HAPPY THOUGHTS.t
4g Happy thought!" (Mr. Burnand must have said to himself when he reprinted these papers) —" puzzle the critics." The present critic -confesses himself puzzled. There is such a fund of humour in every page of the book that calm analysis is out of the question. We • It is somewhat curious that Dr. Melds takes no note of the remarkable passage, Toark lindoat, this thecarpenter, n tearm, t.hoet sl:,>sn of Mary, the brotherBorefttaremne:iliagnhcl mean cousins, but what of brothers and sisters?
t Happy Thoughts. By F. C. Burnand. London : Bradbury and Evans. 1868. have heard of wild attempts to construct the character of the jotter from his various confessions. A vain man, a weak-minded man, an absent philosopher have in turn been suggested. But it would be quite impossible to find any one means of reconciling the many contradictions in which Mr. Burnand indulges. The truth is, he has an extravagant turn for caricature, and this time he has revelled in it. If he has had any guiding principle at all, it has been the principle of the absence of principle. He is like the man who made a resolution never to make resolutions. Perhaps the happy thought occurred to him that he would create an ass, and would see how many forms of folly could possibly be combined in one person. It is only in this way that we can explain the total surrender of his hero to each successive absurdity. First of all, the hero is the prey of all kinds of animals. Wasps, hornets, swans, geese, small flies, bats, rats, ferrets, earwigs, and bulldogs keep him everlastingly nervous. When he goes to stay with friends he is bothered by one, bullied by another, perplexed by the mutual relationships of different members of the party, and not very certain as to his own position. He can't play whist or croquet, can't ride, can't say pretty things, can't say clever things, looks stupid when he dresses up, and makes a fool of himself in singing. If he goes by train he overshoots his station, quarrels with cabmen, insults huge and bellicose porters, and is trampled on by an over- officious stationmaster.
There is a touch of nature in each of these scenes which relieves the general effect of hopeless insanity. Since we began writing we have killed one wasp with the book under review, and this might make us believe in the possibility of the opening chapters. Any other passage taken separately would be quite as probable. How well we know the man who wants the exact time every five minutes, and the friend who, in order to give it him, extricates himself from a multitude of wraps, puts down half-a-dozen articles he held in his hand, and just resumes his wraps and packages in time to have to search for his ticket. The monster hotel where the boots and night porters are independent of each other, and where No. 89 gets the boots of No. 90 and the break- fast of No. 75, is quite within the bounds of reason. But the oddity is that such a shoal of adventures should occur to the same man, that he should never gain experience by anything which might have taught him, that his nervousness at one time should not stand him in stead at another, that with his multiplicity of wraps he should be careless about his lug- gage. Mr. Burnand confesses that his first idea was to write "a few chapters of observations not on men, but insects," and that this natural-history project was abandoned about the time when the Typical Developments dawned on the horizon. We should like to know how many other projects were formed and abandoned. If •we had Mr. Burnand's note-book before us we should probably find some such entries as these. " Wrote another chapter. Put an end to the ferret. What animal can I get to replace it ? Happy thought!—Make him an undeveloped philo- sopher. Made him an undeveloped philosopher. Great book. Always going on. Never comes to anything. Stupid if it did come to anything. Happy thought 1—A philosopher singing a comic song." We need hardly say that these jottings are not meant for publication. The rough conception seldom seems promising except to him who can realize it. Common as is the complaint that the finest ideas are marred in the execution, the hints by which those ideas are impressed on the memory bear no relation either to the form in which they first appear to their author, or to that in which they are given to the public. Mr. Burnand's Happy Thoughts may have been as sudden and as undesigned when they occurred to him, as when they flashed into the mythical note-book of the undeveloped philosopher. But it is quite possible that they were seriously worked out, foreseen, laboured, and long expected; that if there was a real note-book, it was of the Sheridan type, and would only bear inspection as a curiosity of literature.
There is a settled purpose in much of Mr. Burnand's extravagance that would tend to confirm this inference. Much of it, indeed the greater part, is extravagance for its own sake. Mr. Burnand is not only comic, but he knows it and he means it. He contrives the most ludicrous situations and thrusts his man into them simply to see what he will say. It is not enough that his man should drink too much at a club dinner, and take shorthand notes of his inarticulate phrases, but he must go and have a serious interview with his " slic'tor," merely in order that his note-book may record all the stages in the typical development of drunkenness. This inter- view with the solicitor is, perhaps, the most characteristic part of the book. It is marked by more than Mr. Burnand's usual daring. The idea of a man writing down in a note-book, " Happ Thght.— Go to bed in my boots," is not comic if you try to analyze it. But then you don't analyze it. You accept it without scrutiny. You know the whole thing is a caricature, and so long as you laugh heartily you don't ask whether this or that detail is out of draw- ing. If you did, the absurdity of a man who can't speak plainly writing down his words exactly as he pronounces them would of course shock your nice sense of proportion. Somehow or other, it does not shock ours. We are in Mr. Burnand's hands. He may do what he likes with us. The only thing we cannot forgive him is his sudden transition from the school of Punch into the school of All the Year Round, when the writer of the jottings tells his mother of his approaching marriage. It was bad enough to have a Cockney for a natural philosopher, the natural philosopher turned into a metaphysician, the metaphysician trying his embryo repartees on railway porters, the railway porter taking out a summons because he was called a fool, the fool being blessed with such brilliant ideas as most of these happy thoughts, and these happy thoughts blinding us to their intolerable absurdity. But a mother looking trustfully into the future is a being of another world. Mr. Burnand's globe is peopled with the nervous, the awkward, the embarrassed. They are backward in repartee. They fail in simile. They say thanks, thanks, thanks, oh thanks! They never tackle a bat. They don't know when to take off their hats. What have they to do with mothers, or why should their mothers look trustfully ? Compare the passage with some of Mr. Burnand's happiest grotesques, and the difference is too palpable. For instance, the idyllic picture of the stranded barge :— " Scientific Note.—How distinctly water convoys sound. I can hear every word that happy bargeman on the opposite shore says, as if I were at his elbow. He is using language of a fearful description to his horses. The other bargeman has lifted himself up (he was on his back kicking his legs in the air on deck) to remonstrate. His remon- strances are couched in still stronger language, and include the man and the beasts. Woman (his wife I should say) interferes with a view to peacemaking. Her soothing words are more forcible than those of the two men, and include them both with the beasts. The children have also joined in, and are abusing the bargeman (their father, as I gather) on shore. My gardener tells. me they'll probably stick here till the tido turns. I ask him if it often happens? He tells me "Oh ! it's a great place for barges." My sister and two ladies in the drawing-room (also facing the lawn) have closed their windows. Typical Developments shall have a chapter on the Ideal Bargeman.' To write is impossible at present. A request has been forwarded to me from the drawing-room to the effect that I would step in and kill an earwig or two. I atop in and kill five. Ladies in hysterics. The punt has reappeared : ho only put in for more bait. Caught anything? 'Nothing.' Had a bite? Once, I think.' He is calm, but not in any way triumphant. "Evening.—Tide turned. Barge gone. They swore till the last moment. From my lawn I attempted to reason with them. I called 4 my good men,' and tried to cajole them. Their immediate reply was of an evasive Character. I again attempted to reason with them. Out of their next reply I distinguished only one word which was not posi- tively an oath. Even as it stood, apart from its context, it wasn't a nice word, and my negotiations came to an end. Wont back to my
parlour and killed earwigs." •
'This is neither excessive caricature nor dependent for its amuse- ment on the unconscious folly of the narrator. In the interview with the stationmaster which follows we have something of both these elements :—
" The pigeon-hole suddenly opens, and the Stationmaster appears. Now's the time for conversation, and picking up character and materials. I have several questions to ask him. I say, I want to know firs ' He catches me up impulsively, 'First, where for ?'—' Chopford,' I answer, and before I can explain the accident which has brought me to Slumborough, he has dashed at a blue ticket, thumped it in one machine, banged it in another, and has produced it cut, printed, double stamped, and all complete for authorizing me to go to Chopford. One and a penny,' says he.—I explain that ' I don't want it, because—' He listens to nothing more, but sits down at his desk, pounces upon a large book, which he opens and shoves aside, then seizes a pen, and begins adding up something on one sheet of paper, and putting down the result on another. While he is engaged in this, .I see the telegraphic needles working. He is too absorbed to notice it. 'Twill be only kindness on my part to direct his attention to it. I say, 'Do you know, Sir—' He is up in an instant, with a pen behind his ear. Ho evidently doesn't recognize me.—'Eh, first ? where for ?'—I can't help saying, 'Yea, Chopford—but—' when he dashes, as before, at the stamping machines, and produces, like a conjuring trick, another ticket for Chop- ford. That's two tickets for Chopford, and a third I've got in my pocket. I toll him I don't want it, and am adding, I don't know if you -observed the telegraph needles—' when he sits down, evidently in a temper, growling something about if you want to play the fool, go somewhere else.' I'd say something sharp if he wasn't at work, but I never like disturbing a man at work. Stop, I might ask him, it wouldn't take a second, how far it is from Chopford to Furze. I approach the pigeon-hole ; I say, mildly, 'If you would oblige me, Sir, for one second—' He is up again more impulsively than ever. 'One, Second. Thought you said, One First,' and before I can point out his mistake he bee banged, thumped, and produced for the third time a ticket to Chop- ford, only now he says, • Tenpence,' that being the reduction on Second class. I am really afraid of making him very violent, so I buy the ticket."
At other times the hapless subject vanishes altogether, and instead we have remarks made upon him by the caricaturist. Thus when
a white tie is not forthcoming, and one is lent by the footman, the comparison of the wearer to a Methodist preacher, a gentleman with the mumps, and the comic nigger who does the bones never could have occurred to the mazed metaphysician of typical develop- ments. Or take this delicious bit of drawing-room buffoonery :— " Miss Pellingle commences ' Rousseau's Dream,' with variations. Beautiful melody, by itself first, clear and distinct. Only the slightest possible intimation of the coming variations given by one little note which is not in the original air. Perhaps arranged for performance in Nova Scotia. Happy Thought. —Turn over. ' No, not yet, thank you.' Too early. A peculiarly harmonized version of the air announces the approach of variations. Two notes at a time instead of one. The 'Dream' still to be distinguished. Miss Pellingle jerks her eye at me. Happy Thought.—Turn over. Beg pardon : two pages. Miss Pollingle's right hand now swoops down on the country occupied by the left, finds part of the tune there, and plays it. Left hand makes a revengeful raid into right-hand country, bringing it's part of the tune up there, and trying to divert the enemy's attention from the bass. They meat in tho middle. Scrimmage. Tune utterly lost. Happy Thought.— Turn over. Too late. Steam on : hurried nod of thanks. Now again. The right hand, it seems, has left some of the tune in the loft hand's country, which the latter finds, and tries to produce. Right hand comes out with bass accompaniment in the treble, and left hand gives in. Both meet for the second time. Scrimmage. Happy Thought.—Botween two hands 'Rousseau's Dzcam' tells to the ground. Now the air tries to break out between alternate notes, like a prisoner behind bars. Then we have a variation entirely bass. Happy Thought.—Rousseau snoring. Then a scampering-up, a meeting with the right hand, a scampering down, and a leap off one note into space. Then both in the middle, wobbling ; then down into the base again. Happy Thought.—Rousseau after a heavy supper. A plaintive variation.—Rousseau in pain. General idea of Rousseau vainly trying to catch the air in his own dream. Light strain : Mazourka time. Rousseau kicking in his sleep. Grand finishing-up : festival style, as if Rousseau had got out of bed, asked all his friends suddenly to a party, and was dancing in his dressing-gown."
Is this the work of a man who always failed in simile?
Previous page
