"Mark Ward on Artemus Twain": Twain's Literary Debt to Ward

Author(s): Robert Rowlette

Source: American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter, 1973), pp. 12-25
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747846
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 "When Mark Twain appeared before a large Buffalo audience,
the other evening, he said that he missed many faces that he
knew well fourteen or fifteen years ago. 'They have gone,'
he added, sadly?'gone to the tomb, to the gallows, or to
the White House. All of us must go to one or other of these
destinations, and it behooves us to be wise and prepare for
all.' Again is Mr. Clemens indebted to Artemus Ward."

INDEPENDENT, 37 (1 Jan 1885), 8.

 %

"MARKWARD ON ARTEMUS TWAIN":

TWAIN'S LITERARY DEBT TO WARD

Robert Rowlette

Maryville, Missouri

Although scholars have long agreed that Mark Twain learned much about
humorous lecturing from Charles Farrar Browne, better known theyas Artemus Ward,1
have disagreed sharply on the corresponding question of a literary From indebtedness.
the early years of Twain's writing career critics regularly linked their names in tacit
attribution of influence.2 Two years after Twain's death William Dean Howells wrote
that "in some of his beginnings Mark Twain formed himself from, if not on, Artemus
Ward. The imitation could not last long; the great master was so immensely the mas
ter; but while it lasts it is as undeniable as it is curious."^ Twenty-five years later
the relationship was still mentioned often for Walter Blair to remark that it
enough4
had become "conventional to suggest that Mark learned from Ward not only the way to
'
speak but also the way to write humorously. Others have since asserted Ward's tu
6
torship.

The only serious challenge to this convention was issued forty years ago
by Bernard DeVoto in the monumental but pontifical MARK TWAIN'S AMERICA. Scorning
the widespread belief among academicians "that Mark Twain's humor developed in imi
tation of . . . Artemus Ward," he produced from "conscientious study" of their works
nine parallels which, with discounted but unspecified similarities in their treatment of
a common theme, the Mormons, the sum of Mark Twain's indebtedness to
"compose
Artemus Ward." That indebtedness, he concluded, is "almost wholly verbal?fifty
words in the collected works. Their minds were disparate, their intentions antagonis
tic, their methods incommensurable. They were humorists and in the production of
humor Artemus Ward was chronologically the first. That is all. DeVoto1 s pronounce
ments have won adherents ,? but neither side in the controversy has investigated fur
ther; the question remains an untidy loose end in Twainian criticism.

The convention that links Twain and Ward began with their bibulous ac
quaintance in December 1863 in Virginia City, Nevada, where Twain was a reporter
for the TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE0 Ward, arriving from San Francisco for a few days of
lecturing in Virginia City and neighboring towns, found Twain and his ENTERPRISE
cronies so congenial
that, his lecturing done, he lingered a few more to play.
days
For Twain, with his
still regional reputation and outlook as a journalist and with only
an amateur's standing as a local Ward's visit was a year
speaker,lu% propitious. Only
the elder, Ward was already famous as a lecturer and as the author of newspaper
sketches and the cacographic letters from the itinerant showman bearing his pseudonym,
all collected in ARTEMUS WARD, HIS BOOK the year before. Quite probably he became
 14

Twain's early standard of success as an author and his model as a humorous lecturer.
Certainly he recognized Twain's gift for humorous writing and encouraged him to con
tribute to prestigious Eastern journals; his "powerfully convincing" note to the SUNDAY
MERCURY^1 was followed shortly by the appearance in its pages of two of Twain's arti
cles; and Twain's "Jumping Frog," which brought his first fame in the East, was in
tended for inclusion in Ward's second book, ARTEMUS WARD, HIS TRAVELS (1865), but
arrived after the publisher's deadline.1^

Ward's death in England in 1867 and the tearful response in that country
and his own may have prompted Twain in the next few years to capitalize on his know
ledge of both the man and his material. Besides his use of Ward in his first books, to
be taken up presently, he recorded some of his impressions of the humorist's piquant
personality in "First Interview With Artemus Ward" (1867). More particularly, in his
lecture tour of 18 71-1872 he presented, several times a week for about seven weeks, a
talk on Artemus Ward,-'-3 probably because of the subject's
appeal. presumed sure-fire
The lecture "embodied
biographical data of dubious accuracy," says Fatout, which
"served only as pegs on which to hang jokes by Ward and by Mark Twain so well mixed
that he once introduced himself as "Charles F. Clemens' . . . and led one reporter to
call the mixture 'Mark Ward on Artemus Twain. ",1^ Some of these with
jokes, other
items, had already been transferred to Twain's pages; others were to follow.

Seldom after that did Twain acknowledge Ward. One cannot be sure that
the inclusion of nine items from Ward in MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, planned
in 1880 and finally published in 1888, indicates that Twain had carefully re-read the
other's work or even that he himself made the selections.^ Although Twain was offi
cially the compiler of the anthology, Howells and Charles Hopkins Clark, the associ
ate editors, did most of the work. Howells wrote the graceful introduction, and one
scholar believes the volume should have been entitled "The Howells Library of Humor,"
"
since he selected the contents. Even though Twain had earlier borrowed heavily from
"
one of the Ward items, "A Visit to Brigham Young, and had echoed two others, "Arte
mus Ward and the Prince of Wales" and "Interview with Lincoln," the question of selec
tion is largely academic since his use of Ward was by this time negligible. In "How to
Tell a Story" (1895), however, the acknowledgment is explicit and important. Here,
Twain indicates how he had ? some
closely studied Ward's lecturing techniques of
which doubled as comic-writing techniques--citing especially Ward's skillful use of
the nub, the apparently casually dropped studied remark, and above all the pause.
Finally, in 1896 Twain's mind turned back to the beginning; his "At Home" readings for
friends that winter sometimes featured his account of how Artemus Ward, international
ly renowned humorist, had befuddled with meaningless plausibilities the young ENTERPRISE
who interviewed him on his arrival in Virginia before. ^
reporter City thirty-three years

In denying Ward any influence on Twain, DeVoto challenged the doubtful to

examine themea they shared, the Mormons.1^ For some years the Mormons, particu
larly with their "peculiar institution" of polygamy, had been exciting an extraordinary cu
here and abroad, which writers humorous and humorless alike tried to satisfy. 0
riosity,
"
Ward had catered to this curiosity in 1860 with "A Visit to Brigham Young, a humor
ous account of a fictitious interview with the Mormon leader four years before he vis
ited Salt Lake City in January 18 64 ; in ARTEMUS WARD, HIS TRAVELS he devoted ten chap
ters to the Mormon segment of his Western journey. Twain had spent two days in the Mor
mon city in early August 1861 while enroute with his brother Orion to Nevada; he did not,
however, turn the Mormon material to literary purposes until the composition of ROUGHING
IT a decade later. Several passages from ROUGHING IT suggest that he may have found
 15

Ward's account useful to jog his memory or to provide ideas; they manifestly resemble
some from Ward in more than subject matter. Compare these two descriptions of Salt
Lake City; Ward's is printed in the column on the left:

The population of Great Salt Lake City is Next day we strolled about everywhere
20,000.?The streets are eight rods?and through the broad, straight, level streets
are neither flagged nor paved. A stream . . . of a city of fifteen thousand inhabi
of pure mountain water courses through tants. ... A limpid stream and
rippling
each street?and is conducted into the dancing through every street . . . block
gardens of the Mormons. The houses are after block of trim dwellings, built of
mostly of adobe?or sun-dried brick?and "frame" and sunburned brick.?A great
present a neat and comfortable appearance orchard and garden behind
thriving every
... no house [do you see] that is dirty, one of them, apparently?branches from
shabby, and dilapidated. . .
. Every Mor the street stream winding and sparkling
mon has a tidy dooryard. Neatness is a among the garden beds and fruit trees?and
great characteristic of the Mormons.21 a grand general air of neatness, repair,
thrift, and comfort around and about and
^o o
over the whole.

While Twain needed no

help for his descriptions, such a routine one as
especially
this, he often needed it for his memory. Both writers see what any traveler would see
and many had already described; but Twain's passage seems to paraphrase Ward's,
following its basic details and their order and emphasis too closely for mere coinci
dence. Only the population figures vary significantly. Twain's could
figure easily
come from his memory; more likely it comes from a memorandum he had re
recently
23
ceived from Orion.

From Ward almost certainly comes the mandatory joke about polygamy:

I had a man pointed out to me who married The next most interesting thing is to sit
an entire family. He had in and
originally listen to these Gentiles talk about
tended to marry Jane, but Jane did not and how some
polygamy; portly old frog
want to leave her widowed mother. The of an elder, or a bishop marries a girl?
other three sisters were not in the matri likes her, marries her sister?likes her,
monial market for the same reason; so this marries another sister?likes her, takes
gallant man married the whole in
family, another?likes her, marries her mother,
cluding the girl's grandmother, who had likes marries
her, her father, grandfather,
lost all her teeth, and had to be fed with
great grandfather, and then comes back
a 24
spoon and asks for more.
hungry (ROUGHING IT,
I, 123-124)

Twain's insatiable polygamist, like Ward's less one, marries four sisters and
earthy
their mother, then, with no grandmother to wed, on Ward's and on the
improves pecu
liarity of the institution by marrying all the sisters' male ancestors as well.2^ Prob
ably Twain supplied the three generations of males when he noticed the burlesque pos
sibilities of having his old frog literally marry a whole of both sexes?an
family oppor
tunity Ward's gallant man did not have.

Each author offers an anecdote about the ruler of Utah and his unruly wives;
Ward's is from "A Visit to Brigham Young":

His wives air very expensiv. allers And Mr. said

Thay Johnson that while he and Mr.
 16

want suthin & ef he don't buy it for urn Young were pleasantly conversing in private,
thay set the house in a uproar. He sez one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and de
he don't have a minit's peace. His wives manded a breast-pin,
remarking that she had
fite amung theirselves so much that he has found out that he had
been giving a breast
bilt a fittin room for thare speshul bene pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did not pro
ift, & when too of 'em get into a row he pose to let this partiality go on without
has em turned loose into that place, whare making a satisfactory amount of trouble a
the dispoot is settled accordin to the rules bout it. Mr. Young reminded her that there
of the London prize ring. Sumtimes thay was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said
abooze hisself individooally. Thay hev that if the state of things inside the house
pulled the most of his hair out at the roots was not agreeable to the stranger, he could
& he wares meny a horrible scar upon his find room outside. Mr. Young promised the
body, inflicted with mop-handles, broom breast-pin, and she went away. But in a
sticks and sich. Occashunly they git minute or two came
another
Young in Mrs.
mad & scald him with bilin water. When and demandeda breast-pin. Mr. Young
he got eny waze cranky thay'd shut him began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young cut
up in a dark closit, previsly whippin him him short. She said No. 6 had got one,
arter the stile of muthers when thare orf and No. 11 was promised one, and it was
springs git onruly. Sumtimes when he "no use for him to try to impose on her?
"
went in swimmin thay'd go to the banks of she knew her rights. He gave his promise
the Lake & steal all his close, thereby and she went. And presently three Mrs.
compellin him to sneek home by a circoo Youngs entered in a body and opened on
tious rowt, drest in the Skanderlus stile their husband a tempest of tears, abuse,
of the Greek Slaiv. "I find that the keers and entreaty. They had heard all about
"
of a marrid life way hevy onto me, sed No. 6, No. 11, and No. 14. Three more
"
the Profit, & sumtimes I wish I'd re breast-pins were promised, and the weird
-.26
maned singel sisters out again.
filed And in came elev
en more, weeping and wailing and gnashing
their teeth. Eleven promised breast-pins
purchased peace once more.

Young explained to his guest that

before the farce were ended, "No. 6's
breast-pin will cost me twenty-five hun
dred dollars before I see the end of it. And
those creatures will compare those pins to
gether, and if one is a shade finer than the
rest, they will all be thrown on my hands,
and I will have to order a new lot to keep
order in the family. (ROUGHING IT, I,
125-126)

In each case expensive andabusive wives mar the domestic peace of the hen-pecked
sovereign. The abuse is
physical in Ward but verbal in Twain, whose anecdote elabo
rates the first three sentences of Ward's and particularizes both the item provoking the
tempest and the cost. On the lecture platform in 1868 Twain's first version of this
yarn starred the unhappy Sultan of Turkey and his 900 wives; it was closer in some
respects to Ward's, especially in the humor of hair-pulling fights among the wives.27

Nearly as troublesome as the prophet's wives were his ubiquitous children.

Says Ward, again in "A Visit to Brigham Young":

He don't pretend to know his children, thare is so many of urn, tho they all
 17

know him. He sez about every child he meats calls him Par, & he takes
it for grantid it is so. (HIS BOOK, p. 99)

And Twain:

Along with each wife were

children?fifty her
altogether .... He said that
Mr. Young told smart
him several
sayings of certain of his "two year olds"
. . . and then wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the pets that had said
the last good thing but he could not find the child. He searched the faces
of the children in detail but could not decide which one it was. (ROUGH
ING IT, I, 125-126)

He amplifies further with Young's anecdote:

Why, sir, a woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort
of complexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine
and she my wife. . . . Well, sir, she called my attention to the fact that
the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resemble me?a com
mon thing in the territory?and, to cut the story short, I put it in my nur
sery, and she left. And . . . when they came to wash the paint off that
child itwas an Injun! (ROUGHING IT, I, 128-129)

In such a way Twain seems repeatedly to build on suggestions from Ward.

Brigham Young continues to interest them most. Both, for example, describe him as a
shrewd man of extraordinary administrative ability; Ward illustrates by showing Young
using "revelation" to persuade the faithful to shingle his huge dwelling free of charge,
and Twain by showing him enforcing contractural procedure among his followers against
their own business interests (HIS TRAVELS, pp. 182-183; ROUGHING IT, I, 118-121).
Both observe his command presence and gentle eye; report his cordiality (Ward had
been understandably apprehensive because of his burlesque treatment of him in "A
Visit . . ."), his sovereign power, his people's unquestioning devotion to him, his
immense wealth; and joke about his seventy or eighty wives in Salt Lake City as well
as others "sealed" to him throughout the Territory. Other aspects of Mormon culture
elicit comparable comment from both. They report that the Mormon women are neither
ugly nor lovely and
speculate whether they are happy, and comment on the girls' being
intensely trained from childhood to approve plurality. Finally, both read or began to
read the Book of Mormon and pronounced it tedious, tiresome, or worse. Ward then
padded out his book by quoting (in the last chapter) sixteen pages from Joseph Smith's
revelations and Twain his by quoting the Mormon Bible intermittently for nine pages
(interspersing his own biting commentary)/ then adding an appendix of twenty-three
more. 2^
pages

These things, the padding aside, were inherent in the "Mormon question,"
and thereading public would expect them to be treated. Yet quite as much as the pro
liferation of common topics, the order of their occurence and the similarity of treatment
and attitude suggest that Ward's material on the Mormons was one source of Twain's.

ROUGHING IT contains one additional passage not on the Mormon theme

that requires notice. Ward had written a long account of Horace Greeley's wild forty
mile dash, in a coach driven by Hank Monk, from Carson City to Placerville where he
was to be feted at seven o'clock. They started late, but Monk, oblivious to rock
strewn roads, to Greeley's head going up and down through the roof of the coach and
 18

his broken pleas to slow down, and mindful only of his orders to get his passenger
there on time, careened into Placerville with the gasping Greeley promptly at seven

(HIS TRAVELS, pp. 156-162). Twain reports the story as being maddeningly and un

varying inflicted on him by successive fellow-passengers late in his stage-journey to

Nevada, and concluding always with tiresome refrain: "Keep your seat, Hor
^Monk's
' .29
ace, and I'll get you there on time!

Parallels with Ward occur sporadically in Twain's other early work. Some,
as in ROUGHING IT, consist chiefly of ideas or situations adopted and adapted. Com
pare these experiences with foreign tongues, Ward's at a Chinese theater in San Fran
cisco, Twain's in the Sandwich Islands:

"
The Chinaman at the door takes my ticket "Fine day, John .
" "
with the remark, "Ki hi hi ki! Shoolah! "Aole iki.
And I tell him that on the [I took that to mean, "I don't know. "]
whole I think he is right .... As my "Sorter sultry, though."
"
time is limited, I go away at the close of "Aole iki.
the second act .... The doorkeeper "You're right?at least I'll let it go at
again says, "Ki hi-hi ki! Shoolah!" that, any way. It makes you sweat con
"
adding this time, however, "Chow-wow. siderably, don't it?"
"
I agree with him in regard to the ki hi and "Aole iki.
the hi ki, but tell him I don't feel alto "Right again, likely . . . ."30
gether certain about the chow-wow. (HIS
TRAVELS, pp. 140-141)

Situations, remarks, and responses are closely similar; so are the reactions in these
scenes showing male honor supposedly threatened by strange women:

Ward was discussing women's rights with Twain was in a bath-tub in Milan when his
a woman who grabbed him by the collar. room was invaded by a maid whom he ad
"
"I hope, marm, sez I, starting back, monished: "Beware, woman! ... I am an
"that your intentions is honorable? I'm unprotected male, but I will preserve my
" "31
a lone man hear in a strange place, honor at the peril of my life.
(HIS BOOK, p. 120)

Twain may have found one of Ward's "Original Programmes" announcing

his lecture useful for a description of art in INNOCENTS ABROAD:

The program announced: THE APPEARANCE Twain enlivened an account of art in Rome:
OF ARTEMUS WARD. Who will be greeted The colors are fresh and rich, the "expres
"
by applause. . . .When quiet has been sion, I am told, is fine, the "feeling" is
restored, the lecturer present a rather
will lively, the "tone" is good, the "depth" is
frisky prologue, of about ten minutes in profound, and the width is about four and
length, and of nearly the same width. It a half feet, I should judge. (INNOCENTS
perhaps isn't necessary to speak of the ABROAD, II, 6)
depth. (COMPLETE WORKS, p. 393)

Each piece depends upon incongruous use of dimensions?width in both cases, width
and depth in Ward's?for its effect. Incongruity in another of Ward's programs must
also have appealed to Twain:

Artemus Ward as speaks at Dodsworth Twain remembered the advertisement an

 19

Hall, and shows his Paintings the Eve nouncing his first lecture to have read: Doors
ning of Every Day at 8 o'clock. Opening open at 7 1/2. Trouble begins at 8.32
his portals at 7 1/2 o'clock. (COMPLETE
WORKS, p. 34)

Souvenir hunters on old battlefields figure in these parallel sketches of the

rapacious exploiting the gullible:

On the Plains of Abraham there was once There was nothing else to do, and so every
some tall fitin, and ever since then there body went to hunting relics. . . . Some
has been a great demand for the bones of . . . brought bones . . . and were grieved
the slew'd on that there occasion. But to hear the surgeon pronounce them only
the real
ginooine bones was long ago car bones of mules and oxen. Blucher . . .
ried off, and now the boys make a hansum brought a sack full . . . and is labeling
thing by cartin the bones of hosses and his trophies now. I picked one up . . .

sheep out there, and sellin' 'em to intel and found it marked "Fragment of a Russian
"
ligent American towerists. (HIS TRAVELS, General. I carried it out to get a better

pp. 44-45) light upon it?it was nothing but ... a

jawbone of a horse. (INNOCENTS ABROAD,

II, 92-93)

One battlefield is replenished with the bones of sheep and horses when the human sup
ply runs out, the other with bones of mules, oxen, and horses; Twain again adds an
improving touch of particularity.

DeVoto cites Twain's "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" as a

possible reminiscence of the Revolutionary Soldier in Ward's "Affairs Round the Village
" "
Green. Ward remembered reading an account of "Another Revolutionary Soldier Gone,
then visited with one who still lived; this old veteran still

distinctly remembers Washington, of George, the favorite body-servant of the

course; they all do. But what I wish to lamented Washington, died in Richmond,
call special attention to, is the fact that Va. , last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95
this Revolutionary soldier is one hundred years. His intellect was unimpaired, and
years old, that his eyes are so good that his memory tenacious, up to within a few
he can read fine print without specta minutes of his decease. He was present
cles? he never used them by the way? at the second installation of Washington
and his mind is perfectly clear. (HIS as President, and also at his funeral, and
TRAVELS, p. 108) distinctly remembered all the prominent
incidents connected with those notable
33
events

Three close correspondences?the distinct remembrance of Washington, the advanced

age, and the unimpaired faculties of each?make the case for a reminiscence. DeVoto
overlooked in the same sketch by Ward the probable source of another Twain "reminis
cence" in LIFE THE MISSISSIPPI.
ON Ward surveyed in retrospect the careers of nine
of his boyhood companions, noting sadly that most of them had not done well in life?
the good little
boy, for example, who was "in the penitentiary for putting his uncle's
"
autograph to a financial document. Twain questioned an old resident of Hannibal in
"My Boyhood Home" about a larger number of his boyhood friends and learned that
many of them, too, had been defeated by life. Each inquired especially about the town
dullard who, by contrast and to the surprise of all, turned out well:
 20

Hubertson, the utterly stupid boy?the "Well now, case

his is^ curious ! There
lunkhead who never had his lesson?he's wasn't a human
being in this town but knew
about the ablest lawyer a sister State can that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;
boast. (HIS TRAVELS, p. 113) perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you
may say. Everybody knew it, and every
body said it. Well, if that very boy isn't
the first lawyer in the state of Missouri
I'm a Democrat! "34
to-day,

Twain, unrecognized by his former fellow townsman and using an assumed name, then
inquired about Sam Clemens. Ward in another sketch ("To Reese River") had earlier
used the device of concealing his identity to discover what another thought of him:

Mr. Ryder knows me only as "Mr. Brown," "Oh, he succeeded well enough?another
and he refreshes me during the journey by case of a d-d fool. If they'd sent him
quotations from my books and lectures. to St. Louis, he'd have succeeded sooner."
"Never seen Ward?" he said. It was with much satisfaction that I
"
"Oh no. recognized the wisdom of having told this
"Ward says he likes little candid gentleman, in the beginning, that
girls, but he likes large girls just as my name was Smith.35
well. Haw, haw, haw! I should like to
"
see the d-d fool.
He referred to me. (HIS
TRAVELS, pp. 165-166)

Additional correspondences, strictly verbal in nature, flicker through the two

writers' pages. Predominantly catch-phrases or punch-lines, many were shared with oth
ers of the comic-writing 3 6 but a few to originate with Ward. DeVoto cites one
tribe, appear
of the more familiar examples?Ward's "My wife says so, too," which Twain echoes
with Huck's "Tom Sawyer, he says the same"?and one of the least?Ward's "I was 96
minits passin a given point," which Twain uses several times. Several times also he
and to the ? a
borrowed varied Ward's question Prince of Wales how did he like "bein
prince as fur as he had
got?" Ward's response to the telegram from the manager of the
San Francisco Opera House asking what he'd take for forty nights in California became
famous. He and water. "37 And Twain, on the Secretary of the
said, "Brandy calling
was "What will He "38
Treasury, asked, you have?" said, "Rum punch.

More memorably, the nub climaxes a longer passage. Ward's painful ex

perience with a mustard plaster leads in to a humorously intended misapplication of

Scripture:

I lay there in this wild, broiling way for nearly two weeks, when one morn

ing I woke up with my head clear and an immense plaster on my stomache.

The plaster had operated. I was so raw that I could by no means say to
Dr. Williamson, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." (HIS TRAV

ELS, p. 174)

Twain writes of a much more severe case of burning flesh:

He said there was no joke about this matter?for the house was full of
smoke?he had heard dreadful screams?he recognized the odor of burning
flesh. We soon found out that he was right. A poor old negro woman, a
 21

servant in the next house, had fallen on the stove and burned herself so

badly that she soon died. It was a sad case ... all spoke gloomily of
the disaster. . . . In a grave voice and without even a shadow of a smile,
said: --"WELL and faithful servant. "39
Riley DONE, good

Finally, Ward's "most notable contribution" to Twain, as DeVoto says, is

the punch-line in the best-known passage in INNOCENTS ABROAD and one of the best
known in Twain's entire canon. At an inn in London Ward asks the innkeeper to attend
a seance with him. It is to be conducted by a "Trans-Mejim" who says "the sperrits
of departed great men talk through him. He says that tonight sev'ril em'nent persons
will speak through him--among others, Cromwell." The landlord hesitates. "And this
Mr. Cromwell?is he dead?"4^ In Genoa Twain and his traveling companion, the doc
tor, harass their current guide by affecting a stupid indifference to the grandest won
ders he can show. Before the bust of Columbus and before the Egyptian mummy the

doctor, his eyeglass relentlessly in place, produces not the expected gratifying burst
of admiration but a series of imbecilic questions ending with the solemn and unsettling,
"Is?is he dead?"41

Collectively, these parallels show that Twain borrowed considerably from

Ward, far more than DeVoto would allow. Mostly he borrowed the staples of the comic
writers' trade?jokes, anecdotes, catch-phrases, snappers, one-liners?for use in his
Sandwich Island letters, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and
several sketches; he borrowed more of these as well as details for development and
factual material, and probably the idea of padding with appendices, for more extensive
use in ROUGHING IT, where Ward's influence on several chapters has gone largely
unnoticed. The borrowing did not continue for long. After ROUGHING IT, except for
striking correspondences in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, it virtually ceased.

This sudden decline probably owes much to Twain's strong resentment at

being unfavorably compared with Ward, whose popularity was still greater than his own.
His high opinion of Ward's platform artistry was matched by a low opinion of his lit
erary artistry. Early in 1866 he was thankful that the "Jumping Frog" had not appeared
in the "wretchedly poor" HIS TRAVELS;42 and the truth of Edgar M. Branch's remark
that "the genius of the 'Jumping Frog' dwarfs Ward's talent"43 was doubtless apparent
to Twain long before he turned to Ward's book for his own purposes in ROUGHING IT.
He came to resent Ward especially for the charge of imitation, a charge, ironically,
that he himself, more with his "Artemus Ward" lectures on the tour of 18 71-18 72 than
with his books, did most to encourage. On the platform that winter, says Fatout, he
soured unbecomingly when audiences and newspaper reporters made damaging compari
sons of his and Ward's rendering of the same jokes. Rankled, he alluded rather grace
lessly to Ward's alleged coarseness and unpolished wit. At times he went so far as to
imply "that the illiterate showman of the badly-spelled sketches was only the alter
of Ward himself. "44 After he was not likely, in his or his writing,
ego that, lectures
to encourage the comparison again.

NOTES

^ee especially Fred W. Lorch, THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT EIGHT / MARK

TWAIN'S LECTURE TOURS (Ames: Iowa State U Press, 1968), pp. 14-16; Paul Fatout,
 22

MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 1960), pas
sim; MARK TWAIN IN VIRGINIA CITY (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 1964), p. 114.

2
Edwin Whipple, "American Literature in the First Century of the Repub
lic," HARPER'S, 52 (Mar 1876), 514-533; Henry Clay Lukens, "American Literary Co
medians," HARPER'S, BO (Apr 1890), 783-797; Henry A. Beers, INITIAL STUDIES IN
AMERICAN LETTERS (NY: Chautauqua Press, [1899]), p. 201.

3Introduction to ARTEMUS WARD'S BEST STORIES, ed. Clifton Johnson.

(NY: Harper, 1912), p. xiv.

4Will D. Howe, "Early Humorists," CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN

LITERATURE (NY: Putnam's, 1918), II, 159; William Thompson Hastings, SYLLABUS OF
AMERICAN LITERATURE (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1923).

5NATIVE AMERICAN HUMOR (NY: American Book, 1937), pp. 149-150.

6Effie Mona Mack, MARK TWAIN IN NEVADA (NY: Scribner's, 194 7), p.
298; Irving McKee, "Artemus Ward in California and Nevada, 1863-1864," PACIFIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW, 20 (Fall 1951), 20; Fatout, MARK TWAIN IN VIRGINIA CITY, p.
130; Robert Hutchins, Introduction to facsimile edition of ARTEMUS WARD, HIS BOOK
(Santa Barbara: W. Hebberd, [1964]), p. lx.

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1932), pp. 164, 221; for his complete findings
see pp. 219-221.

p. 150; Ivan Benson, MARK TWAIN'S WESTERN YEARS (Stanford:

8Blair,
Stanford U Press, [1938]), p. 155; Delancey Ferguson, MARK TWAIN / MAN AND LEG
END (NY: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943), p. 88; James C. Austin, ARTEMUS WARD (New Haven:
Yale U Press, 1964), p. 114.

9
Useful among the numerous accounts of Ward's stay in Virginia City and
his antics with Twain are Albert B. Paine, MARK TWAIN / A BIOGRAPHY (NY: Harper,
1912), I, 239-242; DeVoto, pp. 137-140; Fatout, MARK TWAIN IN VIRGINIA CITY, pp.
118-134.

He was not to give his first public lecture until October 1866 but had
made a start as public speaker on 11 December, just before Ward arrived, with his

burlesque of political oratory before the "Third House," a mock legislature composed
chiefly of journalists that parodied the proceedings of formal legislative sessions.

UMARK TWAIN'S LETTERS, ed. Albert B. Paine (NY: Harper, 1917), I,

93-94; letter of 1 Jan 1864.

1
instead
It appeared in Henry Clapp's SATURDAY PRESS for 18 November.

Edgar M. Branch cites

beginning the of Twain's original version of the tale?"Mr. A.

Ward, Dear Sir"--as "Clemens' indirect acknowledgment of Ward's invitation to con

"
tribute a sketch to his forthcoming book . . . in "'My Voice Is Still for Setchell': A

Background Study of 'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,*" PMLA, 82 (Dec 1967), 597.

MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT, pp. 151-159; Lorch,

13Fatout,
THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT EIGHT, pp. 117-119. See also Marvin Felheim, "Mark
 23

Twain's 'Artemus Ward' Lecture of the Tour of 1871-1872," NEW ENGLAND QUARTER
LY, 25 (Sep 1952), 327-343.

14MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT, p. 152. Fatout reports (p.

15 6) that audiences often resented hearing again jokes that in their view Ward had told
better and that for years since had been newspaper filler. Lorch m-entions (p. 119)
another resentment?the impropriety of Twain's discussing a dead favorite "in a bur

lesque vein." He provides a partial text of the lecture composited from newspaper
reports (pp. 297-303), but nearly all of the jokes and anecdotes are missing.

15MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR, with a Foreword by Clarence Gohdes

(NY: Garrett Press, 1969).

16Harold Blodgett, "A Note on MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY OF HUMOR," AMER

ICAN LITERATURE, 10 (Mar 1938), 78-80.

17LITERARY ESSAYS (NY: Harper, 1899). Except for the first paragraph,
which is mildly laudatory, Twain's review of Ward's lecture in Virginia City has been
lost.

18Fatout, MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT, p. 265.

19MARK TWAIN'S AMERICA, pp. 219-220.

20
In this country travelers westward felt obliged to tarry among the Mor
mons, shudder virtuously, then make profitable reports in books with wordy titles.
See, for example, Benjamin G. Ferris, UTAH AND THE MORMONS / THE HISTORY,
DOCTRINES, CUSTOMS, AND PROSPECTS OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS / FROM PER
SONAL OBSERVATIONS DURING A SIX MONTHS' RESIDENCE AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY
(NY: Harper, 1856); Mrs. Benjamin G. Ferris, THE MORMONS AT HOME /WITH SOME
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL FROM MISSOURI TO CALIFORNIA, 1852-1853 (NY: Dix & Ed
wards, 185 6); I. W. Gunnison, THE MORMONS / OR, LATTER-DAY SAINTS / IN THE
VALLEY OF THE GREAT SALT LAKE / A HISTORY OF THEIR RISE AND PROGRESS, PECU
LIAR DOCTRINES, PRESENT CONDITION, AND PROSPECTS . . . (Philadelphia, 1856);
Richard Francis Burton, THE CITY OF THE SAINTS /AND ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUN
TAINS TO CALIFORNIA (NY: Harper, 1862). In England the Mormons were said to have
rivaled even the Civil War in topical interest. See Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley,
A JOURNEY TO GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. . . , 2 vols. (London: W. Jeffs, 1867).

21 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ARTEMUS WARD

(London: Chatto & Windus,
1922), p. 370; hereafter cited as COMPLETE WORKS.

22ROUGHING IT (NY: Harper, 1913), I, 113-114.

?^
Orion had noted, "Salt Lake has about 15,000 inhabitants; the buildings
are adobe, with plenty of ground around them, and shade trees are plentiful?all
planted" (Franklin R. Rogers, ed., THE PATTERN FOR MARK TWAIN'S ROUGHING IT/
LETTERS FROM NEVADA BY SAMUEL AND ORION CLEMENS, 1861-1862 [Berkeley and
Los Angeles: U of California Press, 19 61], p. 48). Just before he began writing the
chapters on the Mormons, Twain had written his brother asking for a memorandum of
their westward journey, for "scenes, names, incidents, or adventures of the coach
trip?for I remember next to nothing about the matter" (quoted by Rogers, p. 16).
24

ARTEMUS WARD, HIS TRAVELS (NY: G. W. Carleton, 1865), p. 212.

Reports of one man marrying several sisters were not uncommon in the
literature on the Mormons. Authors such as Samuel Bowles, who knew of a man mar

rying a woman and her daughters, felt especially fulfilled (ACROSS THE CONTINENT /
A SUMMER'S JOURNEY TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, THE MORMONS, AND THE PACIF
IC STATES . . . [Springfield, Mass.: S. Bowles, 1866], p. 123).

26ARTEMUS WARD, HIS BOOK, p. 99-100.

27Fatout, MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT, p. 85.

28HIS TRAVELS, pp. 215-231; ROUGHING IT, I, 133-142 and II, 343-366.
The appendix consists of an ENTERPRISE article by Conrad Wiegand, an old friend of
Twain's, and two long passages, one closely paraphrased and one quoted, from Mrs.
Catherine V. Waite's THE MORMON PROPHET AND HIS HAREM. In ROUGHING IT
Twain added an appendix for the first time in padding out a travel book, a technique
he would use in all other travel books until FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR. Whether or
not he got the idea from Ward, and he may have, it spared him the labor of working
the borrowed material into his text and aided him in filling out the necessary volume
of a subscription book.

29ROUGHING IT, I, 160-165. Though Ward gave the story wider circula
tion, it was already an old chestnut on the Pacific Coast. Twain undoubtedly heard
it first; ten days before Ward's arrival on 12 December 1863 Hank Monk had been
presented with
$500-$600 a watch, engraved with his immortal words to Greeley (see
Henry Nash Smith, ed. with the assistance of Frederick Anderson, MARK TWAIN OF
THE ENTERPRISE [Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1957], p. 99). At
the time he appropriated the anecdote Twain wrote Greeley to ask if it were true (see
Hamlin Hill, MARK TWAIN AND ELISHA BLISS [Columbia: U of Missouri Press, 1964],
p. 54). He was later to use another and better version of it, substituting Nat Parsons
for Greeley and a Washington, D. C. , hack driver for Monk, in TOM SAWYER ABROAD
(ch. 1). The hack driver's reassuring cry to Nat Parsons echoes Monk's to Greeley:
"
"Don't you fret, I'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it, sho' !

30LETTERS FROM THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, ed. George Ezra Dane (Stan
ford: Stanford U Press, [1938]), p. 187.

31THE INNOCENTS ABROAD (NY: Harper, 1911), I, 186.

32ROUGHING IT, II, 293. Twain evidently remembered Ward's program,

not his own. His, which Lorch reproduces (THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT EIGHT, pp. 27
28), reads, "DOORS OPEN AT 7 O'CLOCK. THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT 8 O'CLOCK."
With numerous variations he used the second sentence in his handbills for all later
advertisements during his first season of lecturing. No mention is made of his ever
having used "7 1/2" o'clock.
From the lecture that Ward's poster announced Twain may have got, if
is correct, ?
James C. Austin's conjecture the subject for "The Invalid's Story" (1882)
about two men with a coffin and some "capable" limburger cheese in a stuffy baggage
car. story was
The current in Nevada lore and both probably heard it there. Twain's
version is much longer and infinitely better, while remaining close to Ward's in out
line, many details, and punch-line ("Artemus Ward, Mark Twain and the Limburger
 25

Cheese," MIDCONTINENT AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL, 4 [Fall, 1963], 70-73).

33SKETCHES NEW AND OLD (NY: Harper, 1917), pp. 49-56.

34LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI (NY: Harper, 1917), p. 431.

Ibid., p. 433. Other non-verbal parallels exist, fainter, but sugges

tive? Twain's mock veneration for Adam in INNOCENTS ABROAD, for example, resem
bles Ward's for Shakespeare on his visit to the poet's tomb; and Twain's interview
with Lincoln and his frustrated attempts to advise the President on matters of state
recall Ward's interview and his advice to Lincoln to fill the cabinet with showmen.
DeVoto notices?disdainfully?similarities between Ward's letter to the Prince of
Wales and Twain's petition to the Queen of England, and between Twain's "Story of
a Good Little Boy" and some of Ward's romances.

" "
3^Such as: "It ain't my stile, "I'm just a poor orphan, "I know it's
so--he admitted it himself," "I don't know what a paladium is, but . . . ," "it's too
many for me," and so on.

37Don C. Seitz, ARTEMUS WARD (CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE) /A BIOG

RAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY (NY: Harper, 1919), p. 125; Lorch, p. 301.
38
"The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation," SKETCHES NEW AND
OLD, p. 323.

39REPUBLICAN LETTERS, ed. Cyril Clemens (Webster Grove, Mo.: In

ternational Mark Twain Society, 1941), pp. 12-13; more accessible in Bruce R. Mc
Elderry, Jr., ed., CONTRIBUTIONS TO "THE GALAXY", 1868-1871, BY MARK TWAIN
(Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1961).

40COMPLETE WORKS, p. 362.

41 The
good service
that Twain got from the phrase is indicated by an
event nearly thirty years later, though by then he had forgotten about having used it.
Stopping on his around-the-world lecture tour in Australia in 1896, he was greeted
affectionately with the question, "Say?Mark--is he dead?" Puzzled, he could only
assume it to be "a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though I did not de
tect it at that time, that that was its source. And I didn't detect it afterward in Mel
bourne, when I came on the stage for the first time, and the same question was

dropped upon me from the dizzy height of the galleries. It is always difficult to ans
wer a sudden inquiry like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what
it means" (FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR [NY: Harper, 1899], I, 167).

42Paine, MARK TWAIN, I, 279; letter of 20 Ian 1866. At the same time,
he labeled the "Frog" a "villainous backwoods sketch," though at other times he
thought well of it.

"
Voice Is Still for Setchell' . . . , pp. 597-598.
43"'My

MARK TWAIN ON THE LECTURE CIRCUIT, p. 153.