"It was a sad fate for them and I pity them. So I hope, do you"

January 26, 2016 9:46 AM

Charles Farrar Browne, the Sometimes-Racist Father of Standup Comedy

aka Artemus Ward, Among the Mormons, and his Complete Works, as described by Mark Twain:

he would under the circumstances confine himself to Artemus Ward whom he pronounced America's greatest humorist. He stated that he would forego criticism upon the subject, but would confine himself to Artemus Ward's biography. His description of Charles F. Browne was not very complimentary inasmuch as he described his hair as a divided flame and his nose as a cowcatcher.

Artemus Ward in London

As I remarked afore, I’m gettin’ on well. I’m aware that I’m in the great metrop’lis of the world, and it doesn’t make me onhappy to admit the fack. A man is a ass who dispoots it. That’s all that ails him. I know there is sum peple who cum over here and snap and snarl ’bout this and that: I know one man who says it is a shame and a disgraice that St. Paul’s Church isn’t a older edifiss; he says it should be years and even ages older than it is; but I decline to hold myself responsible for the conduck of this idyit simply because he’s my countryman. I spose every civ’lised land is endowed with its full share of gibberin’ idyits, and it can’t be helpt—leastways I can’t think of any effectooal plan of helpin’ it.

posted by the man of twists and turns (7 comments total)

Very interesting. Seems he was a kind of proto-Mark Twain, and it's fitting that he helped to launch Clemens's humorist career as both writer and lecturer. But from the passages quoted in the piece, I can see why this guy is, more or less, a forgotten historical footnote. Twain was a master of vernacular writing whose diction, while using words both archaic and informal, is still completely understandable to the modern eye and ear; whereas Browne's prose in dialect is nearly impenetrable by comparison.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:17 AM on January 26, 2016

Yeah, sounds to me like he was always racist.
posted by vverse23 at 10:20 AM on January 26, 2016

whereas Browne's prose in dialect is nearly impenetrable by comparison.

Interesting to say, as Twain's arguably most-famous work Tom Sawyer is penned largely in a similar spelled-out dialect. Browne/Ward is decipherable when approached as such, altho his humor doesn't hold up nearly as well, especially in comparison to Twain - in fact the only audible chuckle the article summoned from me was in reading Twain's description of Browne ("His nose rambled on aggressively before him, with all the strength and determination of a cow-catcher, while his red moustache — to follow out the simile — seemed not unlike the unfortunate cow. " - that's solid gold!). Browne's excerpts seem to be, once the fashion of dialect is sussed out, the 1800's equivalent of 'What's up with airplane food?'
posted by FatherDagon at 10:25 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Somehow being king of Cleveland just wasn’t enough

Some things never change.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:45 AM on January 26, 2016

Hmm ... Kliph Nesteroff gives that honor to Frank Fay, vaudeville MC, Mr. Barbara Stanwyck for a time, and all-around not the nicest guy in the world.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 10:49 AM on January 26, 2016

Frank Fay
Previously (self link!)
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:53 AM on January 26, 2016

I might have missed it but the lede never gets followed up on in the article -- the gathering was for the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the story, well, it's not all that funny but you can read it here.
posted by PandaMomentum at 1:31 PM on January 26, 2016