THE HUMORIST
Humour is the instrument of the critic. If the psychological explanation
of laughter be, as some have supposed, the sight of "a teleological
being suddenly behaving in an ateleological manner," then the mere act
of laughter is in itself an act of comparison and of criticism. The true
castigator of morals has never striven to make his subjects appear
disgraceful, but to make them appear ridiculous. Except in the case of
positive crime, for example, murder or treason, the true instrument of
the censor is burlesque. It fails him only when his subject is
consciously and deliberately breaking a moral law: it is irresistible
when its target is a false moral law or convention of morals set up to
protect anti-social practices. Among these we may reckon bribery of
politicians, oppression of the poor, vulgar ostentation, the habit of
adultery and the writing of bad verse. Aristophanes, Moliere, Byron, and
Dickens--these attempted to correct the social vices of their times by
laughter.
But humorous literature is not wholly confined to such practical ends.
We may derive pleasure from reading literary criticism for its own sake
and not for the purpose of knowing what books to read: we also gain and
require a pure pleasure from that constant criticism of human things
which we call humour. It remains a function of criticism, as may be seen
from the simple fact that no man was ever a good critic of anything
under the sun who had not a sense of humour. It is a perpetual
commentary on life, a constant guide to sanity. And a good joke, like a
good poem, enlarges the boundaries of the spirit and puts us in touch
with infinity. But too much abstract disquisition on the subject of
humour is a frequent cause of the lack of it.
Mr. Belloc's first essays in humour were not of the satirical or
purposeful sort: unless we consider an obscure volume called _Lambkin's
Remains_ to be of this nature. The author has kept in affection, it
would seem, only one of these compositions sufficiently to reprint it
out of a volume which can hardly now be obtained. Mr. Lambkin's poem,
written for the Newdigate Prize in 1893 on the prescribed theme for that
year, "The Benefits of the Electric Light," might fairly be considered a
warning to the examiners to set their subject with care.
The first of his popular essays in amusement, the one by which--owing to
an accident of music--he is still best known, though anonymously, to a
large public, is _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_. Successors in a
similar manner are _More Beasts for Worse Children_ (delightful title),
_A Moral Alphabet_, and _Cautionary Tales for Children_. These are
successful books for children, of a great popularity, and may be read
with considerable pleasure by elder persons.
To define the particular quality which makes them good is more than a
little difficult. It is much easier to analyse and expose the virtues
of the most affecting poetry than to explain what moves us in the
mildest piece of humour. This is amply proved by the fact that
innumerable volumes exist on the origin of comedy and the cause of
laughter, and there are more to come: while, roughly speaking, even
philosophers are agreed as to the manner in which serious poetry touches
us.
A great deal, too, of the appeal of these pieces is due to the
illustrations of B. T. B. which complement the text with an apt and
grotesque commentary. The pleasure given by the verse, perhaps, if one
may handle so delicate and trifling a thing, lies in a sort of
inconsequence and unexpectedness. Witness the poem on the Yak:
Then tell your Papa where the Yak can be got,
And if he is awfully rich
He will buy you the creature--
(The reader now turns over the page.)
Or else
he will _not_.
(I cannot be positive which.)
Or it may reside in mere genial idiocy, as in _The Dodo_:
The Dodo used to walk around
And take the sun and air.
The Sun yet warms his native ground--
The Dodo is not there!
The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb--
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.
This is the quality which chiefly inspires the _Cautionary Tales_, that
admirable series of biographies. "_Matilda, Who told Lies and was Burned
to Death_" is perhaps too well known to quote, but we may extract a
passage from "_Lord Lundy, who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and
thereby ruined his Political Career_":
It happened to Lord Lundy then,
As happens to so many men:
Towards the age of twenty-six,
They shoved him into politics;
In which profession he commanded
The income that his rank demanded
In turn as Secretary for
India, the Colonies and War.
But very soon his friends began
To doubt if he were quite the man:
Thus, if a member rose to say
(As members do from day to day),
"Arising out of that reply...!"
Lord Lundy would begin to cry.
A hint at harmless little jobs
Would shake him with convulsive sobs,
While as for Revelations, these
Would simply bring him to his knees
And leave him whimpering like a child.
This genial idiocy, this unexpectedness and inconsequence, are perhaps
the most characteristic qualities of his freest humour elsewhere. Take,
for example, the flavour of this singular remark from _The Four Men_.
Grizzlebeard is telling, according to his oath, in a most serious
fashion the story of his first love. He says:
"I learnt ... that she had married a man whose fame had long been
familiar to me, a politician, a patriot, and a most capable
manufacturer.... Then strong, and at last (at such a price) mature,
I noted the hour and went towards the doors through which she had
entered perhaps an hour ago in the company of the man with whose
name she had mingled her own."
_Myself._ "What did he manufacture?"
_Grizzlebeard._ "Rectified lard; and so well, let me tell you, that
no one could compete with him."
Let the reader explain, if he can, the comic effect of that startling
irrelevance; we cannot, but it is characteristic.
It is some effect of dexterity with words, some happy spring of
inconsequence, which produces this particular kind of joke. A certain
exuberance in writing which plainly intoxicates the writer and carries
the reader with it, is at the bottom of humour of this sort. What is it
that causes us to smile at the following passage, a disquisition on the
aptitude of the word "surprising"?
An elephant escapes from a circus and puts his head in at your
window while you are writing and thinking of a word. You look up.
You may be alarmed, you may be astonished, you may be moved to
sudden processes of thought; but one thing you will find about it,
and you will find out quite quickly, and it will dominate all your
other emotions of the time: the elephant's head will be surprising.
You are caught. Your soul says loudly to its Creator: "Oh, this is
something new!"
One might suggest that psychological analysis with an example so absurd
provokes the sense of the comic, but it is not quite that. It is not
Heinesque irony, the concealment of an insult, nor Wilde's paradox, the
burlesque of a truth. It is merely comic: a humorous facility in the use
of words, though not barren as such things are apt to be, but quite
common and human. The philosophical rules of laughter do not explain it:
but it is funny.
Something of the same attraction rests in a quite absurd essay, wherein
Mr. Belloc describes how he was waylaid by an inventor and, having
suffered the explanations of the man, retaliated with advice as to the
means to pursue to get the new machine adopted. The technical terms
invented for both parties to the dialogue are deliciously idiotic, a
sort of exalted abstract play with the dictionary of technology.
In descriptions of persons we are on safer ground, and the reader, if he
still care, after all we have said, for such-like foolishness, may
explain these jokes by the incongruity of teleological beings acting in
an ateleological manner. We are determined to be content in picking out
passages that amuse us and in commenting on them but by no means
explaining them.
Mr. Belloc himself has invented or recorded the distinction between
things that would be funny anyhow, and things that are funny because
they are true. Most of his jokes fall into the second category. The
German baron at Oxford, the gentleman who asked when and for what action
Lord Charles Beresford received his title, the poet who wrote a poem
containing the lines:
Neither the nations of the East, nor the nations of the West,
Have thought the thing Napoleon thought was to their interest,
all these people are admirably funny because they do, or very well
might, exist. In fact, most of Mr. Belloc's humour is observation, a
slow delicate savouring of human stupidity and pretence.
The sporadic stories in his books are funny because, at least, we can
believe them to be true. Read this from _Esto Perpetua_:
An old man, small, bent, and full of energy opened the door to
me.... "I was expecting you," he said. I remembered that the driver
had promised to warn him, and I was grateful.
"I have prepared you a meal," he went on. Then, after a little
hesitation, "It is mutton: it is neither hot nor cold." ... He
brought me their very rough African wine and a loaf, and sat down
opposite me, looking at me fixedly under the candle. Then he said:
"To-morrow you will see Timgad, which is the most wonderful town in
the world."
"Certainly not to-night," I answered; to which he said, "No!"
I took a bite of the food, and he at once continued rapidly:
"Timgad is a marvel. We call it 'the marvel.' I had thought of
calling this house 'Timgad the Marvel,' or, again, 'Timgad
the----'"
"Is this sheep?" I said.
"Certainly," he answered. "What else could it be but sheep?"
"Good Lord!" I said, "it might be anything. There is no lack of
beasts on God's earth." I took another bite and found it horrible.
"I desire you to tell me frankly," said I, "whether this is goat.
There are many Italians in Africa, and I shall not blame any man
for giving me goat's flesh. The Hebrew prophets ate it and the
Romans; only tell me the truth, for goat is bad for me."
He said it was not goat. Indeed, I believed him, for it was of a
large and terrible sort, as though it had roamed the hills and
towered above all goats and sheep. I thought of lions, but
remembered that their value would forbid their being killed for the
table. I again attempted the meal, and he again began:
"Timgad is a place----"
At this moment a god inspired me, and I shouted, "Camel!" He did
not turn a hair. I put down my knife and fork, and pushed the plate
away. I said:
"You are not to be blamed for giving me the food of the country,
but for passing it under another name."
He was a good host and did not answer. He went out, and came back
with cheese. Then he said, as he put it down before me:
"I do assure you it is sheep," and we discussed the point no more.
That is an amusing episode and wholly characteristic. The humour of Mr.
Belloc's books, particularly of his books of travel, resides in a
quantity of such tales, not acutely and extravagantly funny, but all
amusing because they are all (apparently) true.
With that more practical branch of humour, satire, the angle of view
shifts a little. The power of making laughter becomes here a weapon, and
its hostile purpose, as it were, sharpens the point. Mr. Belloc's satire
has a hardness and a precision lacking in the broad and general effects
of his quite irresponsible humour.
All satire, as we have said, has a definite moral intent, whether it be
to restrain a corrupt politician or a bad poet, and this makes it
serious, sometimes painful, always, in failure, heavy and unpleasant.
The little book called _The Aftermath: or Caliban's Guide to Letters_ is
not altogether a success. One might believe that Mr. Belloc's disgust
with the tricks of journalism has killed, as never his disgust with the
tricks of government, his sense of joy in human pretence. These
sketches, by just a little, fail to give one a feeling of rejoicing in
the author's wit: they seem bitter, strained, and, while one appreciates
the justice of the serious charge, the humour which was to carry it off,
becomes from time to time heavy and lifeless. It is even a depressing
book: but this may be because the deepest rooted of our illusions,
deeper than the illusion about politics, is the illusion concerning the
cleverness of authors.
The skit, written with Mr. G. K. Chesterton, on the proceedings of the
Tariff Reform Commission, is, on the other hand, one shout of laughter:
as though that singular inquiry could not raise bitterness or indeed any
emotion but delight in the breasts of true observers of humanity. It is
a pity it is no longer obtainable.
The two or three satirical poems show a very definite and determined
purpose, a sort of ugly competent squaring of the fists, a fighting that
pleases by clean hard hitting.
It must have been a great pleasure to Mr. Belloc to write:
We also know the sacred height
Up on Tugela side,
Where the three hundred fought with Beit
And fair young Wernher died.
* * * * *
The little empty homes forlorn,
The ruined synagogues that mourn
In Frankfort and Berlin;
We knew them when the peace was torn--
We of a nobler lineage born--
And now by all the gods of scorn
We mean to rub them in.
It must have been a great relief, too, to have planted such sound and
swinging blows on the enemy's person. The enemy is not appreciably
inconvenienced, but--Mr. Belloc has probably told himself--a few have
chuckled, and that begins it.
In such a way we come naturally to the five satirical novels, obviously
an illustration of the passage in _The Party System_, where Mr. Belloc
advocates the annulling of political evils by laughing at them. It is
not our business here to analyse these compositions from the point of
view of considering the amount of political usefulness they may have
achieved. We must consider rather Mr. Belloc's fine, contented industry
in his satiric task, the persistence with which he builds up his
instrument of destruction.
The method in these books is exclusively ironic. Never does the writer
overtly state that he seeks to drag down a system which he hates by
laughter. In _Emmanuel Burden_, that extraordinary book, the severity of
the method is extreme, almost overwhelming. The author supposes himself
to be writing a biography especially designed to uphold the principles
of "Cosmopolitan Finance--pitiless, destructive of all national ideals,
obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition": and he
preserves that pose consistently.
Elsewhere, for example, in _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, the pretence is
less elaborate: winks and nudges to the reader are permitted, and the
whole effect is less careful and more human, less bitter and more
humorous. But the general tone is maintained throughout the five books,
discussing the same characters who appear and reappear, the Peabody Yid,
Mary Smith, the young and popular Prime Minister, "Methlinghamhurtht,
Clutterbuck that wath," and the excellent Mr. William Bailey, who had
the number 666 on his shirts, subscribed to anti-Semitic societies on
the Continent and cherished with a peculiar affection _The Jewish
Encyclopaedia_. Such a preservation of tone is admirable, for it is a
subtly restrained acidity, requiring either intense and unremitting care
(which seems unlikely) or a special adjustment of temperament. It is
very Gaulish, it must have been modelled on Voltaire: but it is also
enlivened with flashes of irresponsibility that are the author's own.
To have composed five such volumes as, taking them in order, _Emmanuel
Burden_, _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, _A Change in the Cabinet_, _Pongo
and the Bull_, and _The Green Overcoat_, is an achievement of a very
remarkable sort, the more remarkable that the interest of these stories
lies entirely in Mr. Belloc's peculiar views upon politics and finance.
Even Disraeli, who liked writing novels about politics, could not
restrain himself from love interests, romance, poetry, and what not
else: but Mr. Belloc, serious and intent, concentrates his energies with
malevolent smile on one object.
In this consistent level of irony there are undoubtedly exalted patches
of more than merely verbal humour, such as, for example, Sir Charles
Repton's jolly speech at the Van Diemens meeting, in which he outlines
with enormous gusto the principles of procedure of modern finance. (It
will be remembered that an unfortunate accident had deprived Sir Charles
of his power of restraint and afflicted him with Veracititis.)
"Well, there you are then [he says], a shilling, a miserable
shilling. Now just see what that shilling will do!
"In the first place it'll give publicity and plenty of it. Breath
of public life, publicity! Breath o' finance too! We'll have that
railway marked in a dotted line on the maps: all the maps: school
maps: office maps. We'll have leaders on it and speeches on it. And
good hearty attacks on it. And th-e-n ..." He lowered his voice to
a very confidential wheedle--"the price'll begin to creep up--Oh
... o ... oh! the _real_ price, my beloved fellow-shareholders, the
price at which one can really _sell_, the price at which one can
handle the _stuff_."
He gave a great breath of satisfaction. "Now d'ye see? It'll go to
forty shillings right off, it ought to go to forty-five, it may go
to sixty!... And then," he said briskly, suddenly changing his
tone, "then, my hearties, you blasted well sell out: you unload ...
you dump 'em. Plenty more fools where your lot came from.... Most
of you'll lose on your first price: late comers least: a few o'
ye'll make if you bought under two pounds. Anyhow I shall....
There! if that isn't finance, I don't know what is!"
That is great, it is humour of a positively enormous variety, and pure
humour bursting and shining through the careful web of purposeful irony.
Such is the tendency of Mr. Belloc in his most intent occupations, to be
suddenly overcome with a rush of something broad, human and jolly, in a
word, poetic. In these moments he abandons his theories and his
propaganda and sails off before the inspiration. By such passages, as
much as or more than by their constant flow of skilful jeering, these
books will last.