AFTERTHOUGHT
JOHN WELLS
'Life is just one damned thing after another.' —Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915).
With ruffles beginning to blossom once again from the breasts of our dandies, and rich theatrical colours and textures asserting them- selves once more in the silk-lined drawing- rooms of the fashionable, it seems that we have acquired sufficient experience of peace to sup- port again the development of style.
Subtly, and pretending all the time that they were mocking the elaborate artificiality of other epochs, the creators of fashion have pre- pared us gradually for the sudden joyous realisation that we are once again living in a world where snuff boxes and lace are accept- able, and where aesthetes can coo enrap- tured, without fear of public ridicule, at the loveliness of each other's ringlets and scented sidewhiskers. This same movement towards an intricately worked style has also been appar- ent in the realm of elegant conversation, where language arches itself up into graceful sub- junctives and flowers in brilliant images almost without the listeners or even the speaker know- ing to what extent he is parodying himself. The indications are clear. Unless we are all con- sciously on our guard we shall soon all be grovelling at the feet of a new wave of epi- grammatic wits.
Genuine and original wit, as those of us on the fringes of the business realise pos- sibly more acutely than others, is a rare and wonderful thing, springing up unexpectedly at moments of death and despair, or bubbling over at times of unusual exuberance. Like the sudden and spontaneous inspirations and insights which grow together to create a style, wit is the instinctive gift of a single individual. Once it is taken over as public property and becomes second-hand it is already dying, and once it has achieved general acceptance, like any fashionable style, it is already dead. And
it is always at this point that the epigrammatic wit seems to appear.
Imagine the legendary scene. The murmur of conversation in the salon, lovely women whis- pering behind fans and fondling their lapdogs, footmen waiting silent and still. Everywhere there is a sense of expectancy. Then far away the sound of polished red heels on the marble and the tantalising tap of a silver-knobbed cane. The conversation dies away. All heads in the room, except those of the phlegmatically static footmen, turn towards the white doors. They are opened from outside, and the epi- grammatic wit is framed in the doorway. He bows, the lovely eyelashes droop on every side, here and there a delicate blush glows on a perfect cheek. The epigrammatic wit gives an airy gesture with his white-gloved, heavily beringed hands, and steps regally into the centre of the room.
The well-oiled lock clicks shut behind him and there is a moment of intense anticipation. 'Life,' he says, with an irrepressible twinkle in his wonderfully bright eyes, 'is just one damned thing after another.' There is a rising wave of laughter, filling the whole room. Lapdogs are allowed to fall numbed to the floor as their mistresses roll backwards, trying weakly to control themselves. The sober footmen, for all their training, cannot restrain themselves either, and a rueful smile struggles at the corners of their grim lips. Chaos reigns. The epigram- matic wit, his work accomplished, turns on his polished red heel, taps three times on the floor with his stick, and the doors open. He walks away, calm and confident, down the long corri- dor paved with black and white marble, the laughter of beautiful women still faintly rising and falling far behind him.
The insupportable tedium of the epigram- matic wit, if such a person ever existed, must have been most apparent in ordinary social intercourse. Anxious, like the professional ath- lete, to remain in peak condition, he can have found little time for relaxation. Working into the small hours with joke books and concor- dances of puns, painstakingly memorising the exact intonation and set of the head best cal- culated to bring the house down at teatime, he must have astonished his housekeeper by leap- ing from his bed with some piece of encapsu- lated wisdom on the nature of existence, and tried out all his most sparkling lines on the apathetic cab-driver on his way to his first engagement of the day. A brief work-out with the crossing sweeper to polish the edge on his latest paradox before straightening his jabot and then off up another endless marble corridor to deliver the goods.
To be a friend of such a man would have been unthinkable. Every thoughtful inquiry about his health, every innocent observation about the weather or his mother-in-law must inevitably have invited a metaphorical foot in the mouth as the linguistic acrobat mounted his springboard, spinning away like a catherine wheel and conscious only of the blurred circle of applauding admirers. Reduced to the role of a stolid tumbler's assistant, few can have remained loyal for long. At some stage those closest to him must have resorted to un- kind suggestion behind his back that perhaps Max's epigrams were losing something of their original bite, or hinted that the one about life being one damned thing after another had been pinched from a contemporary at Cambridge.
Perhaps the only comfort, looking back, is to dwell on the epigrammatic wit's declining years. Followed now by a gloomy claque of highly-paid supporters, he taps at the drawing- room door. Eventually it is opened and he tries to force his way among the chattering guests. At last he finds a little space, strikes an attitude, and attempts a senile epigram. His assistants affect unconvincing hilarity and are asked to leave by a footman. The epigram- matic wit, sensing a pun in the footman's words, pauses, racking his memory for the apposite shaft. The footman, lifting a heavy brass warming-pan from the wall, strikes him a ring- ing blow on the head, and he is carried out by his assistants. Abandoned in the poor hos- pital, he observes weakly that life is just one damned thing after another, is felled by a burly male nurse who suspects some jeu (respell at the expense of his race, and expires.
Previous page
