SHAM FUN.
MOT long ago a small crowd collected in.- a street near 1_11 the river and sounds proceeded from the group _like those we associate with a dog-fight. The noise became louder and louder till it seemed impossible that two does should produce such a variety of howls and growls and barks. The explanation of the commotion was this. Two sailors, in the centre of the, group were playing with two toy dogs on strings, or rather long tubes with bulbs at the ends. The men pinched the bulbs and the toys jumped at each other while the men imitated the noise of a fight. Other sailors and civilians joined the group and joined in the chorus as well as they could for laughing. What a childish scene I But how English ! Whatever definition we favour of that indefinable word " humour," it cannot cover such a farce as.this. It was a sense of sheer fun which had taken hold of the company—a sense which belongs to all children and to certain grown-up men. The piece of nonsense •took only a few minutes to enact. Very little time was wasted, and every one went on his way refreshed as though he had had a very exhilarating and. entirely harmless drink. It is a very illusive thing, this English spirit of fun. It is not just high spirits. Men whose spirits are not very high are at moments carried away by it, and women. who would seem less a prey to low spirits than their husbands and brothers are hardly susceptible of it at all. Crazy high spirits are commonly to be seen in young girls of a rough type, but they find expression in senseless giggling rather than in pleasant nonsense. Most women who do not belong to that particular and mercifully not very numerous type grow up early indeed. They are, according at any rate to French proverbial philosophy, the only sex which really grows up at all.. Of course, in. making generalizations about men and women one must always remember there are conspicuous exceptions. There is no invariable mental distinction between the sexes any more than there is a mental distinction between rich and poor, gentle and simple, or even, correctly speaking, between old and young. Still, a woman with an entirely irrational sense of fun is rare and is a little suspected, at least by her sisters, who feel her to be unfeminine.
Socially speaking, the present age is a gentle one as com- pared to the ages behind us. We do not make fun of suffering any more, nor are we willing—after our school- days—to suffer physically for fun. The incident of the sham dog-fight recalled to the writer's mind a very amsuing essay of Steele's on the subject of " Frolic," which contains much that is still true and some things that are as much things of the past as the doings of ancient Rome. It is noticeable that Steele all through his essay leaves wonat. out of count altogether. He does not seem to expect them ever to " give a loose to that pleasing forgetfulness wherein men put off their characters of business and enjoy their very selves." Only a very few men, he maintains, are capable of genuine " frolic." " Festivity of spirit is a very uncommon talent and must proceed from an assem- blage of agreeable qualities in the same person." Is this true now ? Steele does not seem to expect it at all among simple people. He seems to regard it as the monopoly of gentlemen. The man who has it must be unselfcon- scious, " it is never very grateful but where it is regarded by him who possesses it in the second place." There are, he observes, too many " whose mirth consists only in doing things which do not become them with a secret conscious- ness that all the world knows they know better." This consciousness is still the destruction of all real fun and is the reason why many very cheerful and very humorous people wish there were no such thing, or at least that it were socially taboo. They cannot recognize real " Fes- tivity of spirit," and cannot differentiate it from its imitation.
Self-conscious fun being really nothing but an affectation changes with the fashion. Past affectations are very hard to understand, and Steele tells one story to which the present generation have no key. " I have heard," he says, " of some very merry fellows among whom the frolic was started and passed by a great majority that every man .should immediately draw a tooth." To-day it is impossible that such a thing should take place outside a lunatic asylum. " The same company at another night has each man burned his cravat ; and one perhaps -whose estate would bear it has thrown a long wig and hat into the same fire." No sober man could laugh to-day at antics so extravagant. Fights with the watch belong to a . different category. Shakespeare has explained them to us. " I know a gentle- man," says Steele, who has several wounds in his head by watch-poles and has been thrice run through the body to carry on a good jest." Falstaff, born out of due time, appeals to our sympathies, and we can really laugh when we are told that he is " very old for a man of so much good humour." The last sentence wherewith Steele dismisses him is eternally true of those people who, lacking " festivity of spirit," determine to enact it : " To this day he is seldom merry but he has occasion to be valiant at the same time." Have we not all suffered from these valiant merrymakers, who succeed so often in making a whole company miserable. Their awkward sallies produce anger, reprisals take place, the man who " began it " becomes valiant and hits hard. From a sham fight under- taken in real fun we come to a real fight in sham fun, than which nothing is more dangerous.
It is rather surprising to hear that there was so much sham fun in Steele's day. We had somehow thought that fun then, though rough, was the outcome of true high spirits. Nowadays its existence as a sham is largely due, we think, to the exaggerated language universally current about the gift of humour. It is constantly spoken of as an essential quality, as " God given," as something beyond price, a quality whose possession goes far to excuse a scoundrel and whose absence would destroy the attraction of a saint. Indeed, its absence except in a woman can hardly be forgiven. During the War it was exalted almost to a level with courage and often confused with modest heroism. No one dare say a word for those who are without it, and consequently a sort of hypocrisy of humour has arisen. Those who have none confuse it with all sorts of other mental peculiarities and pretend to it under the guise of good spirits and nonsense almost as in a past generation men pretended to religion and virtue. Women are the smallest offenders in this matter, partly because they have less temptation and partly because they are so seldom hypocrites. Does the whole of Engliih literature contain a notable woman hypocrite ? With no desire to see humour less valued, we should very much like to hear it less extolled. Imagine a world in which no man dared declare himself unmusical and everyone " performed " in order to maintain his character What a hubbub there would be 1 The music of the unmusical would drive read the average man with a good average ear who wanted to listen to music and not a din. The social lawgivers would have to allow the man with no sense of iuelody to be _quiet and not call him names ; otherwise there would be a reaction and all music would be at a discount. We are threatened with the same state of things where fun and humour are concerned. Those who can attain to nothing but facetiousness must be allowed to admit their deficiency, be patted on the head for their other good qualities, and encouraged to hold their peace.
Previous page
