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Francis James Robinson (1820–1872)
- University of Missouri Press
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299 Francis James Robinson (1820–1872) Born in Georgia in 1820,Francis James Robinson,using the pseudonym Kauphy, published in Athens, Georgia, a collection of seven humorous sketches, Kups of Kauphy: A Georgia Book in Warp and Woof in 1853. Robinson acknowledges in his preface that two of the “kups”—“Snipe Pie” and the “Fright’d Serenaders, or the B’hoys in a Fix,” the latter a sketch featuring rural youthful pranksters possibly inspired by Washington Irving’s“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”—had been published previously in newspapers. His book published “at the solicitation of many kind friends,” Robinson paid homage to fellow Georgians Augustus Baldwin Longstreet and William Tappan Thompson, who preceded him in the field of antebellum southern humor and who achieved popularity in the genre. In explaining the intended purpose of his book, Robinson writes, half whimsically, that it is his “fond hope . . . that the Kauphy will exhilarate, without intoxication —amuse, while it may instruct, and convey a pleasure, if no more than momentary , upon those who may imbibe.” If one is willing to “imbibe,” Robinson further notes,“either at the concoction or the concoctor—no matter which, so you laugh at something; a hearty cachinnation being far better for your health and happiness than a whole “box of pills” or a quart bottle of “Schnapps.” “Old Jack C—,” one of the sketches in Kups of Kauphy, features an African American slave as the central character who was based on a real-life waiter in Madison, Georgia. In the tale, Jack serves as a vehicle to initiate situations that function so readers can experience the therapeutic effects of laughter. Though seemingly a stereotype, Jack shows that he is much more, actually transgressive in his display of ingenuity in duping white men, thereby proving himself to be more clever and more capable than they are. Moreover, Robinson gives Jack a dominant voice, allowing the slave the freedom to speak in his own vernacular tongue, saying openly what seems to be on his mind. As a staunch advocate of slavery, critic of abolitionists, and owner of slaves, Robinson, despite intrusive editorial commentary espousing traditional southern views of African American inferiority, actually shows that Jack, as a prankster, has found a way to get along in a racist society without seriously having to compromise his personal individuality. 300 Southern Frontier Humor Robinson’s observation about the therapeutic benefits of humor is appropriate because he was a dentist, practicing in Lexington, Georgia, and he may have found laughter relieved his patients’ pain. At various times in the 1860s and early 1870s, Robinson also served Oglethorpe County in several public capacities as clerk of inferior court, clerk of superior court, ordinary, school commissioner, and justice of the peace. In addition, like many other Old Southwest humorists, he wrote for several newspapers in his native state, such as the Southern Banner in Athens and the Augusta National Republican in the 1860s. While he was clerk of superior court in 1863 in Oglethorpe County, he wrote a patriotic notice for the Southern Banner, urging the county’s women to support the appeal by General Foster, the quartermaster general of Georgia, to knit winter socks for local Confederate soldiers. In 1868, for several months, Robinson served as local editor of the National Republican, which helped to elect Rufus B. Bullock as the governor of Georgia. Soon after, in a letter to Bullock, dated June 29, 1868, concerning the presidential campaign, Robinson, who wanted to be the editor of the National Republican, became disenchanted because Bullock apparently would not endorse him for this position. Expressing his displeasure with the newspaper, Robinson announced that he was resigning from the staff. While as a whole the sketches in Kups of Kauphy do not compare with the best in Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes or the vernacular epistles that comprise Thompson ’s Major Jones’s Courtship, Robinson’s handling of scene, plot conventions, dialect, and stylistics shows his keen familiarity with the genre of Old Southwest humor and his ability to employ these materials so that his most memorable characters, such as Old Jack, can speak in their own voices, “us[ing] their own language in portraying their individuality.” Texts: “Lije Benadix,” and “Old Jack C—,” in Kups of Kauphy: A Georgia Book, in Warp and Woof, Containing Tales, Incidents, etc. of the “Empire State of the South” (Athens, GA: Christy & Chelsea, 1853). Lije Benadix In the year 18— there vegetated a specimen of the genus homo, in...