“Laughter is Wisdom—Tears Are Vain”: A Poem by Robert J. Burdette, Pasadena, 17 April 1899

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

For nearly forty years, Robert J. Burdette (1844-1914) had a national reputation as a humorist, whose lectures and writings reached wide audiences, while he also had a lengthy career as a minister. His last fifteen years were spent in Pasadena and his work with the Crown City’s Presbyterian Church as well as the founding pastor at the Temple Baptist Church in downtown Los Angeles, along with his speeches and products of the pen, made him one of the region’s best-known figures.

The highlighted object from the Museum’s collection for this post is a brief little poem written by him on the letterhead of the residence, Sunny Crest, in which he and his wife, Clara Baker Burdette. Dated 17 April 1899 and addressed to Mrs. Kittie W. Swett, who appears to have lived in New Hampshire, the bit of verse simply reads,

We see in life more joy than pain,

We laugh more than we fret;

Laughter is wisdom—tears are vain—

Says Robert J. Burdette

Basic as this is, the tidbit is classic Burdette, emphasizing a relentless positivity in the face of human suffering as well as the boosting of humor as an antidote to negativity. A longtime newspaper editor and publisher, he became a sensation in speaking engagements throughout the country during the last quarter of the 19th century and into the first decade and so of the 20th, while his books, articles and newspaper columns were also highly regarded.

The Burdette family, lines 20-25, enumerated in the 1850 census in Fulton, just outside Cincinnati, Ohio.

He was born to a clerk and bookkeeper and housewife in the hamlet of Greensboro, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh and near the West Virginia border, but moved with his family as a small child to Fulton, a few miles northeast of Cincinnati along the Ohio River. After several years, there was another westward migration to Peoria, Illinois, where the young man finished third in his high school class.

Within a year of graduation as the Civil War was in its early stages, Burdette enlisted with the 47th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers and worked with the medical corps, serving as his unit fought at Corinth and Vicksburg under a brigadier general returning to the United States Army after a decade of service including during the Mexican-American War, but who was unknown until he scored impressive victories: Ulysses S. Grant. Late in the conflict, Burdette took part in the Red River Campaign through Louisiana and, after war’s end, he returned home to Peoria.

Muscatine [Iowa] Journal, 19 March 1877.

His first job was with the postal service of a railroad, but his talent with chalk drawings led him to go to New York City to study, but his descriptions of the Big Apple for his hometown paper led to an offer, which he accepted in 1869, to work for the Peoria Transcript. In 1874, having recently married, he moved to Burlington, Iowa, situated across the Mississippi River from Illinois, and became an editor of the Burlington Hawkeye. His writings were such that a 1907 biography asserted that, “the paragraphs from his pen, sparkling with wit and genius, soon gave the Hawkeye a national reputation.”

In late 1876, he gave his first public oration at nearby Keokuk, further south along the mighty Mississippi, and very quickly, “Bob” Burdette became widely known as, the sketch commented, “the ability which had made his name famous as a writer was soon as widely and heartily recognized on the [speakers’] platform.” The account added that “his services were in demand in all directions” so that, three decades later, “he is in constant demand” and was accounted the only nationally prominent lecturer “to still hold his audiences alone without ‘accessories.'” In 1877, he published The Rise and Fall of the Mustache and Other Hawkeyetems and followed this with other books, including a biography of William Penn, founder of his home state.

Los Angeles Herald, 31 March 1888.

After his first wife, Carrie, died in 1884, having long had health issues, Burdette took their son, Robert, Jr., and moved in with a sister-in-law at Bryn Mawr, a suburb of Philadelphia, and where he resided for the next fifteen years. He secured a position as a feature writer for Ladies’ Home Journal, while continuing to expand his fame as a speaker, with the biography lauding him for his “influence . . . for the right,” upholding “the standard of public morality,” fun that was “manly and honest,” and advice for the young that any parent would want for their children. It was added that Burdette’s popularity was such that “his ready wit, unfailing aptness, and winning personality are ever sought.”

As Los Angeles was in the midst of its great Boom of the Eighties, Burdette made his inaugural appearance in the Angel City at the end of March 1888 when he delivered “The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man” at the First Baptist Church, situated at the corner of Fort Street (renamed Broadway two years later) and Sixth Street. The speaker recently was ordained and licensed as a Baptist minister. The Los Angeles Herald of the 31st reported that “a large and appreciative audience” was taken with the speaker’s “keen perception, his power to read character and his warm heart.” The paper continued,

Not only does he entertain, amuse and, at times, convulse his audiences with laughter, but his sentences, laden with pungent truths, are irresistible, and penetrate the most obtuse mind. No one can hear him and not be benefited, as well as entertained. It is evident that Mr. Burdette’s mission is not simply to amuse, but to bring more sunshine into the world and to help men see it. No aim could be higher. The lecture last night abounded in wit, humor, pathos, bits of wisdom, remnants of which, at least, every hearer will retain.

Three years later, Burdette returned and the Los Angeles Express of 25 March 1891 remarked that he “is a sunny and wholesome philosopher, in whose humor there is no lurking asp.” It quoted from one of his Ladies’ Home Journal essays in which he “tells us how to live, so that when we are old all will not be vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Los Angeles Express, 25 March 1891.

As he expounded on how to do this, he implored his readers (and hearers) to “be happy and light-hearted, then; but be the house of your mirth as pure as a temple, and your laughter sinless as the song of birds.” Through these expressions, “exalt wisdom” and this would lead to honor and grace so that “the years of thy life be many and thy heart be ever young.”

In two successive editions of the Christmas number of the Los Angeles Times for 1893 and 1894, Burdette made contributions, including a “Christmas on the Road” essay about the celebration of the holiday by strangers on a train. The 11 February 1895 edition of the paper ran one of his poems, “Alone,” of which a sample is:

Since she went home—

Longer the evening shadows linger here,

The winter days fill so much of the year,

And even summer winds are chill and drear,

Since she went home . . .

Since she went home—

The long, long days have crept away like years,

The sunlight has been dimmed with doubts and fears,

And the dark nights have rained in lonely tears,

Since she went home—

On 12 March 1896, Burdette appeared at the Music Hall with his “fun new vehicle” called Good Medicine under the auspices of The Newsboys’ Home, a residential facility for young boys hawking newspapers on Angel City street corners. The following day, he was an honored guest at the influential Friday Morning Club, comprised of prominent women, and shared the speakers’ rostrum with Susan B. Anthony, the champion of the abolition of slavery, alcohol temperance, and woman suffrage.

Los Angeles Times, 22 December 1893.

After “Aunt Susan” was introduced by club president Caroline M. Severance and gave a short and well-received address, Burdette praised Anthony and spoke about the roles of women and men so that, while the latter might be a simple shoe seller, he’d need clerks, bookkeepers, stenographers and porters, “yet his wife is expected to be a cook, a housekeeper, a kindergartner [teacher], a seamstress, and a thousand other things.”

The Express of 13 March recorded that “his speech was brilliant, with anecdote, rich with story, and kept the ladies in a ripple of laughter from start to finish.” Moreover, it was observed that Burdette finished “with a charming tribute to the new woman” and expected that he would later be able to talk to the Club “when the women would be American citizens of the body politic,” meaning, of course, having the right to vote.

Express, 4 March 1896.

Burdette returned for a lengthy stay in 1898, but, rather than do so in the late winter as usual, he spent a longer period in the late spring and early summer. In advance of this trip, the Pomona Progress of 21 April reprinted a short bit of wit and wisdom about the good things in life that came cheap, including “spring water [that] costs less than whisky” and “a box of cigars [that] will buy two or three Bibles,” while he added that a poker hand could, in half a minute, cost more than a “church subscription in three years.”

When the renowned orator was in Pasadena to address the students of the Throop Polytechnic Institute, now the California Institute of Technology, which was founded several years prior, the Times of 23 June added that Burdette “is a guest of Mrs. P.C. Baker,” who held a reception in honor of her distinguished guest. At the end of the year, however, Clara Baker, a two-time widower who inherited a substantial fortune and a large house called Sunny Crest on South Orange Grove Boulevard, in what was later known as “Millionaire’s Row,” was in Rochester, New York to visit Anthony and was joined by Burdette.

Express, 13 March 1896.

On Valentine’s Day 1899, the Times reported that Burdette accepted the position of temporary pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Pasadena, with it being noted that “last summer he spent several weeks here, the guest of Mrs. P.C. Baker” but “little thought he would come back to take up the ministry here,” especially as he was ordained as a Baptist minister. On the 22nd, the Los Angeles Record finally revealed what was obviously, that Baker and Burdette were to marry, with it being added that the two “are life-long friends.”

It was further stated that the couple planned to tie the knot after the first of April and, on 20 March, the Record provided details on their connection, stating that, two decades prior, Burdette was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to deliver an oration and Baker, then married to Professor of Greek Nathaniel M. Wheeler, “stood in the pulpit beside the humorist philosopher and read the hymns.” It was added that, as she delivered the elocution, Burdette “well night forgot his text” and told the Chicago Journal that “it was the first time that I ever heard a hymn read.”

Los Angeles Record, 20 March 1899.

The account noted that Burdette was a frequent visitor in the Wheeler household until the academic’s failing health led him and Clara to move to Pasadena, though he soon died. She then married Col. Presley C. Baker, who fought for the Confederacy and was an attorney in Galveston, Texas before coming to Pasadena, also for health reasons. He and Clara had just completed Sunny Crest when he died in 1893. After this, “Mrs. Baker and Burdette kept up the old friendship” by correspondence and occasional visits to each other’s home in the Crown City and Bryn Mawr until “a deeper attachment” formed and they decided to wed.

Burdette arrived in Pasadena on 24 March and went to stay with a friend, Dr. Norman Bridge, but a surprise maneuver was executed the following day in which a small group of fifteen persons were invited by Baker to a luncheon only to learn upon arrival that the repast was a nuptial feast. The Times of the 26th thought it important to tell readers that the event was a marriage not a wedding, while the Record of the 25th reported “the wedding was a very quiet one” with the house modestly decorated, though Clara “was richly gowned and was regal in appearance.”

Record, 25 March 1899.

The Express of 31 March quoted from the Pasadena News and its enthusiastic welcome of Burdette as a newly minted Crown City resident, with it proclaimed,

Jolly, happy Bob, you have made us laugh and cry, and cry and laugh, and now it tickles us all over to think that Pasadena, the home of the fair widows and orange blossoms, is now going to claim you as its own. Your bewhiskered stories and your ancient jokes will all seem new to us . . . Welcome, thrice welcome, dear Bob, for we are as happy as a baker’s boy to have you among us.

The Burdettes had a brief honeymoon in Santa Barbara before returning the day before the new pastor’s debut at the Presbyterian Church for an Easter Sunday sermon that was quoted in full in local papers. The Times of 3 April commented that the church was overfull and some people were outside and in side rooms and parlors to hear what “was full of poetry and feeling” as the minister expounded on Hosea 8:14 and its admonition of the redemption of the dead to eternal life.

Times, 3 April 1899.

Burdette asked the congregation whether St. Paul should be referred to in past or present tense and inquired if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were not living in the hearts of people, while wondering “Doesn’t the name of Robert E. Lee thrill a million hearts today?” If this sounds strange coming from a Union veteran (whose wife was the widow of a Confederate officer) who fought under the commanding general who accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, it appears that the pastor didn’t see a reason to distinguish between the rebel commander-in-chief and the President martyred just after the war’s end.

In any case, there is more to the Burdette story (for Clara, as well as Robert), so we’ll pick up more of those tales at later dates with artifacts from the Museum’s holdings featured in those posts.

3 thoughts

  1. Fascinating post — Burdette embodied a brand of 19th century optimism that feels so American! His ability to transcend and transform the recent bitterness (Civil War!) is quite stunning.

  2. Hi Michele, thanks for the comment and it is remarkable to see how popular Burdette became during a time of transformation after the war and as the country moved towards an urban industrial economy with a faster pace of life and the stresses and conflicts that were part of the time. We’ll certainly look to talk about him and Clara, as well, in future posts.

  3. The line from Bob Burdette’s poem, “The long, long days have crept away like years,” resonated deeply with me, echoing the sentiment captured in the Chinese idiomatic expression: “度日如年.” This Chinese phrase vividly portrays the experience of enduring a challenging day that feels as long as a year. It’s truly fascinating how languages from diverse cultures can convey similar emotions using distinct words.

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