Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Anything which is to make a very strong impression at once, should be sudden, I suppose,” remarked Augustus. “The din in a great factory is as deafening as a peal of thunder, but it does not produce the same effect upon the senses. A tallow candle will go through a deal door if it goes fast enough, but a hundredth part of the slow pressure that is needed to force a piece of iron through the plank would squash the candle into a wafer of grease.”

  “The resemblance certainly extends to wit in speech,” said Cæsar. “One word spoken at the right moment, if it is the right word, will sway a crowd more than an hour of dull talking to the same effect. The human mind is very limited and consequently very liable to be surprised. If you surprise it agreeably, you may do anything with it. If you surprise it disagreeably, it may do anything with you.”

  “Like a woman,” suggested Heine. “Only women are more often the source of surprise than the persons surprised. Woman, like wit, is full of delightful and surprising contrasts. Some women are like good wit, for one is never tired of them. Others are like bad jokes which will not bear repetition. Like wit, a woman’s sudden appearance in a man’s life produces a tremendous effect, but if he has grown up with her from a child the effect of her presence is much less. There is pleasant wit, bitter wit, every-day wit, and best-company-manners wit; there are pleasant women, bitter women, women who are agreeable every day and women who are only tolerable in a ball-room. Some wit pleases everybody, and some wit only pleases its author; there are women whom everybody likes and women whom nobody likes but themselves. It seems to me that there is no end to the resemblance.”

  “No, sir,” said Johnson, “there is no end to it, because it is founded on a false principle. Every word you say of wit I will say with equal truth of a pudding. Are not puddings frequently sources of agreeable surprise? Is not a pudding full of the delightful and surprising contrasts produced by the variety of ingredients from which it is made? Are not some women like good puddings, of which one is never tired, while others are like puddings oversweet and cloying to the taste, so that one cannot eat of them twice? To a man who has never eaten a fine pudding, would not the first mouthful produce a tremendous effect, whereas a man who has eaten puddings from his boyhood regards the tempting dish with a complacency amounting almost to indifference? Are there not pleasant puddings, bad and bitter puddings, every-day batter puddings, and noble plum puddings for fine company, not to mention the weekly pudding at the ‘Cheshire Cheese’ in Fleet Street? The latter, too, would make a man ill if he were to eat of it every day. Do not some puddings please everybody while some only suit the taste of the cook who makes them? Sir, upon this principle life is a pudding, woman is a pudding, man is a pudding, and indeed everything is pudding, and nothing but pudding. Sir, to compare things, which affect our minds with things which affect our bodies, is futile and ineffectual, except for purposes of poetry; for since everything with which we are brought in contact through the senses is either agreeable, indifferent or repulsive to us, things of all kinds may be compared with ideas, which, to the mind, are also inevitably either repulsive, indifferent or agreeable.”

  “But why do you say it is admissible in verse?” asked Diana. “I should think that nothing ought to be admitted in poetry which is not logical and reasonable.”

  “In a piece of poetry,” answered Johnson, “the object aimed at is to awake sentiments by means of lively images. Any image will serve the poet which calls up in the reader the feeling which the writer intends to evoke. Heine may compare wit to women in a poem, if he is inclined to do so, and I have no doubt he could produce very pleasant images; but in examining the nature of wit itself, I maintain that such images are out of place. For if, as I have sufficiently shown, anything which affects our senses may be compared to wit, it is clear that the selection of the particular comparison is merely a matter of taste; since the resemblance in all cases is limited to the similarity of the sensations evoked, and in no way extends to any similarity in the things themselves. It is one thing to awaken a sentiment by comparing man’s life to a flowing river; it would be quite another to attempt to explain the nature of life itself by studying the nature of the stream.”

  “Evidently,” said Heine. “I was not philosophising — I was only thinking. Happily that does not mean the same thing in these days. As for the nature of wit, I believe that it cannot be defined. You may define a joke and make one according to the nature of your definition. But wit itself escapes definition. You can only classify jests by your taste, and say this is wit, that is humour and that other is buffoonery. You can only say that the more wit makes you think, the better it is, and the further removed from farce.”

  “That is true,” observed Cæsar, “and it adds another condition to the definition of wit. It ensures it from grossness by providing that it must appeal to the higher parts of the intelligence. Very fine wit does not always provoke laughter and, generally, when wit degenerates into buffoonery, laughter becomes a mere physical paroxysm. Then it is easy to prolong it, because it has become morbid and no longer is the expression of a mental state, but of a state of the body. Very fine wit never causes a paroxysm. A man under the influence of any bodily disturbance, even when that has proceeded from a state of the mind, is not capable of the free exercise of his intelligence which is necessary to appreciate wit, or to produce it. Whenever he is so disturbed his mental sight is dimmed and his humour is grosser. A man who cannot help laughing is no better than a woman who is hysterical and must cry and sob, whether she have any cause or not.”

  “Rather less wearing on the nerves,” remarked Gwendoline.

  “The finest wit,” said Pascal, “is elicited by controversy. The finest humour is the result of a jovial constitution, seconded by a mind very keen in small things.”

  “I detest rules,” answered Heine. “A man may be witty, humorous, pathetic, melancholy, heroic and ridiculous in one day.”

  “Yes,” replied Augustus, “but he may be humorous, pathetic and the rest without ever being witty, in our sense of the word. To trace the origin of wit and humour to the character and constitution of man is altogether impossible. We may understand something about the nature of earth and water, but we can never be certain of the conditions which produced them. But is it true that the best wit results from controversy?”

  “It must be true,” said Cæsar, “because it is only in controversy that the mind is fully exercised, imagination, force of logic and power of language all playing great parts together, and all stimulated in the effort to make the enemy seem contemptible. Perhaps no one but a man who has fought with words really understands the power and the use of wit, as well as its construction.”

  “Yes,” answered Heine. “Pascal himself has shown that. He is the father of French style and one of the oracles of French wit, and to attain that position he only wrote eighteen letters in a great controversy. Dr. Johnson himself was never so witty as when he was arguing something with somebody. Resistance evokes wit, as well as action. There is no more certain method of making a pig run in one direction than to pull his tail the other way. That is a pig’s idea of wit, I suppose. Abuse a great man, and he will often say a good thing. Agree with him, and he will take you for a fool and talk blatant rubbish to satiety. It is incredible how much may be got out of a man of the most ordinary intelligence, merely by denying everything he says. Tell a labourer that the sun does not go round the earth, and he will laugh at you. Tell a schoolmaster that the earth does not go round the sun, and he will be positively amusing at your expense. The British workman when contradicted knocks down his adversary with his fist, if he does not chance to have a crowbar in his hand. The fine gentleman of the nineteenth century contents himself in such a case with making depreciatory remarks about the colour of his enemy’s hair. Professor Diæthylmethylologicus of the University of Nudelsuppenwurstburg, if you contradict him, will hold you up to the scorn of all ages and especially of the whole principality of Schwartenmagen-Limburger-Stinkenstein.”
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  “You seem to say,” observed Augustus, “that real wit must necessarily be directed against some person or something. If that is true it is at once distinguished from humour.”

  “Yes,” said Pascal, “that is certainly true, and mere humour may become wit by the way in which it is used. A humorous saying gains keenness and force by being directed against a real person or thing, with genuine or apparent truth. Humour invents the absurd and laughs at it. Wit sees the absurd in the flesh and holds it up to ridicule. There is a vast difference between the two. The one laughs at itself, the other bites its enemy and laughs at his discomfiture.”

  “Really,” answered Lady Brenda, “I do not think that wit is always bitter, by any means. People may be very witty about things that hurt nobody.”

  “Yes. But their wit is directed against the thing, and you know that it is impossible to be witty about inanimate things in nature. Therefore when you exercise your wit upon a thing made by a man, such as a book, a coat or a piece of music, you are attacking the maker of the thing through his work. The more the person to whom you are speaking is in sympathy with you, the better he will appreciate your wit; the more he likes the thing or the person you attack, the less he will like what you say. You may, if you please, set up an object to be knocked down. You may write a play, full of wit. But you can only do it by making one character witty at the expense of another. When a man is witty at his own expense, he is only humorous, because he is not in earnest. One might find instances of both in one phrase.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Johnson, “Polonius says to Hamlet: ‘I will most humbly take my leave of you.’ Hamlet answers: ‘You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal.’ That is a thrust at Polonius. Hamlet adds: ‘Except my life, except my life, except my life.’ That is a thrust at himself. But it is not humorous, though it be witty, since he who says it is in earnest. A man may be witty who attacks himself with the same energy that he would employ against another; but one who lightly holds himself up to ridicule is merely indulging his taste for humour. Sir, I agree with you that wit only exhibits itself in attack or in the answer to an attack, that is to say, either in attack or in controversy.”

  “Most men prefer the former,” remarked Heine. “Most men think it very pleasant to shut the door closely and whisper to their loving wives that other men are idiots. When the wife is loving she perceives the joke; when she is not, she consoles herself with the reflection that her husband is himself idiotic and every fresh proof of the fact is a new delight to her.”

  “What a dreadful idea!” exclaimed Gwendoline, looking at Augustus and laughing. “Is the converse true, I wonder?”

  “No, madam,” answered Heine, with a smile. “No man can possibly believe a woman foolish who has shown enough intelligence to marry him.”

  “Sir,” said Johnson, “this is paradox. One may be complimentary without being paradoxical, as one may be strong without being violent. A man, sir, should never believe a woman to be foolish, until he knows himself to be wise, any more than he should call his enemy weak before he has vanquished him, or his friend unfaithful until he has himself made exhibition of his own fidelity. Sir, I will apply to women what our host’s friend said of whiskey; there are no bad women, nor foolish women, either, though some women are better and wiser than others.”

  “You are asserting a negative,” retorted Heine.

  “No, sir,” roared the doctor, “I am asserting positively that all women are more or less good. Badness is the negative of goodness, and no one can assert that it is universal. The only business of wit is to point out the cases where there is badness, as the only purpose of the barometer is to warn men of foul weather. Nobody, sir, need be warned of the approach of fine weather, and no man need be cautioned that his neighbour is a good man. In the African desert there is no use for barometers and in heaven there will be no wit; for where all is good it will be as unnecessary to speak of evil, as it is senseless to carry an umbrella amidst the sands of Sahara, where it never rains.”

  “You have at least shown a new and surprising relation between wit and the barometer,” answered Heine. “After all, it carries out the theory that wit is only found in attack or in controversy, since it is clear that where attack and controversy are impossible, wit must be out of the question. In a place where there are to be no professors, no fools, no bad poets and very few good ones, it is not easy to say what is to become of wit, satire, sarcasm, irony and Heinrich Heine. In future I shall regard the falling of the barometer as a piece of most exquisite wit, equal at least to Voltaire’s attacks on Frederick of Prussia and on Jean Jacques Rousseau.”

  “But if it is true that wit is only used in attacking something or somebody,” said Diana, “wit can never be harmless — that is, it is always used with the intention of hurting a good or bad person or thing.”

  “Yes,” answered Pascal, “it is never meant merely to excite laughter, except when the whole attack or quarrel is pure fiction, as in a romance or a piece for the stage, and then the author purposely sets up somebody or something for a butt. Apart from fiction, true wit must always be used as a weapon, and the pleasurable sensation caused by it in the mind is only excited in those who are on the side of the assailant; on the other side nothing is experienced but pain or indignation. Humour, on the other hand, has no intention of giving pain either to just or unjust persons, and its sole end is to cause laughter. Humour begins with the comic mask and ends with the harmless jest. Wit begins when pain is felt by some one, or would be felt if that some one heard it.”

  “Humour is a parade, wit is warfare,” said Cæsar. “Fine humour often shows the power for keen wit, but never uses it. The sham fight holds the dangerous place between the two, as when friends argue a question for their pleasure. How often does Plato tell us that some one interposed in the discussions he reports, in order to prevent high words and anger! But the parties never showed any inclination to quarrel, until from being humorous they grew witty first, and then abusive; as when Dionysodorus proved to Socrates that words could never have any sense, and Ctesippus fell out with him and his companion Euthydemus and told them they were talking nonsense, which was very true, so that Socrates had to interfere to keep the peace. Sham fights may easily end in real battles, unless there is a supreme commander to whom all questions are referred.”

  “That is the reason why they have a Speaker in the House of Commons,” remarked Augustus. “In countries where the Speaker is not respected the members quarrel violently and try to be as witty as they can, until they are ready to proceed from words to deeds.”

  “Words are so much cheaper and more easily handled,” said Heine. “We have invented a formula for making jests on men of any size. It would be another matter to invent a rule whereby a little man might always be able to break a big man’s neck.”

  “That is the general’s business,” answered Cæsar, “and that is a soldier’s idea of wit. To lie in wait in secret places, to anticipate exactly the movements of the enemy, to be always striking and never struck, to move quickly and unexpectedly, to be always ready and never surprised — that is warfare, and in controversy it is wit. The one may be reduced to a rule like the other, and success of the one like that of the other depends upon fertility of imagination, upon the nature of one’s tools, and upon practical skill in making the tools perform what has been imagined.”

  “That is better than comparing wit to woman, as I did,” said Heine. “Dr. Johnson cannot put pudding in the place of warfare in Cæsar’s simile.”

  “No, sir,” answered Johnson. “Wit and warfare may be employed in the attainment of any object, bad or good; but pudding is an object desirable for its own sake, like woman; and, as the Greeks attacked Troy in order to recover the person of Helen, and sent many heroes’ souls down to Hades in the prosecution of a fair and justifiable siege, so also, with an ingenuity and courage worthy of a greater cause, hungry schoolboys in all ages have employed the most subtle cajoleries o
f diplomacy and the boldest arts of predatory warfare in the effort to obtain for themselves a larger share of pudding than that allotted to them by the economy of a parsimonious cook or by the reasonable prudence of a careful mother.”

  CHAPTER XII.

  “IT SEEMS TO me,” said Lady Brenda, “that if all this is true, men have no right to try and be witty for wit’s sake.”

  “I suppose not,” assented Augustus. “Since wit is a weapon, it cannot be an aim, but it can be used in attaining an object, provided a man has the power to be witty. It is like the differential calculus, the Steam-engine or revolver — a mere instrument to an end.”

  “Men who try to be always witty,” said Heine, “generally get the reputation of being spiteful. So do men who cannot help being witty, just as a strong man who is always knocking down other men is called quarrelsome. Strength and wit can only be objects of cultivation for the sake of the results they produce. Before being witty, or exerting one’s strength, one ought to consider what one wants to obtain.”

  “People say that no one really wants anything but happiness in the world,” remarked Diana.

  “Of course,” answered Heine. “And if every one knew exactly what would make him happy, a great deal of struggling and fighting and vulgar noise would be spared. The mistake most men commit is in forming a wrong idea of happiness and then in spending the rest of their lives in trying to get into their hands the means for attaining the end they have imagined.. What is happiness?”

  “A state,” said Cæsar, “in which all the noblest passions of man exist, continue, and are constantly satisfied, without being weakened by satiety, and where the ignoble passions do not exist. That would be human happiness. But it is unattainable.”