Don't laugh too loud — this theatre of the world is unsafe
PAUL JOHNSON Ive smile, naturally, sometimes on our first day of life. But we have to learn to laugh — that is, we imitate the mouth motions, facial contortions and, above all, the laugh noises of our elders. This is why the way we laugh is part of our breeding. I notice every year at the Christmas season a lot of loud, infuriating and ill-bred laughter in restaurants, from people who have had a few, chiefly from shavenheaded men but also from a growing number of women. Jane Austen deplored loud laughter, believing that a fine-tuned control of the vocal cords was a sure sign of a gentleman. Her Emma was convinced that the young farmer Robert Martin, whom she considered a demeaning suitor for Harriet Smith, would laugh in an unseemly manner. Jane would not have approved of the modern Santa Claus, with his 'Ho, ho, ho!' like a rum-soaked buccaneer. Sad that Santa, who ought to be courtly, indeed regal, has been allowed to stray over the boundary line.
Not many would now have the nerve to teach people how to laugh with propriety. Before the Great War, a famous colonel of the Prussian Death's Head Hussars used to call his subalterns together and say, 'You young officers are laughing in an unsoldierly way. I don't want my officers sniggering, giggling and guffawing, like tradesmen and Jews and Poles. You are Hussars! Ja! And there is only one way for a Hussar to laugh — short and sharp. Thus: "Ha!" Now — we practice. All together: one, two, three, Ha! One, two, three, Ha! Ja, that is goot!' I believe Lord Cardigan, who would not allow beer bottles on the mess table, ordered his Hussar officers to laugh thus, only he insisted on 'Haw!' and, in moments of great glee, 'Haw-haw!' Hence the chain of events which led the public, during the last war, to christen the traitor Joyce, with his put-on posh voice, 'Lord Haw-Haw'.
The cavalry colonels had history on their side. How cavemen laughed we do not know. But it is certain 'Ha' was found in Greek, Latin, most of the Romantic and all the Teutonic languages. 'Ha' in the singular does not occur in Old English, though 'Ha ha' does, and 'Ha' was frequent in Middle English from about 1300. Chaucer, enterprising and innovative as always, was the first to introduce the spiteful feminine expression Tee hee!', which he gives to the beautiful young Alyson in The Miller's Tale, when she successfully tricks her unwelcome elderly suitor into kissing her arse in the dark. Tee hee' was reserved for girls. Old women and witches said 'He he'.
As it happened, 'Ha', also spelt `Haghe', 'Haugh' and `Hah', depending on the pronunciation in your part of the country, signified a lot of other feelings beside amusement, and Shakespeare made good and frequent use of it. Thus, in Hemy IV, Part I, exultation: 'And then the power of Scotland and of York, to join with Mortimer, ha!' Or, in Hamlet, surprise: `Ah ha, boy, sayest thou so?' Or, in Troilus, there is an exchange signifying suspicion, also employing that useful monosyllable 'Hum': Patroclus: Jove bless great Ajax!
Thersites: Hum.
Patroclus: I come from the worthy Achilles. Thersites: Ha?
It is interesting to note that the man who made the most profitable use of the expression in this sense was the Duke of Wellington. He was a man of unusual discretion but also of exquisite manners — not for him the modern rudery of 'No comment'. When asked, as often happened, an impertinent question, or one he did not wish to answer, or when unwilling to make an immediate comment on a piece of information, he had a habit of saying 'Ha!' The young Gladstone, who heard him thus in 1836, noted approvingly that 'Ha!' was 'a convenient suspensive expression'. Mr Attlee, who hated using the word more than was necessary, and who considered almost any question intrusive, used the same device, though his 'Ha!' was more a kind of quiet nasal noise — 'hunnif or `nimmm' — than a Wellingtonian ejaculation. I found, when I interviewed him on television, that he could be disconcertingly uncommunicative in this way. Thus, after his resignation, when he had become Earl Attlee, I asked him, 'How do you think your successor is doing?' Attlee: `Mmmm What's your next question?' (This is a trick I recommend to people being grilled by John Humphrys on the Today programme.) There are many mysteries about laughter. Why is a snicker morally preferable to a snigger and what is the precise difference in sound quality? Why are a giggle and a shriek 'U', yet a titter and a guffaw `non-U'? To cackle is rude but to chortle or chuckle acceptable. To banter or chaff implies you are well over 50, but yuk or yuk-yuk makes you a yobbo. Kooky implies you're a Yank but dolled or daft a Scot. Is a horse-laugh a kind of whinnie or a hee-haw, or is that only for donkey types? Can a lady emit a belly laugh? Or a hoot? Can a man give vent to a tinlde9 A peal of laughter is reserved for tenors. What does a bass do? Cachinnate? The word hilarious is dear to me because the first girl I really loved was Hilary, who later, poor thing, married (briefly) Anthony Crosland. But none of the canonised Hilaries had much to laugh about. St Hilarion lived in a mud hut near Gaza for 50 years on figs and carrots, and then had to go on the run, selling firewood. Hilary of Poitiers became a bishop to escape from his wife, and gave his name to Hilary Term, still in use in Oxbridge and lawcourts. Not much to be jocose (good word) about there.
Laughter has its own complex body language. Hence 'heaving'. Ted Heath heaved his shoulders silently. Willy Whitelaw also heaved but did a ho-ho noise like an Etonian Father Christmas. Roy Jenkins tended, when amused, to turn his hand to the right as if opening a doorknob (or, as some used to say, stroking Annie Fleming's breast). What exactly is implied by 'in stitches' or 'rolling in the aisles'? Mark Twain, when lecturing for laughs, reckoned he was not in top form unless the audience stamped their feet. There is a description of hilarious body language in Psalm 22: 'All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.' Wonderful, isn't it, the way the Bible still conjures up vivid images, by its love of detail, from 3,000 years ago?
There used to be, in El Vino's in Fleet Street, a habitué who always sat at the lawyers' table. He was enormously fat, all over his body — not disgustingly so, rather a Falstaffian type, honourably fat, or a Dickens character, born to cheer us up. And, my word, he laughed! Someone would set him off, and a low rumble would begin in his body, round about the knees, and slowly move upward, gathering power and decibels, until what I can only call a roaring chortle took possession of his entire form, literally shaking it with mirth. At times his performance was so mesmerising that the rest of the room would fall silent to listen and to look at this splendid human laughing machine, and we would all smile, indeed laugh with him, and rejoice that someone, at least, got such fun out of life. Share the joke, eh? Alas, he died, and there has been none like him since. All laughter ends in a rictus. Let's keep hooting all the same.
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