it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or what not. Books are a legitimate cause
of acceptance. If presents be not the soul of friendship, they are
undoubtedly the most spiritual part of the body of that intercourse.
There is too much narrowness of thinking on this point. The punctilio of
acceptance, me-thinks, is too confined and strait-laced. I could be
content to receive money, or clothes, or a joint of meat from a friend.
Why should he not send me a dinner as well as a desert? I would taste
him in all the beasts of the field, and through all creation. Therefore
did the basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not displease me.”
It is hard not to envy Talfourd when one reads these lines. It is hard
not to envy any one who had the happiness of giving fruit, or cheese, or
pigs to Charles Lamb. How gladly would we all have brought our offerings
to his door, and have gone away with bounding hearts, exulting in the
thought that our pears would deck his table, our pictures his wall, our
books his scanty shelves! “People seldom read a book which is given to
them,” observes Dr. Johnson, with his usual discouraging acumen; but
Lamb found leisure, amid heavy toil, to peruse the numerous volumes
which small poets as well as big ones thought fit to send him. He
accepted his gifts with a charming munificence which suggests those
far-off, fabulous days when presents were picturesque accessories of
life; when hosts gave to their guests the golden cups from which they
had been drinking; and sultans gave their visitors long trains of female
slaves, all beautiful, and carrying jars of jewels upon their heads; and
Merlin gave to Gwythno the famous hamper which multiplied its contents
an hundredfold, and fed the starving hosts in storm-swept Caradigion. In
those brave years, large-hearted men knew how to accept as well as how
to give, and they did both with an easy grace for which our modern
methods offer no adequate opportunity. Even in the veracious chronicles
of hagiology, the old harmonious sentiment is preserved, and puts us to
the blush. St. Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar at the gates of
Tours was hardly what we delight in calling practical; yet not one
shivering outcast only, but all mankind would have been poorer had that
mantle been withheld. King Canute taking off his golden crown, and
laying it humbly on St. Edmund’s shrine, stirs our hearts a little even
now; while Queen Victoria sending fifty pounds to a deserving charity
excites in us no stronger sentiment than esteem. It was easier, perhaps,
for a monarch to do a gracious and a princely deed when his crown and
sceptre were his own property instead of belonging to the state; and
picturesqueness, ignore it as we may, is a quality which, like
distinction, “fixes the world’s ideals.”
These noble and beautiful benefactions, however, are not the only ones
which linger pleasantly in our memories. Gifts there have been, of a
humble and domestic kind, the mere recollection of which is a continual
delight. I love to think of Jane Austen’s young sailor brother, her “own
particular little brother,” Charles, spending his first prize money in
gold chains and “topaze crosses” for his sisters. What prettier, warmer
picture can be called to mind than this handsome, gallant, light-hearted
lad--handsomer, Jane jealously insists, than all the rest of the
family--bringing back to his quiet country home these innocent trophies
of victory? Surely it was the pleasure Miss Austen felt in that “topaze”
cross, that little golden chain, which found such eloquent expression in
Fanny Price’s mingled rapture and distress when _her_ sailor brother
brought her the amber cross from Sicily, and Edmund Bertram offered her,
too late, the chain on which to hang it. It is a splendid reward that
lies in wait for boyish generosity when the sister chances to be one of
the immortals, and hands down to generations of readers the charming
record of her gratitude and love.
By the side of this thoroughly English picture should be placed, in
justice and in harmony, another which is as thoroughly German,--Rahel
Varnhagen sending to her brother money to bring him to Berlin. The
letter which accompanies this sisterly gift is one of the most touching
in literature. The brilliant, big-hearted woman is yearning for her
kinsman’s face. She has saved the trifling sum required through many
unnamed denials. She gives it as generously as if it cost her nothing.
Yet with that wise thrift which goes hand in hand with liberality, she
warns her brother that her husband knows nothing of the matter. Not that
she mistrusts his nature for a moment. He is good and kind, but he is
also a man, and has the customary shortsightedness of his sex. “He will
think,” she writes, “that I have endless resources, that I am a
millionaire, and will forget to economize in the future.”
Ah, painful frugality of the poor Fatherland! Here is nothing
picturesque, nor lavish, nor light-hearted, to tempt our jocund fancies.
Yet here, as elsewhere, the generous soul refuses to be stinted of its
joy; and the golden crown of King Canute is not more charming to
contemplate than are the few coins wrested from sordid needs, and given
with a glad munificence which makes them splendid as the ransom of a
prince.
HUMOR: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN.
Nations, like individuals, stand self-betrayed in their pastimes and
their jests. The ancient historians recognized this truth, and thought
it well worth their while to gossip pleasantly into the ears of
attentive and grateful generations. Cleopatra playfully outwitting
Anthony by fastening a salted fish to the boastful angler’s hook is no
less clear to us than Cleopatra sternly outwitting Cæsar with the poison
of the asp, and we honor Plutarch for confiding both these details to
the world. Their verity has nothing to do with their value or our
satisfaction. The mediæval chroniclers listened rapturously to the
clamor of battle, and found all else but war too trivial for their pens.
The modern scholar produces that pitiless array of facts known as
constitutional history; and labors under the strange delusion that acts
of Parliament, or acts of Congress, reform bills, and political
pamphlets represent his country’s life. If this sordid devotion to the
concrete suffers no abatement, the intelligent reader of the future will
be compelled to reconstruct the nineteenth century from the pages of
“Punch” and “Life,” from faded play-bills, the records of the
race-track, and the inextinguishable echo of dead laughter.
For man lives in his recreations, and is revealed to us by the
search-light of an epigram. Humor, in one form or another, is
characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of
social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which
history leaves obscure. The laugh that we enjoy at our own expense
betrays us to the rest of the world, and the humorists of England and
America have been long employed in pointing out with derisive fingers
their own, and not their neighbor’s shortcomings. If we are more
reckless in our satire, and more amused at our own wit, it is because we
are better tempered, and newer to the game. The delight of being a
nation, and a very big nation at that, has not yet with us lost all the
charm of novelty, and we pelt one another with ridicule after the
joyously aggressive fashion of schoolboys pelting one another with
snowballs. Already there is a vast array of seasoned and recognized
jokes which are leveled against every city in the land. The culture of
Boston, the slowness of Philadelphia, the ostentation of New York, the
arrogance and ambition of Chicago, the mutual jealousy of Minneapolis
and St. Paul,--these are themes of which the American satirist never
wearies, these are characteristics which he has striven, with some
degree of success, to make clear to the rest of mankind. Add to them our
less justifiable diversion at official corruption and mismanagement, our
glee over the blunders and rascalities of the men whom we permit to
govern us, and we have that curious combination of keenness and apathy,
of penetration and indifference which makes possible American humor.
Now Englishmen, however prone to laugh at their own foibles, do not, as
a rule, take their politics lightly. Those whom I have known were most
depressingly serious when discussing the situation with friends, and
most disagreeably violent when by chance they met an opponent. Neither
do they see anything funny in being robbed by corporations; but, with
discouraging and unhumorous tenacity, exact payment of the last farthing
of debt, fulfilment of the least clause in a charter. Our lenity in such
matters is a trait which they fail to understand, and are disinclined to
envy. One of the most amusing scenes I ever witnessed was an altercation
between an exceedingly clever Englishwoman, who for years has taken a
lively part in public measures, and a countrywoman of my own, deeply
imbued with that gentle pessimism which insures contentment, and bars
reform. The subject under discussion was the street-car service of
Philadelphia (which would have been primitive for Asia Minor), and the
Englishwoman was expressing in no measured terms her amazement at such
comprehensive and unqualified inefficiency. In vain my American friend
explained to her that this car-service was one of the most diverting
things about our Quaker city, that it represented one of those humorous
details which gave Philadelphia its distinctly local color. The
Englishwoman declined to be amused. “I do not understand you in the
least,” she said gravely. “You have a beautiful city, of which you
should be proud. You have disgraceful streets and trams, of which you
should be ashamed. Yet you ridicule your city as if you were ashamed of
that, and defend your trams as if you were proud of them. If you think
it funny to be imposed on, you will never be at a loss for a joke.”
Yet corruption in office, like hypocrisy in religion, has furnished food
for mirth ever since King Log and King Stork began their beneficent
reigns. Diogenes complained that the people of Athens liked to have the
things they should have held most dear pelted with dangerous banter.
Kant found precisely the same fault with the French, and even the
history of sober England is enlivened by its share of such satiric
laughter. “Wood was dear at Newmarket,” said a wit, when Sir Henry
Montague received there the white staff which made him Lord High
Treasurer of England, for which exalted honor he had paid King James the
First full twenty thousand pounds. The jest sounds so light-hearted, so
free from any troublesome resentment, that it might have been uttered in
America; but it is well to remember that such witticisms pointed
unerringly to the tragic downfall of the Stuarts. Indeed, the gayest
laugh occasionally rings a death-knell, and so our humorists wield a
power which could hardly be entrusted into better hands. “Punch” has the
cleanest record of any English journal. It has ever--save for those
perverse and wicked slips which cost it the friendship of stouthearted
Richard Doyle--allied itself with honor and honesty, and that sane
tolerance which is the basis of humor. “Life” has fought an even braver
fight, and has been the active champion of all that is helpless and
ill-treated, the advocate of all that is honorable and sincere. The
little children who crawl, wasted and fever-stricken, through the heated
city streets, the animals that pay with prolonged pain for the pleasures
of scientific research,--these hapless victims of our advanced
civilization find their best friend in this New York comic paper. The
girl whose youth and innocence are bartered for wealth in the open
markets of matrimony, sees no such vigorous protest against her
degradation as in its wholesome pages. It is scant praise to say that
“Life” does more to quicken charity, and to purify social corruption
than all the religious and ethical journals in the country. This is the
natural result of its reaching the proper audience. It has the same
beneficent effect that sermons would have if they were preached to the
non-church-going people who require them.
When we have learned to recognize the fact that humor does not
necessarily imply fun, we will better understand the humorist’s attitude
and labors. There is nothing, as a rule, very funny, in the weekly
issues of “Punch,” and “Puck,” and “Life.” Many of the jokes ought to be
explained in a key like that which accompanied my youthful arithmetic;
and those which need no such deciphering are often so threadbare and
feeble from hard usage, that it is scarcely decent to exact further
service from them. It has been represented to us more than once that the
English, being conservative in the matter of amusement, prefer those
jests which, like “old Grouse in the gunroom,” have grown seasoned in
long years of telling. “Slow to understand a new joke,” says Mrs.
Pennell, “they are equally slow to part with one that has been
mastered.” But there are some time-honored jests--the young
housekeeper’s pie, for example, and the tramp who is unable to digest
it--which even a conservative American, if such an anomaly exists, would
relinquish dry-eyed and smiling. It is not for such feeble waggery as
this that we value our comic journals, but for those vital touches which
illuminate and betray the tragic farce called life. “Punch’s” cartoon
depicting Bismarck as a discharged pilot, gloomily quitting the ship of
state, while overhead the young emperor swaggers and smiles derisively,
is in itself an epitome of history, a realization of those brief bitter
moments which mark the turning-point of a nation and stand for the
satire of success. “Life’s” sombre picture of the young wife bowing her
head despairingly over the piano, as though to shut out from her gaze
her foolish, besotted husband, is an unflinching delineation of the most
sordid, pitiful and commonplace of all daily tragedies. In both these
masterly sketches there is a grim humor, softened by kindliness, and
this is the key-note of their power. They are as unlike as possible in
subject and in treatment, but the undercurrent of human sympathy is the
same.
Is it worth while, then, to be so contentious over the superficial
contrasts of English and American humor, when both spring from the same
seed, and nourish the same fruit? Why should we resent one another’s
methods, or deny one another’s success? If, as our critics proudly
claim, we Americans have a quicker perception of the ludicrous, the
English have a finer standard by which to judge its worth. If we, as a
nation, have more humor, they have better humorists, and can point
serenely to those unapproached and unapproachable writers of the
eighteenth century, whose splendid ringing laughter still clears the
murky air. It is true, I am told now and then, with commendable gravity,
that such mirth is unbecoming in a refined and critical age, and that,
if I would try a little harder to follow the somewhat elusive satire of
the modern analyst, I should enjoy a species of pleasantry too delicate
or too difficult for laughter. I hesitate to affirm coarsely in reply
that I like to laugh, because it is possible to be deeply humiliated by
the contempt of one’s fellow-creatures. It is possible also to be sadly
confused by new theories and new standards; by the people who tell me
that exaggerated types, like Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Gamp, are not
amusing, and by the critics who are so good as to reveal to me the
depths of my own delusions. “We have long ago ceased to be either
surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything the English say of us,”
writes Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. “We have recovered our balance. We
know that since ‘Gulliver’ there has been no piece of original humor
produced in England equal to Knickerbocker’s ‘New York;’ that not in
this century has any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the
‘Biglow Papers.’”
Does this mean that Mr. Warner considers Washington Irving to be the
equal of Jonathan Swift; that he places the gentle satire of the
American alongside of those trenchant and masterly pages which
constitute the landmarks of literature? “Swift,” says Dr. Johnson, with
reluctant truthfulness, “must be allowed for a time to have dictated the
political opinions of the English nation.” He is a writer whom we may be
permitted to detest, but not to undervalue. His star, red as Mars, still
flames fiercely in the horizon, while the genial lustre of Washington
Irving grows dimmer year by year. We can never hope to “recover our
balance” by confounding values, a process of self-deception which
misleads no one but ourselves.
Curiously enough, at least one Englishman may be found who cordially
agrees with Mr. Warner. The Rev. R. H. Haweis has enriched the world
with a little volume on American humorists, in which he kindly explains
a great deal which we had thought tolerably clear already, as, for
example, why Mark Twain is amusing. The authors whom Mr. Haweis has
selected to illustrate his theme are Washington Irving, Dr. Holmes, Mr.
Lowell, Artemus Ward, Mark Twain and Bret Harte; and he arranges this
somewhat motley group into a humorous round-table, where all hold equal
rank. He is not only generous, he is strictly impartial in his praise;
and manifests the same cordial enthusiasm for Boston’s “Autocrat” and
for “The Innocents Abroad.” Artemus Ward’s remark to his hesitating
audience: “Ladies and gentlemen! You cannot expect to go in without
paying your money, but you can pay your money without going in,”
delights our kindly critic beyond measure. “Was there ever a wittier
motto than this?” he asks, with such good-natured exultation that we
have a vague sense of self-reproach at not being more diverted by the
pleasantry.
Now Mr. Haweis, guided by that dangerous instinct which drives us on to
unwarranted comparisons, does not hesitate to link the fame of
Knickerbocker’s “New York” with the fame of “Gulliver’s Travels,”
greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. “Irving,” he gravely
declares, “has all the satire of Swift, without his sour coarseness.” It
would be as reasonable to say, “Apollinaris has all the vivacity of
brandy, without its corrosive insalubrity.” The advantages of
Apollinaris are apparent at first sight. It sparkles pleasantly, it is
harmless, it is refreshing, it can be consumed in large quantities
without any particular result. Its merits are incontestible; but when
all is said, a few of us still remember Dr. Johnson--“Brandy, sir, is a
drink for heroes!” The robust virility of Swift places him forever at
the head of English-speaking satirists. Unpardonable as is his
coarseness, shameful as is his cynicism, we must still agree with
Carlyle that his humor, “cased, like Ben Jonson’s, in a most hard and
bitter rind,” is too genuine to be always unloving and malign.
The truth is that, when not confused by critics, we Americans have a
sense of proportion as well as a sense of humor, and our keen
appreciation of a jest serves materially to modify our national
magniloquence, and to lessen our national self-esteem. We are
good-tempered, too, where this humor is aroused, and so the frank
ignorance of foreigners, the audacious disparagement of our fellow
countrymen, are accepted with equal serenity. Newspapers deem it their
duty to lash themselves into patriotic rage over every affront, but
newspaper readers do not. Surely it is a generous nation that so
promptly forgave Dickens for the diverting malice of “Martin
Chuzzlewit.” I heard once a young Irishman, who was going to the World’s
Fair, ask a young Englishman, who had been, if the streets of Chicago
were paved, and the question was hailed with courteous glee by the few
Americans present. Better still, I had the pleasure of listening to a
citizen of Seattle, who was describing to a group of his townspeople
the glories of the Fair, and the magnitude of the city which had brought
it to such a triumphant conclusion. “Chicago, gentlemen,” said this
enthusiastic traveler in a burst of final eloquence, “Chicago is the
Seattle of Illinois.” The splendid audacity of this commended it as much
to one city as to the other; and when it was repeated in Chicago, it was
received with that frank delight which proves how highly we value the
blessed privilege of laughter.
Perhaps it is our keener sense of humor which prompts America to show
more honor to her humorists than England often grants. Perhaps it is
merely because we are in the habit of according to all our men of
letters a larger share of public esteem than a more critical or richly
endowed nation would think their labors merited. Perhaps our humorists
are more amusing than their English rivals. Whatever may be the cause,
it is undoubtedly true that we treat Mr. Stockton with greater deference
than England treats Mr. Anstey. We have illustrated articles about him
in our magazines, and incidents of his early infancy are gravely
narrated, as likely to interest the whole reading public. Now Mr.
Anstey might have passed his infancy in an egg, for all the English
magazines have to tell us on the subject. His books are bought, and
read, and laughed over, and laid aside, and when there is a bitter
cadence in his mirth, people are disappointed and displeased. England
has always expected her jesters to wear the cap and bells. She would
have nothing but foolish fun from Hood, sacrificing his finer instincts
and his better parts on the shrine of her own ruthless desires, and
yielding him scant return for the lifelong vassalage she exacted. It is
fitting that an English humorist should have written the most sombre,
the most heart-breaking, the most beautiful and consoling of tragic
stories. Du Maurier in “Peter Ibbetson” has taught to England the lesson
she needed to learn.