Delphi complete works of.., p.370
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 370
One admits that that kind of writing largely passed out with the Great War. The people who used to write it have been replaced by the newer, the realistic writers, who would probably transpose the episode just described, as follows:
‘As the first roar of grapeshot zoomed past us, my stomach suddenly sank. I walked to the edge of the mound and vomited. My stomach turned. I was sick. I threw up. “Did you vomit?” asked Lord Kitchener. I said I had. “Well, I’m going to,” he said. He went and vomited. He was sick. “Did you vomit, Kitchener?” said Roberts. “Yes.” “Well, move aside and let me.”’
These newer writers, who may be described as of the ‘blood and guts’ school, had pretty well transformed the surface of all our fiction before the present war began. They took humour out to put worse in. Later on, when in some happier day this present war turns to history and lives again in fiction, it is not possible yet to know how it will be told. But what I am discussing here is not what will be made out of the war afterwards but what is to be made of it now. And I say, there is no humour in it.
I do not for a moment disparage the current ‘humour’ of the London press, written in the light of incendiary fires and in the imminence of death. It’s brave stuff. It is a tradition of the English people not to cry; they hate sentiment; and the Scots go even further; they keep not only their sorrow but even their jokes to themselves. This refusal to whine, this make-believe of laughter in the face of death is grand. But there is no ‘humour of war’ in it; nothing but resolution and pathos. And those of us far from the danger that inspires it have no right to share in it.
Indeed the more we think of it the more we realize that humour is itself one of the things at stake in this war. If the war goes wrong, there will be no more humour left in the world. It will be all crushed and beaten out of it. A child will whisper, ‘Mother, I’ve thought of a joke,’ and will be answered, ‘Hush! darling, or the Gestapo will hear you.’ Or a bold-hearted boy might ask, ‘Father, who was Josh Billings?’ and his father will answer, ‘A very wicked man, my son; never speak of him.’
Humour cannot share its ground with cruelty. It may be that in its earliest twilight our humour and our laughter arose out of a savage exultation ‘over a beaten enemy. The savage cracked his enemy’s head with a tomahawk and said, ‘One on you!’
It is only now when we are in danger of losing our good old democracy that we can see how fine and free it is and how individual character responds to it. Till the war came we spent our time growling at the imperfections of democracy. Democracy, of course, was inefficient; so it ought to be. Efficiency is an unnatural strain, like Sunday School, or company manners. Democracy was more or less crooked; so is humanity; so are you.
But democracy was everywhere permeated with humanity, and humour was the very atmosphere of its life. It presented everywhere that rare combination of humbug and sincerity which makes the world go round. It evolved the ‘politician’ as the master genius of democracy. Chivalry evolved the Knight, looking for the Holy Grail. Monarchy evolved the gentlemen, hunting foxes. Democracy, in America, evolved the politician, hunting votes. This meant a man who really loved his fellow-men could stand for them all day and would give everything to everybody, or promise it, and had no principles that he was not willing to sell for better ones. The politician, and our democratic politics, moved, if you like, in an atmosphere of humbug, of make-believe anger and mock denunciation. A politician could boil with indignation as easily as an egg on a heater. He could stand appalled at anything he needed to stand appalled at. The country was alternately saved and lost every two years; it moved on the brink of ruin, it rounded a corner, it emerged into the sunlight — something doing all the time. But with it all how utterly and vastly superior it has been to anything that despotism can ever offer to Europe.
Humour in Europe is dead. There hasn’t been a joke in Germany for twenty-five years. Germany turns its tongue and pen to vitriolic satire, to coarse denunciation as far from humour as blasphemy from blessing. Mussolini, it stands on record, was once an enthusiastic student of Mark Twain. He couldn’t pass now.
We must keep our sense of humour till after the war. Some day we may be back again in a world of peace, in the sunshine of unprepared democracy, in the ease of inefficiency, in the out-of-door sport of politics, and humour will come into its own again.
Won’t everything seem funny then? What a laugh we’ll have, eh?
MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS I - CHRISTMAS RAPTURE
PRE-WAR
WELL, WELL, HERE’S Christmas time again, and Christmas almost here! There’s always a sort of excitement as it gets near, isn’t there? Only this morning the postman was saying — there’s a genial fellow, if you like, that postman — was saying that Christmas is right on top of us. I said; not yet, but he said, oh yes, as good as here. He said it was real Christmas weather, too. I thought, not yet, but he insisted. He said that why he likes Christmas is that he has three kiddies, all boys. He always takes them out on Christmas. My! I hope he takes them a good long way this Christmas! Florida, eh?
The furnace man was talking too. He says I’ll be having company round Christmas and so he’s going to drive the furnace a bit. I tell him I don’t expect much company but he says he is going to coax her along anyway. The furnace man comes from the old country and where he worked, the gentleman he worked for — this, of course, was a real gentleman — used to give him a goose every Christmas. Never missed. That was nice, wasn’t it? The furnace man has four kiddies, all boys; he says it’s a great business for him and the missus thinking what to give them all...I do hope they can think of something good this year.
But, as I say, as Christmas gets near there’s a sort of excitement about it. Such a lot of things to go to — concerts, entertainments, all sorts of things. I don’t know how I’m going to manage them all. Here’s this big Police Concert, one of the first. A policeman brought tickets for it to the door yesterday — such a big, fine-looking fellow — with a revolver. I took two tickets. My, that will be a great evening, all those policemen singing together. But I don’t know whether I’ll go. Such a lot of police, eh?...But I’ve got the tickets up on the mantel alongside of the Firemen’s Entertainment, and the Musicale for the Deaf and Dumb and a lot more. That one on the right is a new one — the Garbage Men’s Gathering. I got that from the garbage man early this morning. My goodness! It was a piece of luck. He told me he had rung the bell twice and was just going away when I came down in my dressing-gown. Wasn’t it a lucky chance! And, do you know, he says it’s a new thing this Christmas, the first time the garbage men have got together. Think of it — ever since the birth of Christ.
But the bother is it’s the same night as the Archeology lecture at the university, and I mustn’t miss that. Mrs. Dim — she’s the wife of Professor Dim who’s giving the lecture — sent me a ticket. I had sent her an azalea and she sent back the ticket right away — pretty thoughtful, eh? — and afterwards I met her on the street and she said I really must come. She said this is his new lecture. He’s only been giving it since 1935. So there’s the ticket on the mantelpiece. The Record of the Rocks, it reads — Great title, eh? you’d wonder how a man could get a title like that. Mrs. Dim told me that Professor Dim thought and thought and thought, before he got it. I’ll say he did, eh?
But of course there’s one thing I certainly won’t miss and that’s church on Sunday morning. I’m not much of a church-goer as a rule but I never miss Christmas morning. Canon Bleet always preaches himself. He’s past eighty now, but my! he’s a vigorous old man! He preached an hour and a quarter last Christmas — and such a sermon. He just took the text, ‘Come!’ — just that one word, ‘Come’ — or, no, wait a minute, it was ‘Up!’...It was about the Hittites. He went back to Genesis, then right down to the apostles and half way back again. So I’m not going to miss that. I don’t know what it’s going to be this year. I hope it’ll be the Hittites again, eh?
So when you put it all together it begins to look like a pretty big day, doesn’t it? And naturally the biggest part of it is Christmas Dinner! Such a dinner as I had last year at the Dobson-Dudds, a real, old-fashioned dinner, right after church. Eat! I never ate so much in my life — turkey, plum pudding, everything. You see what makes you eat at their house is they don’t have anything to drink. They are against it. Dudd told me so himself, right after we got into the house, after I’d taken my coat off. He said they’re against it, on principle. Mrs. Dudd said so too, in the drawing-room.
They have a lovely place, perfectly beautiful, and so hospitable! Mrs. Dudd says she calls it Liberty Hall, because she lets people do just as they like. But as she said she’s against having anything to drink because of the children seeing it. You see Mrs. Dudd was a Dobson and all the Dobsons were against it. Old Mrs. Dobson, Mrs. Dudd’s mother, was there at the dinner — that was good, wasn’t it? — She sat next to me, and she told me she had always been against it. She told me she didn’t know where the young people were getting to now; she said you go to dinner where young girls are drinking cocktails and wine till it’s just awful! Say — think if I’d got into a dinner like that!
But, of course, there’s one good thing about not having anything to drink, you can certainly eat. I mean, not only the turkey and that but a lot of extra things. I ate celery all the time I was waiting for the turkey. You naturally do if there’s no sherry. I ate bunches of it, and afterwards a lot of parsley and part of a table wreath by mistake.
Such a dinner! We went into the drawing-room afterwards and it was great. We didn’t smoke because Mrs. Dudd doesn’t believe in gentlemen smoking when ladies are present. She thinks that the ladies’ company ought to be good enough without. So it ought, oughtn’t it? However, we had a fine time looking at photographs taken of their summer place — Liberty Cottage. I had to leave about five o’clock for Canon Bleet’s Happy Sunday Afternoon (he has it on Christmas, too) for the Newsboys. I just made it.
Of course, naturally the great excitement before Christmas time is the question of buying presents. It takes a tremendous lot of thinking about because the real thing in giving is to think just what people would like and what would be suitable and acceptable — the kind of thing a person would like to have and to keep. Often it’s puzzling to know what to give. Now there’s Horton. He’s a stockbroker down town, and I see him often at the club and I must give him something this year because he sent me an azalea. It was the one I sent on to Mrs. Dim. Horton got the azalea, I think, from Noyse, another man at the club, who is a lawyer. At any rate I saw it come into the club. Noyse is a lawyer for a florist, and of course that started it. Now, you see, if I have to give a present to Horton — he’s the one I say is a broker — I can’t really tell what I ought to give as it all depends on the market. I had thought of giving him a Turkish rosewater Narghile pipe — but if the market all goes bad again, it might be a winter overcoat.
I say I had thought of giving — because right there is another of the pleasures of Christmas giving — thinking of something to give, even if in the end you don’t feel quite sure and don’t give it. For example. I am giving Canon Bleet an encyclopaedia. Isn’t that just exactly, absolutely the thing for a scholarly old clergyman? Can’t you just see him starting right in at Capital A, and reading it all! But wait, he mustn’t have it yet! You see encyclopedias get so quickly out of date.
Wait! — patience! — till the very year when there’s a new one. For example, the Britannica came out in 1927. So Canon Bleet knows all that happened up to then. I’ve been waiting each year to hit it right. So far no luck. But I happen to know, on the inside, that there’s to be a new edition out three years after the end of the war. That’s the one for him, eh?
On the other hand, some presents I’ve got. I have them right here in the room — things that I wanted to make sure of. This dressing-gown (the one I have on) is for my brother George. When I got it, a little while ago, it looked a little bit too new. So I’ve been taking the edge off it, and of course I can easily have any buttons sewn on or the ink taken out. Then here’s this present for Teddy. Teddy travels a good deal, so guess what I’ve got him — a travelling bag. Pretty good idea, eh? — the kind of bag you take when you travel. It’s made of pigskin. The man said so, but to look at a pig you wouldn’t think it. It’s too clean for a pig. I’ve taken a trip or two with it just to get it more like the natural pig before Teddy gets it.
And yet somehow I now and then think that perhaps this Christmas I’ll break away a little. After all, a man ought not to get into a rut. So much church-going (every year) is apt to get a man stuck in a groove.
And the Christmas dinner stuff! The Dobson-Dudds have invited me to come again for Christmas dinner this year. But I don’t think I can go. Oh no, I mustn’t. It would be imposing on them. A man mustn’t always be taking the hospitality of his friends. I think this year I’ll just go down and have a bite to eat at the club, with just a glass of sherry and just a bottle of red wine or a quart of Scotch whisky. Just that.
No, I’m not sure I won’t alter it all. It’s too exciting, too wearing — concerts, sermons, I can’t keep up with it. Perhaps I’ll pack up George’s dressing-gown into Teddy’s pigskin travelling bag and beat it out of town. Where? I don’t know — perhaps I’ll go up north, eh? or down south? or, say, out west, or perhaps back east — anyway, somewhere!
MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS II - CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
PRE-WAR
LET ME SAY right at the start that I am devoted to Christmas — no time in the year like it. It’s all brightness and light and Christmas trees with candles, and holly berries — with little children dancing in a ring and every one pretending to be a fine fellow, and pretty nearly succeeding in it.
I was brought up on it; weren’t you? It was a sort of family tradition — house all hung with mottoes of MERRY CHRISTMAS, and cotton wool and red flannel...You had all that in your family, too, didn’t you, and your brother Jim always gave your brother Dick a necktie every Christmas, just the same as the one Dick gave to Jim, and your mother paid for both of them — didn’t she, so as to teach the children to be generous?
Quite so; and in that case you’ll agree with me that of all the side issues and extras that go with Christmas and make it what it is, there isn’t one that for warmth and character is in it with Christmas shopping! The pleasure of anticipation, that warm glow about the heart, eh! That joy in generous giving far ahead of getting anything for yourself. That’s you, isn’t it? Yes, I’m sure it is.
And, of course, as we all know, the anticipation of pleasure has in it a higher quality, in reality, than the pleasure itself. Packing a picnic lunch is better than a picnic, getting fishing tackle together is better than fishing, and looking over a travel folder called Five Days in Sunny Jamaica is better than living there,
So, come on out into the street in our imagination and let’s go Christmas shopping.
What a picture it all calls up — the clean fresh air, the streets as light as day and all full of people, the big snowflakes falling — never so big and never so slow in coming down as at Christmas time — they hate to land and miss the rest of it...Snowflakes falling on the laughing crowd, on the little “tots” holding their mothers’ hands, and falling on the coloured hoods and the glistening hair of the pretty girls — it takes a snowflake to pick out the prettiest...All moving, swaying, laughing, talking, and going more or less nowhere!...Such is Christmas shopping on a winter evening.
Notice, while the picture is still before us, how all the people in the Christmas crowd of the streets are somehow lifted out of their common selves and idealized. Sour old devils of ‘fathers’ have dropped off thirty years of age and thirty pounds of sin, every woman looks like mother, and all the girls — I swear it’s not the snowflakes — have turned pretty — and the little ‘tots’ just mentioned — it’s hard to realize how often in our home life we’ve called them ‘little pups.’
Christmas shopping for me! As I sit here in my club writing about it, the thing gets hold of me. I’m going to do it this year. I’ve purposely left it all till this, the last evening before Christmas, when I am free to go at it, and as soon as I have scratched off this writing I shall go out and join the glad throng,
First — be very careful about that idea of starting shopping early in the year, right back in January or February, when things are being sold off. I tried that a year or so ago. There’s nothing in it. People had so often showed me things that they had ‘picked up’ in January! Well, you know how words impress you and the idea of just ‘picking things up’ makes you feel terribly superior.
People talk also of getting things ‘for a song,’ though that’s mostly when they go abroad and bring back some pottery from Italy. That’s too far to go for Christmas.
Anyway, I went out in January and picked up a bird-cage and a book called The Bible Lands of Palestine and a pair of braces (boy’s size). I admit the things were cheap. The birdcage was only three and six and it was worth thirty shillings. The man in the shop admitted this himself, but it’s been no good to me. I know no one with a bird. People don’t seem to keep birds now. Yet this is a fine cage, big enough for a penguin, with a bar for it to swing on and little places where you put in food and water, and other little places where you take out whatever you take out. Too bad, I can’t use it. I may offer it in a raffle for a charity...however, let it go.
