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The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Complete Works of
Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) Part 6
With a biographical sketch by Melville D. Landon,
"Eli Perkins"
Artemus Ward's Panorama.
6.1. Prefatory Note by Melville D. Landon.
6.2. The Egyptian Hall Lecture.
6.3. "The Times" Notice.
6.4. Programme of the Egyptian Hall Lecture.
6.5. Announcement and Programme of the Dodworth Hall Lecture.
The fame of Artemus Ward culminated in his last lectures atEgyptian Hall, Piccadilly, the final one breaking offabruptly on the evening of the 23d of January, 1867. Thatnight the great humorist bade farewell to the public, andretired from the stage to die! His Mormon lectures wereimmensely successful in England. His fame became the talkof journalists, savants, and statesmen. Every one seemed tobe affected differently, but every one felt and acknowledgedhis power. "The Honorable Robert Lowe," says Mr. E.P.HINGSTON, Artemus Ward's bosom friend, "attended the Mormonlecture one evening, and laughed as hilariously as any onein the room. The next evening Mr. John Bright happened tobe present. With the exception of one or two occasionalsmiles, he listened with GRAVE attention."
The "London Standard," in describing his first lecture inLondon, aptly said, "Artemus dropped his jokes faster thanthe meteors of last night succeeded each other in the sky.And there was this resemblance between the flashes of hishumor and the flights of the meteors, that in each case onelooked for jokes or meteors, but they always came just inthe place that one least expected to find them. Half theenjoyment of the evening lay, to some of those present, inlistening to the hearty cachinnation of the people, who onlyfound out the jokes some two or three minutes after theywere made, and who laughed apparently at some gravestatements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's jokesare certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect liesin their seeming impromptu character. They are carefullyled up to, of course; but they are uttered as if they aremere afterthoughts of which the speaker is hardly sure."
His humor was so entirely fresh and unconventional, that ittook his hearers by surprise, and charmed them. His failinghealth compelled him to abandon the lecture after abouteight or ten weeks. Indeed, during that brief period he wasonce or twice compelled to dismiss his audience. Frequentlyhe sank into a chair and nearly fainted from the exertion ofdressing. He exhibited the greatest anxiety to be at hispost at the appointed time, and scrupulously exerted himselfto the utmost to entertain his auditors. It was not becausehe was sick that the public was to be disappointed, or thattheir enjoyment was to be diminished. During the last fewweeks of his lecture-giving, he steadily abstained fromaccepting any of the numerous invitations he received. Hadhe lived through the following London fashionable season,there is little doubt that the room at the Egyptian Hallwould have been thro