The Complete Works of Josh Billings.
by Henry W. Shaw.
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.
ADAPTED FROM THE LONDON EDITION.
In the United States of America a "show" is the generic name comprising every description of entertainment, being equally applied to an equestrian performance, a dramatic company, an operatic concert, a political oration, or a lecture on the geology of the oil district of Pennsylvania. A few years ago, when I did not know America quite so well as I do now, I was asked by Mr. Barnum to meet him on a matter of business at his celebrated Museum on Broadway. Every one who has visited New York and called in at that strangely-jumbled exhibition, will remember a small room on the first landing, with "Mr. Barnum--Private"
painted on the door. I don"t know whether any show-case in the Museum was as attractive to the crowds of country visitors as that little room proved to be. Though privacy was written on the post, publicity was ever peeping in at the door. Shrewd, astute, and _ruse_ as Barnum is, none knew better than he that the greatest object of interest in the Museum was himself. Hence he arranged to have his private room immediately in front of the public staircase, with the door always a little open, to pique curiosity, unless really important business required absolute seclusion. In this room, or rather in this gla.s.s-case, for its three sides were of gla.s.s, like the cases containing the wax-figures and the stuffed animals, Barnum and I met. He conversed about different speculations he had on hand, and various ideas which he wished to carry out. Some of them were very characteristic of the man and his spirit of enterprise. One, was to organize an expedition to the mouth of Davis"s Straits at the proper season, select a very large iceberg, bring it down in the tow of two or three steamers to New York Bay, put a floating fence around it, exhibit the iceberg at twenty-five cents admission, and realize a large profit by making and vending sherry cobblers with ice from the real iceberg! Another idea suggested by the man of many shows was to get the American Minister at the Court of Constantinople to apply to the Sultan for a firman to permit Barnum or his agent to visit the mosque at Hebron, traditionally a.s.serted to be built over the Cave of Machpelah, in which the remains of the patriarchs were buried. "If we could only get the remains of Abraham and bring them to New York!"
exclaimed the _deus ex machina_ of the Museum, rubbing his hands with delight at the ingenuity of the thought. Then, after a moment"s reflection, and knowing me to be well acquainted with England, he remarked, inquiringly, "What do you think of Spurgeon for a show? Could he be got over here?" To me unused as I then was to American can manners, the a.s.sociation of a clergyman with Bartlemy Fair and Barnum"s Museum seemed ludicrously incongruous. Subsequently my experience taught me to believe that some of the preachers of the United States look at their position from the same point of view as did Mr. Barnum in wishing to speculate in Spurgeon.
A "showman," as well as an author, _Josh Billings_ is now regarded in the cities of the Union. In England we would style him a facetious lecturer, but the lecturing business in America is carried out with all the arts, formulae and appurtenances of showmanship. There are the large posters, the puff advertis.e.m.e.nts, the agent in advance, and the lithographs plain or colored, all brought into requisition. It is quite true that if Charles d.i.c.kens visited Manchester or Birmingham to read "Doctor Marigold" or "The Christmas Carol," he also had his agent and his yellow window-bills with the black and red printing; but the window-bill is limited to a size and is printed in a style fitting to the superior cla.s.s of entertainment; while, in America, the posters of the popular lecturer are as showy and as exciting as those of Van Amburgh with his wild beasts, or the Hanlon Brothers with their feats on the trapeze. Quaintness, however, is an essential requisite in the placard of the facetious lecturer. _Artemus Ward_ used to announce in large letters on the walls that he would "Speak a Piece" at a certain place and on a certain date. _Josh Billings_ announces in a still more mystic manner, strongly reminding the observer of Ruskin"s bizarre, grotesque, enigmatical t.i.tles. I have before me, as I write, a printed notice which reads thus:--
"ALLYN HALL, HARTFORD.
JOSH BILLINGS, On the 7th, WITH HIS HOBBY HORSE."
The reader who is anxious to know what _Josh Billings_ means by an advertis.e.m.e.nt so eccentric in its character can have his curiosity satisfied by turning to page 404 of this work. The chapter is headed "How to pick out a good Horse," and the caption is a.s.suredly none the more inappropriate or infelicitous than are the t.i.tular conundrums of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture," "Unto this Last," or "A Crown of Wild Olives." John Ruskin and _Josh Billings_ understand with equal clearness the value of a t.i.tle which shall arrest attention by not being too easy of comprehension.
I first heard of _Josh Billings_ several years ago when crossing the Isthmus of Panama by that remarkable railway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When Nunez de Balboa in the olden time had his first peep of the Pacific, and beheld the ocean which no European had before seen, from an eminence which is now a station of the railway, he little thought that in a few centuries hence the steam engine would haul thousands upon thousands of Christians up to the same summit, and allow them to enjoy the same sight at so many American dollars each. Terribly prosaic is this earth becoming! And, despite Schiller and Coleridge, it is scarcely Jupiter who "brings whate"er is good," or Venus "who brings everything that"s fair." A locomotive or a steamboat will bring or take you to both; and a railway it was which brought me to know of _Josh Billings_. The incident was simply this:
Midway on the Panama railway there is a station at which travellers alight while the engineer looks after his supply of wood and water. A beautifully picturesque station it is, looking from it along the road which you have come, or adown that portion of the railway track which you have to go--a luxuriance of tropical vegetation meets the eye, overpowering the mind with the wild profusion of its beauty. Nature seems to revel in a wealth of verdure. Palms, bananas, and trees innumerable of every graceful form tower upwards to the unclouded sky, or arch over the flower-garnished earth. The trunk of each is invisible; for creeping plants of the most delicate growth entwine around the wood, hang in loops from the boughs, connect tree to tree with a lace-work of exquisite elegance and sun-dyed brilliancy, and sway in wreaths of natural arabesque to and fro in the fragrant, moist, and enervating air.
The station lies back from the road, and, if I remember rightly, is thatched with palm leaves. As I alighted at it, groups of native New-Grenadians cl.u.s.tered around me, the younger ones being almost in a state of nudity. Some offered me oranges, some bananas, some milk in a green-gla.s.s bottle, and one of them wished me to buy a monkey. Pushing through them, I made my way for the station, the sultry atmosphere having rendered me languid and a gentle stimulus being desirable. I expected to find the refreshment department in the care of a native, or, at any rate, of a Spaniard; but the ubiquitous Yankee was master of the premises, and a forlorn ague-stricken, quinine-and-calomel-looking master he seemed to be. His whiskey was something not to be forgotten; nor were his dogs, half a dozen of which were running about the place, the greatest burlesques of the race canine I had hitherto seen. They were all lean, hungry, and wolfish-eyed. Their tails drooped mournfully, as if the seething heat had melted the sinews and softened the bones; they whined peevishly, but bark there was none--their owner required it all to keep the ague away. I had drunk my whiskey, become Christian in my feelings, and was silently pitying the poor animals, when the proprietor of the miserable dog-flesh, stationing himself beside me, and placing his hands on his hips, sententiously observed,--
"Them critturs are the pride of the Isthmus. They"re a pair of the most elegant puppies in this State. Nary one of "em would flunk out before any dog."
"They look very cowardly about the tail," I remarked.
"That"s the way of dogs" tails on the Isthmus," was his response. "Do you know what _Josh Billings_ says about dogs" tails?"
I frankly confessed that I did not; adding, that I was profoundly ignorant of _Josh Billings_, and pleasantly intimating that I supposed him to be one of the guards on the line.
"I guess you haven"t read the papers lately," continued my new acquaintance, as though pitying my ignorance. "_Josh Billings_ knows that there are some dogs" tails which can"t be got to curl no ways, and some which will, and you can"t stop "em. He says, that if you bathe a curly-tailed dog"s tail in oil and bind it in splints, you cannot get the crook out of it; and _Josh_, who says a sight of good things, says that a man"s way of thinking is the crook in the dog"s tail, and can"t be got out, and that every one should be allowed to wag his own peculiarity in peace."
That my Yankee acquaintance was partial to _Josh Billings_, and that anything which related to dogs was congenial with his tastes, I furthermore ascertained by noticing two sc.r.a.ps of paper posted on the rough wall of his cabin. I copied both. One was in prose and the other in rhyme. Here is the prose one:--
DOGS.
"Dogs are not vagabones bi choise and luv tew belong tu sumbody. This fac endears them tew us, and i have alwas rated the dog az about the seventh cusin tew the human specious. Tha kant talk but tha can lik yure hand; this shows that their hearts iz in the plase where other folks"
tungs is.--JOSH BILLINGS."
Thus it was that I first heard of _Josh Billings_. In the course of my voyage from Aspinwall to New York, while seated on the deck of the steamer, listening to the drolleries of a group of very convivial pa.s.sengers, and gliding along the coast of Cuba in the brightness, sheen, and splendor of a tropical night, I heard many of his best things recited, and his name frequently quoted as that of one who had already taken his place in American literature. Oliver Wendell Holmes I had known for years, Artemus Ward was a household name in California, James Russell Lowell had become a familiar acquaintance through the "Biglow Papers;" but who was _Josh Billings_? I asked my _compagnons de voyage_, but all they knew of him was that he was a very clever fellow who had written some very clever things. Whether he lived in New York State, Pennsylvania, Vermont, or Missouri, no one could tell me, nor could I get any satisfactory information as to the journal in which his articles had first appeared, what his antecedents were, or whether the name attached to his writings was that of his parentage and christening, or merely a whimsical _nomme de plume_.
Long after my arrival in New York the mystery remained unsolved. I applied to literary friends for its solution, but all they seemed to know was that various smart things had run the round of the papers with the signature of "_Josh Billings_" to them, but in what paper they had originated or by whom they were written none could give me information.
My friend George Arnold, a well-known wit of the _New York Leader_, knew of my anxiety. Meeting me one day at Crook and Duff"s Restaurant, the mid-day rallying point of most of the genial spirits of New York, he drew me aside and gravely asked--
"Have you found out yet who _Josh Billings_ is?"
"I have not," I answered. "Do you know?"
"Yes; but keep it dark. Only five of his friends have been let into the secret. It would not do to let the world know. His position would be damaged."
"Who is it?" I demanded eagerly. "Is it Hosea Biglow under a new name?"
"No; somebody better known."
"Horace Greeley?" I suggested, interrogatively.
"No. A still greater man. Can"t you guess?"
"Really, I cannot. Don"t keep me in suspense. Tell me."
"The author is ----" and my friend paused--"the author of _Josh Billings_ is none other than--President Lincoln!"
My informant made the communication so gravely, that for the moment I believed it; especially as some few days previous, being down in Washington, I had occasion to know that Barney Williams, the actor, was summoned to the White House on a Sunday afternoon, that he spent some hours with the President, and that on his return in the evening to Willard"s Hotel he a.s.sured me that the President had beaten him in telling funny stories, and had said the drollest things he had heard for many a day. That my information was nothing more than a hoax the reader will readily suppose; but I felt bound to "pa.s.s it on" to my acquaintances, with a like injunction to secresy, until at length I had the amus.e.m.e.nt of hearing that it had reached the ears of Mr. Lincoln, who laughed heartily at the joke, and pleasantly observed that his shoulders were hardly broad enough to bear the burdens of the State, without having to carry the sins of all its wits and jesters.
Time pa.s.sed on and business called me to take a trip one day up the Hudson River to the pleasant little town of Poughkeepsie. What a quiet, charming little town it is, those who have visited it can well remember.
I selected the steamer _Armenian_ for my trip up the river. The Rhine of America never was seen to more advantage than it was on that bright summer"s day, and Poughkeepsie never looked fairer than as I saw it from the middle of the stream. I landed at a town on the left bank, crossed the river, went down to Poughkeepsie by rail, and arrived there late in the evening, I knew of only two staple products of the place, and they were--whiskey and spiritualism. The whiskey I tasted, and the spiritualism I went in search of in the person of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Swedenborg of the United States, whose books on the unseen world have been introduced to the British public by Mr. Howitt. A kindly Poughkeepsian volunteered to conduct me to where the great mysticist had lived; but I found, to my disappointment, that he was then absent from the town. To console me for my ill-luck, in not being able to see so great a celebrity, my guide soothingly observed that there was another great writer resident in and belonging to Poughkeepsie.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Why, _Josh Billings_!" was the reply.
Eureka! I had found him. I had unearthed my game at last and discovered my eremite in his mystic seclusion. I lost no time in inquiring who _Josh Billings_ was and where he lived.
"His name is Shaw--Henry W. Shaw. He"s an auctioneer, and I"ll show you the way to his house," volunteered my friendly guide.
We went to the house; but like Mr. Davis, Mr. Shaw was not at home. All that I could then learn about him was that he belonged to Poughkeepsie, that he had been _the_ Auctioneer of the town for many years, that he was by no means a young man, that his address for the general public was "Box 467" at the Post-office, that he was a very business-like person, and that he wrote articles for the newspapers, as well as sold property by auction and acted as agent for the transfer of real estate. The reader will therefore fully comprehend how much Mr. Shaw felt himself to be in his element while writing the chapter headed "Advertizement," in which he offers
"To sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars a pallas, a sweet and pensive retirement, lokated on the virgin banks of the Hudson river, kontaining 85 acres. Walls ov primitiff rock, laid in Roman cement, bound the estate, while upward and downward, the eye catches far away, the magesta and slow grander ov the Hudson. As the young moon hangs like a cutting of silver from the blue brest of the ski, an angel may be seen each night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green. (N. B. The angel goes with the place)."
Better fortune led me at last to meet Mr. Shaw in New York City. We were introduced to one another at Artemus Ward"s Mormon entertainment on Broadway. I found a man rather above the middle height, spa.r.s.e in build, sharp in features, his long hair slightly turning gray, and his age between forty and fifty, reserved in manner, a rustic, unpolished demeanor, and looking more like a country farmer than a genial man of letters or a professed wit and a public lecturer on playful subjects. I can vouch for his geniality, for, on the evening of our first meeting, we adjourned from Dodworth Hall to the St. Denis Hotel opposite, and, in the company of a few friends, spent a mirthful hour or two. The night was bitter cold; but warm sherry, excellent Bourbon, and jovial spirits made the bleak wind which whistled up Broadway from the Bay, as melodious as the music of lutes.
Mr. Shaw informed me that he was born in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, town of Lanesboro, county of Berkshire, and came from Puritan stock. He said that his father and grandfather both had been members of Congress, and each one had left so pure a political record, that he himself had never dared to enter the arena of politics. His first literary efforts in the comic line were published in the country papers of New York State; many of them first attracted attention in the columns of the _Poughkeepsie Daily Press_. In America a popular author has much more scope for gaining publicity and popularity than he has in England. The newspapers of the Union are always ready to receive pithy paragraphs from clever men, and to attach the authors" name to them. The great secret of the popularity of _Artemus Ward_ and of _Josh Billings_ is simply that which the late Albert Smith of England so well understood years ago, never to publish any article, however trivial or lengthy, without the signature or the initials of the writer to it. A smart, terse, pungent paragraph inserted with the author"s real or a.s.sumed name attached, in one of the journals of the United States, soon finds its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. With comparatively little trouble, except to worry his brains for comic ideas--no slight trouble, nevertheless--the wit of the Western world soon gains notoriety, if not fame. His racy article of a few lines is copied into paper after paper, until his name becomes familiar in all the cities of the Union. This accomplished, a new field of enterprise opens up. Some speculative man in New York or Boston thinks what a good and profitable enterprise it would be to engage the funny man whose printed jokes circulate everywhere, engage to give him so much per month for a year or two, have some large woodcuts engraved, some showy posters struck off, some smart advertis.e.m.e.nts written, halls taken throughout the country, and the man of many jokes made to retail them all over the land at an admission fee varying from one dollar down to twenty-five cents. Only a few years ago the business of joking in public--the joker himself appearing before the audience--was pretty well confined to the clown of the circus and the "middle-man" and "end-man" of the negro minstrel troupe. Things change rapidly across the Atlantic, and at the present day the clown in motley and the minstrel in burnt-cork have their vocation superseded by the facetious lecturer, dressed in evening costume, travelling with gaudy show-bills, and having a literary as well as an oratorical reputation.
Not a single writer on "Punch" or "Fun," if he had been trained in America and had written there, but would have thrown the desk aside for the rostrum long ago. Simply to write is not excitement enough for your ardent American, if he can enjoy the applause of an audience, and make dollars at the same time, merely by being the mouthpiece of his own jokes.
Bowing to the fate of nearly all comic men in his native country, Mr.
Shaw was ferreted out in his Poughkeepsie home, and urgently solicited to accept an engagement as a public lecturer. He tried the experiment in the Athenaeums and Lyceums of his own State, and succeeding, followed up his new calling until now he is recognized as an established, legitimate, and lucrative "show," having his proper value in the market, and is a.s.signed status on the rostrum. He travels over the United States with his Lectures, ent.i.tled, "_Hobby Horse_"--"_Specimen Brix_"--"_Sandwiches_"--"_What I kno about Hotels_"--etc., and is making money more rapidly than ever he did with the hammer of an auctioneer.
Many good stories are told of him. One is that being in Washington, and asked by a politician there relative to his opinion of Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, who opposed President Johnson so hotly in the Government, and who figured as a thoroughly ultra-radical, Mr. Shaw replied, "Give me leave to recite a little dream I had last night. I fancied that I was in the lower regions, and while engaged in conversation with the proprietor, an imp announced that Thad Stevens was at the door desiring admission. Old Nick promptly and emphatically refused him entrance on the ground that he would be continually disturbing the peace and order of the place. The imp soon returned, saying that Thaddeus insisted on coming in, declaring that he had no other place to go to. After much deliberation, Old Nick"s face suddenly brightened with a new idea, and he exclaimed, "I"ve got it. Tell the Janitor to give him six bushels of brimstone and a box of matches, and let him go and start a little place of his own.""
Having described who _Josh Billings_ is, it may be fitting to add a few words relative to his writings and their position in the comic literature of America. Fun is indigenous to the soil, it wells up from the Western prairie, sparkles in the foam of Niagara, springs up in the cotton-fields of the South, and oozes out from the paving-stones of the cities of the North. The people of the United States are fun-loving and fun-makers. Of the peculiar character of the fun a word or two may be written presently. There is always some popular man wearing the cap and bells, and reflecting the humor of his land. At one period the author, whom all the papers quote, is Sam Slick, Doesticks, then John Phnix, then Major Downing, then Artemus Ward, then Orpheus C. Kerr, and then Josh Billings. As fast as one resigns the position, another takes his place--"_Uno avulso non deficit alter_." During the war, joking went on at a faster pace than ever, and even those who did not esteem President Lincoln for his patriotism valued him immensely for his jokes. The jingle of the bells in the hand of Momus and the clank of the sabre attached to the waist of the modern sons of Mars, were ever mingled throughout the long and fiercely-contested conflict.
Take a little of Martin Farquhar Tupper, and a little of Artemus Ward, knead them together, and you may make something which approaches to a _Josh Billings_. That Mr. Shaw aspires to be a comic Tupper is evidenced in the various chapters headed "Proverbs," "Remarks," "Sayins," and "Afferisims." That he has had Artemus Ward before him is demonstrable by comparing the chapter in which "_Josh Billings Insures his Life_," with Artemus Ward"s celebrated paper, ent.i.tled "His Autobiography."[*] But Artemus is great in telling a story, having an imaginative power to conceive an accident, plan the action of a piece of drollery, invent an odd character, and describe his creation with infinite humor and force.
The talent of Mr. Shaw is of another kind. He is aphoristically comic, if I may use the phrase. He delights in being ludicrously sententious--in Tupperizing laughingly, and in causing an old adage to appear a new one through the fantastic manner in which it is dished up.
He is the comic essayist of America, rather than her comic story-teller.
* "Artemus Ward, His Book," p. 316.