The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-12-18
ARTEaIUs WAND N IoNnoN.
L. he a True HumOrIsr 9-.-HIs POINT
as Lecturer Discussed.

!
| as n Lecturer Discussed.
The following is part of an article on
the lecturing of Artemus Ward, in Lon
don, and is from the London Spectator
Artemus Ward is, as a true humorist
Snould be, even better than his books.
what his personal influence adds to the
humor OF his stories is not always OF
course easy to analyZe, but mainly, we
think, this-the impression which he
contrlves to produce that his confusions
OF thought and speech are all inevitable
on his own part, that his mind drifts on
nelpIessly from one of these grotesoue
ideas or expressions to the next, as the
creature or victim of some overruling
| power, which chooses his thought and
language for him, so that he is not even
a party to the transaction, though he
mas an earnest and rather melancholy
interest in the resalt. When he first
comes on TO the platform, with his long,
hollow-cheeked face, and his bright
sad, lnterrogative eyes, we should ex-
pecL from him, If we knew nothing
ABOUT the matter, almost anything
rather than cause for laughter.
he never smiles, but looks, on the
contrary, pleading and entreating, as
II he were above all things solicitous to
get his thoughts really disentangled
this time, when he is approaching one
OF MS odd comparisons. When he first
appears, for instance, he says, with the
greatest simplicity and pathetic kind
OF earnestnesS, that he does not himself
think at all highly of his entertainment
or expect much from it, that he only
hopes to obtain from it small sum Of
money, sufficient to take him to New
Zealand, for he adds, 'tif could only
go to New Zealand, 1 should feel that I
had not not wholly lived in vain;" and
then, as the audience laugh at this very
fnR RI lfvrr,
vain life, he adds, with eagerness and a
child-like sort of etfusion to his audi
ence, II don't want TO live wholly in
VAN" at Which, of course, the laughter
deepens into hearty roar. That is n
type of the whole character of his hu-
NOR. He gets hold of two inconsistent
and absurdly arbitrary ideas, con-
meets them with a sort of simple
tervor in his own mind, and
presses them on his hearers with
an air of plaintive good faith that is
quite irresistible. So, a few sentences
afterward, when he mentions that he
would not allow bust of himself to
be taken because he could not bear the
idea OF the people carrying him about
everywhere, making him common, and
hugging him in plaster of Paris, and
his audience (rather prematurely)
laugh, he assumes the laugh to be skep-
tical, and says with sharp, half snap
HASh Oil OA lhlOC5nJs hEEuu9nIaLlV9 1r-
ritation, "YeS, they would ;" and then
those who saw nothing humorous be-
fore are fully. carried away now, and
join in the universal chorus. The char
aCter he best likes to fill is that of a sort
of Intellectual Hans, the model simple
ton of the old German stories, in the
act of confiding himself to the public.
In the German stories Hans only makes
n practical fool of himself in all sorts
of impossible ways. But Artemus
Ward intellectualiZes him, shows the
inner absurdities of his own thoughts
with pathetic earnestness and candor,
His mind seems to wander when he
speaks of his own past, with winning
simplicity.
Nothing is better than his eager, ar
dent way of propoundinga truism. You
cannot avoid the conviction for a mo-
ment that it has just struck him as
real truth.
Perhaps the most humorous part of
Artemus Wards lecture, however, is
the natural, unresisting way in which
he drifts about in search of words aud
phrases, often conveying n sense ordif-
tculty and of conscious error, and then
correcting himselfby the use OF phrase
still more ludicrous, and on which vet
he seems to have landed by an impe-
rious necessity. The art with which he
gives the impression that he is foun-
dering along in his choice of words,
the victim OF. the first verbal associa3
ton which strikes his memory, and vet
just familiar enough with language to
feel uncertain as to his ground and to
wish to get hold Of some clearer term,
is beyond praise.
A general effect ofhaving to grope for
his language before he can express him |
self, always hovers about his manner.
When he says, with some pride, that he |
would not allow them to ''sculp" him,
and that "the clothes l now occupy pro-
duced great sensation in America"
there is no glimmer of smile on his |
face, and marked absence of empha-
sis on the grOtesQue words, which he |
slips out exactly as if he were rather
anxious to divert attention from points |
on which he feels his ground somewhat
uncertain-just as an Englishman |
abroad hastily slurs over his doubtful |
grammar to get on to idioms of which |
he is more certain. Then occasionally |
he will fall in the most natural and |
helpless way into language trap or
his own setting, as where he says that |
in the hurry of embarkingon bonrd the |
steamer which took him from New |
York, some middle-aged ladies against |
whom he was hustled, mistook his |
character wholly and said, "Base man,
leave us, oh leave us land leftthem,
oh, 1 left them J" where he appears O ute |
unable to help throwing thesecond half
Vi VIC SeALSuGS IuIO Lu6 10TH OL au an /
to the first. 1t impresses one |
as a sheer inability to get out of the |
wake of the first half OF the sentence,
not as any wish to be amusing, that |
makes him interpolate the second "oh I" |
He seems like man who, having taken |
a good run, cannot stop himself at the |
right point, but must run beyond it;
the rhythm of the elderly ladies' exhor.
tation mastered him; he helplessly sue
cumbs to it In explainlngh how he obeyed |
it. It is the fatalism OF grammatical |
construction. When he points out the |
lion on Brigham Young's gate, he says, |
pointing to very ridiculous and elon-l
gated feature in 1t. ''Yonder lion, you |
will observe, has a tail. 1t will be con-
tinued for a few evenings longer"
The humor of all this is the humor of |
the humor of letting your
thoughts drift idly with the most absurd |
that crosses them and never |
rescuing yourself by any insurrection
OF common sense.
PROFESSOR SEMMEs Qate Captain
SOmmes of the Alabnma,) lectured on
the STA instant in Galveston, Texas,
taking the name OF his vessel as the