make it wus, he’d grabbed a deth holt onto a tail, and hilt es long es he cud stan hit fur his ankils. Then he let go and swung—tick, tick, like ontu a durnd ole clock what wur behine time an tryin tu ketch up. . . These examples indicate quite clearly that it is situation, rather than setting, which enlivens Suts world of fantasy. With a representative picture of character, setting, and situation, both in the framework and in Sut’s world, in mind, the reader can see what an enormous responsibility and load language must carry, if these are adequately translated to the reader. In addition, his language must make up for gestures and vocal intonation with which the oral tale was enlivened. Harris is a master of vivid metaphors. Lizzards running up Old Bullen’s legs make a noise “like squirrels a-climbing a shell- bark hickory”; Sut’s mam gets hostile and soaks “hickory ile intu” his back “ontil hit” greases his “shut buzzum”; and cursing runs out of an old Dutchman “in a solid sluice as thick es a hoe handil.” The metaphors are reinforced by a vigorous use of verbs. When Ibid., p. 143. '‘Nashville Union and American, April 22, 1858. 8 o Donald Day mam tangles with Mis’ Simmons, they “fit, an’ they font, they scratch’d, an’ they claw’d, they grab’d, and they snatch’d, they knock’d, an’ they hit, they grunted, an’ they groaned. . . As important as the vivid metaphors is the painstaking use of detail. When Sut describes a situation, he makes the whole come to life by a few details. See how this very complex situation un¬ folds its tremendous activity in a few words: A monstrous cloud ove dust, like a harykane hed cum along, hid all the bosses; an away abuv hit yu cud see bosses tails an ends ove fence rales a flyin about, an now and then a par ove brite hind shoes wud flash in the sun like two sparks, an away a head wur the baskit [in Old Burns’s hand on top of a run-away bull], circklin roun’ an about at random. A heap of brayin, sum nickerin, the bellerin ove the bull, clatterin ove runnin hoofs, an a monstrous rushin soun made up the nize.®® Sut also uses details to bring out more subtle points. When he wants to picture his unrest in the presence of Sicily Burns he says: My toes felt like I wer in a warm krick wif minners a-nibbhn at em; a cole streak wer a racin up an’ down my back like a lizzard wif a tucky hen arter ’im; my bans tuck the ager, an’ my hart felt hot an onsatisfied like. . . .®« Thus language is used by Harris to fuse the other elements into a whole and bring them to life, and is itself made exactly appropri¬ ate to the character or situation, whether it be in the framework or in Sut’s world of fantasy. Harris literally seems to breathe life and gestures and intonations and experience into cold words so that they blend with character and situation—so that they become men in action. But he is not content to stop there. After his matter is deftly spun into yarn, then wound into a ball of the correct size (or as Sut says, “I ain’t like ole Glabbergab; when I’se spoke off what I knows, I stops talking”), he then sews it into a more com¬ pact and durable sphere by his satires on the foibles of mankind. IV In his earlier writings Harris is content to amuse. The gauge for “The Knob Dance” is “fun” which is appropriate to “a regular bilt frolick in the Nobs of ‘Old Knox.’” Although amusement “Nashville Union and American, April i6, 1858. Yams, p. 80. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 8 i continues to be the primary purpose in his yarns, beginning with “Sut Lovengood’s Daddy ‘Acting Horse,’ ” he adds lusty licks at the foibles of mankind. In order to do this without freighting his stories with moral preachment, he gives to Sut’s reasoning processes this characteristic: Well, I thinks peopil’s brains what hev souls, am like ontu a chain made outen gristil, forkid at wun aind; wun fork goes tu the eyes, an’ tuther tu the years, an’ tuther aind am welded tu the marrer in the backbone, an’ hit works sorter so. Thar stans a hoss. Well, the eyes ketches his shape, jis’ a shape, an’ gins that idear tu the fust link ove the chain. He nickers, an’ the years gins that tu tother fork ove the chain, a soun, nuffin but a soun. Well, the two ruff idears start along the chain, an’ every link is smarter nur the wun ahine hit, an’ dergests em sorter like a paunch dus co’n, ur mash’d feed, an’ by the time they gits tu the back-bone, hit am a hoss an’ yu \nows hit. Now, in my case, there’s a hook in the chain, an hits mos’ ove the time onhook’d, an’ then my idears stop thar half made. Rite thar’s whar dad failed in his ’speriments; puttin in that durn’d fool hook’s what made me a natral born fool. The breed wer bad to, on dad’s side; they all run tu durn’d fools an’ laigs powerful strong.®^ This is not a very abstruse explanation for a psychologist, but is a highly appropriate way to have Sut characterize himself. With this random kind of “hooking” provided for, Harris can “hook” that chain in Sut only when it makes the satire of a desired sort possible. Furthermore, it provides for a strange or unusual moral kind of “hooking.” A “morril an’ sensibil way” of running a quilting for Sut—one that is “good fur free drinking, good fur free eating, good fur free hugging, good fur free dancing, good fur free fiting, an’ goodest uv all fur poperlating a country fas’ ”—differs from the ideas of “the ole mammys.” Whiskey plays an important part in Sut’s world. This “barlm of life” is a sort of gateway, an approach, to the good things in life and it is itself the best thing in life: it is not to be enjoyed by those who damn other amusements. With this as a criterion for hypocrisy, the “Hardshell” in “Bart Davis’s Dance” who lets his “shovel-shaped onder lip” drop outward “like ontu the fallin door ove a stone coal stove” and upsets a gourd of whiskey “inside ove his teef” so that the liquid goes down his throat “like a snake travelin thru a wet Ibid., pp. 210-211. 82 Donald Day sassige gut,” is welcome. But when he puritanically tries to inter¬ fere with the “innercent mucement” of dancing which follows, he is appropriately punished.®® This indicates Harris’s chief hatred: hypocrites. His satires, made effective by Sut’s punishment, fall on many classes: women, circuit riders, lawyers, sheriffs, dandies, politicians, temperance workers, tavern “perpryiters,” professors, pedigree hunt¬ ers, and many other odious specimens of humanity. But it is at women and circuit riders—two groups which he particularly feels should not be hypocrites—that he aims his most frequent and best directed satires. A few examples of satires at these two groups will indicate his method. Deceitful women are satirized in the person of Sicily Burns.®® Delicacy is not the proper attribute of a woman, for as Sut snorts: “There never was a durnder humbug on earth than it is, except the delicates themselves, an’ their appurtinances. Oh! its jist so.”®® But a strong-minded woman is worse. If such a woman gets after a man, Sut advises: . . . jist you fight her like she wore whiskers or run like hell, ef you dont, ef she dont turn you inter a kidney worm’d hog what cant raise bristiles in less nor a month, you are more or less ove a man than I takes you to be. Ove all the varmints I ever seed I’s feardest of them.®^ Old Bullen is Sut’s particular hate among the many circuit riders whom he meets. The chief “pint” of this worthy is “durn’d fust rate, three bladed, dubbil barril’d, warter-proof, hypockracy, an’ a never tirein appertite fur bald-face.” He not only drinks whiskey, which he shouldn’t, but also makes and sells whiskey, of which Sut says: ... he puts in tan ooze . . . an’ when that aint handy, he uses the red warter outen a pon’ jis’ below his barn; makes a pow’ful natral color, but don’t help the taste much. Then he correcks that wif red pepper; hits an orful mixtry, that whisky ole Bullen makes. . . Balanced against this odious group in Sut’s fantastic world is a group of “right folks.” For instance, Sut has a definite use for Ibid., pp. 181-188. Ibid., pp. 75-79. *® Chattanooga Daily American Union, Nov. 28, 1867. “^Nashville Union and American, June 30, 1858. Yarns, p. 86. The Humorous Works of George W. Harris 83 women. He thinks that “men folks wur made jist to drink, eat, and stay awake in the early part of the night,” and that the women are made “tu cook the vittils, mix the liquor, and help the men tu du the staying awake.” Here is his selection for a “helper”: But then, George, gals an’ ole maids haint the things tu fool time away on. Hits widders, by golly, what am the rale sensibil, steady-going, never-skeering, never-kicking, vvillin, sperrited, smoof pacers. . , . They hes all ben tu Jamakey an’ larnt how sugar’s made, an’ knows how tu sweeten wif hit; an’, by golly, they is always ready tu use hit. . . . Nex tu good sperrits, an’ my laigs, I like a twenty-five year ole widder, wif roun ankils, an’ bright eyes, honestly an’ squarly lookin intu yurn, an’ saying ... I hes been thar; yu know hit ef yu hes eny sense, an’ thar’s no use in eny humbug, ole feller—cum ahead! Widders am a speshul means, George, fur ripening green men, killin off weak ones, an’ making ’ternally happy the soun ones.®^ In the final analysis, then, Harris writes humor which is “strik¬ ingly different” and which reaches “the highest level of achieve¬ ment before Mark Twain” simply because he is able to take the same material and the same forms and to do more with them than the other humorists of the Old Southwest. After the war, when life which he has satirized becomes life which he hates and blasts, in one nostalgic effort he writes a sketch about the “good old days” with only the subtlest ironies replacing his usual satire. This sketch, “Bill Ainsworth’s Quarter Race,”®^ gathers together the ex¬ cellences of Harris, both in his selection of material and use of technique, mellows and softens his robustness without the loss of any of his strength, and, perhaps, rests at a peak of attainment in American humor. Ibid., pp. 141-142. ‘‘Knoxville Press and Messenger, June 4, 1868. Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables Louise Dauner T he fables of Joel chandler Harris are usually inconspicu¬ ously paged among other representatives of Southern local- color literature; yet a little more than cursory examination vv^ill note in them an imaginative and dramatic vitality beside which other Southern local-color specimens wear the faded gentility of museum pieces. I should like to suggest here that their superiority lies not merely in the appeal of primitive fantasy, but also in both a mythic and a comic implication, as these record dimly apprehended but elemental human recognitions. The point may be rather of contemporary interest, because the last decade or so has witnessed the appropriation both of fairy tales and of a kind of native fabliau for the most popular modern art medium, the motion picture, where such material appears as the animated cartoons (it is not accidental that these are comics) and as such elaborate fantasy as the creations of Walt Disney. The psy¬ chological patterns by which a complex twentieth century finds amusement and escape in these ingenious depictions of brief, usually violent, escapades drawn from the worlds of the animal and the child may throw light upon the quality of the Uncle Remus fables, the latest, incidentally, to be accorded production. For if the child is indeed father to the man, it is equally probable that in the very naivete of this material lies an unsuspected profundity, even border¬ ing upon the metaphysical. The accidental success of the fables is a textbook platitude—how, in 1879, in the extemporizing spirit engendered by an emergency in the columns of the Atlanta Constitution, Harris wrote a little tale which was to become the first in a unique series. The simple story evoked such enthusiasm that, between 1880 and 1906, the series grew into six books, all centered about the mythopoeic character of a wise, lovable old Negro named Uncle Remus, who was a synthesis of four Negroes whom Harris had known when, a shy boy, he had found his early companionship, not among the members of his own Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 85 race in the luxuriant ante-bellum South, but rather in the planta¬ tion cabins of the slaves. It is not surprising that a book-loving, imaginative boy should have absorbed avidly the naive delights of these many-faceted tales of his childhood; nor should their perennial popularity surprise us. For the stories that buried themselves in the boy’s memory, to be resurrected years later, tales indigenous from South Carolina to Florida, are as variously derived as from the Roman de Renart, the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Basque legends, Bernoni’s Venetian stories, Indian myths of both North and South America, and myths of Egypt and the Orient.^ Thus they transcend race and locality. They suggest both the suprarational and the subrational. They limn the always fascinating world of the magical, and as Yeats says of magic itself, they embody “the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed.” They evoke the mystical shifting borders of race-mind and race-memory, through their elo¬ quent symbols of animals, and of primitive human beings still at the level where mankind can communicate with the animals, can take to itself and interpret the spirit and life of the woods, the stream, and the meadow. Thus, though they are invariably found in the children’s section of our libraries, the Uncle Remus tales are just as much, and no more, children’s tales than the fables of Aesop, the adventures of a bewildered Alice, or the tragicomic truths of Mother Goose. Edwin Arlington Robinson once remarked of the latter, “They are likely to contain some of the most profound and terrible thoughts that have ever shaken the soul of man. I am not sure that the most tragical poetry in the world is not in Mother Goose.” We have only to recall, for instance, the rhyme about that unfortunate old woman who fell asleep one day by the roadside and who, upon waking to find herself with her hair cut off and wearing clothes not her own, cried, “Oh, dearie me. This is none of I,” to suspect in the simple reflection terrifying psychological depths and the pain of the divided or lost identity—implications which seem perfectly apparent to the modern interpreter. Such may well be true of these Negro folk tales; and thus their perennial fascination for us; for the more sophisticated the culture, the more insights into the subliminal wells ^ T. F. Crane, "Plantation Folk-Lore,” Popular Science Monthly, XVIII, 824-833 (April, 1881). 86 Louise Dauner of our racial and individual selves it may gain through the medium of the primitive, which is so closely allied to the symbolic and the mythic. Our interest here in the Uncle Remus tales is not then in the correlations or variations of these fables according to their localities; nor, again, is it in their local-color characteristics, as Uncle Remus himself embodies the idealized ante-bellum Southern Negro; nor yet as he becomes the mouthpiece for the orthodox reconstruction views of the sunny-tempered Harris, an editorial writer, we remem¬ ber, hence bound to comment upon aspects of the distressed period of the postwar Southern scene.^ Rather, we are concerned with detecting some mythic properties in the stories; and with exploring some psychological sources of a humor which is so profoundly simple that it has the suggestive power of the subconscious itself. It is often a question whether the creator is fully aware of all the overtones of his creation, as it is a question whether the creators of our animated animal comics, for instance, are fully aware of the nature of the elements devised to make us laugh. Often we do laugh; but often it is a curious laughter based on tensions which are themselves anything but the stuff of comedy. For almost in¬ variably in these animated cartoons, the comic situation arises out of the frenzied flight of a small and helpless creature from a huge, grotesquely menacing pursuer; and the patterns of action suggest vividly the logical illogicalities of the dream of terror; so that the emotion engendered is not that of the mere ridiculous or grotesque so much as, basically, a kind of panic—a reassertion of a subcon¬ scious, fundamental fear which once acted for our survival, and which now assumes the guise of comedy in proportion to our ability consciously to rationalize and to be amused by that elemental emo¬ tion. We identify ourselves for the nonce whh the small animal being pursued, and we recognize our essential kinship to the world of the animal. At the same moment, as reasoning human beings, we stand apart from and above the animal world. It is perhaps this simultaneous double focus—our sense of both identification and spectatorship—which constitutes for us the comic discrepancy. Thus our animal heroes and villains appear with both factual and sym- ‘ See John Stafford, "Patterns of Meaning in Nights uhth Uncle Remus," American Literature, XVIII, 89-108 (May, 1946), an illuminating discussion of the fables as “literary strategy.” Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 87 bolic implications; and it is largely the latter which may provide the essential impulse for our laughter. Similarly, we may question whether Harris himself knew exactly what—or all—that he was doing, beyond the creation of a series of amusing tales whose primary motive was the entertainment of chil¬ dren—of whatever age. He himself disclaimed any pretensions to being a “literary man.” Once he commented, “I have no literary training and know nothing at all of what is termed literary art. I have had no opportunity to nourish any serious literary ambitions, and the probability is that if such an opportunity had presented itself, I would have refused to take advantage of it.”^ He referred to himself as a “cornfield journalist.” Nor, according to another statement, were the Uncle Remus legends written with an eye to their importance as folklore stories. “1 had no more conception of that than the man in the moon. The first one was written out almost by accident, and as a study in dialect.”^ Later, Harris did admit to verifying each new story, and to se¬ lecting, out of many versions, the one most characteristic of the Negro. But the fables are more comprehensive than merely Negro “documents.” Ray Stannard Baker calls them “the slow fruitage of the wonder, the humor, and the pathos of a race of primitive story-tellers. They were instinct with those primal passions which appeal to human nature, savage and civilized, the world over.”^ He adds that once Harris showed him sixteen introductions to a single story. This does not then seem like a wholly unsclfconscious art; nor is it merely the retelling of slave stories, but an alteration, an adaptation, a polishing and sharpening, until the products differ from pure folk tales. Uncle Remus is not the typical product of slavery: he is a poet and philosopher, if a primitive one. Nevertheless, it is still probably true that, with all of the effort that Harris expended upon the tales—he wanted only the narra¬ tives, preferring to concoct the settings himself—and with all of their inimitable ability to convey the tones and rhythms of the spoken word, their creation of situation, of gesture, of the fire-lit * “How Joel Chandler Harris Came to Write the Uncle Remus Stories,” Current Litera¬ ture, XLV, 164 (Aug., 1908). * “The ‘Accidental’ Genius of Joel Chandler Harris,” Current Opinion, LXV, 325 (Nov., 1918). * “How Joel Chandler Harris Came to Write the Uncle Remus Stories,” p. 164. 88 Louise Dauner cabin setting, of the eager audience, and of the adroit, dramatic use of pause and irrelevance, he was still less aware of their pro¬ fundities than a later period, with its deeper psychological knowl¬ edge and sharper sense of myth may be. Mark Twain, for one, was sure that Harris did know what he was doing. He wrote to Harris, in i88i, “The stories are only alligator-pears—one eats them merely for the sake of the dressing.”® It is exactly the “dressing,” the essential mythic and comic aspects of the fables, which constitutes a contemporary interest. Obviously the fables, like the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, pre¬ sent a human world in terms of an animal world. As such it is completely primitive because it is, as yet, a morally undefined world. With regard to its uncomplicated “ethic” Harris once said, “It is not virtue that triumphs here, but helplessness; it is not malice, but mischievousness.”^ Assuredly, our sympathies are on the side of helplessness, in the figure of Brer Rabbit, who, lacking brawn, must use brains, and who exists in a ruthless, predatory world where brawn must continually be outwitted. And it is also true that mischievousness rather than malice does often motivate his inde¬ fatigable prank-playing, which is why we never really resent him. He is both cute and acute. He has a complete aplomb, a never- failing ingenuity, even when he lies palpitating in the clutches of a momentarily imminent death. He is an animal Til Eulenspiegel. But even Til came to a summarizing rope, one day; and if Brer Rabbit never gets summarized, quite, there are occasions when we feel that he deserves it—when malice rather than mischief underlies his actions. When a guiltless Possum dies in the ordeal by fire suggested by Brer Rabbit for the theft of the butter which Brer Rabbit himself had stolen, we echo the Boy’s instinctive protest. It is exactly these instances, those which lie beyond (or below) the realm of mere mischief, which suggest to us a deeper import in the fables; for it is here that an elementary sense of moral conflict ap¬ pears, with the emergence of an elementary sense of ethics. And it is here that we become aware of mythic undertones. Myth may be partially defined as the symbolical representation of the abstract, undefined wisdoms of an inarticulate mankind. It arises out of the collective subconscious, and it contains both indi- * E. C. Parsons, “Joel Chandler Harris and Negro Folk-Lore,” Dial, LXVI, 492-493 (May, 1919). ’’ Crane, “Plantation Folklore," p. 825. Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 89 vidual and universal implications. Thoreau has called myth “an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain.” And he adds: This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth ... is the most impressive proof of a common humanity. ... To some extent mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. . . . In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men as Aurora the sun’s rays.® Now what “ancient history and biography,” what “unconscious thoughts and dreams of men” may lie concealed in the “hiero¬ glyphics” of the Uncle Remus fables.? Let us first consider Brer Rabbit, that perennial, ingenious mischief-maker. In African folk¬ lore generally, the Rabbit is the cleverest, the mightiest, of all the animals.^ He is the Wonder-Worker, figuring particularly in the Bantu tales of the Hare and the Jackal. Since the bulk of the Negroes in the Southern American states are descended from Bantu¬ speaking tribes,^® Brer Rabbit, as transmitted by Uncle Remus, re¬ tains his “supernatural” status. As seen here, he is also a “degeneration” of the Great Hare, Manabozho, of the Algonquian Indians of Eastern North America, one of the most important figures in Indian myth. It has been suggested that he derives his mythic importance from several fac¬ tors: his prolific reproductiveness, his usefulness for food, his speed, and his seasonal change of coat, which gave him a reputation as a magician. In one line of development he becomes the great Demi¬ urge, the life-spirit, the benefactor of mankind; in another he be¬ comes the vain Trickster of the animal tales. As the combined Hero, Transformer, and Trickster, the Hare is a great personage in North American mythology. Some tribes, however, accord him ® Henry D. Thoreau, A Wee\ on the Concord and 'Merrimac\ Rivers (New York: Hurst & Company, n.d.), pp. 52-53. “ But in the folklore of the Gold Coast the rabbit role is taken by the spider {anansi), and on the Slave Coast, by the tortoise (atvon); and in West Africa the hare rather takes the place of the fox, usually being outwitted by both spider and tortoise (A. B. Ellis, "Evolution in Folklore,” Popular Science Monthly, XLVIII, 93, Nov., 1895). H. B. Alexander, The Mythology of All Races (Boston, 1916), VII, 282-283. 90 Louise Dauner in their myths predominantly a creative, heroic character while others, in folk tales, record (as does Uncle Remus) his discreditable adventures. Viewed still more abstractly, he appears as a symbol for some power or efficiency in the universe which is so obvious to the primi¬ tive mind that, though it must be imaged rather than philosophi¬ cally defined, it must still be taken into account in any effort to suggest a universal scheme. Thus, metaphysically. Brer Rabbit, as portrayed in the Uncle Remus fables, and in his subversion of the normal procedures of life (of the other animals) is the unpredict¬ able, the eternal trickster, the Thwarter. And here again we see the primitive imagination in the very act of asserting itself; The irrational twists of circumstance (symbolized by Brer Rabbit) are “rationalized” in the fact that Brer Rabbit is generally given a motive for his acts. He may embark upon his prank innocently enough, in the impulse of mere curiosity, or of a simple practical joke. But most often he has previously suffered injury or humilia¬ tion at the hands of his victim; he has then no rest until he has exe¬ cuted some retaliation. Whatever his motive, there is no escape from him, as there is no escape from the Irrational in human life. Thus Brer Rabbit is, by extension, the rationalized Irrational; and, aesthetically, he is Irony. There is an undramatic realism in the fact that Brer Rabbit con¬ sistently triumphs over the other animals. He is simply “smarter” than his opponents, who are always strangely gullible, and who never learn from sad experience any more than human beings apparently learn. Such realism precludes any sentimentality. When catastrophes occur, they are outside the realm of the tragic; merely recognized as inevitable in a simplified existence where life is con¬ tinual hazard, where bad luck hovers daily in the shadow of the hawk’s wing, where death follows the hawk’s swift plunge, and where both life and death must be fatalistically accepted. Occasionally the other animals band together in an effort to controvert Brer Rabbit’s unholy ingenuities. But they almost never succeed: “He mos’ allers come out on top,” says Uncle Remus with a chuckle. For Brer Rabbit, the personified Irrational, is always Ibid., X, 297-299. The “mythic” acts include: the setting in order of the first shapeless world and the conquest of its monstrous beings; the theft of fire, the sun, or daylight; the restoration of the world after the flood; the creation of mankind and the institution of the arts of life. Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 91 waiting for his chance to “get even.” Once Mr. Lion had driven him from the drinking stream. Until the day when Brer Rabbit ties Mr. Lion to a tree, pretending anxiety over the latter’s safety in an impending (but wholly imaginary) hurricane, Brer Rabbit has been “huntin’ a chance fer to ketch up wid ’im.” And so it goes with all who have pursued him, frightened him, or caught him— Brer Fox, Brer Bear, Brer Wolf, Brer Hawk—even Mr. Man. They all come somehow to grief, and Brer Rabbit continues to maintain the uneasy respect of the community. But irony or malice or mischief always conceals itself beneath the casual. Here life-and-death animosities wear the guise of social amiability—like the good-humored badinage of a group of Negroes through which catastrophe may slice in the unpremeditated stroke of a razor blade. Brer Rabbit meets Brer Wolf on the road one day. If he is frightened, he conceals it beneath a genial inquiry of How are all Brer Wolf’s folks.'' But Brer Rabbit has previously fleeced Wolf out of some beef, on the pretext of its being poisoned meat, and now a revengeful Wolf is after meat of a different kind. At the right moment politeness accedes to the demands of nature, and in a flash Rabbit is fleeing for his life. An important recognition with regard to the fables is that they exist on different mythic and comic levels, determined by the nature and the degree of the mischief perpetrated by Brer Rabbit. The dramatic intensity deepens when mischief becomes malice. When Brer Rabbit, as practical joker, goes fishing with Brer Wolf, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear—a spectacle staged for the amusement of one Miss Meadows and “de gals”—we have simple mischief expressed in slapstick comedy. Brer Rabbit admits with a wink that he is going to fish for “suckers.” With studied gestures he drops his pole, stares into the water, scratches his head, and, having attracted general attention, announces that there can be no fishing that day, for the moon has dropped into the pond. Unless it is seined out, says he, they may as well all go home. Brer Terrapin, who is often in cahoots with Brer Rabbit, suggests that those who “fetch out” the moon will, according to hearsay, likewise fetch out a pot of money. Enthusiastically Brer Wolf, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear try to seine out the moon; but reaching a spot in the pond where the bottom shelves off, they are ingloriously, and to the general amuse¬ ment, ducked. Brer Rabbit soothes them with the comment, “I 92 Louise Dauner hear talk dat de moon’ll bite at a hook ef you take fools fer bait.” This is pure shenanigan, with no more serious motive than that of the discomfiture produced by the practical joke. But on the next level, injury or death may follow the mischief-making. In this group are many of the fables centering about Brer Rabbit and another animal who is tricked into substituting himself for the Rabbit, previously caught and about to be killed for his misdeeds. When Brer Rabbit is caught by Mr. Man and hung up in a bag upon a limb to await final disposition. Brer Possum, passing by, inquires what he is doing in the bag. Brer Rabbit replies that he is listening to the singing in the clouds, which is so beautiful, as he describes it, that Brer Possum begs to be allowed to listen, too. He releases Brer Rabbit, gets into the bag himself, and later is severely beaten by Mr. Man. A third level presents an even more ruthless world. Here we have not merely normal hazard or witty gulling, nor the egoism and brutality of retaliation for past injury, but the repulsive faces of deliberate murder and cannibalism. Brer Rabbit, out visiting the neighbors one day, enters Brer Wolfs house. He finds only old Granny Wolf, crippled, blind, and half deaf, sitting by the fire. Brer Rabbit makes himself comfortable by the fire, over which hangs a pot of boiling water. By and by he tells her that he, too, is crippled and getting bliad, and that she must boil him in the water. He then drops a chunk of wood into the pot, causing a per¬ ceptible splash, and a little later reports that he is feeling better. At this. Granny Wolf begs him to put her into the pot. He does so, and boils her to death. Then, not yet satisfied, he disposes of her bones, leaving her meat in the pot, and, disguised in her frock and cap, sits down to await the return of Brer Wolf and his family. When they arrive. Brer Rabbit invites them to dinner. After Brer Wolf has consumed a large portion of his mother, the children discover the terrible facts. In fury. Brer Wolf pursues Brer Rabbit until the latter, exhausted, takes refuge under a leaning tree, from which he escapes only through trickery. There is a macabre, ghoulish quality in this episode which shocks the Boy. “I didn’t think Brer Rabbit would burn anybody to death in a pot of boiling water,” he remonstrates. But Uncle Remus merely laughs and remarks metaphorically, “Dat was endurin’ er de dog days. Der er mighty worn times, dem ar dog days is.” Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fahles 93 We may interpret the “dog days” as an era when the crudities of existence are most apt to produce an expression of sheer savage, uninhibited nature. There is an earliest time-world suggested here. And so perhaps we may say that the levels of experience presented here suggest stages in man’s emergence from the period of savagery and of a brutal physical existence. It is with relation to this evolu¬ tionary aspect that the roles of the Boy and of Uncle Remus become especially eloquent. Repeatedly the Boy voices our own shock and protest against brutality and injustice. His questions and comments impose upon the basic amorality a naive moral judgment. Thus, symbolically and mythically considered, the Boy is the emerging awareness of right—of appropriateness, pity, justice, order. Obviously, the Boy is eternal Child, asking his terribly simple, his often unanswerable, questions, as he first observes a fascinating natural world; and as, maturing, he encounters the implications of a moral universe in which evil, here present as trickery, injustice, revenge, and death, becomes manifest. Still a dweller in the world of light and imagina¬ tion and innocence, he must protest against these painful aspects of experience. So he emerges in a second mythic role: he is Child- Man in the first impulse of naming and ordering his worlds; he who, out of his as yet unspoiled intuition and instinctive moral sensitivity still untouched by formal tradition, must try to supply a moral system for a primitive universe which lacks such a system. In this effort he is somewhat bound to be disappointed. He can only “grow up,” and failure to find answers to his questions, and disillusionment are part of the process. It is partly through Uncle Remus that his maturing, or becoming “realistic,” occurs. Uncle Remus is the Wise Man of his tribe who, as the storyteller, articulates and hands down to the young the wisdoms of his varied worlds—varied, because Uncle Remus is the mediator between the world of man and the world of the animals. Thus he presents to the Boy a simplified realization of the complexity of experience; and thus he teaches the Boy some hard facts, voiced in the terms of the unsentimental life that he interprets. When Brer Rabbit, meeting Mr. Man with a wagon full of money, inquires why Mr. Man should have so much money and he have none (a primitive recognition of the Haves and the Have- Nots), the Boy asks, “Where did he get so much money.?” Matter- 94 Louise Dauner of-factly, Uncle Remus answers, “Bruisen round en peddlin’ ’bout. . . . But no marter bout dat, he got de money; en wen you sorter grow up so you kin knock ’round, it won’t be long fo some un’ll take . . . you off round de cornder en tell you dat ’taint make no difiunce whar de money come fum so de man got it. Dey won’t tell you dat in de meetin’-house, but dey’ll come mighty nigh it.” For Uncle Remus, the right is the fact—a kind of realism as ter¬ ribly effective sometimes as it is simple. If such wisdom is entirely practical, and usually based in self- interest, it is nevertheless the accumulated, well-conned knowledge which insures existence in such a tooth-and-nail world. And when self-interest becomes, as it usually does, a variety of ruthlessness, and the Boy, the gentle heir to a higher culture, protests, in mo¬ ments of shock. Uncle Remus merely counters, “In dis worril, lots er fokes is gotter suffer fer udder fokes sins. Looks like hit’s mighty on wrong; but hit’s des dat way.”^^ Within this code of behavior the crude antidote to such in¬ equality (which exists in the nature of things) is eat, or be eaten. Thus one must employ all possible competences—ingenuity, trick¬ ery, knowledge of one’s own and one’s opponent’s powers and weaknesses. Thus Brer Rabbit, constitutionally weak and helpless against superior strength, becomes the epitome of the subtler ca¬ pacities, and so survives in a hostile world as man himself survived in the world of the saber-toothed tiger. Time and again Brer Rabbit is caught; but each time he escapes against nearly impossible odds. And partly because he has the desperate courage of the weak, partly because of his humor—his brazen effrontery and ingenuity— we applaud the bobbing white tail that assures us he has escaped once more. For Brer Rabbit, that small figure posed against the terrific odds of a world of claw and fang and no pity, he who has only his quick brain and his swift legs, may also be, in effect, ridiculously weak man himself, in a time before mere life-preserving ingenuity has developed into moral intelligence. We are standing on the threshold of the dawn of morality; and the main characters in these fables may well suggest stages in the evolution of our moral intelligence. In the Boy we have gentle instinct, highly developed sensibility, posing in essence the questions J. C. Harris, “Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter,” Uncle Remus and His Songs and Sayings (New York, 1909), p. 86. Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 95 of the first philosophers. In Uncle Remus we have the symbol of the wisdom of Things-as-They-Are, a simple, realistic acceptance and humorous transmission of the strenuous conditions and para¬ doxes of life. In Brer Rabbit we have the inescapable irony of the Irrational, coupled with man’s own terribly humorous struggle for survival. And if Brer Rabbit thus emerges as an innately para¬ doxical figure, perhaps that is merely to suggest that in a purely natural world, it is man himself, operating at whatever level of intelligence, who is the supreme paradox. But there is no sermonizing here, and since these stories are on the surface merely entertainment. Brer Rabbit’s characteristic atti¬ tude is a humorous one. Thus in Brer Rabbit the mythic and the comic blend most fully; and this is entirely appropriate, for Irony and the Irrational are the stuff of comedy. There are, however, further sources for this humor. The ability to discover similarities in dissimilarities is the ability of the humor¬ ist as well as of the poet. Uncle Remus, as the purveyor of char¬ acter and situation, is, in effect, both poet and humorist (at a very simple level). Here the basic comic dissimilarity is in the world represented in the fables. As we already know, it is the animal world; but it is by implication also the human world. Says Uncle Remus, “De creeturs kyar’d on marters same ez fokes. Dey went inter fahmin’, en I speck ef de troof wuz ter come out, dey kep’ sto’, en had der camp-meetin’ times en der bobbycues w’en de wedder wuz ’greeable.”^® This essential comic contrast is further embodied in the constant spectacle of strength outwitted by weak¬ ness, of brute force outdone by mischievous ingenuity. The funda¬ mental disparity is perceived by the poetic-humorous imagination of Uncle Remus, and a playful judgment (another element of humor) is pronounced upon each situation which instances the disparity. Another element for humor lies in the very naivete of the ma¬ terial. The first and simplest art medium was that of drawing; and the simpler the literary material, the more readily it lends itself to illustration and paricularly to comic figuration.^^ Thus, consequent upon the above basic contrasts, and out of the very simplicity, “Mr. Rabbit Meets His Match Again,” ibid., p. 103. The 1909 edition of the fables contained 112 illustrations; and their cartoon possi¬ bilities have emerged not only through the motion picture, but in the comic sections of many current newspapers as well. 96 Louise Dauner emerges a second comic element, the quality of the graphic. There is a primitive, natural “cuteness” about the personalities of the ani¬ mals, which may lie for us in the attractiveness of any miniature being or world. (We have long ago seen the appropriateness of the miniature for satire.) There is also a kind of cuteness in the scenes and situations. For instance, in “Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit,” Brer Rabbit has tricked Miss Cow into butting a per¬ simmon tree to shake down some persimmons for him. Harder and harder Miss Cow butts, until one horn is caught fast in the tree trunk, and there she is, readily accessible for milking. Brer Rabbit goes to get his family, “en ’twan’t long fo’ here he come wid his ol ’oman en all his chilluns, en de las’ one er de fambly was totin’ a pail. De big ims had big pails, en de little uns had httle pails.” One visualizes with delight the rabbit procession, headed by Brer Rabbit and his ole ’oman, followed by their children in dimin¬ ishing size, with individual milk pails to match. The little scene almost demands graphic representation, as do innumerable others where we note a characteristic detailing of the configuration or of the steps of the action, which gives a clearness of effect like a slow- motion film. In addition to these elements of humor, the contrasts, and the graphic quality, there is of course the important element of lan¬ guage. Through this dialect Harris stated that he hoped to give “vivid hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro,” and “to embody the quaint and homely humor which was his most prom¬ inent characteristic.”^® A number of features here may be observed for their comic effectiveness. The very brevity of the fables serves as a humorous element. In addition to creating an artistic suspense which leads us always on to further development in the next episode, it seems somewhat to condition the lineaments of the dialect. Words, rendered pho¬ netically, are characteristically distorted; most often, through the omission of letters or syllables, they are abbreviated. Frequendy they are telescoped into other words in a manner which somewhat prefigures (on a very low level) the word-amalgamations of the later works of Joyce. There is also a kind of word-augmentation which often emerges with the emphasis and comic effect of a Harris, Uncle Remus and His Songs and Sayings, Introduction, p. viii. Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables 97 double negative (frequently used by illiterate speakers). “Hit’s mighty onwrong,” says Uncle Remus. Or, with the propensity of the Negro toward rhetoric and grandiloquence, he uses such coin¬ ages as “I disremember,” or “diserkommerdated.” All of this— abbreviation, telescoping, augmentation—produces an ambiguity which is humorous in its mixture of confusion and clearness, and often too as a malapropism is humorous. The ambiguity is also humorous on a purely aural level. Allied with the aural effects of word distortion is a simple hu¬ morous onomatopoeia. Characteristically, Uncle Remus incorpo¬ rates “sound effects” to heighten the dramatic suspense of a scene: “Wham!” “Kerblam,” “Lippity-clippity,” etc. Or, upon occasion, he produces for the Boy vocalizations representing various animals, like Brer Terrapin, whose liquid gurgles arise from the water in the phonetic form “I-doom-er-ker-kum-mer-ker,” a kind of dark mur¬ muring sense in nonsense. Another humor element appears in the use of rhythmic phrases and repetitions. Even in the prose form of the fables (excluding the songs of Uncle Remus) the element of rhythm is conspicuous, and contributes an earthy pleasure. Brer Rabbit, having again out¬ witted Brer Fox, sits on his porch chanting with a true Negro delight in rhythm: He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat dar! He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat dar!^® These frequent little chants also adumbrate a primitive magic and ritual, and the brooding overtones of a spirit world still immediate and real to the race from which the fables partly derive. Thus, generally, this is a “mixed”—which is to say a true—humor, which must inevitably contain an element of the darkly suggestive or of the disproportionate. Thus the comic quality, naive as it is, is a major element of the “dressing” noted by Mark Twain, and makes more palatable the allegorical quality of the legends. It is easily apparent why the Negro selected for his hero Brer Rabbit, the most harmless of animals, who is to be repeatedly vic¬ torious over the fangs and the superior strength of the bear, fox, wolf, lion, and even over the machinations of Mr. Man. It seems to be a clear case of his imaginative identification of Brer Rabbit “How Mr. Rabbit Saved His Meat,” ibid., p. 103. 98 Louise Dauner with himself, in a hostile social, economic, and spiritual world. Thus we may suspect some underlying serious intention for the fables. And we may feel with Harris himself the presence in them of the “melancholy” features which attend any true folk materials, as they convey symbolically the implications of a weak, perplexed, and struggling humanity. Here as elsewhere, then, the comic or humorous is only the re¬ verse side of the tragic, the conscious or subconscious rationalization of the irrational. And here again, we may recognize with Words¬ worth that the worlds of the child and of the man, matured by the burden of experience into an understanding of Nature, both sub¬ jective and objective, may curiously and at last return to each other, to spin within the same essential orbits. The dimly apprehended truths of one era become the platitudes of another. But the plati¬ tudes, which touched by poetic imagination may become the myths, assume new meaning when seen in the unadulterated light of their origins. Such reillumination and re-emphasis are the enduring fascination and value of folk materials. When to the inherently poetic and “true” materials of the collective imagination is added a conscious individual artistry, as is true with the Uncle Remus fables, the blend may effect for us both an aesthetic pleasure and a sharper awareness of our present—collective and individual— which is also our past. The Birth and Death of a Satirist: Eugene Field and Chicago’s Growing Pains Robert A. Day I F EUGENE FIELD is remembered at all today, it is as the author of “Little Boy Blue,” “Wynken, Blinken, and Nod,” and a few other children’s poems. That he is so little known at present is the fate of a man who was first and last a journalist, and is also a reflection of the ephemeral quality of most of his verses and prose tales, which rival the rhymes of Edgar Guest in insipidity and sen¬ timentality. There was, however, another side to Field’s work. He produced an enormous quantity of satiric prose paragraphs and sketches, which gained him much of his reputation as a wit and humorist and which have qualities that his verse never had: vigor, spice, and a sometimes exquisite and often clever sense of what can be done with the right word in the right place. The most important aspect of these sketches and squibs, however, is their purpose; for the majority of them are pungent topical satire. I In order to appreciate the quality and the limitations of Field’s satiric humor, it is necessary to consider the conditions under which it was written. For twelve years (1883 to 1895) Field ground out an average of two thousand words a day for his column, “Sharps and Flats,” in the Chicago Daily News. One would naturally expect to find many deficiencies in such an enormous and rapidly produced volume of material, and plenty are to be found. The bulk of his comment, in the earlier and more vigorous years of the column, was devoted to the cultural oddities of the adolescent city, and to the ludicrous efforts of Chicago’s newly rich porkpackers to acquire “culmre” and to possess things of beauty and virtu.^ It is somewhat difficult to form an accurate notion of what cul- * More extended accounts of the history of the column may be found in Charles H. Den¬ nis, Eugene Field’s Creative Years (New York, 1924), chaps, iv, vii-x, xii; and in Slason Thompson, Life of Eugene Field (New York, 1927), chaps, vii, xi-xiii. The two accounts often differ slightly on minor points; both volumes consist of personal reminiscences, rather than accurate biography. 100 Robert A. Day tural Chicago really must have been like in those lush days, and therefore of the amount of exaggeration in Field’s account. But an instructive parallel to Field’s lambastings exists in a survey of Chicago’s literary accomplishments by William Morton Payne, a prominent and serious magazine writer of the nineties. Writing in the New England Magazine, he says rather plaintively at the outset that “no community is a priori open to reproach for having chosen to express itself in other than literary forms,”^ and is forced to admit frankly that Chicago is in the main a city where the arrogant self-assertion and dull philistinism of the American character are more clearly typified than perhaps anywhere else in the land. . . . The Chicago of the present is ... so overshadowed by the commercial spirit that the delicate plants of literary culture, even where they have taken root, have found it difficult to obtain the light and air necessary for their continued existence.® Payne gives a lengthy list of cultural clubs, publishing houses, lyceums, books, and authors. Only three or four of the authors— such as H. B. Fuller—are remembered today, and the literary works include everything between boards; few are classifiable as belles- lettres, none are memorable. It appears that the clubs are dedicated to snobbery as much as to culture. In short, the reader reaches the conclusion that though valiant efforts were being made to mend matters, the Chicago of the early nineties had scarcely emerged from provincialism and was far from being culmrally of age. An inkling of the tone Field was to take in his attack on Chi¬ cago’s cultural pretensions can be gained by examining the Tribune Primer, a collection of the parodies of a children’s first reader which he wrote in his Denver days: Here we have a Lady. She was at a Party last Night, and the Paper spoke of her as the Amiable and Accomplished Wife of our Respected Fellow Citizen. Our Respected Fellow Citizen is now as Full as a Tick, and his Amiable and Accomplished Wife is Walloping him with the Rolling Pin. The lady appears to be more Accomplished than Amiable.^ The Primer as a whole is in bad taste and not particularly amus¬ ing. Yet it is decidedly robust, reminding one to some extent of ‘“William M. Payne, “Literary Chicago,” 'New England Magazine, VII, 683 (Feb., 1893). ’ Ibid., pp. 683-684. 'The Complete Tribune Primer (Boston, 1901), p. 89. The Birth and Death of a Satirist 101 Mark Twain’s early productions. This robust vein was developed, refined, and pointed as Field began his comments on Chicago, and his fame grew until the publisher Ticknor felt that it would be a profitable venture to bring out a volume of Field’s work. The result was Culture s Garland, which appeared in 1887 with a lauda¬ tory introduction by Julian Hawthorne. Culture’s Garland is subtitled “Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of Literature, Art, Music and Society in Chicago and Other Western Ganglia.” It has a gallows as a colophon, and on one of the fly¬ leaves appears the “garland”: “A Chicago literary circle: in the similitude of a laurel wreath.” It is a garland of sausages.® The task of making adequate illustrative comment on the volume is a difficult one. Field’s fancy was inexhaustible, and he approached his game from many paths. Perhaps the device he uses most fre¬ quently is the imitation of a bit of cultural news. Sometimes the “news” in the item is entirely apocryphal; sometimes Field deals with the imaginary sayings and doings of real Chicagoans, such as Potter Palmer and Pullman; again he writes bogus book reviews and literary notes. Perhaps the best way to show his method and ma¬ terial is to examine a few of the more representative squibs, such as “Chicago Palmistry.” In this it appears that a young palmist, Mr. Heron-Alien, is “making a barrel of money in Chicago.” The aristocrats are all flocking to his salon; he has had to invent a new system of description for the Chicago hand, of which a diagram is appended. Every Chicago hand, it seems, has a prominent Pork- Line. Also a Mons Prudentiae, and a Mons Asinorutn; if the pork¬ line veers toward the latter, it indicates that the possessor is inclined to take fliers in wheat, etc. Then there is the sand-line. “In a great many instances it is so strongly marked that its shadow is plainly outlined on the back of the hand.”® This is because Chicagoans exhibit “the most sand of anyone.” The literary line causes the wearer to “inquire into the mysteries of summer philosophy . , . and to have the seaside novels rebound in half-calf.” The line D is common to the Chicago hand: it argues a fondness for the fine arts, for music, and for all articles of vertoo—such as piano-fortes, folding-beds, wax flowers, race-horses, perfumery, $4 opera, pug dogs, “ See Dennis, Eugene Field's Creative Years, p. 154, for a possibly inaccurate account of the history of these embellishments. ‘Eugene Field, Culture’s Garland (Boston, 1887), pp. 22-23. 102 Robert A. Day statuary, Browning’s poems, dyspepsia, and lawn-tennis. Of late this art¬ line has got so deep in a great many Chicago hands, that it had to be sewed up by a doctor.'^ The last line, which is visible about the wrist three times a day, is found among those who have become wealthy—and cultured— rather suddenly. It is known as the water-line. This brief sketch gives one an idea of the style, tone, and ap¬ proach of much of Field’s satire. The humor is heavy-handed; there is not the slightest doubt of what the satirist is getting at. On the other hand, there is as little doubt of its irritating effect on the pork-packers. The original idea of palmistry is a clever way of introducing the satirical comment, and the author chooses his ma¬ terials well for telling effect—as in the list of “articles of vertoo.” However slapdash the writing may be, it shows that Field was capable of a vigor and energy which he did not demonstrate in the poems and fairy-tales. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Culture’s Garland is the astonishing number and variety of the devices Field uses to start off his sketches. In his pose as slightly bewildered or deadpan recorder of events or as passionate defender of Chicago culture, he deals with dramatic performances, opera, new books, the visits of literary notables, the reactions of Chicagoans to Eastern or Euro¬ pean culture, various activities of Chicago cultural or literary groups, and the bons mots or adventures of the local cognoscenti. One trick to which he was particularly addicted was the writing of atrocious verse which he ascribed to various celebrities, local or otherwise, such as one Judge Cooley, whose juvenilia he professed to have discovered; Helena Modjeska; and William Dean Howells. Field was never craven in his use of the names of real persons; while some of the names in Culture’s Garland are indubitably fictitious, here is an example of what Field could say when he was in the mood: Still, Chicago is hardly in a position to criticize Philadelphia unpreju¬ dicedly. Chicago has been so unfortunate as to become the adopted home of three of Philadelphia’s most enterprising sons. One of these gentlemen is Mr. Joseph C. Mackin, who, owing to ’ Ibid., p. 23. The Birth and Death of a Satirist 103 circumstances over which he has no control, is temporarily absent from this city. Another is Mr, Gallagher, who ought to be absent, but isn’t. The third is Mr. Charles T. Yerkes.® Probably Field’s most sustained attack on a single person was that directed against Pullman. He concocted a news item to the effect that Umberto Primo of Italy had created “our esteemed fellow- townsman, Col. George M. Pullman” a marchese, or, as more adapted to the exigencies of Chicago pronunciation, a “markeesy.” Pullman, he said, had constructed a magnificent sleeping-car for that monarch, and, he hinted, was recompensed in the Italian manner with a marquisate in lieu of more substantial reward, Mr. Pullman might also style himself a chevalier, but “we are inclined to think that markeesy sounds just a trifle more bong tong than sheevalya, and we hope that Mr. Pullman will choose that title.”® Field designed a coat of arms for the markeesy, which featured two Pullman porters, demandant, and a pillow with a bedbug on it. He also described the projected ceremony of investment in the most ridiculous terms, commented on the Dante and Tasso boom resulting from the event, suggested that the markeesy wear a Boston garter instead of the customary badge of rank, condoled with him on the failure of the Italian olive crop, and deprecated the local envy which had pro¬ duced the scurrilous rhyme: When the party is breezy and wheezy. And palpably greasy, it’s easy To coax or to wring, From a weak-minded king, The titular prize of markeesy.^® The irony of the whole performance is superb, however unsubtle it is, and one may be sure that it made Pullman writhe. The markeesy makes a frequent appearance in Field’s column, usually contemplating a display of art with honest bewilderment. The reader cannot wonder at Field’s sincere hatred of cultural preten¬ sion; he can, however, marvel at Field’s violence, his lack of good taste, and the fact that he got away with it. His biographers are unanimous in asserting that for years he kept the haut monde of ’ Ibid., p. 54. ^ Ibid., p. 91. Ibid., p. 64. Robert A. Day 104 Chicago, including all his friends, in a state of perpetual fidgets, each fearing that he would be lampooned next; and the situation gained in seriousness from the realistic appearance of some of the “news items” and the fact that gullible Eastern journals sometimes reprinted them as news. When Field left personalities alone and commented on more general matters, he usually had a justifiable grievance, and his per¬ formance improved commensurately. A good example of his more refined irony is one of his briefest paragraphs, which says much in little: It is understood that the private dinners given to Mr, Lowell during his stay here have called for an expenditure of not less than forty thousand dollars. Yet there are carping critics who say that Chicago is not a great hterary centre.^ ^ Field seldom managed to maintain the same level of taste even within the limits of a single sketch; the rapidity with which he wrote and the ephemeral nature of his material would have pre¬ vented him from polishing, even had he had the inclination to do so. Within a single paragraph one can often find two such antip¬ odal specimens of wit as these: We do not know what an eroica symphony is; but in our most cultured circles, it is beUeved that eroica is a misprint for erotica. . . . The fact that she [Miss Aus der Ohe] is unmarried should forever set at rest the rumor that she is the original Ohe mamma.^^ It is indeed remarkable that, writing as hastily as he did, he was able to produce so much that was truly satirical and truly amusing. The topics of Field’s satire may be divided for convenience into several categories. There are general comments on the state of Chicago taste; single attacks on specific persons such as Pullman (though these people may be regarded partly as representatives of the general state of affairs); feuds and practical jokes, such as those perpetrated on Howells, Edward Bok, Charles Dudley Warner, and Edmund Clarence Stedman;^® political satire (which is difficult to ^^Ibid,, p. 131. Ibid., p. 154. Field declared that Bok was to wed “the favorite granddaughter of Lydia Pinkham,” confused Warner with a maker of patent medicines and declared that he was to lecture on either “Some Golden Remedies” or “The Theory that Ben Jonson Did Not Write ‘Rasselas’ ” (a slap at a lecture of Lowell’s), and said that Stedman would be welcomed to Chicago with The Birth and Death of a Satirist 105 grasp without an intimate knowledge of Chicago politics at the time); and a most interesting series of sketches attacking Hamlin Garland, Howells, and the “veritists.”^^ The satire of the first class bulks largest, has the most lasting interest, and is perhaps the most important to the student of cultural history. Field never tires of contrasting commercialism and culture, or of finding new and diverting ways in which to do it. It is impossible to go into detail concerning all the affectations he dissects, but men¬ tion should be made of some of his most interesting paragraphs. For example, he proposes to condense music in the cause of effi¬ ciency : . . . much as we revere Mr. Beethoven’s memory, we do not fancy having fifty-five minute chunks of his musty opi hurled at us. . . . Nothing is more criminal hereabouts than a waste of time; and it is no wonder, then, that the creme de la creme of our elite lift up their hands, and groan, when they discover that it takes as long to play a classic symphony as it does to slaughter a carload of Missouri razorbacks, or an invoice of prairie- racers from Kansas.^® He describes a new invention, a folding-bed which looks like a bookcase filled with the classics in the daytime; he gives a Chicago man’s version of the lives of Dante and Socrates; he satirizes the city’s French attainments in “Oon Criteek de Bernhardt” and “Oon Conversarzyony Frongsay”; he comments ironically on Mr. Winston of Chicago, who got himself made a brigadier general of militia so that he might have a gorgeous uniform to wear as ambassador to Persia. He once caused the publisher McClurg great pain by herald¬ ing the appearance of the apple of McClurg’s eye, a volume of the fragments of Sappho, simultaneously with the appearance of Adam Forepaugh’s circus. The latter, he said, had more of the sort of poetry that appealed. “Sappho was a gamey old girl, you know. ... If that woman had lived in Chicago, she would have been tabooed. . . .” And what rhythm—be it Sapphic, or choriambic, or Ionic a minore—is a parade including “two hundred Chicago poets afoot . . . nine white stallions representing the Muses . . . the Blue Island Avenue Shelley Club.” Dennis’s and Thompson’s biographies describe these and many other practical jokes, with their sequels and ramifications. See Dennis, Eugene Field's Creative Years, chap, x, for a history of the controversy. Culture's Garland, pp. 147-149, passim. io6 Robert A. Day to be compared with the symphonic poetry of a shapely female balanced upon one delicate toe on the brisding back of a fiery, untamed palfrey that whoops round and round to the music of the band . . . ? If our bosoms swell with delight to see the quiet and palatial homes of our cultured society overflowing with the most expensive wallpapers and the costliest articles of virtue . . . vaster still must be the pride, the rapture we feel when we behold our intellect and our culture paying the tribute of adoradon to the circus. Viewing these enlivening scenes, why may we not cry in the words of Sappho, “Wealth without thee. Worth, is a shameless creature; but the mixture of both is the height of happiness”.?^® The satire of the two volumes entitled Sharps and Flats in the posthumous Worlds is culled mostly from the columns of Field’s later years; it is less clumsy and in better taste, but it is also less energetic. One of the best items is the description of the Arcadian simplicity of Washington under President Cleveland’s Jeffersonian reforms, where, for example, the Postmaster General sorts the mail; another is the ironical “Recipe for a Nominating Speech,” which is as pointed today as when it was written. Occasionally the old tone returns, as in the paragraph dealing with a literary club: At the meeting of the West Side Literary Lyceum last week the ques¬ tion “Are Homer’s poems better reading than Will Carleton’s.?” was de¬ bated. The negative was sustained by a vote of 47 to 5. On this occasion Miss Mamie Buskirk read an exquisite original poem entitled “Hope.”^'^ One could go on indefinitely, citing amusing and biting com¬ ments from Field; but those quoted are sufficient to display the principal qualities of his work. It flicks at a multitude of stupidities, and with no light hand. It is vigorous, but uneven; it runs the gamut of wit from clumsy puns to ironical understatement. It is completely merciless, and the effect Field’s biographers say it had can be deduced from its complete lack of ambiguity. Moreover, Field often displays in it a talent for burlesque and parody, as in his imitation of Midwestern journalistic “high style” in the Sappho paragraph quoted above. He knows how to use words when he is willing to exercise his ability; his vocabulary is sizable. And it is impossible not to be convinced of Field’s sincerity, even though it is hard to decide how deeply his convictions ran. Ibid., pp. 251-253, passim. ^’’Sharps and Flats, ed. Slason Thompson {The Wor\s of Eugene Field, New York, 1901, Vol. XII), pp. 105 £. The Birth and Death o£ a Satirist 107 II Having examined Field’s satire and seen something of its effect, we may legitimately wonder what sources it had in Field himself. What was his true attitude toward culture and toward Chicago.? Why did his satire decrease in venom and robustness as the years passed.? How did he regard his own satire, and where did he place it with respect to the rest of his work—the poems, sentimental stories, and fairy tales? What was his cultural background, and to what school of literature may he truly be said to have belonged ? In the first place, he had an excellent education. He went to the private school of the Reverend Mr. Tufts in Massachusetts; he at¬ tended Williams College, Knox College in Illinois, and Missouri State College; he spent his patrimony in a “grand tour” of Europe before settling down to work. His father was a brilliant lawyer who had been a precocious scholar and who had an excellent knowledge of French, German, Latin, and Greek; he is said to have obliged his sons to correspond with him in Latin.^® Field himself had a pas¬ sionate love of Horace, and published a translation of some of the odes, epodes, and epistles with his brother, as Echoes from the Sabine Farm. He also cherished a project of writing a life of Horace. He was interested in “Old English,” and although the clumsiness of his attempts to reproduce the language of Chaucer in verse or prose is apparent, their frequency in his writings indicates his preoccupa¬ tion with older literature. He wrote some of his poems in Greek characters as a joke. In his later years he became an ardent biblio¬ phile; his works bristle with references to rare old editions, and he composed an entire volume. The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, on which he was engaged at his death. Yet in this volume, in the translations of Horace, and in the imi¬ tations of Chaucer’s English, a great deal of the dilettante appears; Field seems to be a lover of books, rather than of what is in them. His Horatian poems do not differ materially in quality from those of his brother; they are no neater or more appealing; they are only somewhat more audacious and slangy. Cleverness is there, but not much intellect. This, too, is a fault of his fairy tales. They have a certain elegance and charm of diction, but on the whole they are Eugene Field and Roswell M. Field, Echoes from the Sabine Farm (Wor\s, New York, 1901, Vol. VI), p. ix. io8 Robert A. Day merely a feebler version of such Oscar Wilde tales as “The Night¬ ingale and the Rose.” Of his poetry it is unnecessary to speak; it is merely meretricious. Stedman calls him “a complex American, with the obstreperous bizarrerie of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of our oldest culture always at odds within him,”^® which is no doubt true; but the conflict was certainly not a deep one. Part of this lack of depth may be ascribed to the fact that much of his work was for a newspaper column; but in no part whatever of his nonsatirical work does Field exhibit anything more profound than charm or verbal cleverness. Field made several statements on his literary and intellectual attitudes, which are of some help in classifying him. One is a short piece called “An Auto-Analysis,” supposed to have been written to answer questions which were continually being asked him. The sincerity of the statements is perhaps questionable, but one may also question how a man of culture, taste, and intellect could be willing to publish some of the following information about himself: he adores dolls; his favorite hymn is “Bounding Billows”; he is very fond of Andersen and believes in ghosts, witches, and fairies; his favorite poems include “We Are Seven” and “Lead, Kindly Light”; he dislikes Dante and Byron, politics, sculpture, and painting; and in twenty-two years of journalism he has written only in reverential praise of womanhood.”® Moreover, Field frequently exhibited a short of sleazy and es¬ capist romanticism. In 1893 Hamlin Garland engaged in a debate at the Chicago Literary Congress with Mrs. Catherwood, the author of several popular historical novels, on the merits of realism and romanticism. Field immediately took up the defense of Mrs. Cather¬ wood. Garland, he said, was under the baleful realistic influence of Mr. Howells; but he (Field) preferred Mrs. Catherwood’s em¬ broidery needle and lance to Garland’s dung fork.”^ Mr. Garland’s heroes sweat and do not wear socks; his heroines eat cold huckleberry pie and are so unfeminine as not to call a cow “he.” ... it is proper that we should add that we have for Mr. Garland personally the ^^The Holy Cross and Other Tales (Worli^s, New York, 1901, Vol. V), p. xii. “An Auto-Analysis” in The Complete Tribune Primer (Boston, 1901), pp. 3-8. For a description of Garland’s impact on Chicago, see J. S. Goldstein, “Two Literary Radicals: Garland and Markham in Chicago, 1893,” American Literature, XVII, 152-160 (May, 1945)- The Birth and Death of a Satirist 109 warmest affection, and we admire his work, too, very, very much; it is wonderful photography.-- Six columns in all were devoted to the controversy, and Field spared no pains to make Garland look ridiculous. Of course, Field was to some extent on the side of good sense; if Garland at that period resembled the portrait H. B. Fuller gives of him in “The Downfall of Abner Joyce,” he was indeed a fit subject for a certain amount of ridicule.^^ But the important point is that Field was not content merely to ridicule the excesses of the veritists; he cried out for knights in armor. He made some much more revelatory comments in the same year when interviewed by Garland. How accurate and truthful the interview may be is open to question, but the statements may be taken for what they are worth. Field never thought, he said, of writing about his own experiences as a city editor; “things have to get pretty misty before I can use ’em; I’m not like you fellows [the veritists].” He protested that he had never called his verse poetry, and he was glad that his Tribune Primer was a rarity; he hated sham and fraud, and had “jumped on that crowd of faddists.” He had never claimed to be anything but a newspaperman. His best work was along the lines of satire; he had “stood for manliness and honesty.” He was not a reformer, but a lover of romance, past or future. “The present don’t interest me—at least not taken as it is. . . . I don’t care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic.”"'^ If Field (or Garland) may be believed, he had a most modest view of all his work, thought his satire his best effort, and felt almost a terror—at least a complete incapacity—at coping with things as they are. On the other hand, his satire is often couched in tones of realism so blunt as to be in bad taste. And according to Caroline Ticknor, writing some years after the fact, he had a higher opinion of his fantasy and verse than of his satire. He wanted the tales and sentimental verses to go into the projected Ticknor book (Culture’s Garland) and wanted the introduction to be written by Stedman. He became contemptuous of the whole project when Sharps and Flats, ed. Thompson {Worlds, XI), 48-49. Henry B. Fuller, Under the Skylights (New York, 1901), pp. 3-139. Hamlin Garland, “A Dialogue between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland,” McClure’s Magazine, I, 202 (Aug., 1893). no Robert A. Day neither plan succeeded, and would later have been happy to see Culture’s Garland out of the way. Eugene Field’s delight at the appearance of his first litde book was that of an enthusiastic schoolboy, but his attitude toward this early volume changed completely after the publication of his later works, and Culture’s Garland was recalled by its author, who was then as keen in his desire to destroy all available copies as he had been to launch his first volume, for the preface of which he had wished to make Stedman responsible.^® The best summary of Field’s intellectual position would probably run somewhat as follows: while not a profound thinker or the pos¬ sessor of deep-rooted convictions, he had a good cultural training and a vague though strong devotion to “culture” in the sense of good books, works of art, and general polish. He had a strong dislike of sham and fraud, and in his early years as a journalist he possessed a hoydenish sense of humor and a verbal brilliancy which he directed against the gaucheries he saw in the snobbish Chicago aristocracy. However, he was also strongly sentimental and escapist; the culture he wanted was a remote thing of the library and the studio, uncon¬ nected with life as it is lived. As the years passed he retreated into book-collecting and fantasy; since his heart was not in his satire as Swift’s was, he ceased to face life in his work as soon as he could manage to escape from it. His manner became more genteel, and his earlier Western vigor withered away. His indignation at human¬ ity was superficial and spasmodic; thus, having no real basis, it was easily swept away when he discovered the delights of literary trifling. His lack of sincerity was his greatest defect; without sincerity there was no barrier to his becoming lost in the spurious genteel. It is only fair, however, to note that most of the reviewers of his time agreed with him. They were almost unanimous in praising his tender tales of affection or fantasy and his exquisite and graceful verses; they passed over his satire with a blush or at most a conde¬ scending nod for its robust cleverness. The anonymous reviewer of the Nation, however, once gave a strikingly modern summary of Field, and maintained, as most modern readers would, that his satire is the only part of his work that has any vitality in it: A born humorist, writing verse and prose for a newspaper in a com- Caroline Ticknor, “Edmund Clarence Stedman and Eugene Field,” Bookman, XXVII, 151 (April, 1908). The Birth and Death of a Satirist III munity as yet too entirely devoted to money-getting to be even provincial, Mr. Field began by writing some very amusing caricatures of Chicago life and manners. “Culture’s Garland” is very broad humor. ... for ourselves we are inclined to think that laughter, and not solemn lauda¬ tion, would be to Mr. Field’s shade the most refreshing tribute. . . . He evidently never regarded himself altogether seriously, and it bored him to be so regarded. He wrote, day by day, whatever came into his head, and his more ambitious attempts . . . are often marred by an indif¬ ference of taste. ... In fact, Mr. Field’s Horace will never seem tolerable to those who know what others have done in the same vein. Mr. Field’s talent was distinctly imitative, he is a literary mimic ... a caricaturist. . . . His pathos ... is also quite as loose [as his humor]. . . . His children’s poems reek of the nursery. . . . Many of them are just the sort of doggerel which a gifted nurse might be able to compose. Whether they can hold their place as literature may be doubted.. .. To make Mr. Field a solemn classic is a pious effort on the part of his publishers, to which everyone who loves a joke will wish godspeed.^® What, then, are we to think of Field’s satire ? It is certainly not great literature. On the other hand, it undoubtedly played a part in jolting Chicago out of its crassness, its abject reverence for the East, its flamboyant display, its intellectual poverty and pretension, and its bad taste. Historically, Field’s work furnishes a commentary on one phase of America’s cultural development, and gives a de¬ tailed picture of the hobbledehoy age of Chicago. As literature it is amusing, though of poor quality, and it is vigorous. It is in some respects a reflection of the tradition of American humor that runs through the work of Mark Twain, Josh Billings, George Ade, and lesser humorists of the lush postwar period. It reflects talent, if not genius, brilliant manipulation of words and phrases at times, and an amazing display of inventiveness and variety in the ridiculous situations described. Lastly, an examination of Field’s personality with reference to the rising and dying out of the satiric vein in him is an interesting study in the interweavings of the “genteel tradition” with the more rough-and-ready native humor of the West; and it gives some hints of what an author must have and must lack in order to be a true satirist. For these reasons Field’s column and Culture’s Garland are of significance in the history of American literature. Review of Field’s Wor\s, Nation. LXIII, 165 (Aug. 27, 1896). “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Arkansas Eugene Current-Garcia I N 1845, when William T, Porter proudly announced the begin¬ ning of the fifteenth volume of his weekly sporting journal, the New York Spirit of the Times} both he and his magazine stood at the threshold of a popularity till then unparalleled in the annals of American journalism.^ Affectionately known to thousands of Americans from Canada to the Mexican border as “Mr. Spirit” and the “Tall Son of York,” Porter had achieved such recognition as the fruit of his successful pioneering in a unique editorial field: for he had not only made the Spirit “most emphatically a sport¬ ing PAPER . . . accredited for accuracy, for fulness and impar¬ tiality,” but had also striven to “elevate its character by associating with this peculiar feature the charms of Polite Letters, and the de¬ lights of Music and the Theatre.”® The Spirit, in short, had proved its worth as an entirely new and original American venture, a suc¬ cessful rival to Bell’s Life of London: its widespread appeal was evident in the flood of encomiums that poured in from other jour¬ nalists and private subscribers throughout the nation;^ and Porter was ready to advance its prestige and his own still further by be¬ coming an anthologist and exploiting its contents in a series of volumes initiated by the publishing firm of Carey and Hart under the whimsical general title of the Library of Humorous American Writers. ^The Spirit of the Times, XV, i (March i, 1845). Hereinafter indicated as Spirit. ° The circulation of the Spirit was more than 16,000 in 1843 and climbed above 40,- 000 several years later. (See W. S. Hoole, Alias Simon Suggs, University, Alabama, 1952, p. 47; also F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, New York, 1930, I, 479-382.) ’Quoted in Francis Brinley, Life of William T. Porter (New York, i860), p. 147. * Throughout his career Porter shrewdly culled and reprinted in the Spirit the brightest and most laudatory of these compliments: see, for example, the Spirit, XIII, 57 (April 8, 1843); XIV, 241, 253, 366, 390, 391, 505 (July 20, 27; Sept. 28; Oct. 12; Dec. 21, 1844): XV, I, 38, 6q, 08 (March ' ''nril 3, 24, 1845). “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Arl^ansas ”3 This new move was to provide further proof of Porter’s editorial acumen. For whatever else may have helped to earn popular sup¬ port for the Spirit, there was little doubt in his mind that the broad¬ est base for its widespread appeal lay in the humorous tall tales and sketches, especially those coming from the South and South¬ west, which had been gaining increasing prominence in its pages during the early 1840’s; and Porter was losing no opportunity to make the most of them. He had long since recognized that the adventurous life of the frontier, with its variety of incidents and social types, its peculiarities of speech and manners, offered the most fruitful field in America for fresh, racy literary treatment. In 1840 he had observed: Life at the West and South is a teeming theme for Magazine writers; but the cleverest and most amusing have certainly been of a sporting nature. The curious and often rich provincialisms of dialect are here most appropriate, and are most vividly brought out by scenes on the Course or in the Field. The ‘Spirit of the Times’ has been greatly favoured with communications of this description.^ Constantly encouraging the writers of these sketches to produce more, and ever on the lookout for fresh new talent, by the mid- 1840’s Porter had already published in the Spirit such a large mass of these humorous sporting narratives that many a newspaper editor enthusiastically agreed with the one who called him “that prince of good fellows . . . the father of the funny literature of the day [whose] paper ... at $5.00 per annum, . . . would be ‘dog’ cheap at double the money.”® Porter’s pride in the Spirit’s singular achievement was under¬ standably great, though tempered by an awareness that while his was the shaping hand, others also deserved a large share of credit for its success. Quick to acknowledge that the key to its popu¬ larity was held by his contributors and correspondents. Porter re¬ garded himself as their literary godfather, whose duty it was to stimulate, criticize, publish, and then advertise their creative efforts ^Ibid., IX, 565 (Feb. i, 1840). '‘Ibid., XVII, 26 (March 13, 1847). This writer went on to say: “The Times is a tall paper—it has a tall editor — (6 ft 6 in his brass heeled boots) —the contributors are the very tallest kind of chaps to fight down ennui with tales of their bar hunts in the West, their Southern exploits in ‘fyttinge ye tygre’—and love adventures in the North and East. Long may it flourish, and, like the gnarled oak, gather strength as it increases in years — and may the shadow of the editor never be less.” Eugene Current-Garcia 114 for all the world to see and approve. Thus, when he discovered in an obscure East Alabama newspaper the promising talent im¬ plicit in J. J. Hooper’s first sketches of Simon Suggs, he avidly seized and reprinted the work, observing in an introductory com¬ ment that it was “a great pity that gentlemen of such sterling in¬ tellectual ability as the writer of the subjoined sketch should hide their light under a bushel.”^ His delight in the discovery of Hooper was twofold: for he not only saw an opportunity to include some of the Simon Suggs material in the new anthology of humorous sketches he was then finishing for Carey and Hart and virtually stopped the presses to get it in;® but he also hoped to enroll Hooper among the Spirit’s regular corps of correspondents. “What a cor¬ respondent he would make for the ‘Spirit!’” said Porter and then punningly continued: What a ‘choice spirit’ among that circle of ‘jolly good fellows’ whose contributions to the columns of this journal have rendered it far more famous for original wit and humour than its being the ‘chronicle of the Sporting World.’ Aside from a host of correspondents among breeders and turfmen of the highest intellectual merit—of writers on purely literary themes, we believe that our correspondents at this moment comprise more men of genius—disciples of Momus, we mean, than any mere newspaper or magazine ever had. . . . Disguised under signatures as quaint and novel as the scenes they describe, are some of the most brilliant writers of the day, who have been read and admired the world over, ALBERT PIKE, HENRY WEI. HERBERT, WILLIS, HOFFMAN, NOLAND, THORPE, DR. IRVING, and Others of kindred genius. . . . Among this ‘crowd’ we intend to enroll Hooper.® That Porter succeeded in both aims and thus boosted Hooper into nation-wide fame almost overnight belongs, however, to an already well-told story, which need not be repeated here.^® More to our present purpose is his connection with another member of his “circle of jolly good fellows”—namely Thomas Bangs Thorpe, ’’Ibid., XIV, 547 (Jan. ii, 1845). Previous to this Porter had reprinted only one of Hooper’s pieces, the amusing sketch entitled “Taking the Census in Alabama,” which he later used in his second anthology. (See Spirit, XIII, 326, Sept. 9, 1843; also A Quarter Race in Kentucf^y.) Till 1845, however. Porter knew very little about Hooper. ° Hoole, op. cit., p. 56. ° Spirit, XIV, 547. Hoole, op. cit., pp. 47-79, passim. “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of ArJ^ansas ”5 whose career as a writer and editor curiously paralleled his own.^^ Long before Porter became personally acquainted with Hooper, he had known Thorpe and had been reprinting in the Spirit the latter’s sketches and essays on Southwestern life. A transplanted Easterner educated in Connecticut, Thorpe had gone south for his health in 1837 and established himself in Louisiana, where he re¬ mained seventeen years, carrying on there his threefold career as artist, newspaper editor, and writer; devoting his energies with both brush and pen to the depiction of scenes and activities in the lush, virgin territory of the lower Mississippi valley.^^ With an artist’s eye keyed to the romantic tradition of Thomas Cole and John James Audubon, and an enthusiasm equal to theirs, he sought to record the wonders and terrors of nature in a section of America still wild and primitive; and he wrote numerous pieces illustrating the impact upon the settler of its trackless forests and teeming wild life, pub¬ lishing many of them in his own newspapers.^^ The first of these to be reprinted in the Spirit appeared in 1839 as “Tom Owen the Bee Hunter,”^^ and within the next five or six years more than fifty of Thorpe’s pieces appeared in the columns of the Spirit}^ Included among these was the most famous of all his writings, “The Big Bear of Arkansas,”^® which Porter at once recognized Besides reprinting all of Thorpe’s writings that he could get, Porter introduced his friend to Carey and Hart, urging the publishers to make use of his talents, and aided in publicizing his books. “Some of his sketches of scenery in the great Valley of the Mississippi,” said Porter, “and of the ‘characters’ encountered there are equal to any¬ thing in the language, in my humble opinion. You will see that, like many other young writers, he looks to ‘this child’ as a sort of ‘literary god-father.’ ” (Letter to Carey and Hart, March 3, 1845. In New York Historical Society Library. Hereinafter, all letters referred to are in this collection, unless otherwise indicated.) Several surviving records of Thorpe’s paintings exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association in the 1870’s may be seen in the Thorpe MSS collection at the New York Public Library. Such titles as “I’ll Fight it out on this line,” “Country Road,” “Palmetto Swamp,” and “Banks of the Mississippi” suggest the similarity between Thorpe’s paint¬ ing and his writing. Thorpe was a charter member of the Brooklyn Art Association and lived in Brooklyn during the 1870’s. One of the earliest of these pieces, an essay entitled “The Mississippi,” was pub¬ lished in the Knickp-bocker Magazine in Dec., 1840 (XVI, 461-464). The newspapers Thorpe edited in Louisiana included the Concordia Intelligencer at Vidalia; the Com¬ mercial Times and the Daily Tropic in New Orleans; and the Conservative in Baton Rouge. (See Virginia Herron, Thomas Bangs Thorpe and The Spirit of the Times, un¬ published Master’s thesis, Alabama Polytechnic Institute, 1953, pp. 9-11. For much of the information on Thorpe presented in this paper, I am indebted to Mrs. Herron’s painstaking assistance.) Spirit, IX, 247 (July 27, 1839). Herron, op. cit., p. 46. Spirit, XI, 43-44 (March 27, 1841). ii6 Eugene Current-Garcia as a masterpiece and did not forget to play up four years later as the title story in his first collection of Southwestern yarns.” Porter’s skill as editor and anthologist was ably demonstrated in this work. Well aware that the Spirit's files over the preceding six or seven years had accumulated a rich fund of narrative, most of which was as genuinely American in spirit and as well written as anything Cooper and Paulding had done—but far racier in tone— he wrote an engaging preface to the little volume, pointing up the novelty and scope of this new literature, advertising the Spirit’s unique role in bringing it before the American public, and praising individually the writers who had created it.^® As a group, said Porter, these included “some of the most extraordinary men who ever lived ‘to point a moral and adorn a tale.’ Despite their rug¬ ged exteriors and their fondness for whiskey, hunting, and reckless adventure, most of them, he continued, “are gentlemen not only highly educated, but endowed with a keen sense of whatever is ludicrous or pathetic, with a quick perception of character, and a knowledge of men and the world: more than all, they possess in an eminent degree the power of transferring to paper the most faithful and striking pictures with equal originality and effect. In this respect they have no superiors on either side of the Atlantic.”^ Singling out Thorpe for special commendation as one “whose sketches of the men and manners of the great valley of the Missis¬ sippi . . . have been read and admired wherever our language is spoken,”^^ Porter let it be known, however, than many another Spirit correspondent “of equal, if not superior, merit” had been omitted from the collection “on the ground that, like dressing a salad, a small but proper proportion of salt and pepper is quite as requisite as the more material ingredients of oil and mustard.”^^ And he concluded by modestly dedicating the book to all “those correspondents who have extended to him . . . the aid of their abler pens. The Big Bear ran to i8r pages and contained twenty-one sep¬ arate sketches, together with brief headnotes on each of the authors The full title of the book was The Big Bear of Arkansas, and Other S\etches, Illus¬ trative of Characters and Incidents in the South and South-West. Edited by William T. Porter. With Illustrations by Darley. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1845. Ibid., pp. 7-12. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 10. ^^Ibid., p. II. Ibid., p. 12. “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Arkansas 117 represented.^^ Further evidence of Porter’s editorial skill may be seen not only in the selection of his material,but also in his ar¬ rangement of the sketches and in the emphasis he placed upon the superior talent of Thorpe and the newly discovered Hooper. For he reiterated in his headnotes to the stories of both men his con¬ viction that their reputation for originality and humor would soon be world-wide, and suggested that their two stories in the present collection were but a small sample of the greater riches they would soon have to offer in book form on their own.^*’ By thus antici¬ pating the forthcoming publication of Hooper’s Simon Suggs and Thorpe’s Mysteries of the Backwoods, Porter gave a well-deserved “plug” to both of his foremost writers and at the same time under¬ scored the success of his own prior collection. Porter’s confidence in the success of The Big Bear had the sup¬ port of the publishers themselves, who wrote him flattering letters about the book during the course of its composition.^^ But, ever alert to the values of shrewdly placed publicity, he left nothing to chance. At least two months before its appearance in the book- ** The titles of the other twenty yarns were represented in the following order: “Jones’s Fight—A Story of Kentucky, By an Alabamian"; “The Great Kalamazoo Hunt— A Story of Michigan, By a New Yorker"; “That Big Dog Fight at Myers’s—A Story of Mississippi, By a Mississippian”; “How Simon Suggs ‘Raised Jack’—A Story of Georgia, By an Alabamian"; “Swallowing An Oyster Alive —A Story of Illinois, By a Missourian”; “A Texas Joker ‘In a Tight Place’—A Story of That Ilk, By an Edi¬ tor”; “Billy Warrick’s Courtship and Wedding—A Story of the ‘Old North State,’ By a County Court Lawyer”; “A Bully Boat and a Brag Captain —A Story of Steamboat Life on the Mississippi, By Sol. Smith”; “Letter from Billy Patterson Himself—‘Who hit Billy Patterson?’ ”; Swim for a Deer—Story of Mississippi, By the ‘Turkey Run¬ ner’ ”; “Chunkey’s Fight With The Panthers—A Thrilling Hunting Adventure in Missis¬ sippi, By the ‘Turkey Runner’ ”; “A Yankee That Couldn’t Talk Spanish—By John A. Stuart, Esq. of South Carolina”; “ ‘Old Sense’ of Arkansas—By ‘N.’ of that Ilk”; “Stoke Stout, of Louisiana—By Thorpe and Patterson, of the ‘Concordia Intelligencer’ ”; “Life and Manners in Arkansas—By an ex-governor of a Cotton-growing State”; “Anecdotes of the Arkansas Bar—By a Backwoods Lawyer”; “Hoss Allen, of Missouri”; “Pulling Teeth in Mississippi—By Uncle Johnny”; “The Way ‘Lige’ Shaddock ‘Scared Up a Jack’ — A legal Sketch, in the ‘Old North State.’ ” Fully two-thirds of the sketches dealt with scenes and characters in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Concerning Thorpe’s work Porter wrote: “It is understood to be his intention to publish, at an early day, a collection of his writings, original and selected, to be illus¬ trated by himself. As he is alike felicitous in the use of crayon, brush, or pen, we anticipate a brace or two of volumes of the highest pictorial and literary interest. The story annexed will give the reader an idea of his peculiar style in hitting off the original ‘characters’ frequently met with in the great valley of the Mississippi.” {The Big Bear, p. 13.) His headnote for Hooper was almost a word-for-word repetition of the com¬ ment he had written about the Alabama writer several weeks before in the Spirit {ibid., p. 71; see also supra, notes 8 and 10). Letter to Messrs. Carey & Hart, Feb. 14, 1845. ii8 Eugene Current-Garcia stores, Porter was inquiring “whether a notice and advertisement of ‘The Big Bear’ etc. would not tell on its sale } It occurred to me that a strong puff of the different sketches in the vol. by myself, in ‘The Spirit’—none of them being mine, would, at any rate, not ‘set it back any.’ And in subsequent letters he eagerly discussed other devices for stimulating public interest in the book and assur¬ ing it a wide sale.^® On March 15, for example, he wrote: Pray let me have any duplicate illustrations of ‘The Big Bear’ at as early a day as you can conveniently, and with them please send a proof of the Editor’s Preface. Would it not be gratifying to the different writers to re-publish it, or a portion of it in the ‘Spirit.?’ As a dozen different members of ‘the press gang’ are spoken of, it might not ‘set you back any’ in the sale of the work.^^ A week later the entire preface, reprinted verbatim, did appear in the Spiritf^ following an announcement calling attention to it and to the forthcoming publication of the book itself “in a week or two,” and listing by title each of the twenty-one sketches in it.®^ There was, said Porter, “not an indifferent story in the whole col¬ lection, and, we doubt if more original wit and humor was ever stitched between the covers of one volume.” T he Big Bear did not appear in a week or two, nor was it in fact published till about the middle of May, although it was again announced as “nearly ready” on April 19.^^ But thereafter Porter adroitly kept up interest in the book by occasionally reprinting in the Spirit favorable notices appearing in other papers^'^ and by seeing to it that an ample num¬ ber of free copies were being sent to those who would aid in pub¬ licizing the work.^° From the outset The Big Bear’s popularity was thus assured. Ibid. ^“Letter to Carey & Hart, Feb. 27, 1845. Porter began this letter by saying: “I ap¬ preciate your hint as to ‘notices to correspondents,’ much obliged. I should be delighted to receive the ‘casts’ referred to, in ‘The Big Bar.’ If you think it would serve your purposes I could also have them published in other papers here.” Letter to Carey & Hart, March 15, 1845. ®’^XV, 39 (March 22, 1845). ^^Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., XV, 90 (April 19, 1845). In this second announcement Porter listed all twenty-one titles again but changed two of them. He also indicated that two other Carey and Hart humor collections, Thompson’s Chronicles of Pineville and Hooper’s Some Adventures of Simon Suggs, were about to be issued along with The Big Bear. Spirit, XV, 86, 147 (April 19, May 24, 1845). Letter to Carey & Hart, May 20, 1845. “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Ari^ansas 119 Porter’s success in his first venture, however, only whetted his appetite for greater recognition as an anthologist. Scarcely had he completed his labors on The Big Bear when he began sounding out Carey and Hart on the possibility of his editing for them a fancy illustrated volume of anecdotes on the American turf, a work which he felt would outdo that of the well-known English sportsman “Wildrake” (George Tattersall) bearing the odd title of The Crachj of the Day^^ But despite the fact that Porter offered to supply the steel engravings himself at a reduced fee,^^ and that the publishers were seriously considering the venture, the project fell through, apparently because no suitable financial agreement could be reached between them.^® Undaunted by this setback, however. Porter coolly proposed a conference with Carey and Hart regarding two other works he had in mind; “Have you a copy of ‘Nimrod on Sporting?’ [he asked]—a quarto, superbly got up? Such a work, in octavo form, strictly American in its character, with 40 to 60 engravings on steel, would, I think command a great sale. The engravings would be illustrative of hunting, shooting, fishing, etc.”^® This was the germ of Porter’s most ambitious editorial project, the first American edition of Colonel Hawker’s Instructions to Young Sportsmen, to be issued late the next year, although a rival publish¬ ing house would bring it out. Meanwhile, even before The Big Bear was released Porter had also begun vigorously attacking the problem of editing a second volume of Southwestern sketches, confidently predicting that he could make it “a still more interesting compilation” because he intended taking a wider range.^® Though he had only to dig deeper into the Spirit’s files to find the basic ingredients for it, his Letter to Carey & Hart, Feb. 14, 1845. Porter remarked that "a large handsome volume with 30 portraits, etc. on steel, could not fail to sell, it appears to me. I can very readily, with the material I have in hand, and a thorough knowledge of almost every man or horse that has figured on the Turf for fifteen years or more—compile a volume that will put ‘The Cracks of the Day’ behind the distance flag! You may deem this inexcusable egotism on my part, but you must recollect I am not ‘fresh caught,’ and moreover that ‘an editor never blushes.’ I should like an opportunity of doing my best in a match at book editing—‘The Tall Son of York’ vs. ‘Wildrake,’ or Porter vs. Tatters¬ all. Pray let me have your ideas of such a work. I should expect to re-write three quarters of it.” Letter to Carey & Hart, Feb. 27, 1845. Letter to Carey & Hart, March 3, 1845. “It appears to me I cannot afford to recieve [Wc] what you can afford to pay ... at the present time.” Ibid. Letter to Carey & Hart, Feb. 14, 1845. 120 Eugene Current-Garcia editorial problem was complicated, first by the fact that Carey and Hart were rushing to bring out four or five humor collections at the same time, most of them based on yarns taken from the Spiritf^ and secondly, because all the competent wood engravers in New York had fallen behind in their efforts to keep up with the demand for woodcuts of Barley’s Hogarthian illustrations for them.^^ Nevertheless, like a skilled juggler. Porter went on at top speed managing a variety of details with great aplomb: looking after the engravings for his own and Hooper’s books,^ passing on authors’ corrections of proof to the publishers,^^ selecting and send¬ ing them additional stories for consideration,^^ and of course keep¬ ing up his weekly issue of the Spirit, which no amount of other business could force him to neglect.^® In putting together his second collection of humorous yarns Porter showed the same sureness of selectivity and arrangement as had characterized The Big Bear. For his title story he again chose one of the most popular of the Spirit yarns, “A Quarter Race in Kentucky,” which had been reprinted twice after its original ap¬ pearance,^^ and which Porter himself thought unbeatable.^® As Letter to Carey & Hart, April lo, 1845 (in New York Public Library). In addi¬ tion to The Big Bear, the firm was also bringing out Hooper’s Simon Suggs, Thomp¬ son’s Chronicles of Pineville, Thorpe’s Mysteries of the Bac\woods, and Porter’s A Quar¬ ter Race in Kentucky. That Darley’s illustrations were almost as highly regarded as the sketches them¬ selves may be seen from the following reaction to The Big Bear, printed in the Boston Daily Times: “We have read and re-read many of them, till tears of delight and screams of laughter brought on syncope; and we have offered to back ‘Simon Suggs,’ ‘That Big Dog Fight at Myers’s,’ and ‘Chunkey’s Fight with the Panthers,’ against the same amount of printed matter to be culled from any other volume, for fun, spirit and force, to the ‘extent of our pile,’ time and again, without finding any ‘takers.’ The illustrations by Darley, are worthy of the text. This fine artist never resorts to illegitimate means for creating a laugh. He draws men, and not like the London Cruikshanks, nondescripts and ourang outangs.—Such are the truth and accuracy of his drawings, that he ap¬ proaches very close to ‘Bewick’ and ‘Hogarth,’ those glorious masters of comic design. This work is destined to be immensely popular” (quoted in Spirit, XV, 147; May 24, 1845). ‘“Letter to Carey & Hart, April 10, 1845 (in New York Public Library). “Letter to Carey & Hart, June 7, 1845 (in New York Public Library). ‘“Undated note to Carey & Hart, 1845 (in New York Public Library). In this note Porter wrote: “Herewith I send you half a dozen more stories. I have three times as many more cut out to select from which I will send on directly.” An example of Porter’s foresight in this respect may be seen in his arranging with Carey and Hart to have them send him advance chapters of Hooper’s Simon Suggs sketches for prior publication in the Spirit. (See letters of March 3 and April 10, 1845; also Hoole, op. cit., p. 57.) The story first appeared in the Spirit in 1836 (VI: 162); it was reprinted four years later (X, 361; Oct. 3, 1840) and again, by popular request, in 1843 (XIII, 265; August 5). ‘“Letter to Carey & Hart, March 15, 1845. “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Ar]{ansas I 2 I for the remaining stories, he once more skimmed the cream of the Spirit’s crop, carefully arranging them in a pattern which brought the best yarns to the forefront of the volume. And although he was now obliged to fall back on the second- or third-best offerings of some writers—notably Thorpe and Hooper, since their best pieces had already appeared in earlier volumes^®—he made up for this deficiency by achieving greater diversification and turning out a bigger package. Thus, whereas The Big Bear contained only twenty-one sketches, most of which dealt with Southwestern scenes and incidents, A Quarter Race contained thirty-three,®” including twelve or thirteen Eastern and Midwestern yarns, which gave the volume a nation-wide scope and justified its claim as a work “illus¬ trative of scenes . . . throughout the Universal Yankee Nation.”®^ This was perhaps the main reason why Porter, upon completing his editorial chores in October, 1846, confidently assured his publish¬ ers that the book was “a far better one ... than the Big Bar.”^^ Sev¬ eral weeks later, while waiting impatiently to see the finished copy, he repeated his conviction that “if it don’t ‘go off like hot cakes’ I shall be greatly mistaken.”®® During the last few days of Decem¬ ber the Quarter Race finally appeared as Volume 5 of Carey and Hart’s Library of Humorous American Writers and was announced with appropriate fanfare in the Spirit on January 2, 1847.®^. What¬ ever its merits, the book was clearly an effort on the part of both Porter and the publishers to wring the humor market dry by ex¬ ploiting still further the popularity of The Big Bear —a fact which Though fairly good, the stories by Thorpe and Hooper in the Quarter Race (“Bob Herring, the Arkansas Bear Hunter” and “Taking the Census in Alabama”) did not compare with their best efforts; but neither did Porter attempt to play them up prom¬ inently in the volume. Besides the title story, some of the more hilarious yarns in the book were “A Shark Story,” “Ance Veasy’s Fight with Reub Sessions,” “Going to Bed Before a Young Lady,” “Dick Harlan’s Tennessee Frolic,” and “Cupping on the Sternum.” The full title of the book was A Quarter Race in Kentucky, and Other Sketches, Illustrative of Scenes, Characters, and Incidents, Throughout "The Universal Yankee Na¬ tion." Edited by William T. Porter. With Illustrations by Darley. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1847. Letter to “My Dear Hart,” Oct. 27, 1846. Letter to Carey & Hart, Dec. 14, 1846. XVI, 539. Along with the announcement Porter reprinted a highly favorable notice from the Boston Daily Times, which said in part: “This is a compilation of capital comic sketches from the columns of the New York ‘Spirit of the Times,’ whose editor has done more to develop and foster the humorous genius of his countrymen than any man alive. There are thirty-three articles in the present volume, all of rare merit and most amusing character” (ibid., p. 540). 122 Eugene Current-Garcia Porter’s short preface frankly admitted. Yet their faith in it was evidently justified, for the same collection of stories reappeared once more under another title ten years later.®® For Porter, how¬ ever, the Quarter Race represented only a part of his personal triumph as editor in 1847, since almost simultaneously with its publication he could also take pride in that of his most impressive, if now forgotten, volume—the first American edition of Hawker’s Instructions to Young Sportsmen!"^ To understand the full significance of Porter’s editorial work in this third anthology, some knowledge of its background, func¬ tion, and reputation may be needed. Originally published in Eng¬ land over a quarter century before and already a classic in its field. Hawker’s book had gone through nine editions by the time Porter undertook to adapt it for an American audience. It was the sports¬ man’s bible throughout the English-speaking world, containing all the relevant, up-to-date information on methods, equipment, game sites, and regulations for hunting, fishing, and other field sports in the European area. As characterized by one critic in Graham’s Magazine, the book had “stood its ground since 1814 against all rival productions, increasing in value with each new edition, and determinately brought up with all the successive improvements that have revolutionized the noble art of venerie since the date of its first appearance.”®^ Thus, among sportsmen of the 1840’s, even in America, Hawker’s name was a household word, notwithstand¬ ing the fact that much material in his book—such as data on Euro¬ pean game laws and the pursuit of wild fowl on the coast of France—had no direct bearing upon conditions in the United States. In editing Hawker, therefore. Porter carefully selected and condensed all the relevant original material within the first 180 pages of his edition, cut away all that was irrelevant to an American reading public, and supplied in its place a sizable body of essays was reprinted by T. B. Peterson in 1858 under the title of Colonel Thorpe’s Scenes in Ar\ansaw and combined with another humorous collection, J. M. Field’s The Drama in Pol{eri/ille, which Peterson had originally published in 1850. The full title of this work, published by Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia in Nov., 1846, was Instructions to Young Sportsmen, In All That Relates to Guns and Shooting. By Lieut. Col. P. Hawker. First American, from the Ninth London Edi¬ tion. To Which is Added The Hunting and Shooting of North America. With Descrip¬ tions of the Animals and Birds. Carefully Collated from Authentic Sources. By Wm. T. Porter, Esq., Editor of the “New York Spirit of the Times,” Etc., Etc., Etc. With Illustrations. '’Quoted in Spirit, XVI, 480 (Nov. 28, 1846). “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Ar}{ansas 123 by American authors dealing exclusively with hunting and wild life in North America. To accomplish his purpose Porter called once more upon his corps of Spirit experts, notably Thorpe, Audubon, and W. H. Her¬ bert (“Frank Forrester”),®® explaining his intention in a dedicatory statement addressed to his friend, the wealthy South Carolina plant¬ er Colonel Wade Hampton, Jr.: . . . it appeared to me that much of [Hawker] was altogether unneces¬ sary to sportsmen on this side of the Atlantic. You will see, therefore, that I have omitted many chapters contained in the original, which, being devoted to matters of local character, could not be regarded as either useful or interesting to our countrymen generally. The space thus obtained I have filled up with a series of articles upon the HUNTING AND SHOOTING OF NORTH AMERICA, from the pens of OUr most practical and scientific sportsmen. If you did not excel in all Field Sports, ... I should hesitate in expressing the hope that this work may meet your acceptance. It is the first, of a purely sporting character, ever published in the United States; and should it be deemed worthy of those for whose instruction and amusement I have compiled it, I shall feel amply repaid for the labour expended upon it.®® Thus, although Porter’s edition employed the English original as a springboard, nearly two-thirds of the book was entirely American in its authorship, aim, and function. This portion, running from page 181 to page 456, contained thirty-eight separate essays cover¬ ing every phase of hunting in America, nine of which had been written by Audubon,^ six by Thorpe,®^ and four by Herbert,®“ An eccentric and extraordinarily prolific writer, Herbert was a native Englishman who came to the United States in the early 1820’s and quickly built up a reputation as a writer of both sporting narratives and historical novels, some of his best known titles being The Warwick. Woodlands, My Shooting Box, and The Quorndon Hounds. A close friend of Porter and an intimate member of the Spirit circle since 1836, Herbert lived in seclusion at “The Cedars,” near Newark, New Jersey. His death by suicide in 1858 shocked Porter severely and possibly hastened the latter’s own death a few months later. Porter wrote his obituary, which appeared in Porter’s Spirit, IV, 185 (May 22, 1858). See also W. M. Van Winkle, Henry William Herbert: A Bibliography of His Writings, 18 1858 (Portland, Maine, 1936); Luke White, Jr., Henry William Herbert & The American Publishing Scene (Newark, New Jersey, 1943); and a biographical sketch of Herbert by F. E. Pond in Frank Forrester’s Sporting Scenes and Characters (5th edition, Phila¬ delphia, 1881), pp. 9-37. ” Instructions to Young Sportsmen (dedication “To COL. WADE HAMPTON, JR. of Lake Washington, Miss., formerly of Columbia, S. C.”), p. i. Audubon’s essays were “The Snipe,” “The Ruffled Grouse,” “The Pinnated Grouse,” “The Canvass-back Duck,” “The Wild Turkey,” “Deer Hunting,” “ ‘Barking Off’ Squir- 124 Eugene Current-Garcia three by J. P. Giraud, a prominent ornithologist of New York who collaborated with Audubon/^ and the remainder by a number of others.®^ As a treatise on the hunting and shooting of North America the book was so comprehensive in scope, and, as an example of American craftsmanship, so carefully composed, printed, and illus¬ trated, that it immediately drew high praise as a landmark in American bookmaking. Commenting upon the extraordinarily thorough job of editing performed by Porter, Graham s Magazine noted that the work brought together for the first time invaluable data relating to the innumerable varieties of hunting and shooting, unknown elsewhere, which are presented by the wide expanse of our territories, from Maine to Texas, and from the Hudson to the Yellow Stone.... These consist sometimes of succinct and clear instructions for the bag¬ ging of the respective victims, and sometimes of most spirited and graph¬ ic sketches in that peculiar and piquant style which forms the most na¬ tional part of our literature. The names of Thorpe, Frank Forrester, Sibley, Kendall, Audubon, Giraud, and a host of other contributors of equal merit, are enough to guarantee their value and attractiveness.®® Similar views were quoted in the Spirit from the New York Eve¬ ning Mirror, the Courier and Enquirer, the Albionf^ and numerous other journals.®^ But perhaps the fullest and most authoritative trib¬ ute to Porter’s achievement came from a source seldom guilty of idle, rels,” “The Rice Bird,” and “Wild Geese” (the last two in collaboration with J. P. Giraud). Thorpe’s essays were “Woodcock Fire Hunting in Louisiana,” “The Wild-Cat,” “ ’Possum Hunting,” “Bear Hunting in Arkansas,” “Fire Hunting for Deer,” and “Griz¬ zly Bear Hunting.” Herbert’s essays were “The Game of North America,” “The Woodcock,” “The Quail,” and “English and American Game.” Giraud’s essays dealt with “The Rail,” “The Plover,” and “The Curlew.” Besides those listed above there were also essays on the hunting of buffalo, wolves, moose, elk, and caribou, as well as on the setter and the pointer. Spirit, XVI, 480. This writer also commented on the makeup of the book as fol¬ lows: “The dress of the book is worthy of its interest and position. The plates which adorn it are among the most brilliant and successful specimens of the art of wood en¬ graving that we have seen in this country, and are set off to advantage by the clear type and white paper through which they are scattered. The binding is showy but in taste, and the whole work eminently worthy the place it will immediately assume in the library of every sportsman.” XVI, 486 (Dec. 5, 1846). Ibid., XVI, 468, 516, 559, 567 (Nov. 21; Dec. 19, 1946; Jan. 16, 23, 1847); XVII, 90 (April 17, 1847). “Mr. Spirit” and The Big Bear of Ar}{ansas 125 chauvinistic puffery, the Duyckincks’ Literary World, which gave him and the Spirit unqualified praise for popularizing and digni¬ fying the physical arts of hunting and fishing and thereby provid¬ ing a needed antidote to the alleged effeminacy of transcendental¬ ism. Concerning the major values of Porter’s edition of Hawker, this writer pointed out: . . . The crack sportsman of England would find his formulas sadly set at naught in the deep tangles, gloomy swamps, and vast prairies of this country. Hence, although those portions of Hawker, which have been retained, are excellent, . . . yet we regard Porter’s additions as much more valuable. His practical hints are calculated more immediately for this meridian. He has wisely called to his aid the best writers, upon such themes, in the country, nearly every one of whom has been, or is, a correspondent of his admirable weekly, ‘The Spirit of the Times.’ The natural history and mode of pursuing nearly all the objects of sport is given, from the moose to the cariboo [sic], down to the rice bird and snipe. It thus forms one of the best series of sketches, upon such subjects, ever collected. This mode of illustrating such themes is, by the way, the proper one; as, since each sketch is by a different writer, and he an eye-witness, we have a pleasing variety of style and manner throughout.®* With the completion of Hawker’s Instructions at the beginning of 1847 Porter rounded out his career as anthologist. He went on editing the Spirit brilliantly for nearly another decade but produced no more books,®® though it is said that he had at least one extensive manuscript in preparation at the time of his death, a biography of his good friend Herbert.'® But as a result of his phenomenal ener¬ gies during the brief three-year span from 1844 to 1847, he had not only brought additional fame and success to himself and the Spirit, but had also raised to a prominence equal to his own in American literature the names of his associates and friends in the world of sport. Pioneering in the two fields of sporting and humor writing, he had literally brought out a new class of writers and fathered a new style of American literature, which—as his successor Wilkes bombastically expressed it—“was not stewed in the closet, or fretted out at some pale pensioned laborer’s desk, but sparkled ’‘^Ibid., XVII, 127 (May 8, 1847). ’“A second American edition of Hawker was published by the same firm in 1853. ’“Brinlev, op. cit., p. 267. (See supra, n. 59.) 126 Eugene Current-Garcia from the cheerful leisure of the easy scholar . . . and flowed from every mead, or lake, or mountain—in the land where the rifle or the rod was known.”^^ ’’^Porter's Spirit of the Times, IV, 328 (July 24, 1858). Porter relinquished the editor¬ ship of the original Spirit in 1856 and then joined forces with George Wilkes as senior editor of an ill-fated new journal bearing his name. (See Mott, op. cit., I, 480 n.) The quotation above is part of the full-page obituary on Porter written by Wilkes. After Porter’s death this magazine, like its predecessor, went downhill rapidly and expired in the throes of a legal squabble over ownership and management. The Imagery of George Washington Harris Milton Rickets F ew of our minor writers have shown a more unusual com¬ mand of the American language than George Washington Harris, and perhaps no one has created so pessimisdc an account of the American backwoods settlement. In the darkness of his vision he is comparable to Mark Twain, and in his preoccupation with physical ugliness to Jonathan Swift, although these particular quali¬ ties have passed almost unnoticed because of the indirection with which he communicates them. Walter Blair has observed that Harris’s “writings were better than the rest,” but that his book, Sut Lovingood’s Yarns, “has never had the widespread appreciation it deserves, partly, perhaps, because its artistry has never been sufficiently appreciated... Of the frontier humorists in whose tradition Harris wrote—A. B. Longstreet, T. B. Thorpe, William Tappan Thompson, Johnson Jones Hooper, and others—Harris was among the least interesting in the variety of his plots, but at the same time the most intense in his vision, and the most self-conscious in his use of language: “well, when I larns tu spell an’ pernounce the flavor ove a ded hoss,” his story-telling pro¬ tagonist, Sut, promises hopelessly, “play the shape ove a yeathen war-jug [water-jug?] ontu a fiddil, ur paint the swifness ove these yere laigs ontu a clap-board, then I’ll ’scribe [describe] the nise ove that meetin.”^ Harris’s imagery is the medium through which he projects, indirectly, his vision of the American backwoods—the cabins, doggeries, and clearings of Frog Mountain, Rattlesnake Spring, and Lost Creek. It is a strange, subtly perceptive, dark vision, projected through a varied, complex, and tonally consistent body of images. It is misleading, as Henry W. Wells observes in Poetic Imagery, ^Native American Humor (New York, 1937), p. 96. “George W. Harris, Sut Lovingood's yarns (New York, 1867), p. 158. Page refer¬ ences in the text are to this edition. 128 Milton Rickels to consider symbolism a phase of rhetoric.® Imagery at its best is not simply a matter of literary technique; for Harris, it embodies his philosophy, his religion, his humor—in short, his knowledge of the world. Harris’s work provides an unusual opportunity to ob¬ serve an example of the function imagery serves in providing a counterpoint to surface meaning, because what his images communi¬ cate is not the same thing that his plots and characters communicate. The stories themselves are examples of wildly exuberant humor, full of cruel practical jokes and a childlike, or savage, deUght in inflicting discomfort on one’s enemies. Coarse and impish on the surface, the tales celebrate the joy of physical movement, delight in food, drink, and sexual experience, and the excitement of wild confusion. But the careful reader is early aware that the tone of the tales is not one of sheer fun, of masculine delight in slapstick. Harris knew that he had something to say, a vision of back- woods life to present that was altogether unusual in the 1850’s and i86o’s, a striking obverse to the Adamic myth, as R. B. W. Lewis calls it; the idea of “the authentic American as a figure of heroic innocence and vast potentialities.”^ Since Crevecoeur the American frontier had been accepted as the creator of the truest American. But Harris was hopeless that he could command any audience worth communicating his counter-vision to—if, indeed, he beheved any such audience existed. From the first, Harris warns his readers that his stories have a moral point of view. In his dictated Preface, Sut forecasts that his book will not “sit purfeckly quiet ontu the stumicks ove sum pussons” and those are “—them hu hes a holesum fear ove the devil....” But Sut has no hope of reforming the hypocritical and the wicked: “They hes been preached to, an’ prayed fur, now ni ontu two thousand years an’ I won’t dart weeds whar thuty-two poun shot bounces back” (p. x). Prefaces themselves, Sut argues, are to no purpose: “Smells tu me sorter like a durned humbug, the hole ove hit—a httil like cuttin ove the Ten Cummandmints intu the rine ove a warter- million; hits jist slashed open an’ the inside et outen hit, the rine an’ the cummandmints broke all tu pieces an’ flung tu the hogs, an’ never tho’t ove onst—them, nur the ’tarnil fool what cut em thar” ®New York, 1924, p. 3. ^The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1955), p. I. The Imagery of George Washington Harris 129 (p. ix). The purpose of the book, Harris has Sut say, is to comfort “eny poor misfortinit devil hu’s heart is onder a mill-stone . . .”(P* xi) by making him laugh. But the laughter must come from the poor plots; the style, the imagery, communicates an infernal country in which no man could take joy. I Most apparent in Harris’s images is the frequency with which he uses epithets and complexly developed metaphors and similes. The similes are often extended by elaborate addidon and qualifica¬ tion of detail. Almost every line of the book contains some kind of imagery. The detail used in the comparisons is concrete, closely packed, and graphic. The first effect of this frequency of imagery is speed and in¬ tensity. The reader is whirled into the illusion of sheer delight in motion and wild acdon. Racy colloquialism, nonce words, corrup- dons of names and of bookish terms, compression of detail, astonish¬ ing expansion of connotadon, and controlled changes in the tensions of the acdon and of the language, shifting from litotes to the wildest hyperbole, give a constant illusion of speed and movement. Images are expanded by piling detail upon detail until the reader is be¬ wildered in a complexity of emotions and ideas. The subject matter of Harris’s images shows that his concrete world of reference was limited but closely and intensely observed. The great body of his metaphors and similes can be classified into a few broad categories. The largest group, constituting well over one-third of all images ernployed, is made up of animal images—mammals, birds, fish, and insects. Usually these are unpleasant, whatever the animal. Harris uses horses, mules, and asses most frequently: a woman may be as “ugly es a skin’d boss” (p. 36); Sut, Harris’s protagonist, has a starched shirt that stands like “a dry hoss hide” (p. 32); words may fall from one’s lips “sorter like a ole heart-broken hoss slobbers” (p. 61); an attractive woman can do more devilment than “a loose stud hoss et a muster groun’ ” (p. 77 ); and a deceitful woman may look as “solemn es a jasack in a snowstorm when the fodder gin out” (p. 80). The next largest group within the animal category consists of 130 Milton Rickels comparisons to bulls and cows. Sut’s starched shirt sat as close to his skin “es a poor cow dus tu her hide in March” (p. 33); a re¬ formed creature may become as “morril es a draft-steer” (p. 104); and, of the naked Parson Bullen, “his belly wer ’bout the size an’ color ove a beef paunch” (p. 57). The third sub-group is made up of insects, usually poisonous or verminous—mosquitoes, hornets, ants, bees, locusts, lightning bugs, bed bugs, weevils, cockroaches, fleas, and others. After insects come comparisons to dogs and cats, followed and approximately equaled by those to hogs and sows. For example, the victim of one of Sut’s practical jokes lies as “quiet as a sick sow in a snowstorm” (p. 44). A strong minded woman may browbeat her man until she changes him into “a kidney worm’d hog what cant raise bristiles in less nor a month.”^ Many of the comparisons to domestic beasts are to skinned carcasses or bloody parts of butchered animals. Whiskey goes down a circuit rider’s throat “like a snake travelin thru a wet sassidge gut” (p. 185). Another man might have a mouth “es red es a split beef” (p. 199), or a foot that “wer the biggest chunk ove meat an’ knotty bones I ever seed tu have no guts intu it” (p. 37). Miscellaneous animals make up the rest of the sample: alligators, elephants, lizards, snakes, worms, eels, rats, fish, ganders, sheep, squirrels, panthers, wolves, buzzards, ferrets, and weasels. A fish image may illustrate Harris’s stranger conceits. He imagines his political enemies in hell, where the devil sorted them from the “common cusses,” took “up a needil as long as a harpoon, and with a big quile of trace chain . . . threaded ... it and strung em on the chain . . . then hung the whole bunch over the aidge of the boat into the brimstone. Jehosephat, how they sizzled, an’ sloshed, an’ dove, and sprinkled hot iron about wif thar tails. A string of sun pearch would have been jist no whar.”® At times the image refers to no specific animal but merely to general animal characteristics. A practical joker watches for oppor¬ tunities “jist es dost es a ole ’oman what wer wunst onsanctified hersef, watches her darters when a suckus ur a camp meetin am in heat” (p. 61). Sut says of a Yankee whom he hates: “He wer ® “Sut Lovengood’s Chest Story,” Nashville Union and American, June 30, 1858, quoted from Donald Day, “The Life and Works of George Washington Harris” (unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Chicago, 1942). ° “Sut Lovengood Come to Life,” Nashville Union and American, May 3, 1866, quoted from Day, p. 55. The Imagery of George Washington Harris 131 hatched in a crack . . (p, 37). And Sut’s starched shirt, with bits of his skin clinging to it, “looked adzactly like the skin ove sum wile beas’ tore off alive .. (p. 35). The total effect of Harris’s animal imagery is unpleasant. It im¬ plies speed, wild action, grotesque appearance, bloody flesh, and suffering. Next to animals, the second largest category, accounting for perhaps one-fifth of Harris’s similes and metaphors, is that of ma¬ chinery and implements: steam engines, locomotives (a pair of angry bulls clash “like two drunk locomotives,” p. 99), threshing machines, pumps, steamboats, sawmills, grist mills, cotton gins, whiskey stills, corn shellers, welding torches, knives, axes, and the like. The pictures they create are of motion, frequently of powerful, fearsome, and mindless action. The third most frequent group of images has to do with human actions, trades, and professions. An act may be “quick es an ’oman kin hide a strange hat” (p. 239), or one may be a “pow’ful b’lever, not a sarcumsized b’lever, but a lie b’lever” (p. 198). Or animal characteristics and human trades may be combined: Sut says he may “turn buzzard, an’ eat ded bosses fur a livin’’ (p. 171). Of a dog fight, Sut says, “When the ballunce ove the dorgs cum up, (human like,) they all pitched into the poor helpless devil . . .” (p. 106), and of critics, “Then thar’s the book-butchers, orful on killin an’ cuttin up, but cud no more perjuce a book, than a bull-butcher cud perjuce a bull” (p. x). Thus Sut’s characters are compared to the church-goers, circuit riders, congressmen, soldiers, rough-and- tumble fighters, drunks, auctioneers, farmers, butchers, tailors, coffin- makers, and other classes and trades of the backcountry. The category next is size is made up of references to household goods and utensils. A fat man may be “a tub ove soap-grease” (p. 51) or pot-bellied (p. 51); women are quilts (usually old quilts) (pp. 105, 22); an unconscious man may be “es cold es krout” (p. 73); while another may have a head “es big es a wash pot” (p. 28). Various smaller categories can be set up, including those referring to the appearance and power of whiskey, called skin-gut, fester gut, rot-gut, popskull, churn brain, limberleg, tangle-leg, tangle-foot, kill- devil, etc. (pp. 31,85,113, 173, 199, etc.); of the imagined actions and 132 Milton Rickels looks of the devil and of hell; of vegetables and plants; of gun¬ powder, poisons, and diseases. Many incongruous or incommensurate comparisons, common in American humor, appear in Harris’s descriptions. One may be “a bigger fool nor ole Squire Mackmullen, an’ he tried tu shoot hisef wif a onloaded hoe-handle” (p. 58). Retribution may be “es big es a car shed” (p. 179). A Negro camp meeting, disrupted by Sut, “looked like forty-eight cords ove black cats a-fitin . . .” (p. 167). Sheriff Doltin purses his mouth to blow out “a whistil seven foot long” (p. 240), and Sut, singing Daddy kill’d the blind bull, Human nater, human nater! Mammy fried a pan full, Sop an’ tater, sop an’ tater, (p. 123) claims that the song is prettier than Longfellow’s “Exelcider” “by a gallun an’ a ’alf” (p. 123). II Several generalizations are possible after Harris’s imagery is ab¬ stracted and classified. First, it is neither attractive nor pleasant. The effect of images of flayed and butchered animals, of mindless and rapidly running machinery, and of the utensils of the backwoods kitchen is generally ugly or grotesque. However, it is equally apparent that the effect is not merely ugly. Harris’s imagery is formally varied and complex. Usually it is concrete and graphic, but at times it conveys no picture at all. It becomes cryptic and intellectual, communicates ideas and judgments. One example of such sunken imagery^ is Sut’s mother’s invitation to the local deacon to leave her home: “We’s got no notes tu shave, nur gals ole enuf tu convart. . .” (p. 289). Thus Harris im¬ plies that the circuit rider’s interest in girls is sexual rather than spiritual. The image comprehends too much for simple visualiza¬ tion. It approaches abstraction. Specifically, it compares a child to a nubile adolescent, and then, shifting the object of the comparison, sussests that a minister can have no interest in children. Such sunken imagery exists for its content of ideas. Its generalization is expansive. Recurring images of circuit riders as fathering illegiti- ’ The term is from Wells, pp. 76, 87, 172, and elsewhere. The Imagery of George Washington Harris 133 mate children, seducing girls, fleeing irate husbands, and the like, communicate a graphic impression of the hill country preacher as ignorant, immoral, and as baldly hypocritical as Chaucer’s Pardoner or Boccaccio’s Friar Onion. Explicitly Harris does not argue this. But behind the comic fantasy of his plots plays the counterpoint of the imagery, sounding the discordant notes of the American Eden. However, Harris’s vision of evil had no complementary vision of good. Without hope he could do no more than mourn that his knowledge and his art should die, as his image of the Mosaic law hints: “a littil like cuttin ove the Ten Cummandmints intu the rine ove a warter-million; hits jist slashed open an’ the inside et outen hit, the rine an’ the cummandmints broke all tu pieces an’' flung tu the hogs . , .” (p. ix).® Although the tables of the law are broken, Harris’s image is unsentimental and hard: only fools offer laws to swinish mankind. Next, the imagery reveals that Harris was blessed with an ex¬ pansive, myth-making imagination which functioned with natural ease and telling effect in symbols and allegories. The excesses of the language, wild, vigorous, and compelling, match the vaultings of a large and strange imagination, an imagination at times irra¬ tional and compulsive but bodying forth from a microcosm of home¬ ly images a macrocosm of emotions and ideas. Ill Perhaps the consistency, the artistry, and the meanings communi¬ cated by the imagery may be illustrated further by examining in some detail those associated with Sut, with Sut’s father, and with two minor female characters. The first picture of Sut is of “a queer looking, long legged, short bodied, small headed, white haired, hog eyed, funny sort of a genius, fresh from some bench-legged Jew’s clothing store” (p. 19). When Sut swears, he says “durn my skin— no, my haslets—” (p. 29), and we know that he has haslets like a hog rather than respectable internal organs. To emphasize his animality, but also to connote a new creature through whose eyes the world will be refracted, Sut observes often tliat he has no soul: “I don’t keer fur herearter, fur hits onpossible fur me tu hev ara soul” (p. 107).® He is, Sut repeats, a “nat’ral born ® Cf. Exodus 33; 15-19. “And again, “I hain’t got nara a soul, nuffln but a whisky proof gizzard” (p. 172). 134 Milton Rickels durn’d fool”—“a poor ornary devil” (p. 58). He flaunts his soulless¬ ness, his wildness, and his animality. Others he sees as equally animal but less honest, taking refuge in convention’s comfortable hypocrisy. Without really caring he meditates that if his legs hold out he might “turn human . . . that is sorter human, enuf to be a Squire ur school cummisiner” (p. 97). Soulless, Sut is free of re¬ sponsibility, free from the necessity to be decent or good, but at the same time free to be honest about what he sees of himself and of his world. Other clues to Sut’s nature and consequently to his function as protagonist are offered by the images associated with his parentage. Early he observes that he is “one of dad’s explites at makin cussed fool inventions, an’ cum afore my time” (p. 107). Later he adds “I’s nufiin but sum new-fangil’d sort ove beas’, a sorter cross atween a crazy ole monkey an’ a durn’d wore-out hominy-mill” (p. 107); per¬ haps, that is, child of a lascivious animal and a worn out kitchen machine. Thus, offspring of machine and animal, he is character¬ ized as living or moving almost without mind or spirit—a suitable protagonist to celebrate the joys of action and the abandonment to the irrational, cruelty, hatred, and the euphoria of whiskey. In his most fantastic explanation of his parentage, Sut explains to a stranger: “we kept a sand-hill crane, and Mam and him had a difficulty, and he chased her under the bed.”^® Sut is king of the fools, and the strange animal imagery of his birth connotes that he is fantastic and mythic, sired, like a Greek hero, by a wild bird on a wild hill country woman. Even in accounts of his parentage less mythic and irrational, Sut is the figurative child of the sand hill crane. Once, speculating on his legitimacy, Sut muses: My long laigs sumtimes sorter bothers me, but then mam tuck a pow’ful skeer et a san-hill crane a-sittin on a peel’d well-pole, an’ she out-run her shadder thuty yards in cumin half a mile. I speck I owes my laigs an’ ipeed tu that sarcumstance an’ not tu eny fraud on mam’s part. (p. 68) At the level of plot, Sut’s image of himself is of a “nat’ral born durn’d fool,” delighting in liquor, women, food, practical jokes, ““Sut Lovengood Lands Old Abe Safe at Last,” Nashville Union and American, March 5, 1861, quoted from Brom Weber’s modernization of George W. Harris, Sut Lovingood (New York, 1954), p. 232. The Imagery of George Washington Harris 135 and lazy story-telling. His pleasures are made possible to some ex¬ tent by his consciousness of his own insignificance. Yet below his frequent confessions of worthlessness sounds a recurring theme of desperate misery. A few times Sut feels shame. Once, to satirize Abraham Lincoln, Harris pictures him as so disgustingly ugly and cowardly that Sut is ashamed for such a man to be President of the United States. Again, when community propriety in the person of Squire Hanley surprises Sut and his mother torturing the family father and husband, Sut suddenly sees the degradation of his life, and is ashamed: A appertite tu run began tu gnaw my stumick, an’ I felt my face a- swellin wif shame. I wer shamed ove dad, shamed ove mam’s bar laigs an’ open collar, shamed ove mysef, an’ dam, ef I minds right, ef I warn’t a mossel shamed ove the pup. (p. 286) Although at times Sut speculates that he might some day turn human, “That is, sorter human” (p. 97), he abandons himself to his animality in full consciousness of his misery and wretchedness. He expresses repeatedly in comic ambiguity his final despair: “I’ll drownd mysef sum day” (p. 30); “I orter bust my head open again a bluff ove rocks, an’ jis’ wud du hit, ef I warnt a cussed coward” (p. 97); and “I’se a goner I ’speck, an’ I jis don’t keer a durn. I’m no count, no how. Jis’ look at me! Did yu ever see sich a sampil of a human afore? I feels like I’d be glad tu he dead” (pp. 106-107). The conditions of his life make him liken himself to Old Stuffgut, his dog: He wur skeered all the time, an’ stud redy tu run ur tu steal, as the chances mout be; an’ takin ’im altogether, he wur jis’ the rite sort ove a dog tu belong tu me—not wurth a durn, an’ orter been killed afore his eyes got open. (p. 151) By denying Sut any transcendence, Harris consigns him to such com¬ plete insignificance that all violations are authorized. Sut’s father is protagonist in two sketches which, perhaps signifi¬ cantly, begin and end Harris’s one published volume. In both tales the animal metaphor is extended to allegorical proportions. In the first, “Sut Lovingood’s Daddy, Acting Horse,” Sut’s father plays the part of a domestic work animal. The family finds itself so poor that it has no horse to pull the plow. “Dad,” “Mam,” and the 136 Milton Rickels “childer” wait until almost strawberry time, hoping a stray will come by. None appears because, Sut observes, no such good luck “ever cums wifin reach ove whar dad is, he’s so dod-dratted mean, an’ lazy, an’ ugly, an’ savidge, and durn fool tu kill” (p. 22). But the old man is not without his sense of responsibility, and one night, as Sut recounts: he lay awake till cock-crowin, a-snorin, an’ rollin, an’ blowin, an’ shuffin, an’ scratchin hissef, an’ a whisperin at mam a heap, an’ at breckfus’ I foun’ out what hit ment. Says he, “Sut, I’ll tell yu what we’ll du: I’U he boss mysef, an’ pull the plow whilst yu drives me, an’ then the ‘Ole Quilt’ (he ment that fur mam,) an’ the brats kin plant, an’ tend, ur jis let hit alone, es they darn pleze; I aint a carein.” (p. 22) However, merely to pull the plow is not enough; Sut’s father decides he must be harnessed to play the character of a horse. While Sut buckles on the gear, the old man blows out his stomach to try the belly band, “chomps” the bit, tries to bite Sut’s arm, whinnies like a mad horse, and drops on all fours to kick at his wife. Throughout, this fantastic paterfamilias works not as an obedient draft animal, but as a wild and fractious beast, driven to his task by cruelty and restraints. At the end, pursued by hornets, he overdoes the part of the horse and leaps over a cliff. In complaining that this was unhorselike, Sut introduces a new image: thars nara boss ever foaldid durned fool enuf tu lope over eny sich place; a cussed muel mout a dun hit, but dad warn’t actin muel, tho’ he orter tuck that karacter; hits adzactly sooted to his dispersition, all but not breedin. (pp. 25-26) Thus in this tale, Harris’s customary animal metaphors are extended to become allegory, if one pleases: man, to feed his offspring, be¬ comes a work animal. But he does not, like Chaucer’s Bayard, re¬ sign himself with “Yet am I but an hors.” He knows himself that he must be harnessed, curbed, and driven; still he remains wild and bestial. At the end of the collection, in a story titled “Dad’s Dog-School,” Harris has Sut’s father once more choose to play the part of an ani¬ mal. For this adventure, the old man decides to teach the family bull pup, an animal “Ugly as a she ho’net an’ brave es a trap’t rat...” (p. 278), to bite and hang on. For the purpose Sut’s father has him- The Imagery of George Washington Harris 137 self sewed up in the hide of a newly slaughtered yearling bull, and has Sut sick the dog on him. Unexpectedly the dog goes in under the hide and fastens his teeth in the blood-besmeared nose and upper lip of Sut’s father. As Sut gleefully describes it, “Dad’s ole warty snout wer pull’d out tu a pint like ontu a mad bar’s . . ..” The old man’s obscenities and blasphemies are so distorted by the pup’s hold that the family pretend not to know that he is crying for help. In the end Sister Sal separates the two with an ax, chopping away in her zeal the end of “Dad’s” nose and a half-moon of his upper lip, along with the dog’s snout and jaw. The dog, Sut observed, was “momoxed,” and “Dad” remained long afterward “es tetchy about hit ... es a soreback boss is ’bout green flies” (p. 277). Thus once again Sut’s father chooses to become an animal, dressed, like an Indian shaman or a primitive Greek priest, in the skin of a bull to suffer an obscure and bloody penance, perhaps for the guilt of bringing children into the world. Harris never explains logically why Sut should hate his father. In a tale written after the book was published, entitled “Well, Dad’s Dead,”” the old man’s death is treated with callous indifference by Sut and with relief by “Mam.” George Washington himself, “Mam” observes, never had a better idea. But if “Dad” is a bull, or a fractious horse—more like a mule, except for the not breeding—per¬ haps the imagery connotes that condition the psychologists associate with sexual jealousy of the bull of the herd. However that may be, the imagery associated with Sut’s father— that of domestic animals, horse, mule, bull—connotes reluctant domesticity, cruel, fractious animality, laziness, and a desire for freedom, like Sut’s, from inner and outer restraints. One may add other objects of Sut’s scorn to make a revealing list: he despises circuit riders, teachers, church-goers, sheriffs, judges, constables, Yankees (“they think that God eats half dimes for break- fus”),^“ Negroes, Republicans, Irishmen, Catholics, Jews, ugly women, old women, respectable women, and the woman as wife. Some of these groups are proper objects of prejudice for his place, time, and condition. The others generally represent respectability or authority. The imagery associated with them implies unattractive- ” Knoxville Press and Herald, November 15, 1868. See Day, pp. 61-62. ’■“Sut Lovengood Blown Up,” Nashville Gazette, July 21, 1857, quoted from Day, p. 99. 138 Milton Rickels ness, an inclination and a power to suppress, and hypocrisy. One example, powerful and bitter, summarizes Sut’s vision of man’s con¬ dition and man’s fate; Whar thar ain’t enuf feed, big childer roots littil childer outen the troff, an’ gobbils up thar part. Jis’ so the yeath over: bishops eats elders, elders eats common peopil; they eats sich cattil es me, I eats possums, possums eats chickins, chickins swallers wums, an’ wums am content tu eat dus, an’ the dus am the aind ove hit all. (p. 228) Sut’s hatreds, however, are not confined to symbols of oppressive authority and hypocritical respectability, or to outsiders. His dark philosophy is shown not only in his hatred of his ugly and guilty father but also in a series of hatreds culminating in a strange hatred of innocence worthy of the Marquis de Sade: I hates ole Onsightly Peter, jis’ caze he didn’t seem tu like tu hear me narrate las’ night; that’s human nater the yeath over, an’ yere’s more uni- varsal onregenerit human nater: ef ever yu dus enything tu enybody wifout cause, yu hates em allers arterwards, an’ sorter wants tu hurt em egin. An’ yere’s anuther human nater: ef enything happens [to] sum feller, I don’t keer ef he’s yure bes’ frien, an’ I don’t keer how sorry yu is fur him, thar’s a streak ove satisfackshun ’bout like a sowin thread a- runnin all thru yer sorrer. Yu may be shamed ove hit, but durn me ef hit ain’t thar. Hit will show like the white cottin chain in mean cassinett; brushin hit onder only hides hit. An’ yere’s a littil more; no odds how good yu is tu yung things, ur how kine yu is in treatin em, when yu sees a littil long laiged lamb a-shakin hits tail, an’ a-dancin staggerinly onder hits mam a-huntin fur the tit, ontu hits knees, yer fingers uAll itch tu seize that ar tail, an’ fling the littil ankshus son ove a mutton over the fence amung the blackberry briars, not tu hurt hit, but jis’ tu disapint hit. Ur say, a littil calf, a-buttin fas’ under the cow’s fore-laigs, an’ then the hine, wif the pint ove hits tung stuck out, makin suckin moshuns, not yet old enuf tu know the bag aind ove hits mam frum the hookin aind, don’t yu want tu kick hit on the snout, hard enough tu send hit back¬ wards, say fifteen foot, jis’ tu show hit that buttin won’t allers fetch milk? Ur a baby even, rubbin hits heels apas’ each uther, a-rootin an’ a-snifflin arter the breas’, an’ the mam duin her bes’ tu git hit out, over the hem ove her clothes, don’t yu feel hungry tu gin hit jis’ one ’cussion cap slap, rite ontu the place what sum day’ll fit a saddil, ur a sowin cheer, tu show hit what’s atwixt hit an’ the grave; that hit stans a pow’ful chance not tu be fed every time hits hungry, ur in a hurry? (pp. 245-246) The Imagery of George Washington Harris 139 By imputing to Sut a hatred of ignorant innocence, Harris moves his protagonist beyond the point of social criticism. Sut is honest in the way Simone de Beauvoir contends the Marquis de Sade is honest: “He adhered only to the truths which were derived from the evidence of his own actual experience.”^^ Further, also like the Marquis de Sade, Sut’s choice seems merely between conventional morality at its lowest, and violence. Sut chooses pointless violence. Franklin Meine,^^ F. O. Matthiessen, and other critics who have commented on Harris’s work, praise Sut’s love of joy, his Rabelaisian “jollity of mind pickled in a scorn of fortune,”^^ and indeed Sut has joys and high spirits. Matthiessen observes that the animal imagery connotes nature.^® If it does, it customarily connotes the nature of unrestrained and savage beasts rather than the nature of beautiful animals and parklike country side. It is the nature that seeks escape from all restraints. Harris’s Sut and his father are natural man unsoftened by humanity, unenlightened by intelligence, and un¬ guided by religion: a terrible natural man who suffers in his world, and who, like a stone age savage, renews his sense of power and command by inflicting meaningless and endlessly repetitious pain on whatever few he can find in his power. For examples of the connotations and the artistry of Harris’s more pleasant imagery, two women, minor characters in the Yarns, will serve. One of the few times Harris allows Sut to be sentimental comes in his description of Sheriff Doltin’s tubercular wife. The imagery associated with her is the imagery of inanimate nature and of musical instruments. From nature Sut draws comparisons to wells of water, the stars, the moon, and the like. The finger cords in her hands, Sut observes, “wer mos’ as high, an’ look’d es tight, and show’d es clar thru the skin es the strings ove a fiddil” (p. 257). The second image, combining an insect and a musical instrument, describes her coughing as “not much louder nor a crickit chirpin in a flute ..(p. 257). Another woman whom Harris describes to indicate Sut’s approval of her is the mountain girl Sicily Burns. In the images associated “Simone de Beauvoir, The Marquis de Sade (New York, 1953), p. 80. ^*Tall Tales oj the Southwest (New York, 1930), p. xxiv. ^American Renaissance (New York, 1941), p. 644, to describe Wirt Staples, one of Harris’s more heroic creations. Ibid. “Animal imagery of which Harris was so fond, since it brought man close to nature. . .” is Matthiessen’s phrase. 140 Milton Rickels with her, there are almost no animals, and of these none are ugly. Three references to horses occur: Sicily’s hair is “es long as a boss’s tail” (p. 76), she stands “sixteen an’ a ’alf hans hi” (p, 75), and could “du more devilmint nur a loose stud hoss et a muster groun’, ef she only know’d what tools she totes” (p. 77), which women do know, Sut believes. Again describing the impact of her appearance, Sut says that whenever he sees her his stomach feels as it does when he has “seed the rattil-snake squar hissef tu cum at me . ..” (p. 78). A dog collar could circle her waist (p. 76), her cheeks and lips are as “rosey es a pearch’s gills in dorgwood blossum time . . .” (p. 76), and her hair is “black es a crow’s wing et midnite” (p. 76). No other animal imagery is associated with Sicily. The other images selected by Sut to describe her appearance and the nature of her effect on him are drawn from flowers, snow, ripe fruit, storms and lightning, fire in the mountains, plants, the clarity or foam of a rushing river, good whiskey, quicksilver, and music. When George observes that Sicily is handsome, Sut objects: Handsome! that ar word don’t kiver the case; hit sounds sorter like callin good whiskey strong water, when yu ar ten mile frum a still-hous, hit a rainin, an’ yer flask only haf full. She shows amung wimen like a sun-flower amung dorg fennil, ur a hollyhawk in a patch ove smartweed. Sich a buzzim! Jis’ think ove two snow balls wif a strawberry stuck but-ainded intu bof on em. (p. 75) Sicily is described first in terms of her appearance, then in terms of a series of her actions, and finally in terms of her effect on Sut and on men in general. Of her smile, Sut says, “sich a smile! Why, when hit struck yu far an’ squar hit felt jis’ hke a big ho’n ove on- rectified ole Munongahaley” (p. 76). Again, Sut compares Sicily to a mountain storm: “I’se hearn in the mountins a fust rate fourth proof smash ove thunder cum unexpected, an’ shake the yeath, bringin along a string ove litenin es long es a quarter track, an’ es bright es a weldin heat, a-racin down a big pine tree, tarin hit intu broom splits, an’ toof pickers, an’ raisin a cloud ove dus’, an’ bark, an’ a army ove Urn’s wif a smell sorter like the devil wer about, an’ the long darnin needil leaves fallin roun wif a tif— tif—quiet sorter soun, an’ then a quiverin on the yeath es littil snakes die; an’ I felt quar in my in’ards, sorter ha’f cumfurt, wif a littil glad an’ rite smart ove sorry mix’d wif hit.” (pp. 77-78) The Imagery of George Washington Harris 141 Sicily is also like the clear, cool water, white foam, and music of the Oconee River. When George objects to the final comparison, Sut insists: “Music; the rushin warter dus make music; so dus the wind, an’ the fire in the mountin, an’ hit gin me an oneasy queerness agin; but every time I look’d at that gal Sicily Burns, I hed all the feelins mix’d up, ove the litenin, the river, an’ the snake, wif a totch ove the quicksilver sensashun a huntin thru all my veins fur my ticklish place.” (p. 78) The effects of Sicily on Sut lead him to another of his philo¬ sophical generalizations: “George, this worl am all ’rong enyhow, more temtashun than per- ventitive; ef hit wer ekal. I’d stand hit. What kin the ole prechurs an’ the ugly wimen ’speck ove us, ’sposed es we ar tu sich invenshuns as she am?” (p. 77) Thus in this sunken image Sicily Burns becomes the essence of female temptation which man cannot resist. She is as tempting as naked Eve, and like Eve, she is associated with serpents and the smell of the devil. The imagery communicates not merely the seductive beauty of the flesh, but the complexity of desire, fear, and the shaking power of sensual passion. It may well appear that Harris’s imagery will bear close scrutiny, that it is art of no mean order. Sut appears to seek sheer fun, but the imagery associated with him enlarges his stature to a figure ambiguously comic and mythic, hopelessly desiring an impossible freedom, pursuing intensity of experience in the flesh, and an aban¬ donment to the obsessive and the irrational. Subtly communicated is die hint of large hopes of what man might be on the frontiers of the new world, and bitter disappointment in what he really was. Sut is hard and cruel because in the moral void of the American backcountry of his experience he can assert his individuality only through violence. The stories recount crude practical jokes; the imagery supplies the counterpoint, sounding a world only occasion¬ ally satisfying, but more often harsh, hypocritical, wicked, transitory, and meaningless. The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction Howard W. Webb, Jr. O UR JUDGMENTS OF RiNG Lardner and of his work have become stereotyped and thus distorted. Because of the seeming finality of Clifton Fadiman’s argument that “Except Swift, no writer has gone farther on hatred alone,we have come to think of Lardner as a man who despised his fellowman. Because of the clarity widi which he caught the social, professional, and linguistic traits of his characters—his “athletes, salesmen, surburbanites, song writers, barbers, actresses, stenographers, and the like”^—we have come to beheve that his achievement went no further. So long as we rest with these conclusions, we will miss the more fundamental, and far subtler, point of his writing. The dominant theme in Ring Lardner’s writing was not the pettiness and meanness of modern fife; it was the problem of communication. In his work he analyzed, more in amusement and pity than in anger, the flaws and failures that im¬ pede its smooth and even flow. This theme is manifest in both the matter and the manner of Lardner’s work. Such factors as debasing of standard English, banality of vocabulary and ideas, confusion and absence of meaning, all of which tend to jeopardize or destroy the process of successful linguistic communion, provide the substance of many of his comic sketches, his nonsense compositions and parodies, and even of his radio reviews.^ The same factors define the essence of his style, that imaginative synthesis of vulgate Americanese. Matter and manner were most significantly combined in Lardner’s short stories. There ^Clifton Fadiman, “Ring Lardner and the Triangle of Hate,” Nation, CXXXVI, 315 (March 22, 1933). See also Maxwell Geismar, “Ring Lardner: Like Something Was Going to Happen,” Writers in Crisis (New York, 1942), pp. 3-36. ^George F. Whicher, “Analysts of Decay,” The Literature of the American People, ed. A. H. Quinn (New York, 1951), p. 880. Similar lists can be found in almost all anthologies, articles, and reviews. ® See Ring Lardner, First and Last (New York, 1934), for a representative selection of such pieces. The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 143 the substance is mirrored by the very nature of the style.^ Usually embodied in an oral narrative, a series of letters or a diary, or in con¬ versations, the style creates a host of personalities who cannot com¬ municate successfully. Each of them is hopelessly confined within a prison of self which no word or touch or gesture ever quite pene¬ trates. These are the figures who dramatize Ring Lardner’s theme: the comedy, the pain, the terror of being incommunicado. Lardner’s typical character has an image of himself which bears little resemblance to the one he actually presents to others. So long as he can interpret, in terms of his private self-image, the realities that surround him, he is safe and happy; but more often than not, because image and reality collide, he feels threatened and insecure. Thus, within his prison he is, paradoxically, tormented by the possi¬ bility of invasion and assault. Depending upon his response to his predicament, he may be viewed as comic or vicious or pathetic. No one story comprehends all these possibilities. Rather, all of them together describe various aspects of a single situation, a situa¬ tion best instanced by an experience Lardner recalled from his junior year in high school: They was a 14 witted boy in town that thought the school yard was his amusement park. For many yrs. he had spent all his days roaming the grounds and picking up stones which he throwed at no special targets, but finely one day the janitor told him to get off the grounds and stay off by orders of the school board. Well my father was on the school board and after that whenever I hove in sight of the boy, who incidentally ignored the janitor’s advice, he would say to me your father is on the school board and follow up the remark with a shower bouquet of specially selected stones. My sudden death would not of changed the make-up of the school board, but I never had time to stop and tell him that.® Because his understanding of the normal world was vague at best, the half-wit felt generally threatened; because he lived in his own private world, he was able to respond to the threat—to communicate his unhappiness—only by finding a target for his stones, Lardner understood very clearly the threat he faced—those were real stones; but because of the half-wit’s predicament, and his response to it, * I have dealt with Lardner’s style in “The Development of a Style: The Lardner Idiom,” which will appear in American Quarterly. ® Ring Lardner, “What I Ought to of Learnt in High School,” American Magazine, XCVI, 80, 82 (Nov., 1923). 144 Howard W. Webb, Jr. Lardner too was unable to communicate. Both parties felt assaulted and both were incommunicado. In his fiction Lardner examined this situation from four perspec¬ tives, emphasizing one at the start of his career, another in the early twenties, a third at the end of that decade, and a fourth in the last few years of his hfe. In the beginning, most of his stories regarded only the half-wit, who thus appears to be a harmless fellow throwing stones “at no special targets.” Encased within his distorted personal universe, he goes his way heedless, even unaware, of others; and his eccentric behavior is merely ridiculous. The best-known embodi¬ ment of this figure is Jack Keefe, the rookie pitcher of You Know Me Al.^ Jack perceives reality through the thick shield of his enormous ego. When he wins a game, his pitching must triumph over the errors of other players and misjudgments of the umpires; “I had everything and the Cubs done well to score a run. . . . The umps give them their run. . . . Then Schulte the lucky stiff happened to get a hold of one and pulled it past first base. I guess Chase must of been asleep” (p. 8o). When he loses, the fates and his teammates have played him false: “I had a sore arm when I was warming up. . . . Weaver and Lord and all of them kept kicking them round the infield and Collins and Bodie couldn’t catch nothing. . .. Crawford got the luckiest three-base hit I ever see. He popped one way up in the air and the wind blowed it against the fence” (pp. 38, 41). When the manager taunts: “Don’t work no harder than you have to or you might get hurt and the league would blow up,” Jack concludes: “I guess he thinks pretty well of me” (p. 27). Jack’s only security, in a seemingly treacherous world, is his con¬ ception of himself. When this is challenged, as it frequently is, by the battering of reality. Jack’s reaction is compounded of fear and hostility. A friendly bit of advice from an Ed Walsh or a Christy Mathewson he regards as a sign of jealousy. When his wife Florrie wants to hire a nurse to watch the baby, Jack refuses because “I would not trust no nurse to take care of the baby because how do I know the nurse is not nothing but a grafter or a dope fiend maybe and should ought not to be left with the baby” (p. 186). When the ’ Yok Know Me Al (New York, 1916; reissued New York, 1925). All references arc to the reissue of 1925. Two other collections of "busher" stories are Treat ’Em Rough (Indianapolis, 1918) and The Real Dope (Indianapolis, 1919); two uncollected groups of stories appeared serially in the Saturday Evening Post in 1915 and 1919. The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 145 force of reality overwhelms his bastion, Jack retreats into illusion. For example, he rejoins the White Sox after World War I deter¬ mined not to sign for less than five thousand dollars, although he quickly reduces the amount he will accept to three thousand. His contract, however, calls for only twenty-four hundred dollars, and Jack is incensed. “I was getting $2500.00 per annum before 1 went to the war,” he writes; but after all efforts to raise the amount have failed, he decides to sign for “$2400.00 which is the same money I was getting when 1 quit and that’s going some Al. . . From the time he leaves Terre Haute to join the White Sox, in the first “busher” story, until, in the last, he is sold to the Athletics, Jack Keefe remains unchanged. Never is he able to move beyond the confines of his private self-image, to establish any meaningful relationship with the world which seems to threaten him. But his frustration, his outrage, and his antics are comic, for they bring harm only to him. He is the smart wisecracker—who answers the banter¬ ing of others with the threat of a punch in the jaw; the unbeatable pitcher—who cannot win regularly; the irresistible lover—whose affairs end with someone else’s getting the girl; the model husband —who cannot get along with his wife. He is Jack Keefe, able and all-knowing, for whom life is forever going wrong. “You know me Al,” he boasts, and the words, which run like a refrain through the stories, form an ironic assertion of what he is not. This first portrait in Lardner’s gallery was followed by similar ones: Alibi Ike, Gulhble of Gullible’s Travels (Indianapolis, 1917), Fred Gross of Own Your Own Home (Indianapolis, 1919), and the wife and the sister-in-law of The Big Town (Indianapolis, 1921). In another group of stories, however, a new perspective emerges; here the scope has been enlarged to include both the half-wit and his victim. The half-wit is still heedless of others, but he is not unaware of them. He regards them as invaders and thus as appropriate tar¬ gets for his “specially selected stones.” Seen in this broader view, his behavior is no longer merely eccentric; it is dangerous. The first of these vicious half-wits to appear in Lardner’s writing was Midge Kelly of “Champion.”® Midge, like Jack Keefe, has an ''“The Busher Re-enlists,” Saturday Evening Post, CXCI, 151, 155 (April 19, 1919). *The story first appeared in the Metropolitan Magazine, XLIV, 14-16, 62-64 (Oct-, 1916). It was subsequently included in How to Write Short Stories (New York, 1924) and in Round Up (New York, 1929), pp. 109-127. Unless otherwise noted, all references to individual stories are to the last named collection. 146 Howard W. Webb, Jr. enormous ego; but he is never afraid, nor does he ever retreat. Reali¬ ty must conform to his view of it—or else. When his private self- image is threatened, he becomes aggressive, striking out violently at anyone who seems to intrude upon his demesne. Indeed, he is ca¬ pable of only two responses: arrogance or anger. His associates ulti¬ mately learn this, but not always before they have been hurt. Midge seduces the sister of his best friend and, after being forced to “do right by her,” deUvers “a crushing blow” (p. 114) to her cheek and abandons her. Midge’s manager. Tommy Haley, has no contract; he relies instead upon the champion’s gratitude. “He knows it was me that drug him out o’ the gutter,” Tommy remarks, “and he ain’t goin’ to turn me down now. . .. Where’d he of been at if I hadn’t listened to him when he first come to me.?” (p. 116). But the time arrives when Tommy is of no further use; and Midge tells him: “Get out o’ here before they have to carry you out. You been spongin’ off o’ me long enough” (p. 122). Tommy has failed to understand that for Midge Kelley other people are either extensions of or threats to himself, and that when they cease to be the former they automatically become the latter, and appropriate targets for his punches. The obvious loathing Lardner felt for Midge Kelly, and for the other vicious half-wits he created, may account for the impression that he hated the human race. Actually, however, completely vicious characters occupy central positions in very few of his stories. Besides Midge Kelly, there are only Conrad Green and Jim Kendall, the practical joker of “Haircut.” Similar characters, like the miserable mates of “The Love Nest” and the garrulous bridge player of “Who Dealt.?” are careless or thoughtless rather than vicious. They repre¬ sent a modification of the original image, even though their stones land with the same force and cause as much harm. Perhaps even more important, many of these characters bring pain to themselves as well as to their vicdms. Conrad Green ends his day defeated on every front; Jim Kendall brings on his own death; the “love nest” turns out to be a chamber of horrors; and with her chatter the bridge player ruins her own marriage as well as that of her friends. Wheth¬ er by viciousness or carelessness, these people despoil or destroy the territory they wish to protect. Perhaps a further explanation for the undue emphasis given Lard- ner’s hatred may be found in a third group of stories which present The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 147 Still another view of the total situation. Here, dangerous or thought¬ less stone-throwers are an integral part of the action, but the central figures are their victims. Several uncollected early tales present this view;® it is most fully set forth, however, in a number of stories which appeared between 1927 and 1929. The significance of these stories derives from the behavior of the victims themselves. Some of them, like the provincial poet of “The Maysville Minstrel” and the neglected wife of “Now and Then,” suffer passively, resigning themselves to persecution. Others strike back; and their action casts the half-wit in the role of the invader: a coarse boor who, brandishing his weapons of crude manners and vulgar language, charges into the world of decency and common sense. This situadon may be illustrated by the behavior of Mr. Shel¬ ton, the central character in “Contract.”^® After enduring baby talk, faulty grammar, bad cocktails, and constant criticism of his bridge playing for an entire evening, he decides that he has had enough. A week later, when the bridge club meets once more, he takes de¬ light in pointing out flaws in his companions’ table manners, pro¬ nunciation, and usage; to his delight, he is not invited again. His triumph, however, is brief, for at the next bridge party he attends, his partner ends the first game by inquiring: “Oh, Mr. Shevlin . . . why didn’t you lead me a club? You must watch the discards!” (P- 139)- Like so many of the others in this third group,^^ “Contract” is an essentially trivial story, little more, in fact, than the petdsh ex¬ pression of a personal irritation. But this should not blind us to the importance of the perspective here presented, for, as Donald Elder points out, “In many cases the very flaws in the stories are clues to [Lardner’s] anger, his exasperations, his disappointments. . . The images of invasion and assault and the situations in which com¬ munication is distorted or breaks down were more for Lardner than hterary devices. They were central to his view of life; they spoke his own fears. The stone-throwing episode that he recalled was not an isolated instance; his writing about himself is filled with anec- * See, for example, “Back to Baltimore,” Redbook^, XXIV, 29-41 (Nov., 1914), and “The Crook,” Saturday Evening Post, CLXXXVIII, 18-20, 52-53 (June 24, 1916). “The story first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, LXIII, loo-ioi, 142, 144, 149 (March, 1929), and was reprinted in Round Up, pp. 129-139. “ See, for example, “Nora,” “Liberty Hall,” “Dinner,” and “Ex Parte,” all reprinted in Round Up. “Donald Elder, Ring Lardner (New York, 1956), p. 307. 148 Howard W. Webb, Jr. dotes in which he, as an unoffending man of decency and common sense unable to communicate with those who threaten him , is the victim of the brutish people and forces of the world. In “Jersey City Gendarmerie Je T’aime” he relates his unhappy encounters with Jersey City policemen; in “All Quiet on the Eastern Front” his troubles with the insistently noisy boats outside the New York hos¬ pital where he is staying; and in “A Slow Train Through Arizona” his trials on a trip from Tucson to Phoenix.^® And Lardner’s fear of assault was compounded by his apparent inability to forestall or halt it. Just as Mr. Shelton never fully tri¬ umphed over his bridge partners, so Lardner was not able to make the Jersey City police comprehend his plights and needs, or to silence the noisy boats. Just so, he could not pause to argue with the half¬ wit. His personal world, like his fictional world, was one in which people did not listen or would not understand. The predicament is forcefully illustrated in the macabre sketch “Large Coffee,”^^ which describes the frustrating, twelve-week effort of a writer to make clear to room service that he wants for breakfast “enough coffee to fill one cup four times” (p. 73). Although he finally gets an order clerk who understands his request, she lasts less than two weeks; and soon after her departure, his body is found in his room, “his head crushed in by a blow from some blunt instrument” (p. 72), presumably, and appropriately, the telephone. In the light of these sketches, the stone-throwing situation— clear enough when seen in terms of a Jack Keefe, a Midge Kelly, or even a Mr, Shelton—becomes wholly ambiguous. In a world where one is victimized by policemen, plagued by boat whistles, and unable to make clear a simple order—in such a world, where do reality and normality lie; where is meaning to be found ? In such a world, how does one distinguish between the half-wits and the men of decency and common sense ? How, in fact, does a man judge what he himself is.? These are precisely the problems posed in the fourth group of Lardner’s stories. In this group there are no stone-throwers; there are only victims. And whether they are wildly unbalanced, comic¬ ally stupid, or quietly reasonable, they all face the same predicament. Although they seek desperately for adequate definitions of self, theirs “Afea/ Yor\er, V, 24-25 (Nov. 2, 1929); ibid., VII, 14-17 (June 27, 1931): Cosmo¬ politan, XCI, 86-87 (Sept., 1931). See also the series of autobiographical articles that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1931-1932. ^ First and Last, pp. 71-77. The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 149 is a world where meaning is not possible. Thus, unarmed against the stones of fate and circumstance which rain down upon them, they surrender to despair or madness and submit themselves to chaos. The first instance of this perspective is again to be found in an early story, “My Roomy.”^® Mr. Elhott, the central character, is a major-league rookie, and he is in search of an identity. He wants very much to be a successful ball player so that he can make enough money to marry his girl. His teammates regard him as “just a plain nut and li’ble to break out any time” (p. 341); and his irra¬ tional behavior seems to justify their assumption. Although he is a power with the bat, Elhott refuses to learn to field. Off the diamond, his actions are even stranger: he runs water in the bath¬ tub all night, shaves in the middle of the night, and sings as loudly as possible regardless of the lateness of the hour; only his room¬ mate, the sympathetic but detached narrator of the story, will put up with him. Elliott’s bizarre behavior is never explained, but clearly it is a twisted cry for recognition. Unlike Jack Keefe and Midge Kelly, Mr. Elhott is not trying to maintain an image of self but to establish one. If he is a success and gets to marry his girl, he tells the narrator, he will “settle down. I’d be so happy that I wouldn’t have to look for no excite¬ ment” (p. 342). And he seems to have a chance to find himself; for in spite of his eccentricities, he is kept on the team as a pinch hitter, because, as his roommate says, “He sure can bust ’em” (p. 330). Indeed, the self-image that Elhott is trying to establish is that of a “buster.” In part he triumphs; he can “bust” the ball and “bust up” ball games. He cannot understand, however, that his demands for recognition, his inability to communicate with nor¬ mality, “bust up” the routine activities of his teammates. When his roommate scolds him for breaking up a poker game, Elliott re¬ plies: “That’s my business—bustin’ things” (p. 338), and hurls a pitcher of ice water through a closed window. His tragedy is that in striving to be a “buster” he succeeds only in being a “bust.” When his antics on the diamond become in- “The story first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, CLXXXVI, 17-19, 61-62, 65 (May 9, 1914). It was reprinted in How to Write Short Stories and in Round Up, pp. 327-346. 150 Howard W. Webb, Jr. tolerable and he is sold to Atlanta, he decides to quit baseball. Before he leaves, however, he goes up to the lookin’-glass and stares at himself for five minutes. Then, all of a sudden, he hauls off and takes a wallop at his reflection in the glass. Naturally he smashed the glass all to pieces and he cut his hand somethin’ awful. Without lookin’ at it he come over to me and says: “Well, good-by, sport!”—and holds out his other hand to shake. When I starts to shake with him he smears his bloody hand all over my map. Then he laughed like a wild man and run out o’ the room and out o’ the hotel, (p. 344) The symbolic overtones of the scene are obvious: in smashing his reflected image, Elliott is acknowledging his failure and “busting” what he has sought to become; in smearing his blood on his room¬ mate, he is cursing the world of normaUty which he has sought so unsuccessfully to enter. Nor is the irony of his failure yet at an end. Returning to his home town to discover that his girl has aheady married, he assaults the happy couple with a baseball bat; and again he fails. From the asylum where he is sent, Elliott writes his roommate: “I was at bat twice and made two hits; but I guess I did not meet ’em square. They tell me they are both ahve yet, which I did not mean ’em to be.” He signs himself “B. Elhott,” significantly, the first indication of a given name, and adds in a post script that the “B stands for Buster” (p. 346). Thus, with complete defeat and total insanity comes fulfilment. “My Roomy” is Lardner’s most revealing story. Taken together with the Jack Keefe stories and “Champion,” it defines Lardner’s total view of life; for while Elliott has much in common with both the “busher” and Midge Kelly, he is not comic or vicious; he is pathetic. Also, seen in terms of the high-school anecdote, he joins the problems of the half-wit with those of Ring Lardner. Like the former, he wants to assert his right to a plot of ground, a place in the world; like the latter, he wants to shout his name and halt the rain of stones; and like both, he cannot find any successful means to communicate. Mr. Elliott’s is, to be sure, a special case; the normal, reasonable world does exist in “My Roomy,” and Elliott is cut off from it by his own eccentricities as well as by the circum¬ stances that assail him. This does not, however, vitiate the story’s The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 151 fundamental point: the horror and terror of being perpetually and irrevocably incommunicado. Lardner did not employ this perspective again until the last three or four years of his life. Then, overwhelmed by physical disease and intellectual despair,^® he resigned himself to what he apparently regarded as an indifferent, if not malevolent, and chaotic world. A persistent motif in his final stories is the impossibihty of establishing any rational and enduring image of self. Three stories in particular —“Mamma,”^^ Lose With a Smile (New York, 1933), and “Poo¬ dle”^*—make clear the extent of his resignation. In “Mamma” the central character, a Mrs. Cams, shaken by the deaths of her husband and two children, wanders aimlessly about New York, telling any¬ one who tries to help her that her name is Mamma and that her husband will take her home to their beautiful children after he leaves his ofBce. Ultimately, at the hospital where she is taken. Mamma remembers her last name, and a nurse learns the facts of the case. Later, when Mamma asks whether her husband has been called, the nurse replies: “There’s no such name.... I looked in the book and couldn’t find it” (p. 252). This is the only humane answer possible, for Mamma has not been denied, she has been deprived of her self- image. The world no longer holds any meaning for her; only in the haven of insanity can she continue to assert the identity she has lost. Nor is there any joy in Lose With a Smile. This series of letters between a rookie and his girl, as Gilbert Seldes has aptly observed, “is not amusing. It is melancholy.”^® Danny Warner, the rookie, aspires to a regular position on the Brooklyn club and honestly tries to follow the instructions of the manager and the coach; and he hopes, too, to make a name for himself in the music world. But, in contrast with Jack Keefe, he has limited talents and less self-confi¬ dence. On the diamond, he is unsuccessful even as a pinch-hitter, and the qualities of his voice and songs spell obvious disaster for his musical ambitions. Even his chances for a happy marriage seem dim, for at the end, having been released to Jersey City, Danny writes his girl that he is through with baseball and may see her “in 10 days and may be never” (p. 172). On the same day, she writes “ See Elder, pp. 293-378. "“Mamma,” Good House\eeping, XC, 52-54, 252 (June, 1930). ““Poodle,” Delineator, CXXIV, 8-9, 30, 32-33 (Jan., 1934). ““Editor’s Introduction,” The Portable Ring Lardner (New York, 1946), p. 5. 152 Howard W. Webb, Jr. that she is coming to New York on “Saturday morning and please meet me as I will be scared to death if you dont” (p. 174). They may get together; but since their letters will inevitably cross, it is just as likely that while the girl waits forlornly in the station Danny will be wandering about New York, as lost in his way as Mamma is in hers. For the foolish, as for the mad, Lardner offered little solace. For the man of decency and common sense he offered none at all. Such a figure is the nameless narrator of “Poodle,” a victim of the de¬ pression whose only weapon against his helpless state is self-derision. After losing his job, he begins the dreary, hopeless round of the un¬ employed: answering want ads, sleeping in hotel lobbies, and watch¬ ing cheap movies. One day, treating himself to a more expensive show at the Paramount, he encounters an eccentric millionaire who calls him Poodle and insists that they are old friends. The million¬ aire needs a companion “to prevent him buying the corner of Forty-second and Fifth Avenue and starting a rival Radio City” (p. 32), and the narrator is hired for the job. “I’m a seventy-two hun- dred-dollar day nurse named Poodle,” he concludes. “I spend eight hours a day with a crazy person ...” (p. 33). In a world gone mad, a world from which certainty and solid definitions have departed, the reasonable man has no choice but to assume whatever identity insanity will grant him. From this conclusion we may gauge the depth of Lardner’s own despair. He had insisted upon the necessity for self-knowledge and successful communication; and in the beginning, the “busher” had been able to be Jack Keefe and Midge Kelly to be “champion,” how¬ ever comic or vicious they might thus appear. In the end, however, Lardner conceded that neither self-knowledge nor successful com¬ munication was possible; what had seemed the special plight of “Buster” Elliott had become the common predicament of all men. Mrs. Cams could be only “Mamma”; Danny and his girl could have, at best, only the anonymity of life in the city; the nameless victim of the depression could be only “Poodle.” In these final stories even Lardner’s style has lost its zest; its flatness and lack of emphasis re¬ veal more of the author than of his characters. Had he lived longer, Lardner might have found another perspective from which to regard that stone-throwing situation; or he might have explored in greater depth and with more linguistic effectiveness his final, Olympian view The Meaning of Ring Lardner’s Fiction 153 which merged the half-wit and the victim into a single lost and helpless figure. We may regret the loss, but we should not, in re¬ viewing what he accomplished, obscure his achievement. Lardner’s writings present a unified view of life. We need not accept that view, but we sliould at least recognize it as that of a man who has raised serious questions about the nature of experience. Nor should we allow the settings of his stories to blind us to the sig¬ nificance of his dominant theme. The problems with which he dealt were no more acute among the semi-literate and inarticulate who ran the base paths, trod the boards, or lounged in the broad expanse of middle-class suburbia than they were among the rest of America’s citizens. Finally, we should dismiss the charges of mis¬ anthropy which have long been lodged against Lardner. His crea¬ tions, even those he loathed, were the product of his sympathetic understanding of the catastrophe that befalls anyone who is cut oil from communication with his fellowmen. We should, at last, allow Ring Lardner to communicate with us. Aeolism in Knickerbocker's A History of New York David Durant F ew readers of Washington Irving’s Diedrich Knickerbocker’s A History of New York have missed its satiric elements; many have been struck by the pointed satire of Thomas Jefferson in its fourth book. The “Introduction” to the work by Stanley Williams and Tremaine McDowell describes “the mood of political satire” as “dominant” and emphasizes the thesis that “William Kieft, in the fourth book of A History of New York, personality and character an adumbration of Thomas Jefferson.”^ Modern critics, too, have stressed the satire of Jefferson; Lewis Leary sums up the case by his statement that “no one will miss Thomas Jefferson” in the work.^ This specific satire is so evident that it has detracted at¬ tention from both the other books of the History and a persistent thread of satire which unifies the entire work. That unifying factor is Irving’s treatment of Aeolism—the inflation of empty subjects into false importance through idle words. In each of the three reigns which Knickerbocker presents, Aeolism is a major satiric norm. In the idyllic days before and dur¬ ing Twiller’s rule, the outstanding characteristic of the Dutch is the lack of bombast which allows their colony its unimpeded growth. In Kieft’s days, Aeolism pervades the entire people, dooming the colony to a time of troubles. Peter the Headstrong enters the work as the champion of unwordy action, becoming a norm against which the windy people are satirized. His military actions, how¬ ever, eventually lead him into a chivalric Aeolism, so that by the end of the History the downfall of the Dutch is in large measure a product of their complete devotion to the Aeolism, either political or military, which they had so conspicuously lacked in their golden past. ^ Introduction to Washington Irving, Diedrich Knickerbocker’s A History of New York (New York, 1927), pp. lx, Ixi. All subsequent quotations are taken from this, the 1809 text. ® Washington Irving (Minneapolis, 1963), p. 16. Aeolism in KnicXerboc\er s A History of New Yor}{ 155 This political satire, whose major positive norm is that of pointed speech, is narrated by the most bombastic of historians. He revels in discursive prefatory remarks, digressions, and a high-flown rhet¬ oric in the description of the prosaic. He is, moreover, linked spe¬ cifically to Aeolistic characters in the History: to the windy William by his philosophic tendencies, to the militaristic Peter by his chivalric posings, and to the historical bombast of Antony van Corlear by his style throughout. On one level, then, the Aeolistic mode of his presentation indicts the modern historians as it does the windy Dutch, presenting the History as a casebook of the mal¬ practices of wordy historians. This historical self-satire extends its effect from the Dutch to the reader. Knickerbocker repeatedly maintains that the United States has fallen heir to the Aeolistic political tendencies of the Dutch. Correspondingly, insofar as his readers accept the History as history, they are convicted of a modern taste for Aeolism which makes possible the very history Irving is satirizing. Yet Irving has provided an escape mechanism from this satire for the reader; the Aeolism which condemns the work and the reader for his in¬ terest in it is finally essential to its stature as fiction. As William Hedges has pointed out, although Knickerbocker’s “inability to refrain from epic, lyric, and elegiac eloquence vitiates his narrative as history, it is precisely what sustains Irving’s fiction.”^ Knicker¬ bocker has a turn for the composition of fiction very like Irving’s. He recreates the past with such freedom that it is more telling satire of the political climate of his own day than mere history could be. His constant affirmation that he is presenting unadorned history allows the reader to feel the satire involved in bombastic history; his tendency to fiction allows at least the needed clue that Irving’s intention is more satiric than historical and more humor¬ ously fictional than either of these two. The history which lies at the base of this structure of history, satire, and fiction begins with the depiction of an idyllic prehistory of the Dutch in America. Their prime characteristic in this period is their silence. That feature is introduced in conjunction with the most obvious of the tags by which Knickerbocker identifies the Dutch—their predilection for pipe-smoking. Hendrick Hudson’s ® Washington Irving: An American Study, 1802-1832 (Baltimore, 1965), p. 65. 156 David Durant first words on sighting the New World are as conspicuous for their brevity as for their inanity: “see! there!”^ This brevity is accom¬ panied by “clouds of dense tobacco smoke”; both the New World and the Dutch pipe-smoking silence have been discovered. The Dutch habit of smoking “a silent pipe” (p. 85) is reiterated in the description of their contact with the Indians: The Indians were much given to long talks, and the Dutch to long silence—in this particular therefore, they accommodated each other com¬ pletely. The chiefs would make long speeches about the big bull, the wabash, and the great spirit, to which the others would listen very at¬ tentively, smoke their pipes and grunt yah myn-her. . . . (pp. 86-87) The connection of pipe-smoking and silence is particularly notable in the Dutch political meetings. When “they then called a council of safety to smoke over the state of the province,” for instance, they deliberated for six months, while “nearly five hundred words were spoken, and almost as much tobacco was smoked as would have served a certain modern general through a whole winter’s cam¬ paign” (pp. 88-89). This pipe-smoking silence proceeds from something less than political profundity. It is, rather, a direct result of the Dutch stu¬ pidity. The burgers “never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that they live in profound and enviable ignorance of all the trou¬ bles, anxieties and revolutions, of this distracted planet” (pp. 84-85). Yet for all the stupidity which produces their silence, the policy which results is wise because it leaves a wonderful state of laissez- faire: “the members quietly smoked their pipes, making but few laws, without ever enforcing any, and in the mean time the af¬ fairs of the settlement went on—as it pleased God” (p. 103). That it did please God was obvious from the rapid growth of the colony; the councilors’ mouths were so occupied with their pipes that they could not speak long enough to impede progress. The first governor of this happy colony is described as perfectly suited to its pipe-smoking political inactivity. Twiller comes from a family who “were never either heard or talked of—which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition *P. 75 - Aeolism in Knickerboc\er s A History of New Yor\ 157 of all sage magistrates and rulers” (p. 114). Walter is a fit son of such parents, for rather than by “talking a vast deal and thinking a little,” thereby becoming a “vapouring, superficial pretender,” he is one of the happy group characterized “by holding their tongues and not thinking at all” (p. 115). His rule is of pipe-smoking silence: “instead of a sceptre he swayed a long turkish pipe” (p. 117); his only judicial pronouncement is so short winded, and so dense, that it precludes any other case for the rest of his reign. He is, therefore, for Knickerbocker “not only the first, but also the best governor that ever presided over this ancient and respectable province” (p. 118). As he is so glorified, Irving has established his norm of silence for the History. Not only Twiller, but the golden days of pipe-smoking peace and inactivity expire as “his venerable excellency had just breathed and smoked his last—his lungs and his pipe having been exhausted together, and his peaceful soul, as Dan Homer would have said, having escaped in the last whiff that curled from his tobacco pipe” (p. 173-174). What follows is the windy reign of Wilhelmus Kieft. The tran¬ sition from the silent days of peace to this Aeolistic travesty is sym¬ bolized by the changes which take place in the smoking habits of the Dutch. The villainous Kieft, foiled in his attempts to outlaw pipes altogether, succeeds in introducing short ones: yet did he abolish the fair long pipes which prevailed in the days of Wouter Van Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity, and sobriety of deport¬ ment, and in place thereof introduced litde captious short pipes. . . . The smoke of these villainous litde pipes—continually ascending in a cloud about the nose, penetrated into and befogged the cerebellum, dried up all the kindly moisture of the brain, and rendered the people as vapourish and testy as their renowned Htde governor, (p. 218) The people, as a result of this short-piped Aeolism, become as fac¬ tious and unruly as the New Englanders, “smoking at each other with implacable animosity” (p. 226). The golden days of silence have disappeared in the clouds of smoke from these short pipes which allow their smokers to speak. The villain responsible for this alteration is William. He has “a mind, the territory of which was subjected to perpetual whirl¬ winds and tornadoes” (p. 228). He is, most notably, a philosophic 158 David Durant Aeolist, “exceedingly fond of trying philosophical and political experiments” (p. i8i). Besides the antipipe experiment, “he was much given to mechanical inventions—constructing patient smoke- jacks—carts that went before the horses, and especially erecting windmills” (p. 196). In a telling mixture with this predilection for Aeolistic invention is his style of argument, in which, “between logical deductions and metaphysical jargon, he soon involved him¬ self and his subject in a fog of contradictions and perplexities” (p, 180). In all, he is so much a windbag that “it was a matter of astonishment . . . how so small a body, could have contained such an immense mass of words without bursting” (p. 193). The emptiness of his Aeolistic reliance on words is most evident in his military measures. His chief weapon is the fulmination of proclamations. These are analogous to his windy speeches, being not only “written in thundering long sentences, not one word of which was under five syllables” (p. 187), but entirely impotent. Matching the windy emptiness of his weapons are his defenses. To safeguard the colony, he erects windmills and flagstafis or em¬ ploys a windy trumpeter. In short, the reader comes to the guided conclusion that William “thought to manage his government, as he did his mills—by mere wind” (pp. 196-197). Like Twiller’s, Wil¬ liam’s end is particularly revealing. Knickerbocker squashes the rumor that “the ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blow¬ ing down of one of his windmills” (p. 238), but his end is still fully as windy as his life: these, I say, did eternally operate to keep his mind in a kind of furnace heat, undl he at length became as completely burnt out, as a Dutch family pipe. ... In this manner did the choleric but magnanimous Wil¬ liam the Testy undergo a kind of animal combustion ... so that when grim death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left enough of him to bury! (p. 239) William’s end is, of course, part of the satire of Jefferson which pervades this part of the History. Neither Irving nor Knicker¬ bocker for him, however, has allowed the element of personal satire to overwhelm what is more important to the work as a whole— the satiric attack on the Aeolistic ills of democracy. That attack is reiterated by the final and most important of the Aeolism in Knickerbocker’s A History of New Yor\ 159 political figures of the History. After the pipes have their final vic¬ tory over the Aeolistic William, Peter Stuyvesant comes to the head of the state. His measures against Aeolism are swift: he gives his councilors “abundance of fair long pipes” (p. 248) and makes “a hideous rout among the ingenious inventions and expedients of his learned predecessor—demolishing his flag-staffs and wind-mills” (pp. 248-249). He is William’s opposite: “not a man to vent his spleen in idle vapouring” (p. 312). Even his letters, on the few occasions when he has recourse to such devices, are free of Aeolistic flourishes: “neither couched in bad Latin, nor yet graced by rhe¬ torical tropes” (p. 252). His domestic policies are directed almost entirely against the Aeolism of the populace: he “treated the sovereign people with such tyrannical rigour, that they were all fain to hold their tongues, stay at home and attend to their business” (p. 251). Yet his measures against Aeolism are both too late and unefficacious, for the Dutch are now beyond restraint in their Aeolism. They have become “that most potent and blustering monarch, the sovereign people” (p. 409). During each of Peter’s absences from New York, they rise in all their windy might. Their first rebellion, in which they dare “even to give vent to their censures in the streets” (p. 342), is put down by Peter’s staff. Their next manifestation is vented by a cob¬ bler, whose words are so empty that they continue to pour from his throat even after Peter has shocked him into immobility. Peter’s commands for silence are unavailing. By the time of the final threat to New York, its people have lapsed into the most abject Aeolism. They assemble “brawling conventions,” in which they carry William’s paper wars another step, standing on the of¬ fensive by dint of “gallant vapouring and rodomontado” (p. 410). Their leaders are, if anything, more grievously struck by the Aeolistic distemper, “breaking out in long, windy speeches, caused, as physicians suppose, by the foul air which is ever generated in a crowd” (p. 411). People and leaders finally combine to overthrow Peter with the help of British threats, carrying out their revolt by an orator, “talkative rather than eloquent” (p. 439). Peter’s anti-Aeolistic role in domestic politics establishes him as a norm of silence which sharpens the implicit criticism of windy democrats. Perspicacious as Peter is in opposing this Aeolism, he i6o David Durant overlooks the tendency toward Aeolism which seems to be inherent in war. The windy democrats are easily spotted foes but not such vaporers as the musicians of strife who form Peter’s beloved army. Their Aeolism is so infectious that Peter becomes tainted with windy militaristic posturing. His attacks bear an unhealthy re¬ semblance to William’s windmill defenses. As he begins his attack on the Swedish fort, he “let fly a tremendous volley of red hot, four and forty pounder execrations, that would infallibly have battered down the fortifications . . . had not the ramparts been remarkably strong” (p. 348); it takes him some time to perceive that “it was utterly impossible (as it really was in those unphilosophic days) to carry on a war with words” (p. 348). Such is the effect of war upon him, indeed, that he “was as eloquent as he was valorous— indeed these two rare qualities seemed to go hand in hand in his composition” (p. 421). This satire of military Aeolism is accompanied by a pipe sym¬ bolism which establishes an anti-Aeolistic norm. Peter showed his military Aeolism when he “dashed the pipe he was smoking against the back of the chimney” (p. 311) in a fit of military fervor. It is this action which marks the transition from the “piping times of peace” (p. 295), when even Peter “would smoke his pipe, crack his joke, and forget the rugged toils of war” (p. 384). The antithetical opposition of pipes and war is demonstrated in the major battle of the History, when the Dutch are almost put to rout because their sacrosanct pipes are attacked by the Swedes. The fall of New York to the English, which is pictured as being primarily the result of the Aeolistic tendencies of Peter’s subjects, is partially the result of Peter’s own brand of Aeolism. The vaporish populace are so in¬ tent on words that they cannot bestir themselves to their own de¬ fence; Peter offers them only the alternative of military Aeolism. Thus the fall of the city which marks the conclusion of the history also marks the climax of the Aeolistic tendencies it had portrayed. The persistent satire of Aeolism is intended to take its effect both as a historical lesson and as an allegory of the Aeolism of modern republicanism. Almost every type of Aeolism which Knickerbocker attacks in the Dutch has an explicit correlative in the America of his day. Van Corlear’s trumpeting, which is sym¬ bolic of the Aeolism of two Dutch reigns, is like all modern “brawl- Aeolism in Knickerbocker s A History of New Yor\ i6i ing editors” (p. 233), William Kieft’s oratory not only parodies Jefferson but touches modern “statesmen, orators, civilians and di¬ vines; who by dint of big words, inflated periods, and windy doc¬ trines, are kept afloat on the surface of society, as ignorant swimmers are buoyed up by blown bladders” (p. 205). The elected officials of the late Dutch administrations resemble “in disinterested zeal the wide mouthed tribunes of ancient Rome, or those virtuous pa¬ triots of modern days” (p. 387). The populace of the modern day, too, fall under this satire: the Dutchmen’s sudden passion for endless harangues ... is without doubt a cruel and distressing disease, which has never been eradicated from the body politic to this day; but is continually breaking out, on all occasions of great agitation, in alarming and obnoxious flatulencies, whereby the said body politic is grievously afflicted, as with a wind cholic, (p. 412) Knickerbocker’s consistent satire of the Aeolism of the Dutch and of his own day provides at least a negative standard for his History. He does not present his historical figures simply in their own terms but highlights the Aeolism which lies at the base of their eventual downfall. Again, the treatment of Aeolism trans¬ forms the History from mere chronological account of past events into a shaped statement on the effects of Aeolism. The history of the Dutch becomes the story of an idyllic, silent community which falls into chaos and eventual defeat because of its wordiness. Most importantly, the Aeolistic theme’s concentration upon expression makes it convenient for extension to the style of Knickerbocker’s narration. The relationship between the history and its narration is paradoxical: the attack on Aeolism is couched in the most Aeolistic terms. William Hedges has described this paradox in general terms: “Irving’s ability to put a finger on human pettiness is almost as striking as Swift’s, but he has difficulty measuring degrees of it. Knickerbocker, for instance, lacks a scale of values such as that im¬ plied in Gulliver s Travels.'"^ Thus, while Knickerbocker’s history seems unequivocal on the evils of Aeolism, his narration is ex¬ travagantly Aeolistic. If we are to accept his attack on Aeolism, we ' “Washington Irving,” in Major Writers of America, ed. Perry Miller (New York, 1962), p. 185. David Durant 162 must question his veracity. His seeming surety on the vices of Aeolism is undercut by his own practice of the habit. Irving has taken pains to highlight the perplexing Aeolism of his narrator’s attack on it. Knickerbocker’s windy irrelevance is obvious from the first chapters, in which he reels out a Swiftian preface whose connection to his actual history is almost non-exis¬ tent. He repeatedly interrupts his historical narrative to give the readers details of his own life. He is addicted to rhetorical flour¬ ishes throughout the History: he attempts to dignify his prosaic history with false predictions of coming high action and with ■ornate embellishments of trivia. He is, more than any of the char¬ acters whom he satirizes for that flaw, supremely given to the use of words without substance. That tendency is most obvious in a sort of historical Aeolism, in which Knickerbocker like other “learned men can weave whole systems out of nothing” (p. 48). He tells of the trip of the first colonists on the way to the New World, although the event was ^‘passed over in utter silence” (p. 80) by his sources. He evolves a complicated “biography of my heroes” (p. 90) out of a knowledge ■of their names alone. In a work which is consistent in its attacks on Aeolism and which is full of explicit promises of exact veri¬ similitude, these features are jarring. When Knickerbocker spends paragraphs describing Peter’s speeches, we are willing to grant him that leeway. When he prefaces those speeches with lamen¬ tations about the lack of source material for them, we must see that Irving is making his narrator culpable, to amuse us, for the very sins his work deplores. Knickerbocker’s Aeolism is the more evident because of his close connections to specific Aeolistic characters in his History. When Knickerbocker boasts that “my work shall, in a manner, echo the nature of the subject, in the same manner as the sound of poetry has been found by certain shrewd critics, to echo the sense” (p. 41), he gives us a hint, despite his intended irony, of how close his writ¬ ings are to the traits of his characters. He echoes William, for in¬ stance, in his devotion to windy philosophy. That philosophy is a negative characteristic is established by Knickerbocker’s contention that he is a plodding soul unlike “your adventurous philosopher [who] launches his theory like a balloon, and having inflated it Aeolism in Knic\erboc\er's A History of New Yor\ 163 with the smoke and vapours of his own heated imagination, mounts it in triumph, and soars away to his congenial regions in the moon” (p. 32). That it is a primal trait of Knickerbocker’s is confirmed when, within a few chapters, “the Author puts a mighty Question to the rout, by the assistance of the Man in the Moon” (p. 51). As he supposes a complicated analogy, including descriptions of the moon-men’s conquest of the earth and their home environment, the reader can scarcely miss his philosophic Aeolism. We have, in fact, a great deal of evidence that Knickerbocker is as much a philosopher, in the worst sense of the term, as his villain William. Seth Handaside, in his introduction to the work, tells the reader that Knickerbocker “was very much given to argue, or as he called it philosophize, about the most trifling matter” (p. 3). This description is validated by the narrator as he boasts that he is “prodigiously fond of these valuable speculations” (p. 254), or again when he labels one of his chapters “Philosophical reflec¬ tions . . .” (p. 202). We know before he tells us that he is, like William, just what he says he is: “a profound philosopher” (p. 240). Knickerbocker is as close to Peter as he is to William. The simi¬ larity is, again, based primarily on a common basis of Aeolism. In part the similarity of the two in chivalric bombast is the product of Knickerbocker’s admiration for Peter, which, he admits, has “trans¬ ported my style beyond the sober gravity which becomes the laborious scribe of historic events” (p. 264). The transportation of his style is most notable in his high-flown account of the gory battle between the Dutch and the Swedes in which no deaths occur; it is as evident in many other parts of the narrative. Von Poffen- burgh’s trip to the southern fort, for instance, becomes the most exalted of sagas in Knickerbocker’s excited account. His chivalric pen leads him to such lengths that he must pause on another oc¬ casion to explain that “the simple truth then of all this oratorical flourish is this” (p. 296). His transported style is primarily a chivalric one. It leads him to “draw my pen to fight another battle” (p. 347) instead of merely describing it. Like Peter, “the writer of a history may, in some respects, be likened unto an adventurous knight” (p. 51), and lest we miss that application, Knickerbocker makes it repeatedly. 164 David Durant He finds himself at one stage “like that mirror of chivalry, the sage and valorous Don Quixote” (p. 261); at another, like King Arthur. Knickerbocker is so much the chivalric Aeolist, indeed, that the reader begins to suspect that it is not his admiration for Peter’s chivalry which leads to his embellishments, but rather his embel¬ lishments which create Peter’s chivalric qualities. Knickerbocker’s similarities to the other characters of the His¬ tory are bolstered by more explicit descriptions of his narrative Aeolism. When he “must pause to take breath” (p. 69) at the end of the first book, we must be aware of the amount of wind he has had to expend in its narration. Later he makes that windiness more explicit when he assures us that to get through his history to its eighth book he had “vapoured exceedingly, yet was it naught but the blustering of a braggadocio at the commencement of a quarrel, which he feels sure he shall have to sneak out of in the end” (p. 386). The narration, like its subject, is so Aeolistic that by its con¬ clusion Knickerbocker’s description covers both: The Dutch Dynasty, pressed, and assailed on every side, approached to its destined end. It had been puffed, and blown up from small begin¬ nings, to a most corpulent rotundity. . . . Thus have I seen a crew of truant urchins, beating and belabouring a distended bladder .... the bloated membrane yields—it bursts, it explodes with a noise strange and equivocal, wonderfully resembling thunder—and is no more. (p. 444) If the history of the Dutch resembles a bladder, it does so in main part because of its historian’s windiness. The effects of this combination of an Aeolistic narrator and his attack on that quality in others are felt in three areas. On a satiric level, Knickerbocker functions as a mere tool: both he and his his¬ tory are examples of the malpractices of Aeolism. As such a case¬ book, the History extends its satiric attack to include its readers, taxing them with tastes for the Aeolistic which make them anal¬ ogous to both Knickerbocker and his historical figures. On a his¬ torical level, Knickerbocker functions as a persona who demon¬ strates Irving’s inability to decide between history as fact and history as fiction. On a fictional level, the Aeolism which Knickerbocker shares with his historical figures suggests that he is a character him¬ self; that the work is as much a character portrait as either a satire or a history. Aeolism in Knic\erboc\er’s A History of New Yor\ 165 On a satiric level, the effect of Knickerbocker’s Aeolism is analogous to the attack on modern democratic Aeolism implicit in the political satire. The History is a casebook of historical bom¬ bast. Its readers are castigated not only as parts of a civilization which makes such histories popular, but more specifically as they are an appreciative audience of this one. This satiric attack is not left implicit. Knickerbocker insists that the readers share his flaw: “I might here pursue an endless chain of very curious . . . specula¬ tions; but as they would be unimportant to my subject, I abandon them to my reader, particularly if he is a philosopher” (p. 64). Not content to tax his readers with philosophic Aeolism, Knicker¬ bocker accuses them of the same military bombast that afflicts Peter and himself. In an extended introduction to the great battle in which no one is killed, he insists that it is the reader’s taste for such spectacles which occasions them. All the various devices of inflating the subject are undertaken, he maintains, to “contribute to the amusement and edification of the reader, and redound to the glory, the increase and the profit of the craft” (p. 177). These aspersions on the reader are part of Knickerbocker’s attempts to make his attack on his character’s Aeolism a persuasion to such Aeolism for his readers. His description of false historians carries at least an implicit description of his own design: “many an honest unsuspicious reader, who devours their works under an idea of acquiring solid knowledge, must not be surprised if, to use a pious quotation, he finds ‘his belly filled with the east wind’ ” (p. 176). Knickerbocker’s inflation of his readers is accomplished not only through the coining of at least suspect historical detail, but also through his suggestion of a bond of community with his readers. Tellingly, that bond is presented as a product of his Aeolistic tendency to digress: “as we jogged along together, in the high-road of my history, I gradually Began to relax, to grow more courteous, and occasionally to enter into familiar discourse, until at length I came to conceive a most social, companionable kind of regard for them” (p. 332). Knickerbocker continues this descrip¬ tion of this fellowship by revealing that the five chapters of his Aeolistic preface were only a trick by which he weeded out un¬ worthy readers. Every page has “thinned my ranks more and more” (p. 333); now he and his readers are joined by their mutual ability i66 David Durant to appreciate his style. Knickerbocker has made explicit what is implicit throughout the work: the History's readers are as respon¬ sible and as culpable for its Aeolism as he. The Aeolism of the narrator which indicts his readers on a satiric level also allows Irving to dramatize his notion of the nature of history. William Hedges has suggested that ELnickerbocker drama¬ tizes Irving’s dilemma in this area. Irving, he maintains, was in¬ capable of either Bolingbroke’s “amused tolerance” of the fictions of didactic history or Emerson’s “joyful acceptance” of history as “a fable agreed upon.”® Instead, Knickerbocker “symbolizes a disin¬ tegration of intellect and personality that one risks in attempting to play faithful and imaginative historian to a world like Boling- broke’s.”^ In this light, the combination of Knickerbocker’s Aeolistic embellishments of factual history and his attack on the Aeolism of its figures demonstrates the tension which defines Irving’s his¬ torical philosophy. Hedges’s stress on Knickerbocker’s subjectivity urges the fic¬ tional aspect of the history: “Irving does not let the reader forget that the action which develops is nominal, not real history. The characters owe their lives to the almost random associations which strike Knickerbocker’s fancy.”® Reading the history as a subjective projection, we discover the functional nature of the seemingly di¬ gressive stress on its narrator. In this light, Seth Handaside’s in¬ troductory description of Knickerbocker is not merely a clever trick, but a carefully contrived method of focusing attention on the nar¬ rator as character. As he repeatedly interrupts the historical nar¬ rative to describe himself, as he caps the history’s conclusion with a parting word to the reader, we are to be aware that Irving has given h im such space to define the bias of the history. Even as we investi¬ gate the narrator’s impact on his history, then, Irving has insured that we recognize Knickerbocker as an independent, fictional char¬ acter. Investigation of Knickerbocker as character suggests a final function for his Aeolistic attack on Aeolism. Since his history is a ° “Knickerbocker, Bolingbroke, and the Fiction of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XX, 325-326 (June-Sept., 1959). See also Hedges, Washington Irving, p. 72. ’’ Hedges, “Knickerbocker,” p. 327. ® Ibid., p. 320. Hedges investigates Knickerbocker as character at length in both this article and in Washington Irving, chap. ii. Aeolism in Knickerbocker s A History of New YorJ^ 167 subjective projection of himself, it offers a means of defining him. Knickerbocker himself feels that the work is “the scanty fruit of a long and laborious life” (p. 455). From the reader’s perspective, the History is not merely his sole product, but a creation whose qualities define his life. Narrator and history share almost identical beginnings in obscurity and conclusions in defeat. Knickerbocker treats the Dutch because of the moderns’ lack of knowledge of them; he is so unknown before the publication of his history that he easily disappears. At the end of his history, after describing the bursting of the Dutch bubble, Knickerbocker suggests his anal¬ ogous defeat: “many will spring up and surpass me in excellence” (p. 454). These similarities are overshadowed by those of the history which comes between them. Realizing that his history’s greatness will be a measure of his own, Knickerbocker inflates it to give them both stature. We recognize his Aeolism finally from both his style and his characters; both define their creator. Neither the history proper nor the sections dealing with the narrator are di¬ gressive; both are parts of a single design. The unity which Irving’s use of Aeolism gives the History, then, is intended to do more than provide a bond between the events of the history of the Dutch. The unique nature of the work lies in its intentional complexity. The Aeolistic narrator is a historian whose work involves, as an allegory, a satiric attack on political Aeolism and includes, as a casebook of bombast, a similar attack on Aeolistic historians. He is, as well, a creative writer ill-disguised as historian and a fictional character large in his own right. That we cannot afford to dismiss any of his guises is a measure both of Irving’s skill and of his History's greamess. The Text, Tradition, and Themes of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” J. A. Leo Lemay T he classic story, as well as the most frequently anthologized one, of the humor of the Old Southwest is Thomas Bangs Thorpe’s “The Big Bear of Arkansas.”^ It first appeared in Wil¬ liam T. Porter’s sporting magazine, the Spirit of the Times, XI (March 27, 1841), 43-44. When Porter reprinted it in what became a popular anthology of humorous stories, he recognized its domi¬ nant stature and entitled the collection The Big Bear of Ar\ansas and Other Sketches (Philadelphia, 1845). Unfortunately, Porter re- • I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship which allowed me to spend part of my time (while working on the ideology of early American humor) writing this essay. 1 Epithets such as “classic," “archetypal,” and “greatest" are usually used to describe the position of this story in the tradition of the Old Southwestern school of humor. See, for example, Hugh Holman, in the anthology Southern Writing is8^-ig2o (New York, 1970), pp. 432 and 476; or Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), p. 335. Guides to the scholarship on Thorpe are Milton Rickels’s notice “Thomas Bangs Thorpe," in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., ed., A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (Baton Rouge, La., 1969), pp. 308-309; and Charles E. Davis and Martha B. Hudson, “Humor of the Old Southwest: A Checklist of Criticism,” Mississippi Quarterly, XXVll (Spring, 1974), 198-199. Rickels's biography Thomas Bangs Thorpe: Humorist of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, La., 1962) is the major study. For a brief sketch and estimate of Thorpe see Franklin J. Meine’s account in the Dictionary of Ameri¬ can Biography. Perhaps the most telling single phrase concerning this story's importance is found in the subtitle of Norris W. Yates’s book. William T. Porter and the Spirit of the Times: A Study of the Big Bear School of Humor (Baton Rouge, La., 1957). Walter Blair calls the story “the most widely praised and reprinted comic narrative The Spirit ever pub¬ lished,” “ ‘A Man's Voice, Speaking': A Continuum in American Humor.” in Harry Levin, ed.. Veins of Humor (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 199. The story has been reprinted in nearly every anthology devoted to American humor or specifically to Southwestern humor. All of the standard modern anthologies include it: Franklin J. Meine, Tall Tales of the Southwest (New York, 1930 ), pp. 9 - 21 ; Walter Blair, Native American Humor (1800—igoo) (New York, 1937; repr., San Francisco, i960), pp. 337~348; V. L. O. Chittick, Ring-Tailed Roarers (Caldwell, Idaho, 1941), pp. 87-100; Kenneth S. Lynn, The Comic Tradition in America (New York, 1958), pp. no-123; Brom Weber, An Anthology of American Humor (New York, 1962), pp. 246-255; and Hennig Cohen and William B. Dillingham, Humor of the Old Southwest (Boston, 1964), pp. 268- 278—as well as most of the large anthologies of American literature which do not take the major-writers approach. “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 169 vised the text of Thorpe’s story, evidently with an eye to making it less colloquial—and thus, perhaps, supposedly more suitable for a general audience." When Thorpe himself published the story in his anthology The Hive of the Bee-Hunter (New York, 1854), pp. 72-93, he evidently used an edition of Porter’s anthology as his copy-text, for he followed Porter’s changes in numerous accidentals and in all three of Porter’s substantives.* And Thorpe revised his earlier text. The only previous comparison of the texts of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” that 1 have seen prefers the text as found in the Hive (1854) to that of the Spirit (1841) because the Hive contains Thorpe’s “last” revisions. But even the scholars^ who prefer the later text admit that the later version “changed some dialect words into their standard forms,” including “the self-conscious substitution of ‘bear’ for ‘bar.’ ” Thorpe, I believe, revised his story with an eye to a different audience. Originally, he wrote for the masculine, ^ Porter separated rambling sentences (thus losing part of the mock-oral, monologue effect), frequently added punctuation (with the same unfortunate result), capitalized the “b" in “big” when referring to the Arkansan as the “Big Bar” (thus, regrettably, more clearly distinguishing between the man and the bear), capitalized other proper nouns (e.g., “hoosier” becomes “Hoosier”—thus losing some of the appearance of colloquialness, and perhaps of illiteracy), and he even made three substantive changes in the text: Spirit, p. 43b4.2, “he” becomes “it” in Porter, p. 17.10; Spirit, p. 44a3.3i, “coming” becomes “he came” in Porter, p. 27.5; and Spirit, p. 44a3.3t, “then he walked” becomes “then walked” in Porter, p. 27.13. Because of the large amount of type in each page of the Spirit of the Times, my references to the Spirit are to page, column (a, b, or c), and paragraph—and, in the case of compara¬ tive textual references, line—the counting of the paragraphs beginning anew with each column (the first indented paragraph in each column, except for the opening paragraph of the story, will be counted as paragraph two). Thus the first reference to the Spirit, p. 43b4.2, is to p. 43, column 2(b), the fourth paragraph, line 2. I have used a xerox of the microfilm edition of the Spirit in the University of California, Los Angeles, library (American Culture series 2, reel 624); the UCLA Special Collections copy (call no. PN6157 Z5P83b) of The Big Bear of Arkansas and Other Sketches (1845); (I also collated the first edition with the Huntington Library copy of the Philadelphia; Cary & Hart, 1847 edition, accession no. 265000, and found the two texts of “The Big Bear” identical); and I used the Huntington Library copy, accession no. 124808, of The Hive of the Bee-Hunter (New York: Appleton, 1854). ^ Thorpe continued the pernicious practice that Porter had begun of breaking up the long paragraphs (perhaps partially to make the story take up more space), added quotation marks wherever possible (thus making the monologue within the frame seem to be less of a mock- oral story), and “corrected” many of his dialect spellings to standard forms. He revised the syntax in several places to make the word order smoother, and in some cases changed the diction to more “correct" (though less colloquial and vital) forms (e.g., “all conversation dropped,” Spirit, p. 43b2.21-22, became “all conversation ceased,” Hive, p. 74.15). Most of Thorpe’s changes make the text more formal (surprisingly, in a few cases he changed stan¬ dard spelling into dialect forms), though in one or two cases the loss in colloquialness may be offset by a gain in clarity. ■* Francis Lee Utley, Lynn Z. Bloom, and Arthur F. Kinney, eds.. Bear, Man, and God: Eight Approaches to William Faulkner’s "The Bear” (New York, 1971), pp. 148-149. 170 J. A. Leo Lemay sporting magazine audience who read the Spirit of the Times. When he published The Hive of the Bee-Hunter thirteen years later, he was attempting to reach a more general and genteel audi¬ ence. The successful editor William T. Porter had shown the way. In general, what Thorpe did to the text of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” in revising it could justly be compared to a pedantic school-marm’s corrections of Mark Twain’s colloquial prose. I believe that the best text of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” is that of the Spirit of the Times.^ The urbane narrator of “The Big Bear of Arkansas” opens the story by portraying the various characters found on that melting pot of the old frontier, a Mississippi River steamboat, specifically men¬ tioning the Yankee pedlar (“the pedlar of tin-ware from New England”), the aristocratic Southern plantation owner, the gamut of types from the comparatively new states (“Wolvereens, Suckers, Hoosiers, Buckeyes and Corncrackers”), and the English sportsman. Although the archetypal ideas of the ship of fools and of the ship as microcosm are clearly suggested, Thorpe does not draw the ex¬ pected moral on the universality of the types of mankind nor does he comment on the omnipresence of fools and gulls. Instead, he celebrates a unique and heroic type of man found only in America, “the half-horse and half-alligator species of men, who are peculiar to ‘old Mississippi.’ ” Thus the reversal of the reader’s expectations (created by the archetypal setting) emphasizes the distinctness of the peculiarly American hero. The speaker’s ambivalent feeling toward this unique American character is immediately revealed when he patronizingly comments that this “species . . . appear[s] to gain a livelihood simply by going up and down the river.” Despite the speaker’s condescension, the story will show the superi¬ ority of the loquacious gamecock of the wilderness not only to the ® One substantive revision, however, sheds light on the earlier text, and one seems an improvement. Thorpe substituted ‘'pre-emption" {Hive, p. 81.15) for “land” {Spirit, p. 4307.14), thus using a new colloquial term for a homestead; and I agree with the scholars who have earlier considered the texts of “The Big Bear of Arkansas" that this is an improvement. And Thorpe changed the name of the games “chickens and roulette” {Spirit, 43b2.42) to “checkers and roulette” {Hive, p. 75.19). It may be that Thorpe was originally creating a transferred pun, i.e., that he meant us to realize that “chickens” was dialect for “checkers” and that he was punning on the idea of chickening out in roulette. But I must confess that I never did know what the game “chickens" was until 1 saw it called “checkers” in the Hive version. The printing in the Spirit of “chickens” may have been simply a typo for "chickers” (perhaps caused by the compositor's mistaking Thorpe’s manuscript “r” for an “n”). “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 171 “cynical-looking Hoosicr,” the “timid little man,” the English sportsman, and especially to the urbane narrator (all of whom are bested or insulted by Jim Doggett), but also to the unnamed people “from every state in the union, and from every portion of the world.” Thorpe makes the gamecock of the wilderness immediately dominate the crowd on board the boat. Moreover, Doggett is re¬ ferred to in the story as “our hero,” and though the tone of these references may be mocking, the authorial voice behind the super¬ cilious persona is not.® After the introductory paragraph, the narrator tells of the trip up the Mississippi from New Orleans during which he encountered Doggett, who gained the attention of the steamboat crowd with a “loud Indian whoop,” a “loud” cock “Crowing,” and a shout pro¬ claiming his identity as “the big Bar of Arkansaw” (p. 43b2). The early anecdotes told by Doggett exaggerate the abundance and fer¬ tility of the land. Such exaggerations were characteristic of the earliest American promotion tracts. By the early seventeenth cen¬ tury, the anti-American literature commonly burlesqued these “lubberland” motifs, and so later promotion tracts, like Nathaniel Morton’s Neu' English Canaan (1636), John Hammond’s Leah and Rachel (1656), and George Alsop’s A Character of the Province of Maryland (1666), mocked the tradition within the promotion tracts themselves. Burlesques of the tracts (whether published sepa¬ rately or within the tracts themselves) are thereafter a common motif of American literature. And much of the material and humor of Thorpe’s story is directly descended from this tradition.’^ No ® It is beyond the scope of this essay to trace the developing attitudes toward the Ameri¬ can frontiersman. Part of the context is supplied by Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), and by Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600—1860 (Middletown, Conn., 1973). For some suggestive comments on the heroic stature of the frontiersman and of America's comic gods, see two articles by Richard Dorson, “America’s Comic Demigods,” American Scholar, X (Autumn. 1941), 389-401; and “Davy Crockett and the Heroic Age,” Southern Foll{lore Quarterly, VI (June, 1942), 95-102. In “Thomas Bangs Thorpe and the Literature of the Ante-Bellum Southwestern Frontier," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXXIX (April, 1956), 199-222, esp. p. 207, n. 29, Eugene Current- Garcia claims that Thorpe’s anthology The Mysteries of the Bacl^woods (Philadelphia, 1846) failed commercially because, rather than collecting humorous pieces, it nostalgically por¬ trayed the Old Southwestern frontier as a fast-disappearing Eden. As I shall attempt to show below, this same attitude supplies the thematic basis of Thorpe's humorous, but bitter, master¬ piece. ^ The most popular English folksong of the seventeenth century concerning America satirized the promotion-tract portrayals of America. Typical lines are; “There Milk from Springs, like Rivers, flows, / And Honey upon hawthorn grows; / Hemp, Wool, and Flax, 172 J. A. Leo Lemay doubt he was most immediately mocking the common promotional literature of his own day (the newspapers were full of it), but contrary to the usual statements about the beginnings of the Old Southwestern school of humor,® Thorpe was using a vital tradition of American humor that had been continually popular since the mid-seventeenth century. In the first anecdote of his monologue, Doggett tells how he replied to the ribbing of the New Orleans inhabitants about his ignorance of the term game: “Strangers, if you’d asked me how we got our meat in Arkansaw, I’d a told you at once, and given you a list of varmints that would make a caravan, beginning with the bar, and ending off with the cat” (p. 43b2). From emphasizing the plenty and variety of the animals of wilderness Arkansas, Doggett switches to ridiculing the puny game shot by the New Orleans dwellers, sparrows and green herons (“chippen-birds and shite-pokes”). To clench the insult, he tells a specific incident—the first of the tall tales of the story. Doggett claims that he “never did shoot at but one” bird, “and I’d never forgiven myself for that, had it weighed less than forty pounds.” This detail is one of several that continues the colonial traditions. The forty-pound wild turkey was a commonplace of seventeenth and eighteenth-century promo¬ tion tracts; indeed, only the more restrained writers specified forty pounds, and frequently the colonial authors said that the wild turkeys reached fifty pounds or more, or said that hundreds of them there grows on trees, / The mould is fat, and cutts like Cheese; / All fruits and herbs growes in the fields, / Tobacco it good plenty yields.” This song, often untitled, is con- veniendy available in Charles H. Firth, ed.. An American Garland: Being a Collection of Ballads Relating to America 156^-1759 (Oxford, 1915), pp. 27-30, under the title “A proper Newe Ballett called The Summons to Newe England.” For the reactions in one typical colony to such satires, see my Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland (Knoxville, Tenn., 1972), especially the discussion of George Alsop's A Character of the Province of Maryland (London, 1666) and Ebenezer Cook’s The Sot-Weed Factor (London, 1708). Nineteenth- century satires of emigrants' expectations continued this tradition: see “Oleana” in Theodore C. Blegan and Martin B. Ruud, Norwegian Emigrant Songs and Ballads (Minneapolis, •936), pp. 192-198; “Amerikavison” in Robert L. Wright, Swedish Emigrant Ballads (Lincoln, Neb., 1965), pp. 37-39; and “Can you ride in a cart,” Colonial Magazine and Commercial-Maritime Journal, VIII (May-June, 1842), 82—quoted in W. S. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America: Projects and Opinions in the Early Victorian Period (Oxford, 1957), p. 254. ® See, for example, Philip D. Jordan, “Humor of the Backwoods, 1820-1840,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXV (June, 1938), 25-38, especially pp. 25-26. “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 173 were encountered at a time.® But Thorpe, in his outrageous use of specific detail, surpasses the colonial authors as well as the folk who put on the greenhorns by repeating these claims in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After punningly saying of his forty-pound turkey, “Wasn’t it a whopper,” Doggett claims, “when he fell out of the tree, after I shot him, on striking the ground he bust open behind, and the way the pound gobs of tallow rolled out of the opening was perfectly beautiful” (p. 43b4).'“ After a brief encomium on Arkansas (“the creation State, the finishing up country; a State where the sile runs down to the centre of the ’arth, and government gives you a title to every inch of it,” p. 43b6), the gamecock is taunted about the mosquitoes and replies with a mock-encomium on their “enormous” size, punningly con¬ ceding that they are too forward and “do push themselves in some¬ what troublesome” (p. 43b8). From the beginning of American colonization, the promotion writers had been replying to English objections concerning American mosquitoes. In an early example of New England dry humor, William Bradford answered the perennial complaint: “They are too delicate and unfit to begin new plantations and colonies, that cannot endure the biting of a mos¬ quito. We would wish such to keep at home till at least they be mosquito-proof.”“ Like Bradford, the Arkansan claims that natives ® “The Summons to Newe England,” cited in n. 7, says, “There flights of Fowl do cloud the light, / Great Turkies of sixty pound in weight, / As Big as Estriges . . . Firth, p. 28. The Jesuit promotion writer for Lord Baltimore, Andrew White, in A Relation of Maryland (London, 1635), claimed that Maryland contained “wild Turkeys in great abundance, whereof many weigh 50. pounds, and upwards” (p. 23). A skeptical early American scientist, the Rev. John Clayton, published a piece on American birds in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in the late seventeenth century which shows that he had heard oral anecdotes about large turkeys: “there be wild Turkeys extreme large. They talk of Turkeys that have been killed that have weighed betwixt fifty and Sixty- pound weight. The largest that ever I saw weighed something better than 38 pound.” Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, The Reverend John Clayton (Charlottes¬ ville, Va., 1965), p. 97. Thomas Morton claims that “Turkeys . . . hath bin killed that have weighed forty eight pound a peece,” New English Canaan (1637), p. 69. Charles Francis Adams, in his edition of Morton (Boston, 1883), p. 192, notes a number of addi¬ tional seventeenth-century exaggerations of the size of turkeys. Baughman, motif Xi265(ba), cites Vance Randolph, We Always Lie to Strangers: Tall Tales from the Ozarl^s (New York, 1951), p. 98; but Randolph is, indirectly, quoting Thorpe’s “Big Bear of Arkansas.” Samuel E. Morison, ed., William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York, •952), p. 144. Cf. Lemay, Men of Letters, p. 234. Other examples of this motif may be found in John White, The Planters Plea (London, 1630), repr. in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, LXIII (1928-1929), 388; Francis Higginson, New Englands Plantation (London, 1630), p. 42; and [Edward Johnson], Good News from New England 174 J. A. Leo Lemay are bothered less than others by mosquitoes; in addition, he implies that mosquitoes actually are useful to the natives of Arkansas in ridding them of such true pests as Yankees. Jim Doggett’s reply uses a favorite American technique—it exaggerates the problem and boasts about it, a strategy employed in America’s earliest extant folk song, “New England’s Annoyances,”^" which answers the anti¬ promotion tract satires about early America. Continuing the celebration of the abundance and fertility of the wilderness, Doggett tells “how numerous bear were in his ‘diggins,’ ” where he represented them to be “about as plenty as blackberries and a little plentifuler” (p. 43b9). From their abun¬ dance, Doggett turns to their size. Echoing two Biblical passages {Numbers 13:20 and Ecclesiastes 3:1), Doggett says that he “read in history that varmints have their fat season and their lean season,” but in Arkansas (which is thus implicitly compared to another Canaan, as presented in Numbers 13, a “fat land” that “floweth with milk and honey”) bears “have one continued fat season the year round” (p. 43C3). Doggett’s most striking anecdote of the fertility of Arkansas concerns crops: a “fellow who had stopped at my place, with an idea of buying me out” mistakes beets for cedar stumps and potatoes for Indian mounds (p. 4307).“ This is an especially splendid example of the common boast of the large size of American plants, a tradition which also stems from the colonial promotion tracts, where America was portrayed as a cornucopia and where, like the ancient classical idea of heaven, harvests of the extraordinarily large crops were made three times a year.^^ And (London, 1648), p. 8. For one later use, see Mark Twain, Ufe on the Mississippi (1883), chapter 34 (“Tough Yarns”). A version of "New England's Annoyances” is conveniently available in Harrison T. Meserole, Seventeenth-Century American Poetry (New York, 1972), pp. 503-505. Lies about beets are Baughman's motif X1433 and about potatoes are X1435. Baughman's motif Xi435.i(b), about potatoes being mistaken for Indian mounds, citing B. A. Botkin's Treasury of American Foll(lore (New York, 1944), p, 598, ultimately derives from “The Big Bear" by Thorpe, For a classical analogue of a turnip “weighing over 40 pounds,” see the Loeb edition of Pliny, Natural History, tr. H, Rackham (Cambridge, Mass., i 95 o)> V, 271 (book XVIII, xxxiv, 128). For English jestbook analogues on the extraordi¬ nary size of cabbages, see #222 in Anthony Copley, Wits, Fits, and Fancies (London, 1614), reprinted in Paul M. Zall, ed., A Nest of Ninnies and Other English Jesthool(s oj the Seventeenth Century (Lincoln, Neb., 1970), p. 6 (I am indebted to my friend Paul Zall for this example); and #120 in John Wardroper, Jest Upon Jest (London, 1970), p. 103. In the first Maryland promotion tract, Andrew White, A Declaration oj the Lord Baltimore’s Plantation in Mary-land (London, 1633), claimed that corn “is very plentiful in each of three Harvests in the same year, yeelding in greatest penurie two hundred for “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 175 Doggett immediately tops his outrageous tall tale with a paradox: “the sile is too rich, and planting in Arkansaw is dangerous.” He explains: “I had a good-sized sow killed in that same bottom land. The old thief stole an ear of corn, and took it down where she slept at night to eat; well, she left a grain or two on the ground, and lay down on them; before morning the corn shot up, and the per¬ cussion killed her dead” (p. 4307). This tall tale may reflect an oral anecdote or may be Thorpe’s original creation, but the outrageous put-on was commonly used by colonial Americans in replying to the English writers who satirized the promotion tracts. Its continu¬ ation in the literature and oral culture of the nineteenth century descended, in part, from the replies to the satires on colonial pro¬ motion tracts. These anecdotes of the abundance and fertility of Arkansas sym¬ bolically portray Arkansas as Eden, as the “creation State” (p. 43b6). This view of America also descends from the promotion tracts. And in the colonial promotion tracts, as in “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” a tension develops between a celebration of the wilderness as Eden and the portrayal of the future of America, when it will be a land of farms and of cities—in effect, a land like the one the emigrants are invited to leave.^® So too, in Thorpe’s story, even before the central anecdote of the big bear is told, conflict exists. Not only are there mosquitoes in paradise (although the tone of the passage assures the reader that this is really no problem), but the stuff of paradise, the game, is hunted, killed, and eaten; and the inhabitant of the paradisical world of Arkansas is primarily a hunter, a killer, a violator of nature.^® Doggett’s first anecdote. one, in ordinary yeares five or sixe hundred; and in the better, fifteen or sixteen hundred for one.” Hesiod in Worlds and Days describes the Elysian fields as a place where harvests are made three times a year. Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White (Cambridge, Mass., Loeb Library, 1959), p. 15. Anecdotes about fertility are also a common subject of English jestbooks. See the "great dispute betwixt Joch^ey a Scotchman, and Jenkin a Welch man . . . about the fruitfullnesse of their Countries," #61 in John Ashton, ed.. Humor, Wit & Satire of the Seventeenth Century (1883; repr. New York, 1968), p. 180. For references to the cornucopia theme in early Maryland literature (which is, of course, typical of the promotion literature of other colonies), see my Men of Letters, pp. 13, 19, 54, 119, 156, 167, and 177. These implicit tensions of the promotion tracts are made explicit by George Alsop in A Character of the Province of Maryland (London, 1666), as well as by such eighteenth- century authors who reflect the promotion tract traditions as Robert Beverley, Richard Lewis, and Ebenezer Cook. Kenneth Lynn, Mark, Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1959), pp. 92-93, points out the combination of “urbane confidence and intense uneasiness” in Thorpe’s story; 176 J. A. Leo Lemay contrasting the rural/primitive idea of killing for food with the urban/modern idea of killing for pleasure or “game,” presents a version of the sacramental attitude toward nature. But reverence for nature is dropped as Doggett boasts of his fabulous ability as a hunter, and especially as a killer of bears. Although Doggett twice directly brags about his union with nature (“But mosquitoes is natur, and I never find fault with her,” p. 43b8; and “natur in¬ tended Arkansaw for a hunting ground, and I go according to natur,” p. 43C7), he is in fact the ultimate violator of nature, a man whose primary function is to kill. Several scholars have commented on the big bear as a version of the magical fabulous beast of folklore.” Although tempted by such by-paths as the role of Doggett as the Accursed Hunter or the significance of a grape-vine being used as a life-line, I will confine myself here to the central issue of the nature and functions of the bear as a spirit. Since we are dealing with symbols rather than with an allegory, we cannot expect to find a perfect consistency in the implications of the story, but I believe that the dominant symbols clearly imply several themes. The bear is, as I will show, inextricably linked with Christian, as well as with folkloristic, concepts. When Doggett begins the story of the big bear, he immediately hints that and Katherine G. Simoneaux, “Symbolism in Thorpe’s ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas,’ ’’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXV, (Fall, 1966), 240-247, argues that Doggett’s Arkansas is “the lost Eden” and “a Garden of Paradise.” In “Folklore in Literature: A Symposium,” Journal of American Folklore, LXX (Jan.-March, 1957), Richard M. Dorson, p. 7, Carvel Collins, p. 9, and especially Daniel G. Hoffman, p. 20, comment on the bear’s mana. See also Dorson’s American Folklore (Chicago, 1959), p. 60; Rickels, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, pp. 58-60; Simoneaux, p. 244; and John Q. Anderson, ed.. With the Bark On: Popular Humor of the Old South (Nashville, Tenn., 1967), pp. 80-82. The archetypal background of bears as supernatural mandalas is studied in Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), passim, but especially pp. 53-60; see also Louise G. Clubb, “The Tragicomic Bear,” Comparative Literature Studies, IX (1972), 17-30; and Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), pp. 31-35. Richard Slotkin, in Regeneration through Violence, pp. 480-484, believes that the scene with the bear in the crotch of a tree, surrounded by baying hounds, presents an image “of the hanging god of primitive mythology and, by extension, of the crucifixion” (p. 481). He argues that the sequence in the penultimate climax recapitulates a fire-hunt myth, representing "a quest into the unconscious for the vision of an anima” (p. 482). Quoting excerpts does his intelligent interpretation injustice—and, of course, his interpretation sup¬ ports the thesis of his book. Slotkin’s analysis is the most detailed criticism of “The Big Bear” made from a mythic-archetypal point of view. One of my few radical disagreements with Slotkin is that he evidently presumes that Thorpe is to be identified with the city- slicker narrator (“the hunter’s narrative is framed by Thorpe’s account of his meeting with the teller on a steamboat,” p. 481). “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 177 it is a story of the supernatural, for it “was never beat in this world, or in any other.” And he has prepared the reader for this extraordi¬ nary history by concluding his earlier bear anecdote with “much onlikelier things have happened” (p. 43C5). When Doggett first sees the claw marks of the big bear on the trees “about eight inches above any in the forests that I knew of” (p. 44a2), he “couldn’t believe it was real.” Only after he sees the marks elsewhere does he concede, “/ kjiew the thing lived.” Since he is the greatest bear hunter of the district, which, according to Doggett, is a reputation “much harder to earn than to be reckoned first man in Congress” (p. 43C10), he immediately views the existence of the great bear as a personal challenge: “here is something a purpose for me—that bar is mine, or I give up the hunting business” (p. 44a2). And the bear seems to reciprocate the feeling, for the bear’s initial action is to kill Doggett’s hog, thus challenging him. When Doggett first chases the bear, “the dogs run him over eighteen miles, and broke down, [and] my horse gave out.” He expresses his wonder: “Before this adventure, such things were unknown to me as possible.” How the bear could do it “was past my understanding” (p. 44a3). After hunting the bear for “two or three years” (p. 43c 10), Doggett directly identifies the bear with the devil: “I would see that bar in every thing I did ,—he hunted me, and that too, like a devil, which I began to think he was” (p. 44a3). When shot by Bill, a greenhorn hunting companion of Doggett, “in the centre of his forehead” (p. 44a3), the immortal bear (which, like other fabulous beasts, can be killed only by a shot in a certain place—in his case, in “his side, just back of his foreleg,” p. 44a3)^® became angry, and with his left paw “brushed out” a pup that attacked him “so totally . . . that he entirely disappeared.” The angered spirit-bear is punningly described as “in a wrath”; and a wraith, of course, is a spirit. Doggett’s marvelous gun (which “if not watched closely . . . will go off as quick on a warm scent as my dog Bowie-knife will,” p. 43bii) mysteriously snaps‘® and the great One thinks of Achilles, the werwolf, the vampire—and especially of other bear stories. In “A Bear Hunt in Vermont" (1S33), the one vulnerable place to shoot the spirit-bear is “just under the off ear": see Richard M. Dorson, Jonathan Draws the Long Bow (Cam¬ bridge, Mass., 1946), p. 116. This motif also occurs in “A Bear Hunt in Vermont" (1833). Dorson, Jonathan, p. 116. Similarly, in Faulkner’s “The Bear,” Walter Ewell fires and inexplicably misses the bear, even though in “The Old People,” we are told that Ewell never misses. 178 J. A. Leo Lemay hunter finds himself inexplicably without another cap. The bear flees to a magical “little island in the lake” (the magic island is a common retreat in folklore and mythology, and was used in at least one tall tale by a colonial Pennsylvania frontiersman),^” and after Doggett, who has found the caps in the lining of his coat, shoots him in the one “correct” place, the big bear mysteriously changes into another bear. Doggett sums up the episode: “the way matters got mixed on that island was onaccountably curious, and thinking of it made me more than ever convinced that I was hunt¬ ing the devil himself” (p. 44^3). The actual killing, suitably, takes place on a Sunday morning (we’re told that it’s the “morning previous to the great day of my hunting expedition,” which is to begin “on Monday morning”), the bear unexpectedly appearing while Doggett is defecating. “He loomed up like a blac\ mist'’’ and after being shot walked through the fence like a falling tree would through a cobweb,” and spent his dying struggle “groaning in a thicket near by, like a thousand sinners.” (This thicket may recall Doggett’s earlier coupling of a thicket and religion: “a small mos¬ quito would be of no more use in Arkansaw than preaching in a cane-brake,” p. 43b8). After telling of the bear’s enormous size, Doggett moralizes to his steamboat audience: “It was in fact a creation bar, and if it had lived in Sampson’s time, and had met him, in a fair fight, it would have licked him in the twickling of a dice-box” (p. 44bi). Doggett also remarks on the magical prowess of the bear, muses on “something curious about” his earlier missing the bear, and gives his “private opinion . . . that the bar was an unhuntable bar, and died when his time come." At the end of Doggett’s monologue, the narrator further comments on the “mys¬ tery” and “superstitious awe connected with” the bear, and super¬ ciliously says that such feelings are “common with all ‘children of the wood,’^^ when they meet with anything out of their every day experience”—but we learn that all of the diverse hearers aboard the Mississippi steamboat evidently share the feeling (including the See the tale recorded in John W. Jordan, ed., “Journal of James Kenny, 1761-1763,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XXXVII (1913), 180-181. The allusion is to the common ballad (and chapbook story) of the two orphans who are abandoned in the woods by their cruel uncle. Nature acts as the agent of the uncle and kills the children. Ironically, in Thorpe's story the “children of the wood” are frontiers¬ men—those best able to deal with the wilderness. “The Big Bear of Arkansas” 179 narrator), for Doggett is the first to break the silence that follows his narrative (p. 44b2). Clearly, the big bear is a spirit. Doggett several times identifies him as a devil (his epithets for the bear include “the old black rascal”), and on occasion the imagery links him with aspects of nature. The magical suggestions establish the bear as an enemy spirit of modern man and further identify him as the spirit of nature, and sometimes as the symbol of the undefiled Eden, the “creation bar” (p. 44bi). The falling tree metaphor used to describe his death is especially suitable, for the cutting down of the trees of the American wilderness had been viewed as the primary symbol of the destruction of the wilderness and as the end of the American paradise since at least the early eighteenth century.^" The bear’s role as the devil, together with the religious imagery, may also suggest that the institution of religion (which is, of course, a chief mark of civilization and a natural concomitant of the destruction of the wilderness) will replace the paganism of nature. In addition to those aspects of the bear as a personification of the wild and savage that modern, fallen man must oppose, there is another reason for the supernatural qualities of the bear, a reason which may have functioned in such epics as Beowulf, but which is, comparatively, lacking from such twentieth-century versions of the archetype as Faulkner’s “The Bear.”'* The greatness of the bear measures the greatness of his opponent: As the bear becomes a devil, Doggett assumes heroic proportions and becomes a god. If, as Doggett says, the big bear could have defeated Samson, then Doggett is more heroic than Samson (and, by implication, other heroic figures of Richard Lewis, in “Food for Critics" (c. 1730), Ebenezer C 223, 238-39 myth, use of, 84-98, 128, 175-78, 181- 82, 184, 206-8 Nasby, Petroleum V., 4, 15-16, 27 Newell, Robert Henry (“Orpheus C. Kerr”), 4, 8, lo-ii, 15, 21 New England humor, 4, 15, 19, 22-23, 25. 27, 173-74 newspaper humor, 16-20, 99-108 New Yor\ Leader, 14-15, 19 Nicl{ of the Woods, 14 Noland, Charles Fenton Mercer, 240-53 Nye, Bill, 2-12, 18, 24, 28-32 oratory, 3-6 Paige, Joseph H., 3 parody. See burlesque Parrington, Vernon Louis, 150, 43, 44 n, 50 Pattee, Fred Lewis, 16, 33 Peck, George Wilbur, 16, 20, 23-24, 27 periodicals, comic, 21-23 Perkins, Eli, 14, 16, 19, 25, 27 pessimism, 147-53 Phoenix, John, 1-12, 33-35, 42 Picayune (New York), 22 “Pike” as character, 33-42 political thrust, 3-6, 15-16, 44-58, 104-6, 191-95, 243, 247, 251-52 Pomeroy, Marcus M. (“Brick”), 16 Porter, William Trotter, 25, 71-73, 112-26, 168-70 pretension, ridicule of, loo-ioi, 103- 4,184-85 primitivism, 128, 139,175-76,181-82, 184,187-88 promotion tracts, 171-75 Puc\, 16,18,23,30 Punch, 240-41 Quarter Race in Kentucky, A, 119-22 Read, Opie, 23 realism, 1-12, 32, 90, 93-94, 108, 213. See also burlesque; irony; satire religious motif, 179-82, 187-88. See also moral concerns Riley, James Whitcomb, 30 Rogers, Will, 16 romanticism, 1-12. See also burlesque; irony; satire Roughing It, 62-63 Rourke, Constance, 191 Russell, Sol Smith, 14 Sala, George Augustus, 25 satire, 44-45, 50, 55-56, 82, 99-111, 154-67, 214, 246. See also burlesque; irony Sellers, Colonel Beriah, 199 sentimentality, 90, 93. See also burlesque; satire sermons, 3-4, ii, 82 sexuality, 38, 45, 139-41, 237-39, 261-63 Shaw, George Bernard, 235 Shaw, Henry Wheeler (“Josh Bill¬ ings”). 17.21,24, 27 Shillaber, B. P., 19, 22-23, 27 Skinner, Cornelia Otis, 258n, 26in Slick, Sam, 25 Smith, Charles Henry (“Bill Arp”), 15. 27 Smith, Seba, 4, 15, 19 Smith, Sol, 14 social criticism, 137-39. See also moral concerns; political thrust Social Darwinism, 236 Southern Literary Messenger, 21 Southwest, humor of Old, 4, 15, 21, 23, 33, 68-83, 114, 117, 123, 127-41, 168-69, 199-200, 203, 208-9, 240-53 Index 274 Spirit of the Times, 18, 72-73, 112-26, 168-70,187-88,191, 200,240-53 sporting literature, 112-26, 182-83, 240, 245 style, 3-6, 32, 72-74, 79-80, 142-43, 152, 199, 202, 251,255. See also imagery; language, use of Suggs, Simon, 4, 15, 114, 117 supernatural, 177-79 Sut Lovingood’s Yarns, 68-83, 208 Swift, Jonathan, 43, 127, 142, 161-62 tall tales, 174-75,190-210 Taylor, Bayard, 360, 380, 40 Texas Siftings, 22-23 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 214 Thompson, William Tappan, 15, 23 Thorpe, Thomas Bangs, 114-17, 123, 168-69, 241 Titan, The, 224-39 topicality, 99-111 tragedy, 43-58, 98, 224-27, 236 transcendentalism, 193-95, 199 Trenerry, Walter N., 264n, 266n Trent, William Peterfield, 15 trickster as type, 89-90 Twain, Mark, 2-12, 14, 16, 23, 25, 27, 29, 62-63, 68, loi, 127, 170, i74n, 183, 191-92, 198-99, 208-9 type-characters. See character-types Uncle Remus stories, 84-98 urban life, 99-1 ii, 225-26, 231-39 Vanity Fair (New York), 1-2, ii, 16, 22 Visscher, William L., 27, 30 Ward, Artemus, 1-12,14,16, 24, 26, 63-64 Warner, Charles Dudley, 2, 53n Webb, Charles H., ii Weiner, Ellis, 256n, 26in, 262n, 263n, 268n Westerner as type, 40. See also frontiersman as type Whetstone, Pete, 245-53 Whig attitudes, 191-95, 243, 247, 251-52. See also political thrust White, E. B., 255 White, Richard Grant, 15 Widow Bedott Papers, 23 wilderness, 175-89. See also frontiers¬ man as type Wildfire, Colonel Nimrod, 14 Wiltshire, Richard, 255-56 women characters, 38, 82-83, ^39 Yankee Doodle, 16, i8n, 22 Yates, Norris W., i68n, 242,246 Notes on Contributors Walter Blair (1900—). University of Minnesota, 1928-1929; University of Chi¬ cago, 1929-1968. (With Franklin J. Meine) Mike Fink, King of Mississippi Keelboatmen (1933); Native American Humor (1937); Horse Sense in Ameri¬ can Humor (1942); Tall Tale America (1944); Mark Twain &■ Huck Finn (i960); (with Hamlin Hill) America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doones- bury (1978). Edited (with Franklin J. Meine) Half Horse, Half Alligator: The Growth of the Mik^ Fink Legend (1956); (with Hamlin Hill) The Art of Huckleberry Finn (1962); Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Huck, ^ Tom (1969); (with Raven I. McDavid, Jr.) The Mirth of a Nation: America’s Great Dialect Humor (with Victor Fischer) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1988); (with Dahlia Armon) Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians and Other Unfinished Stories (1989). Eugene Current-Garcia (1908—). Louisiana State University, 1944-1947; Au¬ burn University, 1947-1979; Hargis Professor of American Literature, 1964- 1979. O. Henry: William Sidney Porter (1965); The American Short Story before 1850 (1985). Edited (with Walton R. Patrick) Realism and Romanticism in Fiction (1962). Louise Dauner (1907—). University of Wisconsin, 1945-1946; Butler Univer¬ sity, 1946-1948; Drake University, 1948-1963; Indiana University-Purdue Uni¬ versity, Indianapolis, 1963-1977. Donald Day (1899—). Big Country: Texas (1947); The Evolution of Love (1954); Will Rogers, A Biography (1962). Edited (with Mody C. Boatwright) Backwoods to Border (1943) and From Hell to Breakfast (1944); Will Rogers, Autobiography (1949); Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Own Story (1951); Woodrow Wilson’s Own Story (1952); Uncle Sam’s Uncle Josh; or Josh Billings on Prac¬ tically Everything (1953); (with Harry Herbert Ullom) The Autobiography of Sam Houston (1954); The Hunting and Exploring Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt (1955); Will Rogers, Society Is Where You Find It (1955). Robert A. Day (1924—). Dartmouth College, 1952-1954; Graduate Center, City University of New York, 1954—. Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson (1966). Edited Familiar Letters betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady iy2$ (1955); The History and Adventures of an Atom (1989). David Durant (1940—). University of Kentucky, 1970—. Lome Fienberg (1948—). University of the South, 1978-1979; Grinnell College, 1979-1981; Iowa State University, 1981-1984; Millsaps College, 1984—. Charlton G. Laird (1901-1984). South Branch, University of Idaho, 1934-1942; Purdue University, 1942-1943; University of Nevada, 1943-1968. The Miracle 276 Notes on Contributors of Language (1953); Language in America (1970); The Word: A Loo\ at the Vocabulary of English (1981), Edited Walter Van Tilburg Clar\, Critiques (1983)- J. A. Leo Lemay (1935—). University of California, Los Angeles, 1964-1977; H. F. duPont Winterthur Professor of English, University of Delaware, 1977—. Ebenezer Kinnersley, Franl^lin’s Friend (1964); A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (1969); A Calendar of American Poetry in the Colonial Newspapers and Magazines and in the Major English Magazines through iy6$ (1970); Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland (1972); “New England’s Annoyances”: America’s First Foll{ Song (1985); The Canon of Benjamin Franhlin, New Attributions and Reconsiderations (1986). Edited The Oldest Revolutionary: Essays on Benjamin Franklin (1976); Essays in Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis (1977); The Auto¬ biography of Benjamin Fran\lin: A Genetic Text (1981); Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge (1987); Robert Bolling Woos Anne Miller: Love and Courtship in Colonial Virginia, iy6o (1990). Richard G. Lillard (1909-1990). Los Angeles City College, 1933-1934, 1935- 1942, 1949-1962; California State University, Los Angeles, 1962-1974. (With Otis C. Coan) America in Fiction (1941, 1945, 1949, 1956, 1967); Desert Chal¬ lenge (1942); The Great Forest (1947); American Life in Autobiography (1956); Eden in Jeopardy (1966); (with Elna S. Bakker) The Great Southwest (1972); My Urban Wilderness in the Hollywood Hills (1983). G. R. MacMinn (1884-1972). Iowa State College, 1909-1910; University of California, 1910-1918; California Institute of Technology, 1918-1954. The Theater of the Golden Era in California ( 1941). James C. McKelly (1959—). Auburn University, 1990—. Milton Rickels (1920—). George Pepperdine College, 1953-1957; University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1957-1986. Thomas Bangs Thorpe, Humorist of the Old Southwest (1962); George Washington Harris (1965); (with Patricia Rickels) Seba Smith (1977). Neil Schmitz (1936—). State University of New York at Buffalo, 1968- (except for University of Essex, UK, 1973-1974). Of Hucl{ and Alice: Humorous Writ¬ ing in American Literature ( 1983). Robert O. Stephens (1928—). University of Texas, 1957-1961; University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1961—. Hemingway’s Nonfiction: The Public Voice (1968). Edited Ernest Hemingway: The Critical Reception (1977). Jack E. Wallace (1928—). University of Kentucky, 1956-1960; Miami Univer¬ sity, i960—. Howard W. Webb, Jr. (1925—). Central Missouri State College, 1953-1956; Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1956-1990. Edited Illinois Prose Writers (1968). Louis J. Budd is James B. Duke Professor of English, Emeritus, at Duke Uni¬ versity. He served as Managing Editor of American Literature from 1979 to 1986 and as Chairman of the Board of Editors from 1986 to 1991. He is a past president of the American Humor Studies Association and is founding president and Honorary Life Member of the Mark Twain Circle of America. His publi¬ cations have dealt mostly with the career and writings of Mark Twain. Edwin H. Cady is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, at Duke University. He served as Associate Editor or Managing Editor of American Literature from 1973 to 1978 and 1986 to 1987 and as Chairman of the Board of Editors from 1979 to 1986. His publications have dealt with much of American poetry and prose from colonial to early modern times, paying particular attention to W. D. Howells and Stephen Crane. He was honored with the Jay B. Hubbell Medal in 1991. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data On humor / edited by Louis J. Budd and Edwin H. Cady, p. cm. — (The Best from American literature') Articles selected from the journal American literature. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8223-1173-9 (alk. paper) I. American wit and humor—History and criticism. I. Budd, Louis J. II. Cady, Edwin Harrison. III. Series. PS430.05 1992 817.009—dc20 91-4113 CIP DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 27706