English Humour for Beginners

by George Mikes

  Carson: ‘Give me the name of one.’

  Gilbert: ‘There are fifty of them.’

  Carson: ‘Give me one.’

  Gilbert: ‘I would say such a piece as the Circus Girl.’

  Carson: ‘Would you call it a bad musical comedy?’

  Gilbert: ‘I would call it bad. I believe the manager calls it a musical comedy.’

  As Dickens lit up the early Victorian days, so did Gilbert and Sullivan sparkle, dazzle and delight life a few decades later.

  I said about Lewis Carroll, that no writer, no person, can be two persons. What appears to be a dual personality always proves to be a complete and reasonable unit as soon as we get the clue to it. But if a person cannot be two persons, he can be half a person – at least in literature. Gilbert and Sullivan were two halves. With the exception of the Bab Ballads – charming, witty and original – one was not much without the other. Gilbert did write some successful plays, good plays, funny plays, worthy plays, but they would have been forgotten long ago but for his collaboration with Sullivan. And this is even truer for Sullivan. Sullivan was regarded as the great musician of his age, an English Haydn, or even more, and was often castigated for wasting his precious time on such trifles as the Savoy operas. He should be writing grand operas, oratorios and other immortal stuff. Well, he did – and if the grand stuff is remembered and performed at all, it is because he also wrote The Gondoliers and The Yeomen of the Guard, with Gilbert. After their quarrel they tried to prove that neither needed the other, but they failed to click with other partners. I know it will displease many of their admirers but I repeat: Gilbert is nothing without Sullivan, Sullivan is nothing without Gilbert. Ivanhoe, the grand opera, would have been thrown on the dustheap of musical history, if it were not for The Mikado. The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, have a lot to do with the case.

  ETIQUETTE

  W. S. Gilbert

  The Ballyshannon foundered off the coast of Cariboo,

  And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;

  Down went the owners – greedy men whom hope of gain allured:

  Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.

  Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew,

  The passengers were also drowned excepting only two:

  Young PETER GRAY, who tasted teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO,

  And SOMERS, who from Eastern shores imported indigo.

  These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,

  Upon a desert island were eventually cast.

  They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used,

  But they couldn’t chat together – they had not been introduced.

  For PETER GRAY, and SOMERS too though certainly in trade,

  Were properly particular about the friends they made;

  And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth –

  That GRAY should take the northern half, while SOMERS took the south.

  On PETER’S portion oysters grew – a delicacy rare,

  But oysters were a delicacy PETER couldn’t bear.

  On SOMERS’ side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick,

  Which SOMERS couldn’t eat, because it always made him sick.

  GRAY gnashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store

  Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature’s shore:

  The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved,

  For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.

  And SOMERS sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south,

  For the thought of PETER’S oysters brought the water to his mouth.

  He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff:

  He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.

  How they wished an introduction to each other they had had

  When on board the Ballyshannon! And it drove them nearly mad

  To think how very friendly with each other they might get,

  If it wasn’t for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!

  One day, when out a-hunting for the mus ridiculus,

  GRAY overheard his fellow-man soliloquising thus:

  ‘I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on,

  M’CONNELL, S. B. WALTERS, PADDY BYLES, and ROBINSON?’

  These simple words made PETER as delighted as could be,

  Old chummies at the Charterhouse were ROBINSON and he!

  He walked straight up to SOMERS, then he turned extremely red,

  Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and said:

  ‘I beg your pardon – pray forgive me if I seem too bold,

  But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old.

  You spoke aloud of ROBINSON – I happened to be by –

  You know him?’ ‘Yes, extremely well.’ ‘Allow me – so do I!’

  It was enough: they felt they could more sociably get on,

  For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew ROBINSON!

  And MR SOMERS’ turtle was at PETER’S service quite,

  And MR SOMERS punished PETER’S oyster-beds all night.

  They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs:

  They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;

  They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;

  On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.

  They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,

  And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;

  Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon,

  And all because it happened that they both knew ROBINSON!

  They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore,

  And day by day they learned to love each other more and more.

  At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day,

  They saw a vessel anchored in the offing of the bay!

  To PETER an idea occurred. ‘Suppose we cross the main?

  So good an opportunity may not occur again.’

  And SOMERS thought a minute, then ejaculated, ‘Done!

  I wonder how my business in the City’s getting on?’

  ‘But stay,’ said MR PETER: ‘when in England, as you know,

  I earned a living tasting teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO.,

  I may be superseded – my employers think me dead!’

  ‘Then come with me,’ said SOMERS, ‘and taste indigo instead.’

  But all their plans were scattered in a moment when they found

  The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound!

  When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind,

  To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.

  As both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke,

  They recognized an unattractive fellow pulling stroke:

  ’Twas ROBINSON – a convict, in an unbecoming frock!

  Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!

  They laughed no more, for SOMERS thought he had been rather rash

  In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash;

  And PETER thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon

  In making the acquaintance of a friend of ROBINSON.

  At first they didn’t quarrel very openly, I’ve heard;

  They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word:

  The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head,

  And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.

  To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth,

  And PETER takes the north again, and SOMERS takes the south;

  And PETER has the oysters, which he loathes with horror grim,

  And SOMERS has the turtle – turtle disagrees with him.

  THE PLAYED-OUT HUMORIST

  W. S. Gilbert

&nbs
p; QUIXOTIC is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is,

  Who seeks for jocularities that haven’t yet been said.

  The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries,

  And every joke that’s possible has long ago been made.

  I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness,

  But humour is a drug which it’s the fashion to abuse;

  For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the business

  No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.

  And if anybody choose

  He may circulate The news

  That no reasonable offer I’m likely to refuse.

  Oh happy was that humorist – the first that made a pun at all –

  Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean,

  Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all –

  How popular at dinners must that humorist have been!

  Oh the days when some stepfather for the query held a handle out.

  The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far?

  And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron blew the candle out,

  And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar!

  But your modern hearers are

  In their tastes particular,

  And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a-jar!

  In search of quip and quiddity, I’ve sat all day, alone, apart –

  And all that I could hit on as a problem was – to find

  Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part,

  Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind:

  For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity –

  It’s not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout –

  And I’ve come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity,

  In present Anno Domini, is worked completely out!

  Though the notion you may scout,

  I can prove beyond a doubt

  That my mine of jocularity is utterly worked out!

  GENTLE ALICE BROWN

  W. S. Gilbert

  IT was a robber’s daughter, and her name was ALICE BROWN,

  Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;

  Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;

  But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.

  AS ALICE was a-sitting at her window-sill one day

  A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;

  She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,

  That she thought, ‘I could be happy with a gentleman like you!’

  And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,

  She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten,

  A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road

  (The Custom-house was fifteen minutes’ walk from her abode).

  But ALICE was a pious girl, who knew it wasn’t wise

  To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;

  So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed –

  The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.

  ‘Oh holy father,’ ALICE said, ‘’twould grieve you, would it not?

  To discover that I was a most disreputable lot!

  Of all unhappy sinners I’m the most unhappy one!’

  The padre said, ‘Whatever have you been and gone and done?’

  ‘I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad.

  I’ve assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad.

  I’ve planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,

  And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!’

  The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear –

  And said, ‘You mustn’t judge yourself too heavily, my dear –

  It’s wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;

  But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.

  ‘Girls will be girls – you’re very young, and flighty in your mind;

  Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:

  We mustn’t be too hard upon these little girlish tricks –

  Let’s see – five crimes at half-a-crown – exactly twelve-and-six.’

  ‘Oh, father,’ little ALICE cried, ‘your kindness makes me weep,

  You do these little things for me so singularly cheap –

  Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;

  But oh, there is another crime I haven’t mentioned yet!

  ‘A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes, –

  I’ve noticed at my window, as I’ve sat a-catching flies;

  He passes by it every day as certain as can be –

  I blush to say I’ve winked at him, and he has winked at me!’

  ‘For shame,’ said FATHER PAUL, ‘my erring daughter! On my word

  This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.

  Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand

  To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!

  ‘This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!

  They are the most remunerative customers I know;

  For many many years they’ve kept starvation from my doors,

  I never knew so criminal a family as yours!

  ‘The common country folk in this insipid neighbourhood

  Have nothing to confess, they’re so ridiculously good;

  And if you marry any one respectable at all,

  Why, you’ll reform, and what will then become of FATHER PAUL?’

  The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,

  And started off in haste to tell the news to ROBBER BROWN;

  To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,

  Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.

  Good ROBBER BROWN he muffled up his anger pretty well,

  He said, ‘I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;

  I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,

  And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.

  ‘I’ve studied human nature, and I know a thing or two;

  Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do,

  A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall

  When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small.’

  He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;

  He watched his opportunity and seized him unaware;

  He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,

  And MRS BROWN dissected him before she went to bed.

  And pretty little ALICE grew more settled in her mind,

  She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind,

  Until at length good ROBBER BROWN bestowed her pretty hand

  On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.

  Limericks and Clerihews

  I am not in love with the limerick, although I believe my reservations have more to do with the many tasteless and witless limericks in circulation than with any inborn limitation of the form itself. The limerick is regarded as a very English comic verse form although – according to some – its origin is French. This ‘according to some’ must be emphasized, because no one really knows anything definite about the origin of the limerick and no one really knows why it is named after a western Irish town or county.

  Langford Reed devoted a great deal of energy to the study of limericks and he suggests: ‘This peculiar form of verse was brought direct to Limerick by the returned veterans of the Irish Brigade, who were attached to the French army for a period of nearly a hundred years from 1691. The Brigade was based in Limerick and probably brought home a large number of barrack-room songs.’ Others maintain that limericks
are much older than that, originating in the fourteenth century.

  More recently Mr G. Legman – whom we met in the chapter on sex jokes – has devoted two columns to the limerick. Mr Legman is interested only and exclusively in dirty limericks. This, he says, reflects no personal preference, only scientific requirements. (It was the same with the dirty joke.) He seems to be annoyed that people venture to write clean limericks at all. ‘The clean sort of limerick,’ he writes,* ‘is an obvious palliation, its content insipid, its rhyming artificially ingenious, its whole pervaded with a frustrated nonsense that vents itself typically in explosive and aggressive violence.’ Why a man’s rhyming should improve if he writes dirty limericks instead of clean ones is not explained. Mr Legman admits that aggressive bawdy limericks exist but he grows positively angry when he speaks of the ‘silly delectation of a few elderly gentlemen, such as the late Langford Reed’ whose great sin seems to have been to like clean limericks. He also quotes another American, Don Marquis, who said that there are three kinds of limericks: ‘Limericks to be told when ladies are present; limericks to be told when ladies are absent but clergymen are present; and LIMERICKS.’

  Mr Legman also says that limericks, in spite of their overwhelming dirt, are the folklore of the educated classes. ‘Limericks are not liked by, nor consciously to be collected among working men, farm-hands, cowboys, sailors and other classic oral sources.’

  Limericks do in fact, as Marquis said, fall more or less into classes. The first is the class of the dirty limerick. It is, as a rule, very dirty indeed, and rarely witty or even funny. I see no necessity for using many four-letter words in an ordinary book or article, meant for the general reader, but I use them sometimes when bowdlerization would look silly. Mr Legman’s first volume contains 1952 limericks. I have read hundreds which I would willingly recite to ladies but certainly not to clergymen. But I feel I have to give a few examples, however reluctantly. I have chosen the relatively clean and relatively funny ones:

  There was a young lady from Spain,

  Who was fucked by a monk in a drain.

  They did it again,

  And again and again,

  And again and again and again.

  (The admirable potency of the monk reminds me of a joke I recently heard in Hungary. An elderly gentleman asks another: ‘Do you go out to pee between two lovemakings?’ – ‘Always,’ he replies. ‘How could I withhold it for a month?’)