History of English Humour Volume II Part 28

Humorous complications appear under many forms and disguises. The Americans have lately introduced an indifferent kind of it under the form of an ellipse--an omission of some important matter. Thus, the editor of a Western newspaper announces that if any more libels are published about him, there will be several first cla.s.s funerals in his neighbourhood. Again, "An old Maine woman undertook to eat a gallon of oysters for one hundred dollars. She gained fifteen--the funeral costing eighty-five." Another common form of humorous complication is taking an expression in a different sense from that it usually bears. "You cannot eat your cake, and have your cake;" "But how," asks the wilful child, "am I to eat my cake, if I don't have it?" Thackeray speaks of a young man who possessed every qualification for success--except talent and industry.

In many other common forms of speech there are openings for specious amendments, sometimes for real ones, especially in ironical expressions.

But as in p.r.o.nunciation we regard usage rather than etymology, so in sense the true meaning is not the literal or grammatical, but the conventional. Much indifferent humour is made of question and answer;--the reply being given falsely, as if the interrogation were put in a different sense from that intended, an occasion for the quibble being given by some loose or perhaps literal meaning of the words. Thus, "Have you seen Patti?" _A._ "Yes." _Q._ "What in?" _A._ "A brougham."

Indelicacy or irreverence is unpleasant in itself, and yet when complication is added to it few of us can avoid laughing, and I am afraid that some considerably enjoy objectionable allusions. To tell a man to go to h---, or that he deserves to go there, is merely coa.r.s.e and profane abuse, but when a labourer is found by an irritable country gentleman piling up a heap of stones in front of his house, and being rated for causing such an obstruction, asks where else he is to take them, and is told "to h--- if you like," we are amused at the answer--"Indeed, then, if I was to take them to heaven, they'd be more out of your way." Thus, also, to call a man an a.s.s would not win a smile from most of us, but we relax a little when the writers in a high church periodical, addicted to attacking Mr. Spurgeon, upon being accused of being actuated by envy, retort that they know the commandment--"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's a.s.s."

If we examine carefully the circ.u.mstances which awaken the ludicrous, we shall probably come to conclude that they often contain something which puzzles our understanding. An act which seems ridiculous would not appear so if we could entirely account for it, for instance, if it were done to win a bet. There seems to be in the ludicrous not merely some error in the taste brought before us, but something which we can scarcely believe to be the case. This alone would account for some variation, for what seems unintelligible to the ignorant seems plain to the educated, and what puzzles the well-informed raises no question among the inexperienced. The ludicrous depends upon that kind of intellectual twilight which is the lot of man here below. Were our knowledge perfect we should no more laugh than angelic beings,[21] were it final we should be as grave as the lower animals. Humour exists where the faculties are not fully developed, and our capacities are beyond our attainments, but fails where the mind has reached its limit, or feels no forward impulse. Study and high education are adverse to mirth, because the mind becomes impressed with the universality of law and order, and when learned men are merry, they are so mostly from being of genial or sympathetic natures. Density and dullness of intelligence are also unfavourable to humour from the absence of sensibility and generalization. We find that those whose experience is imperfect are most inclined to mirth. This is the reason why children, especially those of the prosperous cla.s.ses, are so full of merriment. They are not only highly emotional, but have inquiring and progressive minds, while their experience being small, and generalization imperfect, they see much that appears strange and perplexing to them; but their laughter is never hearty as in the case of those whose views are more formed.[22]

Exaggeration always contains either falsity, or complication, and when it is used for humour the deficiency is made up. It easily affords amus.e.m.e.nt, because it can bring together the most distant and discordant ideas. American wits have made great use of it. Thus we read of a man driving his gig at such a pace along the high road that his companion, looking at the mile stones, asked what cemetery they were pa.s.sing through? One of the same country described the extent of his native land in the following terms: "It is bounded on the North by the Aurora Borealis, on the South by the Southern Cross, on the East by the rising sun, and on the West by the Day of Judgment." The same may be said of diminution which is only humorous when connecting distant ideas. In "The Man of Taste," a poem, by the Rev. T. Bramstone in Dodsley's collection, we read--

"My hair I'll powder in the women's way, And dress and talk of dressing more than they; I'll please the maids of honour if I can, Without black velvet breeches--what is man?"

Longinus, says, "He was possessor of a field as small as a Lacedaemonian letter." Their letters often consisted only of two or three words. A gentleman I met on one occasion in a train, speaking of a lady friend, observed--"She's very small, but what there is of her is very, very good. Why, she'd go into that box," pointing to one for sandwiches.

"She's not bigger than that umbrella. 'Pon my honour as a gentleman, she's not."

Humour, by means of the perplexity it produces, often gains the victory over strong emotions. This fact has been practically recognised by orators, who see that when a man is struck by a humorous allusion, powerful feelings which could not otherwise be swayed give way, and even firm resolutions seem for the moment shaken and changed. We are bribed by our desire for pleasure, and a man thus often seems to sympathise with those he really opposes and can even be made to laugh at himself--strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by complexity. To most persons nothing can be more solemn than the thought of death, except its actual presence; but Theramenes was light-hearted when the hemlock bowl was presented to him, and drinking it off could not, as he threw out the dregs, resist exclaiming "To the health of the lovely Critias."[23] Sir Thomas More was jocose upon the scaffold.

Baron Gorz, when being led to death, said to his cook--"It's all over now, my friend, you will never cook me a good supper again." The poet Kleist, who was killed in the battle of Kunersdorf, was seized with a violent fit of laughter just before he expired, when he thought of the extraordinary faces a Cossack, who had been plundering him, made over the prize he had found. In the same way a lady told me that a friend of hers, having had a severe fall from his horse, drew a caricature of the accident while the litter was being prepared for him. Scarron was constantly in bodily suffering; and Norman Macleod wrote some humorous verses "On Captain Frazer's Nose" when he was enduring such violent pain that he spent the night in his study, and had occasionally to bend over the back of a chair for relief.

Charles Mathews retained his love of humour to the last. I have heard that, when dying at Plymouth, he ordered himself to be laid out as if dead. The doctor on entering exclaimed, "Poor fellow, he's gone! I knew he would not last long," and was just leaving the room with some sad reflections, when he heard the lamented man chuckling under the sheet.

Thus, also, a German General relates that after a skirmish a French hussar was brought in with a huge slash across his face. "Have you received a sabre cut, my poor fellow?" asked the General. "Pooh, I was shaved too closely this morning," was the reply. Something may be attributed in such cases to nervous excitement, which seeks relief in some counteraction. Mr. Hardy observes that there appears to be always a superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged and open to the notice of trifles.

Addison says that false humour differs from true, as a monkey does from a man. He goes on to say that false humour is given to little apish tricks, and buffooneries. Now the reason why Addison and cultivated men in general do not laugh at buffooneries and place them in the catalogue of false humour, is simply because they do not present to their minds any complication. When harlequin knocks the clown and pantaloon over on their backs, "the G.o.ds" burst with laughter, unable to understand the catastrophe, but those who have seen such things often, and consider that men make a living by such tricks, see nothing at all strange in it, remain grave and perhaps wearied. It was the want of complication that probably prevented Uncle Shallow from complying with the simple Slender's request to "Tell Mistress Anne the jest how my father stole two geese out of a pen."

It may be almost unnecessary to observe that all errors in taste are not ludicrous. "Tea-boardy" pictures do not make us laugh, we only attribute them to unskilful artists, of whom unfortunately there are too many. Nor is the ludicrous to be cla.s.sed under the head of taste; very often that which awakens it offers no violence to our aesthetic sensibilities. It is true that in Art, that which appears ludicrous will always be distasteful, for it will offend the eye or ear, but it is something more, and we occasionally speak as though it were outside taste altogether. Thus when we see some very evident failure in a sketch, we say "this is a most wretched work, and out of all drawing," and add as a climax of disapprobation "It is perfectly ridiculous." A violation of taste is never sufficient for the ludicrous, and the ludicrous is not always a violation of taste.

There is something in humour beyond what is merely unexpected. I remember a physician telling me that a gentleman objected very much to some prescriptions given to his wife, and wanted some quack medicines tried. The doctor opposed him, and on the gentleman calling on him and telling him he was unfit for his profession, there was an open rupture between them, and they cut each other in the street. Not long afterwards the gentleman died, and left him a legacy of 500. The doctor could not help being amused at the bequest under such circ.u.mstances, though, had it come equally unexpectedly from a mere stranger, he would have been merely surprised.

In some humorous sayings we find several different complications, which increase the force. Coincidences of this kind not only add to, but multiply humour in which when of a high cla.s.s the complexity is very subtle. It has much increased since ancient times, there was a large preponderance of emotion.

CHAPTER XXII.

Imperfection--An Impression of Falsity implied--Two Views taken by Philosophers--Firstly that of Voltaire, Jean Paul, Brown, the German Idealists, Leon Dumont, Secondly that of Descartes, Marmontel and Dugald Stewart--Whately on Jests--Nature of Puns--Effect of Custom and Habit--Accessory Emotion--Disappointment and Loss--Practical Jokes.

Although a distinction can be drawn in humour between the sense of wrong and the complication which accompanies it, still, as in any given case, the two flow out of the same circ.u.mstances, there seems to be some indissoluble link between them. It is not necessary to say that the sense of the ludicrous is a compound feeling, to maintain that it has the appearance of containing or being connected with something like a feeling of disapprobation.

Moreover, all the elements contained must be perfectly fused together before the ludicrous can be appreciated, just as Sir T. Macintosh observes of Beauty, "Until all the separate pleasures which create it be melted into one--as long as any of them are discerned and felt as distinct from each other--qualities which gratify are not called by the name of Beauty," and when we say that the humour consists of an emotion awakened by an exercise of judgment, we do not pretend to determine how far the emotion has been modified by judgment, and judgment directed by emotion.

We cannot properly suppose that there is anything really wrong in external objects brought before us, and did we recognise that everything moves in a regular pre-ordained course, we should be obliged to consider everything right, and conclude that the error we observe is imaginary, and flows from our own false standard. We do so with regard to the so-called works of Nature, and, therefore, we never laugh at a rock or a tree--no matter how strange its form. But in the general circ.u.mstances brought before us the reign of law is not so clear, especially when they depend on the actions of men, which we feel able to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon, and condemn when opposed to our ideal. In humorous representations we are actually beholding what is false; in ludicrous we think we are, though we cannot avoid at times detecting some infirmity in our own discernment. Thus, in the case of a child's puzzle, a person unable to solve it sometimes exclaims, "How dull I am! I ought to be able to do it," and people occasionally find fault with their senses, as we sometimes see them laughing when dazzled by rapidly revolving colours.

Such instances may suggest to us that the fault we find really originates in our own obtuseness.

But before proceeding, we must allow that philosophers and literary men are divided in opinion as to the existence of any feeling of wrong in the ludicrous. Voltaire, tilting against the windmills which the old animosity school had set up, observes, "When I was eleven years old, I read all alone for the first time the 'Amphitryon' of Moliere, and I laughed until I was on the point of falling down. Was this from hostility?--one is not hostile when alone!" This will not seem to most of us more conclusive reasoning than that of his opponents. We seldom laugh when alone, although we often feel angry.

Dryden says "Wit is a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject," and Pope gives us a similar opinion in the following words--

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed, Something whose truth convinced at sight we find.

That gives us back the image to our mind."

Taking this view of the subject, we should be inclined to think the Psalms of David especially witty, and to agree with the pretentious young lady who, being asked what she thought of Euclid, replied at a hazard that "It was the wittiest book she had ever read." But it seems probable from other pa.s.sages in Pope's works that he did not here intend to give a full definition, but only some characteristics. Moreover, in former times, Wit was not properly distinguished from Wisdom, and the above authors probably used the word in the old sense. Young says, "Well-judging wit is a flower of wisdom," to which we may reply in the words of an old proverb, "Wit and Wisdom, like the seven stars, are seldom found together."

Brown, in his lectures on "The Human Understanding," observes that in the ludicrous we do not condemn, but admire, and he cites as an ill.u.s.tration the case of some friends dining at an hotel. Boniface smilingly inquires what wine they would like to drink. One says Champagne, another Claret, another Burgundy, but the last one observes knowingly that he should like that best for which he should not have to pay. Now in this there is certainly a fault, for the answer is not applicable to the question. Brown's theory is that the ludicrous arises from the contemplation of incongruities, and he finds himself somewhat puzzled when he considers that the incongruities in science--in chemistry, for instance--do not make us laugh. He is at some trouble to explain that the importance of the subject renders us serious. But had he recognised the fact that the ludicrous implies condemnation, he would have seen that we could not be amused at incongruities in science, because we have a strong conviction that they are not real but only apparent. Some very ignorant persons, as he observes, do occasionally laugh at philosophic truths. I knew a lady who laughed at being told of the great distance of the planets, and a gentleman a.s.sured me that a friend of his, a man who had such shrewdness that he rose from the lowest ranks and acquired 100,000, would never believe that the earth was round!

Jean Paul, taking the same admiration view, observes that "women laugh more than men, and the haughty Turk not at all." But are not these facts referable to comparative excitability and apathy, and also to the multiplicity and variety of female ideas compared with the dulness of the Moslem's apprehension. Jean Paul proceeds to say that the more people laugh at our joke, the better we are pleased, and that this does not seem as though the enjoyment came from a feeling of triumph. But what is really laughed at is the humour, and not the humorist, and as a man wishes the beauty of a poem he has written to be generally acknowledged, so he desires to see the point of his satire appreciated by as many as possible.

A fruitful source of error in the investigation of humour arises from the difficulty in determining where it lies--of localizing it, if I may be allowed the expression. We hear a very amusing observation, and at once join heartily in the laugh, but cannot say whether we are laughing at a circ.u.mstance or a person, at a representation or a reality.

We come now to the most important authority on this side of the question. The systems which the German philosophers have propounded are more serviceable to themselves than edifying to the ordinary reader.

High abstractions afford but a very vague and indefinite idea to the mind, nor can their application be fully understood but by those who have ascended the successive stages by which each philosopher has himself mounted. On the present subject, their opinions seem to have been influenced by their views on other subjects. As we have already observed, Kant and several of the leading German idealists are in favour of considering the ludicrous as a "resolution" or a "deliverance of the absolute, captive by the finite," an opinion which reminds us of Hobbes' old theory of "glorying over others." The difference between their views and that of most authorities is not so great as it at first appears; they admit a "negation" of truth and beauty, but found the ludicrous, not upon this, but upon the rebirth which follows. This step in advance, taken in accordance with their general philosophy, may be correct, but it does not seem warranted by the mere examination of the subject itself. Can we say that at the instant of laughter we regard not that something is wrong, but that the reverse of it is right? When humour is brought before us, do we feel in any way instructed? This rebirth from a negation must seem somewhat visionary. What, for instance, is the truth to be gathered from the following. "I wish," said a philanthropic orator, "to be a friend to the friendless, a father to the fatherless, and a widow to the widowless."

Probably, the philosopher who formed the rebirth theory had looked at ludicrous events rather than humorous stories--and it may be urged that we laugh at the former when we are set right, and are convinced of having been really mistaken. But at the moment what excites mirth is something that seems wrong. We meet a friend, for instance, in a place where we little expected to see him, and perhaps smile at the meeting.

Had we known all his movements we should not have been thus surprised, but we were ignorant of them. Here we may say our views are corrected, and our amus.e.m.e.nt comes from a resolution or rebirth. But reflection will show that whatever our final conclusion may be, we laugh at what seems to us, at the moment, unaccountable and wrong; and as soon as we begin to correct ourselves, and to see how the event occurred, our merriment disappears.

Many instances will occur to us in which what is really right may appear wrong. Most of us have heard the proverb "If the day is fine take an umbrella, if it rains do as you like." It may give good advice, but we should be much inclined to laugh at anyone who adopted it.

Leon Dumont, the latest writer who has added considerably to our knowledge on this subject, does not admit the existence of imperfection in the ludicrous. But the arguments which he adduces do not seem to be conclusive. He says, for instance, that we laugh at love and amatory adventures because they abound in deceptions! But deception always implies ignorance or falsity, and the extravagant phraseology of love, the fanciful names, the griefs and ecstasies, are not only ridiculous in themselves, but lead us to regard lovers generally as bereft of reason.

Dumont observes, in support of his theory, that "when a small man bobs his head in pa.s.sing under a door, we laugh." But if a puppet or a pantaloon were to do so we should scarcely be amused, for we could account for it, and see nothing wrong in his action. He goes on to ask how the other view is applicable in the case of Ariosto's father, who rates his son at the very moment when the latter is wanting a model of an enraged parent to complete his comedy. It is our general idea that the anger of a father is something alarming and painful to endure, but here we see it regarded as a most fortunate occurrence. The man is producing the contrary effect to what he supposes, he is not effecting what he is intending; here is a strange kind of failure or ignorance.

Suppose we had known that the father was only simulating anger, we should probably not have laughed, or if we were amused, it would be at Ariosto's expense, who was being deceived in his model of parental indignation.

Leon Dumont defines the laughable to be that of which the mind is forced to affirm and to deny the same thing at the same time. He attributes it to two distant ideas being brought together. We might thus conclude that there was something droll in such expressions as "eyes of fire," "lips of dew."

Everyone is aware that humour is generally evanescent, the feeling goes almost as soon as it arrives; and the same spell, if repeated, has lost its charm. It may be said that all repet.i.tion is, in its nature, wearisome, because it is not in accordance with the progress of the human mind, but we must admit that it is less damaging to poetry in which there is a perpetual spring and rebirth, and to proverbs which have ever fresh and useful application.

"Nothing," writes Amelot, "pleases less than a perpetual pleasantry,"

and we all know that a jest-book is dull reading. Humour seems the more fugitive, because we do not know by what means to reproduce and continue it. We can, almost at will, call up emotions of love, hatred or sorrow, and when we feel them we can aggravate them to any extent, but humour is not thus under our command. We cannot invent or summon it. When we have heard a "good thing" said, we shall find that the mere repet.i.tion of the words originally uttered are more fully successful in reproducing and prolonging our mirth than all the attempts we usually make to develop it and come closer to the point. Sydney Smith was of opinion that much might be effected by perseverance, and this is the reason that he was often guilty of that bad and overstrained wit which led Lord Brougham to call him "too much of a Jack pudding."

We cannot by calculation and design produce anything worthy of the name of humour. It is generally true that any kind of reflection is inimical to it. But no doubt the great cause of its evanescence is that it leads to nothing, and adds nothing to our information. The most fleeting humour is that which is on unimportant subjects, as in comic poems and squibs, which may show considerable ingenuity, but have no interest. It is the nugatory and negative character of humour that makes it so short-lived. Hence, also, it is best at intervals, and in small quant.i.ties. The fact that when any attempt is made to explain a jest and glean any information from it the humour vanishes, seems much opposed to its containing any principle of rebirth.

Many of the philosophers, who have discarded the idea of there being condemnation in the ludicrous, have been misled either by not distinguishing between the ludicrous and the gift of humour, or by regarding the grain of truth which is imbedded in all wit as the entire or princ.i.p.al cause of our amus.e.m.e.nt. To form the complication necessary for humorous sayings there must be, of course, some element of truth to oppose the falsity in them. The course in forming witty sayings is generally the following. We remark some real resemblance between things which has. .h.i.therto been unnoticed. We then, upon this foundation, make a false statement, deriving so much colour from the truth that we cannot easily disengage one from the other. The resemblance must be something striking and unusual, or it would not support a statement which opposes our ordinary experience. As in the ludicrous there is reality, so in humour there must be some element of truth, or we should regard the invention as simple falsehood. To this extent we are prepared to agree with Boileau that "the basis of all wit is truth," but the result and general impression it gives is falsity.

Addison's Genealogy of Humour:--

Truth Good Sense Wit Mirth Humour

at first seems to be erroneous, but he does not really mean to say that there is no falsehood in it, but that it does not approach nonsense, and often contains useful instruction.

Holms exhibits the nature of humour in a pa.s.sage remarkable for philosophy and elegance:

"There is a perfect consciousness in every kind of wit that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray separated from the rest, red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade upon an object, never white light. We get beautiful effects from wit, all the prismatic colours, but never the object is in fair daylight. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always its essential object is the purest white light of truth."

Bacon went further, and considered that even the beauty of poetry and the pleasures of imagination were derived from falsehood.

"This truth is a naked and open daylight, which doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle light. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth well by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that shineth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imagination, and the like, but that it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things full of melancholy indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves."

Mr. Dallas goes so far as to say that "it is impossible that laughter should be an unmixed pleasure, seeing it arises from some aspect of imperfection or discordance." The fact that many people would undergo almost any kind of suffering rather than be exposed to ridicule, indicates that it contains some very unpleasant reflection. We sometimes feel uncomfortable even when we hear laughter around us, the cause of which we do not know, fearing that we may be ourselves the object of it--even dogs dislike to be laughed at. Our ordinary modes of speech seem to point to some imperfection or error in humour, as when we say "there is many a true word spoken in jest," or "life is a jest,"