sources of laughter--we have experimented with American children;
testing their appreciation of the ludicrous by giving them blocks
which, when fitted into place, display absurd and incongruous pictures.
Their reactions to this artificial stimulus are of value, only when
they are old enough for perception, and young enough for candour. The
merriment of children, of little girls especially, is often unreal
and affected. They will toss their heads and stimulate one another to
peals of laughter which are a pure make-believe. When they are really
absorbed in their play, and astir with delicious excitation, they do
not laugh; they give vent to piercing shrieks which sound as if they
were being cut into little pieces. These shrieks are the spontaneous
expression of delight; but their sense of absurdity, which implies a
sense of humour, is hard to capture before it has become tainted with
pretence.
There are American newspapers which print every day a sheet or a
half-sheet of comic pictures, and there are American newspapers which
print every Sunday a coloured comic supplement. These sincere attempts
to divert the public are well received. Their vulgarity does not
offend. “What,” asks the wise Santayana, “can we relish if we recoil
at vulgarity?” Their dullness is condoned. Life, for all its antics,
is confessedly dull. Our absurdities may amuse the angels (Walpole had
a cheerful vision of their laughter); but they cannot be relied on to
amuse our fellow men. Nevertheless the coloured supplement passes from
hand to hand--from parents to children, from children to servants.
Even the smudgy black and whites of the daily press are soberly and
conscientiously scrutinized. A man, reading his paper in the train,
seldom skips that page. He examines every little smudge with attention,
not seemingly entertained, or seeking entertainment, but without
visible depression at its incompetence.
I once had the pleasure of hearing a distinguished etcher lecture on
the art of illustrating. He said some harsh words about these American
comics, and threw on the screen a reproduction of one of their most
familiar series. The audience looked at it sadly. “I am glad,”
commented the lecturer, “that you did not laugh. Those pictures are, as
you perceive, as stupid as they are vulgar. Now I will show you some
clever English work”: and there appeared before us the once famous Ally
Sloper recreating himself and his family at the seashore. The audience
looked at him sadly. A solemn stillness held the hall. “Why don’t you
laugh?” asked the lecturer irritably. “I assure you that picture _is_
funny.” Whereupon everybody laughed; not because we saw the fun--which
was not there to see--but because we were jolted into risibility by the
unwarranted despotism of the demand.
The prohibition jest which stands preeminent in the United States,
and has afforded French and English humorists a field which they have
promptly and ably filled, draws its vitality from the inexhaustible
springs of human nature. Readers and play-goers profess themselves
tired of it; moralists deprecate its undermining qualities; but the
conflict between a normal desire and an interdict is too unadjustable,
too rich in circumstance, and too far-reaching in results, to be
accepted in sober silence. The complications incidental to prohibition,
the battle of wits, the turns of the game, the adventures--often sorry
enough--of the players, all present the essential elements of comedy.
Mrs. Gerould has likened the situation to an obstacle race. It is that,
and it is something more. In earlier, easier days, robbery was made
justifiably droll. The master thief was equally at home in northern
Europe and in the far East. England smiled at Robin Hood. France
evolved that amazing epithet, “chevalier d’industrie.” But arrayed
against robbery were a moral law and a commandment. Arrayed against
wine are a legal ordinance and the modern cult of efficiency. It will
be long before these become so sacrosanct as to disallow a laugh.
The worst that has been said of legitimate American humour is that it
responds to every beck and call. Even Mr. Ewan S. Agnew, whose business
it is to divert the British public, considers that the American
public is too easily diverted. We laugh, either from light-hearted
insensitiveness, or from the superabundant vitality, the half-conscious
sense of power, which bubbles up forever in the callous gaiety of
the world. Certainly Emerson is the only known American who despised
jocularity, and who said early and often that he did not wish to be
amused. The most striking passage in the letters of Mr. Walter Page
is the one which describes his distaste for the “jocular” Washington
luncheons at which he was a guest in the summer of 1916. He had come
fresh from the rending anxiety, the heroic stress and strain of
London; and the cloudless atmosphere of our capital wounded his spirit.
England jested too. “Punch” had never been so brilliant as in the
torturing years of war. But England had earned the right to jest. There
was a tonic quality in her laughter. Page feared from the bottom of
his soul lest the great peaceful nation, safe, rich and debonair, had
suffered her “mental neutrality” to blot out from her vision the agony
of Europe, and the outstanding facts which were responsible for the
disaster.
This unconcern, which is the balance wheel of comedy, has tempered the
American mind to an easy acceptance of chance. Its enthusiasms are
modified, its censures are softened by a restraining humour which is
rooted deeply in indifference. We recognize the sanity of our mental
attitude, but not its incompleteness. Understanding and sympathy are
products of civilized life, as clarifying in their way as tolerance
and a quick perception of the ludicrous. An American newspaper printed
recently a photograph entitled “Smilin’ Through,” which showed two
American girls peering through two holes in a shell-torn wall of
Verdun, and laughing broadly at their sport. The names and addresses of
these frolicsome young women were given, and their enjoyment of their
own drollery was emphasized for the diversion of other young women at
home.
Now granted that every nation, like every man, bears the burden of its
own grief. Granted also that every woman, like every man, has her own
conception of the humorous, and that we cannot reasonably take umbrage
because we fail to see the fun. Nevertheless the memories of Verdun
do not make for laughter. There is that in its story which sobers the
world it has ennobled. Four hundred thousand French soldiers gave
their lives for that battered fortress which saved Paris and France.
Mr. Brownell reminds us that there is such a thing as rectitude outside
the sphere of morals, and that it is precisely this austere element in
taste which assures our self-respect. We cannot analyze, and therefore
cannot criticize, that frothy fun which Bergson has likened to the foam
which the receding waves leave on the ocean sands; but we know, as he
knows, that the substance is scanty, and the after-taste is bitter in
our mouths. We are tethered to our kind, and it is the sureness of our
reaction to the great and appealing facts of history which makes us
inheritors of a hard-won civilization, and qualified citizens of the
world.
The Idolatrous Dog
We shall never know why a feeling of shame attends certain harmless
sensations, certain profoundly innocent tastes and distastes. Why, for
example, are we abashed when we are cold, and boastful when we are not?
There is no merit or distinction in being insensitive to cold, or in
wearing thinner clothing than one’s neighbour. And what strange impulse
is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music
when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom? We
are not necessarily morons or moral lepers because we have no ear for
harmony. It is a significant circumstance that Shakespeare puts his
intolerant lines,
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
* * * * *
Let no such man be trusted”--
in the mouth of Lorenzo who disdained neither stratagems nor spoils,
and who carried off the Jew’s ducats as well as the Jew’s daughter.
And Jessica, who sits by his side in the moonlight, and responds with
delicate grace
“I am never merry when I hear sweet music,”
is the girl who “gilded” herself with stolen gold, and gave her dead
mother’s ring for a monkey.
It is a convenience not to feel cold when the thermometer falls, and
it is a pleasure to listen appreciatively to a symphony concert. It is
also a convenience to relish the proximity of dogs, inasmuch as we live
surrounded by these animals, and it is a pleasure to respond to their
charm. But there is no virtue in liking them, any more than there is
virtue in liking wintry weather or stringed instruments. An affection
for dogs is not, as we have been given to understand, a test of an open
and generous disposition. Still less is their affection for us to be
accepted as a guarantee of our integrity. The assumption that a dog
knows a good from a bad human being when he sees one is unwarranted. It
is part of that engulfing wave of sentiment which swept the world in
the wake of popular fiction. Dickens is its most unflinching exponent.
Henry Gowan’s dog, Lion, springs at the throat of Blandois, alias
Lagnier, alias Rigaud, for no other reason than that he recognizes him
as a villain, without whom the world would be a safer and better place
to live in. Florence Dombey’s dog, Diogenes, looks out of an upper
window, observes Mr. Carker peacefully walking the London streets, and
tries to jump down and bite him then and there. He sees at once what
Mr. Dombey has not found out in years--that Carker is a base wretch,
unworthy of the confidence reposed in him.
A few animals of this kind might, in real life, close the courts of
justice. The Dickens dog is detective, prosecuting attorney, judge,
jury and executioner, all in one. He stands responsible for a whole
school of fictitious canines who combine the qualities of Vidocq,
Sherlock Holmes, and the Count of Monte Cristo. I read recently a story
in which the villain was introduced as “that anomalous being, the man
who doesn’t like dogs.” After that, no intelligent reader could have
been unprepared to find him murdering his friend and partner. So much
was inevitable. And no experienced reader could have been unprepared
for the behaviour of the friend and partner’s dog, which recognizes the
anomaly as a person likely to commit murder, and, without wasting time
on circumstantial evidence, tracks him down, and, unaided, brings him
to his death. A simple, clean-cut retribution, contrasting favourably
with the cumbersome processes of law.
A year ago the Governor of Maine had the misfortune to lose his dog.
He signified his sense of loss, and his appreciation of the animal’s
good qualities, by lowering the American flag on the Augusta State
House to half-mast. He was able to do this because he was Governor,
and there was no one to say him nay. Nevertheless, certain sticklers
for formality protested against an innovation which opened up strange
possibilities for the future; and one logical lady observed that a
dog was no more a citizen than was a strawberry patch, a statement
not open to contradiction. The country at large, however, supported
the Governor’s action. Newspaper men wrote editorials lauding the
“homespun” virtues of an official who set a true value on an honest
dog’s affection. Poets wrote verses about “Old Glory” and “Garry” (the
dog’s name); and described Saint Peter as promptly investing this
worthy quadruped with the citizenship of Heaven. The propriety or
impropriety of lowering the national flag for an animal--which was the
question under dispute--was buried beneath the avalanche of sentiment
which is always ready to fall at the sound of a dog’s name.
A somewhat similar gust of criticism swept Pennsylvania when a resident
of that State spent five hundred dollars on the obsequies of his dog.
The Great War, though drawing to a close, was not yet over, and perhaps
the thought of men unburied on the battle-field, and refugees starving
for bread, intensified public feeling. There was the usual outcry, as
old as Christianity--“this might have been given to the poor.” There
was the usual irrelevant laudation of the Pennsylvania dog, and of dogs
in general. People whose own affairs failed to occupy their attention
(there are many such) wrote vehement letters to the daily press. At
last a caustic reader chilled the agitation by announcing that he was
prepared to give five hundred dollars any day for the privilege of
burying his next-door neighbour’s dog. Whether or not this offer was
accepted, the public never knew; but what troubled days and sleepless
nights must have prompted its prodigality!
The honour accorded to the dog is no new thing. It has for centuries
rewarded his valour and fidelity. Responsibilities, duties,
compensations--these have always been his portion. Sirius shines in
the heavens, and Cerberus guards in hell. The dog, Katmir, who watched
over the Seven Sleepers for three hundred and nine years, gained
Paradise for his pains, as well he might. Even the ill-fated hounds of
Actæon, condemned to kill their more ill-fated master, are in some sort
immortal, inasmuch as we may know, if we choose, the names of every
one of them. Through the long pages of legend and romance the figure
of the dog is clearly outlined; and when history begins with man’s
struggle for existence, the dog may be found his ally and confederate.
It was a strange fatality which impelled this animal to abandon
communal life and the companionship of his kind for the restraints,
the safety, the infinite weariness of domesticity. It was an amazing
tractableness which caused him to accept a set of principles foreign to
his nature--the integrity of work, the honourableness of servitude, the
artificial values of civilization.
As a consequence of this extraordinary change of base, we have grown
accustomed to judge the dog by human standards. In fact, there are
no other standards which apply to him. The good dog, like the good
man, is the dog which has duties to perform, and which performs them
faithfully. The bad dog, like the bad man, is the dog which is idle,
ill-tempered and over-indulged by women. Women are responsible for most
of the dog-failures, as well as for many of the man-failures of the
world. So long as they content themselves with toy beasts, this does
not much matter; but a real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his
mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration
of his moral being.
What if the shepherd dog fares hardly, and if exposure stiffens his
limbs! He has at least lived, and played his part in life. Nothing more
beautiful or more poignant has ever been written about any animal than
James Hogg’s description of his old collie which could no longer gather
in the sheep, and with which he was compelled to part, because--poor
Ettrick shepherd--he could not afford to pay the tax on two dogs. The
decrepit beast refused to be separated from the flocks which had been
his care and pride. Day after day he hobbled along, watching the new
collie bustling about his work, and--too wise to interfere--looking
with reproachful eyes at the master who had so reluctantly discarded
him.
The literature of the dog is limitless. A single shelf would hold all
that has been written about the cat. A library would hardly suffice
for the prose and verse dedicated to the dog. From “Gêlert” to “Rab”
and “Bob, Son of Battle,” he has dominated ballad and fiction. Few are
the poets and few the men of letters who have not paid some measure of
tribute to him. Goethe, indeed, and Alfred de Musset detested all dogs,
and said so composedly. Their detestation was temperamental, and not
the result of an unfortunate encounter, such as hardened the heart of
Dr. Isaac Barrow, mathematician, and Master of Trinity College. Sidney
Smith tells us with something akin to glee that this eminent scholar,
when taking an early stroll in the grounds of a friend and host, was
attacked by a huge and unwarrantably suspicious mastiff. Barrow, a
fighter all his life (a man who would fight Algerine pirates was not to
be easily daunted), hurled the dog to the ground, and fell on top of
him. The mastiff could not get up, but neither could Barrow, who called
loudly for assistance. It came, and the combatants were separated; but
a distaste for morning strolls and an aversion for dogs lingered in the
Master’s mind. There was one less enthusiast in the world.
We are apt to think that the exuberance of sentiment entertained by
Americans for dogs is a distinctively British trait, that we have
inherited it along with our language, our literature, our manliness,
our love of sport, our admirable outdoor qualities. But it may be
found blooming luxuriously in other and less favoured lands. That
interesting study of Danish childhood by Carl Ewald, called “My Little
Boy,” contains a chapter devoted to the lamentable death of a dog
named Jean, “the biggest dog in Denmark.” This animal, though at times
condescending to kindness, knew how to maintain his just authority. “He
once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He once bit his
own master.” The simple pride with which these incidents are narrated
would charm a dog-lover’s soul. And the lame boy’s point of view is not
permitted to intrude.
Of all writers who have sung the praises of the dog, and who have
justified our love for him, Maeterlinck has given the fullest
expression to the profound and absorbing egotism which underlies
this love. Never for a moment does he consider his dog save as a
worshipper. Never does he think of himself save as a being worshipped.
Never does he feel that this relationship can be otherwise than just,
reasonable, and satisfying to both parties. “The dog,” he says,
“reveres us as though we had drawn him out of nothing. He has a
morality which surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself,
and which he can practise without scruple and without fear. He
possesses truth in its fullness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.”
And what is this ideal? “He” (the dog) “is the only living being that
has found, and recognizes, an indubitable, unexceptionable and definite
god.”
And who is this god? M. Maeterlinck, you, I, anybody who has bought
and reared a puppy. Yet we are told that the dog is intelligent. What
is there about men which can warrant the worship of a wise beast? What
sort of “truth in its fullness” is compatible with such a blunder?
Yet it is for the sake of being idolized that we prize and cherish the
idolater. Our fellow mortals will not love us unless we are lovable.
They will not admire us unless we are admirable. Our cats will probably
neither love nor admire us, being self-engrossed animals, free from
encumbering sensibilities. But our dogs will love and admire the
meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical
homage. M. Maeterlinck recognizes our dependence on the dog for the
deification we crave, and is unreasonably angry with the cat for her
aloofness. In her eyes, he complains, we are parasites in our own
homes. “She curses us from the depths of her mysterious heart.”
She does not. She tolerates us with a wise tolerance, recognizing our
usefulness, and indulgent of our foibles. Domesticity has not cost her
the heavy price it has cost the dog. She has merely exchanged the
asylum of cave or tree for the superior accommodation of the house.
Her habits remain unaltered, her freedom unviolated. Cream-fed and
pampered, she still loves the pleasures of the chase; nor will she pick
and choose her prey at the recommendation of prejudiced humanity. M.
Maeterlinck, who has striven to enter into the consciousness of the
dog, describes it as congested with duties and inhibitions. There are
chairs he must not sit on, rooms he must not enter, food he must not
steal, babies he must not upset, cats he must not chase, visitors he
must not bark at, beggars and tramps he must not permit to enter the
gates. He lives under as many, and as strict, compulsions as though he
were a citizen of the United States. By comparison with this perverted
intelligence, this artificial morality, the mind of the cat appears
like a cool and spacious chamber, with only her own spirit to fill it,
and only her own tastes and distastes to be consulted and obeyed.
Perhaps it is because the dog is so hedged in by rules and regulations
that he has lost his initiative. Descended from animals that lived
in packs, and that enjoyed the advantages of communal intelligence,
he could never have possessed this quality as it was possessed by an
animal that lived alone, and had only his own acuteness and experience
to rely on. But having surrendered his will to the will of man, and his
conscience to the keeping of man, the dog has by now grown dependent
for his simplest pleasures upon man’s caprice. He loves to roam; but
whereas the cat does roam at will, rightly rejecting all interference
with her liberty, the dog craves permission to accompany his master
on a stroll, and, being refused, slinks sadly back to confinement and
inaction. I have great respect for those exceptional dogs that take
their exercise when they need or desire it in self-sufficing solitude.
I once knew an Irish terrier that had this independent turn of mind. He
invited himself to daily constitutionals, and might have been seen any
morning trotting along the road, miles away from home, with the air of
an animal walking to keep his flesh down. In the end he was run over by
a speeding motor, but what of that? Die we must, and, while he lived,
he was free.
A lordliness of sentiment mars much of the admirable poetry written
about dogs. The poet thrones himself before addressing his devoted and
credulous ally. Even Matthew Arnold’s lines to “Kaiser Dead”--among the
best of their kind--are heavy with patronage:
“But all those virtues which commend
The humbler sort who serve and tend,
Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.”
To be sure, Kaiser was a mongrel; but why emphasize his low estate?
As a matter of fact, mongrels, like self-made men, are apt to have a
peculiar complacency of demeanour. They do not rank themselves among
“the humbler sort”; but “serve and tend” on the same conditions as
their betters.
Two years ago Mr. Galsworthy, who stands in the foremost rank of
dog-lovers, and who has drawn for us some of the most lifelike and
attractive dogs in fiction, pleaded strongly and emotionally for the
exemption of this animal from any form of experimental research. He had
the popular sentiment of England back of him, because popular sentiment
always _is_ emotional. The question of vivisection is one of abstract
morality. None but the supremely ignorant can deny its usefulness.
There remain certain questions which call for clean-cut answers. Does
our absolute power over beasts carry with it an absolute right? May we
justifiably sacrifice them for the good of humanity? What degree of
pain are we morally justified in inflicting on them to save men from
disease and death? If we faced the issue squarely, we should feel no
more concern for the kind of animal which is used for experimentation
than for the kind of human being who may possibly benefit by the
experiment. Right and wrong admit of no sentimental distinctions. Yet
the vivisectionist pleads, “Is not the life of a young mother worth
more than the life of a beast?” The anti-vivisectionist asks: “How can
man deliberately torture the creature that loves and trusts him?” And
Mr. Galsworthy admitted that he had nothing to say about vivisection in
general. Cats and rabbits might take their chances. He asked only that
the dog should be spared.
It has been hinted more than once that if we develop the dog’s
intelligence too far, we may end by robbing him of his illusions.
He has absorbed so many human characteristics--vanity, sociability,
snobbishness, a sense of humour and a conscience--that there is danger
of his also acquiring the critical faculty. He will not then content
himself with flying at the throats of villains--the out-and-out
villain is rare in the common walks of life--he will doubt the godlike
qualities of his master. The warmth of his affection will chill, its
steadfastness will be subject to decay.