CHAPTER IX.
The Marred Anecdote—Gaulardisms—M. Goussaut—The Retort and the Pun—“Maloniana”—Metrical Adaptations—Second-hand Facetiæ—Parallel Versions.
A SINGULAR lusus artis is the marred anecdote, of which the most familiar specimen is the threadbare story of Goldsmith and the stale greens. But this was a very old Joe, and seems to have been first narrated in connection with a couple of scholars, of whom one laughing at the other because his garment was too short, his companion remarked that it would be long enough before he got another. The next person whom he met became the recipient of a version of the matter immaterially varied, yet so as to give the death-blow to the witticism. “Jack,” quoth he, “I’ve just heard such a capital joke.” “What was it?” “Why, I told Tom that his coat was too short, and he answered that it would be a long time before he got another.” “Well, I don’t see anything in that.” “Ah! well,” returned the first, “it seemed a very good joke when he made it.”
Nearer, however, to Goldsmith’s day a very similar pleasantry used to be current about Archbishop Herring when he was at college. Herring, having fallen into a ditch near St. John’s, a wag, passing by, called out, “There, Herring, you are in a fine pickle now!” A Johnian, overhearing this, went back to his college, and was asked by some of his friends what made him so merry. “Oh,” says he, “I never met with such a good story before. Herring of Jesus fell into the ditch, and an acquaintance said, as he lay sprawling, ‘There, Herring, you are in a fine condition now.’” “Well,” observed some one, “where is the wit in that?” “Nay,” replied the first, “I am sure it was an excellent thing when I heard it.”
Here, in good faith, was a crassitude which Joe Miller himself would have hardly surpassed in his most Bœotian and opaque moments.
The Gaulardism, borrowing its name from a certain Sieur de Gaulard, who was remarkable for the negation of everything savouring of intelligence, strikes one as of an analogous complexion to this jocular gaucherie; and both are intimately allied to the Gothamite drolleries and ineptitudes, of which the most ancient types have very probably and very naturally disappeared by escaping registration. The gaulardisms and their analogues pursue a uniform vein:—
“The Sieur Gaulard, being told by somebody that the Dean of Alençon was dead, said, ‘Don’t believe it; for, if it were so, I should have heard from him, as he keeps no secrets from me.’”
“A person, seeing a great heap of stones, said to a friend how much he would like to have them at home. ‘How so?’ demanded the other. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘then I would build a good handsome brick wall round my house with them.’”
The mantle of Gaulard must have descended on the President Goussaut, who, if the anecdotes about him are to be credited, must have adorned his lofty official position. The rest are as by sample exhibited:—
“Monsieur Goussaut, President of the Chamber of Accompts, was celebrated for stupidity. One day standing behind a player at piquet, who did not know him, the player throwing a foolish card, exclaimed, ‘I am a mere Goussaut!’ The president, enraged at finding his name used as a proverb, said, ‘You are a fool.’ ‘True,’ said the other, without ever looking back, ‘that is just what I meant to say.’”
Had Goussaut been an English, instead of a French, name, we might have looked upon it as an inadvertent felicity.
Of course these merriments have their equivalents or survivals in the later life and literature; and I may adduce as a specimen the question raised in some company as to the age of Lord Chesterfield, when one of the party suggested that his lordship must be older than was generally supposed, as he would be at least one-and-twenty when he signed the bond which was forged by Dr. Dodd!
Then, once more, there is Mrs. Malaprop, the celebrated persona in Sheridan’s Rivals, who shares with her creator the honour of having said many things for which neither has any actual responsibility. That so familiar aphorism, “Comparisons are odorous,” is in a play printed more than a century before Sheridan was swaddled.
In other words, the gaulardism and Malapropism are of all, time, just as the intellectual abortions which produce them are. An inadvertence which may be thought to merit classification among gaulardisms, is recorded of a German writer (F. von Raumer) upon England as it was, or seemed to him to be, in 1835, where he speaks of becoming acquainted with the famous Vicar of Wakefield, and describes his gooseberry wine as quite answering to the description of it given in the book!
It is very far from being generally apprehended, indeed, how plentiful and how varied this description of gaucherie always has been and still remains. Two instances, separated by a wide interval of time, and entirely distinct in their character, occur to me. In 1615 an anonymous personage reproduced a tract which Robert Greene, the dramatist, published in 1592, under a new title and with an original preface, purporting to be by Greene, in which he refers to works belonging to a date long posterior to his decease.
My second illustration is from another field and from modern life. Mr. Alma Tadema exhibits a picture representing a room in ancient Pompeii, with all the supposed coeval appurtenances; and among these we recognise patinated bronze vases, the property, not of the Pompeian, but of the R. A.
This may be as appropriate an opportunity as I shall have of noticing an analogous type of solecism. In the farce of High Life Below Stairs one of the characters inquires who was the author of Shakespear, to which a second responds, Kolley Kibber. We are here face to face with a piece of small wit, which belongs to the same family as that where surprise is expressed by some sapient individual at the literary activity of Mr. Finis and M. Tome; or where the foolish Duke of Gloucester envied the good fortune of that rich fellow Co., who seemed to be a partner in so many firms.
I once saw a copy of Thomas May’s translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, on the flyleaf of which some simpleton had written, “Ben Jonson, from Thomas May,” in order to lead to the supposition, of course, that the book had been presented by one poet to the other. This was a sort of compromise between a jest and a fraud; but an equally ludicrous inconsistency may be found in Joe Miller’s Jests, 1832, No. 1107, where the familiar anecdote about Randolph being identified by Jonson at the Devil Tavern is given; and the dramatist, when Randolph had delivered his extempore rhyme about John Bo-peep, is made to exclaim: “By Jasus, I believe this is my son Randolph!” and we are gravely informed by the editor that By Jasus! was Jonson’s “usual oath.”
But the complexion of the story, as a whole, is fictitious; and while I do not for a moment believe that the verse is a contemporary impromptu, I am strongly sceptical as to its claim to the character even of a contemporary production. There is no ground for accrediting the poet with the degree of poverty presumable from the description of his clothes and his need of a trifling gratuity; and the very texture of the lines is apocryphal. Besides, the narrator first makes us understand that Randolph was unknown to Jonson and the rest of the company, and then alleges their identification of him from a specimen of poetry which could have furnished no clue whatever to the improviser.
I have dwelt on this point because the biographical scrap, so far from standing alone or being a rare type, is a member of an exceedingly numerous family, and the stricture has a common application to it and its congeners.
The Retort and the Pun, and indeed the entire genus of succincter jests, are least prone to editorial treatment. But, on the other hand, there are two classes which, from their nature, have a peculiar and an inherent liability to sophistication—namely, the Epigram and the Story; and in fact the very structure of these ought to be, as a general rule, a sufficient indication and evidence of their artificial development. The droll and amusing tales in the old English jest-books have been obviously woven into a narrative shape by the original recipient of the particulars, or by some one else more experienced in the science of literary cuisine. The inimitable account of John Adroyns, who, after performing on some provincial stage the part of his Satanic majesty, walked home in his theatrical garb, and met with a complication of mishaps, is an excellent specimen of the professed jocular compilation by a third person, as distinguished from a piece of humour delivered to us exactly or approximately in the terms which the actor or actors employed. So long as a pleasantry presents itself to notice with honest credentials, there is no ground for complaint and no source of difficulty; but it is where an anecdote is introduced under fictitious colours, that the critical inquirer is apt to feel, if not embarrassment, at least annoyance.
I shall transcribe one illustration of this kind of cross-bred offspring from Maloniana:—
“Few classical quotations have ever been more neatly applied than the following. Mr. Burke had been speaking in the House of Commons for some time, and paused. He soon proceeded, and some time afterwards paused again, so long (which with him is very uncommon) that Sir William Bagot thought he had done, and got up to speak. ‘Sir’ (said Mr. B.), ‘I have not finished.’ Sir W. B. made an apology, and said, ‘As the hon. gentleman had spoken a long time, and had paused unusually long also, he imagined that he had concluded, but he found he was mistaken. Some allowance, however, he hoped, would be made for him as a country gentleman, for—
‘Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.’”
If the process by which the passage from the poet, “so neatly applied,” was, subsequently to the event, spliced to it, is not apparent to the reader, I confess that it is so to myself; and few things are less probable than the pronunciation of such an impromptu under such conditions. Yet we find Malone, a man of the world and a sagacious critic, setting down the passage in undisturbed credulity and absolute good faith as a fact within his knowledge and as a spontaneous performance in its integrity. It may seem very remarkable that its superficial unlikelihood should not have struck him; but it is the case that entertaining gossip or laughable traits concerning celebrated people usually pass unchallenged, even when a slight scrutiny would suffice to expose their spuriousness either in whole or in part; and it must be remembered that the bulk of our Ana have come to us through channels infinitely more open to corrupting agencies and less discriminating than Malone. But the Jest, in its many varieties, is indulgently regarded, whether by the general public, which takes the matter as proven, or by the literary fraternity itself, for whom it serves as a pleasant relaxation from severer studies.
As it is with the Story, so also it fares with the Epigrammatic bon-mot or facetious notion thrown into the metrical form. There is a tolerably familiar one, which carries plainly enough on its front, when we approach the subject in an inquiring temper, the traces of its parentage:—
“A fisherman one morn display’d
Upon the Steine his net;
Corinna could not promenade,
And ’gan to fume and fret.
“The fisher cried, Give o’er the spleen,
We both are in one line:
You spread your net upon the Steine,
Why may not I spread mine?
“Two of a trade can ne’er agree,
’Tis that which makes you sore:
I fish for flat fish in the sea,
And you upon the shore.”
The frequenters of Brighton fifty years ago would have been familiar with the scene portrayed in these lines, which might be founded on an actual incident or a possible one. The stanzas were, of course, the composition of a wit of the time, and bring before us a glimpse of London-super-mare, before it had parted with all the pleasant characteristics of a Sussex fishing village—when the fisherman could still come up Pool Valley, and lay his nets to dry on what is now an ornamental square!
It is now time to turn to another aspect of this many-sided and, so to speak, ramified subject, and to consider a different phase of the vicissitudes and metamorphoses which this branch of literature not only has undergone, but preserves a constant tendency to undergo. It is the invaluable art of attiring the fresh hero or favourite in the disused habiliments of his predecessors. It affords a signal exemplification of the strange and unexpected fortunes which may attend an adventure or a witticism, as well as of the surprising diversity of uses to which a capable artificer may apply a single suit of motley. We are looking at the genealogical side of the question, the heraldic point of view.
No. 67 of the Hundred Merry Tales (1526) treats “of the Scholar of Oxford that proved by sophistry two chickens three.” In the Jests of Scogin we similarly encounter “How Jack by sophistry would make of two eggs three.” It is the identical invention lamely repeated, and a jest-book of the eighteenth century reproduces it once more as an episode in the life of the Merry Monarch, where he, Nell Gwynne, and the Duchess of Portsmouth are the actors, and the Duchess is made the sufferer.
Again, No. 57 of Merry Tales and Quick Answers discourses “of him that would give a song for his dinner,” reminding us of the popular farce, No Song, no Supper. Let us set before the reader the version, as it stands in the volume just quoted, side by side with a second which is better known. The parallel is curious; and I confess that I am sceptical as to the later text being more than a literary adaptation after Jonson’s time. If it was a veritable coincidence, it was an extraordinary one:—
| “There came a felowe on a tyme in to a tauerne, and called for meate. So, whan he had well dyned, the tauerner came to reken and to haue his money, to whom the felowe sayde, he had no money, but I wyll, quod he, contente you with songes. Naye, quod the tauerner, I nede no songes, I must haue money. Whye, quod the felowe, if I synge a songe to your pleasure, will ye nat than be contente? Yes, quod the tauerner. So he began, and songe thre or foure balades, and asked if he were pleased? No, sayde the tauerner. Than he opened his pourse, and beganne to synge thus: “‘Whan you haue dyned make no delaye, But paye your oste, and go your waye.’ Dothe this songe please you, quod he? Yes, marye, said the tauerner, this pleaseth me well. Than, as couenant was (quod the felowe), ye be paide for your vitaile. And so he departed, and wente his waye.” | “Ben Jonson, owing a landlord some money, kept away from his house. The vintner, meeting him by chance, asked him for what was owing to him; but at the same time told him, that if he would come to his house, and answer him four questions, he would forgive him the debt. To this proposal Ben very readily assented, and at the time appointed waited upon the landlord, who produced a bottle of wine, and then put to him these questions: ‘First, What pleases God? Secondly, What pleases the devil? Thirdly, What best pleases the world? And lastly, What best pleases me?’ ‘Well,’ says Ben, directly: “‘God is best pleased when man forsakes his sin; The devil’s best pleased when men persist therein; The world’s best pleased when you do draw good wine; And you’ll be best pleased when I pay for mine.’ “The vintner was so well pleased with this impromptu that he gave Ben a receipt in full for his debt, and treated him with a bottle into the bargain.” |
The details, it will be at once observed, are slightly varied; but the germ is the same, and the truth appears to be, that a copy of the Merry Tales had fallen in Jonson’s way, and that he wished to reproduce a drollery which tickled his fancy, and more or less suited his case.
To the same group may be thought to appertain Old Merrythought’s song in the Knight of the Burning Pestle:—
“For Jillian of Berry she dwells on a hill,
And she hath good beer and ale to sell;
And of good fellows she thinks no ill,
And thither will we go now, now, now,
And thither will we go now.
“And when you have made a little stay,
You need not ask what is to pay,
But kiss your hostess and go your way,
And thither will we go now, now, now,
And thither will we go now.”
It may seem to some unkind to disturb this and other such traditions about distinguished persons; but the blame rests elsewhere—with the bookseller or author, who thought fit to propagate these fictions and variæ lectiones; and the restitution of literary property to its legitimate owners is among the functions and obligations of the antiquary.
It was natural for the old booksellers to draw into their service, in offering a popular volume to the public, some more or less magnetic name, which might play the part of foster-parent to the jocular collections of an obscure literary adventurer; but it seems incredible that any reader or editor should have been found so wanting in perception as to set seriously down to Archibald Armstrong a jest-book and a tract, which passed current as his at the time of their original appearance. Archy’s Jests and Archy’s Dream were palpably the productions of two professional writers, who followed the common practice of utilising the capital resident in a departed celebrity.
The rejoinder of Frederic the Great to Dr. Franklin, when he sought his aid in establishing freedom in America, to the effect that he was born a prince, had become a king, and would never do anything to ruin his own trade, is so far entitled to the priority over a somewhat similar trait preserved of Joseph II. of Germany, “Je suis par métier royaliste, Monsieur,” that Frederic preceded Joseph in order of time.
The majority of our books of facetiæ contain, however, a reasonable percentage of matter special to themselves; the unacknowledged recourse to other authorities is only an incidental form of transgression; and the cases of wholesale piracy, the extent of the series considered, are not numerically important. The recommittal to the press of forgotten miscellanies, with a mere change in the title or the hero, is almost countable on the fingers.
Some allowance is to be made, as I have said, for the intuitive recurrence of the same idea, moreover; as where, in Scogin’s Jests, one of the stories—“How the Scholar said that Tom Miller of Oseney was Jacob’s father”—is the original of the joke enunciated with a probable unconsciousness of plagiarism or anticipation by the Christy Minstrels; and, again, as where the account of the gruff old gentleman and the boy Sheridan is forestalled in that highly succulent collection brought out under the auspices of Jack of Dover.
In the latter, a physician and a boy enter into conversation; and when the boy has, as we should say, chaffed his senior pretty freely, the doctor testily observes: “Thou art a rare child for thy wit; but I fear thou wilt prove like a summer apple, soon ripe, soon rotten; thou art so full of wit now, that I fear thou wilt have little when thou art old.” “Then,” said the boy, “I gather by your words that you had a good wit when you were young!” The students of Sheridaniana will recognise a familiar acquaintance here in a strange dress.
