Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 610
The only way to deal with the situation is to say very quietly, “Yes, I heard it.” Even if you didn’t it doesn’t matter. He’ll tell it again.
(5) The Crab Fashion Story. In this kind of story the narrator keeps moving backward instead of forward. Each item that he mentions suggests to him something that went before. But for timely interruptions he would never end. Example: the narrator begins:
What you say about the darkies reminds me of a funny story I’ve heard my father tell about his old days in Georgia. Father’s people, of course, didn’t really come from Georgia; they moved in there after the war; before that they belonged in Mississippi right close to Vicksburg. I know I’ve heard father say that from the high bluff at Vicksburg you could see the roof of the old plantation. His people hadn’t built it, though. It was originally built, so they say, by one of the ancestors of Jefferson Davis —
By this time the narrator is moving backward so fast that nothing will stop him, till he bumps into Christopher Columbus. But he has a sort of subconscious sense that warns him, and he presently gives himself a new start, like this:
However, to make a long story short, when father lived in Georgia there used to be revival meetings among the darkies where the preacher, don’t you know, would get them all worked up and hysterical and getting the powers and all that. Of course father and the other boys in the family were not allowed to go to the meetings because the family had been brought up Episcopalian. In fact mother’s grandfather, she was one of the Slopes of West Virginia — I don’t know if you ever heard of him — was the Rev. Alleghany Slope who wrote a book called Walking Upward and Slipping Backward that was very highly thought of; in fact he taught in the seminary at Oil City. However, to make a long story short —
And with that the narrator is back at the camp meeting for a new start. Incidentally no long story was ever made short. On the contrary, short stories are made long.
Consider here as a final illustration of the mechanism of story telling the way in which one and the same story might be told by different narrators. We can take one of the most familiar of American stories, known to everybody and not needing quotation at full length, the story of the man who was “put off at Buffalo.” Reduced to a few words it amounts to this:
A man before going to bed in a Pullman car said to the porter, “We pass Buffalo at three o’clock in the morning. See that I get off there. Even if I am sleepy and refuse to get up, you just put me off.” Next morning the man woke up in broad daylight to find the train long past Buffalo. “Why didn’t you put me off?” he asked angrily. The porter looked dumbfounded. “If I didn’t put you off, who on earth was that man who fought so hard when I threw him off at Buffalo at three o’clock this morning?”
Here is the same story:
I — As Related by Hierocles of Athens b.c. 500
Two countrymen, having accepted a ride (or, perhaps, having been invited to a ride) in a carrier’s cart (or, perhaps, in a four wheeled Prospectus), this one desiring to go to Corinth and that one on the other hand desiring to go to Megara, the carrier let down this one at Megara and that one at Corinth.
II — As Told by the Anglo-Indian Colonel Mentioned Above
A rather — er — surprising incident happened to a friend of mine — a — er — retired Indian officer like myself. He was traveling in your country and the train was — er — getting to one of your towns called — er — Buffalo. He was in one of what you call — er — sleepers, I believe, and he said to the saice — er — I mean the porter: “Be sure to wake me at Buffalo.” He said, “Even if I seem — er — disinclined to turn out, be sure to get me awake and — er — put me off at Buffalo.” Well the — er — saice, at least the porter promised most faithfully and in the morning forgot — er — utterly and entirely to do so. My friend was carried on to another of your towns called I think — er — Cleveland.
III — As Told by Sir Walter Scott
The market town of Buffalo is pleasantly situated at the point where Lake Erie, the broad surface of its waters swollen from the multitudinous streams which have gathered from the furthest confines of the Superior Lake and the Lakes of Michigan and Huron, themselves no inconsiderable bodies of that fluid without which mankind would perish, empties itself into the wide flood of the Niagara River, where its waters, as if conscious of an impending fate, move with a gathering speed in their progress toward the stygian abyss of Niagara. The town itself, known as Buffalo, from its having been from time immemorial the watering place of the vast herds of bison which formerly frequented the region, is a rising frontier settlement of some ten thousand souls. It contains a number of fine edifices, including several churches built of timber, and a handsome court-house and a jail of stone.
Toward this fair town of Buffalo on a certain evening in early summer there might have been seen approaching one of those vehicles called trains newly introduced both in the old world and the new whose speed already rivals that of the fleetest coaches. The way along which it passed presented a scene of wild if not unattractive beauty. The forest which lined each side of the narrow clearance was thickly hung with sassafras, sumach and succotash while the bright hues of the magnolia broke the lively green of the cucumis melo and the darker foliage of the iguanadon. In the marshier ditches which lined the track the light antelope paused a moment to view the passing wonder before plunging into the forest, or the heavy buffalo stood, immovable and silent, as if resenting this intrusion upon his immemorial domain.
Seated within the train, a traveler whose alert and evident curiosity proclaimed him a stranger to the locality, eyed alternately the passing forest and the interior of the flying car. He was a man of about forty whose well set features and firmly knit frame showed him to be a person of resolution, while his iron gray hair and face bronzed by the sun of a dozen climes showed him not unacquainted with situations of emergency and danger.
Strathgellert, for such was the traveler’s cognomen, presently withdrew his eyes from the landscape over which the shadows of approaching night were already falling, and summoned to his side the faithful African attendant whose ministering services were engaged in surrounding the traveler with every comfort possible.
“Porter,” said Strathgellert using to the attendant the name commonly employed in the wilds of America to those of his office, “I am informed that we may expect to reach the town of Buffalo at any advanced hour of the night, nay, I might rather say, at an early hour of the morrow?” The porter, his face illuminated by one of those broad grins which are at once the characteristic and the charm of his race, indicated his assent. “In that case,” said Strathgellert, “I desire you to call me in time to allow time to dress and get down at Buffalo; be certain to see that I am awake, nay, if need be, use every exertion to make me so, and see to it that I do not at such an early hour seek to foist you off with excuses; in a word, my good fellow, put me off at Buffalo.”
The African hastened to assure our traveler of his devotion and, with the fidelity of his race, pledged himself to the desired service. Strathgellert, already fatigued with the events of the day as narrated in the preceding chapter, and his senses rendered drowsy by the falling darkness and the rhythmical motion of the flying vehicle, extended himself on one of the couches or berths with which the sleeping cars of America are provided, and, commending himself briefly to that Providence which alone can bring them safely to their destination, was not long in falling into that deep and profound slumber known to the seafarer and the traveler.
Chapter 2
The sun rose brightly over the broad and placid bosom of Lake Erie, illuminating it from its east end up, while along its shores a flying train, its pace continually increasing, passed rapidly along the broad reaches of sand and marsh which fringe the low outline of the lake and indicate the territory where the domain of the terrible Seneca gives place to that of the milder and more tractable Pottawottomie. It was at about nine of the clock when a traveler occupying one of the lower bunks or berths put his head out from the curtains which screened it from the inquisitive eye, into the body of the car now flooded with the broad sunshine of the day and asked in a tone of eagerness which brooked of no denial, “Have we passed Buffalo?” The faithful African whose vigil had lasted unbroken and without complaint since the evening before, hastened to the side of Strathgellert, for our readers have divined that he it was, and said in a humble and ingratiating tone, “Sir, we are just coming into Ashtabula.” Strathgellert leaped from his couch his eyes aflame. “Foul negro,” he exclaimed, “we have passed Buffalo; deny it not; and why, sirrah, did you not put me off at Buffalo?” The African, falling on one knee and with outstretched hands imploring the pity of his angered master, replied, in tones in which respect and submission struggled with anxiety and trepidation, “Sir, I did put you off; or if it wasn’t you, who indeed was the man whom I, with these hands, ejected from the car, struggling vainly against my reluctant exercise of force?”
Here indeed was mystery. Strathgellert was about to seize the unhappy negro by the neck when his arm was arrested by an occurrence, so strange, and so unaccountable that we reserve it for our reader’s consideration in a later chapter.
CHAPTER VIII. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
OUR COMIC NATIONS — Is There National Humor — American Humor — Mr. Punch and English Humor — The Irish Bull — The Grim Humor of Scotland.
The idea of national characteristics has been greatly overdone. It comes down to us as a legacy of the past when a man living in France lived in a quite different way from that of an Englishman, and both of them were similarly separated from Italians and Arabs and equatorial Pygmies — different clothes, different houses, different food and different habits and different religions. This of necessity carried with it a difference of thought. But in the world in which we live all this is passing away. Frenchmen play football, Arabs go in for boxing and Pygmies take piano lessons. Africans come to Europe to learn, and Europeans go to Africa to forget. American missionaries spread Christianity among the Hindoos, and Hindoos teach Buddhism in Omaha. Through it all is heard the unending voice of the radio, and is seen the universal flicker of the cinema. The world is being unified into one, and the human race being standardized into a type.
Go where you will, there is the same increasing overgrowth of sameness. If Dr. Livingstone could come to life again and visit the scenes of his explorations in the Upper Basin of the Congo, he would find a Rotary Club, a Women’s Fortnightly Lunch Club, Boy Scouts celebrating Mother’s Day, and Natives returning for Old Home Week. If Balboa climbed again the heights of Panama to gaze out upon the Pacific, they would certainly expect him to make a luncheon speech as the guest of the Panama Club.
Whether this is good or bad, whether it means advance or decline, progress or stagnation, is not here in question. Probably it is a good thing. Just now the whole aim and effort of the world should be to avoid war. We know how, but we can’t do it. Economic nationalism, just when it should have faded out of the world, has broken out more virulent than ever. Leagues of nations won’t work as long as there are nations that need leaguing. When the nations are ready to form a league, and obey it, they won’t need a league any more. Nor is force any use as the ultima ratio. Science has so utterly overdone it that there is nothing in it except mutual destruction. Everybody can kill everybody.
In this gloomy outlook the only bright spot on the horizon is the increasing standardization of mankind. The realization that we are all just about the same kind of people may create the kind of world-consciousness that will one day replace nationality.
Meantime that is rather far away.
Nor is there anywhere where nationality and national differences have been worked harder than in the domain of humor. The comic press has long since created a set of national types very largely imaginary except in so far as they had a historic origin and preserve a faint survival of it. The novel, the stage and the screen help to keep them going, poor mock figures that they are, Pat and Sandy and Alphonse, John and Jonathan, Tony and Fritz, and even Sambo and Fuzzy Wuzzy — like a set of scarecrows on a clothesline flapping in the wind.
Look at them. Here is the imaginary Frenchman — always called Alphonse or Gaston (yet statistics show that only one Frenchman in 100,000 is called Alphonse; mostly they are called Bill or Pete); wears a stovepipe hat and a bell-shaped coat; eats frogs; prefers other men’s wives to his own; excellent taste, but inferior morals.
The imaginary Englishman — tall and lackadaisical; hay-colored hair and a huge straw-colored mustache; face purple; only one eye, the other being glass; says “ripping” and “topping;” served in the Guards (Gahds) in the “Baw Waw.”
Scotchman — says “Hoot awa’ wi ye”; is very dour and grim; prefers wet weather to sunshine; likes the notion of hell; hopes to go there — less expensive than Heaven.
Irishman — always merry; says “arrah! bigorrah, mavourneen, macooshlah, bismallah!”; twirls a shillelagh; likes a fight; has no respect for the law; makes a fine policeman.
Based on these types the comic Frenchman and the comic Englishman and the rest are turned loose upon literature and the stage.
But in reality the various kinds of national humor differ only about as much and as little as national thought. What makes them seem different is, for one thing, that you can’t translate humor. You can translate a scientific statement but not a joke. You can say with equal force in every language, “The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal.” Even in Esperanto “as angelos as basos as triangolos as equalos” seems to keep its force. But the language of humor — at least its technical and verbal forms — defies translation. That puts a barrier at once between the expression of humor from nation to nation unknown in the case of science. An equally great barrier is found in the fact that a great mass of current humor is fragmentary, topical and deals with the affairs of day to day. Jokes about the NRA in America are as unfathomable in London as jokes about the Welsh Church are in New York. Why is it that a great many Americans (quite a lot, — you’ll find some everywhere) don’t read Punch? Because they couldn’t appreciate the humor? Not at all. They could. But they don’t know what it is about. Give them a good training in an English public school and ten years’ residence in England, and they’d enjoy it. French jokes in Le Rire about Monsieur Doumergue or Monsieur Flandin may be very funny, but you have to know who Monsieur Doumergue and Monsieur Flandin are to get them right. And who ever heard of them? Some jokes and many pictures are based on universals, but the bulk are not.
But within the limits thus indicated one can at any rate find a certain distinctive individuality that marks the humor of each country. No doubt as the nations unify and standardize out of existence, the distinction will tend to fade. Already there is practically only one kind of moving picture.
American humor as it developed in the nineteenth century, from a grin to a laugh, certainly stood out from that of the rest of the world. It was distinctly the product of a new country, a new environment from which people could look back to older civilization with unprejudiced vision. Up on top of the Rockies, at Virginia City, Nevada, Mark Twain and Artemus Ward could see Europe better than could the people walking in the Rue de Rivoli or sitting round the Forum in Rome. But as this topic has already been discussed above in connection with Mark Twain, there is no need to treat it here.
Turn to English Humor — English, not British — for each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn’t. I may do the place an injustice, but the outside world connects Wales with “bards,” who throw themselves (fortunately) into “Conway’s foaming flood,” as a means of spiting the English, but whose talent does not run to fun.
The distinguishing feature of English humor of the highest type is its fidelity to facts. It depicts and it describes things as they actually happened, or as they actually could have happened, without exaggeration, without distortion. Take the case of line drawing, black and white, as it appears, for instance, in the pages of Punch. The wonderful series of amusing and satirical cartoons that have adorned Punch, from the days of Tenniel and George DuMaurier to those of Bernard Partridge and Ravenhill, are exact — literal. If Mr. Punch wants to draw a jolly old gentleman, he draws a jolly old gentleman, a real one. An American artist — or at least many American artists — would draw merely an exactly round circle for his face, the segment of a curve for his mouth and two dots for his eyes. For the American reader the fun — the humor — incongruity — consists in the realization that, after all, that is all that a jolly old gentleman really is — a circle and a couple of dots. Some of the American effects, one must admit, are quite extraordinary. Benevolence is reduced to a circle. Horror is represented by one hair standing on end and perplexity by a distention of the eyeball.
Of course, not all English drawings are literal. There are exceptions. It would be difficult to imagine actual human beings with faces quite so malicious, with teeth quite so gnashing as those of Mr. H. M. Bateman; or with heads quite so bulbous, and expressions quite so seraphic as those of Mr. Heath Robinson. There is, too, a certain minor amount of symbolism that substitutes a few lines for a completed figure, a few zigzags to indicate motion; or the remembered art of Phil May, marvelous not in what it put in, but in what it left out. But all of this mode is not the true British type but flourishes better among the cartoonists of America who reduced Theodore Roosevelt to a box of teeth, his namesake to a forehead, and by whom Andy Gump of the comic supplement is made singularly true to life by leaving out all of his face below the mustache.
