CHAPTER VIII.
The same Subject continued—The Anecdote-monger.
THE sophistication of anecdotes is undertaken for the sake of constructing fresh material for the entertainment of the general reader without resorting to original sources. It is of course a process which is confined, as a rule, to popular literature, and to literature only; yet I remember having once seen at an auction a large portrait of Charles II., where, without any becoming regard to the costume, a head of Charles I. was painted in, because the Martyred monarch was dearer to connoisseurs than the Merry one.
The writers of the life of Charles Lamb have gone nearly as far by telling a story, in one version of which Benjamin Jonson figures, and in the other Dr. Johnson, as the personage quoted by Lamb. It was a case in which either would serve the turn; and variety pleases.
The statement of Malone about the elder Richardson sounds the keynote to the present argument. It became part of Richardson’s business to collect gossip about his contemporaries and others—in other words, he procured the outlines, and filled in the background and colour, if they were wanting, so far as he judged them requisite for the immediate purpose. He was one of many. Aubrey, Chetwood, Oldys, Walpole, and Malone himself, did much the same. Chetwood is wholly untrustworthy. Aubrey is to be accepted with many grains of allowance. But Oldys, Walpole and Malone were unusually accurate and scrupulous, and took pains to ascertain the truth, or not to set down, at any rate, what they knew to be the reverse.
Valuable as the information and traits preserved by Walpole and Malone must always remain, neither looked much below the surface, or took the trouble to scrutinise very closely the stories which reached their ears,—although we have seen, just above, that the latter, at all events, took true measurement of Richardson.
In the use of made-up tales or gossip, it was doubtless considered that the original outlines were of insufficient interest and dramatic completeness; and we are presented accordingly with a finished scene or conversation built out of a mere meagre skeleton. Like the first sketch of a picture which the artist makes in the fields or on the water, the professional adept in another way obtains his rough material at the club or the dinner-table, and takes it home with him to finish pro bono publico.
A curious glimpse of what may be described as preliminary rumination and subsequent cookery is afforded by Malone in what he says about the celebrated Lord Chesterfield:—
“The late Lord Chesterfield’s bons-mots were all studied. Dr. Warren, who attended him for some months before his death, told me that he had always one ready for him each visit, but never gave him a second on the same day.”
Chesterfield’s utterances, in other words, were second-hand impromptus—clever things which occur to one after the event, to be brought adroitly in next time. They resemble the speech which the man makes to himself on his way home, but which he should have delivered at the meeting or the banquet.
There are producible specimens, not only of the radix, which an artificer elaborates to suit his purposes, but of the converse—where the length of the original saying has been regarded as prolix, and has been shorn of its ample proportions, till it becomes a mot or an epigram. Every one has heard, for instance, of the capital observation of Horne Tooke, in reply to somebody who had stated in his hearing that the law was open to all men: “And so is the London Tavern!” But the more correct version of this matter appears to be one which is given in Joe Miller, 1832, No. 947:—
“John Horne Tooke’s opinion upon the subject of law was admirable. ‘Law,’ he said, ‘ought to be, not a luxury for the rich, but a remedy to be easily, cheaply, and speedily obtained by the poor.’ A person observed to him, ‘How excellent are the English laws, because they are impartial, and our courts of justice are open to all persons without distinction!’ ‘And so,’ said Tooke, ‘is the London Tavern to such as can afford to pay for their entertainment.’”
Here we have an illustration of the imperfect manner in which a presentment in miniature conveys the sense of the speaker. It is by no means multum in parvo. Tooke laid down the principle which Brougham subsequently carried into effect, but which proved a virtual dead letter—the County Court machinery, which was to have brought home justice at a low rate to every man’s door, but which, in point of fact, has been, from beginning to end, nothing but a sham and a juggle.
There is no story within my knowledge which indicates so clearly and amusingly one of the sources of corruption in the present branch of literature as the following:—
“A gentleman had purchased a jest-book, from which having selected a few tolerable stories, he related one of them, stating every circumstance as having actually happened to himself. His youngest son, a boy about nine years of age, who had occasionally got hold of the volume, sat with evident marks of impatience until his father had concluded, when he jumped up and bawled, ‘That’s in the book! that’s in the book!’”
Now, of course it does not require much calculation to arrive at an idea of the peculiar susceptibility of jocular and anecdotal matter to arbitrary treatment at the hands of every comer. It is truly the poet’s mutato nomine de te.
There are instances, again, where the text of a jest has a certain aspect of verisimilitude, yet where the peruser is apt on reflection, I think, to conclude that the cook has done his part. Let me illustrate this by a citation:—
“Two men, who had not seen one another for a great while, meeting by chance, one asked the other how he did. He replied, he was not very well, and had been married since he saw him: ‘That’s good news, indeed,’ said he. ‘Nay, not such good news, neither,’ replied the other; ‘for I married a shrew.’ ‘That was bad,’ said the friend. ‘Not so bad, neither; for I had two thousand pounds with her.’ ‘That’s well again,’ said the other. ‘Not so well, neither,’ said the man; ‘for I laid it out in sheep, and they all died of the rot.’ ‘That was hard, indeed,’ says his friend. ‘Not so hard,’ says the husband; ‘for I sold the skins for more than the sheep cost.’ ‘That made you amends,’ said the other. ‘Not so much amends, neither; for I laid out my money in a house, and it was burnt.’ ‘That was a great loss, indeed.’ ‘Nay, not so great a loss, neither; for my wife was burnt in it.’”
A capital anecdote, assuredly; but the cue is too sustained for a casual encounter. It has the air of a hint taken and worked humorously out.
As there are cases in which matters of fact are edited ad hoc, so does it occasionally happen that a joke is invented to suit certain given conditions. The name of a person or place, coupled with some flexible incident, suggests to an ingenious mind an ex post facto happy phrase or figure, as we see in the commonly accepted tradition of the actor, Andrew Cherry, who informed a manager that he had been bitten by him once, and that he was resolved he should not make two bites of A. Cherry.
The story of Diogenes and Alexander, where the former asks the king as a favour to stand from between him and the sun, is obviously a literary evolution from the accredited character of the so-called cynic; and the same may be predicated of that where Diogenes flings away the cup on seeing some one drink water from his conjoined hands. The office of biographer, from the dearth of material and stock-in-trade, had already become merged in those of inventor and romancist.
I have elsewhere taken occasion to suggest that the philosopher’s so-called tub was some Hellenic pleasantry at the expense of a, no doubt, very humble and contracted dwelling. So we are accustomed to speak of a man living in a box or a crib.
The dits with which we are so liberally regaled about exalted personages and crowned heads, are interesting in their way, and here and there may have come down to us pretty nearly as they left the mouths of the reputed authors—as, for example, the annexed:—
“The town of Chartres was besieged by Henry IV. of France, and capitulated. The magistrate of the town, on giving up the keys, addressed his Majesty: ‘This town belongs to your highness by divine law, and by human law.’ ‘And by cannon law,’ replied the king.”
The only difficulty is, that cannon law is not the phrase which the speaker would have used. An English translator has for once improved his original.
I have stated that the same conditions are apt from time to time to produce identical trains of thought. A little trait of the famous founder of the Bourbon dynasty in France is on exactly parallel lines with an actual incident which occurred within our personal knowledge, and might have done so within that of a thousand others. The rank of one of those concerned in the original anecdote communicates to it, however, an additional zest. It is said that, on one occasion, as Henry IV. was leaning out of window, a fellow about the palace, mistaking him for an intimate, slapped him behind. The king turned round sharply, and the other, in a terrible fright, stammered out that he thought it was So-and-so—Jacques or Jean. “Well,” returned Henry, good-naturedly, “if it had been, you need not have hit so hard.” An involuntary gravitation to a certain portion of our frame seems to be a universal and immemorial instinct of human nature. The truth to say, this choice morceau has been attributed to Sully as well as to his royal master.
But too many sayings are either vamped-up and utterly worthless, or are laid before us in a shape which arises from sheer ignorance of the costume of the subject, like the ridiculous descriptions which occur in the Bravo of Venice and other melodramatic romances. To any one who is conversant to a fair extent with the strict and stern régime under the old French monarchy, what can be more absurd and self-convicting than the subjoined relation?—
“An honest dragoon, in the service of Louis XIV., having caught a man in his house, after some words told him he would let him escape that time; but if ever he found him there again, he would throw him out of the window. Notwithstanding this terrible threat, in a few days he caught the spark there again, and was as good as his word. Sensible that what he had done would soon be known, he posted to court, and throwing himself at the king’s feet, implored His Majesty’s pardon. The king asked what his offence was; on which the soldier told him how he had been injured. ‘Well, well,’ said the king, laughing, ‘I readily forgive you; for, considering the provocation, I think you were much in the right to throw his hat out of the window.’ ‘Yes, please your Majesty,’ said the man; ‘but then his head was in it.’ ‘Was it?’ replied the king: ‘well, my word is passed.’”
There was scarcely a court in Europe with which such an incident could have been less happily associated; and it is almost difficult to call to mind any constitutional system, except perhaps that of the first Napoleon or our own Charles II., where such a tête-à-tête, so to say, could have taken place.
Nearly the whole stock which exists up and down the market of Irish bulls, Sawniana, gasconades, gaulardisms, and Mrs. Partingtoniana, has submitted to the churn. A pattern is produced; and any given or desired number of impressions may be had to order—no two alike exactly, and no two very different.
Which was the absolute jocus princeps about the Scotch, it is probably at this time impossible to discover; but it is obvious that they are all grafted on one parent stem, and scarcely yield a second moral. The entire assemblage forms a satirical exposure of the alleged parsimonious egotism of the nation. Ex uno disce omnes:—
“A Scotch pedestrian, attacked by three highwaymen, defended himself with great courage and obstinacy, but was at length overpowered and his pockets rifled. The robbers expected, from the extraordinary resistance they had experienced, to lay their hands on some rich booty, but were not a little surprised to discover that the whole treasure which the sturdy Caledonian had been defending at the hazard of his life, consisted of no more than a crooked sixpence. ‘The deuce is in him,’ said one of the rogues; ‘if he had had eighteenpence, I suppose he would have killed the whole of us.’”
And it is the same with another group, to which I have lately adverted:—
“‘Soldiers must be fearfully dishonest,’ says Mrs. Partington, ‘as it seems to be a nightly occurrence for a sentry to be relieved of his watch.’”
Mrs. Partington was nothing more than a lay-figure, on which the ingenious could pass off the jeu de mot, which begins to form an element in the facetiæ of the seventeenth century. She was a convenient personification, like her successors Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Brown.
