Some time ago a Sub-Tropical Dinner was given by some South African
millionaire. I forget his name; and so, very likely, does he. The humour
of this was so subtle and haunting that it has been imitated by another
millionaire, who has given a North Pole Dinner in a grand hotel, on
which he managed to spend gigantic sums of money. I do not know how he
did it; perhaps they had silver for snow and great sapphires for lumps
of ice. Anyhow, it seems to have cost rather more to bring the Pole to
London than to take Peary to the Pole. All this, one would say, does not
concern us. We do not want to go to the Pole--or to the hotel. I, for
one, cannot imagine which would be the more dreary and disgusting--the
real North Pole or the sham one. But as a mere matter of psychology
(that merry pastime) there is a question that is not unentertaining.
Why is it that all this scheme of ice and snow leaves us cold? Why is
it that you and I feel that we would (on the whole) rather spend the
evening with two or three stable boys in a pot-house than take part
in that pallid and Arctic joke? Why does the modern millionaire's
jest--bore a man to death with the mere thought of it? That it does bore
a man to death I take for granted, and shall do so until somebody writes
to me in cold ink and tells me that he really thinks it funny.
Now, it is not a sufficient explanation to say that the joke is silly.
All jokes are silly; that is what they are for. If you ask some sincere
and elemental person, a woman, for instance, what she thinks of a good
sentence from Dickens, she will say that it is “too silly.” When Mr.
Weller, senior, assured Mr. Weller, junior, that “circumvented” was “a
more tenderer word” than “circumscribed,” the remark was at least as
silly as it was sublime. It is vain, then, to object to “senseless
jokes.” The very definition of a joke is that it need have no sense;
except that one wild and supernatural sense which we call the sense of
humour. Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that
is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
It is meant to remind us human beings that we have things about us as
ungainly and ludicrous as the nose of the elephant or the neck of the
giraffe. If laughter does not touch a sort of fundamental folly, it
does not do its duty in bringing us back to an enormous and original
simplicity. Nothing has been worse than the modern notion that a clever
man can make a joke without taking part in it; without sharing in the
general absurdity that such a situation creates. It is unpardonable
conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is
why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit
and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you
must be the Court Fool.
Whatever it is, therefore, that wearies us in these wealthy jokes
(like the North Pole Dinner) it is not merely that men make fools of
themselves. When Dickens described Mr. Chuckster, Dickens was, strictly
speaking, making a fool of himself; for he was making a fool out of
himself. And every kind of real lark, from acting a charade to making
a pun, does consist in restraining one's nine hundred and ninety-nine
serious selves and letting the fool loose. The dullness of the
millionaire joke is much deeper. It is not silly at all; it is solely
stupid. It does not consist of ingenuity limited, but merely of inanity
expanded. There is considerable difference between a wit making a fool
of himself and a fool making a wit of himself.
The true explanation, I fancy, may be stated thus. We can all remember
it in the case of the really inspiriting parties and fooleries of our
youth. The only real fun is to have limited materials and a good idea.
This explains the perennial popularity of impromptu private theatricals.
These fascinate because they give such a scope for invention and variety
with the most domestic restriction of machinery. A tea-cosy may have to
do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends on whether the amateur
actor can swear like an Admiral. A hearth-rug may have to do for a
bear's fur; it all depends on whether the wearer is a polished and
versatile man of the world and can grunt like a bear. A clergyman's hat
(to my own private and certain knowledge) can be punched and thumped
into the exact shape of a policeman's helmet; it all depends on the
clergyman. I mean it depends on his permission; his imprimatur; his
nihil obstat. Clergymen can be policemen; rugs can rage like wild
animals; tea-cosies can smell of the sea; if only there is at the back
of them all one bright and amusing idea. What is really funny about
Christmas charades in any average home is that there is a contrast
between commonplace resources and one comic idea. What is deadly dull
about the millionaire-banquets is that there is a contrast between
colossal resources and no idea.
That is the abyss of inanity in such feasts--it may be literally called
a yawning abyss. The abyss is the vast chasm between the money power
employed and the thing it is employed on. To make a big joke out of a
broomstick, a barrow and an old hat--that is great. But to make a small
joke out of mountains of emeralds and tons of gold--surely that is
humiliating! The North Pole is not a very good joke to start with. An
icicle hanging on one's nose is a simple sort of humour in any case. If
a set of spontaneous mummers got the effect cleverly with cut crystals
from the early Victorian chandelier there might really be something
suddenly funny in it. But what should we say of hanging diamonds on a
hundred human noses merely to make that precious joke about icicles?
What can be more abject than the union of elaborate and recherche
arrangements with an old and obvious point? The clown with the red-hot
poker and the string of sausages is all very well in his way. But think
of a string of pate de foie gras sausages at a guinea a piece! Think of
a red-hot poker cut out of a single ruby! Imagine such fantasticalities
of expense with such a tameness and staleness of design.
We may even admit the practical joke if it is domestic and simple. We
may concede that apple-pie beds and butter-slides are sometimes useful
things for the education of pompous persons living the Higher Life. But
imagine a man making a butter-slide and telling everybody it was made
with the most expensive butter. Picture an apple-pie bed of purple
and cloth of gold. It is not hard to see that such schemes would lead
simultaneously to a double boredom; weariness of the costly and complex
method and of the meagre and trivial thought. This is the true analysis,
I think of that chill of tedium that strikes to the soul of any
intelligent man when he hears of such elephantine pranks. That is why we
feel that Freak Dinners would not even be freakish. That is why we feel
that expensive Arctic feasts would probably be a frost.
If it be said that such things do no harm, I hasten, in one sense, at
least, to agree. Far from it; they do good. They do good in the most
vital matter of modern times; for they prove and print in huge letters
the truth which our society must learn or perish. They prove that wealth
in society as now constituted does not tend to get into the hands of
the thrifty or the capable, but actually tends to get into the hands of
wastrels and imbeciles. And it proves that the wealthy class of to-day
is quite as ignorant about how to enjoy itself as about how to rule
other people. That it cannot make its government govern or its education
educate we may take as a trifling weakness of oligarchy; but pleasure
we do look to see in such a class; and it has surely come to its
decrepitude when it cannot make its pleasures please.