The Arlington Hotel on Vermont Avenue near H Street had opened in December 1869 and had been “entirely refitted and redecorated” by January 1871 (“‘The Arlington,’” Washington Globe, 24 Jan 71, 7; Boyd 1872, 56). Clemens stayed there, perhaps for the first time, in early September (8 Sept 71 to OLCclick to open link). He could also speak knowledgeably about the fare at once-fashionable Willard’s Hotel, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street West, because he had boarded there while rooming with Senator William M. Stewart in the winter of 1867–68 ( L2 , 116–17). Since 1869 Willard’s had not been profitable; it was at present closed while its owners disputed plans for its future. Clemens’s friend Hiram J. Ramsdell remarked in one of his Cincinnati Commercial letters that the Arlington was “the only first-class hotel in the city” and applauded the Willard’s eclipse:

Willard’s disappeared from the Washington directory in 1872, reappeared in 1873, and was able to advertise itself in the 1874 directory as the largest hotel in the city, “REHABILITATED and refitted throughout in the most elegant manner. . . . bedding, upholstery, furniture and equipment are entirely new, . . . costing over $200,000” (Boyd: 1873, 49; 1874, 121).

Only a single page of the manuscript is known to survive:

The eccentric will drawn up by Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) in fact

Two trustees were appointed, as well as four literary executors, in England and America. The residue of Browne’s estate, after various bequests, was to go toward the founding of “an asylum for worn-out printers in the United States,” at the direction of Horace Greeley (Seitz, 220–21).

The Artemus Ward talk attracted “the largest audience ever assembled in Lincoln Hall”—2,000 people, 150 of them crowded on stage. The Washington Evening Star liked the “pleasant talk,” but deplored the confusion of Mark Twain’s jokes with Artemus Ward’s and concluded: “No lecturer has a right to trifle with his audience in that kind of style” (“Mark Ward on Artemus Twain,” 24 Oct 71, 1; OC to MEC, 26 Oct 71, CU-MARK). And the Washington Morning Chronicle—which had heralded the coming of this “very rare and a very singular human being” who “is never tiresome; never a bore; never offers worn-out jokes; . . . he is at once charming, entertaining, and more than acceptable—the pride and the boast of our people”—was “disappointed” with the performance. It criticized Clemens’s “Unfit habits of speech,” called his “eccentricities of bearing” the “outward form of the inner peculiarity,” and found his gestures “simply outré when tried by rules” (“Amusements,” 23 Oct 71, 4; “Mark Twain’s Lecture at Lincoln Hall,” 24 Oct 71, 4). Despite these and subsequent poor reviews, however, Clemens delivered “Artemus Ward, Humorist” exclusively through 6 December. He then delivered it intermittently until the end of the month as he tinkered with and perfected yet another lecture, drawn from Roughing It.

See 18 Oct 71 to OLCclick to open link. The lectures at Easton and Reading were rescheduled for 23 and 24 November, respectively (Redpath and Fall 1871–72, 5).

Clemens wrote this letter on the backs of two pages of his Artemus Ward lecture notes. As these notes indicate, and newspaper reports confirm, the lecture was a mélange of biographical information, anecdotes taken from Ward’s works, and Clemens’s own anecdotes (see Inds , 280, Fatout 1976, 41–48). The Genial Showman: Being Reminiscences of the Life of Artemus Ward (1870), by Ward’s manager, Edward P. Hingston, seems to have been Clemens’s chief biographical source.

Supposedly while traveling

Clemens used the story in his lecture, but sharpened the punch line: “‘You can’t,’ said he, ‘overtake a cow, but what’s to hinder one walking in the back door and biting the passengers’” (“Artemus Ward. By Mark Twain,” Gold Hill {Nev.} News, 8 Dec 71, 2, reprinting unidentified paper; Fatout 1976, 44). In 1874 he used an abbreviated version of it—with appropriate illustrations and without attributing it to Ward—in chapter 43 of The Gilded Age (Pullen, 90–91).

Another complaint about the “Slow Railroad” that Clemens attributed to Ward (“Artemus Ward. By Mark Twain,” Gold Hill {Nev.} News, 8 Dec 71, 2, reprinting unidentified paper; Fatout 1976, 44).

These page citations (see also notes 10 and 12) establish that Clemens was using George W. Carleton’s 1867 edition of Artemus Ward; His Book (Charles Farrar Browne 1867). In this case the allusion is to “The Showman’s Courtship” (57–61). The 1867 edition was sold as part of a set that also included Artemus Ward; His Travels and Artemus Ward in London, and Other Papers (Charles Farrar Browne 1865 and 1867).

In his “Fourth of July Oration” Artemus Ward declares: “I tell you, feller‐citizens, it would have bin ten dollars in Jeff Davis’s pocket if he’d never bin born!” (Charles Farrar Browne 1867, 182). Clemens cited Ward’s “celebrated expression” in his lecture as an example of unconscious plagiarism, claiming to have come across the saying “in an English author, who wrote some fifty years ago. Pounds were substituted for dollars, and some other name appeared in the place of Jeff. Davis” (“Mark Twain on Artemus Ward,” Albany Evening Journal, 29 Nov 71, 2).

“The War Fever in Baldinsville,” from Artemus Ward; His Book (Charles Farrar Browne 1867, 185–90).

A paraphrase of the last line of “Interview with the Prince Napoleon,” from Artemus Ward; His Book (Charles Farrar Browne 1867, 199). In his lecture, Clemens identified it as a comment on the demise of the comic weekly Vanity Fair (“The Institute Lectures,” Hartford Times, 9 Nov 71, 2).

Ward’s “Some Verses Sugestid by 2 of My Uncles” (Charles Farrar Browne 1867, 200): “Uncle Simon he / Clum up a tree / To see what he could see / When presentlee / Uncle Jim / Clum up beside of him / And squatted down by he.”

Unidentified.

This allusion and the next five lines derive from T. W. Robertson’s introduction to Artemus Ward’s Lecture (Charles Farrar Browne 1869, 14–17).

Ward’s London lecture.

Clemens told audiences that “Ward used to say that to be attached to anything did not argue good feeling toward it, for he knew of a horse being attached to a dray and yet being down on that dray” and cited the observation as another example of unconscious plagiarism: “A Western journalist told me that this witticism was not original with Artemus Ward, but that he himself was the author of it” (“Mark Twain on Artemus Ward,” Albany Evening Journal, 29 Nov 71, 2).

In his prefatory note to Artemus Ward’s Lecture, Hingston remarked on Ward’s “self-reliant” nature (Charles Farrar Browne 1869, 23).

By the time this letter reached Redpath, Clemens had given “Artemus Ward, Humorist” in Wilmington, Delaware, on 24 October, and in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on 25 October. Two of the Wilmington papers reacted politely, calling the lecture “exceedingly pleasant” and “interesting” (“The Lecture Last Evening,” Wilmington Every Evening, 25 Oct 71, 4; “The Lecture Field,” Wilmington Commercial, 25 Oct 71, 1). A third expressed its dissatisfaction, however, and concluded: “On the whole it is safe to say that there are few more unsatisfactory efforts to be chronicled in the lecture field” (“Mark Twain’s Lecture,” Wilmington Delaware Gazette, 27 Oct 71, 3). En route to Norristown, Clemens stopped in Philadelphia to see T. B. Pugh, in whose Star Course he was to lecture on 20 November. “This morning,” wrote Susan Dickinson on 25 October to her sister, lecturer Anna, “I came across Mr. Pugh with an individual whom he introduced as Mr. Clemens. I can’t say that I admire his personal appearance, tone, or manner” (Dickinson Papers, DLC; for Anna Dickinson’s even harsher characterization of Clemens for her mother, see L3 , 66 n. 2, which misidentifies Dickinson’s correspondent as her sister). The Norristown performance was unsuccessful: reviewers called Clemens “a fraud as a lecturer” and were insulted by his departure immediately after the lecture (Norristown Independent, Norristown Herald and Free Press, excerpted in Fatout 1960, 154–55). No lecture was scheduled for 26 October, which Clemens apparently spent mostly in travel, arriving that evening in Hartford. He left early the next morning for his engagement in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (OC to MEC, 23 Oct 71, 26 Oct 71, both in CU-MARK).