Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Charles Farrar Browne, the First Standup Comedian About this episode Charles Farrar Browne is often called the first standup comedian. He was, in the 1860s, wildly famous, but his early death, and the soaring career of one of his friends, have contributed to Browne fading from the spotlight in history.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.
0:45 Holly Frey? In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.
0:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real.
1:01 Holly Frey? Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.
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2:48 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:58 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
3:01 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
3:03 Holly Frey? This is another, uh, how did that get on my list topic? But I saw it there recently when I was looking at some other stuff and I started looking back at my notes on it. And then I started, you know, doing internet searches for him and I stumbled across a weird brief, it's not a, not a big thrust to the episode, postmortem drama that sprang up and I was like, oh, I want to talk about that. And we'll get to that, but it is, don't, don't get too excited. It's not a big thing. It just was funny to me. But today we are talking about Charles Farrar Brown, who is often called the first stand-up comedian. And he was in the 1860s wildly famous, but his early death and the soaring career of
3:49 Holly Frey? one of his friends have kind of contributed to Brown really fading from the spotlight in history. So we'll talk about his brief career today.
3:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Charles Farrar Brown was born in Waterford, Maine, in Oxford County on April 26, 1834. His father was Levi Brown and his mother was Caroline Eliza Farrar Brown. Their families had moved to the town from Massachusetts and Vermont, respectively. Charles was their second son. His older brother was named Cyrus. The couple also had two daughters, Maria and Ellen, who died in childhood. Not long after Charles was born, the Browns moved from their farm to a large home, which is sometimes described as a mansion. This was a home that Caroline's family owned. Levi was a civil engineer who performed surveys, but he also did a lot of other jobs.
4:42 Tracy V. Wilson? He farmed, ran a shop, and served in the state militia, was also briefly the town constable, and then the town clerk.
4:50 Holly Frey? Yeah, he did a lot, a lot of civic duty. Charles's early childhood sounds fairly idyllic. Biographer Dawn C. Seitz, who we're going to talk about in behind the scenes, described Waterford like this, quote, "So purely New England was the community that it bred plentiful whimsies, many of which cropped out in the writings of the humorist, and to a degree, account for him. Old inhabitants recall small escapades, such as can be told about mischievous boys in most country villages."
5:23 Tracy V. Wilson? But then Levi died in 1847, when Charles was just 13, and those idyllic days of childhood ended really abruptly. Charles's mother Caroline found herself in a tough spot in terms of finances. Although there had been times when money was plentiful, things had gotten a lot tighter in the years before Levi's death, and they really didn't have any money to live off of. Charles later wrote of his father, quote, "My father was a magistrate and lumber merchant, a clear-headed and thoroughly honest man, so competent in his business as to be consulted on all kinds of law questions, and so honest that he invariably had his hands
6:05 Tracy V. Wilson? full of business involving large sums of money. I fear he was a little too honest, for he died poor after all."
6:14 Holly Frey? Charles's older brother Cyrus had already left home to begin work as a printer when their father died. And although he was barely a teenager, Charles also then learned the printing trade, working first as an apprentice. He was put on a coach to Lancaster, New Hampshire to learn the publishing business under a man named John M. Ricks, who ran a paper called The Weekly Democrat.
6:37 Tracy V. Wilson? That first job as an apprentice sounds like kind of a wild mix. He lived with his boss and he had to take a cart all over the county to collect subscription fees from the residents. He was apparently prone to getting into long chats with people and telling them stories rather than focusing on his actual job. The printing office was on the second floor of a building that had store rooms on the first floor, and some of his coworkers had figured out how to run a hose down to the room below to tap the rum barrels so that they could sip from there the way you would through a straw, just sipping on some rum from their second floor chairs. Although it does not seem to be the doing
7:19 Tracy V. Wilson? of Brown, this rum straw setup caused the other employees to get so out of hand that John Ricks fired them all and shut the paper down for an entire week.
7:31 Holly Frey? Charles next found a position in Norway, Maine, which is near Waterford, working at the Norway Advertiser. That paper had 1,000 subscribers, which was considered quite substantial. He also hoped to attend classes at the Norway Liberal Institute to get more education. He did enroll there, but he kind of did more extracurricular things than actual schoolwork. He got involved with the drama club and the school paper. This time, he did not live with his boss, but it was pretty close. He rented a room at the back of the printing office. But the Norway Advertiser went out of business in 1850.
8:09 Tracy V. Wilson? At that point, 16-year-old Charles got a job editing the New Bedford Standard, and he moved on shortly after that to the Fall River News. From there, he tumbled through a series of jobs at various papers, many of which ended when the various offices closed. At the age of 17, he was once again looking for work, and that's when, thanks to a recommendation from his old boss, John Ricks, he landed a position as a compositor at a humor magazine called The Carpet Bag that was in Boston, Massachusetts. For the next several years, he set type for the magazine. And in the process, he got to read a lot of humor writing. He started to think he should try his hand at writing it himself.
8:53 Tracy V. Wilson? So he wrote his own humor piece about a Fourth of July holiday in Waterford. He submitted that anonymously to the publisher by mixing it in with the regular mail. The paper's owner, Benjamin Schillerber, printed it. Charles was elated. He later wrote that he, quote, "thought I was the greatest man in Boston." After that, he continued to submit writing to the paper, initially using the pseudonym Lieutenant Chub. That was meant to be a joke at his own expense because he was notoriously lanky. People apparently always commented on how very skinny he was. One of the other writers for The Carpet Bag, John Trowbridge, wrote of Brown's work during this time, quote,
9:35 Tracy V. Wilson? "His serious countenance veiled a spirit of original and audacious waggonery." One of the interesting things that started happening during this time was that Brown was writing, in a lot of cases, about places he had lived or worked before. And in some instances, that ended up connecting various writers to other publishers and editors, because they all started to kind of get to know one another through Brown's writing. Coming up, we'll talk about a job that led to a huge change for Brown. But first, we'll pause for a sponsor break.
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12:18 Holly Frey? Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.
12:31 Tracy V. Wilson? In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness, and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.
12:42 Holly Frey? Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.
12:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions, and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.
13:04 Holly Frey? Come curious and leave with something you can use.
13:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with GEICO.
13:19 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
14:02 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
15:08 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:28 Holly Frey? After the carpetbag, Brown continued to work in journalism and he eventually had jobs at the Commercial, a paper in Toledo, Ohio, and at the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Ohio that Brown began to develop the character that he became publicly known as, Artemis Ward. And this whole thing started as a joke. Brown wrote a letter to the paper as Ward, asking for some free advertising for his traveling show. Brown later wrote of his time at the Plain Dealer in a letter, quote, "I here commenced the Artemis Ward papers. The selection of that nom de plume was purely accidental. I wrote the first Ward sketch on a purely local subject, not supposing I should ever write
16:13 Holly Frey? another. Somehow, the name Ward entered my head and I used it."
16:18 Tracy V. Wilson? So listeners, you are not going to have the wonder and delight that is the creative spelling that is used in this letter, but I will try to allude to it where I can. So this first letter read in part, quote, "Sir, I'm moving along, slowly along, down towards your place. I want you should write me a letter saying how is the show business in your place. My show at present consists of three moral bears, a kangaroo, a moose and little rascal like twould make your larf yourself to death." Whoa, I did that almost good.
16:58 Holly Frey? You did pretty good.
16:59 Tracy V. Wilson? "Twood make you larf yourself to death to see the little cuss jump up and squeal. Wax figures of General Washington, General Tyler, John Bunyan, Captain Kidd, and Dr. Webster in the act of killin' Dr. Parkman, besides several miscellaneous moral wax statutes of celebrated pirouettes and murderers, and ekled by few and excelled by none. If you say anything about my show, say as my snakes is harmless, says the newborn babe. What an interesting study it is to see a zoological animal like a snake under perfect subjection. My kangaroo is the most larfable little cuss I ever saw. All for 15 cents."
17:43 Holly Frey? Feel like I should give Tracy some sort of award for having to do that.
17:48 Holly Frey? So the backstory for this Artemis character was that he was the manager of a touring sideshow. And his shtick was writing letters to papers, often to try to advertise his traveling waxworks and those snakes and kangaroos that Tracy just mentioned. As evidenced in that sample that Tracy just read, the character's literacy was a bit tenuous. The writing was always full of very odd spellings and grammatical errors, but Ward always touted that he was full of, quote, "Yankee common sense." That also meant that he was pretty racist and he was not too kind to women either. A lot of his jokes over the years about black people or women revolved around his experiences with them being too stupid to understand his humor.
18:33 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1860, Brown got a job at Vanity Fair as a staff writer and moved to New York. To be clear, this is not the same Vanity Fair that runs today. It was a different paper. This is also when he chose to add an E to the end of his last name. Not long after he started at Vanity Fair, Brown found that the Artemis Ward character had gotten so popular that he decided to start giving lectures in character as this sideshow entrepreneur. This was an unusual move, and it's the reason he's often touted as the originator of stand-up comedy. He certainly was not the first person to tell jokes on stage. We have plenty of examples in the archive where we talk about people who were clowns
19:18 Tracy V. Wilson? or jesters throughout history, long before that. But he took the kinds of jokes he had seen MCs do as a small part of bigger shows, and he turned them into one long act on the lecture circuit. He didn't set up the scenario for what it was, which is an act. He just took the stage and started speaking as though he were any other lecturer, though his material often wandered far afield from the topic that the title might suggest and did indeed connect with audiences as funny. His first lecture, for example, was called Babes in the Woods. It had nothing to do with any such topic. It had been called My Seven Grandmothers at one point in development, and it did not
20:03 Tracy V. Wilson? have any relevance to that title either.
20:06 Holly Frey? If an unsuspecting person happened to attend one of Artemis Ward's lectures, they may not have realized that it was a spoof. Brown never broke character and his delivery was completely deadpan. All handbills for the lecture that were distributed to advertise his shows read, "Artemis Ward will speak a piece," with no mention of Charles Brown. His work reads today as sort of clunky if you're familiar with comedy writing. But at the time, it was very unusual and pretty groundbreaking. One of his bits in that early performance involved stopping abruptly, kind of in the middle of the show and saying, quote, "Owing to a slight indisposition, we will now have an intermission of 15 minutes."
20:50 Holly Frey? And he would then give the audience a moment or two to kind of look at each other and wonder at why there would be an intermission in a lecture, before he would then continue, quote, "But ah, during the intermission, I will go on with my lecture."
21:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Mark Twain would later write of the character, quote, "He represented in Artemis Ward an obscure showman, having much of a certain low cunning and shrewdness, a good hand at a story, always ready to turn an honest or dishonest penny, and whose mission was dollars." And of Brown's delivery, he wrote, quote, "His success as a lecturer depended even more on the manner than on the matter. His inimitable way of pausing and hesitating, of gliding in a moment from seriousness to humor without appearing to be conscious of so doing, cannot be reproduced, so that many of his best things read flat and tame in consequence."
21:50 Holly Frey? Artemis Ward became very popular and quite lucrative for Brown. He reportedly got paid $1,600 in gold for one lecture in California. And one of the first things Brown did when he found himself with a considerable amount of money was to take care of his mother. The homestead where the family had been living since before his father died had become encumbered with debts and Brown paid off all of the outstanding balances and gave the property entirely to his mother. He also left his journalism work so that he could tour full-time. And he continued to write articles, but these were one-offs written as Artemis Ward,
22:32 Holly Frey? and he got paid very well for them, often as much as $600 each.
22:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Brown continued to grow his Artemis Ward character by writing books under that name. The first of them was Artemis Ward, his book, which was published in 1862. This was a collection of anecdotes and short writings on various subjects like would-be sea dogs, the prince of whales, and soliloquy of a low thief. This book was wildly popular. It sold more than 40,000 copies, which was huge at the time.
23:04 Holly Frey? And of course, it was reprinted many times after that. Perhaps the most well-known fan of Ward's writing, especially what appeared in Artemis Ward, his book, was President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln reportedly read the entry "High-Handed Outrage at Utica" in the meeting with his cabinet where he presented the Emancipation Proclamation. That story is quite brief, and it involves a visitor to Ward's show walking up to a wax figure display of the Last Supper and dragging the Judas figure out by the feet and then beating the figure. Artemis asked the man what he was doing, and the brief story concludes, quote, "Says he, 'That's all very well for you to say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscariot
23:47 Holly Frey? can't show himself in Utica with impunity by a darn sight, with which observation he caved in Judas's head.'" The young man belonged to one of the first families in Utica. "I sued him, and the jury brought a verdict of arson in the third degree."
24:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Imagine lots of these things being spelled as they are pronounced and not as they're actually spelled in English.
24:12 Holly Frey? Yeah, jewelry is J O O R Y.
24:16 Tracy V. Wilson? And sood is S O O D. This book drummed up more business for his lectures that in turn led to his fans wanting another book. In 1865, Artemus Ward authored a second book titled Artemus Ward: His Travels. It's very similar in composition to the first book and was also very popular.
24:37 Holly Frey? In 1865, Brown, as Artemus, published Artemus Ward Among the Mormons. This is a very irreverent characterization of the inhabitants of Utah, based on a tour that Brown made through the Western US along with his manager Edward Hingston. This also kind of capitalizes on the fascination a lot of people had at the time, particularly on the East Coast with Mormons and kind of this weird obsession with othering them. In an earlier piece of writing, he had referred to Mormons as, quote, "an on principle, the set of riches as ever drew breath in any spot on the globe." Once again, all of those spellings are very wacky.
25:20 Holly Frey? So it was obviously a pretty biased account, although apparently while Brown slash Ward was in Utah, he became quite ill with typhoid and the local Mormons took excellent care of him, which according to his friends caused him to soften his roasting of them.
25:38 Tracy V. Wilson? In his second book, Ward had already written, for example, about an alleged visit to Brigham Young. Quote, "In a private conversation with Brigham, I learnt the following facts: It takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don't do it only once a year and says it is worse nor clean in house. He don't pretend to know his children, there is so many of them, though they all know him." He says about every child he meets to call him par and he takes it for granted it is so. His wives air very expensive. They allers want something and if you don't buy it for them, they set the house in an uproar. He says he don't have a minute's peace.
26:21 Tracy V. Wilson? His wives fight among theirselves so much that he has built a fighting room for their special benefit. And when two of them get into a row, he has them turned loose into that space where the dispute is settled according to the rules of the London prize ring. Sometimes they abuse himself individually.
26:43 Holly Frey? Brown had workshop this material about Brigham Young and other Utah residents on the stage long before the book came out. And in 1864, he even took it to audiences in a totally different format, and that is the panorama. Brown had arranged to stage his panorama at Dodworth Hall on Broadway in New York, which was a dancing school at the time. Like any of his shows, it was not just about the subject in the title, although he did actually talk about Mormons in this one. The advertising he did for it was really, really racist. He hired a bunch of Irish guys from the city to dress in Native American costumes and carry parasols up and down the street that were painted as signage to get word out about the show.
27:28 Holly Frey? The tickets that were printed took a stab at Brigham Young. The print on them specified that the bearer could only bring one wife to the show.
27:37 Tracy V. Wilson? The show itself involved far more in terms of production value than the standard Ward lectures. The lecture segment was largely extremely unbelievable stories of Ward's adventures. On the advice of P T Barnum, he hired two professional theater artists to paint the panorama, working from photos that Ward had from his travels. The show really didn't do especially well, but Ward toured it to Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island before returning to try again in New York. Then Ward decided to ditch the original painting to have another one made, in part because the original proved unwieldy for travel,
28:19 Tracy V. Wilson? and also because he wanted to play up the fact that he was in all this effort trying to satire the panoramas that had been so popular in the US Northeast for years. They advertised the new painting as a work by the old masters. That was comical, not only because it could not be true, but also because it turned the popular imagery for panoramas on its ear. Scenes that were common, like vast landscapes, were made comical under Ward's direction, with natural features painted way too large, and juxtaposed with small details like people getting bitten by dogs. Some of these images were also really racist, particularly representations of Native Americans,
29:05 Tracy V. Wilson? who were shown at one point scalping Artemis Ward. To complete this whole satire, there was even a staged problem where the painting didn't advance properly, and then Ward had to go backstage to noisily correct the problem.
29:20 Holly Frey? Another figure whose fame has greatly eclipsed Brown's in terms of longevity is Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. The two men met when Brown was in Nevada on tour, and they immediately struck up a friendship. Brown recommended Twain to contacts in the publishing industry to get his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" published after Ward had urged him to write it. Initially, it was allegedly supposed to be included in one of Ward's books, but by the time Twain finished it, it was a little too late to integrate into it. So Brown reached out to the New York Saturday Press with the short story, and it was picked up for publication. The two men remained very, very close.
30:04 Holly Frey? They were clearly the best of friends when you read their letters, and Brown is often credited as being a very significant influence on Twain's work.
30:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Brown's next book as Artemis was Artemis Ward in London. That came out in 1867 and Brown was hugely successful in England. He augmented his stage show with a little more production. He had his panorama. He worked with an orchestra on bits of physical comedy. Of Artemis's stage shows, his frequent editor Edward P. Hingston wrote, quote, "With regard to Artemis Ward's entertainment, I have only to say, using a novel and poetic phrase, it must be seen to be believed. It is the manner of the man even more than his matter, which attracts such large audiences. His singularly sparse form, his comic profile, the prominence of one particular feature
30:58 Tracy V. Wilson? of his face, the way he has of saying good things as if perfectly unconscious of what he is saying, and the habit of punctuating his sentences by twiddling a little black cane are all powerful aids to him as a lecturer. In his esoteric developments, he is the most mirthful of men, and those who know him intimately as I do, know him to be as gentle hearted as he is genial, as candid as he is cordial, as true as he is talented."
31:30 Holly Frey? That one prominent feature that Tracy just read about was in fact his nose, which everyone commented was very large. In a moment, we will talk about the rather unhealthy lifestyle that Brown engaged in while he was in England. But first, we will pause to hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.
31:52 Holly Frey? Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.
32:05 Tracy V. Wilson? In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.
32:16 Holly Frey? Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch or a musician before a show, the con- Conversation starts with the official bio ends.
32:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions, and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know it all host, just real people being real.
32:38 Holly Frey? Come curious and leave with something you can use.
32:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.
32:53 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but
33:38 Holly Frey? to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:56 Holly Frey? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and.
34:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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36:08 Speaker 05 Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
36:42 Holly Frey? While touring England, Brown really burned the candle at both ends. He would perform his shows in the evening and then stay up drinking with his English friends, many of them writers for the humour magazine Punch. Ward also wrote humour pieces for Punch during this time, which were lauded as some of the best things the magazine had ever printed. But all of this constant work and partying meant that he was soon physically just exhausted. That exhaustion got bad enough that it was difficult to get through his shows each night, but soon it became apparent that he was not just exhausted, but also quite ill. About two months into his time in England, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
37:25 Holly Frey? After a doctor-ordered stay on the island of Jersey, during which he became terribly, terribly lonely, he knew his days were kind of numbered, and so he tried to get back to London to see his friends. But when he got to Southampton, he was deemed too sick to travel any farther, and so his friends from London went to visit him. At the very end of his life, he asked for paper and a pencil because he had this idea that he was going to write his autobiography. But all he managed was these few lines before he had exhausted himself. Quote, "Some 12 years ago, I occupied the position, or the position occupied me, of city editor of a journal in Cleveland, Ohio.
38:07 Holly Frey? This journal, The Plain Dealer, was issued afternoons, and I was kept very busy indeed from 8 o'clock in the morning till half past 3 in the afternoon in collecting the police reports and other items that might be of local interest."
38:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Brown died on March 6, 1867, in Southampton, England, just a couple of weeks shy of his 33rd birthday. He was laid to rest in a vault at Kensal Green Cemetery in London, in a ceremony that filled the cemetery up to capacity, as every performer and writer in the city turned up to pay their respects.
38:43 Holly Frey? Just a couple of weeks before he died, Brown had made his will, and he had some interesting requests and provisions in it. First, that his impressive collection of books, which he had inherited from an uncle, should go to the boy or girl of Waterford, Maine, quote, "who passed the best school examination between the first day of January and that of April following his decease." He also made provisions for his young, personal attendant to work as a printer's apprentice for two years and then to go to a private school. He provided all of the tuition for that school. He left the rest of his money to support his mother, and the residuals of his books
39:24 Holly Frey? were earmarked to found, quote, "an asylum for worn-out printers in the United States."
39:30 Tracy V. Wilson? The will also specified that he wanted to be buried in Waterford. So, two months after his death, Charles Brown's body was removed from its London vault and shipped back to Maine, where it was interred at Elm Vale Cemetery, in the family plot with his father and sisters. Incidentally, his cousin's daughter Florence Brown was the student who won the Library of Books in accordance with the rules of his will.
39:56 Holly Frey? In November of 1871, Mark Twain toured a lecture about Artemis Ward and Charles Brown, in which he called him, quote, "one of the great humorists of our age." Twain described Brown this way, quote, "His personal appearance was not like that of most Maine men. He looked like a glove stretcher. His hair, red and brushed well forward at the sides, reminded one of a divided flame. His nose rambled on aggressively before him with all the strength and determination of a cowcatcher, while his red mustache, to follow out the simile, seemed not unlike the unfortunate cow. He was of Puritan descent and prided himself not a little on being derived from that stern
40:40 Holly Frey? old stock of people who had left their country and home for the sake of having freedom on a foreign shore to enjoy their own religion and, at the same time, to prevent other folks from enjoying theirs."
40:53 Tracy V. Wilson? One of the things Twain addressed in the lecture was the fact that there were a few pieces of wit in the Artemis Ward repertoire that were later revealed to have been said or written by other men first. Twain details two such instances and then notes, quote, "But in spite of this, Ward must not be regarded as a plagiarist. It is possible for a man to write what he thinks is a creation, but which is in fact only a memory. And it is also possible for two minds at different times to happen upon the same idea." Holmes bears witness to this in the autocrat of the breakfast table. "I myself have written what I thought was my own, have imagined that I have created
41:35 Tracy V. Wilson? something clever and really good, and found out afterwards that the whole thing had been filched from me years and years before by Josephus."
41:45 Holly Frey? In 1891, Charles Brown was revived, or at least his name sure was. He was suddenly all over the papers. And that's because that year, a man named J.A. Brown retained the law firm of Ten Eyck and Remington with the intent of proving that Charles Brown had been his father and had deserted him, his mother, and nine brothers in 1855 to start a new life. Charles Brown officially had never been married. J.A. Brown and his family challenged just about everything that anyone believed about Charles Brown, including the year of his birth. The alleged widow Brown swore an affidavit that she was married to Charles Brown on
42:29 Holly Frey? June 7, 1835. You remember his birthday at the top of the show. That would have been just one year after the birth date, the Brown claimed, and that is in the records in Maine. And she and her sons actually had a lot of sworn affidavits from people in Lexington, Kentucky, that Charles Brown, AKA Artemis Ward, had raised a family there before vanishing.
42:54 Tracy V. Wilson? There was plenty of paperwork evidence to knock down this claim, but even if there hadn't been, this probably would not have amounted to much. Charles Brown's fortune when he died was just not as expansive as a lot of people believed. He had paid for his mother's house and her living expenses, which were not extravagant. And the money that he'd given to pay for his assistant's education had been used in that way. There really just wasn't much else. The family claiming to be Brown's abandoned next of kin eventually seemed to have just dropped the matter. Stories about them in newspapers seemed to have just kind of slowed to a stop not long after that initial reporting.
43:35 Holly Frey? Yeah, there is a whole other thing about like people claiming that he had some very expensive pieces of jewelry and someone saying that they had seen a large sum of money of his when he was in London, but none of that seemed to be true, or if it was, those things had vanished. In 1948, a larger-than-life bust of Charles Brown was sculpted by artist Frank Jourouche and was put on display at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens in Cleveland, Ohio, where it remains next to a bust of his friend Mark Twain. There is also an elementary school named after Artemis Ward in Cleveland, which I kind of like because it's named for an imaginary person.
44:14 Holly Frey? That is Artemis Ward slash Charles Brown.
44:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Yes, do you have listener mail also?
44:28 Holly Frey? You know that I do. This listener mail is from our listener Amanda, and it is a subject that we may have many mails being read about because we've got lots of, lots of answers to it. It is titled, "Non-Goofy Orange Cat."
44:44 Tracy V. Wilson? I knew the topic as soon as you said we'd gotten many emails.
44:47 Holly Frey? Yes, we've got so many and I love it. Amanda writes, "Hello, Holly and Tracy. I just finished listening to Ghosts of the British Isles, Part One, and you asked about non-goofy orange kitties, and I am writing to tell you they do exist. They are a bit of an anomaly, though. I worked in veterinary medicine and as a pet sitter for years and always favored the orange kitties because they were all so weird and sweet. For many years, my husband and I were down to just one cat, which was unusual for us, but I kept telling myself, 'Some sweet orange kitty in need will pass my way soon,' and I waited for the kitty distribution system to do its job. The one sweet cat we had was in her twenties, and we knew our time was limited with her,
45:30 Holly Frey? and suddenly an orange cat showed up in our yard. This kitty kept coming around and eventually trusted us enough to follow us around and get affection. I went door to door and posted flyers in person and online in hopes of finding the kitty's family." After several weeks, this cat was still hanging around, but was getting awfully chubby for a stray cat. Eventually, I lured the kitty into our garage and was able to see that it sure enough was a rare female orange kitty, who was looking very pregnant. Not wanting her to have her kittens outside, we took her in, and after a trip to the vets for a checkup and a microchip scan, we decided to foster her. She had her kittens with us, and we helped her raise them and found them all loving homes.
46:14 Holly Frey? She had three orange boys and one calico girl. We, of course, were foster failures and kept both mama kitty, who we named Mango, and one of her sons, who we called Shrimp. He was the runt and half the size of the rest. Mango has been the most normal orange cat I have ever met. She is smart and sweet and playful, but not the weird goofy that all three of her sons turned out to be. They are all the typical strange, clumsy, silly oranges you'd expect, but their mother is far more graceful, composed, and cat-like. I don't know if that was because she spent time as a stray or just her natural personality, or perhaps this is a female orange cat thing. I have only known a few in my life, but I do feel like the girls have never been as weird and goofy as the orange boys.
46:59 Holly Frey? Anyway, I just wanted to share my normal and goofy orange kitties that we love so much. The one with more white is Mango, and we think is about six years old, and the other orange is her son Shrimp, who is five. I also included a video of Shrimp being the goofy orange boy he is, being afraid of a dryer ball. Thanks for all you do. Your podcast is one of my favorites, and you are both just delightful. Sincerely, Amanda. Okay, these cats, listen.
47:24 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm-hmm.
47:25 Holly Frey? I'm real weepy about kitties lately, and I want an orange cat, so.
47:29 Tracy V. Wilson? No.
47:30 Holly Frey? Distribution system, do your work.
47:34 Holly Frey? Not quite yet. We're not ready for another cat, but, you know, put me, put me on the waitlist. These are so cute, and Mango is absolutely beautiful, and her son does look a little like he might be a goofus, which I love. I love goofy cats. So, thank you. Lots of you have smart orange cats. Some of you have goofy orange cats. I love all the orange cats. Keep the emails coming. You can write to us and share your goofy or non-goofy orange cat, or any other animal, or anything else. You don't have to pay a pet tax, at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the show if you haven't done that before. You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
48:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
48:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.
48:41 Holly Frey? In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.
48:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real.
48:57 Holly Frey? Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.
49:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
49:43 Speaker 05 Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
50:11 Speaker 06 Hey, Molly Ringwald here. Remember when hair was big and everything was neon and you spent all night making a mixtape instead of doing your homework? Well, here's something else to remember. Immune systems weaken as we age, even if you feel totally healthy. Getting your recommended vaccines like pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, COVID-19, and flu can help protect you from getting really sick. Check your eligibility and book at vaxassist.com. Pfizer. Outdue yesterday.
50:42 Speaker 06 Wait, I came in for two things. How is this $47? All right, we're gonna need a plan here.
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