When, I found myself wondering the other night, do the
dead become funny? Someone—I think it was Mr. Handley—had just cracked a joke on the air about not wanting to be Nelson, " with a flock of pigeons in his hair and a Washdown once a year." Why is it unthinkable that anybody should make the same sort of joke about (say) Nelson's neighbour Nurse Cavell, and for how many more decades will this remain true? The Light Brigade who charged at Balaclava nearly a century ago have been fair game for the parodist for some time now ; the Black Hole of Calcutta. the mere mention of which set the blood boiling in our grandparents' veins, has long been acceptable as a facetious figure of speech ; and what may be called the Antimacassar School has helped to turn the late Mr. Glad- stone, only so years after his death, into a tremendous figure of fun. I suppose unsuccessful criminals graduate into posthumous risibility more quickly than any class of human beings except 'possibly actors ; the one class being the enemies of society and the other the servants of the public, perhaps people feel that there is no need to show an undue respect to their memories. Foreigners, of course, are largely exempt from this curious time-lag, being automatically funny whether alive or dead.
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