The Faggot

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 897, 14 February 1930, Page 14

The Faggot

A Bookman’s Bundle

i4'\7" in "The New Statesman,*' J finds answers, in life and literature, to a critic’s rerent disgusted cwnment on a novel, ih'at “all the refined drawing-rooms of Chelsea and Hampstead will not compel me to believe that drunkenness is funny in Moscow', when it is merely disgusting in the Mile End Row.'* “If/* he says, “the definition of ‘fun* is, not something that ought to make us laugh, but something that has in fact for centuries made ordinary people laugh, it is as clear as noonday that drunkenness is one of the funniest things on earth. We may regret this, but we have no . . . right to deny it”; but he goes on to draw his best evidence, not from experience, but from literature: If it can be shown that one comic writer of genius after another, from Shakespeare to Mr Wodehouse, lias made use of drunkenness as a subject of comedy, then, I think, there is tio reasonable conclusion except that, rightly or wrongly, drunkenness is a potentially funny subject. Shakespeare certainly had no scruples against making us laugh at drunkards. If Sir Toby Belch was not funny in his cups, then Shakespeare had no comic gift. As for Dickens, he has left a large family of tragic drunk men and comic drunk men, and there can seldom have been more innocent laughter than that of his readers when Mr Pickwick, overcome with punch, is carried off on the wheelbarrow. Mr Pecksniff, again, is never more glorious than when, exalted with liquor, he comes to the top o? the stairs and expresses his desire to sec Mrs Todgers’s notion of a wooden leg. And did we not in youth enjoy Jos Sedlcy’s drunkenness in Vanity Fair? And have not the greatest contemporary comic writers carried on the tradition? Mr Kipling has given us some of the funniest drunken scenes in literature in Brugglesmith and My Sunday at Home, and no writer has made more hilarious use of the “next morning” feeling than Mr Wodehouse. It may be that there arc people who cannot laugh at any of these things, but it must be admitted that they have made ordinary people laugh, and that, therefore, from the point of the scientific investigator they are funny. Deny that drunkenness has its comic side, and you blot Burns's drinking songs out of literature. And you will also rob biography of many an entertaining passage. There are funny stories about Boswell's drunkenness, about Pitt's drunkenness, about Sheridan’s drunkenness. I have always thought that one of the most amusing of anecdotes Is that which tslls how Sheridan, when picked up drunk from the gutter by the watch and asked for his name, replied “Wilberforce.” Nor would biography be more amusing if Lamb had always been sober. Is there any letter in the world more delightful than that in which he apologises to his hostess for having been carried in a horizontal position from her house; and describes his ludicrous adventures on the way home? * * * The “Manchester Guardian’s” Eondon correspondent writes of the late Lord Rosebery: He refused to write his reminiscences or anything about his j>olitical life, although often asked to do so. He drove a good deal both at Dalmeny and at The Durdans in art. old-fash-ioned carriage with a postilion. Driving near Dalmeny, and speaking of Waiter Scott and the mystery of genius, he said to my friend: “It is ewy to understand Scott, given bis gifts, his education, and his environment. But Burns”—he pointed to a man working in the fields—“that man there might be Burns.” * * * His two favourite authors were Shakespeare, the creator of Hamlet and Macbeth, and Surtees, the creator of .Torrocks and Soapy Sponge. He professed to enjoy with equal delight the cultivated talk of John Morley and the racing reminiscences of Dawson, the veteran trainer, for whom he entertained feelings of real affection. Exquisite in courtesy, his two most intimate friends at one time were Lord Randolph Churchill and Prince Herbert Bismarck, of whom it may be said that their manners were not their outstanding merits. * * The following epistolary samples, dug up by the Sunday “Observer’s” columnist “Observator,” deserve a place among the laconics in future editions of Mr E. V. Lucas’s “The Second Post” or “The Gentlest Art”— if they have not already been admitted to it: (Sir Thomas Liddell to Mr J. G. Lambton, contesting Durham). FEBRUARY 26, 182 S. My dear Sir, —In times like the present, it is impossible to allow private feelings to take the place of a public sense of duty. I think your conduct as dangerous in Parliament as in your own county. Were you my own brother, therefore, I could not give you my support.—Thomas Liddell. (Mr .T. G. Lambton to Sir Thomas Liddell). My dear Sir Thomas, —In answer to your letter. I beg to say that I feel gratitude for your frankness, compassion for your fears, little dread of your opposition, and no want of your snpi>ort.—l am, etc., J. G. Lambton. In an “Observer competition recently readers were invited to vote for —or rather, against —the six most over-rated books. This was the list of flouted masterpieces. “Sartor Resartus” (Carlyle). “Innocents Abroad” (Mark Twain). “The Green Hat” (Michael Arlen). “Lavengro” (Borrow). '•Wutheriug Heights” (Emily Bronte).