Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 189
L’Envoi. The Faded Actor
I CAN CALL him to my mind as I have seen him burlesqued and parodied a hundred times — The Faded Actor. There he stands in his bell-shaped coat drawn at the waist and ample in the shirt. The battered hat that he handles in his elaborate gestures, and holds against his heart as he bows, is but the wreck of a hat that was. His faded trousers are tight upon his leg, drawn downwards with a strap, and carrying some lingering suggestion of the days of Beau Brummel and George the Fourth. His ample buttons are pieced out with string. His frilled cuffs are ostentatious in their raggedness.
From top to toe his creators have made a guy of him, a mean parody of forgotten graces. When he speaks his voice is raucous and rotund. There is something of Shakespeare in it, and something of gin. His face is a blossom that has bloomed overmuch. His feet move in long shoes, fitless, and so worn that he slides noiseless across the stage. Beneath his arm, as if to complete the pathos of his figure, is the rolled up manuscript of the play that he has composed and that the managers, shame be to them, refuse to produce.
In a thousand plays and parodies you shall see this figure of the Faded Actor, a stock abject of undying ridicule. It is a signal for our laughter when he takes a drink, fawning to get it and swallowing it as if into a funnel; it is a signal for our laughter when he cadges for a coin, the smallest not coming amiss; when he arranges with elaborate care upon his uplifted wrist the ruins of his cuff; and most of all when he draws forth from beneath his arm his manuscript and stands forth to read what none will hear except in mockery, with his poor self carried away unconscious with the art of it.
Mark him now as he strikes his attitude to read. Hear the full voice, deep and resonant for all the gin that is in it. No parody can quite remove the majesty of that, nor the grace that has once lived in those queer gestures. Let us temper our laughter, as we look upon him, with something kindlier than mockery, something nearer to respect; for in the Faded Actor with his strange twists and graces, his futile manuscript, his blighted hopes, his unredeemed ambitions, we are looking upon all that is best in the great traditions of the stage. That thick deep voice — comic now, but once revered — that is the surviving tradition of the Elizabethan tragedy, declaimed as a Shakespeare or a Marlowe would have had it. That sliding step so funny to our eye, is all that lingers of the dainty grace of the eighteenth century when dance and stage were one; or that dragging limp with which the poor Faded Actor crosses the stage — he does not know it, but that has come to him from Garrick; or see that long gesticulation of the hand revealing the bare wrist below the cuff, there was a time when such gesticulation was the admired model of a Fox or a Sheridan, and held, even at second hand, the admiration of a senate.
Nay more, there is a thing in the soul of the Faded Actor that all may envy who in this life are busied with the æsthetic arts. For after all what does he want, poor battered guy, with his queer gestures and his outlandish graces? Money? Not he. He has never had, nor ever dreamed of it. A coin here, and there, enough to buy a dram of gin or some broad cheap writing paper on which to enscribe his thoughts — that much he asks; but beyond that his ambition never goes, for it travels elsewhere and by another road. His soul at least is pure of the taint that is smeared across the arts by the money rewards of a commercial age. He lived too soon to hear of the millions a year that crown success and kill out genius; that substitute publicity for fame; that tempt a man to do the work that pays and neglect the promptings of his soul, and that turn the field of the arts into one great glare of notoriety and noise. Not so worked and lived a Shakespeare or a Michael Angelo; and the Faded Actor descends directly from them. Art for Art’s sake, is his whole creed, unconscious though it be. Some one to listen to his lines, an audience though only in a barn or beside the hedge row, a certain mead of praise that is the breath of art and the inspiration of effort; this he asks and no more. A yacht, a limousine, a palace beside the sea — of these things the Faded Actor has never heard. A shelter in some one else’s premises, enough gin to keep his voice as mellow as Shakespeare would have wished it, and with that, permission to recite his lines, and to stand forth in his poor easy fancy as a King of Carthage, or a Sultan of Morocco. Such is the end and aim of his ambition. But out of such forms of ambition has been built up all that is best in art.
To him, therefore, I dedicate this book. He will never read it, and I easily forgive him that. His brain has long since acquired a delicacy of adjustment that renders reading a superfluity. But I make the dedication all the same as a humble tribute to those high principles of art which are embodied in the Faded Actor.
THE END
The Garden of Folly
CONTENTS
PREFACE. CONCERNING HUMOUR AND HUMOURISTS
The Secrets of Success
The Human Mind Up To Date
The Human Body — Its Care and Prevention
The Perfect Salesman
Romances of Business
The Perfect Lover’s Guide
The Restoration of Whiskers
Little Glimpses of the Future in America
My Unposted Correspondence
Letters to the New Rulers of the World
THE GARDEN
OF FOLLY
“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.”
(Confucius — or Tutankhamen — I forget which)
PREFACE. CONCERNING HUMOUR AND HUMOURISTS
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.
The Secrets of Success
AS REVEALED AT One Dollar and Fifty
Cents a Revelation
Note. This opening chapter deals with the secrets of material success and shows how easily it can be achieved. Indeed anybody who is willing to take a brief correspondence course can achieve it in a few weeks. What follows here is based upon the best and newest manuals on the subject, and every word is guaranteed.
The New Race of Big Men and Big
Women
Dear friend reader — for you will not mind my calling you this, or both of this, for I feel already that we are friends, are we not, don’t you? — let us sit down and have a comfortable get-together visit and talk things over.
Are you aware that there is a big movement going on in this country, and that a lot of big-hearted men and ever so many big women are in it? Perhaps not. Then let me try to tell you all about it and the way in which the world is being transformed by it.
No, don’t suggest sending me any money. I don’t want it. Neither I nor any of these big men and women who are working on this thing want money. We all take coupons, however, and if you care to cut out any coupons from any newspaper or magazine and send them to me I shall be glad to get them. But, remember, sending a coupon pledges you to nothing. It does not in any way bring you within reach of the law, and you may cut out as many as you like. Only a little while ago a young boy, scarcely more than a man, came into my office in great distress and in evident remorse. “What have I done?” he moaned. “What is it?” I asked. “I have cut out a coupon,” he said, wringing his hands, “and sent it in.” “To where?” I asked. “To Department B. The Success Editor, Box 440-J. Phoenix, Arizona.” “My dear friend,” I said, “cutting out a coupon pledges you to nothing.” He left my office (after in vain offering me money) a new being. I may say that he is now at the head of one of the biggest dried-prune businesses in Kalamazoo.
In other words, that boy had found the secret of success. A chance remark had suddenly put him in the path of Opportunity.
My dear reader, you may be, all unknowing, in exactly the position of that young man. You may be, like him, on the very verge of opportunity. Like him, you may need only a friendly shove to put you where you belong.
Now this movement that I am in, along with these big women, etc., that I spoke of, is a movement for putting success within reach of all, even of the dullest. You need not despair merely because you are dull. That’s nothing. A lot of these big men in the movement were complete nuts before they came in.
Perhaps it is a new idea to you that success can be deliberately achieved. Let me assure you, on the contrary, that achieving it is the only way to get it.
I wonder, for example, if the thought has ever occurred to you that you would like your salary raised. If so, nothing is more simple. Read the chapters which follow and your salary will be raised before you finish them. After having studied the literature of this big movement for success, I can tell you of hundreds, of thousands, of men and women in this country whose salaries have been raised beyond recognition.
What would you say, for example, to earning sixty-three dollars a week without leaving home, and using only your spare time; and that, too, at an agreeable occupation, needing no preparation and no skill? Do you want to do it? Well, that is what young Edward Beanhead — Kid Ed, they call him — is doing right at this minute in Houston, Texas.
Or what do you say to cleaning up half a million cold in a fortnight, on the sale of an article indispensable to every home in the country, easily understood and never out of order, patent applied for? Well, that was what was done by Callicot Johnson — Cal. Johnson, they generally call him, at least if they’re busy, or Millionaire Johnson, or Lucky Johnson — they call him a lot of names like that. You can see his picture in half the papers in the country — Bull Johnson, he’s often called — you must have seen him. Well, here was a man, this Cal, or this Bull, who never knew till he was forty-one years old that he had personality, and then all of a sudden, one day — but, stop — I’ll tell you later on all about this Bull, or Buffalo Johnson. They often call him Buffalo. I merely say that at present Buffalo — or Buff — is at the head of one of the biggest nut syndicates in El Paso.
Or how would you like to imagine yourself becoming the head of one of the biggest mercantile concerns in the country? Would you have any use for it? I mean, would it make a hit with you? If so, I shall have to tell you presently about Robert J. Rubberheart — Bull Dog Bob they usually call him. It occurred to Bob one day that eighty-five per cent of his efficiency was being squandered in — but, no, I’d better keep it. Suffice it to say that you can see, in the back pages of almost any of the current magazines, a picture of Bob at his mahogany desk in his office in that mercantile firm. He is pointing his finger right at his stenographer’s eye, and underneath him is written, “This man earns ten dollars a minute.” Well, that’s Bob. He has cut out the waste of his efficiency and he has “made good.”
But talking of Bull Dog Bob and the way he “made good,” reminds me of a lot of other cases which I have met in my study of this big movement, of men, yes, and of women, who have “made good.” Perhaps you don’t realize, reader, that no matter if a man is a long way down, almost down and out, he can still “come back” and “make good.” If a man has got sufficient pep and grit not to let the sand get choked out of him he will come back every time. I am thinking here specially — as no doubt you are — of the instance of the Hon. E. Final Upshot, now one of the leading men, one of the big men in the senate of Nicaragua. Yet there was a man who had been nearly beaten out by fate; health gone, friends gone, memory gone — he couldn’t even have remembered his friends if he had kept them — money gone, everything in fact, except that somewhere away down in that man was sand. And so one day just by chance, Ed — his friends now always called him Honest Ed — saw in a paper . . . but don’t let’s spoil the story.
In any case, the real point is that men like Buff Johnson, and Bull Dog Bob, and the Honorable Final Upshot have got personality. That’s it. Some of them had it from the start but didn’t know it. You may be in that class. Concealed in these men was an unsuspected asset, like the jewel in the toad of which Shakespeare speaks. It may be in you.
And having personality, they set to work to develop themselves. They built up their efficiency. They studied their bodies. They took exercises which gave them constitutions like ostriches. They eliminated waste. They chewed their food for hours before they used it. Realizing that a ferruginous diet breaks down the tissues and sets up a subterfuge of gas throughout the body, they took care to combine in their diet a proper proportion of explosives. Having grasped the central fact that the glory of a man’s strength is in his hair, these people, by adopting a system of rubbing (easily learned in six lessons and involving nothing more than five minutes of almost hysterical fun every morning), succeeded in checking the falling of the follicles, or capillary basis of the hair itself. In short, as one of the greatest of them has said, “Hair power is brain power.”
