there are two kinds of jokes, those jokes that are funny because they are true, and those jokes that would be funny anyhow. think it out and you will find that that is a great truth. now the joke i have here for the delectation of the broken-hearted is of the first sort. it is funny because it is true. it is about a man whom i really saw and really knew and touched, and on occasions treated ill. he was. the sunlight played upon his form. perhaps he may still flounder under the light of the sun, and not yet have gone down into that kingdom whose kings are less happy than the poorest hind upon the upper fields.
it was at college that i knew him and i retained my acquaintance with him—oh, i retained it in a loving and cherishing manner—until he was grown to young manhood. i[pg 112] would keep it still did fate permit me so to do, for he was a treasure. i have never met anything so complete for the purposes of laughter, though i am told there are many such in the society which bred his oafish form.
he was a noble in his own country, which was somewhere in the pine-forests of the germanies, and his views of social rank were far, far too simple for the silent subtlety of the english rich. in his poor turnip of a mind he ordered all men thus:
first, reigning sovereigns and their families.
secondly, mediatized people.
third, princes.
fourth, dukes.
fifth, nobles.
then came a little gap, and after that little gap the others.
most of us in our college were the others. but he, as i have said, was a noble in his distant land.
he had not long been among the young englishmen when he discovered that a difficult tangle[pg 113] of titles ran hither and thither among them like random briars through an undergrowth. there were honourables, and there were lords, and heaven knows what, and there were two sirs, and altogether it puzzled him.
he couldn't understand why a man should be called mr. jinks, and his brother lord blefauscu, and then if a man could be called lord blefauscu while his father lord brobdignag was alive, how was it that quite a fresher should be called sir howkey—no—he was sir john howkey: and when the devil did one put in the christian name and when didn't one, and why should one, and what was the order of precedence among all these?
i think that last point puzzled him more than the rest, for in his own far distant land in the pine-woods, where peasants uglier than sin grovelled over the potato crop and called him "baron," there were no such devilish contraptions, but black was black and white was white. here in this hypocritical england, to which his father had sent him as an exile,[pg 114] everything was so wrapped up in deceiving masks! there was the captain of the eleven, or the president of the boat club. by the time he had mastered that there might be great men not only without the actual title (he had long ago despaired of that), but without so much as cousinship to one, he would stumble upon a fellow with nothing whatsoever to distinguish him, not even the high jump, and yet "in" with the highest. it tortured him i can tell you! after he had sat upon several fourth year men (he himself a fresher), from an error as to their rank, after he had been duly thrown into the water, blackened as to his face with blacking, sentenced to death in a court-martial and duly shot with a blank cartridge (an unpleasant thing by the way looking down a barrel); after he had had his boots, of which there were seven pair, packed with earth, and in each one a large geranium planted; after all these things had happened to him in his pursuit of an anglo-german understanding, he approached a lanky, pot-bellied youth whom he[pg 115] had discovered with certitude to be the cousin of a duke, and begged him secretly to befriend him in a certain matter, which was this:
the baron out of the germanies proposed to give a dinner to no less than thirty people and he begged the pot-bellied youth in all secrecy to collect for him an assembly worthy of his rank and to give him privately not only their names but their actual precedence according to which he would arrange them at the table upon his right and upon his left.
but what did the pot-bellied youth do? why he went out and finding all his friends one after the other he said:
"you know sausage?"
"yes," said they, for all the university knew sausage.
"well, he is going to give a dinner," said the pot-bellied one, who was also slow of speech, "and you have to come, but i'm going to say you are the duke of rochester" (or whatever title he might have chosen). and so speaking, and so giving the date and place he[pg 116] would go on to the next. then, when he had collected not thirty but sixty of all his friends and acquaintances, he sought out the noble teuton again and told him that he could not possibly ask only thirty men without lifelong jealousies and hatreds, so sixty were coming, and the teuton with some hesitation (for he was fond of money) agreed.
never shall i forget the day when those sixty were ushered solemnly into a large reception room in the hotel, blameless youths of varying aspect, most of them quite sober—since it was but 7 o'clock—presented one by one to the host of the evening, each with his title and style.
to those whom he recognized as equals the aristocrat spoke with charming simplicity. those who were somewhat his inferiors (the lords by courtesy and the simple baronets) he put immediately at their ease; and even the honourables saw at a glance that he was a man of the world, for he said a few kind words to each. as for a man with no handle to his[pg 117] name, there was not one of the sixty so low, except a mr. poopsibah of whom the gatherer of that feast whispered to the host that he could not but ask him because, though only a second cousin, he was the heir to the marquis of quirk—hence his norman name.
it was a bewilderment to the baron, for he might have to meet the man later in life as the marquis of quirk, whereas for the moment he was only mr. poopsibah, but anyhow he was put at the bottom of the table—and that was how the trouble began.
in my time—i am talking of the nineties—young men drank wine: it was before the bishop of london had noted the great change. and mr. poopsibah and his neighbour—lord henry job—were quite early in the feast occupied in a playful contest which ended in mr. poopsibah's losing his end seat and going to grass. he rose, not unruffled, with a burst collar, and glared a little uncertainly over the assembled wealth and lineage of the evening. lord benin (the son of our great general lord ashantee[pg 118] of benin—his real name was mitcham, god rest his soul) addressed to the unreal poopsibah an epithet then fashionable, now almost forgotten, but always unprintable. mr. poopsibah, forgetting what nobility imposes, immediately hurled at him an as yet half-emptied bottle of champagne.
then it was that the bewildered baron learnt for the last time—and for that matter for the first time—to what the island race can rise when it really lets itself go.
i remember (i was a nephew if i remember right) above the din and confusion of light (for candles also were thrown) loud appeals as in a tone of command, and then as in a tone of supplication, both in the unmistakable accents of the cousins overseas, and i even remember what i may call the great sacrilege of that evening when lord gogmagog seizing our host affectionately round the neck, and pressing the back of his head with his large and red left hand, attempted to grind his face into the tablecloth, after a fashion wholly [pg 119]unknown to the haughty lords of the teufelwald.
during the march homewards—an adventure enlightened with a sharp skirmish and two losses at the hands of the police—i know not what passed through the mind of the youth who had hitherto kept so careful a distinction between blood and blood: whether like hannibal he swore eternal hatred to the english, or whether in his patient german mind he noted it all down as a piece of historical evidence to be used in his diplomatic career, we shall not be told. i think in the main he was simply bewildered: bewildered to madness.
of the many other things we made him do before eights week i have no space to tell: how he asked us what was the fashionable sport and how we told him polo and made him buy a polo pony sixteen hands high, with huge great bones and a broken nose, explaining to him that it was stamina and not appearance that the bluff englishman loved in a horse. how we made him wear his arms embroidered[pg 120] upon his handkerchief (producing several for a pattern and taking the thing as a commonplace by sly allusion for many preparatory days). how we told him that it was the custom to call every sunday afternoon for half an hour upon the wife of every married don of one's college: how we challenged him to the great college feat of throwing himself into the river at midnight: how finally we persuaded him that the ancient custom of the university demanded the presentation to one's tutor at the end of term of an elaborate thesis one hundred pages long upon some subject of theology: how he was carefully warned that surprise was the essence of this charming tradition and not a word of it must be breathed to the august recipient of the favour: how he sucked in the knowledge that the more curious and strange the matter the higher would be his place in the schools, and how the poor fool elaborately wasted what god gives such men for brains in the construction of a damning refutation against the monophysites: how his tutor, a[pg 121] humble little nervous fool, thought he was having his leg pulled—all these things i have no space to tell you now.
but he was rich! doubtless by the custom of his country he is now in some great position plotting the ruin of britannia and certainly she deserves it in his case. he was most unmercifully ragged.
