As Popanilla becomes introduced to the best people of Hubbadub, the capital, the resources of his own country arouse interest, and an expedition of vast commercial enterprise is headed for the Isle of Fantaisie. Failure to find it precipitates a panic and leads to the imprisonment of its representative, for exciting hopes under false pretenses. However, a happy ending is secured by a legal coup d’état, and a solution of all problems announced by Mr. Flummery Flam, who has discovered that “it was the great object of a nation not to be the most powerful, or the richest, or the best, or the wisest, but to be the most Flummery-Flammistical.”[109]
In Disraeli’s two little classical burlesques, published five years after Popanilla, still another device is used. There is neither an Englishman in Italy, nor an Italian in England, but the ancient stage of Greek mythology is made the background for a thinly disguised modern satiric drama. Familiar characters and incidents are seen masquerading in equally familiar costumes and scenes, but the former are local and current, and the latter revived from a far past.
There is none of Browning’s seriousness in Disraeli’s interpretation of Ixion. His story is utilized because it offers tempting chances for saucy, allusive comment on mundane affairs. A journey through space inevitably suggests the humor of proportion; but Ixion and Mercury give us not the grave irony of Byron’s Cain and Lucifer, nor the rollicking yet pensive mirth of Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield. They are content with clever jocularity.
For instance, as they graze a certain star, Ixion inquires who live there. “Some low people who are trying to shine into notice,” is the haughty reply. “’Tis a parvenu planet, and only sprung into space within this century. We do not visit them.”[110]
During his brief but splendid sojourn on Olympus the guest is postured as a complacent, insolent, Barry Lyndon sort of rascal, who makes himself perfectly at home in the divine dining and drawing rooms (which are, of course, conducted according to the British code of etiquette), fulfills Cupid’s prediction that he will write in Minerva’s album, though he does manage to escape her “Platonic man-trap,” carries on his intrigue with the Queen of Heaven in the Don Juan manner, and meets his detection and punishment with supercilious assurance and a final triumphant taunt.
The Infernal Marriage of Proserpine to Pluto introduces a disturbing element into the ancien régime of Hades. The new and influential bride stirs up a terrible political turmoil by interfering in the matter of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the consequence is quite disastrous. The conservative Fates and Furies are so incensed that they neglect their disciplinary duties, whereby the radical Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion obtain a respite from torture and a dangerous opportunity to talk politics. The phrases “Ministry Out,” “Formation of New Cabinet,” are bandied about. Finally a change of scene is prescribed for the Queen. Her departure is celebrated by an elaborate banquet and a magnificent procession,[111] and we left to infer that the future belongs to the reactionaries.
We, however, follow the fortunes of Proserpine, who dwells for a season in Elysium, after a visit en route to the dethroned Saturn, who discusses with her The Spirit of the Age. Elysian society is of course the English of Disraeli’s set; gay, graceful, complacent, and malicious. The finest gentleman there is Achilles; the worst cad is Æneas, who would fain make up with the now popular Dido, but being repulsed, must content himself with becoming head of the Elysian saints and president of a society to induce Gnomes[112] to drink only water.
In form these last two productions belong to the general division of burlesque. There are also touches of travesty in Peacock.[113] But the main instances of this type of the grotesque are found in the two writers who filled in this line the interval between the last of Disraeli’s, in 1833, and the last of Peacock’s, in 1861. During the forties and first half of the fifties stood Thackeray, monopolist of parody and caricature. Immediately following came the two contributions of Meredith to satiric persiflage. In both cases this fantastic stuff formed the preliminary to the real work, being merely the romantic avenue by which two of the greatest realistic satirists came into their own kingdom.
It happens, therefore, that though the quantity of this early product is sizable enough, its rank is comparatively low. It is overshadowed by the others on the list because in it the fun and nonsense is predominant and the critical element so slight as to be negligible; and it is overshadowed still more by the more mature genius of the authors themselves.
It is natural that the burlesque should have been a favorite satiric mode from Aristophanes to Rostand and Shaw. The wit it requires is imitative rather than creative, and its appeal is instantaneous.