ROBERT JONES BURDETTE.
The famous funny man of the Burlington, Iowa, Hawkeye, was born at Greensboro, Pennsylvania, on the 30th of July, 1844. At the early age of seven months he went West with his parents, to grow up with the country. They settled in Peoria, Illinois, where at the age of eighteen Robert enlisted as a private, in 1862, in the Forty-seventh Illinois Infantry. He served through the war as a private, was present at the siege of Vicksburg, and was a member of the famous Red River expedition. He showed himself to be a brave and fearless man on various occasions, especially at the battle of Corinth.
Robert J. Burdette, at the close of the war found life’s struggle rather severe. He was the oldest son of a family of nine, and aided them as best he could. In after years he made the remark: “As the oldest son I saw it was my duty to help pull the others through.” His facilities for acquiring an academic education were limited, and his ambition to enter college has never been gratified.While on a visit to New York he penned several letters from that city to the Peoria Transcript, and the publication of these letters betrayed his natural inclination for the journalistic life. Upon his return to Peoria he secured a position as proofreader on the Transcript. In the meantime he wrote numerous sketches for the different New York magazines, but few of which were published or even accepted.
Burdette says of his life from this time forward: “After a while I started a paper of my own—the Peoria Review. I ran it two years. It was a comforting sort of a paper. It brought to me a few cares but no uncertainty. I knew every Monday morning that on the next Saturday night I would not have money enough to pay the hands. During my career as editor of that wretched sheet it never disappointed me in that particular—not once. Finally the sheriff took me into partnership, and there was a glorious increase of activity. He was an enterprising man, very. He realized more in an hour than I had done in two years. Presently the partnership dissolved, and I looked around for something to do. I thought I would try and get on the Burlington Hawkeye. It was a sober, staid old paper, financially solid. I was young and active. Thought I, ‘I think I can do that paper good. If I can get on the staff I amsure it will do me good. Well, I was thinking of going over there when one day its manager, Mr. Wheeler, came to see me, and offered me the position of city editor and reporter. Well, if I live ten thousand years it will not be long enough time for me to be sufficiently thankful that I accepted the offer, and, besides that, I am very proud of the fact that they sent for me. It gave me an independence of personal satisfaction that I have never recovered from. I don’t try to be funny in my writings. I have an idea, occasionally, and when I get it loose people laugh. Then I review the remark and shake it out to find the fun. My perception of a joke is not hung on a hair trigger.”
In 1870, Mr. Burdette became affianced to Miss Carrie Garrett, of Peoria, Illinois. She was a frail and delicate young lady, and on visiting her one afternoon, Robert was met at the door by her friends, who announced that she was lying at the point of death. The situation was a grave one, but in fifteen minutes’ time he had procured a marriage license from the county clerk’s office, and Miss Garrett became Mrs. Robert J. Burdette at a time when her responses could only be made by a slight motion of the eyes and a faint pressure of the hand. But little hope was entertained for her life, but she passed the ordeal, and after some length of time rallied sufficiently to go with her husbandon a short bridal tour to their quiet home in a neighboring street, in Peoria. Mrs. Burdette has been an invalid all her life, and the genial humorist has been a patient attendant and companion for her in her dreary hours of life. The major portion of the rollicking humor that Burdette produces, is written at the bed side of his invalid wife.
It was soon after his marriage, when he was doing editorial work on the Peoria Transcript, that Burdette began his humorous writing. He tells of it in his own words as follows: “When I was on the Transcript, I would try to think of something pleasant to tell the folks when I went home at night—something that would make a tea-table lively. And when nothing of a funny nature occurred, I would make up something, such as one of the burlesques concerning the Middle Rib Family. They seemed to be enjoyed around the tea-table, and finally Mrs. Burdette urged me to write them up. I told her that they would sound as flat as dish-water in print—that it was nothing but tea-table chatter, and that she must not be so highly impressed by my nonsense. But she persisted, and so I would occasionally write in a light vein for the Transcript. The sketches seemed to take, and then I plunged into deep water.” Afterwards Burdette said of his humor: “You see, I don’t know how I do say things people thinkfunny, and sometimes I am in a state of mind bordering on insanity to know why people think they are so. I certainly had no school except the wide world, from which to learn the lesson of fun; and, now I come to think of it, perhaps the page was the most instructive that could have been placed before me.”
From 1874 to the date of his joining the editorial corps of the Burlington Hawkeye, Mr. Burdette rose rapidly as a humorist, and after his writings and the Hawkeye both had become famous, he entered the lecture field. His first lecture was decided upon and written by the promptings of his wife. This little episode Robert tells as follows: “One day when she was lying helpless, she said she believed that I could write a lecture and deliver it successfully, and so she sat me down to write that lecture; and from time to time I rebelled with tears and groans and prayers. I told her that I was too little, that I had no voice, that I couldn’t write a funny lecture, anyhow. She kept me at it, and in due time we had a lecture on our hands:—‘The Rise and Fall of the Mustache.’ That was all right enough; now how to get the audience. I thought I would try it first at Keokuk. If I delivered it first in Burlington, even though it were tame, tamer, tamest, I thought they might pat me on the back. ButKeokuk hated Burlington. I thought that if it was flat the Keokuk folks would tell me so. Mrs. Burdette said that, as she was responsible for that lecture, she was going to hear it first delivered. So I carried her aboard the cars. We went down to Keokuk, and they pronounced it good.”
The whole of the United States have since agreed with Keokuk. Burdette has lectured in about every State in the Union to delighted audiences. Taking his age into consideration, Mr. Burdette is very youthful in appearance. He is short in stature, easy in manner, and affable in conversation. He has a low, broad forehead, a black mustache, rounded chin, and dark, yet bright, penetrating eyes. When writing at any considerable length, he scarcely ever has a definite plan for his effusion, and lets it take its own free way from the point of his pen. He has written much in verse and prose, but his humorous descriptions and pen pictures of those he meets in every-day life, are the most readable of his productions. It is natural for him to be funny, and in speaking of the most common-place things he expresses himself in the most humorous way.
Burdette has published two books: The Rise and Fall of the Mustache, and Hawkeye Glances, both volumes commanding a large sale. He has written much for the literary weeklies, and his penis never idle. Among his attempts and successes in poetry nothing equals his touching tribute to
WILHELMJ.
Oh, king of the fiddle, Wilhelmj,If truly you love me, just tellmj;Just answer my sighBy the glance of your eye,Be honest, and don’t try to sellmj.With rapture your music did thrillmj;With pleasure supreme did it fillmj,And if I could believeThat you meant to deceive—Wilhelmj, I think it would killmj.
Oh, king of the fiddle, Wilhelmj,If truly you love me, just tellmj;Just answer my sighBy the glance of your eye,Be honest, and don’t try to sellmj.With rapture your music did thrillmj;With pleasure supreme did it fillmj,And if I could believeThat you meant to deceive—Wilhelmj, I think it would killmj.
Oh, king of the fiddle, Wilhelmj,If truly you love me, just tellmj;Just answer my sighBy the glance of your eye,Be honest, and don’t try to sellmj.
Oh, king of the fiddle, Wilhelmj,
If truly you love me, just tellmj;
Just answer my sigh
By the glance of your eye,
Be honest, and don’t try to sellmj.
With rapture your music did thrillmj;With pleasure supreme did it fillmj,And if I could believeThat you meant to deceive—Wilhelmj, I think it would killmj.
With rapture your music did thrillmj;
With pleasure supreme did it fillmj,
And if I could believe
That you meant to deceive—
Wilhelmj, I think it would killmj.
Among the thousand and one “good things” that Burdette has given us, none contains more of his genuine, characteristic humor than his
NIGHT THOUGHTS.Don’t judge a man by his clothes. Can you tell what the circus is going to be like by looking at the Italian sunset pictures on the fence? Do you value the turkey for its plumage? And isn’t the skin of the mink the most, and, indeed, the only valuable part of him? There be men, fair to look upon, who wander up and down this country, and sit in the coolest places on the hotel piazzas, who are arrayed in fine linen and cardinal socks, and who have to hold their hand over their scarf-pin when they want to see the moonlight, who, unassisted and unprompted, do not possessthe discretion to come in when it rains, and don’t know enough to punch a hole in the snow with an umbrella—new, soft snow at that, without any crust on it. Now and then, son, before you are as old as Methuselah, you will meet a man who wears a hat that is worth twice as much as the head it covers. On the other hand, don’t fall into the error of believing that all the goodness, and honesty, and intelligence in the world goes about in shreds and patches. We have seen the tramp dressed in worse rags than you could rake out of the family rag-bag, and more dirt and hair on him than would suffice to protect a horse, who would step up to the front door and demand three kinds of cake, half an apple pie, and then steal every moveable thing in the yard, kill the dog, choke up the pump with sand, tramp on the pansy bed and girdle the cherry trees, because he couldn’t carry them away. Good clothes or bad are never an infallible index to a man that is in them.
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
Don’t judge a man by his clothes. Can you tell what the circus is going to be like by looking at the Italian sunset pictures on the fence? Do you value the turkey for its plumage? And isn’t the skin of the mink the most, and, indeed, the only valuable part of him? There be men, fair to look upon, who wander up and down this country, and sit in the coolest places on the hotel piazzas, who are arrayed in fine linen and cardinal socks, and who have to hold their hand over their scarf-pin when they want to see the moonlight, who, unassisted and unprompted, do not possessthe discretion to come in when it rains, and don’t know enough to punch a hole in the snow with an umbrella—new, soft snow at that, without any crust on it. Now and then, son, before you are as old as Methuselah, you will meet a man who wears a hat that is worth twice as much as the head it covers. On the other hand, don’t fall into the error of believing that all the goodness, and honesty, and intelligence in the world goes about in shreds and patches. We have seen the tramp dressed in worse rags than you could rake out of the family rag-bag, and more dirt and hair on him than would suffice to protect a horse, who would step up to the front door and demand three kinds of cake, half an apple pie, and then steal every moveable thing in the yard, kill the dog, choke up the pump with sand, tramp on the pansy bed and girdle the cherry trees, because he couldn’t carry them away. Good clothes or bad are never an infallible index to a man that is in them.