_High Class Humour.--Mr. Chauncey Depew and General Horace
Porter.--Corneille had no Humour.--A Woman "sans pere et sans
proche."--Mark Twain._
Humour is an unassuming form of wit, by turns gay, naive, grim, and
pathetic, that you will never come across in a vain, affected man.
What, for instance, could be more naive than the following remark I
heard made by Mark Twain at a dinner in New York, one evening? It was
given, of course, in his inimitable drawl:
"I was in the war too--for a fortnight--but I found I was on the strong
side--so I retired--to make the fight even."
* * * * *
There is no country where you hear so many good anecdotes, and no
country where they are so well told.
The Americans are delightful _raconteurs_; they are past-masters in the
art of making those light, graceful, witty little speeches, which give
to their dinners such a unique charm. Then the humour is delicate, the
wit of the brightest. Irony and elegance combine to make these
discourses veritable little literary gems. The Americans have their
heads full of anecdotes and reminiscences; and it little matters in
honour of whom or of what the dinner is given, they are sure to be
ready with anecdotes and reminiscences that are suitable to the
occasion.
The chronicler who draws upon his fertile brain for an interesting
column for his paper every day may choose his own subject, and the task,
difficult as it is, is not insurmountable; but to be able, night after
night, throughout a whole season, to make a witty speech on a given
subject, not chosen by the speaker--this appears to me to be a wonderful
feat. Nevertheless, it is done every year by a goodly number of
Americans, foremost among whom must be named Mr. Chauncey Depew and
General Horace Porter. A banquet is not complete without the presence of
one of these delightful orators.
Here is a specimen of General Porter's drollery--a portrait of an old
typical Puritan, given at a "New England" dinner.
"The old Puritan was not the most rollicking, the jolliest, the most
playful of men. He at times amused himself sadly. He was given to a mild
disregard of the conventionalities. He had suppressed bear-baiting, not,
it is believed, because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave
pleasure to the audience. He found the Indians were the proprietors of
the land, and he felt himself constrained to move against them with his
gun, with a view to increasing the number of absentee landlords. He
found Indians on one side and witches on the other. He was surrounded
with troubles. He had to keep the Indians under fire and the witches
over it. These were some of the things that reconciled that good man to
sudden death. He never let the sun go down upon his wrath, but he, no
doubt, often wished himself in that region near the Pole, where the sun
does not go down for six months at a time, and gives wrath a fair chance
to materialize. He was a thoughtful man. He spent his days inventing
snow ploughs, and his evenings in sipping hot rum, and ruminating upon
the probable strength of the future prohibition vote. Those were times
when the wives remonstrated with their husbands regarding the
unfortunate and disappointing results of too much drink, particularly
when it led the men to go out and shoot at Indians--and miss them. These
men generally began drinking on account of a bite of a snake, and
usually had to quit on account of attacks from the same reptiles."
General Porter was good enough to introduce me to a New York audience on
one occasion.
"Ladies and gentlemen," began the General, without relaxing a muscle of
his face, "I claim your indulgence on behalf of the speaker who is going
to address you; he has to speak in a language not his own, and, besides,
he has not the resource of some of our countrymen, who, when their
throats are tired, can speak through their noses."
* * * * *
Mr. Depew has not a very high opinion of English sense of humour.
This is an anecdote which he tells on the subject.
Mr. Depew and General Porter were present one evening at a dinner in
London. The General had just terminated a speech, and Mr. Depew was
called upon for one in his turn.
"Gentlemen," said he, rising, "I am in a great state of embarrassment. I
had prepared a speech which General Porter, to my great surprise, has
just given you word for word. The General and I occupied the same cabin
on board the boat which brought us to England, and I strongly suspect he
must have stolen my notes."
At this, it appears Mr. Depew heard an Englishman say to his neighbour:
* * * * *
"It is not the act of a gentleman."
I have sometimes heard it said that no man is really great who has no
sense of humour and cannot see through a joke. If this is a rule, the
French form an exception.
Corneille was one night looking on at a representation of Racine's
"Plaideurs." When he heard the fine verse from the _Cid_, parodied, and
applied by Racine to an old lawyer:
"_Les rides sur son front gravaient tous ses exploits_,"
it is said that Corneille exclaimed, in bourgeois style:
"I don't think people ought to be allowed to steal your verses like
that."
* * * * *
American ladies run their husbands and fathers very close in the matter
of wit. Their wit is apt to be a little more sarcastic, perhaps. They
are not women for nothing.
Some people were talking one day, in a New York drawing-room, of a lady
who was making herself conspicuous in society, but of whom no one seemed
to know the antecedents.
"Oh, don't speak to me of her," said one lady as witty as uncharitable;
"she is _sans pere et sans proche_."
* * * * *
Since the death of Artemus Ward, Mr. Samuel Clemens, whose pseudonym of
"Mark Twain" is a household word among every English-speaking people,
has held unchallenged the position of first American humorist.
Mark Twain is a man of about fifty years of age, thin, of medium height,
and having well-marked features. His face, almost surly, is grave to
severity, and rarely relaxes.
The profile is Jewish. The eyes, small and keen, are almost entirely
hidden by thick bushy eyebrows; the well-shaped head is covered with
thick bushy hair. A few yards off, Mark Twain's head looks like a crow's
nest. The voice is drawling and has a decidedly nasal tone. When he
slowly gets on his feet to speak, "tosses his frontlet to the sky,"
twists his head sidewise, frowning all the while, you little guess that
in a few moments this man will convulse you with laughter.
Truly nothing could be more droll than Mark Twain's manner of telling an
anecdote. His jokes, which he seems to twirl out from under his ears,
make straight for your sides, tickle them unmercifully, and set you
twisting on your chair.
Mark Twain has amassed a considerable fortune, not--as he says
himself--in writing his own books, but in publishing those of other
people.[7] If there had been an international copyright between England
and America, Mark Twain would have made a considerable fortune without
going into business.
[7] Mark Twain is the chief partner in the firm of Charles Webster
and Co., New York.
This writer excels specially in accounts of travels. He will not give
you deep thoughts or serious information. He is a charming guide, who
makes you see the comic side of the life he describes, who will pilot
you wherever there is something for his keen observation to glean. His
caricatures are so perfectly hit off that you recognise the original
immediately.
This man of merriment is, it appears, also a deep student of serious
things. His father was long anxious to have him write a life of Christ,
and if he has never complied with his parent's wish, it is only from a
feeling that a volume of the kind, coming from his pen, might not be
read with the reverence such a subject demands.
Mark Twain inhabits a delightful cottage in Hartford, in the State of
Connecticut.