Mark Twain and American Humor

Contexts for Understanding The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Overview

Southwestern Humor Popular dialect humor Humor by women writers Some 19th-century jokes Twain’s “How to Tell a Story” Petrified Man Hoax

Southwestern Humor (1830-1860)

Arose from the tall tale tradition seen in Davy Crockett (Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett, 1834) and Mike Fink stories.

Use of dialect, earthy language and incidents, crude physical humor, and cruelty.

Examples: Thomas Bangs Thorpe, “The Big Bear of Arkansas” James Kirk (or Kirke) Paulding"Nimrod's Wildfire Tall Talk" (1833) George Washington Harris (1815-69) Sut Lovingood: Yarns spun by a "Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool" (1867)

Southwestern Humor

Conflicts with nature described in a humorous way so as to control the version of the tale and make the wilderness more manageable (stories about bear hunts, etc.). The land itself and its creatures are larger than life, mythical.

Often an element of triumphant trickster, or the trickster who is himself tricked or bested in a trade.

In some of these, character of humorist is played off against a character representing an educated or Eastern elite.

Forms of Southwestern Humor

The sketch, sometimes featuring unusual local characters. The anecdote. Example: Twain's

"The Dandy Frightening the Squatter." The hoax, a story that purports to be real.

Author reports wonders of the western frontier; most hoaxes masquerade as travel letters. Example: Twain’s “Petrified Man” hoax.

Author hints at fictionalizing role and tries to tip off the readers. The frame tale in which an outsider describes an event.

Example: Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,”

Women Humorists

Frances Whicher (1811-1852), The Widow Bedott Papers

Marietta Holley (1836-1926), “Samantha” or “Josiah Allen’s Wife,” sometimes called the “female Mark Twain.” Among her most popular books was Samantha at Saratoga (1887).

Ready to laugh?

Here’s what a nineteenth-century standup comedian might have told as jokes.

Twain’s “The Whittier Birthday Dinner Speech,” which he presented in 1877 to a crowd that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, insulted the authors with Western humor.

It may be the first example of a celebrity “roast.”

Some 19th-century Jokes

“Who is that man who keeps saying it is always the unexpected that happens?” “I’m not sure. Probably an attaché of the weather bureau.”

Foreigner—I think I may say now that after two years of constant study I understand the English language. Native—Nonsense! Have you ever tried to grasp the meaning of an insurance policy?

More 19th-century Jokes

She—I’m sure, Mr. Goodby, there are many girls who could make you far happier than I could. He (dolefully)—That’s the trouble; they could but they won’t.

Stylish Lady visitor (to small boy, while waiting for hostess to come down)—What is the matter with Fido, that you are watching him so closely? Small boy—Mamma said that your hat was enough to make a dog laugh, and I wanted to see him do it.

Popular Humorists

David Ross Locke (“Petroleum V. Nasby”)(184-1867)

Charles Farrar Brown or “Artemus Ward”

William Wright (“Dan DeQuille”) (1829–1898)

Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”) (1835-1910)

Henry Wheeler Shaw (“Josh Billings” (1818-1885)

Picture shows Billings, Twain, and Nasby.

The Lecture Circuit (1870s-1900)

Humorists like Twain traveled on the lecture circuit, sometimes with two of them traveling and performing together in lecture halls (there were no comedy clubs).

Twain advertised his lectures with the phrase “The Trouble Begins at 8.”

Theater owners would put out the picture of Twain on a frog, or even just a picture of a frog, and audiences would know he would be appearing at that theater.

Like Dickens, Twain would not just read from but perform his work.

The Jumping Frog

Finley Peter Dunne (“Mr. Dooley”) (1867-1936)

Dialect humor was popular, especially in performance and in the newspapers. What dialect is this?

“Th’ diff’rence between Christyan Scientists an’ doctors is that Christyan Scientists think the’se no such thing as disease, an’ doctors think there ain’t anythin’ else. An’ there ye ar-re.”

“What d’ye think about it?” asked Mr. Hennessy. “I think,” said Mr. Dooley, “that if th’ Christyan Scientist had

some science an’ the’ doctors more Christyanity, it wudden’t make anny diff’rence which ye called in—if ye had a good nurse.”

Mark Twain, from “How to Tell a Story”

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

From Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.   

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

A “Petrified Man”

The Cardiff Giant A 10’ gypsum statue carved

and buried behind a barn in upstate New York.

Workers “discovered” it in 1869, and it sparked a debate over whether there were “giants in the earth” as the Bible proclaimed.

Other “petrified men” had been discovered earlier.

“The Petrified Man” [Also called “A Washoe Joke] Territorial Enterprise, October 4, 1862

A petrified man was found some time ago in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford. Every limb and feature of the stony mummy was perfect, not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one during the lifetime of the owner - which lifetime, by the way, came to a close about a century ago, in the opinion of a savant who has examined the defunct. The body was in a sitting posture, and leaning against a huge mass of croppings; the attitude was pensive, the right thumb resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the fore-finger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart. This strange freak of nature created a profound sensation in the vicinity, and our informant states that by request, Justice Sewell or Sowell, of Humboldt City, at once proceeded to the spot and held an inquest on the body. The verdict of the jury was that "deceased came to his death from protracted exposure," etc. The people of the neighborhood volunteered to bury the poor unfortunate, and were even anxious to do so; but it was discovered, when they attempted to remove him, that the water which had dripped upon him for ages from the crag above, had coursed down his back and deposited a limestone sediment under him which had glued him to the bed rock upon which he sat, as with a cement of adamant, and Judge S. refused to allow the charitable citizens to blast him from his position. The opinion expressed by his Honor that such a course would be little less than sacrilege, was eminently just and proper. Everybody goes to see the stone man, as many as three hundred having visited the hardened creature during the past five or six weeks. 

Illustration from Sketches, New and Old

(1882)