Any review of funny books must bristle with the prejudices of the reviewer and this review certainly bristles with mine. Were I, for instance, an English master who once taught me at a preparatory school, I should doubtless find History Repeats Itself, by J. Adrian Ross and J.E. Broome, a funny book. It owes a good deal to 1066 and All That–– which was not published in my day—and even more to W. S. Gilbert and the Gilbert A. Becketts:
Boadicea, Queen of Britain,
With the craze for speed was bitten.
Chariots of different sorts—
Landaulette and Super Sports—
This is just the sort of thing to read out to the junior boys when exams are over and you are prepared to unbend and show that you despise history as much as the boys do—this is just the thing for when there are ten minutes to spare before the bell goes for milk and biscuits.
Were I a fluffy river girl with a weakness for night clubs and Maidenhead, speed and Bing Crosby, and all the wild, wilful delights of this wild, wilful, delightful, funny old world, I would probably take my philosophy from How about a Man––‘full of sound but not too serious advice for every girl, whether she be sixteen or sixty’. But were I that English master, I would, of course, read it to the boys: or give it to the headmaster’s wife for Christmas.
Were I somebody with the sort of humour one sometimes finds in a house one rents for the summer at the seaside, someone who likes putting up notices everywhere, little rhymes about not splashing in the bathroom, not dropping ash on the carpet, not leaving wet sand shoes in the hall, a real good, doggy, sporty sort not too keen about art, I would doubtless buy Auful Weekends––and Guests, by ‘Fish’, tear out the pictures and pin them up all over the house. As it is, drawings by ‘Fish’, though strongly individual, have never made me laugh. They are competent in a superficial, rather 1920 manner: eyes are like commas, curves of a decorative nature swirl about, everything is two-dimensional. Despite his pseudonym, ‘Fish’s’ work smells to me of lavender soap.
The book that makes me laugh is Take Forty Eggs. It is a parody of a cookery and household management book and it seems to me to be spontaneous, unselfconscious and the result of perfect sympathy in humour between author and artist. It may not be everybody’s idea of what is funny. Some may take this literally: ‘Bloodstains, how to remove from newspaper. Newspapers in which meat or fish have been wrapped are often unpleasantly discoloured. To clean, soak for several hours in water and scrub vigorously.’ Others may get more of a laugh from:
COOKERY FOR SADISTS Devilled Sago
Tear a lettuce into pieces, fling them into boiling water and leave them till they blanch. Tear up a carrot by the roots and boil it in oil. Pound some sago to a jelly. Slash some turnips with a sharp knife, rub salt, curry powder and cayenne into the cuts and truss them tightly. Stuff with the other ingredients. Grill them. Baste them.
Eat them.
All these books appeal to individual types. But what shall we say of that organ that, as is well known, is appreciated the world over where clean fun and class distinction are decently honoured, that organ that is as essential to a household as the annual catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores? I refer to Punch.
I think Punch receives today severer knocks than it deserves. The glances at recent numbers that I have made during visits to the dentist show that a minor revolution is starting. On the one side is the old gang of artists and contributors: a certain type of drawing and ‘joke’ has so long been expected of it that it is unable to manufacture anything else. Mr Lewis Baumer draws fast, almond-eyed girls shocking elderly aristocrats, or pokes fun at the rich, or makes jokes about people keeping butlers and footmen; Mr G. D. Armour specialises in scratchy fences above which appears an ‘angry Master of Foxhounds’; Mr Charles Grave remains resolutely nautical; etc, etc. On the other side there is the new gang of new artists and new kinds of humorists. It is not very strong and some of the artists’ drawings are really hideous—as ugly as the worst work of the old gang. But there is an effort to break with the tradition of the late Sir Owen Seaman. The new gang labours under three disadvantages. The New Yorker exists and any jokes in the New Yorker tradition will be called plagiarism. Sex is taboo. The third disadvantage under which Punch labours is its public. The Punch public expects a joke that is ‘good enough for Punch’ and no better. Anything oddly humorous might lose a subscriber. Writing for Punch means writing for Punch’s public—almost as tricky and dangerous a task as writing for a periodical whose editor is under the advertisement manager.
In The Pick of Punch (1937-1938) one finds the war fought out fiercely. There are 170 illustrations and I have made an analysis of those that were identifiable to me as jokes. Twenty-one were mostly cartoons that are not meant to be very funny or even satirical. The remaining 149 fell under the following subjects and I have given the number of jokes on each subject:
- Class distinction (money, butlers, lack of education, ignorance, birth, incorrect accent, etc)…..42
- Unclassifiable and not funny 19 Professional (lawyers, ‘modern artists’, sailors, etc) 16 Funny (jokes whose drawings and words, if any, made me laugh and were not in the old gang tradition)…..14
- Precocious children (i.e. ‘Where shall I wash, Mummy?’ ‘Why, in the bathroom of course.’ ‘No. Where on me?’)…..14
- Sport (ignorance of rules of, inferiority in, etc)…..13
- Fairly funny…..9
- Colonels…..5
- Good idea, feeble drawing…..4
- History…..4
- Husbands (carrying parcels, etc)…..4
- Mildly satirical…..3
- Scottish…..1
- Funny drawing, feeble joke…..1
TOTAL 149
The prose betrays the same symptoms as the illustrated jokes. I notice that the sort of story that starts ‘“Well,” I said to Angela, as I cracked my breakfast egg, “the Income Tax collector has called,”’ is still popular.
The British Character, by ‘Pont’, consists of drawings that have appeared in Punch. ‘Pont’ is in the newer Punch tradition and he is good at drawing semi-imbecile clubmen, middle-aged ladies and vacuous ‘modern’ girls. Here and there the restrictions demanded by the Punch public appear but on the whole he has his own gentle sense of satire and sticks to it. I liked some of his drawings immensely, especially where one of the British characteristics is ‘Love of writing letters to the Times’.
TENNIS WHITES AND TEACAKES JOHN BETJEMAN
John Murray Publishers Paperback, 12 Jun. 2008
451 pages 9780719569043