Newspaper Comedians

27

ders. James Montgomery Bailey ("The Danbury News Man") and Robert Jones Burdette ("The Hawkeye Man") attained a more than local vogue as newspaper comedians, Bailey excelling in quaintly exaggerated pictures of familiar domestic occurrences, Burdette in the unexpected collocation of dissimilar ideas. Edgar Wilson Nye ("Bill Nye"), once of The Laramie [Wyoming] Boomerang, was also fond of surprising turns of phrase, but his most characteristic vein lay in a sort of affected, zealous idiocy. No better example of his manner is available than one already selected by a skilled hand:

The condition of our navy need not give rise to any serious apprehension. The yard in which it is placed at Brooklyn is enclosed by a high brick wall affording it ample protection. A man on board the Atlanta at anchor at Brooklyn is quite as safe as he would be at home. The guns on board the Atlanta are breechloaders; this is a great improvement on the old-style gun, because in former times in case of a naval combat the man who went outside the ship to load the gun while it was raining frequently contracted pneumonia."

The lecture platform gave both Nye and Burdette an opportunity to display at best advantage their comical solemnity, and much of their notoriety rose from their public appearances. Nye especially was fortunate in his collaborators, touring at one time with Mark Twain and again with James Whitcomb Riley' and Eugene Field.

The last named, greatest of newspaper paragraphers and in his own right something more, qualified as a Middle Westerner by his birth in St. Louis (1850) and by his New England ancestry and bringing up. After three years in three colleges, a trip to Europe, and an early marriage, he served his apprenticeship to journalism on several Missouri papers. From The Denver [Colorado] Tribune his first humorous skit, The Tribune Primer (1882), was reprinted. The best years of his life were spent in Chicago as contributing editor to The Chicago Record. In his daily column of "Sharps and Flats" appeared his most characteristic verse, 3 tales, and miscellaneous paragraphs, later 'Quoted by S. Leacock, American Humour, Nineteenth Century, vol. lxxvi, p. * See Book III, Chap. X. 3 See Book II, Chap. XXIII.

453.

collected to form A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), A Little Book of Profitable Tales (1889), and other volumes. He was still in the prime of life and at the height of his celebrity as a household poet, humorist, and lecturer, when he wrote in the assumed character of a veteran bibliomaniac: "I am aweary and will rest a little while; lie thou there, my pen, for a dream-a pleasant dream-calleth me away.” A few weeks later (4 November, 1895) death visited the writer as he slept.

Field's best known pieces of verse and prose exploiting sentimental and pathetic themes, especially Christmas festivities and the deaths of little children, emerge from a background of humorous writing illustrated by the rank and file of his contributions to "Sharps and Flats." The waggery of his natural bent finds unmixed expression in the early and unsuccessful book, Culture's Garland; Being Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of Literature, Art, Music and Society in Chicago and other Western Ganglia (1887), which engagingly blends the atmosphere of cultivation, so long anticipated by Chicagoans, with whiffs from the very real and ever-present stockyards. Only a few gleams of wit, however, relieve the profitable sentimentality of the later Tales.

A better balanced expression of his undeniable personal charm is to be found in A Little Book of Western Verse, virile and funny in the ballads of the miners' camp on Red Hoss Mountain; otherwise "Western" only as it exemplifies a readiness to try anything once. Among many lullabies, Christmas hymns, and lyrics of infant mortality, the playful side of Field's genius is sufficiently represented by imitations of Old English ballads, echoes of Horatian themes, a few rollicking nursery songs, and much personal, political, and literary gossip cleverly versified. A bit of flippancy like The Little Peach of Emerald Hue goes to show that Field's humour could on occasion conquer the sentimental strain in him. But only too often his children die from the fatal effects of contact with the angels. In his more ambitious pieces Field not infrequently falls into an over-refinement and false simplicity of style. When not too consciously doing his best, however, nothing could seem

I "I want to dip around in all sorts of versification, simply to show people that determination and perseverance can accomplish much in this direction." S. Thompson, Eugene Field, vol. ii., p. 120.

more effortless than the easy play of his wit. One thrust at a gang of politicians junketing at their constituents' expense deserves to be recalled as a fair example of his skill:

BLUE CUT, TENN., May 2, 1885.-The second section of the train bearing the Illinois Legislature to New Orleans was stopped near this station by bandits last night. After relieving the bandits of their watches and money, the excursionists proceeded on their journey with increased enthusiasm.actions

Political sarcasms like the foregoing, though frequently employed, have ordinarily been powerless to influence either the character of American politics or the fortunes of any particular politician. On the contrary, they have had, like Ford jokes, a certain advertising value, being considered less marks of discontent than the banter of satisfaction with which healthy Americans accompany their doings. Most unusual, therefore, is the spectacle of the national frame of mind changed in consequence of the work of a humorist. Yet that result may fairly be claimed for the "Dooleys" written by Finley Peter Dunne during the Spanish-American War. The American public, conscious of a chivalrous mission in the war, uncertain of the strength of the adversary, and angry at the bustling incompetence and greedy profiteering at home, lost its sense of humour. Its regeneration from the slough of perfervid earnestness was accelerated by the cool remarks of the Irish saloonkeeper of Archey Road, Chicago. As Mr. Dooley commented on the great charge of the army mules at Tampa with reflections on other jackasses, pictured the Cuban towns captured by war-correspondents and the Spanish fleet sunk by dispatch boats, celebrated General Miles's uniform and the pugnacity of "Cousin George Dooley" (Admiral Dewey), the national fever cooled, and the nation, realizing its superfluous power, burst into saving laughter.

"We're a gr-reat people," said Mr. Hennessy, earnestly.

"We ar-re," said Mr. Dooley. "We ar-re that. An' th' best iv it is, we know we ar-re."

Mr. Dooley for some years continued to give his opinions on the men and affairs of peace with a shrewdness that recalls 1 S. Thompson, Eugene Field, vol. ii., p. 204.

the pungent insight of Josh Billings and makes him one of the most quotable writers. Americans of the present generation are not likely to forget some of his sayings, least of all the remark of Father Kelly:

"Hogan," he says, "I'll go into th' battle with a prayer book in wan hand an' a soord in th' other," he says; "an' if th' wurruk calls f'r two hands, 'tis not th' soord I'll dhrop," he says.

When not busied with comments on current events, Mr. Dooley sometimes had leisure to relate incidents of the life about him in the gas-house district. As an interpreter of the city, however, he yields to Sydney Porter ("O. Henry"). ' The O. Henry story is the last word in deft manipulation, but as a humorist Porter is not deeply philosophical. His neat situations, surprising turns, and verbal cleverness show a refinement upon the methods of predecessors, indeed, but not a new comic attitude. Unsurpassed in daring extravaganza when he can give himself completely to gaiety, he becomes immediately sober in the presence of thought or sentiment. In these respects he represents the norm of recent American humour at a high pitch of technical perfection, and his death in 1910 may fittingly be taken as the close of the period. Just at present, judicious Americans are importing their best current humour from Canada.

I See Book III, Chap. VI.

I

CHAPTER X

Later Poets

N the expanding, heterogeneous America of the second half

of the nineteenth century, poetry lost its clearly defined tendencies and became various and experimental. It did not cease to be provincial; for although no one region dominated as New England had dominated in the first half of the century, the provincial accent was as unmistakable, and the purely national accent as rare, as before. The East, rapidly becoming the so-called "effete East," produced a poetry to which the West was indifferent; the West, still the West of "carnivorous animals of a superior rank," produced a poetry that the cultivated classes of the East regarded as vulgar. In a broad way it may perhaps be said that the poetry of this period was dedicated either to beauty or to "life"; to a revered past, or to the present and the future; to the civilization of Asia and Europe, or to the ideals and manners of America, at least the West of America. The virtue of the poetry of beauty was its fidelity to a noble tradition, its repetition, with a difference, of familiar and justly approved types of beauty; its defect was mechanical repetition, petty embellishment. The virtue of the poetry of "life" was fidelity to experience, vitality of utterance; its defect, crudity, meanness, insensitiveness to fineness of feeling and beauty of expression. Where the poets are many and all are minor it is difficult to make a choice, but on the whole it seems that the outstanding poets of the East were Emily Dickinson, Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, R. H. Stoddard, Stedman, Gilder, and Hovey; and of the West, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Sill, Riley, and Moody.'

None of these has gained more with time than has Emily For the South, see Book III, Chap. IV.