November 18, 2024 • 35 mins
Charles Farrar Browne is often called the first standup comedian. He was, in the 1860s, wildly famous, but his early death, and the soaring career of one of his friends, have contributed to Browne fading from the spotlight in history.
Research:
- “Born 1834; Married 1835. Artemus Ward’s Alleged Widow Claims His Estate.” The Savannah Morning News. April 15, 1891. https://www.newspapers.com/image/852548808/?match=1&terms=artemus%20ward
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Artemus Ward". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Artemus-Ward
- Dahl, Curtis. “Artemus Ward: Comic Panoramist.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, 1959, pp. 476–85. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/362502
- Hingston, Edward P. “The Genial Showman, Reminiscences of the Life of Artemus Ward.” London: Chatto and Windus. 1881. https://archive.org/details/genialshowmanrem00hingiala/page/n5/mode/2up
- Hofferth, Micah. “Charles Farrar Browne, the Sometimes-racist Father of Standup Comedy.” Vulture. Feb. 28, 2012. https://www.vulture.com/2012/02/charles-farrar-browne-the-sometimes-racist-father-of-standup-comedy.html
- “Mark Twain on Artemus Ward.” The Albany Evening Journal. Nov. 29, 1871. https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/roughingit/lecture/awlectaj.html
- Reed, John Q. “Artemus Ward’s First Lecture.” American Literature, vol. 32, no. 3, 1960, pp. 317–19. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2922080
- Seitz, Don C. “Artemus Ward.” Harper & Brothers. 1919. Accessed online: https://archive.org/stream/artemuswardchar00seituoft/artemuswardchar00seituoft_djvu.txt
- “Ward, Artemus (1834-1867).” The Vault at Pfaff’s, Lehigh University. https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54123
- Ward, Artemus. “The Complete Works of Artemus Ward.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6946/6946-h/6946-h.htm#bio
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This is another how
did that get on my list? Topic? But I saw
(00:22):
it there recently when I was looking at some other stuff,
and I started looking back at my notes on it,
and then I started, you know, doing internet searches for him,
and I stumbled across a weird brief it's not a
big thrust of the episode post word of drama that
sprang up, and I was like, oh, I want to
(00:43):
talk about that, and we'll get to that, but it is.
Don't get too excited. It's not a big thing. It
just was funny to me. But today we are talking
about Charles Farrar Brown, who is often called the first
stand up comedian, and he was in the eighteen sixties
wildly famous. But his early death and the soaring career
of one of his friends have kind of contributed to
(01:04):
Brown really fading from the spotlight in history. So we'll
talk about his brief career today. Charles Ferrara Brown was
born in Waterford, Maine, in Oxford County on April twenty
sixth eighteen thirty four. His father was Levi Brown and
his mother was Caroline Eliza Farrar Brown. Their families had
(01:25):
moved to the town from Massachusetts and Vermont, respectively. Charles
was their second son. His older brother was named Cyrus.
The couple also had two daughters, Maria and Ellen, who
died in childhood. Not long after Charles was born, the
Browns moved from their farm to a large home, which
is sometimes described as a mansion. This was a home
(01:48):
that Caroline's family owned. Levi was a civil engineer who
performed surveys, but he also did a lot of other jobs.
He farmed, ran a shop, and served in the state militia.
Was also briefly the town constable and then the town clerk. Yeah,
he did a lot, a lot of civic duty. Charles's
early childhood sounds fairly idyllic. Biographer Don c Sites, who
(02:13):
we're going to talk about behind the scenes, described Waterford
like this quote, so purely New England was the community
that it bred plentiful whimsies, many of which cropped out
in the writings of the humorist, and to a degree
account for him. Old inhabitants recall small escapades such as
can be told about mischievous boys in most country villages.
(02:36):
But then Levi died in eighteen forty seven, when Charles
was just thirteen, and those idyllic days of childhood ended
really abruptly. Charles's mother, Caroline found herself in a tough
spot in terms of finances. Although there had been times
when money was plentiful, things had gotten a lot tighter
in the years before Levi's death, and they really didn't
(02:58):
have any money to live off of. Charles later wrote
of his father, quote, my father was a magistrate and
lumber merchant, a clear headed and thoroughly honest man, so
competent in his business as to be consulted on all
kinds of law questions, and so honest that he invariably
had his hands full of business involving large sums of money.
(03:22):
I fear he was a little too honest, for he
died poor. After all. Charles's older brother Cyrus, had already
left home to begin work as a printer when their
father died, and although he was barely a teenager, Charles
also then learned the printing trade. Working first as an apprentice,
he was put on a coach to Lancaster, New Hampshire
(03:43):
to learn the publishing business under a man named John
m Rix, who ran a paper called The Weekly Democrat.
That first job as an apprentice sounds like kind of
a wild mix. He lived with his boss, and he
had to take a cart all over the county to
collect subscription fees from the residents. He was apparently prone
to getting into long chats with people and telling them
(04:06):
stories rather than focusing on his actual job. The printing
office was on the second floor of a building that
had storerooms on the first floor, and some of his
coworkers had figured out how to run a hose down
to the room below to tap the rum barrels so
that they could sip from there the way you would
through a straw, just sipping on some rum from their
(04:28):
second floor chairs. Although it does not seem to be
the doing of Brown, this rum straw set up caused
the other employees to get so out of hand that
John Ricks fired them all and shut the paper down
for an entire week. Charles next found a position in Norway, Maine,
which is near Waterford, working at the Norway Advertiser. That
(04:51):
paper had one thousand subscribers, which was considered quite substantial.
He also hoped to attend classes at the Norway Liberal
Institute to get more education. He did enroll there, but
he kind of did more extra curricular things than actual
school work. He got involved with the drama club and
the school paper. This time he did not live with
(05:13):
his boss, but it was pretty close. He rented a
room at the back of the printing office, but the
Norway Advertiser went out of business in eighteen fifty. At
that point, sixteen year old Charles got a job editing
the new Bedford Standard and he moved on shortly after
that to the Fall River News. From there, he tumbled
(05:33):
through a series of jobs at various papers, many of
which ended when the various offices closed. At the age
of seventeen, he was once again looking for work, and
that's when, thanks to a recommendation from his old boss,
John Rix, he landed a position as a compositor at
a humor magazine called The Carpet Bag that was in Boston, Massachusetts.
(05:56):
For the next several years, he set type for the
magazine and in the process he got to read a
lot of humor writing. He started to think he should
try his hand at writing it himself, so he wrote
his own humor piece about a fourth of July holiday
in Waterford. He submitted that anonymously to the publisher by
mixing it in with the regular mail. The paper's owner,
(06:18):
Benjamin Shilliber, printed it. Charles was elated. He later wrote
that he quote thought I was the greatest man in Boston.
After that, he continued to submit writing to the paper,
initially using the pseudonym Lieutenant Chubb. That was meant to
be a joke at his own expense. Because he was
notoriously lanky, People apparently always commented on how very skinny
(06:41):
he was. One of the other writers for The Carpetbag,
John Trowbridge wrote of Brown's work during this time, quote,
his serious countenance veiled a spirit of original and audacious waggery.
One of the interesting things that started happening during this
time was that Brown was writing in a lot of
cases about places he had lived or worked before, and
(07:03):
in some instances that ended up connecting various writers to
other publishers and editors because they all started to kind
of get to know one another through Brown's writing. Coming up,
we'll talk about a job that led to a huge
change for Brown. But first we'll pause for a sponsor break.
(07:30):
After the carpetbag, Brown continued to work in journalism, and
he eventually had jobs at the Commercial, a paper in Toledo, Ohio,
and at the Plane Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio. It was
in Ohio that Brown began to develop the character that
he became publicly known as Artemis Ward. And this whole
(07:50):
thing started as a joke. Brown wrote a letter to
the paper as Ward, asking for some free advertising for
his traveling show. Later wrote of his time at the
plane dealer in a letter quote, I here commenced the
Artemis Ward papers. The selection of that nom de plume
was purely accidental. I wrote the first Ward sketch on
(08:12):
a purely local subject, not supposing I should ever write another.
Somehow the name Ward entered my head and I used it. So, listeners,
you are not going to have the wonder and delight
that is the creative spelling that is used in this letter.
But I will try to allude to it where I can.
(08:34):
So this first letter read, in part quote, sir, I'm
moving along slowly along down towards your place. I want
you should write me a letter saying how is the
show business in your place. My show at present consists
of three moral bears, A kangaroo, A moves in little
(08:56):
rascal like would make your life, your sale, your death. Lo,
I did that almost good? You did pretty good? Twould
make you life yourself to death? To see the little
cuss jump up and squeal. Wax figures a General Washington,
General Tyler, John Bunyan, Captain Kidd, and Doctor Webster in
the act of killing Doctor Parkman, besides several miscellaneous moral
(09:17):
wax statutes of celebrated pirroots and murderers, and egaled by
few and excelled by none. If you say anything about
my show, say is my snake's as harmless as the
newborn babe? What an interesting study it is to see
a zoological animel like a snake under perfect subjection, My
(09:38):
kangaroo is the most laughable little cuss I ever saw.
All for fifteen cents. I feel like I should give
Tracy some sort of award for having to do that
to the backstory for this Artemis character was that he
was the manager of a touring side show, and his
stick was writing letters to papers, often to try to
(10:00):
advertise his traveling waxworks, and those snakes and kangaroos that
Tracy just mentioned. As evidenced in that sample that Tracy
just read, the character's literacy was a bit tenuous. The
writing was always full of very odd spellings and grammatical errors,
but Ward always touted that he was full of quote
Yankee common sense. That also meant that he was pretty racist,
(10:23):
and he was not too kind to women either. A
lot of his jokes over the years about black people
or women revolved around his experiences with them being too
stupid to understand his humor. In eighteen sixty, Brown got
a job at Vanity Fair as a staff writer and
moved to New York. To be clear, this is not
the same Vanity Fair that runs today. It was a
(10:46):
different paper. This is also when he chose to add
an e to the end of his last name. Not
long after he started at Vanity Fair, Brown found that
the Artemis Ward character had gotten so popular that he
decided to start giving lectures in character as this side
show Entrepreneur. This was an unusual move, and it's the
(11:07):
reason he's often touted as the originator of stand up comedy.
He certainly was not the first person to tell jokes
on stage. We have plenty of examples in the archive
where we talk about people who were clowns or gestures
throughout history long before that. But he took the kinds
of jokes he had seen MC's do as a small
(11:30):
part of bigger shows, and he turned them into one
long act on the lecture circuit. He didn't set up
the scenario for what it was, which is an act.
He just took the stage and started speaking as though
he were any other lecturer, though his material often wandered
far afield from the topic that the title might suggest,
(11:50):
and did indeed connect with audiences as funny. His first lecture,
for example, was called Babes in the Woods. It had
nothing to do with any such topic. It had been
called My Seven Grandmothers at one point in development, and
it did not have any relevance to that title either.
If an unsuspecting person happened to attend one of Artemis
(12:12):
Ward's lectures, they may not have realized that it was
a spoof. Brown never broke character, and his delivery was
completely deadpan. All handbills for the lecture that were distributed
to advertise his shows read Artemis Ward will speak a
piece with no mention of Charles Brown. His work reads
(12:32):
today as sort of clunky if you're familiar with comedy writing,
but at the time it was very unusual and pretty groundbreaking.
One of his bits in that early performance involved stopping abruptly,
kind of in the middle of the show and saying, quote,
owing to a slight indisposition, we will now have an
intermission of fifteen minutes. And he would then give the
(12:54):
audience a moment or two to kind of look at
each other and wonder at why there would be an
intermission in a lecture before he would then continue quote,
but ah, during the intermission, I will go on with
my lecture. Mark Twain would later write of the character, quote,
he represented an Artemis Ward, an obscure showman, having much
(13:15):
of a certain low cunning and shrewdness, a good hand
at a story, always ready to turn an honest or
dishonest penny, and whose mission was dollars. And of Brown's delivery,
he wrote quote, his success as a lecturer depended even
more on the manner than on the matter. His inimitable
(13:36):
way of pausing and hesitating, of gliding in a moment
from seriousness to humor without appearing to be conscious of
so doing cannot be reproduced, so that many of his
best things read flat and tame. In consequence, Artemis Ward
became very popular and quite lucrative for Brown. He reportedly
(13:59):
got paid sie sixteen hundred dollars in gold for one
lecture in California, and one of the first things Brown
did when he found himself with a considerable amount of
money was to take care of his mother. The homestead
where the family had been living since before his father died,
had become encumbered with debts, and Brown paid off all
of the outstanding balances and gave the property entirely to
(14:23):
his mother. He also left his journalism work so that
he could tour full time, and he continued to write articles,
but these were one offs written as Artemis Ward, and
he got paid very well for them, often as much
as six hundred dollars each. Brown continued to grow his
Artemis Ward character by writing books under that name. The
(14:44):
first of them was Artemis Ward, his book, which was
published in eighteen sixty two. This is a collection of
anecdotes and short writings on various subjects like would be
sea Dogs, the Prince of Wales, and soliloquy of a
low thief. This book was wildly popular. It sold more
than forty thousand copies, which was huge at the time,
(15:06):
and of course it was reprinted many times after that.
Perhaps the most well known fan of words writing, especially
what appeared in Artemis ward his book, was President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln reportedly read the entry high Handed Outrage at Utica
in the meeting with his cabinet where he presented the
Emancipation Proclamation. That story is quite brief, and it involves
(15:29):
a visitor towards show walking up to a wax figure
display of the Last Supper and dragging the Judas figure
out by the feet and then beating the figure. Artemis
asked the man what he was doing, and the brief
story concludes quote says he that's all very well for
you to say, But I tell you, old man, that
Judas is scaret can't show hisself in Udicki with impunity
(15:52):
by a darned sight, with which observation he caved in
Judas's head. The young man belonged to one of the
first famer and udiki I sued him, and the Jewry
brought a verdict of arson in the third degree. Imagine
lots of these things being spelled as they are pronounced
and not as they're actually spelled in English. Yeah, jewelry
(16:15):
is jo r y. That ensued is sood. This book
drummed up more business for his lectures that in turn
led to his fans wanting another book. In eighteen sixty five,
Artemis Ward authored a second book titled Artemis Ward His Travels.
It's very similar in composition to the first book and
(16:37):
was also very popular. In eighteen sixty five, Brown as
Artemis published Artemis Ward Among the Mormons. This is a
very irreverent characterization of the inhabitants of Utah, based on
a tour that Brown made through the Western US along
with his manager, Edward Hingston. This also kind of capitalizes
(16:59):
on the fascination a lot of people had at the time,
particularly on the East Coast, with Mormons, and kind of
this weird obsession with othering them. In an earlier piece
of writing, he had referred to Mormons as quote an
on principle the set of riches as ever drew breath
in any spot on the globe. Once again, all of
(17:20):
those spellings are very wacky, so it was obviously a
pretty biased account. Although apparently while Brown slash Ward was
in Utah. He became quite ill with typhoid, and the
local Mormons took excellent care of him, which, according to
his friends, caused him to soften his roasting of them.
(17:40):
In his second book, Ward had already written, for example,
about an alleged visit to Brigham Young quote in a
private conversation with Brigham, I learned the follow in facts.
It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He
don't do it only once a year, and says it
is worse nor clean in house. He don't pretend to
(18:01):
know his children. There is so many of them, though
they all know him. He says about every child he
meets to call him par and he takes it for granted.
It is so His wives air very expensive. They hollers
want something, and if he don't buy it for him,
they set the house in an uproar. He says he
don't have a minute's piece. His wives fight among theirselves
(18:25):
so much that he has built a fighting room for
their special benefit, And when two of them get into
a row, he has them turned loose into that space
where the dispute is settled according to the rules of
the London Prize Ring. Sometimes they abuse himself individually. Brown
(18:45):
had workshopped this material about Brigham Young and other Utah
residents on the stage long before the book came out,
and in eighteen sixty four he even took it to
audiences in a totally different format, and that is the Panorama.
Brown had arranged to stage his Panorama at Dodworth Hall
on Broadway in New York, which was a dancing school
(19:07):
at the time. Like any of his shows, it was
not just about the subject and the title. Although he
did actually talk about Mormons in this one, the advertising
he did for it was really really racist. He hired
a bunch of Irish guys from the city to dress
in Native American costumes and carry parasols up and down
the street that were painted as signage to get word
(19:28):
out about the show. The tickets that were printed took
a stab at Brigham Young. The print on them specified
that the bearer could only bring one wife to the show.
The show itself involved far more in terms of production
value than the standard Ward lectures. The lecture segment was
a largely extremely unbelievable stories of Ward's adventures. On the
(19:53):
advice of P. T. Barnum, he hired two professional theater
artists to paint the panorama, working from photos that Ward
had from his travels. The show really didn't do especially well,
but Ward toured it to Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island,
before returning to try again in New York. Then Ward
(20:13):
decided to ditch the original painting to have another one made,
in part because the original proved unwieldy for travel, and
also because he wanted to play up the fact that
he was, in all this effort trying to satirize the
panoramas that had been so popular in the US Northeast
for years. They advertised the new painting as a work
(20:35):
by the old masters that was comical, not only because
it could not be true, but also because it turned
the popular imagery for panoramas on its ear. Scenes that
were common, like vast landscapes, were made comical under Ward's direction,
with natural features painted way too large and juxtaposed with
(20:57):
small details like people getting bitten by dog. Some of
these images were also really racist, particularly representations of Native Americans,
who were shown at one point scalping Artemis Ward to
complete this whole satire. There was even a staged problem
where the painting didn't advance properly, and then Ward had
(21:18):
to go backstage to noisily correct the problem. Another figure
whose fame has greatly eclipsed Brown's in terms of longevity
is Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain. The two men met
when Brown was in Nevada on tour, and they immediately
struck up a friendship. Brown recommended Twain to contacts in
(21:39):
the publishing industry to get his story the celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County, published after Ward had urged him
to write it. Initially, it was allegedly supposed to be
included in one of Ward's books, but by the time
Twain finished it, it was a little too late to
integrate into it. So Brown reached out to the New
York Saturday Press with the short story and it was
(22:02):
picked up for publication. The two men remained very, very close.
They were clearly the best of friends when you read
their letters, and Brown is often credited as being a
very significant influence on Twain's work. Brown's next book as
Artemis was Artemis Warden London that came out in eighteen
sixty seven, and Brown was hugely successful in England. He
(22:25):
augmented his stage show with a little more production he
had his panorama. He worked with an orchestra on bits
of physical comedy of Artemis's stage shows. His frequent editor,
Edward p. Hingston wrote quote, with regard to Artemis, Ward's entertainment,
I have only to say, using a novel and poetic phrase,
(22:45):
it must be seen to be believed. It is the
manner of the man, even more than his matter, which
attracts such large audiences. His singularly sparse form, his comic profile,
the prominence of one partainicular feature of his face, the
way he has of saying good things as if perfectly
(23:05):
unconscious of what he is saying, and the habit of
punctuating his sentences by twiddling a little black cane are
all powerful aids to him as a lecturer and his
esoteric developments. He is the most mirthful of men, and
those who know him intimately as I do, know him
to be as gentle hearted as he is, genial, as
(23:27):
candid as he is, cordial, as true as he is talented.
That one prominent feature that Tracy just read about was,
in fact his nose, which everyone commented was very large.
In a moment, we will talk about the rather unhealthy
lifestyle that Brown engaged in while he was in England.
But first we will pause to hear from the sponsors
(23:48):
that keep the show going. Touring England, Brown really burned
the candle at both ends. He would perform his shows
in the evening and then stay up drinking with his
English friends, many of them writers for the humor magazine Punch.
(24:13):
Ward also wrote humor pieces for Punch during this time,
which were lauded as some of the best things the
magazine had ever printed. But all of this constant work
and partying meant that he was soon physically just exhausted.
That exhaustion got bad enough that it was difficult to
get through his shows each night. But soon it became
(24:33):
apparent that he was not just exhausted, but also quite ill.
About two months into his time in England, he was
diagnosed with tuberculosis after a doctor ordered stay on the
island of Jersey, during which he became terribly, terribly lonely.
He knew his days were kind of numbered, and so
he tried to get back to London to see his friends,
(24:55):
but when he got to Southampton, he was deemed too
sick to travel any farther and so his friends from
London went to visit him. At the very end of
his life. He asked for paper and a pencil, because
he had this idea that he was going to write
his autobiography, but all he managed was these few lines
before he had exhausted himself. Quote. Some twelve years ago,
(25:17):
I occupied the position or the position occupied me a
city editor of a journal in Cleveland, Ohio. This journal,
The Plaine Dealer, was issued afternoons, and I was kept
very busy, indeed, from eight o'clock in the morning till
half past three in the afternoon, in collecting the police
reports and other items that might be of local interest.
(25:39):
Brown died on March sixth, eighteen sixty seven, in Southampton, England,
just a couple of weeks shy of his thirty third birthday.
He was laid to rest in a vault at kensal
Green Cemetery in London, in a ceremony that filled the
cemetery up to capacity as every performer and writer in
the city turned up to pay their respects. Just a
(26:00):
couple of weeks before he died, Brown had made his will,
and he had some interesting requests and provisions in it.
First that his impressive collection of books, which he had
inherited from an uncle, should go to the boy or
girl of Waterford, Maine, Quote who passed the best school
examination between the first day of January and that of April.
(26:22):
Following his decease, he also made provisions for his young
personal attendant to work as a printer's apprentice for two
years and then to go to a private school. He
provided all of the tuition for that school. He left
the rest of his money to support his mother, and
the residuals of his books were earmarked to found Quote,
(26:42):
an asylum for worn out printers in the United States.
The will also specified that he wanted to be buried
in Waterford, so two months after his death, Charles Brown's
body was removed from its London vault and shipped back
to Maine, where it was interred at Elmvale Cemetery in
the family plot with his father and sisters. Incidentally, his
(27:05):
cousin's daughter, Florence Brown, was the student who won the
library of books. In accordance with the rules of his will.
In November of eighteen seventy one, Mark Twain toured a
lecture about Artemis Ward and Charles Brown, in which he
called him Quote. One of the great humorists of our age.
Twain described Brown this way Quote. His personal appearance was
(27:28):
not like that of most main men. He looked like
a glove stretcher. His hair red and brushed well forward
at the sides, reminded one of a divided flame. His
nose rambled on aggressively before him with all the strength
and determination of a cow catcher, while his red mustache,
to follow out the simile, seemed not unlike the unfortunate cow.
(27:52):
He was of Puritan descent, and prided himself not a
little on being derived from that stern old stock of
people who had left their country home for the sake
of having freedom on a foreign shore, to enjoy their
own religion, and at the same time to prevent other
folks from enjoying theirs. One of the things Twain addressed
(28:12):
in the lecture was the fact that there were a
few pieces of wit in the Artemis word repertoire that
were later revealed to have been said or written by
other men. First, Twain details two such instances, and then
notes quote. But in spite of this, Ward must not
be regarded as a plagiarist. It is possible for a
man to write what he thinks is a creation, but
(28:34):
which is in fact only a memory. And it is
also possible for two minds at different times to happen
upon the same idea. Holmes bears witness to this in
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. I myself have written
what I thought was my own, have imagined that I
have created something clever and really good, and found out
(28:55):
afterwards that the whole thing had been filched from me
years and years before by Josephus. In eighteen ninety one,
Charles Brown was revived, or at least his name sure was.
He was suddenly all over the papers. And that's because
that year a man named jay A. Brown retained the
law firm of Tennike and Remington with the intent of
(29:18):
proving that Charles Brown had been his father and had
deserted him, his mother and nine brothers in eighteen fifty
five to start a new life. Charles Brown officially had
never been married. J A. Brown and his family challenged
just about everything that anyone believed about Charles Brown, including
(29:40):
the year of his birth. The alleged widow Brown swore
an Affi David, that she was married to Charles Brown
on June seventh, eighteen thirty five. You remember his birthday
at the top of the show. That would have been
just one year after the birth date that Brown claimed,
and that is in the records in Maine, and she
and her son actually had a lot of sworn affidavits
(30:02):
from people in Lexington, Kentucky that Charles Brown aka Artemus
Ward had raised a family there before vanishing. There was
plenty of paperwork evidence to knock down this claim, but
even if there hadn't been, this probably would not have
amounted to much. Charles Brown's fortune when he died was
(30:23):
just not as expansive as a lot of people believed.
He had paid for his mother's house and her living expenses,
which were not extravagant, and the money that he'd given
to pay for his assistants education had been used in
that way. There really just wasn't much else. The family
claiming to be Brown's abandoned next of ken eventually seemed
(30:43):
to have just dropped the matter. Stories about them in
newspapers seemed to have just kind of slowed to a
stop not long after that initial reporting. Yeah, there is
a whole other thing about, like people claiming that he
had some very expensive pieces of jewelry, and someone saying
that they had seen a large sum of money of
his when he was in London, but none of that
(31:04):
seemed to be true, or if it was, those things
had vanished. In nineteen forty eight, a larger than life
bust of Charles Brown was sculpted by artist Frank Jaruche
and was put on display at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens
in Cleveland, Ohio, where it remains next to a bust
of his friend Mark Twain. There is also an elementary
(31:24):
school named after Artemis Ward in Cleveland, which I kind
of like because it's named for an imaginary person that
is Artemis Ward slash Charles Brown. Yeah, do you have
listener mail? Also? You know that I do. This listener
(31:47):
mail is from our listener, Amanda, and it is a
subject that we may have many males being read about
because lots of answers to it. It is titled non
goofy or in. I knew the topic as soon as
you said we'd gotten many emails. Yes, we got so many,
and I love it. Amanda writes, Hello, Holly and Tracy,
(32:08):
I just finished listening to Ghost of the British Isles.
Part one, and you asked about non goofy orange kitties,
and I am writing to tell you they do exist.
They are a bit of an anomaly though. I worked
in veterinary medicine and as a pet sitter for years
and always favored the orange kitties because they were all
so weird and sweet. For many years, my husband and
(32:29):
I were down to just one cat, which was unusual
for us, but I kept telling myself some sweet orange
kitty in need will pass my way soon, and I
waited for the kitty distribution system to do its job.
The one sweet cat we had was in her twenties
and we knew our time was limited with her. And
suddenly an orange cat showed up in our yarn. This
(32:50):
kitty kept coming around and eventually trusted us enough to
follow us around and get affection. I went door to
door and posted flyers in person and online in hope
of finding the kitty's family. After several weeks, this cat
was still hanging around, but was getting awfully chubby for
a stray cat. Eventually I lured the kitty into our
garage and was able to see that it, sure enough,
(33:13):
was a rare female orange kitty who was looking very pregnant.
Not wanting her to have her kittens outside, we took
her in and after a trip to the vets for
a checkup and a microchip scan, we decided to foster her.
She had her kittens with us, and we helped her
raise them and found them all loving homes. She had
three orange boys and one Calico girl. We, of course,
(33:35):
were foster failures and kept both Mama kitty, who we
named Mango, and one of her sons, who we called Shrimp.
He was the runt and half the size of the rest.
Mango has been the most normal orange cat I have
ever met. She is smart and sweet and playful, but
not the weird goofy that all three of her sons
turned out to be. They are all the typical strange, clumsy,
(33:56):
silly oranges you'd expect, but their mother is far more gray,
full composed, and cat like. I don't know if that
was because she spent time as astray or just her
natural personality, or perhaps this is a female orange cat thing.
I have only known a few in my life, but
I do feel like the girls have never been as
weird and goofy as the Orange boys. Anyway, I just
(34:17):
wanted to share my normal and goofy orange kitties that
we love so much. The one with more white is
Mango and we think is about six years old, and
the other orange is her son, Shrimp, who is five.
I also included a video of Shrimp being the goofy
orange boy. He is being afraid of a dryer ball.
Thanks for all you do. Your podcast is one of
my favorites and you are both just delightful. Sincerely, Amanda. Okay,
(34:39):
these cats listen. I'm real weepy about kitties lately, and
I want an orange cat. So no distribution system, do
your work. Not quite yet. We're not ready for another cat,
but you know, put me on the wait list. These
are so cute, and Mango is absolutely beautiful. In her son,
(35:00):
it does look a little like he might be a goofus,
which I love. I love a goofy cat, So thank you.
Lots of you have smart orange cats, some of you
have goofy orange cats. I love all the orange cats. Yeah,
the emails come in. You can write to us and
share your goofy or non goofy orange cat or any
other animal or anything else. You don't have to pay
(35:21):
a pet tax at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can also subscribe to the show if you haven't
done that before, you can do that on the iHeartRadio
app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(35:45):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This is another how
did that get on my list? Topic? But I saw
(00:22):
it there recently when I was looking at some other stuff,
and I started looking back at my notes on it,
and then I started, you know, doing internet searches for him,
and I stumbled across a weird brief it's not a
big thrust of the episode post word of drama that
sprang up, and I was like, oh, I want to
(00:43):
talk about that, and we'll get to that, but it is.
Don't get too excited. It's not a big thing. It
just was funny to me. But today we are talking
about Charles Farrar Brown, who is often called the first
stand up comedian, and he was in the eighteen sixties
wildly famous. But his early death and the soaring career
of one of his friends have kind of contributed to
(01:04):
Brown really fading from the spotlight in history. So we'll
talk about his brief career today. Charles Ferrara Brown was
born in Waterford, Maine, in Oxford County on April twenty
sixth eighteen thirty four. His father was Levi Brown and
his mother was Caroline Eliza Farrar Brown. Their families had
(01:25):
moved to the town from Massachusetts and Vermont, respectively. Charles
was their second son. His older brother was named Cyrus.
The couple also had two daughters, Maria and Ellen, who
died in childhood. Not long after Charles was born, the
Browns moved from their farm to a large home, which
is sometimes described as a mansion. This was a home
(01:48):
that Caroline's family owned. Levi was a civil engineer who
performed surveys, but he also did a lot of other jobs.
He farmed, ran a shop, and served in the state militia.
Was also briefly the town constable and then the town clerk. Yeah,
he did a lot, a lot of civic duty. Charles's
early childhood sounds fairly idyllic. Biographer Don c Sites, who
(02:13):
we're going to talk about behind the scenes, described Waterford
like this quote, so purely New England was the community
that it bred plentiful whimsies, many of which cropped out
in the writings of the humorist, and to a degree
account for him. Old inhabitants recall small escapades such as
can be told about mischievous boys in most country villages.
(02:36):
But then Levi died in eighteen forty seven, when Charles
was just thirteen, and those idyllic days of childhood ended
really abruptly. Charles's mother, Caroline found herself in a tough
spot in terms of finances. Although there had been times
when money was plentiful, things had gotten a lot tighter
in the years before Levi's death, and they really didn't
(02:58):
have any money to live off of. Charles later wrote
of his father, quote, my father was a magistrate and
lumber merchant, a clear headed and thoroughly honest man, so
competent in his business as to be consulted on all
kinds of law questions, and so honest that he invariably
had his hands full of business involving large sums of money.
(03:22):
I fear he was a little too honest, for he
died poor. After all. Charles's older brother Cyrus, had already
left home to begin work as a printer when their
father died, and although he was barely a teenager, Charles
also then learned the printing trade. Working first as an apprentice,
he was put on a coach to Lancaster, New Hampshire
(03:43):
to learn the publishing business under a man named John
m Rix, who ran a paper called The Weekly Democrat.
That first job as an apprentice sounds like kind of
a wild mix. He lived with his boss, and he
had to take a cart all over the county to
collect subscription fees from the residents. He was apparently prone
to getting into long chats with people and telling them
(04:06):
stories rather than focusing on his actual job. The printing
office was on the second floor of a building that
had storerooms on the first floor, and some of his
coworkers had figured out how to run a hose down
to the room below to tap the rum barrels so
that they could sip from there the way you would
through a straw, just sipping on some rum from their
(04:28):
second floor chairs. Although it does not seem to be
the doing of Brown, this rum straw set up caused
the other employees to get so out of hand that
John Ricks fired them all and shut the paper down
for an entire week. Charles next found a position in Norway, Maine,
which is near Waterford, working at the Norway Advertiser. That
(04:51):
paper had one thousand subscribers, which was considered quite substantial.
He also hoped to attend classes at the Norway Liberal
Institute to get more education. He did enroll there, but
he kind of did more extra curricular things than actual
school work. He got involved with the drama club and
the school paper. This time he did not live with
(05:13):
his boss, but it was pretty close. He rented a
room at the back of the printing office, but the
Norway Advertiser went out of business in eighteen fifty. At
that point, sixteen year old Charles got a job editing
the new Bedford Standard and he moved on shortly after
that to the Fall River News. From there, he tumbled
(05:33):
through a series of jobs at various papers, many of
which ended when the various offices closed. At the age
of seventeen, he was once again looking for work, and
that's when, thanks to a recommendation from his old boss,
John Rix, he landed a position as a compositor at
a humor magazine called The Carpet Bag that was in Boston, Massachusetts.
(05:56):
For the next several years, he set type for the
magazine and in the process he got to read a
lot of humor writing. He started to think he should
try his hand at writing it himself, so he wrote
his own humor piece about a fourth of July holiday
in Waterford. He submitted that anonymously to the publisher by
mixing it in with the regular mail. The paper's owner,
(06:18):
Benjamin Shilliber, printed it. Charles was elated. He later wrote
that he quote thought I was the greatest man in Boston.
After that, he continued to submit writing to the paper,
initially using the pseudonym Lieutenant Chubb. That was meant to
be a joke at his own expense. Because he was
notoriously lanky, People apparently always commented on how very skinny
(06:41):
he was. One of the other writers for The Carpetbag,
John Trowbridge wrote of Brown's work during this time, quote,
his serious countenance veiled a spirit of original and audacious waggery.
One of the interesting things that started happening during this
time was that Brown was writing in a lot of
cases about places he had lived or worked before, and
(07:03):
in some instances that ended up connecting various writers to
other publishers and editors because they all started to kind
of get to know one another through Brown's writing. Coming up,
we'll talk about a job that led to a huge
change for Brown. But first we'll pause for a sponsor break.
(07:30):
After the carpetbag, Brown continued to work in journalism, and
he eventually had jobs at the Commercial, a paper in Toledo, Ohio,
and at the Plane Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio. It was
in Ohio that Brown began to develop the character that
he became publicly known as Artemis Ward. And this whole
(07:50):
thing started as a joke. Brown wrote a letter to
the paper as Ward, asking for some free advertising for
his traveling show. Later wrote of his time at the
plane dealer in a letter quote, I here commenced the
Artemis Ward papers. The selection of that nom de plume
was purely accidental. I wrote the first Ward sketch on
(08:12):
a purely local subject, not supposing I should ever write another.
Somehow the name Ward entered my head and I used it. So, listeners,
you are not going to have the wonder and delight
that is the creative spelling that is used in this letter.
But I will try to allude to it where I can.
(08:34):
So this first letter read, in part quote, sir, I'm
moving along slowly along down towards your place. I want
you should write me a letter saying how is the
show business in your place. My show at present consists
of three moral bears, A kangaroo, A moves in little
(08:56):
rascal like would make your life, your sale, your death. Lo,
I did that almost good? You did pretty good? Twould
make you life yourself to death? To see the little
cuss jump up and squeal. Wax figures a General Washington,
General Tyler, John Bunyan, Captain Kidd, and Doctor Webster in
the act of killing Doctor Parkman, besides several miscellaneous moral
(09:17):
wax statutes of celebrated pirroots and murderers, and egaled by
few and excelled by none. If you say anything about
my show, say is my snake's as harmless as the
newborn babe? What an interesting study it is to see
a zoological animel like a snake under perfect subjection, My
(09:38):
kangaroo is the most laughable little cuss I ever saw.
All for fifteen cents. I feel like I should give
Tracy some sort of award for having to do that
to the backstory for this Artemis character was that he
was the manager of a touring side show, and his
stick was writing letters to papers, often to try to
(10:00):
advertise his traveling waxworks, and those snakes and kangaroos that
Tracy just mentioned. As evidenced in that sample that Tracy
just read, the character's literacy was a bit tenuous. The
writing was always full of very odd spellings and grammatical errors,
but Ward always touted that he was full of quote
Yankee common sense. That also meant that he was pretty racist,
(10:23):
and he was not too kind to women either. A
lot of his jokes over the years about black people
or women revolved around his experiences with them being too
stupid to understand his humor. In eighteen sixty, Brown got
a job at Vanity Fair as a staff writer and
moved to New York. To be clear, this is not
the same Vanity Fair that runs today. It was a
(10:46):
different paper. This is also when he chose to add
an e to the end of his last name. Not
long after he started at Vanity Fair, Brown found that
the Artemis Ward character had gotten so popular that he
decided to start giving lectures in character as this side
show Entrepreneur. This was an unusual move, and it's the
(11:07):
reason he's often touted as the originator of stand up comedy.
He certainly was not the first person to tell jokes
on stage. We have plenty of examples in the archive
where we talk about people who were clowns or gestures
throughout history long before that. But he took the kinds
of jokes he had seen MC's do as a small
(11:30):
part of bigger shows, and he turned them into one
long act on the lecture circuit. He didn't set up
the scenario for what it was, which is an act.
He just took the stage and started speaking as though
he were any other lecturer, though his material often wandered
far afield from the topic that the title might suggest,
(11:50):
and did indeed connect with audiences as funny. His first lecture,
for example, was called Babes in the Woods. It had
nothing to do with any such topic. It had been
called My Seven Grandmothers at one point in development, and
it did not have any relevance to that title either.
If an unsuspecting person happened to attend one of Artemis
(12:12):
Ward's lectures, they may not have realized that it was
a spoof. Brown never broke character, and his delivery was
completely deadpan. All handbills for the lecture that were distributed
to advertise his shows read Artemis Ward will speak a
piece with no mention of Charles Brown. His work reads
(12:32):
today as sort of clunky if you're familiar with comedy writing,
but at the time it was very unusual and pretty groundbreaking.
One of his bits in that early performance involved stopping abruptly,
kind of in the middle of the show and saying, quote,
owing to a slight indisposition, we will now have an
intermission of fifteen minutes. And he would then give the
(12:54):
audience a moment or two to kind of look at
each other and wonder at why there would be an
intermission in a lecture before he would then continue quote,
but ah, during the intermission, I will go on with
my lecture. Mark Twain would later write of the character, quote,
he represented an Artemis Ward, an obscure showman, having much
(13:15):
of a certain low cunning and shrewdness, a good hand
at a story, always ready to turn an honest or
dishonest penny, and whose mission was dollars. And of Brown's delivery,
he wrote quote, his success as a lecturer depended even
more on the manner than on the matter. His inimitable
(13:36):
way of pausing and hesitating, of gliding in a moment
from seriousness to humor without appearing to be conscious of
so doing cannot be reproduced, so that many of his
best things read flat and tame. In consequence, Artemis Ward
became very popular and quite lucrative for Brown. He reportedly
(13:59):
got paid sie sixteen hundred dollars in gold for one
lecture in California, and one of the first things Brown
did when he found himself with a considerable amount of
money was to take care of his mother. The homestead
where the family had been living since before his father died,
had become encumbered with debts, and Brown paid off all
of the outstanding balances and gave the property entirely to
(14:23):
his mother. He also left his journalism work so that
he could tour full time, and he continued to write articles,
but these were one offs written as Artemis Ward, and
he got paid very well for them, often as much
as six hundred dollars each. Brown continued to grow his
Artemis Ward character by writing books under that name. The
(14:44):
first of them was Artemis Ward, his book, which was
published in eighteen sixty two. This is a collection of
anecdotes and short writings on various subjects like would be
sea Dogs, the Prince of Wales, and soliloquy of a
low thief. This book was wildly popular. It sold more
than forty thousand copies, which was huge at the time,
(15:06):
and of course it was reprinted many times after that.
Perhaps the most well known fan of words writing, especially
what appeared in Artemis ward his book, was President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln reportedly read the entry high Handed Outrage at Utica
in the meeting with his cabinet where he presented the
Emancipation Proclamation. That story is quite brief, and it involves
(15:29):
a visitor towards show walking up to a wax figure
display of the Last Supper and dragging the Judas figure
out by the feet and then beating the figure. Artemis
asked the man what he was doing, and the brief
story concludes quote says he that's all very well for
you to say, But I tell you, old man, that
Judas is scaret can't show hisself in Udicki with impunity
(15:52):
by a darned sight, with which observation he caved in
Judas's head. The young man belonged to one of the
first famer and udiki I sued him, and the Jewry
brought a verdict of arson in the third degree. Imagine
lots of these things being spelled as they are pronounced
and not as they're actually spelled in English. Yeah, jewelry
(16:15):
is jo r y. That ensued is sood. This book
drummed up more business for his lectures that in turn
led to his fans wanting another book. In eighteen sixty five,
Artemis Ward authored a second book titled Artemis Ward His Travels.
It's very similar in composition to the first book and
(16:37):
was also very popular. In eighteen sixty five, Brown as
Artemis published Artemis Ward Among the Mormons. This is a
very irreverent characterization of the inhabitants of Utah, based on
a tour that Brown made through the Western US along
with his manager, Edward Hingston. This also kind of capitalizes
(16:59):
on the fascination a lot of people had at the time,
particularly on the East Coast, with Mormons, and kind of
this weird obsession with othering them. In an earlier piece
of writing, he had referred to Mormons as quote an
on principle the set of riches as ever drew breath
in any spot on the globe. Once again, all of
(17:20):
those spellings are very wacky, so it was obviously a
pretty biased account. Although apparently while Brown slash Ward was
in Utah. He became quite ill with typhoid, and the
local Mormons took excellent care of him, which, according to
his friends, caused him to soften his roasting of them.
(17:40):
In his second book, Ward had already written, for example,
about an alleged visit to Brigham Young quote in a
private conversation with Brigham, I learned the follow in facts.
It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He
don't do it only once a year, and says it
is worse nor clean in house. He don't pretend to
(18:01):
know his children. There is so many of them, though
they all know him. He says about every child he
meets to call him par and he takes it for granted.
It is so His wives air very expensive. They hollers
want something, and if he don't buy it for him,
they set the house in an uproar. He says he
don't have a minute's piece. His wives fight among theirselves
(18:25):
so much that he has built a fighting room for
their special benefit, And when two of them get into
a row, he has them turned loose into that space
where the dispute is settled according to the rules of
the London Prize Ring. Sometimes they abuse himself individually. Brown
(18:45):
had workshopped this material about Brigham Young and other Utah
residents on the stage long before the book came out,
and in eighteen sixty four he even took it to
audiences in a totally different format, and that is the Panorama.
Brown had arranged to stage his Panorama at Dodworth Hall
on Broadway in New York, which was a dancing school
(19:07):
at the time. Like any of his shows, it was
not just about the subject and the title. Although he
did actually talk about Mormons in this one, the advertising
he did for it was really really racist. He hired
a bunch of Irish guys from the city to dress
in Native American costumes and carry parasols up and down
the street that were painted as signage to get word
(19:28):
out about the show. The tickets that were printed took
a stab at Brigham Young. The print on them specified
that the bearer could only bring one wife to the show.
The show itself involved far more in terms of production
value than the standard Ward lectures. The lecture segment was
a largely extremely unbelievable stories of Ward's adventures. On the
(19:53):
advice of P. T. Barnum, he hired two professional theater
artists to paint the panorama, working from photos that Ward
had from his travels. The show really didn't do especially well,
but Ward toured it to Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island,
before returning to try again in New York. Then Ward
(20:13):
decided to ditch the original painting to have another one made,
in part because the original proved unwieldy for travel, and
also because he wanted to play up the fact that
he was, in all this effort trying to satirize the
panoramas that had been so popular in the US Northeast
for years. They advertised the new painting as a work
(20:35):
by the old masters that was comical, not only because
it could not be true, but also because it turned
the popular imagery for panoramas on its ear. Scenes that
were common, like vast landscapes, were made comical under Ward's direction,
with natural features painted way too large and juxtaposed with
(20:57):
small details like people getting bitten by dog. Some of
these images were also really racist, particularly representations of Native Americans,
who were shown at one point scalping Artemis Ward to
complete this whole satire. There was even a staged problem
where the painting didn't advance properly, and then Ward had
(21:18):
to go backstage to noisily correct the problem. Another figure
whose fame has greatly eclipsed Brown's in terms of longevity
is Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain. The two men met
when Brown was in Nevada on tour, and they immediately
struck up a friendship. Brown recommended Twain to contacts in
(21:39):
the publishing industry to get his story the celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County, published after Ward had urged him
to write it. Initially, it was allegedly supposed to be
included in one of Ward's books, but by the time
Twain finished it, it was a little too late to
integrate into it. So Brown reached out to the New
York Saturday Press with the short story and it was
(22:02):
picked up for publication. The two men remained very, very close.
They were clearly the best of friends when you read
their letters, and Brown is often credited as being a
very significant influence on Twain's work. Brown's next book as
Artemis was Artemis Warden London that came out in eighteen
sixty seven, and Brown was hugely successful in England. He
(22:25):
augmented his stage show with a little more production he
had his panorama. He worked with an orchestra on bits
of physical comedy of Artemis's stage shows. His frequent editor,
Edward p. Hingston wrote quote, with regard to Artemis, Ward's entertainment,
I have only to say, using a novel and poetic phrase,
(22:45):
it must be seen to be believed. It is the
manner of the man, even more than his matter, which
attracts such large audiences. His singularly sparse form, his comic profile,
the prominence of one partainicular feature of his face, the
way he has of saying good things as if perfectly
(23:05):
unconscious of what he is saying, and the habit of
punctuating his sentences by twiddling a little black cane are
all powerful aids to him as a lecturer and his
esoteric developments. He is the most mirthful of men, and
those who know him intimately as I do, know him
to be as gentle hearted as he is, genial, as
(23:27):
candid as he is, cordial, as true as he is talented.
That one prominent feature that Tracy just read about was,
in fact his nose, which everyone commented was very large.
In a moment, we will talk about the rather unhealthy
lifestyle that Brown engaged in while he was in England.
But first we will pause to hear from the sponsors
(23:48):
that keep the show going. Touring England, Brown really burned
the candle at both ends. He would perform his shows
in the evening and then stay up drinking with his
English friends, many of them writers for the humor magazine Punch.
(24:13):
Ward also wrote humor pieces for Punch during this time,
which were lauded as some of the best things the
magazine had ever printed. But all of this constant work
and partying meant that he was soon physically just exhausted.
That exhaustion got bad enough that it was difficult to
get through his shows each night. But soon it became
(24:33):
apparent that he was not just exhausted, but also quite ill.
About two months into his time in England, he was
diagnosed with tuberculosis after a doctor ordered stay on the
island of Jersey, during which he became terribly, terribly lonely.
He knew his days were kind of numbered, and so
he tried to get back to London to see his friends,
(24:55):
but when he got to Southampton, he was deemed too
sick to travel any farther and so his friends from
London went to visit him. At the very end of
his life. He asked for paper and a pencil, because
he had this idea that he was going to write
his autobiography, but all he managed was these few lines
before he had exhausted himself. Quote. Some twelve years ago,
(25:17):
I occupied the position or the position occupied me a
city editor of a journal in Cleveland, Ohio. This journal,
The Plaine Dealer, was issued afternoons, and I was kept
very busy, indeed, from eight o'clock in the morning till
half past three in the afternoon, in collecting the police
reports and other items that might be of local interest.
(25:39):
Brown died on March sixth, eighteen sixty seven, in Southampton, England,
just a couple of weeks shy of his thirty third birthday.
He was laid to rest in a vault at kensal
Green Cemetery in London, in a ceremony that filled the
cemetery up to capacity as every performer and writer in
the city turned up to pay their respects. Just a
(26:00):
couple of weeks before he died, Brown had made his will,
and he had some interesting requests and provisions in it.
First that his impressive collection of books, which he had
inherited from an uncle, should go to the boy or
girl of Waterford, Maine, Quote who passed the best school
examination between the first day of January and that of April.
(26:22):
Following his decease, he also made provisions for his young
personal attendant to work as a printer's apprentice for two
years and then to go to a private school. He
provided all of the tuition for that school. He left
the rest of his money to support his mother, and
the residuals of his books were earmarked to found Quote,
(26:42):
an asylum for worn out printers in the United States.
The will also specified that he wanted to be buried
in Waterford, so two months after his death, Charles Brown's
body was removed from its London vault and shipped back
to Maine, where it was interred at Elmvale Cemetery in
the family plot with his father and sisters. Incidentally, his
(27:05):
cousin's daughter, Florence Brown, was the student who won the
library of books. In accordance with the rules of his will.
In November of eighteen seventy one, Mark Twain toured a
lecture about Artemis Ward and Charles Brown, in which he
called him Quote. One of the great humorists of our age.
Twain described Brown this way Quote. His personal appearance was
(27:28):
not like that of most main men. He looked like
a glove stretcher. His hair red and brushed well forward
at the sides, reminded one of a divided flame. His
nose rambled on aggressively before him with all the strength
and determination of a cow catcher, while his red mustache,
to follow out the simile, seemed not unlike the unfortunate cow.
(27:52):
He was of Puritan descent, and prided himself not a
little on being derived from that stern old stock of
people who had left their country home for the sake
of having freedom on a foreign shore, to enjoy their
own religion, and at the same time to prevent other
folks from enjoying theirs. One of the things Twain addressed
(28:12):
in the lecture was the fact that there were a
few pieces of wit in the Artemis word repertoire that
were later revealed to have been said or written by
other men. First, Twain details two such instances, and then
notes quote. But in spite of this, Ward must not
be regarded as a plagiarist. It is possible for a
man to write what he thinks is a creation, but
(28:34):
which is in fact only a memory. And it is
also possible for two minds at different times to happen
upon the same idea. Holmes bears witness to this in
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. I myself have written
what I thought was my own, have imagined that I
have created something clever and really good, and found out
(28:55):
afterwards that the whole thing had been filched from me
years and years before by Josephus. In eighteen ninety one,
Charles Brown was revived, or at least his name sure was.
He was suddenly all over the papers. And that's because
that year a man named jay A. Brown retained the
law firm of Tennike and Remington with the intent of
(29:18):
proving that Charles Brown had been his father and had
deserted him, his mother and nine brothers in eighteen fifty
five to start a new life. Charles Brown officially had
never been married. J A. Brown and his family challenged
just about everything that anyone believed about Charles Brown, including
(29:40):
the year of his birth. The alleged widow Brown swore
an Affi David, that she was married to Charles Brown
on June seventh, eighteen thirty five. You remember his birthday
at the top of the show. That would have been
just one year after the birth date that Brown claimed,
and that is in the records in Maine, and she
and her son actually had a lot of sworn affidavits
(30:02):
from people in Lexington, Kentucky that Charles Brown aka Artemus
Ward had raised a family there before vanishing. There was
plenty of paperwork evidence to knock down this claim, but
even if there hadn't been, this probably would not have
amounted to much. Charles Brown's fortune when he died was
(30:23):
just not as expansive as a lot of people believed.
He had paid for his mother's house and her living expenses,
which were not extravagant, and the money that he'd given
to pay for his assistants education had been used in
that way. There really just wasn't much else. The family
claiming to be Brown's abandoned next of ken eventually seemed
(30:43):
to have just dropped the matter. Stories about them in
newspapers seemed to have just kind of slowed to a
stop not long after that initial reporting. Yeah, there is
a whole other thing about, like people claiming that he
had some very expensive pieces of jewelry, and someone saying
that they had seen a large sum of money of
his when he was in London, but none of that
(31:04):
seemed to be true, or if it was, those things
had vanished. In nineteen forty eight, a larger than life
bust of Charles Brown was sculpted by artist Frank Jaruche
and was put on display at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens
in Cleveland, Ohio, where it remains next to a bust
of his friend Mark Twain. There is also an elementary
(31:24):
school named after Artemis Ward in Cleveland, which I kind
of like because it's named for an imaginary person that
is Artemis Ward slash Charles Brown. Yeah, do you have
listener mail? Also? You know that I do. This listener
(31:47):
mail is from our listener, Amanda, and it is a
subject that we may have many males being read about
because lots of answers to it. It is titled non
goofy or in. I knew the topic as soon as
you said we'd gotten many emails. Yes, we got so many,
and I love it. Amanda writes, Hello, Holly and Tracy,
(32:08):
I just finished listening to Ghost of the British Isles.
Part one, and you asked about non goofy orange kitties,
and I am writing to tell you they do exist.
They are a bit of an anomaly though. I worked
in veterinary medicine and as a pet sitter for years
and always favored the orange kitties because they were all
so weird and sweet. For many years, my husband and
(32:29):
I were down to just one cat, which was unusual
for us, but I kept telling myself some sweet orange
kitty in need will pass my way soon, and I
waited for the kitty distribution system to do its job.
The one sweet cat we had was in her twenties
and we knew our time was limited with her. And
suddenly an orange cat showed up in our yarn. This
(32:50):
kitty kept coming around and eventually trusted us enough to
follow us around and get affection. I went door to
door and posted flyers in person and online in hope
of finding the kitty's family. After several weeks, this cat
was still hanging around, but was getting awfully chubby for
a stray cat. Eventually I lured the kitty into our
garage and was able to see that it, sure enough,
(33:13):
was a rare female orange kitty who was looking very pregnant.
Not wanting her to have her kittens outside, we took
her in and after a trip to the vets for
a checkup and a microchip scan, we decided to foster her.
She had her kittens with us, and we helped her
raise them and found them all loving homes. She had
three orange boys and one Calico girl. We, of course,
(33:35):
were foster failures and kept both Mama kitty, who we
named Mango, and one of her sons, who we called Shrimp.
He was the runt and half the size of the rest.
Mango has been the most normal orange cat I have
ever met. She is smart and sweet and playful, but
not the weird goofy that all three of her sons
turned out to be. They are all the typical strange, clumsy,
(33:56):
silly oranges you'd expect, but their mother is far more gray,
full composed, and cat like. I don't know if that
was because she spent time as astray or just her
natural personality, or perhaps this is a female orange cat thing.
I have only known a few in my life, but
I do feel like the girls have never been as
weird and goofy as the Orange boys. Anyway, I just
(34:17):
wanted to share my normal and goofy orange kitties that
we love so much. The one with more white is
Mango and we think is about six years old, and
the other orange is her son, Shrimp, who is five.
I also included a video of Shrimp being the goofy
orange boy. He is being afraid of a dryer ball.
Thanks for all you do. Your podcast is one of
my favorites and you are both just delightful. Sincerely, Amanda. Okay,
(34:39):
these cats listen. I'm real weepy about kitties lately, and
I want an orange cat. So no distribution system, do
your work. Not quite yet. We're not ready for another cat,
but you know, put me on the wait list. These
are so cute, and Mango is absolutely beautiful. In her son,
(35:00):
it does look a little like he might be a goofus,
which I love. I love a goofy cat, So thank you.
Lots of you have smart orange cats, some of you
have goofy orange cats. I love all the orange cats. Yeah,
the emails come in. You can write to us and
share your goofy or non goofy orange cat or any
other animal or anything else. You don't have to pay
(35:21):
a pet tax at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can also subscribe to the show if you haven't
done that before, you can do that on the iHeartRadio
app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(35:45):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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