GOOD FOR A LAUGH

It is a cliché that Humour, like some fine wines, does not always travel well. We British fall about laughing at the mere sight of Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey of the Carry On team and laugh immoderately at lines uttered by Kenneth Williams’ stabbed Caesar – “Infamy, Infamy, they all have it in for me!” Yes, quite. It would not be surprising if foreigners sit stony-faced through such entertainments, (there were 31 Carry On movies), just as we do not much care for the US’ dire Animal House or Police Academy, weary chapters 1 to 6. As for the French, they had their ribs tickled by leaden Fernandel and, Sacre Bleu, have you ever endured a Louis de Funes comedy at which the French laugh like a drain, comme une descente d’eau as they (probably don’t) say?

A stricken Kenneth Williams as Caesar

Written humour is no doubt equally insular but I would like to celebrate two heroic English maestros, Arthur Marshall and PG Wodehouse.

Arthur Marshall (1910-89) was stage-struck as a child in Barnes and attended many a West End theatrical matinee and to his retrospective horror gave “concerts” to his parents’ friends. He was sent to go-ahead Oundle public school in Northamptonshire, whence to Cambridge, reading languages. He returned to Oundle as a schoolmaster and, apart from the war years, was there until 1954. He evinced a profound knowledge of schoolgirl literature (Angela Brazil a speciality) and broadcast on the radio as a comic Nurse Dugdale gaining a modest popularity. His circle of friends was notably theatrical, many of them, like himself, “wonky” gentlemen, to use his own phrase – names like Terence Rattigan, Somerset Maugham, John Gielgud, supplemented by Maurice Bowra and Guy Burgess give you a flavour.

During the war, Arthur was in the Intelligence Corps and so hilarious a raconteur was he that it is said that his section of the beach at Dunkirk was the only one to echo with laughter. He was charged with guarding captured Keitel and Jodl in 1945, so impeccable in their uniforms and batons in contrast to Arthur’s sloppy informality, that he wondered how on earth we had won the war.

He returned to Oundle where a banking colleague of mine recalled his jokey ways teaching Frog irregular verbs and left to work for Lord Rothschild, moving on to read and vet plays submitted to his friend Binkie Beaumont, the theatrical impresario. Arthur meanwhile wrote hilarious columns first for The New Statesman (sacked for expressing admiration for Mrs Thatcher) and then for The Spectator. A wider audience got to know him as a chubby good-natured presence on the TV game show Call My Bluff.

Arthur Marshall

An Arthur Marshall column jumped around an amazing variety of subjects from Queen Victoria’s oddities, the limitations of British railways, the bon mots of famous actors, Dame Edna unbridled, horoscopes, the Table of Kindred in the Prayer Book, Tennyson’s Maud, bird-song, Dr Crippen, gifts to the Royal Family, foot fetishism, saucy postcards, the Old Testament, ghosts, London taxi-drivers, peculiar names, visits to the dentist, Dame Edith Evans and learning the facts of life, to name but a few.

All these matters were handled with the lightest touch and gems of humour extracted. Arthur is invariably cheerful and his sunny disposition bucks me up immeasurably; I often take one of his volumes to get me through the longeurs of the queue at the Athens bank or the wait at the café while my lovely wife indulges in some retail therapy. His short pieces of about 1500 words are miracles of conciseness and I would give my eye-teeth to write half as well. They are published in collections I Say!, Smile Please, I’ll let you Know, Sunny Side Up, and I also enjoy his autobiography Life’s Rich Pageant.

Arthur Marshall rejoiced in his frivolity; he was truly one of England’s humorous glories.

P G Wodehouse (1881-1975) was a more famous name, writing solidly from 1902 onwards, author of 96 books and lyricist for 30 musical comedies. He lived in England and the USA and also in France. His best years were the inter-war ones but in 1941 he made a foolish comic broadcast after release from German internment, deemed to be collaborationist; he was harshly criticised and never returned to Britain. He continued to write in the US and was long exonerated, being knighted belatedly just before he died.

P G Wodehouse

Wodehouse, known as Plum, once almost got me into very hot water. With my Greek wife and two young sons, we were visiting Athens in 1975 and staying with an aunt and her 2^nd husband. After a few days, the uncle suddenly and sadly died of a heart attack casting a dark pall over proceedings. Following the custom in Greece, the funeral was the next day and an open-coffin Wake for friends and relatives soon took place in the downstairs reception rooms with much weeping and wailing. I was excused this duty and was delegated to look after my two boys then aged 4 and 5 in the study and bedrooms upstairs. The boys were angelic but this is where Plum comes in. The aunt’s 1^st husband was English and some of his books were in the office, among which sat Meet Mr Mulliner and, already a PG fan, I fatally began to read the first story called The Truth about George. It is one of Plum’s best.

- George Mulliner, of independent means, lived in the country and his great pleasure was solving crossword puzzles with the vicar’s daughter Susan “the first girl in Salop to know the meaning of stearine and crepuscular”. Unfortunately he was afflicted by a bad stutter and becoming enamoured with Susan, every time he attempted to express his regard he sounded “like a soda siphon trying to recite Gunga Din”. He decided to take the train to London and consult a Harley Street specialist “a kind man with moth-eaten whiskers and the eyes of a meditative cod-fish” Unable to speak he was advised by the specialist to explain by singing and he launched into “I love a Lassie” supplemented by a tuneless “If you knew Susie” after which the wincing specialist preferred him to write down his requests.

The specialist diagnosed shyness as the problem and told George to engage three strangers a day in conversation after which the shyness and stutter would disappear. Then “in a voice of the clearest timbre, free from all trace of impediment” he requested 5 guineas from George and sent him out into the world. George did not care for the advice but with the courage of the Mulliners pressed on. He took the train home and when a large fierce-looking man entered his compartment he sought to enter into conversation with him. However his visitor anticipated him by saying “The wur-wur-wur-wur weather sus-sus seems to be ter-ter taking a tur-tur turn for the ber-ber better, der-der doesn’t it?” George realised that to answer his choleric visitor with “Y-y-y-y-y-yes” would obviously be madness, and with presence of mind he pointed to his tonsils and feigned dumbness. He sank back into his corner, “quivering in every limb”

Having to change trains for the branch line, he strolled down the empty platform, not far from the County Lunatic Asylum, to be accosted by a distinguished-looking stranger “simply dressed in pyjamas, brown boots and a mackintosh”. Informing George that he was the Emperor of Abyssinia, there followed an alarming conversation on the merits of human sacrifice. George pushed the Emperor into a dark mop-and-lamp room and fled, hiding under the seat of his waiting branch line train. He saw feminine ankles and heard a porter report that someone had escaped from the Asylum.

The train set off and George slowly edged out of his hiding-place while the lady passenger read her paper. Seeking to engage her in conversation as ordered, he cleared his throat, smiling winningly. The lady, believing herself to be quite alone was “a little in the position of Robinson Crusoe when he saw the footprint in the sand” and “regarded him with pale-faced horror”. Her eyes were now “the size of regulation-standard golf balls” George wanted to ask her to join him in a cup of tea from the thermos in his case but could only manage “a sizzling sound like a cockroach calling to its young”. A brainwave saw George singing instead “Tea for Two”, but at this his companion, certain she was in the company of the escaped lunatic, closed her eyes, her lips moving feebly “reminding George of a newly-gaffed salmon”.

George awaited her recovery and meanwhile drank tea from his thermos. The train ran over some points and the thermos was jolted off the seat and exploded noisily. The lady “with a single piercing shriek, rose straight into the air like a rocketing pheasant; having clutched the communication cord, she fell back into her seat.” At this juncture George fled the stationary train and sprinted for home pursued by an angry mob of rustics. He outran them and after downing a reviving whisky and soda, found Susan in his cottage studying his dictionary of synonyms. He explained that he was suffering from “extreme fatigue, weariness, lassitude and languor” and suddenly realised he was no longer a stammerer. He proposed to her in eloquently orotund terms: “Love” he declaims, “Like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower, cries to all the world in a voice of thunder – you are mine!” Susan of course accepts passionately but George has to excuse himself to hide from the mob in the coal-cellar for half an hour. But the pair are happily united. –

On reading this lunatic tale, my two young sons were bemused to see me, face empurpled, eyes popping, stuffing handkerchiefs into my mouth to suppress the peals of laughter that would otherwise have emanated from me, but wholly inappropriate in the sombre house that day. When I am feeling blue, I still read Plum’s story as the perfect restorative.

Wodehouse probably made more readers laugh than any other writer. His fans were legion and included Belloc, Kipling and Evelyn Waugh. Meet Mr Mulliner was dedicated to former prime minister and another fan H H Asquith, (Asquith must have been a fun person; my grandfather, a dancing-teacher, instructed him in the fashionable dance the Black Bottom, while Asquith holidayed in Scotland in about 1926!).

Wodehouse created his own mythical world of idle rich at the Drones Club, men about town like Bertie Wooster and his inimitable valet Jeeves, Lord Emsworth obsessed by his prize pig at Blandings Castle, a series of formidable aunts, the butler Beach, Uncle Fred, wonderful golfing stories and his earlier tales of Psmith and Ukridge.

To be taken out of this difficult real world and into the innocent, gentlemanly and hilarious world of Wodehouse is a privilege indeed. My gratitude to and admiration of PG Wodehouse is boundless.

SMD

5.09.2012

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012