All Things Considered | Page 4

which marks Mr. Pett Ridge's
studies of the small grey streets. Of this type is the simple but smashing
laughter of the best tales of Mr. W. W. Jacobs, telling of the smoke and
sparkle of the Thames. No; I concede that I am not a Cockney
humourist. No; I am not worthy to be. Some time, after sad and
strenuous after-lives; some time, after fierce and apocalyptic
incarnations; in some strange world beyond the stars, I may become at
last a Cockney humourist. In that potential paradise I may walk among
the Cockney humourists, if not an equal, at least a companion. I may
feel for a moment on my shoulder the hearty hand of Dryden and thread
the labyrinths of the sweet insanity of Lamb. But that could only be if I
were not only much cleverer, but much better than I am. Before I reach
that sphere I shall have left behind, perhaps, the sphere that is inhabited
by angels, and even passed that which is appropriated exclusively to the
use of Yorkshiremen.
No; London is in this matter attacked upon its strongest ground.
London is the largest of the bloated modern cities; London is the
smokiest; London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most
sombre; London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is
certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that
we have the most tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most
comedy, that we have the most farce. We have at the very worst a
splendid hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow behind a
screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears;
it is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There remains
always this great boast, perhaps the greatest boast that is possible to
human nature. I mean the great boast that the most unhappy part of our
population is also the most hilarious part. The poor can forget that
social problem which we (the moderately rich) ought never to forget.
Blessed are the poor; for they alone have not the poor always with them.
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can
never forget it.
I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar
jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be
certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men

who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express
except by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate
which they could only express by something indelicate. I remember
that Mr. Max Beerbohm (who has every merit except democracy)
attempted to analyse the jokes at which the mob laughs. He divided
them into three sections: jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about
things alien, such as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr. Max
Beerbohm thought he understood the first two forms; but I am not sure
that he did. In order to understand vulgar humour it is not enough to be
humorous. One must also be vulgar, as I am. And in the first case it is
surely obvious that it is not merely at the fact of something being hurt
that we laugh (as I trust we do) when a Prime Minister sits down on his
hat. If that were so we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral. We do
not laugh at the mere fact of something falling down; there is nothing
humorous about leaves falling or the sun going down. When our house
falls down we do not laugh. All the birds of the air might drop around
us in a perpetual shower like a hailstorm without arousing a smile. If
you really ask yourself why we laugh at a man sitting down suddenly in
the street you will discover that the reason is not only recondite, but
ultimately religious. All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats
are really theological jokes; they are concerned with the Dual Nature of
Man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the
things around him and yet is at their mercy.
Quite equally subtle and spiritual is the idea at the back of laughing at
foreigners. It concerns the almost torturing truth of a thing being like
oneself and yet not like oneself. Nobody laughs at what is entirely
foreign; nobody laughs at a palm tree. But it is funny to see the familiar
image of God disguised behind the black beard of a Frenchman or the
black face of a Negro. There is nothing funny in the sounds that are
wholly inhuman, the howling of wild beasts or of the wind. But if a
man