HUMOUR.

Otago Witness, Issue 3618, 17 July 1923, Page 61

HUMOUR.

ITS PLACE IN MODERN LITERATURE.

By

Mat. Scully.

A sense of humour is one of the best

gifts bestowed on mankind; it is better than wealth, although we might take the hard cash instead if we had a choice in the matter. Just the same it can’t buy humour—that priceless laxative from fatigue, either mental or physical. We know that men of great wealth have sometimes preferred death to life, and that poor men who are possessed of a keen sense of humour never do. “We can laugh at troubles for’ard that they couldn’t laugh at aft!’’ says the late Henry Lawson, with philosophic truth. That is not to say that there is not any humour “aft” —there is. “But,” to quote another humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, “in England, for instance, no humorist writes for a paper which is to be read by a prosperous business man and also by his chauffeur; to reach these two men it is necessary for him to write two different sorts of jokes for two different publications.” Yet we think a joke should be universal, and British jokes are not. The war, however, has done a lot for British wit. It gave more softness and elasticity to British humour. This is partly due to the shattering of class prejudice and partly to the intellectual and emotional awakening. The English humorist has been adopting a less patronising attitude towards his readers. He has credited his readers with a certain amount of intelligence, and has not considered it necessary to explain bis jokes in detail as he used to explain them. You remember the old humorous papers in which the point of every joke, however obvious, was put in italics, so that it might not possibly be missed. If the joke was about a child's bright retort, or something of the sort, there would also he given after the italicised point of the joke a phrase in parentheses showing the effect of the retort on the other character in the dialogue—“Consternation of Mr Brown,” or “Total Collapse of Mr Jones,” or something of that sort. This kind of thing has been done away with in comparatively recent years, and not because English humour has been less subtle, less in need of explanation. What has happened is that the English humorists have learned to place more reliance on their readers’ intelligence. A characteristic of the American humorist, says an Englishman, is that he is not afraid of running the risk of vulgarity. His English cousin, however, “wabbles’’ ; he would like to be funny but he is haunted by the fear of being vulgar. Jerome K. Jerome, it appears, suffered much from this bane, and a large section of the public regarded his early work as a personal insult. Yet one cannot but think that vulgarity and true humour are as wide apart as the poles. Just what a man laughs at —really laughs at—is nearly always a sure index to his personal character, and incidentally the same may be said of a nation. W e cannot hope to enjoy a joke without complete sympathy and understanding of its subject. Most writers and critics seem timid of eulogising the new school of humorists—either that or they really cannot get past Mark Twain and Mr Dickens. Well, then, here goes for a plunge, regardless of consequences—or a vindication once more of the old adage: “Fools rush in where fear to tread.” Anyhow I laughed more heartily over some of Mr V. G. Modehouse’s short stories than I ever did at Mr Pickwick, or Mark Twain’s “Jumping Frog”! For one person at least there never was another short story so diverting as “Extricating Young Gussie,” hv P. G. Wodehouse. And I think it no exaggeration to say that W. W. Jacobs has been responsible for as much universal mirth as ever was the immortal Charles Dickens. All honour to the old giants, of course, but have you ever thought liow difficult it would be for a modern author to get an acceptance if he sent in a contribution anything so insipid as some of their efforts are? Modern authors, more especially humorists, have to keep up a standard far above the old masters in order to get their work “through.” As for the humour with a tear lurking not far from the surface one cannot pick a more suitable author than Pett Ridge —his “Mord Em’lv’’ is inimitable for that stvle of reading. All his works are splendid. Of course he does not indulge in jokes the way that W. W. Jacobs or P. G. Wodehouse do —he is a humorist nevertheless, as they are, and as incomparable in his works as those two artists can be in theirs.

Of American humorists I think George Ade and Stephen Leacock make a far more general appeal to the world’s sense of humour than any of their brother humorists, vounger or older. A beautiful example of clever work and exquisite humour is to be found in Stephen Leacock’s “The Snoopopaths,” a skit on the average modern novel or short story. He says: “A storv to he read by the average reader has got to be snoopopatlietic. This is a word derived from the Greek snoopo —or if there never was a verb snoopo, at least there ought to have been one —- and it means just what is seems to mean. Nine out of ten stories written in America are snoopopathic.” Mr Wodehouse made some pertinent remarks on the subject in an interviewgiven to the Philadelphia Public Ledger. He said: “I think the Old Subscriber must he dying out. For years he dominated the whole of English humorous writing. I first made his acquaintance when I wrote a facetious column on an evening paper in London. Whenever I wrote anything that struck me as particularly good it was deleted by the censor on the ground that the Old Subscriber wouldn’t like it. That sort of tiling was going on all o|ver the country. Ardent

young men, bursting to be funny if they could, were squelched by their editors in the interests of the Old Subscriber. The Old Subscriber was suspicious of humour. He disliked it too new and fresh. It was Old Subscriber who made the difference between the humour of America and the humour of England, which was the difference of a puppy with a kind master and a puppy with a master who bullies it. The American humorist went about his business rollickingly, sure of a kind welcome. The English humorist was deprecating. He hoped he would not be kicked, but he was not betting on it. He generally was kicked.”