AMERICA'S FIRST STANDUP

In 1850 America, lectures provided the most accessible public entertainment -- what TV is today. A lyceum movement in the 1830's and 1840's for a more cultivated few gave way to "the popular lecture". Displacing the lyceums, Young Men's Associations and Literary Societies now paid fees of $50-$100 per lecturer for "National names" -- such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England former-cleric, chracterized by Browne as a "perpendicular coffin in his newspaper review. Among other popular lecturers, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune; famous evangelist, Henry Ward Beecher; Bayard Taylor, with his travelogues; reformed drunk and temperance lecturer, John B. Gough; abolitionist Anna E. Dickinson.

But Charles Farrar Browne, as "Artemus Ward", was America's first comic lecturer, the forerunner of today's "standup comedian", shortened to "standups". By appealing to all classes of audiences, Browne opened the way for the "crackerbox humor" of, say, Mark Twain and Bret Harte to be accepted in American literature.

The lecturing came from Browne's writing, and the writing from his printing. This was in the tradition of Phildelphia printer Benjamin Franklin (1706-1799) who created the famous "Poor Richard's Almanac" to supplement his income from printing handbills and a local newspaper and such.

In 1847, when Charles was 13, his father died leaving little to his wife and surviving children. So, at age 13, Charles quit school for apprenticeship as a "printer's devil" at the office of the Skowhegan Clarion. (Even when nationally famous as writer and lecturer, Browne descibed himself as "always the printer".)

After years of working on various papers, in December, 1857, Browne (at age 23) became Associate Editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer. On January 20, 1858, Browne published (in The Plain Dealer) the first "Artemus Ward" letter, entitled "A Letter from a Showman" (later extended as "One of Mr. Ward's Business Latters"). Other Artemus Letters followed, popularity grewo, further increasing circulation of his paper.

Originating the first syndicated humor column, in 1860, Browne sold his Artemus Letters to the new magazine of humor, Vanity Fair (modeled on the London Punch), published in New York City. In November, 1860, Browne left The Plain Dealer to join Vanity Fair. In May, 1861, at age 27, Browne became the Managing Editor of Vanity Fair.

Browne began a Lecture Series for the 1861-2 season in New London, Connecticut, which was taken to New York City in December, and continued in the Midwest in 1862. In May, 1862, he collected his Artemus Ward Letters for his first book, "Artemus Ward: His Book". He resigned editorship of Vanity Fair to devote his time to writing and lecturing.

The lecture season of 1862-3 carried him as far as Memphis. Browne and "Artemus Ward" had become nationally famous. As an indication of his popularity, President Lincoln insisted on reading the Ward Letter, "High-Handed Outrage at Utica" to his cabinet before presenting to them "The Emancipation Proclamation".

Austin wrote of Browne's art: "For the journalist, the perfectionist's method was impracticable; yet Browne was notably deliberate in composition, and in preparing an delivering his lectures he planned, rehearsed, and constantly modified. He knew the value of economy: 'A line', he once said, 'if you can hit the right thing, will give as good an idea of a place as whole pages.' And he intentionally limited his output in order to avoid surfeiting his public with his peculiar humor -- a practice which many of his followers failed to exercise.

"As a comic in real life as well as in print and on the stage, Browne spent his short life collecting humorous material and experimenting with ways of presenting it. Don Seitz [1919 biographer] quotes jottings from a notebook that Browne carried in 1861-62 containing dates, notes, and laundry lists, as well as lines and phrases obviously meant to suggest ideas for writings and lectures. They are almost the only explicit evidence we have of his methods of composiion but, brief and scappry as they are, they indicate an interest in and sensitivity to words. For example:

"What made Browne's limited production rise above that of his predecessors in American humor and of all his contemporaries but one, was an almost infallible aesthetic sense that was natural, not derived through labor and analysis. .... But his very lack of system conributed to his success. Aside from the newspaper material that he was required to write, he did not put pen to paper until his unconscious processes of selection had done their work. This intuitive process was closely allied to his miraculous sense of rapport with his lecture audiences. Both in writing and in speaking, he knew instinictively what would be effective, and he eliminated what would not.

"... he had several literary forms to choose from .... The simplest of these was the short anecdote, relating a purportedly local incident or a funny occurrence from afield. It was usually merely a joke, although it was often given a timely interest by relating it to specific people, places, or events." With time, Browne spoke before packed houses. A St. Louis editor punned about a Browne one-nighter: "the largest Ward meeting ever held in this city. The famous American actor, Charles Kean, complained about his competition. Browne's first performance in San Francisco accrued gate receipts of sixteen hundred dollars in gold. In London "for six successive weeks the little lecture-room was densely crowded, and people vainly struggled for admission at the door".

avoidance of the announced topic. For example, in his main lecture of the 1861-62 season, "Babes in the Woods", neither "babes" nor "woods" was ever mentioned. By occasionally and drolly mentioning the lecture title, he "convulse[d] the audience with laughter".

On his Western tour of 1864-5, Browne burlesqued the "panorama" or "diorama", another popular device of lectures. It was a large canvas painting which moved, scene by scene, between rollars on either side of the stage. Scenes of great cities, sea battles, travels in Europe or the Near East, etc. Browne was the first to introduce a comic panorama -- for example, an irrelevant painting of Artemus being attacked by wolves or an uncontrollage backdrop of the full moon rising over The Great Salt Lake.

Browne was apparently the first to use the deadpan delivery in his "syandup" -- a forerunner of great comic film actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon (named by French mime Marcel Marceaux as his model). Sam Clemens learned his lecture technique from a manual written by Browne and describes the comic devices: "fictitious hesitancies for the right word, fictitious unconscious pauses, fictitious unconscious side remarks, fictitious unconscious embarrassments, fictitious unconscious emphasis upon the wrong word ... all ... giv[ing] to a recited tale the captivating naturalness of an impromptu narration".

But hesitancy, wooden expression, calculated pause could "work" ony by Browne's establising rapport with the audience, perhaps his greatest gift. A London observer later wrote, "I have heard many orators and seen many actors, but I never saw such a perfect case of magnetic control." One of his many opening devices was to stand silently on the platform, twiddling his thumbs, until the audience became impatient; then he would haltingly say, "Ladies -- and -- gentlemen. When -- you -- have -- finished -- this -- unseemly interruption, i guess I'll begin my duscourse."

In content, Browne used overstatement, mock cliché, misquotes, ridicule of "purple prose", delight in archaic verbs and pronouns, anticlimax.