NONSENSE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 63

NONSENSE NOTES.

By QrExTi.v Pope. There is no harder thing in the world than to write nonsense; at least, to write fine, conscious nonsene. Let him who disbelieves me try. The reason is not far to seek. For the noblest nonsense requires not only genius of a rare and reticent type, it needs a free, unaffected outlook, 'a pojnt of view which has not been tainted bv trade, a mind which is eternally one with the youth of the world. In the world of to-day we need to be succored from our own seriousness. We grow hoary in hard work and our own intensity is our undoing. How many times, viewing scientists, schoolmasters, and social reformers, have we sighed to be saved from so many earnest people? There should be nothing so solemn, but we can see its humorous side. Laughter brings relief from living, and it is to nonsense that we should turn after toil. It is significant that the scoffers are those who have endured. Think on Gargantua. Pantagrull, Gulliver, and Don Quixote for my moral. Falst-aff, Villon, and George Robey are not far behind them. Here we have the laughter which never dies. And in modern times wg have perfected the spirit. It took an age wholly material like our own to bring it to full flower. And in Leacock. Lewis Carroll, and Lear we hare the pure nonsense of eternity. There are many ways of talking nonsense, but only one of writing it. and that is in verse. Or so we used to think before Leacock < ante, and in the joyous inconsequence of I w laughter we forgot our preconceived opinions. In happy fashion we paid him homage. It is seldom that the public buys a book in such thousands, hut it forgot its prejudice for Leacock ; it wished to possess him to chuckle over him and then to chuckle over him again “Nonsense Novels” are a dream of delight, and who has forgotten the Prime Mini. A : ei awling disguised in a rug. Guido, the Gimlet of i Ghent, or the fact that Germany “knew j to a bottle how many soldiers Chicago j could support after closing time”’ Lewis Carroll (in private life the Rev. C. L. Dodgson), the creator of Alice, we all have been familiar with long since. It is a peculiar fact that we should

abandon this keenest of all pleasures to children. Still, if there is a man who has. not heard the King’s shout of “Off with his head!” nor witnessed -the Queen's garden party, where croquet was played with hedgehogs and flamingoes, let us feel for him. Rather than be pitied he may remedy the gap. But it is to a third and lesser known i Napoleon of Nonsense that I wish to make you free. Edward Lear, in spite of other endeavour, is first in the field. His book. “Nonsense Rhymes,” is the finest thing in fun of the century. Ke does not take us into the realm of nonsense through the medium of a well, but brings it into the land of the living. We have not the feeling of emigrants who should walk up to the nearest Court Card and inquire the way to the Alien Registration Office. For, to begin with, we are properly introduced to him— How pleasant to know Mr Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough. His mind is concrete and; fastidious, His nose is remarkably big; Ills visa.ye is more or less hideous, His beard it resembles a wig. And so on until we are told that He has many friends, laymen and clerical; Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible "hat. He reads but he cannot speak Spanish, He cannot abide ginger-beer; Ere 11 i.e days of his pilgrimage vanish, How pleasant to know Mr Lear! And then he takes us by the hand and leads us through a maze of the nonsensical until we cease to wonder if the moon is green cheese in the comfort of certainty. He shows no half lights of truth, his words contain no element of the obvious,, nor does he depend back upon the paradox for his point. He will have nothing to do with truth —away with it! He is always ingenious in execution, from the sketches with which he illustrates his volumes down to the limerick, which I regret to record he did not scruple to employ. It is hard to break with tradition entirely; but in the main the amazing thing about him is the belief he has in his own creations and the credulity he inspires in us as we read. It is hard not to believe in the existence of the Dong with the Luminous Nose, The Blue Baboon, who played the flute, And the Orient Ca,!f from the Land of Tute, And tile A tier;- Squash and the Bisky Bat, and .a. dozen more, including the Firnble Fowl with the corkscrew leg and the Quangle Wangle Q.uee. The very rytlim of their names convinces us of their corporeality. His fun is phrased so aptly that we cannot but believe The Pebble who has no toes Had once as many as we, When they .said, “Some day von may lose them all” He replied, “Fish, diddle de-dee!” j And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink . Lavender water tinged with pink, j For she said, “The World in general knows | There’s nothing so good for a Pebble’s toes!” This has the air of actuality. So, too. has the “Quangle Wangles Hat”:— On the top of the Crumpetty Tree The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face vyu could never see j On account of: his beaver hat! i For his hat was a hundred and two feet wide, j With ribbons and bibbons on every side, ! And bells and buttons and loops and lace, ! So that nobody ever could see the face j Of the Quangle Wangle Qtiee. | Lear is most famous in his creation of | this strange animal. But dear to me are | the adventures of Mr and -urs Discobboios | and the Pelican's Chorus— Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee! and a host of others beside. He is a maker of strange moments; how pleasant, indeed, to know Mr Lear! It is symbolic, from what arduous occupations these three have turned to the noble art of writing nonsense. All three were members of laboriously learned professions. Carroll was a mathematician. Lear an ornithologist, and Leacock, as “the world in general knows,” is the holder of a Chair in Social Sciences. What terrors are conjured up by the reflection that Carroll might have sunk in the morass of mathematics and Leacock have been sWallowed by the sea of his sociology. I said some time ago that we | have abandoned this pleasure in nonsense i to the young—it is time that we realised I that in it is the elixir of youth.