FORMULATION OF THE JEST--EDITORIAL TREATMENT OF
STORIES--SOPHISTICATED VERSIONS.
The literary formulation of the Jest, though it seems to be a matter
which should go without saying, is, on the contrary, an aspect of the
inquiry which presents itself least of all to the mind of the student.
The best artificial anecdote in point of structure is apt to be edited
material, and does not come to our hands, as a rule, _ipsissimis
verbis_, or in the stage of raw unmanufactured goods. For jokes are
customarily delivered by the author rough, as it were, from the quarry,
and before they are admissible into type have to undergo certain
occult scientific processes known to experts--have to pass through the
alembic.
The cue having been given, it does not demand much analytical acumen to
discern in the majority of entries in a jest-book the hand behind the
scenes, the artist’s touch. It becomes fairly easy to detect the fact
that the joke, whatever it is, has not reached the pages which it is
intended to enrich direct from the lips of the utterer, but has been in
the finisher’s laboratory. Something in the texture of the sentence,
or maybe in the wording, seemed to call for amendment. There are cases
where, by rounding a corner or sharpening an edge, the dramatic beauty
of a _mot_ is enhanced beyond common credibility.
This species of manipulation is one from which originals are calculated
to suffer in the ratio of their linear extent; or, in other words, the
briefer a jest is, the less likely it is to encounter the transforming
or embellishing agency of an editor in ambush. Such monosyllabic
flashes as Theodore Hook and Douglas Jerrold were accustomed to
discharge on the spur of the moment afford a certain likelihood of
being pure from the makers; and, so far as Jerrold at all events is
concerned, there are many still living who were absolute earwitnesses
of some of his happiest efforts in this way. His perception and grasp
were almost electric in their rapidity; and the evenings at the
Club, of which he was the co-founder and glory, must rank among the
pleasantest recollections of such as had the good fortune to be present.
A curious article might be written, if such a thing were feasible, on
the progress of jests and allied productions from the mouths of the
authors to the printed page, with a view of the strange scientific
processes employed in adapting the rough material for publication. Men
of wit are, as a rule, not men of letters, or even persons of literary
training and experience; and the _prima stamina_ or germs of their
most felicitous utterances and most interesting anecdotes are always
apt to require the hand of the _rédacteur_. There is almost inevitably
something in the first draft or skeleton of a _bon-mot_, or a choice
piece of gossip, which a critical eye will detect as inimical to its
popularity, as well as to the reputation of the _conteur_. The editor
is the middleman between the manufacturer and the public. He knows
better than the former what he really meant, and better than anybody
what the latter will find palatable. As genuine sherry is too bitter
to be used without a blend, so the _ipsissima verba_ of the ocular
oracle are most frequently treated as a _nucleus_ or a cue; and the
upshot is a description of mosaic, in which the respective claims of
wit and editor are no longer apportionable. The fruitful outpourer of
good sayings may have ceased to rank among living celebrities, and
the scintillations of his genius are gathered into the workshop; or,
if he scatters his treasures during his life, like a prodigal, among
his familiars, it is a marvel if there are not one or two deft hands
waiting to dress the nuggets for the market, and even to wrap them up
so adroitly, that their own father would scarcely recognise them! If
the strict truth could be ascertained, there are hundreds of jokes
floating in the social atmosphere, which bear to their actual makers a
relationship cognate to that between Dame Partlet and the duckling.
Even the merest quips and puns, however, are not exempt from the
profanation of the garbler. He mars them, not in the stealing, but in
the transcription or report. He is joke-proof, or he misses the point
by a hair. He builds an arch, and does not see that he has forgotten
the keystone. This criticism holds good both of Jerrold and Charles
Lamb, two men who have never been surpassed in their astonishing
mastery of the _mot_ in its real meaning and compass. Yet some of
Lamb’s happiest hits have been robbed of their vitality by the neglect
on the part of his biographers of that nicety which is so imperative
in the registration of these casual traits. To omit, alter, or modify
a single word is nothing less than sacrilege and death--sacrilege
to the author and death to his performance. “Oh,” the culprit on
conviction may tell you, “the gist is the same; there is no substantial
difference.” Let him take his discretion back. Is a common carrier to
foist changelings upon us?
The revision of _jeux d’esprit_ for the sake of augmented effect may
be more or less venial; and where the primary object is to amuse, and
no vital chord is touched, the reduction of details to an intelligible
and impressive shape is possibly a benefit to the public, which might
not appreciate the account unground and unpolished. There are so many
hazards and drawbacks attendant on _vivâ-voce_ delivery; and the
editor, after all, only stands to the humourist in a parallel relation
to that which the reporter occupies towards parliamentary proceedings.
He does not render them precisely as he had them from the speakers’
mouths, but as the latter would have given them if they had had the
opportunity of correcting the proofs. It virtually amounts to an
extension of the authority of literature over unwritten matter. The
substance and the quantity are preserved, like liquid poured from a
tankard into a saucer; but the component parts have changed places,
and the record is drafted and printed for future use by a gentleman
who considers that he is a finer judge of your meaning than you are
yourself.
So far, so good. But we are instinctively led hence to the
consideration of a different, yet allied, question--as to the frequent
habit, on the part of narrators, from one cause or another, of
positively tampering with the text of a saying, and falsifying the
sense.
For it is by no means with non-essentials only that your special artist
deals, or even with minor accessories alone. He holds his licence to
extend to the finding you a new hero--one, possibly, who could never,
in his most prophetic mood, have ventured to imagine himself in such a
situation or in such company.
Sometimes it happens that in a comparatively late chap-book we detect a
_rifaccimento_ of an ancient legend.
At Glasgow appeared a small roughly printed tract in 1700, with the
title of _The New Wife of Beath_, in which we are desired to believe
that the text is “Much better Reformed, Enlarged, and Corrected, than
it was formerly in the old uncorrect Copy”; and we are farther told
that there is “the Addition of many other Things.” The preface adds
that the “Papal or Heretical” matter in the former copy has been
omitted in this second edition, leaving nothing to offend the wise and
judicious, “not being taken up into a literal Sense, but be way of
Allegory and Mystical, which thus may edifie.”
We have here, in point of fact, the story and adventures of Chaucer’s
Wife of Bath subsequently to her dissolution; and we learn how, after
a strange series of vicissitudes, including a visit to his majesty the
Devil, who declines to take her in, our heroine finally propitiates
Christ by a profession of faith, and is placed among the elect. It is
a grotesque tissue of piety and blasphemy, presumably adapted to the
Protestant ritual and taste by an anonymous son of the Kirk.
What the reformer suppressed we can only conjecture, since the anterior
impression, with the Popish leaven in it, has not fallen under our
eyes. In lieu of the Saviour, the Virgin was, perhaps, made the central
figure, with the general costume of the piece to correspond. What he
added it is easier to judge; for, looking at the archaic narrative of
“the Countryman who got into heaven by his pleading,” we perceive that
_The New Wife of Bath_ is an amplification of the idea and scheme; and
where the original middle-age story-teller was content with the ordeal
of the Apostles and the First Person of the Trinity, his presbyterian
follower thought it necessary to make the lady run the gauntlet of all
the patriarchs and prophets, and even of our first parents, all of whom
she triumphantly vanquishes, the concluding parley being with Christ
Himself, who is made to come out on hearing the disturbance, and is
overcome by her argumentative eloquence and confiding humility.
With the portentous absurdity of the whole notion, both in its
succincter and more enlarged shape, we need not occupy ourselves. I
merely adduced the circumstance as one of the numerous phases of my
subject; for I presume that no one will seriously question its title to
a place in the semi-jocular category.
Nothing is truer than the passage in Horace:--
“Multa renascentur, quæ jam cecidere ...”
In the mediæval story of the Man with Wooden Legs, who succeeds in
persuading a stranger that his apparent loss was a positive advantage
and blessing, there is a property of permanence; for, as recently as
1885, a boat was capsized, and the only one who escaped was buoyed
up by his artificial limb. This was a recommendation overlooked by
the early _conteur_, anxious as he was to exhibit the unsuspected
superiority of a substructure not prone to casualties, and not only
renewable at pleasure, but useful as fuel when discarded from active
service.
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