THE RAMBLES OF A CLOWN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XXV, 23 June 1894, Page 580

THE RAMBLES OF A CLOWN.

BY A SERIOUS PERSON. I AM willing to bear with resignation the ordinary lot of mortal man. Amateur theatricals, healthy walks, bilious suppers, and uneducated regenerators—l take them as they come in the day’s work. But when I find myself saddled with a reputation I have done nothing whatever to deserve, a reputation which stands like a wall between me and the love of my fellow men, and condemning me to everlasting bitterness and boredom, I claim a right to protest against the universe. lam a clown malgri moi. Whence the reputation comes Ido not know. I look at myself in the glass, and see the reflection of a sober, middle aged Englishman, fat and statesmanlike, with no infinite humour nor merry eye about me—a simple, straightforward Saxon. It may be that to others my face seems that of a natural low comedian ; I do not know. But I should have thought that even low comedians were allowed their moments of seriousness, allowed to share the sorrow and to invite the sympathy of their friends ; no such thing is allowed to me. Everybody I know is convinced that whatever I say, on whatever occasion, I intend to be funny. You remember the man in Catullus who smiled on every occasion, at pathetic speeches and funerals, and is reminded that nothing is more inept than inept laughter! That is the sort of man lam supposed to be. Sometimes, even now, a friend will confide his sorrow to me ; bnt he does so with a beseeching look, as one who should say, • Do recognize that this is a serious matter, and don’t attempt one of your silly jokes!’ Then I say something appropriate and sympathetic, and immediately my friend smiles a sickly smile, and says, probably, that it is no laughing matter to him. All serious talk is hushed when I go into a room, and people sit with faces of painful expectation, many of them obviously bored at having to leave an interesting subject for inane laughter. If a genuinely funny man is there, they think me a tedious anti-climax. Moreover, I am not allowed to have any sorrows of my own ; they are supposed to be invented for other people’s amusement. A woman I know nearly had a fit when 1 told her bow I had fallen off an omnibus. I think if my wife were to elope, this friend would laugh herself into apoplexy. I told a man the other day that my Aunt Rebecca was dead—told him quite simply ; he roared with laughter, and then rebuked me for making a jest of such things. I am not only supposed to be destitute of all sympathy with human sorrow, but this reputation of clowning has earned me the reputation also of envy, malice, and all oncharitableness. Thus, if some pitiful lapse of virtue is mentioned to me, and I find excuse for the sinner, I am supposed to be sarcastic and a mean-minded fellow. I have an enemy whom nevertheless I honestly admire ; if I praise him I am thought sarcastic again, and again mean-mined. I am supposed to be not only a clown, but a stupid clown. But I put it to you : if every trivial and commonplace remark you make were criticised from the point of view of its being meant as a joke, would not you, too, be thought stupid ? The wittiest man alive would not stand such an ordeal. A remark about the weather, or about the political situation, an opinion on the newest religion or the latest play—anything I say is regarded as an attempted joke, and received with maddening indulgence. And yet I solemnly protest to you I have never seriously made a joke in my life. I remember in early youth upsetting a cup of tea in my hat, and another time bumping my head against a banging lamp. If these things are re. sponsible for my reputation, it is surely hard that such trivial things should have made me the most miserable man in London, and at times the most hopeless.