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John S. Robb (1813–1856)
- University of Missouri Press
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258 John S. Robb (1813–1856) The most prominent and prolific of the humorists who wrote for the St. Louis Reveille, John S. Robb (whose pseudonym was “Solitaire”) like the best-known humorous contributors to this newspaper—Joseph M. Field, his brother Matt, and Sol Smith—moved to the Old Southwest from the North, seeking opportunities and new enterprises. Presumably born in Philadelphia, Robb, like his father, followed the printer’s trade and worked on or wrote for newspapers in Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans, Sacramento, and most importantly St. Louis. In St. Louis, Robb edited the Ledger in 1842, then became printer for the Missouri Republican, and in 1845, served as printer for the recently established St. Louis Reveille, which, along with the New York Spirit of the Times, became a major regional venue for frontier humor. With the departure of George L. Curry, the assistant editor of the Reveille, Robb was promoted from the printing department to the editorial staff in April 1846. Robb’s journalistic responsibilities with the Reveille included serving as the newspaper’s roving correspondent and writing feature articles. In June 1848, as one of his assignments, Robb took a steamboat excursion north to Fort Snelling , Minnesota, to tour and write about the post, the post commander Captain Seth Eastman and his wife, and various Indian tribes of the area. Robb’s travelogue , which consisted of four letters, was published in the Reveille in late July 1848. At Fort Snelling, Robb met Henry Lewis, an artist who had drawn sketches of the upper Mississippi River, and who accompanied him on a sketching excursion from Fort Snelling, where he was able to observe and report in the Reveille Lewis’s panorama of the Mississippi. In 1849, Robb, in the company of some other St. Louisans, departed from New Orleans for California to cover the gold rush in a series of letters for the Reveille, which were published in the paper between February 12 and October 29, 1849. Robb, however, did not return to St. Louis, electing to stay in California, editing the Stockton Journal and the Sacramento Age. Robb’s most significant journalistic contributions were his humorous sketches and dialect letters, focusing on the eccentricities and way of life on the Missouri John S. Robb 259 frontier. His first humorous sketch, “Not a Drop More, Major, Unless It’s Sweeten’d,” published in the Reveille on October 21, 1844, and his second and arguably most popular sketch, “Swallowing an Oyster Alive,” a narrative about an innocent Sucker from Illinois being the victim of a practical joke, appeared in the Reveille in December 1844; it was reprinted in William T. Porter’s Spirit of the Times on January 18, 1845, and in Porter’s anthology The Big Bear of Arkansas, and Other Sketches (1845). By the end of 1845, Robb had published more than eighteen additional sketches in the Reveille. In 1847 as part of the Library of Humorous American Works, Carey and Hart of Philadelphia published Robb’s only humor collection, Streaks of Squatter Life and Far-West Scenes. A Series of Humorous Sketches Descriptive of Incidents and Character in the Wild West. To which are added Other Miscellaneous Pieces. Consisting mostly of sketches he had published previously in the Reveille or the Spirit , Streaks of Squatter Life, Robb admitted, was the “production of the few short hours outside of eight in the morning and ten at night, the time between being occupied by arduous duties which almost forbid thought, save of themselves.” The book is enhanced with eight wood engravings by F. O. C. Darley and treats many of the familiar subject categories of Southwest humor, including hunts, electioneering, courtship, frontier theater, practical jokes, drunkenness, tall tales, and mock-yokel letters, and one piece “The Pre-Emption Right,” even makes overtures toward portraying an African American slave’s humanity, thereby contesting the racial politics of the time. “Settlement Fun,” the only dialect letter in Streaks of Squatter Life, a missive from Bill Sapper to his cousin, illustrates Robb’s effort to give a common man voice and dominance in controlling a narrative, both what is recounted and how it is recounted. Between April 26 and July 18, 1846, Robb would write eight more Bill Sapper letters, all of which appeared in the Reveille. In assessing John S. Robb’s literary achievement, Fritz Oehlschlaeger observes that he was “perhaps the most accomplished writer of the group of humorists associated with the Reveille.” Texts:“Nettle Bottom...