WIT WITH A STING.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13087, 22 October 1935, Page 2

WIT WITH A STING.

CELEBRATED “ RUDE" MEN. 1

SAVINGS OF THE PAST. Amusing stories handed down from an age “when wit covered a multitude of insults 7 ' are told in an article by Siir Max Pemberton in a recent issue of the Evening News, Liondon. He tells of celebrated characters of a London known to the older generation of our day. Some interesting extracts are : When the late Sir Somers Vine asked the great Odell, the actor, down to his beautiful place in the country, that .famous old Savage was in no haste to accept so pleasing an invitation. “Don’t know where you live, 77 he replied a little brusquely. “Oh, 77 -said Sir * Some rs ; “why, Vine Court, of course. 7P “Vine Court, 77 repeated Odell; “yes, but what nu mber ? r 7 This famous old Bohemian was one of that great company of “rude/ 7 men whose sayings have' come down to ns from Victorian and Edwardian times. To-day they have no successors. The art of being wittily rude is lost. Men either indulge in mere vulgar abuse or they are silent. The Kembles, the Trees, the Corny ns Carrs are no more with us. Sir Seymour Hicks, Mr Noel Coward and Mr Frederick Lonsdale stand alone as the successors of those masters. Admittedly it was a difficult art* The retort discourteous had to be allied to wit or it was offensive. Mere loud words might have produced a breach of the peace and led to blows. “Rude 77 men were mostly unanswerable and rarely depended, as Johnson did, upon the strength of their lungs and the quickness of their tempers. Thus, when the late Mr Harry Higgins observed to a famous Irishman who brought him the first news of the Armistice that “this will greatly stimulate recruiting in Ireland, 77 no reply was* possible. TREE AND HALL CAINE. Equally, I suppose, that great master of romantic fiction, the late Hall Caine, had little to' say when he, as the tale went, confessed to free that his head was Shakespearean and Tree rejoined, “Yes, but the rest of you, unfortunately, is very like Hall Caine. 77 The riposte was rude, but the age liked that kind of thing, and nobody enjoyed jokes against himself more than the gifted author of “The Deemster. 77 i* l the days of the Edwardian C lub, not only the members but the porters were often lacking in those genteel manners which appear to be de rigueur to-day. Thus, when a member confessed that he had lost ins umbrella shortly after an ecclesiastical* conference had been held at his club, the aged porter shook his head and observed: “Ah, si. l , that conies of having those bishops ill tile place.” Even at the Reform Club when, many years ago, l left a cigarette case in the smoking room, the porter who handed it to me next morning remarked with leal conviction, “Rucky it was found before any of the members came in, sir.”

It was to the Reform, also, that the late Rewis Morris, an undistinguished though cultured poet of Victorian days, called a number of Ills fellow scribes to hear his complaint that there had been a conspiracy of silence against him in the press Having listened to a florid speech, Oscar Wilde was suddenly heard, as he said: “Could not our friend be persuaded to join the conspiracy.' ’ The meeting remember, got no farther than that. THE BISHOP’S GAITERS A witty Eton master, who asked the name of a bumptious intruder into his classroom and learned that it was Cole, pleasantly exclaimed, “Then Cole, you scuttle.” From the

same source is the cheerful though possibly unveracious yarn of the curate who owed his first living to a bishop s gaiters, at which he appears to have stared in a somewhat unseemly manner “You are interested in the episcopal habit?” suggested his Lordship, whose curiosity was aroused. “Yes,” replied the curate in a humble tone; “I never see a bishop’s gaiters but I think that one day one of them may give me a leg up.’ Promotion appears shortly to have followed this audacity. Sometimes the rude man of the old days imitated his brother of tho 1 layer Book and repented of his nut. I remember being at a literary dinner with that great orator, tho late Arthur Diosy, and hearing him lua l ie a speech in the course of winch he told us something of the hardness of teak and the reason it

was so often used in yacht-building and also, he added, in the heads of Cabinet Ministers. By evil chance a Cabinet Minister was of the comipany, and Diosy spent the rest of his evening lamenting the faux pas —quite unnecessarily, as many thought. At the, very next dinner of tho same society it befell that the president desired to compliment a famous pianist, who often played for charity, and in doing so observed

that tho good fellow did not lot his right hand know what his left hand was doing—an observation received without enthusiasm by the pianist! “TONGUE OF THE RAW.” Tho church, very popularly, lias had few rude men, though tho great Archbishop Temple did not aldays mince his words. When a bore asked him if it was not providential that his aunt had been saved from a wreck, it is historic that ho replied: “Impossible for me to say; 1 do not know your aunt.”

In like manner that great scholar Creighton, when a. deputation approached him concerning tho use of incense, withdrew from the room, observing that he could not suffer fools gladly. Nor may we forget “Soapy Sam,” that bishop of Oxford who, when the country vicar asked him what he thought of his choir, replied that it was wholly

scriptural—“Tlu> singers came first and the musicians followed after. 77 The tongue of the Law, naturally, has been a little sharper; and when the learned judge observed to Frank Lockwood, “You cannot teach me manners, Mr Lockwood, 7 the .answer, “That is so, my lord,” was almost obvious. In the same vein was tho famous Curran’s retort to

the judge who protested, “What am 1 on this Bench for?'’ and the switt answer, “Ah, inv lord, there you have me. ’ That sort of thing would hardly go down to-dav 'Manners may make tin. mail but thee may often lose eases.