ENGLISH HUMOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1936, Page 20

ENGLISH HUMOUR

DICKENS AND GILBERT

RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS

WORKS EXAMINED

The centenary year of the birth of the famous "Savoyard" was also the | hundredth year of "Pickwick," which 'may be said to mark the literary birth of Dickens, says a writer in the Melbourne 'Age." ."Humour is the harmony of the heart," wrote English Jerrold. It is "one of the elements of genius," German Goethe somewhat grudgingly conceded. And right well did "Boz" and "Bab" confirm that compound international assertion. One's triumphs were beginning when the other's career was ending. One was a novelist who loved the stage; the other was a playwright who did not love it so much. But in each the gifts of brilliant humour, keen human understanding, and literary genius entered a most effective partnership. They were gallant, resourceful trustees of a great tradition, upon which their individual initiative and genius was developed. In the footsteps of their great Elizabethan predecessor, they gave to the literary world when they gave to nineteenth century English art. Fitting indeed is an anniversary that symbolises the artistic bond between them and their outstanding creations, who have themselves established a humorous kinship in the realm of fancy. And in assisting in this, Gilbert's musical collaborator enters an appearance—physically and artistically—almost independently of Gilbert. Firstly, in the congenial atmosphere of his incidental music to Shakespeare's "Tempest," we see young Sullivan introduced to mid-dle-aged Dickens, and spending a Paris holiday with him prior to the meeting with Gilbert. Then, as a humorist in his own right among the Savoy scores, he has left us not only various proofs of an almost "Gilbertian" wit, but at least one most Puckish tribute to "Dickensian" humour. A PARADOX SEEN. And here is the paradox about this least musical of his musical jokes. Almost approaching musical bathos, it, nevertheless, unites, by the artistic piquancy of its whimsical introduction, the amused imagination, of assembled "Dickensians" and Savoyards on the common ground of Shakespearian humorous fancy. We are in the audience of a performance, of that satirical comedy cantata "Trial by Jury." Counsel for plaintiff, true to form, is quoting ancient precedent to prove modern fact, and is singing his way to the "submission." In the reign of James the Second lUwas generally reckoned A very serious crime To marry two wives at one time. But his Honour,' momentarily impressed by defendant's logic about the right to turn from breakfast to dinner, thinks that perhaps he might be allowed to marry one young lady today and the other young lady tomorrow. Counsel, scandalised to faster tempo, protests: — ■''.-*■'./ But I submit, my lord, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! Sullivan, generally serious if the stage-character is supposed to be serious, irrespective of Gilbert's mood at the moment, has provided counsel with all the forensic emphasis and intonation any singing barrister could desire. And elsewhere most of his humour is either sarcastic little tilts at Continental compositions or skilfully interwoven snatches of hackneyed tunes to emphasise some point of Gilbertian satire. All the more waggish is it, therefore, when, from- down among the bassoons and double' basses, immediately following the word "Burglaree," comes (solo in six quavers):— Hee-haw, Hee-haw, Hee-haw! Which is followed by "a closing chord that seems to emphasise the surprise of this piece of musical impudence. Musical nonsense, perhaps, but in the words of Patience's Lady Jane, "What precious nonsense." BUMBLE AND BOTTOM. I For, to immediate "parochial" fancy summoned by such novel rendering of his famous zoological definition of the law, stands Mr. Bumble. His world of "Bumbledom" was surely a relation of a "Gilbertian situation." But there also, wagging his enchanted ass's ears for a few seconds before baritone counsel shatters the illusion by going on with the song, is "sweet bully Bottom." There he floats for a moment in the darkened auditorium, with his humorous English philosophy and-his inherent national refusal to be shaken from his self-possession by anything Oberon or Puck can do to him. i, This "most romantic of mechanics," as Hazlitt called him; this '.ratepayer in Elfland" —to quote for the moment modern Mr. Priestley—has relived many times. His comprehensive spirit is traceable, for example, in both Wellers, in Diqk Swiveller, Bob Cratchit —even, to an extent, in oid Scrooge after the dream has worked. It is there also in Jack Point, Wilfred Shadbolt, and Bos'n Bill Bobstay.- It comes right out on the footlights in Private Willis in his sentry box in Westminster yard. Unfortified, as he then is, with the knowledge of what has happened to his enc.hanted principals, he is nevertheless ready to sprout wings Co please a Fairy Qiuen more sedate and "Victorian" than Bottom's Titania. But Private Willis, "B" Company, as Mr. Weller would have.put it,"does not think much of a British soldier. who would not "inconvenience himself to help a female in distress." SOME DERIVATIONS. Patience, authorities will tell one, was built up on the Bab ballad, "The Rival Curates." So it was. But turn to one of the earliest sketches by "Boz'' —the one following the beadle, Mr. Bumble's ancestor —and we smile at an account that might well have inspired the "Rival Curates." Then there is "Boz's" consumptive curate, whose cough won him "anonymous presents of black currant jam and lozenges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, warm stockings," and parochial bulletins anent the state of his health. He seeing remembered by "Bab's," Dr. Daly, the Vicar, who, recalling curate days per Sullivan's music in "The Sorcerer" singsHad I n headache? sighed the maids asIlnd'l a coid? welled forth the silent tear; Did 1 look pale? then hatf the parish trembled, And when I coughed all thought the end was near. It is interesting to trace the bonds between the characters of "Boz" and "Bab." It is fitting to see their creators' centenary year marked by stage revivals and presentations on entertainment's most modern reproductive medium, the talking picture. "The humour of English writing and description has often been wondered at, and it flows from the same source as the merry traits of our character. . . . The ludicrous takes hold of the English imagination and clings to it with all its ramifications. We resent any difference or peculiarity of appearance at first, and yet, having not much malice at our hearts, we are glad to turn it into jest." So wrote Hazlitt, who had neither Gilbert nor Dickens to include in his "English Comic Writers."

Mr. J. B. Pr.iestley has four Dickensian stalwarts in his "English Comic Characters." And. an additional century to support the view that English humour is "not quite like any other";

that it has a "twist in it that is purely English," which is noticed imrnedi* ately "we leave the common ground of the laughing and the laughable, th^ universal guffaw." The novelist proi ceeds: "Drolleries of Shakespeare ancl Dickens, Lamb's Letters, and 'Alice irf Wonderland' did not make their ap« pearance by happy accident. The^ are as English as the silvery fields tha<| Constable painted." He has not in< eluded Gilbert, but G. K. Chestertoni —from another bookshelf—repairs thq omission. Whether our humour be Inj. sympathetic, satirical, or nonsensical mood, the ass's head we don is no) ordinary ass's head any more than wag Mr. Bottom's.

What governs an Englishman's'char) acter —and humour also, says Mr Priestley—in his "inner atmosphere, the "weather in his soul"; the atmos> phere and "equilibrium"' of his*"innei man," from which he "easily measure! the value of all that comes within hi^ mental horizon."