IN a small green pertinent volume entitled English Humour, J. B. Priestley has essayed the question of what makes Englishmen laugh. In essays which are quite the best he has ever written, the Yorkshireman defines the English character; he alludes to the Briton’s love of privacy, his idiosyncrasy and his respect for the idiosyncrasy of others, his relish alike of caricature and of understatement. Technically, understatement is the mainspring of English humor just as overstatement or exaggeration is the mainspring of American humor. Within such a generality there is, of course, room for infinite gradation.
For two hundred years English humorists have been making fun of Americans — just as tor approximately the same length of time ‘Percy, the inane Englishman, has been a stock comedian on our own stage. When Mrs. Basil Hall made her Aristocratic Journey in this country in 1827, she was struck — literally and figuratively-by our habitual spitting, she laughed coolly at our gaucheries and was amused to find everything inferior to its English equivalent. E. M. Delafield, when she came to the States in 1933, was neither so acid nor so superior. She came to lecture and he entertained and, in return, to write her observations in the vein of Mr. Lunch. In The Provincial Lady in America (Harpers, $2.50) she does justice to our shrillness in public places, our love of publicity, and our womens clubs. She is genial and even-tempered and, to me, disappointing. Her arch humor is just a shade professional, she is airy when I want her to be penetrating, and, finally, I have misgivings when she attempts to illustrate American vulgarities in terms of semi-veiled personalities. I like E. M. Delafield and I dislike the ‘ Katharine Ellen Blatts.’ But unless you can identify the people she is driving at, her thumb-nail sketches may seem rather flat.
For one English novelist who can observe Americans accurately there are ten who can’t, but try to. American publishers must often groan at the horn-rimmed caricatures who stride through English fiction mouthing an idiom newer heard on land or sea. The shining exception — the man who knows American humor and who has a true ear for our slang — is P. G. Wodchouse. The inanity of his Bertie Wooster, the dignified efficiency of his super-butler. Jeeves, were never more entertaining than in Thank You, Jeeves! (Little, Brown, $2.00). To Wodehouse fans the plot (familiar and a little creaking) will not matter; it is the dialogue, with its exuberance, its double-entendre, Alalapropian quotation, and slang, that gives joy. Mr. Wodehouse is a born comedian, with a positive and tickling talent for the spoken word.
It is the humor of the unexpected that flashes so readily through the pages of Striplings (Dutton, $2.50), a first novel fresh from England which you will hear people talking about. Like The Constant Nymph, like The Innocent Voyage, this book is forever taking you by surprise, forever provoking your sense of propriety, forever treating you to undignified but wholly ludicrous scenes. Without a superfluous sentence the author. N. Warner Hooke, places you in the midst of an outlandish, ill-fated Sussex family who have lost their money and are living on their nerve: Georgina, the mother, self-willed and hard-riding; Enele Pi, her lover, who pays the bills; D. M., her husband, who does nothing and is known to the family as Deaf Mute; Miss Mudford, a blundering governess; the two adolescent youngsters, Netta and Biff, and a queer colleetion of servants and animals. Oppressed by debts, bailiffs, and auctioneers, the big rambling country house is stripped bare, while its inhabitants live with a resourcefulness and misery that would be comic if they were not also sad. The best humor is never far from pathos, and this narrative, which is at heart a study of adolescence, turns serious toward the close to take a very sudden grip upon your sympathies. In retrospect you will remember the novel for its unexpected people and for its frank concern with biological detail.
The sun, I mean the American sun, is soon to shine on A. P. Herbert. It’s about time. An active, impudent writer with a touch of genius and a fine palate for humor, he has come gradually into his own in England. He writes each week for Punch, where he deserves all the license they give him; he assaults British cant with radio talks entitled ‘Mr. Pewter Works It Out’; he does musical comedies for Mr. Cochran, and in rare moments he turns out a book worth keeping. His ‘Two Gentlemen of Soho’ was easily the best parody the Atlantic Monthly ever published, his early volume, The Old Flame, is rightly a collector’s item.
Of his latest novel, Holy Deadlock (Doubleday, Doran, $2.50), he has this to say: ‘The English have had many a good laugh at the American Divorce Laws — of which, perhaps, they don’t know so much as they think. If I do nothing else in this book, I give Americans the opportunity to laugh back a little in a friendly way.’ The ingredients of his book are simple enough: an English couple, Mary and John Adam, having proved their incompatibility, and having each made eyes at more congenial partners, agree to seek a divorce. In accordance with the law , one of them has to be detected in adultery, and, honorably enough, John Adam has the charge trumped up against him. But the court gets wind of the fact that this adultery is deception, not the real thing — and there the trouble begins. A hook with a purpose, written by a brilliant propagandist, this novel is distinguished by its scenes rather than by its character study — the trenchant, witty scenes in the law offices and the courts, the hilarious scene of a London musicalcomedy rehearsal, the lyrical scene aboard the Curlew, here you will see English comedy at its best. I am not trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but there are still some people who don’t know that A. P. Herbert is one of the most charming writers alive.
