by John Cleese
Then he told me another Collingwood story that was even more alarming. Bartlett had spent his entire life in one of the posher parts of Cheshire, and he knew the terrain like the back of his own hand, as they used to say but don’t any more. He discovered that Collingwood had once spent a holiday there and, during a short spell in a hospital when he had nothing better to do, had written a small guidebook to the area . . . from memory!
So Bartlett raced out and bought a copy, and went through it with a fine-toothed comb (as it were) until he found a mistake. Collingwood had described a stile by a country lane, which Bartlett had walked along all his life, a stile which he knew did not exist. Triumphantly he raced, guidebook in hand, from his house until he came to the spot where the alleged stile was supposed to have been . . . and there it was! With the extinguishment of his ray of hope that Collingwood had finally made a mistake, Bartlett turned, trudged home and shot himself. (Metaphorically, of course.)
I suppose one could argue, though, that Collingwood had made a mistake. If a good tutor’s job is to nurture pupils intellectually, to stimulate their curiosity and above all to encourage their love of learning, the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy rather blew it, didn’t he? Instead of engaging Bartlett and drawing out his abilities, the professor pulled what might be described as a cheap music-hall ‘Mr Memory Man’ trick which instead had the effect of discouraging his student for good. One might have hoped that Collingwood’s love of wisdom would have discouraged such a faux-casual showing-off. But great ‘intellects’, ironically, are often allied to stunted emotional development.
When Bartlett left Oxford, his academic hopes unfulfilled, he decided like many of his friends that war with Germany was coming, so he took a job teaching Classics at St Peter’s as a temporary measure. Not long after, he joined the army as artillery officer, was made a major, and commanded a battery of guns during the Allied advance up Italy. What he was very proud of was not his bravery (to have been proud of that would have smacked of self-advertisement) but that the final position of his guns, after several months’ advance, was less than fifteen yards from the position he had calculated on his map, using his trigonometry skills.
At the end of the war, he returned to St Peter’s to find that his position as senior Classics master had been filled by the Reverend A. H. Dolman. This did not surprise him: he expected Tolson to find a replacement; what rather irked him was that Dolman was a German. Since Bartlett was quite practised at killing them, I think he was tempted to add just one more to an already impressive total. Who would notice? But his good manners got the better of him, inevitably, so he took over the teaching of mathematics instead.
Many years later, when Python was performing the stage show in Liverpool, I lunched with Mr Bartlett. He was, of course, retired by then. He told me that he had left St Peter’s after a disagreement with Mr Tolson, and had spent short periods at a couple of other schools, before giving up teaching. There was an air about him that suggested disappointment – that he felt he had not been fairly treated. At the end of the meal, I plucked up the courage to ask about the ‘disagreement’, and he told me that he had discovered inadvertently that Mr Tolson had been paying him, as senior Classics and mathematics master, less than Mr Jones the school odd-job man.
In retrospect, it seems strange that despite the general air of affability, the St Peter’s staff seldom socialised except when sometimes, after the evening meal with the Tolsons, two or three of us would wander down to the saloon bar of one of the local pubs, where I slowly worked my way through the brightly coloured bottles containing international liqueurs. My usual sipping companion was a chap who taught history, named Anthony Viney, whose life by his own description abounded with a certain kind of comedy scene, where a well-meaning innocent accidentally creates chaos and destruction. For example, when Tony took on a Christmas job as a postman, he was given an enormous, extravagantly wrapped box of goodies to deliver to a particular house. As he struggled to carry the huge crate up the drive, the children inside saw him coming and raced out to greet him, jumping up and down in excitement and thronging round him – so much so that as he reached the doorstep, he failed to see several milk bottles there and tripped, breaking a couple, losing his balance and, in the process, dropping the box on the head of the smallest child and treading on the family dog. The screaming and yelping brought the parents to the door, and they proved understandably angered by this gratuitous assault on their family life. Tony picked himself up, apologised, attempted to comfort the damaged child – and then suddenly realised that he had brought the magnificent Christmas offering to the wrong address. Embarrassed beyond endurance, he tried to stammer out an apology, but the father was now shouting so loudly that Tony gave up, grabbed the crate and ran back down the drive as the children sobbed and howled at this sudden and incomprehensible turn of events.
What I found so funny about this tale was the enormous gap between Tony’s intention and the outcome. To start with, the story would immediately cease to be amusing if Tony had caused any of this chaos on purpose. (Similarly, in Fawlty Towers Manuel regularly wrecks Basil’s plans out of a fervent desire to help him – again, if there were any intent to hinder, the joke wouldn’t work.) Next, Tony was a particularly kind and considerate man, and to have inflicted the emotional distress that he did on this unsuspecting family was agonising for him. The story is, in my view, funnier for this awareness on his part than it would be if he hadn’t realised what he’d done, or if he had realised, but simply hadn’t cared.
In the case of Tony the Postman, we can see the whole picture: the purity of his motives; the inconsequentiality of broken milk bottles; the fact that the hijacked goodies were not intended for the family anyway; and, above all, that the emotions suffered by the family (and the dog) were ultimately transient and so harmless.
When James Thurber described humour (or humor) as ‘emotional chaos remembered in tranquility’ he was only pointing out that things that seem very important at the time usually aren’t, and that it’s not unkind to laugh at temporary upsets, especially when they’re our own. In fact, it’s rightly considered healthy to be able to laugh at oneself, and we all much prefer people who do not take themselves ‘too seriously’. A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive).
Pompous people mistrust humour because at some level they know their self-importance cannot survive very long in such an atmosphere, so they criticise it as ‘negative’ or ‘subversive’. Neurotics, sensing that humour is always ultimately critical, view it as therefore unkind and destructive, a reductio ad absurdum which leads to political correctness.
Not that laughter can’t be unkind and destructive. Like most manifestations of human behaviour it ranges from the loving to the hateful. The latter produces nasty racial jokes and savage teasing; the former, warm and affectionate banter, and the kind of inclusive humour that says, ‘Isn’t the human condition absurd, but we’re all in the same boat.’
Which brings me to another story that Tony Viney told me, which is very cruel. And quite hilarious, I hope . . .
Once upon a time, a very kind and gentle history teacher called Tony was driving home at the end of a summer bank holiday. The traffic was even worse than he had feared, and by the time he reached Salisbury Plain the cars were bumper to bumper and moving forward at a rate of about one car’s-length every other Thursday. Tony was very hot, as well as bored and sleepy, when all of a sudden he saw a rabbit. And it was not a happy bunny. In fact it was a sad and miserable little bunny, because it was in the last stages of myxomatosis (this was in the 50s, when the virus was devastating Britain’s rabbit population), and it lay there, hardly breathing, its face disfigured by swelling, its eyes so puffed up it was no longer able to see, sores and tumours clearly visible all over its body, and with just hours, if not minutes, to live. And Tony, being a kind and gentle man, and an
ardent animal lover to boot, was appalled to see such awful suffering, and his heart went out to the pitiable animal; so he left his car and crossed a few yards of grass until he stood by the dying creature. And seeing its nasal discharge and its swollen ears and its strangely enlarged genitals, he choked back his tears, swallowed, and vowed that very moment to put the poor, dear thing out of its misery. He reached down and picked it up by its ears, held it well away from himself, took a deep breath and karate-chopped the back of its neck – giving it the deadly ‘rabbit punch’ which he had read about somewhere.
Unfortunately, however, the poor creature had not read the same piece, and so the blow caused it to spring to life and start leaping about (inasmuch as a rabbit can leap about when it is being held up by its ears) with a suddenness that scared its would-be assassin out of his wits. In the normal course of events, Tony would now have dropped the rabbit and run for his life, but his determination to do the right thing by the rabbit was so great that his nerve held, and, realising that his first karate chop had failed simply because he had not struck the dying creature firmly enough, (out of kindness) he held it up again, grasped its ears even more tightly, and let fly at it once more.
Alas! In his haste to do God’s work, he had neglected to take aim properly, and so he caught the rabbit (which was, to be fair, now a moving target) with a glancing blow on the side of its head, thus spurring it to further exertions, while at the same time releasing a surprising quantity of nasal discharge on to his suit. However, the latter event was a matter of very little importance to Tony at this juncture: the question of how to terminate this remarkably resilient rabbit was now occupying his mind so totally that feelings of shame and inadequacy and self-hatred could hardly be sensed through his all-consuming panic.
How, in God’s name, was he going to kill it?
Various options flashed through his mind: shooting, hanging, drowning, electrocution, impalement, crucifixion, a guillotine . . . something sharp! A knife? A saw? A dagger? An axe? . . . A penknife! I’ve got one in the car! I’ll cut its throat! Perfect!
He turned towards his car, and froze. Up to this moment Tony had been so focused on the poor rabbit that he had completely failed to notice the crescendoing sound of car horns and angry shouting that now suddenly enveloped him. As far as the eye could see (Salisbury Plain is famous for its flatness) motorists and their passengers, all still stuck in the traffic jam, were shouting and shaking their fists and cursing him and screaming threats. A number were opening their car doors and getting out.
For a few seconds Tony was astonished. Could all these people really believe that he was beating up this rabbit for fun? That he had left his car and pounced on the poor, unsuspecting bunny as a form of blood sport? And that he had then started using it as a punchbag, just to pass the time till the traffic started moving again? That he, kind and gentle Tony, was in fact a sadistic, vile murderous brute destined for the front page of the Daily Mail?
Well, I’m afraid that’s exactly what they thought. Unfair, wasn’t it?
So . . . what was Tony to do, in the light of this latest development? Plan A, which was to take the rabbit back to the car where he could quietly stab it to death with his Swiss army knife, seemed too lengthy a procedure, given that people were now actually heading in his direction. He needed something a bit quicker. To his credit, he never even considered following his natural inclination, which was to throw the rabbit away and run. The creature had suffered enough already, he could not let it down. To be dying of myxomatosis, and then, in the middle of that, to be attacked so gratuitously and, after that, to be abandoned to myxomatosis again was a fate no one deserved. So Plan B was . . .
‘Wait a moment!’ thought Tony. ‘If it’s called a “rabbit punch”, since rabbits can’t punch, it must actually kill rabbits. Eventually. So if at first you don’t succeed . . .’
And he started hitting it again, with greater determination. The approaching mob stopped in astonishment. Was he deliberately baiting them? A howl of fury arose from them that froze Tony’s blood. They moved forward again.
And now he panicked.
He threw the rabbit to the ground, and jumped up and down on it.
Then he checked it was dead, shrugged, and waited to be lynched.
And at this very moment, God intervened.
He caused the traffic to begin to move.
And the mob, hearing engines starting up behind them, paused. They were faced with a stark choice. Either they could exterminate this fiend from the face of the planet, or they could regain their place in the queue. A moment of indecision, and then good sense prevailed. They hurried back to their cars, still shouting curses over their shoulders, jumped inside and drove off, in a huff.
Tony pretended to faint, and fell into a position where he could keep his eye on the traffic. He lay there motionless until all the cars that had been in sight during the murder had passed on, at which point he pretended to wake up, and then casually strolled back to his car, got in, and fainted for real.
And it was not as though this kind of thing happened to Tony now and again; such occurrences were a regular part of his day. It was as though God’s Department of Practical Jokes had singled him out for special attention, along with Job. I should have become his Boswell.
When I look back at my two years teaching at St Peter’s, the phrase ‘halcyon days’ pops into my mind and the Oxford English Dictionary tells me it refers to ‘a past time regarded as idyllically happy and peaceful’.
Why was it so happy? Well, for a start, it was so free of stress. There were no public appearances, very few deadlines of any importance, a contented and relaxed atmosphere, congenial colleagues, plenty of fresh air and exercise, and . . . I really enjoyed teaching.
Of course, it was in ideal circumstances. The classes were small, the ten-year-olds well mannered and cheerful and respectful and unarmed, and, by and large, they wanted to learn. Discipline was no problem, once you had gained the ascendency, provided only that you were ‘fair’. The boys were very keen on ‘fairness’. I won a lot of brownie points once when I wrote the non-word ‘wooly’ on the blackboard. They remonstrated with me and pointed out that when they misspelled a word, they had to write it out several times. So I took the chalk and wrote ‘woolly’ one hundred times, all over the board. They approved. Honour was satisfied, and I never spelled ‘woolly’ wrong again. And, maybe, it gave me an idea for Life of Brian.
Best of all, I discovered when I walked out of a class at the end of a lesson, leaving behind some ten-year-olds who could now tell the difference between an adjectival and adverbial phrase (a distinction that had been beyond them forty minutes earlier), that I experienced an inexplicable satisfaction. Partly, perhaps, because I could now tell the difference, too. My job, after all, allowed me to fill in some of the many gaps in my education left by the Clifton science curriculum.
However, during the two years, there were a couple of occasions when something happened which I found quite disturbing.
The first time, I was teaching Form III about Africa. We were looking at our atlases, and I was pointing out the big countries and giving them snippets of information. Then we moved on to the big rivers, and found the Nile and the Zambezi, and the Niger and the Congo. Except that one boy I’ll call Smith couldn’t find the last two. I told him that he would find the Niger in Nigeria, and the Congo in the Belgian Congo. He looked very confused, so I gave the class something to occupy them, sat down next to Smith and asked him what the problem was.
‘I can’t find them, sir.’
‘OK. Let’s look for the Niger. It runs through Nigeria. Do you remember where Nigeria is?’
Smith suddenly gave a big smile and pointed to Nigeria.
‘Good. Now can you see where the river Niger is marked?’
‘Oh! Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Now the Congo river flows through the Belgian Congo [remember, this is 1959]. Where’s the Belgian Congo?’
‘Here, sir!’
‘Yes, sir.’
Now it began . . .
‘Well done. So . . . where’s the river Congo?’
And Smith pointed to Nigeria. I shook my head.
‘Er . . . no . . . it’s there in the Belgian Congo, see?’
Smith looked puzzled again, as though I had asked him to do the square root of 567,917 in his head. I pointed to the Belgian Congo, and waited for his agreement. But Smith was still uneasy. I waited. I wasn’t going to rush him, because then he would be anxious, and when little boys get anxious, they cannot take anything in at all. So I smiled, and nodded encouragingly. After a time, I felt I should offer a little more help.
