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“Egyptian Hall.—Before a large audience, comprising
an extraordinary number of literary celebrities, Mr. Artemus
Ward, the noted American humorist, made his first appearance
as a public lecturer on Tuesday evening, the place selected for
the display of his quaint oratory being the room long tenanted
by Mr. Arthur Sketchley. His first entrance on the platform
was the signal for loud and continuous laughter and applause,
denoting a degree of expectation which a nervous man might
have feared to encounter. However, his first sentences, and
the way in which they were received, amply sufficed to prove
that his success was certain. The dialect of Artemus bears a
less evident mark of the Western World than that of many
American actors, who would fain merge their own peculiarities
in the delineation of English character; but his jokes are of that
true Transatlantic type, to which no nation beyond the limits
of the States can offer any parallel. These jokes he lets fall
with an air of profound unconsciousness—we may almost say
melancholy—which is irresistibly droll, aided as it is by the
effect of a figure singularly gaunt and lean and a face to match.
And he has found an audience by whom his caustic humour is
thoroughly appreciated. Not one of the odd pleasantries
slipped out with such imperturbable gravity misses its mark,
and scarcely a minute elapses at the end of which the sedate
Artemus is not forced to pause till the roar of mirth has subsided.
There is certainly this foundation for an entente
cordiale between the two countries calling themselves AngloSaxon,
that the Englishman, puzzled by Yankee politics,
thoroughly relishes Yankee jokes, though they are not in the
least like his own. When two persons laugh together, they
cannot hate each other much so long as the laugh continues.

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The subject of Artemus Ward's lecture is a visit to the
Mormons, copiously illustrated by a series of moving pictures,
not much to be commended as works of art, but for the
most part well enough executed to give (fidelity granted) a
notion of life as it is among the remarkable inhabitants of
Utah. Nor let the connoisseur, who detects the shortcomings
of some of these pictures, fancy that he has discovered a flaw
in the armour of the doughty Artemus. That astute gentleman
knows their worth as well as anybody else, and while he
ostensibly extols them, as a showman is bound to do, he every
now and then holds them up to ridicule in a vein of the
deepest irony. In one case a palpable error of perspective,
by which a man is made equal in size to a mountain, has
been purposely committed, and the shouts of laughter that
arise as soon as the ridiculous picture appears is tremendous.
But there is no mirth in the face of Artemus; he seems even
deaf to the roar; and when he proceeds to the explanation
of the landscape, he touches on the ridiculous point in a slurring
way that provokes a new explosion.

The particulars of the lecture we need not describe. Many
accounts of the Mormons, more or less credible, and all
authenticated, have been given by serious historians, and Mr.
W. H. Dixon, who has just returned from Utah to London,
is said to have brought with him new stores of solid information.
But to most of us Mormonism is still a mystery, and
under those circumstances a lecturer who has professedly
visited a country for the sake more of picking up fun than
of sifting facts, and whose chief object it must be to make
his narrative amusing, can scarcely be accepted as an
authority. We will, therefore, content ourselves with stating
that the lecture is entertaining to such a degree that to those
who seek amusement its brevity is its only fault; that it is
utterly free from offence, though the opportunities for offence
given by the subject of Mormonism are obviously numerous;
and that it is interspersed, not only with irresistible jokes,
but with shrewd remarks, proving that Artemus Ward is a
man of reflection, as well as a consummate humorist.”

p485-208

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