There was some really clever funning by a straight
comedian, but his best efforts died a-borning; they drew but the
merest ripple of laughter from the audience. Later there was a
scene between a sad person made up as a Scotchman and another
equally sad person of color from the States. These times no English
musical show is complete unless the cast includes a North American
negro with his lips painted to resemble a wide slice of ripe
watermelon, singing ragtime ditties touching on his chicken and
his Baby Doll. This pair took the stage, all others considerately
withdrawing; and presently, after a period of heartrending
comicalities, the Scotchman, speaking as though he had a mouthful
of hot oatmeal, proceeded to narrate an account of a fictitious
encounter with a bear. Substantially this dialogue ensued:
THE SCOTCHMAN - He was a vurra fierce grizzly bear, ye ken; and he
rushed at me from behind a jugged rock.
THE NEGRO - Mistah, you means a jagged rock, don't you?
THE SCOTCHMAN - Nay, nay, laddie - a jugged rock.
THE NEGRO - Whut's dat you say? Whut - whut is a jugged rock?
THE SCOTCHMAN (forgetting his accent) - Why, a rock with a jug on
it, old chap. (A stage wait to let that soak into them in all its
full strength.) A rock with a jug on it would be a jugged rock,
wouldn't it - eh?
The pause had been sufficient - they had it now. And from all parts
of the house a whoop of unrestrained joy went up.
Witnessing such spectacles as this, the American observer naturally
begins to think that the English in mass cannot see a joke that
is the least bit subtle. Nevertheless, however, and to the contrary
notwithstanding - as Colonel Bill Sterritt, of Texas, used to
say - England has produced the greatest natural humorists in the
world and some of the greatest comedians, and for a great many
years has supported the greatest comic paper printed in the English
language, and that is Punch. Also, at an informal Saturday-night
dinner in a well-known London club I heard as much spontaneous
repartee from the company at large, and as much quiet humor from
the chairman, as I ever heard in one evening anywhere; but if you
went into that club on a weekday you might suppose somebody was
dead and laid out there, and that everybody about the premises
had gone into deep mourning for the deceased. If any member of
that club had dared then to crack a joke they would have expelled
him - as soon as they got over the shock of the bounder's confounded
cheek. Saturday night? Yes. Monday afternoon? Never! And there
you are!
Speaking of Punch reminds me that we were in London when Punch,
after giving the matter due consideration for a period of years,
came out with a colored jacket on him. If the Prime Minister had
done a Highland fling in costume at high noon in Oxford Circus it
could not have created more excitement than Punch created by coming
out with a colored cover. Yet, to an American's understanding,
the change was not so revolutionary and radical as all that.
Punch's well-known lineaments remained the same. There was merely
a dab of palish yellow here and there on the sheet; at first glance
you might have supposed somebody else had been reading your copy
of Punch at breakfastand had been careless in spooning up his
soft-boiled egg.
They are our cousins, the English are; our cousins once removed,
'tis true - see standard histories of the American Revolution for
further details of the removing - but they are kinsmen of ours
beyond a doubt. Even if there were no other evidences, the kinship
between us would still be proved by the fact that the English are
the only people except the Americans who look on red meat - beef,
mutton, ham - as a food to be eaten for the taste of the meat itself;
whereas the other nations of the earth regard it as a vehicle for
carrying various sauces, dressings and stuffings southward to the
stomach. But, to the notice of the American who is paying them
his first visit, they certainly do offer some amazing contradictions.
In the large matters of business the English have been accused of
trickiness, which, however, may be but the voice of envious
competition speaking; but in the small things they surely are most
marvelously honest. Consider their railroad trains now: To a
greenhorn from this side the blue water, a railroad journey out
of London to almost any point in rural England is a succession of
surprises, and all pleasant ones. To begin with, apparently there
is nobody at the station whose business it is to show you to your
train or to examine your ticket before you have found your train
for yourself. There is no mad scurrying about at the moment of
departure, no bleating of directions through megaphones. Unchaperoned
you move along a long platform under a grimy shed, where trains
are standing with their carriage doors hospitably ajar, and
unassisted you find your own train and your own carriage, and
enter therein.
Sharp on the minute an unseen hand - at least I never saw it - slams
the doors and coyly - you might almost say secretively - the train
moves out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically
without jarring sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against
steel. It is as though the rails were made of rubber and the
wheel-flanges were faced with noise-proof felt. No conductor comes
to punch your ticket, no brakeman to bellow the stops, no train
butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of his gumdrops, bananas and
other best-sellers.
