“This poor old world works hard and gets no richer: thinks hard and gets no wiser: worries much and gets no happier. It casts off old errors to take on new ones: laughs at ancient superstitions and shivers over modern ones. It is at best but a Garden of Folly, whose chattering gardeners move a moment among the flowers, waiting for the sunset.”
By : Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944)
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I do not claim that this preface has anything in particular to do with the book that follows. Readers who desire to do so, and are mean enough, may safely omit either the book or the preface without serious loss. I admit that the preface is merely inserted in order to give me a chance to expound certain views on the general nature of humour and on the general aspects of the person called the humourist.
There is a popular impression that a humorist or comedian must needs be sad; that in appearance he should be tall, lantern-jawed and cadaverous; and that his countenance should wear a woe-begone expression calculated to excite laughter. The loss of his hair is supposed to increase his market value, and if he is as bald as a boiled egg with the shell off, his reputation is assured.
This I think springs from the fact that, in the past at least, people did not propose to laugh with the humourist but at him. They laughed in an apologetic way. They considered him simply too silly. He wrung a laugh from them in spite of their better selves.
In other words, till our own time laughter was low. Our dull forefathers had no notion of its intellectual meaning and reach. The Court jester, referred to haughtily as “yon poor fool,” was most likely the cleverest man around the Court; and yet historical novels are filled with little touches such as this;—
“The King sank wearily upon his couch. ‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘I am aweary. My mind is distraught. In faith I am like to become as deftless as yon poor fool.’”
Now as a matter of fact, the King was probably what we should call in North America a “great big boob”; and the poor fool if he had lived with us would be either on the staff of LIFE or PUNCH, or at the head of a University—whichever he pleased.
A generation or so ago the idea of the melancholy humourist got a lot of corroboration from the fact that some of the best humourists of the time were in actual reality of a woe-begone appearance. The famous Bill Nye was tall, mournful, and exceedingly thin, a fact which he exploited to the full. He used to tell his hearers that there had been a request for him to come to them again and to appear “in broadsword combat with a parallel of latitude.” The still more celebrated Artemus Ward was also of a shambling and woe-begone habit; his melancholy face and feeble frame bespoke in reality the ravages of a mortal disease. The laughter that greeted his shambling appearance and his timid gestures appear in retrospect as cruel mockery. The humour of Ward’s public appearance which captivated the London of sixty years ago is turned now to pathos.
But Ward and Nye are only two examples of the “melancholy comedian,” a thing familiar through the ages. Yet in spite of all such precedents, and admitting that exceptions are exceptions, I cannot but think that the true manner of the comedian is that of smiles and laughter. If I am to be amused let me see on the stage before me, not the lantern jaws of sorrow but a genial countenance shaped like the map of the world, lit with spectacles, and illuminated with a smile. Let me hear the comedian’s own laughter come first and mine shall follow readily enough, laughing not at him, but with him. I admit that when the comedian adopts this mode he runs the terrible risk of being the only one to laugh at his own fun. This is indeed dreadful. There is no contempt so bitter as that of the man who will not laugh for the man who will. The poor comedian’s merriment withers under it and his laughter turns to a sad and forced contortion pitiful to witness. But it is a risk that he must run. And there is no doubt that if he can really and truly laugh his audience will laugh with him. His only difficulty is in doing it.
This much however, I will admit, that if a man has a genuine sense of humour, he is apt to take a somewhat melancholy, or at least a disillusioned view of life. Humour and disillusionment are twin sisters. Humour cannot exist alongside of eager ambition, brisk success, and absorption in the game of life. Humour comes best to those who are down and out, or who have at least discovered their limitations and their failures. Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
This is why I think such a great number of people are cut off from having any very highly developed sense of humour.
If I had to make a list of them I would put at the head all eminent and distinguished people whose lofty position compels them to take themselves seriously. The list would run something like this.
1. The Pope of Rome. I doubt if he could have a very keen sense of fun.
2. Archbishops and the more dignified clergy, sense of humour—none.
3. Emperors, Kaisers, Czars, Emirs, Emus, Sheiks, etc, etc,—absolutely none.
4. Captains of Industry (I mean the class that used to be called “Nation Makers” and are now known as “profiteers”)—atrophied.
5. Great scholars, thinkers, philanthropists, martyrs, reformers, and patriots,—petrified.
As against this I would set a list of people who probably would show a sense of humour brought to its full growth;—
1. Deposed kings.
2. Rejected candidates for election to a national legislature.
3. Writers whose work has been refused by all the publishers.
4. Inventors who have lost their patents, actors who have been hooted off the stage, painters who can’t paint, and speaking broadly, all the unemployed and the unsuccessful.
I have no doubt that this theory, like most of the things that I say in this book, is an over-statement. But I have always found that the only kind of statement worth making is an over-statement. A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries further.
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