Josh Billings - The Complete Works of Josh Billings

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, sparse 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 Massachusetts, 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 assumed 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 advertisements 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 Athenæums 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 assigned status on the rostrum. He travels over the United States with his Lectures, entitled, “ 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 Phœnix, 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, entitled “His Autobiography.” 1 1 “Artemus Ward, His Book,” p. 316. 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.