What did Canute, Queen Victoria and Lord Curzon have in common?
Many years ago, when she was a penniless teenager in Canada, Barbara Amidl coined a joke against herself: 'My extravagance knows no bounds,' she said, apropos of some minuscule purchase. It is a phrase she likes and has employed through all the ups and downs of her mouvemente life. Her friends know her as a woman of infinite wit and subtle ironies, and know exactly what she is getting at when she loads the conversational dice. But the world is full of po-faced, humourless people on whom irony is wasted. Worse, who take it literally. Barbara used her gentle joke in the presence of a gruesome Vogue interviewer who rolled it over to portray a spendthrift lady of Babylonian fecklessness. Worse, it got into the clippings, and was repeated, with moral overtones added, in The Spectator, which should have known better, being a journal that is written by insiders for insiders.
The moral of the tale is: never tell a joke against yourself. It is sure to be turned inside out and used against you by low-grade acquaintances and journalists. Alas, to deprive oneself of this endearing custom is a grievous loss. It is one of the redeeming features of mankind that we can learn to laugh at ourselves and invite others to join in the joke. It is a step towards self-knowledge. It distinguishes those who have a ticket to Elysium from the rest, condemned for eternity to less demanding pastures. It does not so much sort out the sheep from the goats as the sheep from those who like an occasional gambol in goatskins. Hamlet had this weakness — or strength. I would call it. So did Jane Austen. She confers it on one of her favourites, Mary Crawford, and deliberately not on her ostensible heroine Fanny Price. It leads to Mary's infamous double entendre in describing her uncle's household where senior naval officers abound as full of `rears and vices'. This has recently been chewed over in the Times Literal.), Supplement, the dreary academics who infest its letters page insisting that Jane Austen could not possibly have intended such a disgraceful pun and, even if she did, her publishers would never have allowed it to be printed. Oh God! (to quote Emma). What would Charles Lamb have said? The older I get in exploring the wastelands of this world-wilderness, the more convinced I am that the human race is divided not so much into rich and poor or black and white — or even clever and stupid — but into
those who like jokes and those who don't, primarily because they can't see 'em.
A man who suffered all his life, and still more so since his death, from his propensity to tell jokes against himself was George Nathaniel Curzon. He was snobbish, pompous, self-satisfied and accident-prone. However, he knew he was all these things and took delight in anecdotes that illustrated how heavily he fell into the various pits he dug. This engaging foible, which in a just world would be seen as redemptive, and was so seen by the few who really knew and loved him, was used by enemies or mere acquaintances to portray Curzon as a monster of aristocratic pride and humourless elitism. There was always an almost imperceptible wink in `dear George's' sayings. Thus he was clearly making a joke when he laid down that 'Gentlemen never wear brown.' (Though it had to be taken seriously during the age of Gaitskell, whose London attire was a peculiarly hideous brown pin-striped suit.) Again. when Curzon said 'Gentlemen do not take soup at luncheon' he was not being entirely serious, though the adage has caused endless dissension in households anxious to be comme ilfaut. It is a pity, in a way, that he did not live in the age of political correctness, since it would have given him so many opportunities to shock. A favourite anti-Curzon joke of his was his exclamation, in wartime Egypt, on seeing the Other Ranks disport themselves in a swimming pool at the base camp: 'Good heavens! I always thought the lower classes were covered in thick dark hair!' Another tale he told was: `These motoromnibuses are not all they are cracked up to be. I boarded one in Trafalgar Square t'other day. When the man came to collect the fare, I told him to take me to Carlton House Terrace. And the fellow flatly refused!' Again, in the agony of failing to get the premiership in 1923. Curzon could not miss the opportunity to deliver a Curzonism, and described his successful rival as 'a person of the utmost insignificance Now Curzon, a professional politician of long experience, knew perfectly well that Baldwin, with whom he had served in Cabinet, was a formidable figure. But he needed humour to sweeten the bitter pill. As a result the anecdote is repeated in all the books to emphasise how imperceptive the patrician Curzon was, and how class prejudice marred his political judgment.
Once you admit the possibility that some people — not least powerful people — may tell jokes against themselves, it is possible to look upon famous sayings or incidents with a fresh eye. The outstanding example is King Canute. It ought to be obvious that, sickened by his courtiers' flattery, he had his throne dragged to the seashore and went through the performance of forbidding the incoming tide to wet his feet in order to teach his underlings a moral lesson. That is certainly what the scribe who recorded it intended. But in the realm of popular fable old Canute is paraded as a fatuous monomaniac. How often has a debating hall, including the Commons, echoed with the sneer: `He thinks that, like King Canute, he can turn back the tide of history with a mere word', etc. I have even heard it said that as a result of his humiliation (and wet feet) the King was thereafter referred to not as Canute but Cnut, being short for the Old English 'cannot'. But this may have been a lecture-hall joke of Professor Tolkien's, or even C.S. Lewis's.
Another historical case was Queen Victoria's alleged saying: 'We are not amused.' In my view the Queen was making a joke, and one against herself. She was not deficient in humour: quite the contrary. There even survives a photograph showing her smiling or possibly chortling. No monarch used the royal 'we' in conversation after the early 18th century. If Victoria had wished to convey disapproval at an improper remark or incident, she would have used not the royal we, but the royal impersonal: 'One is not amused.'
have suffered grievously over the years in having stories I tell against myself neatly inverted and used as anti-Johnson ammunition. A typical opportunity occurred recently at a publishing party for Leonie Frieda, attended by an unusually large number of notables, with photographers to match. I arrived rather early and found myself surrounded by three paparazzi, snapping furiously. 'Hey, what's going on?' asked I. 'Why are you taking my photo?' Don't worry, squire,' said one, 'I'm only doing you to make sure my camera is working properly.' This patently sincere put-down made me laugh, and I was about to repeat the tale when Caution raised her head. How might the episode eventually appear in print? 'At a books party the other night. passé author Paul Johnson was preening himself on the large number of photographers taking his picture. But his gigantic ego was soon deflated. "Don't worry, squire," said one snapper. "We're just making sure our cameras are working." 'There. I've done it again.
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