THE MARRED ANECDOTE--GAULARDISMS--M. GOUSSAUT--THE RETORT AND THE
PUN--“MALONIANA”--METRICAL ADAPTATIONS--SECOND-HAND FACETIÆ--
PARALLEL VERSIONS.
A singular _lusus artis_ is the marred anecdote, of which the most
familiar specimen is the threadbare story of Goldsmith and the
stale greens. But this was a very old Joe, and seems to have been
first narrated in connection with a couple of scholars, of whom one
laughing at the other because his garment was too short, his companion
remarked that it would be _long enough_ before he got another. The
next person whom he met became the recipient of a version of the
matter immaterially varied, yet so as to give the death-blow to the
witticism. “Jack,” quoth he, “I’ve just heard such a capital joke.”
“What was it?” “Why, I told Tom that his coat was too short, and he
answered that it would be _a long time_ before he got another.” “Well,
I don’t see anything in that.” “Ah! well,” returned the first, “it
seemed a very good joke when he made it.”
Nearer, however, to Goldsmith’s day a very similar pleasantry used to
be current about Archbishop Herring when he was at college. Herring,
having fallen into a ditch near St. John’s, a wag, passing by, called
out, “There, Herring, you are in a fine pickle now!” A Johnian,
overhearing this, went back to his college, and was asked by some of
his friends what made him so merry. “Oh,” says he, “I never met with
such a good story before. Herring of Jesus fell into the ditch, and an
acquaintance said, as he lay sprawling, ‘There, Herring, you are in a
fine _condition_ now.’” “Well,” observed some one, “where is the wit in
that?” “Nay,” replied the first, “I am sure it was an excellent thing
when I heard it.”
Here, in good faith, was a crassitude which Joe Miller himself would
have hardly surpassed in his most Bœotian and opaque moments.
The Gaulardism, borrowing its name from a certain Sieur de Gaulard,
who was remarkable for the negation of everything savouring of
intelligence, strikes one as of an analogous complexion to this jocular
_gaucherie_; and both are intimately allied to the Gothamite drolleries
and ineptitudes, of which the most ancient types have very probably and
very naturally disappeared by escaping registration. The gaulardisms
and their analogues pursue a uniform vein:--
“The Sieur Gaulard, being told by somebody that the Dean of Alençon
was dead, said, ‘Don’t believe it; for, if it were so, I should have
heard from him, as he keeps no secrets from me.’”
“A person, seeing a great heap of stones, said to a friend how much
he would like to have them at home. ‘How so?’ demanded the other.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘then I would build a good handsome brick wall round
my house with them.’”
The mantle of Gaulard must have descended on the President Goussaut,
who, if the anecdotes about him are to be credited, must have adorned
his lofty official position. The rest are as by sample exhibited:--
“Monsieur Goussaut, President of the Chamber of Accompts, was
celebrated for stupidity. One day standing behind a player at piquet,
who did not know him, the player throwing a foolish card, exclaimed,
‘I am a mere Goussaut!’ The president, enraged at finding his name
used as a proverb, said, ‘You are a fool.’ ‘True,’ said the other,
without ever looking back, ‘that is just what I meant to say.’”
Had Goussaut been an English, instead of a French, name, we might have
looked upon it as an inadvertent felicity.
Of course these merriments have their equivalents or survivals in the
later life and literature; and I may adduce as a specimen the question
raised in some company as to the age of Lord Chesterfield, when one of
the party suggested that his lordship must be older than was generally
supposed, as he would be at least one-and-twenty when he signed the
bond which was forged by Dr. Dodd!
Then, once more, there is Mrs. Malaprop, the celebrated _persona_ in
Sheridan’s _Rivals_, who shares with her creator the honour of having
said many things for which neither has any actual responsibility. That
so familiar aphorism, “Comparisons are odorous,” is in a play printed
more than a century before Sheridan was swaddled.
In other words, the gaulardism and Malapropism are of all, time, just
as the intellectual abortions which produce them are. An inadvertence
which may be thought to merit classification among gaulardisms, is
recorded of a German writer (F. von Raumer) upon England as it was, or
seemed to him to be, in 1835, where he speaks of becoming acquainted
with the famous Vicar of Wakefield, and describes his gooseberry wine
as quite answering to the description of it given in the book!
It is very far from being generally apprehended, indeed, how plentiful
and how varied this description of _gaucherie_ always has been and
still remains. Two instances, separated by a wide interval of time,
and entirely distinct in their character, occur to me. In 1615 an
anonymous personage reproduced a tract which Robert Greene, the
dramatist, published in 1592, under a new title and with an original
preface, purporting to be by Greene, in which he refers to works
belonging to a date long posterior to his decease.
My second illustration is from another field and from modern life.
Mr. Alma Tadema exhibits a picture representing a room in ancient
Pompeii, with all the supposed coeval appurtenances; and among these we
recognise patinated bronze vases, the property, not of the Pompeian,
but of the R. A.
This may be as appropriate an opportunity as I shall have of noticing
an analogous type of solecism. In the farce of _High Life Below Stairs_
one of the characters inquires who was the author of _Shakespear_, to
which a second responds, _Kolley Kibber_. We are here face to face
with a piece of small wit, which belongs to the same family as that
where surprise is expressed by some sapient individual at the literary
activity of Mr. Finis and M. Tome; or where the foolish Duke of
Gloucester envied the good fortune of that rich fellow Co., who seemed
to be a partner in so many firms.
I once saw a copy of Thomas May’s translation of Lucan’s _Pharsalia_,
on the flyleaf of which some simpleton had written, “Ben Jonson, from
Thomas May,” in order to lead to the supposition, of course, that the
book had been presented by one poet to the other. This was a sort
of compromise between a jest and a fraud; but an equally ludicrous
inconsistency may be found in _Joe Miller’s Jests_, 1832, No. 1107,
where the familiar anecdote about Randolph being identified by Jonson
at the Devil Tavern is given; and the dramatist, when Randolph had
delivered his extempore rhyme about John Bo-peep, is made to exclaim:
“_By Jasus_, I believe this is my son Randolph!” and we are gravely
informed by the editor that _By Jasus!_ was Jonson’s “usual oath.”
But the complexion of the story, as a whole, is fictitious; and
while I do not for a moment believe that the verse is a contemporary
_impromptu_, I am strongly sceptical as to its claim to the character
even of a contemporary production. There is no ground for accrediting
the poet with the degree of poverty presumable from the description
of his clothes and his need of a trifling gratuity; and the very
texture of the lines is apocryphal. Besides, the narrator first makes
us understand that Randolph was unknown to Jonson and the rest of the
company, and then alleges their identification of him from a specimen
of poetry which could have furnished no clue whatever to the improviser.
I have dwelt on this point because the biographical scrap, so far from
standing alone or being a rare type, is a member of an exceedingly
numerous family, and the stricture has a common application to it and
its congeners.
The Retort and the Pun, and indeed the entire _genus_ of succincter
jests, are least prone to editorial treatment. But, on the other hand,
there are two classes which, from their nature, have a peculiar and an
inherent liability to sophistication--namely, the _Epigram_ and the
_Story_; and in fact the very structure of these ought to be, as a
general rule, a sufficient indication and evidence of their artificial
development. The droll and amusing tales in the old English jest-books
have been obviously woven into a narrative shape by the original
recipient of the particulars, or by some one else more experienced
in the science of literary _cuisine_. The inimitable account of John
Adroyns, who, after performing on some provincial stage the part of
his Satanic majesty, walked home in his theatrical garb, and met with
a complication of mishaps, is an excellent specimen of the professed
jocular compilation by a third person, as distinguished from a piece of
humour delivered to us exactly or approximately in the terms which the
actor or actors employed. So long as a pleasantry presents itself to
notice with honest credentials, there is no ground for complaint and no
source of difficulty; but it is where an anecdote is introduced under
fictitious colours, that the critical inquirer is apt to feel, if not
embarrassment, at least annoyance.
I shall transcribe one illustration of this kind of cross-bred
offspring from _Maloniana_:--
“Few classical quotations have ever been more neatly applied than the
following. Mr. Burke had been speaking in the House of Commons for
some time, and paused. He soon proceeded, and some time afterwards
paused again, so long (which with him is very uncommon) that Sir
William Bagot thought he had done, and got up to speak. ‘Sir’ (said
Mr. B.), ‘I have not finished.’ Sir W. B. made an apology, and
said, ‘As the hon. gentleman had spoken a long time, and had paused
unusually long also, he imagined that he had concluded, but he found
he was mistaken. Some allowance, however, he hoped, would be made for
him as a _country_ gentleman, for--
‘_Rusticus_ expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.’”
If the process by which the passage from the poet, “so neatly applied,”
was, subsequently to the event, spliced to it, is not apparent to the
reader, I confess that it is so to myself; and few things are less
probable than the pronunciation of such an _impromptu_ under such
conditions. Yet we find Malone, a man of the world and a sagacious
critic, setting down the passage in undisturbed credulity and absolute
good faith as a fact within his knowledge and as a spontaneous
performance in its integrity. It may seem very remarkable that its
superficial unlikelihood should not have struck him; but it is the case
that entertaining gossip or laughable traits concerning celebrated
people usually pass unchallenged, even when a slight scrutiny would
suffice to expose their spuriousness either in whole or in part; and
it must be remembered that the bulk of our _Ana_ have come to us
through channels infinitely more open to corrupting agencies and less
discriminating than Malone. But the Jest, in its many varieties, is
indulgently regarded, whether by the general public, which takes the
matter as proven, or by the literary fraternity itself, for whom it
serves as a pleasant relaxation from severer studies.
As it is with the Story, so also it fares with the Epigrammatic
_bon-mot_ or facetious notion thrown into the metrical form. There is
a tolerably familiar one, which carries plainly enough on its front,
when we approach the subject in an inquiring temper, the traces of its
parentage:--
“A fisherman one morn display’d
Upon the Steine his net;
Corinna could not promenade,
And ’gan to fume and fret.
“The fisher cried, Give o’er the spleen,
We both are in one line:
You spread your net upon the Steine,
Why may not I spread mine?
“Two of a trade can ne’er agree,
’Tis that which makes you sore:
I fish for flat fish in the sea,
And you upon the shore.”
The frequenters of Brighton fifty years ago would have been familiar
with the scene portrayed in these lines, which might be founded on
an actual incident or a possible one. The stanzas were, of course,
the composition of a wit of the time, and bring before us a glimpse
of London-super-mare, before it had parted with all the pleasant
characteristics of a Sussex fishing village--when the fisherman could
still come up Pool Valley, and lay his nets to dry on what is now an
ornamental square!
It is now time to turn to another aspect of this many-sided and, so
to speak, ramified subject, and to consider a different phase of the
vicissitudes and metamorphoses which this branch of literature not only
has undergone, but preserves a constant tendency to undergo. It is the
invaluable art of attiring the fresh hero or favourite in the disused
habiliments of his predecessors. It affords a signal exemplification of
the strange and unexpected fortunes which may attend an adventure or a
witticism, as well as of the surprising diversity of uses to which a
capable artificer may apply a single suit of motley. We are looking at
the genealogical side of the question, the heraldic point of view.
No. 67 of the _Hundred Merry Tales_ (1526) treats “of the Scholar of
Oxford that proved by sophistry two chickens three.” In the Jests of
Scogin we similarly encounter “How Jack by sophistry would make of
two eggs three.” It is the identical invention lamely repeated, and
a jest-book of the eighteenth century reproduces it once more as an
episode in the life of the Merry Monarch, where he, Nell Gwynne, and
the Duchess of Portsmouth are the actors, and the Duchess is made the
sufferer.
Again, No. 57 of _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_ discourses “of him
that would give a song for his dinner,” reminding us of the popular
farce, _No Song, no Supper_. Let us set before the reader the version,
as it stands in the volume just quoted, side by side with a second
which is better known. The parallel is curious; and I confess that I am
sceptical as to the later text being more than a literary adaptation
after Jonson’s time. If it was a veritable coincidence, it was an
extraordinary one:--
“There came a felowe “Ben Jonson, owing
on a tyme in to a a landlord some money,
tauerne, and called for kept away from his
meate. So, whan he house. The vintner,
had well dyned, the meeting him by chance,
tauerner came to reken asked him for what
and to haue his money, was owing to him; but
to whom the felowe at the same time told
sayde, he had no money, him, that if he would
but I wyll, quod come to his house, and
he, contente you with answer him four questions,
songes. Naye, quod he would forgive
the tauerner, I nede no him the debt. To this
songes, I must haue proposal Ben very
money. Whye, quod readily assented, and
the felowe, if I synge at the time appointed
a songe to your pleasure, waited upon the landlord,
will ye nat than be who produced a bottle of
contente? Yes, quod wine, and then put to him
the tauerner. So he these questions: ‘First,
began, and songe thre What pleases God?
or foure balades, and Secondly, What pleases
asked if he were the devil? Thirdly,
pleased? No, sayde What best pleases the
the tauerner. Than world? And lastly,
he opened his pourse, What best pleases
and beganne to synge me?’ ‘Well,’ says
thus: Ben, directly:
“‘Whan you haue dyned “‘God is best pleased
make no delaye, when man forsakes his sin;
But paye your oste, The devil’s best pleased
and go your waye.’ when men persist therein;
The world’s best pleased
Dothe this songe please when you do draw good wine;
you, quod he? Yes, And you’ll be best pleased
marye, said the tauerner, when I pay for mine.’
this pleaseth me
well. Than, as couenant “The vintner was so well
was (quod the pleased with this impromptu
felowe), ye be paide that he gave Ben a receipt
for your vitaile. And in full for his debt, and
so he departed, and treated him with a bottle
wente his waye.” into the bargain.”
The details, it will be at once observed, are slightly varied; but
the germ is the same, and the truth appears to be, that a copy of
the _Merry Tales_ had fallen in Jonson’s way, and that he wished to
reproduce a drollery which tickled his fancy, and more or less suited
his case.
* * * * *
To the same group may be thought to appertain Old Merrythought’s song
in the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_:--
“For Jillian of Berry she dwells on a hill,
And she hath good beer and ale to sell;
And of good fellows she thinks no ill,
And thither will we go now, now, now,
And thither will we go now.
“And when you have made a little stay,
You need not ask what is to pay,
But kiss your hostess and go your way,
And thither will we go now, now, now,
And thither will we go now.”
It may seem to some unkind to disturb this and other such traditions
about distinguished persons; but the blame rests elsewhere--with the
bookseller or author, who thought fit to propagate these fictions
and _variæ lectiones_; and the restitution of literary property to
its legitimate owners is among the functions and obligations of the
antiquary.
It was natural for the old booksellers to draw into their service, in
offering a popular volume to the public, some more or less magnetic
name, which might play the part of foster-parent to the jocular
collections of an obscure literary adventurer; but it seems incredible
that any reader or editor should have been found so wanting in
perception as to set seriously down to Archibald Armstrong a jest-book
and a tract, which passed current as his at the time of their original
appearance. _Archy’s Jests_ and _Archy’s Dream_ were palpably the
productions of two professional writers, who followed the common
practice of utilising the capital resident in a departed celebrity.
The rejoinder of Frederic the Great to Dr. Franklin, when he sought
his aid in establishing freedom in America, to the effect that he was
born a prince, had become a king, and would never do anything to ruin
his own trade, is so far entitled to the priority over a somewhat
similar trait preserved of Joseph II. of Germany, “Je suis par métier
royaliste, Monsieur,” that Frederic preceded Joseph in order of time.
The majority of our books of _facetiæ_ contain, however, a reasonable
percentage of matter special to themselves; the unacknowledged recourse
to other authorities is only an incidental form of transgression; and
the cases of wholesale piracy, the extent of the series considered, are
not numerically important. The recommittal to the press of forgotten
miscellanies, with a mere change in the title or the hero, is almost
countable on the fingers.
Some allowance is to be made, as I have said, for the intuitive
recurrence of the same idea, moreover; as where, in _Scogin’s Jests_,
one of the stories--“How the Scholar said that Tom Miller of Oseney
was Jacob’s father”--is the original of the joke enunciated with a
probable unconsciousness of plagiarism or anticipation by the Christy
Minstrels; and, again, as where the account of the gruff old gentleman
and the boy Sheridan is forestalled in that highly succulent collection
brought out under the auspices of Jack of Dover.
In the latter, a physician and a boy enter into conversation; and when
the boy has, as we should say, chaffed his senior pretty freely, the
doctor testily observes: “Thou art a rare child for thy wit; but I fear
thou wilt prove like a summer apple, soon ripe, soon rotten; thou art
so full of wit now, that I fear thou wilt have little when thou art
old.” “Then,” said the boy, “I gather by your words that you had a good
wit when you were young!” The students of _Sheridaniana_ will recognise
a familiar acquaintance here in a strange dress.
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