MOCKING AT LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 44, 21 February 1931, Page 20

MOCKING AT LIFE

When I was very young I knew a lelown. r Out of professional hours he .Trap a lugubrious fellow,'and his melan*tsoly face always'mado me laugh. Once /he chalked his face for me and stumbled Jaround the room while I" struck him ;with a toy w-hip. Why his glum face land his impotent attempts to evade, the ■tvhip made ,me-laugh I cannot say. Ho JBuffered from some facial distortion, which gave him a permanent grimace. 'A few.years after I first saw him he ,Vas operated upon, and his face was made to appear normal. It no longer made! me laugh. Nor did it make his public laugh. He gave up tho "circus bring and became an undertaker, writes Edgar Holt in the "Melbourne A'Tgu's."

It appears to be natural to laugh at $he misfortunes opE other people. Clowning is really the other side/)f tragedy. 'Xhe clown makes a mockery^a grotesque, stumbling,'pathetic: mockery—-of the pathos of life. Groek, the great Mown who has-just retired from .the {London and Parisian music halls, achieved that fine balance between the ridiculous and the tragic-which made him a jivorthy successor to the immortal Grim»ldi, the clown of the days. of. the Keg-, iency. Groek was not merely big feet lend a bald head. He. saved the tra-. Idition of clowningl from the-, dull clowns ;who degenerated a. noble ,art by tumbling about in a circus ring and hitting tono another with soft turnips. Groek !had one equal only—Charles Chaplin. fTho more one examined the soul of jGrock the funnier he was. His struggle ftvith his piano became mart's struggle |with fate. His fiddle and bow pathetically expressed the hopes, the joys, the borrows, and the trials of life. In three motes of fate—groans, expostulations, jand gurgles of joy—he summarised the jabsurd efforts of man to avoid the pitjfallg of life. It has been truly said tthat if the clown can satisfy the desire 'of his audience for the ridiculous if will jEccept his idea of the sublime. Grock, iafter having made his audience giggle hysterically, would —after how many Unsuccessful attempts? —play Verdi on S. concertina while the audience listen- ; jed to the music with veneration.

PATHOS OF THE COMEDIAN

The ancestor of the clown was the village idiot. He sat at the table of his lord and amused him after dinner. Folly became profitable, and cunning young men began to study the anatomy of mirth, dividing it into falls, knavery, blows, mimicry, surprise, and stupidity. They stole.what they could in the way of clothes from the Italian-pantom-ime, and became an incongruous .mixture of Scaramouche and harlequin, acknowledging also a debt to the sooted cheeks of the Eoman fools and the red noses of medieval devils. :

In England they were at firs.t the fools in Elizabethan masques. *J3ut it was Joseph Grimaldi who wove the tangled threads .of clowning info one deligiitful piece. Pantomimes of the early . nineteenth century were incomplete without the drollery of Grimaldi, who, like the great clowns, touched the deepest emotions of his audience with clownish satire. The end of tho century: saw many other famous clowns. Their,lives were tinged with the tragedy which they mocked. Dan Leno—a wonderful —went mad; George Formby, dying of consumption, made a jest of his cough to provide for his wjf c arid children; Mark Sheridan committed suicide. . .

Of,all clowns, buffoons, and jesters, however, Chaplin is the most sophisticated. '; A sensitive artist, he is an archsatirist. In his hand even the custard pie becomes eloquent. So artfully does he alternate the ridiculous and the pathetic that he makes tears as quickly as laughter. From the ragged wardrobe of clowndom he has created a garb which is symbolic o£ the type at which he mocks. This is how he describes his clownish masterpiece: "That costume helps me to express my conception of the average man, of myself. The derby> too small, is a striving for dignity. The moustache is vanity. The tightly-but-toned coat and the stick are a gesture

towards /gallantry and dash. ... He is trying to meet the, world bravely, to put up a bluff, and he knows that, too." The evolution of the clown from the village idiot,to Grock and Chaplin epitomises, the march of civilisation from simplicity to sophistication.