Three Comic Giants
1. TARTARIN
It is not every country and every period gives birth to a comic giant.Tragic and sentimental heroes are common, and make upon the history ofliterature a mark of sorts; we have Achilles and Werther, William Tell,d'Artagnan, Tristan, Sir Galahad, others, too, with equal claims tofame: but comic giants are few. The literature of the world is full ofcomic pigmies; it is fairly rich in half-growns such as Eulenspiegel, MrDooley, Tchitchikoff, and Mr Pickwick, but it does not easily producethe comic character who stands alone and massive among his fellows, likeBalzac among novelists. There are not half a dozen competitors for theposition, for Pantagruel and Gargantua are too philosophic, while DonQuixote does not move every reader to laughter; he is too romantic, toonoble; he is hardly comic. Baron von Muenchausen, Falstaff, and Tartarinalone remain face to face, all of them simple, all of them adventurous,but adventurous without literary inflation, as a kitten is adventurouswhen it explores a work-basket. There is no gigantic quality where thereis self-consciousness or cynicism; the slightest strain causes thegigantic to vanish, the creature becomes human. The comic giant must beobvious, he must be, to himself, rebellious to analysis; he must also beobvious to the beholder, indeed transparent. That is not a paradox, itis a restatement of the fact that the comic giant's simplicity must beso great that everybody but he will realise it.
All this Tartarin fulfils. He is the creature of Alphonse Daudet, asecond-rate writer who has earned for him a title maybe to immortality.There is no doubt that Daudet was a second-rate writer, and that MrGeorge Moore was right when he summed him up as _de la bouillabaisse_;his novels are sentimental, his reminiscences turgid, his versessuitable for crackers, but Daudet had an asset--his vivid feeling forthe South. It was not knowledge or observation made Tartarin; it wasinstinct. Neither in _Tartarin de Tarascon_ nor in _Tartarin sur lesAlpes_ was Daudet for a moment inconsistent or obscure; for him,Tartarin and his followers stood all the time in violent light. He knewnot only what they had to say in given circumstances, but also what theywould say in any circumstances that might arise.
It is not wonderful then, that Tartarin appears as a large character.You will figure him throughout as a French bourgeois, aged about fortyin the first novel, fifty in the second, and sixty in the third.Daudet's dates being unreliable, you must assume his adventures ashappening between 1861 and 1881, and bridge the gaps that exist betweenthem with a vision of Tartarin's stormily peaceful life in the sleepytown of Tarascon. For Tartarin was too adventurous to live withoutdangers and storms. When he was not shooting lions in Algeria, orclimbing the Alps, or colonising in Polynesia, Tartarin was still ahero: he lived in his little white house with the green shutters,surrounded with knives, revolvers, rifles, double-handed swords,crishes, and yataghans; he read, not the local paper, but FenimoreCooper and Captain Cook; he learned how to fight and how to hunt, how tofollow a trail, or he hypnotised himself with the recitals of Alpineclimbs, of battles in China with the bellicose Tartar. Save undercompulsion, he never did anything, partly because there was nothing todo at Tarascon, partly because his soul was turned rather towardsbourgeois comfort than towards glory and blood. This, however, the fierySoutherner could not accept: if he could not do he could pretend, andthus did Daudet establish the enormous absurdity of his character.
There was nothing to shoot at Tarascon, so Tartarin and his followerswent solemnly into the fields and fired at their caps; there was nothingto climb, except the neighbouring Alpilles ... whose height was threehundred feet, but Tartarin bought an alpen-stock and printed upon hisvisiting-cards initials which meant 'President of the Alpine Club';there was no danger in the town, but Tartarin never went out at nightwithout a dagger and several guns. He was a bourgeois, but he was aromantic: he had to find in fiction the excitement that life refusedhim, to create it where it did not exist. In the rough, Tartarin was thejovial Frenchman of the South, short, fat, excitable, unable to seethings as they are, unable to restrain his voice, his gestures, hisimagination; he was greedy and self-deceived, he saw trifles asenormous, he placed the world under a magnifying glass.
Because of this enormous vision of life Tartarin was driven intoadventure. Because he magnified his words he was compelled by popularopinion to sail to Algiers to shoot lions, though he was at heart afraidof dogs; to scale the Alps, though he shuddered when he thought ofcatching cold. He had to justify himself in the eyes of hisfellow-citizens, or forgo for ever the halo of heroism. He did not haveto abandon it, for Daudet loved his Tartarin; in Algeria he was mocked,swindled, beaten, but somehow he secured his lion's skin; and, in theAlps, he actually scaled both the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc ... the firstwithout knowing that it was dangerous, the second against his will.Tartarin won because he was vital, his vitality served him as a shield.All his qualities were of those that make a man absurd but invincible;his exaggeration, his histrionics, his mock heroics, his credulity, hismild sensuality, his sentimentality, and his bumptious cowardice--allthis blended into an enormous bubbling charm which neither man norcircumstance could in the end withstand.
Daudet brings out his traits on every page. Everywhere he makes Tartarinstrut and swell as a turkey-cock. Exaggeration, in other words lying,lay in every word and deed of Tartarin. He could not say: 'We were acouple of thousand at the amphitheatre yesterday,' but naturally said:'We were fifty thousand.' And he was not exactly lying; Daudet, wholoved him well, pleaded that this was not lying but mirage, mirageinduced by the hot sun. He was not quite wrong: when Tartarin said thathe had killed forty lions he believed it; and his fellow-climberbelieved the absurd story he had concocted: that Switzerland was afraud, that there were eiderdowns at the bottom of every crevasse, andthat he had himself climbed the Andes on his hands and knees. Likewise,Tartarin and the people of Tarascon were deceived by their ownhistrionics. The baobab (_arbos gigantea_) which Tartarin trained in aflower-pot stood, in their imagination, a hundred feet high.
Histrionics and mock heroics pervade the three books. It is not the factthat matters, it is the fact seen through the coloured Southern mind,and that mind turns at once away from the fact towards the trifles thatattend it. Thus costume is everywhere a primary concern. Tartarin cannotland at Algiers to shoot lions unless he be dressed for the part in Arabclothes, and he must carry three rifles, drag behind him a portablecamp, a pharmacy, a patent tent, patent compressed foods. Nothing is tooabsurd for him: he has a 'Winchester rifle with thirty-two cartridges inthe magazine'; he does not shrink from _a rifle with a semicircularbarrel for shooting round the corner_. To climb the Righi (instead ofusing the funicular) he must wear a jersey, ice-shoes, snow goggles.Everywhere he plays a part and plays it in costume. Nor is Tartarinalone in this; the Tarasconnais emulate their chief: Major Bravida donsblack when he calls to compel Tartarin 'to redeem his honour' and sailfor Algiers; when Port Tarascon, the frantic colony, is formed, costumesare designed for grandees, for the militia, for the bureaucrats.Appearances alone matter: Tarascon is not content with the French flag,but spread-eagles across it a fantastic local animal, _La Tarasque_, ofmythical origin.
Life in Tarascon is too easy: Tartarin helps it on with a war-whoop. Hecreates adventure. Thus in 1870 he organises against the Germans thedefence of the town; mines are laid under the marketplace, the _Cafede la Comedie_ is turned into a redoubt, volunteers drill in the street.Of course there is no fighting, the Germans do not come, nor do theprudent Tarasconnais attempt to seek them out, but in its imaginationthe town has been heroic. It is heroic again when it defends against theGovernment the monks of Pamperigouste: the convent becomes a fortress,but there is no fighting; when the supplies give out the heroicdefenders march out with their weapons and their banners, in theircrusaders' uniforms. The town believes. It believes anything andanybody. Because a rogue calls himself a prince, Tartarin entrusts himwith his money and is deserted in the Sahara; because another callshimself a duke, thousands of Tarasconnais follow Tartarin to anon-existent colony bought by them from the pseudo-duke. Whethe
r thematter be general or personal Tartarin believes. He falls in love witha Moorish girl, and innocently allows himself to be persuaded that asubstitute is the beauty whom he glimpsed through the yashmak.
Tartarin believes because he is together romantic, sentimental, andmildly sensual: that which he likes he wants to think true. He wants tobelieve that sweet Baia is his true love; when again he succumbs toSonia, the Russian exile, he wants to believe that he too is anextremist, a potential martyr in the cause of Nihilism; and again hewants to believe that Likiriki, the nigger girl, is the little creatureof charm for whom his heart has been calling. His sentimentality isalways ready--for women, for ideas, for beasts. He can be moved when hehears for the hundredth time the ridiculous ballads that are popular inthe local drawing-rooms, weep when Bezuquet, the chemist, sings 'Ohthou, beloved white star of my soul!' For him the lion is 'a noblebeast,' who must be shot, not caged; the horse 'the most gloriousconquest of man.' He is always above the world, never of it unless hisown safety be endangered, when he scuttles to shelter; as Daudet says,half Tartarin is Quixote, half is Sancho ... but Sancho wins. It isbecause Tartarin is a comic coward that he will not allow the heroiccrusaders of Pamperigouste to fire on the Government troops; the 'abbot'of Port Tarascon to train the carronade on the English frigate; alone,he is a greater coward than in public; he shivers under his weapons whenhe walks to the club in the evening; he severs the rope on Mont Blanc,sending his companion to probable death. But the burlesque does not endtragically: nobody actually dies, all return to Tarascon in time to heartheir funeral orations.
It might be thought that Tartarin is repulsive: he is not; he is tooyoung, too innocent. His great, foolish heart is too open to the woes ofany damsel; his simplicity, his credulity, his muddled faith, theoptimism which no misfortune can shatter--all these traits endear him tous, make him real. For Tartarin is real: he is the Frenchman of theSouth; in the words of a character, 'The Tarasconnais type is theFrenchman magnified, exaggerated, as seen in a convex mirror.' Tartarinand his fellows typify the South, though some typify one side of theSouthern Frenchman rather than another; thus Bravida is military pride,Excourbanies is the liar, and mild Pascalon is the imitator ofimitators: when Tarascon, arrested by the British captain and broughthome on board the frigate, takes up the attitude of Napoleon on the_Bellerophon_, Pascalon begins a memorial and tries to impersonate LasCases. As for Tartarin, bell-wether of the flock, he has all thecharacteristics, he even sings all the songs. He is the South.
The three Tartarin books constitute together the most violent satirethat has ever been written against the South. Gascony, Provence, andLanguedoc are often made the butts of Northern French writers, whileLombards introduce in books ridiculous Neapolitans, and Catalonianspaint burlesque Andalusians, but no writer has equalled Alphonse Daudetin consistent ferocity. So evident is this, that Tarascon to this dayresents the publications, and that, some years ago, a commercialtraveller who humorously described himself on the hotel register as'Alphonse Daudet' was mobbed in the street, and rescued by the policefrom the rabble who threatened to throw him into the Rhone. Tarascon, alittle junction on the way to Marseilles, has been made absurd forever. Yet, though Daudet exaggerated, he built on the truth: there is aclose connection between his preposterous figures, grown men with thetendencies of children enormously distorted, and the Frenchmen of theSouth. Indeed, the Southern Frenchman is the Frenchman as we picture himin England; there is between him and his compatriot from Picardy orFlanders a difference as great as exists between the Scotsman and theman of Kent. The Northern Frenchman is sober, silent, hard, reasonable,and logical; his imagination is negligible, his artistic taste ascorrupt as that of an average inhabitant of the Midlands. But theSouthern Frenchman is a different creature; his excitable temperament,his irresponsibility and impetuousness run through the majority ofFrench artists and politicians. As the French saying goes, 'the Southmoves'; thus it is not wonderful that Le Havre and Lille should notrival Marseilles and Bordeaux.
Tartarin lives to a greater or lesser degree within every Frenchman ofthe plains, born South of the line which unites Lyons and Bordeaux. Itis Tartarin who stands for hours at street corners in Arles orMontpellier, chattering with Tartarin and, like Tartarin, endlesslybrags of the small birds he has killed, of the hearts he has won and ofhis extraordinary luck at cards. It is Tartarin again who still wearsnight-caps and flannel belts, and drinks every morning great bowls ofchocolate. And it is Tartarin who, light-heartedly, joins the colonialinfantry regiment and goes singing into battle because he likes theadventure and would rather die in the field than be bored in barracks.Daudet has maligned the South so far as courage is concerned: there isnothing to show that the Southerners, Tarasconnais and others, are anymore cowardly than the men of the North. Courage goes in zones, andbecause the North has generally proved harder the South must not beindicted _en bloc_. Presumably Daudet felt compelled to make Tartarin apoltroon so as to throw into relief his braggadocio; that is a flaw inhis work, but if it be accepted as the licence of a _litterateur_, itdoes not mar the picture of Tartarin.
It should not, therefore, be lost sight of by the reader of _Tartarin deTarascon_ and of _Tartarin Sur Les Alpes_ that this is a caricature.Every line is true, but modified a little by the 'mirage' that AlphonseDaudet so deftly satirises; it is only so much distorted as ironydemands. _Tartarin de Tarascon_ is by far the best of the three books;it is the most compact, and within its hundred-odd pages the picture ofTartarin is completely painted; the sequel is merely the response of theauthor to the demand of a public who so loved Tartarin as to buy fivehundred thousand copies of his adventures. As for _Port Tarascon_, thebeginning of Tartarin's end, it should not have been written, for itcloses on a new Tartarin who no longer believes in his own triumphs--asober, disillusioned Tartarin, shorn of his glory, flouted by hiscompatriots and ready to die in a foreign town. Alphonse Daudet hadprobably tired of his hero, for he understood him no longer. The realTartarin could not be depressed by misadventure, chastened by loss ofprestige: to cast him to earth could only bring about once more theprodigy of Anteus. He would have risen again, more optimistic andbombastic than ever, certain that no enemy had thrown him and that hehad but slipped. And if Tartarin had to die, which is not certain, forTartarin's essence is immortal, he could not die disgraced, but mustdie sumptuously--like Cleopatra among her jewels, or a Tartar chiefstanding on his piled arms on the crest of a funeral pyre.
2. FALSTAFF
Like Hamlet, Tartuffe, Don Quixote, Falstaff has had his worshippers andhis exegetists. The character Dr. Johnson dwelled on still serves to-dayto exercise the critical capacity of the freshman; he is one of thestars in a crowded cast, a human, fallible, lovable creature, and it isnot wonderful that so many have asked themselves whether there lurkedfineness and piety within his gross frame. But, though 'his pyramid risehigh unto heaven,' it is not everybody has fully realised hispsychological enormity, his nationality; the tendency has been to lookupon him rather as a man than as a type. I do not contend that it isdesirable to magnify type at the expense of personality; far from it,for the personal quality is ever more appealing than the typical, butone should not ignore the generalities which hide in the individual,especially when they are evident. It is remarkable that Dr Johnsonshould have so completely avoided this side of Falstaff's character, soremarkable that I quote in full his appreciation of the fat Knight[5]:--
[Footnote 5: Following on the second part of _King Henry IV._, DrJohnson's edition, 1765.]
'But Falstaff, unimitated, unimitable Falstaff! how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises
in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice; but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety; by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.'
A judgment such as this one is characteristic of Johnson; it iselaborate, somewhat prejudiced, and very narrow. Johnson evidently sawFalstaff as a mere man, perhaps as one whose ghost he would willinglyhave taught to smoke a churchwarden at the 'Cheshire Cheese.' He sawin him neither heroic nor national qualities and would have scoffed atthe possibility of their existence, basing himself on his own remark toBoswell: 'I despise those who do not see that I am right....'
But smaller men than Johnson have judged Falstaff in a small way. Theyhave concentrated on his comic traits, and considered very littlewhether he might be dubbed either giant or Englishman: if Falstaff is adiamond they have cut but one or two facets. Now the comic side ofFalstaff must not be ignored; if he were incapable of creating laughter,if he could draw from us no more than a smile, as do the heroes ofAnatole France, of Sterne, or Swift, his gigantic capacity would beaffected. It is essential that he should be absurd; it is almostessential that he should be fat, for it is an established fact thathumanity laughs gladly at bulk, at men such as Sancho Panza and MrPickwick. It is likely that Shakespeare was aware of our instinct whenhe caused Hal to call Falstaff 'this bed-presser, thishorseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh.' In the mathematics of thestage fat = comedy, lean = tragedy; I do not believe that Hamlet wasflesh-burdened, even though 'scant of breath.'
Fat was, however, but Falstaff's prelude to comedy. He needed to be whathe otherwise was, coarse, salaciously-minded, superstitious, blustering,cowardly, and lying; he needed to be a joker, oft-times a wit, andwithal a sleepy drunkard, a butt for pranks. His coarseness is comic,but not revolting, for it centres rather on the human body than on thehuman emotion; he does not habitually scoff at justice, generosity orfaithfulness, even though he be neither just, nor generous, norfaithful: his brutality is a brutality of word rather than thought, oneakin to that of our poorer classes. Had Falstaff not had an air of theworld and a custom of courts he would have typified the lowest classesof our day and perhaps stood below those of his own time. His is thecoarseness of the drunkard, a jovial and not a maudlin drunkard; whensober he reacts against his own brutality, vows to '... purge and leavesack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.'
Falstaff led his life by a double thread. Filled with the joy of living,as he understood it, limited by his desires for sack and such as DollTearsheet, he was bound too by his stupidity. He was stupid, thoughcrafty, as is a cat, an instinctive animal; none but a stupid man couldhave taken seriously the mockery of the fairies in Windsor Park; himselfit is acknowledges that he is 'made an ass.' We laugh, and again welaugh when, in silly terror and credulity, he allows the Merry Wives topack him in the foul linen basket; where Falstaff is, there is alsorubicund pleasantry.
In the same spirit we make merry over his cowardice; the cowardiceitself is not comic, indeed it would be painful to see him stand anddeliver to Gadshill, if the surrender were not prefaced by the deepgrumbles of a man who suspects that Hal and Poins have captured hisaffections with drugs, who acknowledge that 'eight yards of unevenground is threescore and ten miles afoot' with him. The burlesqueconceals the despicable, and we fail to sneer because we laugh; weforgive his acceptance of insult at the hands of the Chief Justice'sservant: it is not well that a knight should allow a servant to tell himthat he lies in his throat, but if leave to do so can be given in jestthe insult loses its sting. Falstaff is more than a coward, he is thecoward-type, for he is (like Pistol) the blustering coward. The mean,cringing coward is unskilled at his trade: the true coward is the fatknight who, no sooner convicted of embellishing his fight withhighwaymen, of having forgone his booty rather than defend it, can roarthat he fears and will obey no man, and solemnly say: ''Zounds! an' Iwere at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tellyou upon compulsion.' The attitude is so simple, so impudent, that welaugh, forgive. And we forgive because such an attitude could not bestruck with confidence save by a giant.
A giant he is, this comic and transparent man. There is nothingunobtrusive in Falstaff's being; his feelings and his motives are largeand unmistakable. His jolly brutality and mummery of pride are inthemselves almost enough to ensure him the crown of Goliath, but add tothese the poetry wrapped in his lewdness, the idealistic gallantry whichfollows hard upon his crudity, add that he is lawless because he isadventurous, add simplicity, bewilderment, and cast over thistemperament a web of wistful philosophy: then Falstaff stands forthenormous and alone.
Falstaff is full of gross, but artistic glee; for him life is epic andsplendid, and his poetic temperament enables him to discover the beautythat is everywhere. It may be that Henry IV. rightly says: 'riot anddishonour stain the brow of my young Harry,' but it may be also thatthe young prince is not unfortunate in a companion who can find grace inhighwaymen: '... let us not that are squires of the night's body becalled thieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's foresters,gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say, we be menof good government, being governed as the sea is, by our noble andchaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.' Falstaff isbig with the love of life and ever giving birth to it; he is the spiritof the earth, a djinn released whom none may bottle. Because of this heis lawless; he cannot respect the law, for he can respect no limits; hebursts out from the small restrictions of man as does his mighty paunchfrom his leather belt. It is hopeless to try to abash him; force even,as embodied in the Chief Justice, does not awe him overmuch, so welldoes he know that threats will not avail to impair his pleasure.Falstaff in jail would make merry with the jailers, divert them withquips, throw dice and drink endlessly the sack they would offer him forlove. He cannot be daunted, feeling too deeply that he holds the ball ofthe world between his short arms; once only does Falstaff's big, gentleheart contract, when young Hal takes ill his kindly cry: 'God save thee,my sweet boy!' He is assured that he will be sent for in private, and itis in genuine pain rather than fear he cries out: 'My lord, my lord!'when committed to the Fleet.
In this simple faith lies much of Falstaff's gigantic quality. Tobelieve everything, to be gullible, in brief to be as nearly as may bean instinctive animal, that is to be great. I would not have Falstaffsceptical; he must be credulous, faithfully become the ambassador ofFord to Ford's wife, and be deceived, and again deceived; he mustbelieve himself loved of all women, of Mistress Ford, or Mistress Page,or Doll Tearsheet; he must readily be fooled, pinched, pricked, singed,ridiculously arrayed in the clothes of Mother Prat. One moment of doubt,a single inquiry, and the colossus would fall from his pedestal, becomeas mortal and suspicious men. But there is no downfall; he believes and,breasting through the sea of ridicule, he holds Mistress Ford in hisarms for one happy moment, the great moment which even a rain ofpotatoes from the sky could not spoil. It could not, for there echoesin Falstaff's mind the sweet tune of 'Green Sleeves':
'Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, And who but Lady Greensleeves?'
It is natural that such a temperament should, in the ordinary sense,breed lies. Falstaff does and does not lie; like Tartarin he probablysuffers from mirage and, when attacked by highwaymen, truly sees them asa hundred when, in fact, they are but two. But he is not certain, he istoo carel
ess of detail, he readily responds when it is suggested he liesand makes the hundred into a mere sixteen. Falstaff the artist is eitherunconscious of exaggeration, therefore truthful, or takes a childishpleasure in exaggerating; he is a giant, therefore may exaggerate, forall things are small relatively to him. If the ocean could speak nonewould reproach it if it said that fifty inches of rain had fallen intoits bosom within a single hour, for what would it matter? one inch orfifty, what difference would that make to the ocean? Falstaff is as theocean; he can stand upon a higher pedestal of lies than can the mortal,for it does not make him singular. Indeed it is this high pedestal ofgrossness, lying, and falsity makes him great; no small man would dareto erect it; Falstaff dares, for he is unashamed.
He is unashamed, and yet not quite unconscious. I will not dilate on theglimmerings that pierce through the darkness of his vanity: if anythingthey are injurious, for they drag him down to earth; Shakespeareevidently realised that these glimmerings made Falstaff more human,introduced them with intention, for he could not know that he wascreating a giant, a Laughter God, who should be devoid of mortalattributes. But these flecks are inevitable, and perhaps normal in thehuman conception of the extra-human: the Greek Gods and Demigods, too,had their passions, their envies, and their tantrums. Falstaff bearsthese small mortalities and bears them easily with the help of hissimple, sincere philosophy.
It is pitiful to think of Falstaff's death, in the light of hisphilosophy. According to Mr Rowe,[6] 'though it be extremely natural,"it" is yet as diverting as any part of his life.' I do not think so,for hear Mrs Quickly, the wife of Pistol: 'Nay, sure, he's not in hell:he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made afiner end, and went away, an it had been any christom child; a' partedjust between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for afterI saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile uponhis fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was assharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. "How now, Sir John!"quoth I: "what, man! be of good cheer!" So a' cried out, "God, God,God!" three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should notthink of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any suchthoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet; I put my handinto the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then Ifelt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as anystone.'
[Footnote 6: _Account of the Life and Writings of Shakespeare._]
It is an incredible tale. Falstaff to die, to be cold, to callmournfully upon his God ... it is pitiful, and as he died he playedwith flowers, those things nearest to his beloved earth. For he lovedthe earth; he had the traits of the peasant, his lusts, his simplicity,his coarseness and his unquestioning faith. His guide was a rough andjovial Epicureanism, which rated equally with pleasure the avoidance ofpain; Falstaff loved pleasure but was too simple to realise thatpleasure must be paid for; the giant wanted or the giant did not want,and there was an end of the matter. He viewed life so plainly that hewas ready to juggle with words and facts, so as to fit it to hisdesires; thus, when honour offended him, he came to believe there was nohonour, to refuse God the death he owed him because of honour: 'Yea, buthow if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set aleg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honourhath no skill in surgery then? No. Who hath it? he that died o'Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. It is insensiblethen? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why?Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it; honour is amere scutcheon; and so ends my catechism.'
Casuist! But he was big enough to deceive himself. Such casuistry wasnatural to the Englishman of Falstaff's day, who took his Catholicism asliterally as any Sicilian peasant may take his to-day. Of Falstaff'sunquestioning faith there is no doubt at all; his familiar modes ofaddress of the Deity, his appeal when dying, his probable capacity forrobbing a friar and demanding of him absolution, all these areindications of a simplicity so great that casuistry alone could rescuehim from the perilous conclusions drawn from his faith. This is adifficulty, for Falstaff is not entirely the Englishman of to-day; he islargely the boisterous, Latinised Englishman of the pre-Reformationperiod; he is almost the typical Roman Catholic, who preserved throughhis sinful life a consciousness that faith would save him. But the humansides of Falstaff are wholly English; his love of meat and drink, hissleepiness, his gout, his coarseness (which was free from depravity),all these live to-day in the average Englishman of thewell-to-do-classes, that Englishman who dislikes the motor-car butkeeps a hunter he is too fat to ride, who prefers suet pudding to anyhotel _bavaroise_, and who, despite his gout (inherited from Falstaff),is still a judge of port.
That Englishman is not quite Falstaff, for he has lost his gaiety; hedoes not dance round the maypole of Merrie England; he is oppressed bycares and expenditures, he fears democracy and no longer respectsaristocracy: the old banqueting-hall in which Falstaff rioted istumbling about his ears. Yet he contains the Falstaffian elements andpreciously preserves them. He is no poet, but he still enshrines withinhim, to burst out from among his sons, the rich lyrical verse which, MrChesterton truly says, belongs primarily to the English race. The poetrywhich runs through Falstaff is still within us, and his philosophyradiates from our midst. The broad tolerances of England, her taste forliberty and ease, her occasional bluster and her boundless conceit, allthese are Falstaffian traits and would be eternal if admixture of Celticblood did not slowly modify them. Falstaff contains all that is gross inEngland and much that is fine; his cowardice, his craft, his capacityfor flattery are qualifying factors, for they are not English, any morethan they are Chinese: they are human, common. But the outer Falstaff isEnglish, and the lawless root of him is yet more English, for there isnot a race in the world hates the law more than the English race. Thusthe inner, adventurous Falstaff is the Englishman who conquered everysea and planted his flag among the savages; he is perhaps the Englishmanwho went out to those savages with the Bible in his hand; he is theunsteady boy who ran away to sea, the privateersman who fought theFrench and the Dutch; he is the cheerful, greedy, dull, and obstinateEnglishman, who is so wonderfully stupid and so wonderfully full ofcommon sense. Falstaff was never crushed by adversity: no more was theEnglish race; it was, like him, too vain and too optimistic, toomaterially bounded by its immediate desires. It is not, therefore, wildto claim him as the gigantic ancestor and kindly inspiration of thepriests, merchants, and soldiers who have conquered and held fieldswhere never floated the lilies of the French or the castles of thePortuguese. Too dull to be beaten and too big to be moved, Falstaff wasthe Englishman.
3. MUeNCHAUSEN
Exaggeration is a subtle weapon and it must be handled subtly. Handledwithout skill it is a boomerang, recoils upon the one who uses it andmakes of him a common liar; under the sway of a master it is a long bowwith which splendid shafts may be driven into human conceit and humanfolly. There have been many exaggerators in history and fiction sincethe days of Sindbad, and they have not all been successful; some weretoo small, dared not stake their reputation upon a large lie; some weretoo serious and did not know how to wink at humanity, put it in goodtemper and thus earn its tolerance; and some did not believe their ownstories, which was fatal.
For it is one thing to exaggerate and another to exaggerate enough. Alie must be writ so large as to become invisible; it must stand as thename of a country upon a map, so much larger than its surroundings as toescape detection. One may almost in the cause of invention, parallel thesaying of Machiavelli, 'If you make war, spare not your enemy,' and say'If you lie, let it not be by halves'; let the lie be terrific,incredible, for it will then cause local anaesthesia of the brain, compelunreasoning acceptance in the stunned victim. If the exaggerator shrinksfrom this course his lie will not pass; it might have passed, and Iventure a paradox, if it had been gigantic enough. The gigantic qualityin lies needs definition; evidently the little 'white' lie is beyondcount, while t
he lie with a view to a profit, the self-protective lie,the patriotic lie and the hysterical, vicious lie follow it intoobscurity. One lie alone remains, the splendid, purposeless lie, born ofthe joy of life. That is the lie of braggadocio, a shouting, rich thing,the mischievous, arch thing beloved of Muenchausen. The Baron hardly liedto impress his friends; he lied to amuse them and amuse himself. To hima lie was a hurrah and a loud, resonant hurrah, because it was bigenough.
In the bigness of the lie is the gigantic quality of the liar. If, forinstance, we assume that no athlete has ever leapt higher than sevenfeet, it is a lie to say that one has leapt eight. But it is not agigantic lie: it is a mean, stupid lie. The giant must not stoop solow; he must leap, not eight feet, but eight score, eight hundred. Hemust leap from nebula to nebula. If he does not claim to have achievedthe incredible he is incredible in the gigantic sense. Likewise he isnot comic unless he can shock our imagination by his very enormity. Wedo not laugh at the pigmy who claims an eight-foot leap; we sneer.Humour has many roots, and exaggeration is one of them, for it embodiesthe essential incongruous; thus we need the incongruity of contrastbetween the little strutting man and the enormous feat he claims to haveachieved.
If Muenchausen is comic it is because he is not afraid; his godfather,the _Critical Review_,[7] rightly claimed that 'the marvellous had neverbeen carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent.' Because he wasnot afraid, we say 'Absurd person,' and laugh, not at but with him. Wemust laugh at the mental picture of the Lithuanian horse who so bravelycarried his master while he fought the Turk outside Oczakow, only to becut in two by the portcullis ... and then greedily drank at a fountain,drank and drank until the fountain nearly ran dry because the waterspouted from his severed (but still indomitable) trunk! The impossibleis the comedy of Muenchausen; when he approaches the possible his mantleseems to fall from him. For instance, in a contest with a bear, orrather one of the contests, for Muenchausen seemed to encounter bearswherever he went, he throws a bladder of spirits into the brute's face,so that, blinded by the liquor, it rushes away and falls over aprecipice. This is a blemish; a mortal hunter might thus have savedhimself with his whisky-flask; this is not worthy of Muenchausen. ForMuenchausen, to be comic, must do what we cannot do, thrust his hand intothe jaws of a wolf, push on, seize him by the tail and turn him insideout. Then he can leave us with this vision before our eyes of thewrithing animal nimbly treated as an old glove.
[Footnote 7: December, 1785.]
In such scenes as these contests with bears, wolves, lions, crocodiles,the Baron is the chief actor, plays the part of comedian, but he is bigenough to shed round himself a zone of comic light. The giant makescomedy as he walks; notably in St Petersburg, he runs from a mad dog,discarding his fur coat in his hurry, and that, so far as he isconcerned, is the end of the adventure. But a comic fate pursuesMuenchausen, for his fur coat, bitten by the mad dog, developshydrophobia, leaps at and destroys companion clothing, until its masterarrives in time to see it 'falling upon a fine full-dress suit which_he_ shook and tossed in an unmerciful manner.' That is an example ofthe comic zone in which Muenchausen revolves; round him the inanimatebreathes, is animated by his own life-lust until the 'it' of thingsvanishes into the magic 'he.'
It is a pity, from the purely comic point of view, that the Baron shouldso uniformly dominate circumstances. A victorious hero is seldom somirth-making as is the ridiculous and ridiculed Tartarin; we find reliefwhen Muenchausen fails to throw a piece of ordnance across theDardanelles, and when he shatters his chariot against the rock he thusdecapitates and makes into Table Mountain. His failure, injurious to hisgigantic quality, is essential to his comic quality, for the readeroften cries out, in presence of his flaming victories: Accursed sun!Will you never set? But the sun of Muenchausen will never set. For amoment it may be obscured by a passing cloud, while its powerful raysrebelliously glow through the clot of mist and maintain the outline ofthe Baron's wicked little eye, but set it cannot: is it not in itsmaster's power to juggle with moons and arrest the steeds of Apollo?
Demigodly, the giant must see but not judge, for one cannot judge whenone is so far away. Thus Muenchausen has but few sneers for littlemankind; he observes that the people of an island choose as governors aman and his wife who were 'plucking cucumbers on a tree' because theyfell from the tree on the tyrant of the isle and destroyed him, but hedoes not seem to see anything singular in this method of government. Norhas he an express scoff for the College of Physicians because no deathshappened on earth while it was suspended in the air. The scoff is there,but it is not expressed by Muenchausen; he takes the earth in his hand,remarks 'Odd machine, this,' and lays it down again. And it may be toomuch to say 'odd'; though Muenchausen expresses astonishment from time totime it is not vacuous astonishment; it is reasonable, measuredastonishment, that of a modern tourist in Baedekerland. Thus, in hisview, politicians, rulers, pedagogues, apothecaries, explorers are notsubjects for his sling: they are curiosities.
He stares at these curiosities with simple wonder. He does not see theworld as a joke, but as an earnest and extraordinary thing. He is alwaysready to be mildly surprised and he is never sceptical; that is, henever doubts the possibility of the impossible when it happens to him:he gravely doubts it when it happens to anybody else. Thus it is clearthat he does not think much of Mr Lemuel Gulliver, that his chief enemyis his old rival Baron de Tott. If he were not so polite Muenchausenwould call de Tott a plain liar; he refrains and merely outstrips theupstart, as a gentleman should do. Muenchausen sees the world in terms ofhimself; he would have no faith in the marvellous escapes of von Trenck,Jack Sheppard, and Monte Cristo. 'I,' says Muenchausen, and the rivalsmay withdraw. He does not even fear imitation, and if he were confrontedwith Dickens's story of the lunars in _Household Words_, or with hisFrench imitator, M. de Crac, he would chivalrously say: 'Mostcreditable, but I....' Nothing in Muenchausen is so colossal as his 'I.'Like the Gauls he fears naught, save that the sky will fall upon hishead, and I am not sure that he fears even that: the accident mightenable him to make interesting notes on heaven.
There is, perhaps, unjustified levity in this surmise of mine, forMuenchausen is a pious man. When, in Russia, he covers an old man withhis cloak, a voice from heaven calls to him: 'You will be rewarded, myson, for this in time.' It must have been the voice of St Hubert, thepatron to whom Muenchausen readily paid his homage, for Muenchausen simplybelieved in him, liked to think that 'some passionate holy sportsman, orsporting abbot or bishop, may have shot, planted, and fixed the crossbetween the antlers of St Hubert's stag.' But his piety is personal; hebelieves that the voice is for him alone, that St Hubert is his ownsaint. Gigantic Muenchausen shuts out his own view of the world. Hisshadow falls upon and obscures it. That is why he so continuously brags.The most resolute horseman shrinks from a wild young horse, butMuenchausen tames him in half an hour and makes him dance on thetea-table without breaking a single cup; the Grand Seignior discards hisown envoy and employs him on State business at Cairo; he makes a cannonoff a cannon-ball, 'having long studied the art of gunnery'; he doesaway (in his third edition) with the French persecutors of MarieAntoinette. He, always he, is the actor; he is not the chief actor, heis the sole actor, and the rest of the world is the audience.
So simply and singly does he believe in himself that his giganticquality is assured. He disdains to imitate; when confined in the bellyof the great fish he does not wait like Sindbad, or wait and pray likeJonah: Baron Muenchausen dances a hornpipe. He is quite sure that he willescape from the fish: the fish is large, but not large enough to containthe spirit of a Muenchausen; and he is sure that the story is true. Thereis nothing in any adventure to show that the Baron doubted its accuracy,and we must not conclude from his threat in Chapter VIII.: 'If anygentleman will say he doubts the truth of this story, I will fine him agallon of brandy and make him drink it at one draught,' that he knewhimself for a liar. As a man of the world he recognised that his werewonderful stories, and he expected to encounter unbelief, but h
e did notencounter it within himself. No, Muenchausen accepted his own enormity,gravely believed that he 'made it a rule always to speak withincompass.' If he winked at the world as he told his tales it was notbecause he did not believe in them; he winked because he was gay and,mischievously enough, liked to keep the world on the tenterhooks ofscepticism and gullibility. He did not even truckle to his audience, tryto be in any way consistent; thus, when entangled with the eagle herides in the branches of a tree, he dares not jump for fear of beingkilled ... while he has previously fallen with impunity some five miles,on his descent from the moon, with such violence as to dig a hole ninefathoms deep.
No, this precursor of Bill Adams, who saved Gibraltar for GeneralElliott, simply believed. Like Falstaff, like Tartarin, he suffered frommirage; though some of his adventures are dreams, monstrous pictures offacts so small that we cannot imagine them, others are but thedistortions of absolutely historic affairs. No doubt Muenchausen saw alion fight a crocodile: it needed no gigantic flight for him to believethat he cut off the lion's head while it was still alive, if he actuallycut it off 'to make sure' when it was dead; and though he did not tiehis horse to a snow-surrounded steeple, he may have tied him to a postand found, in the morning, that the snow had so thawed as to leave thehorse on a taut bridle; assuredly he did not kill seventy-three brace ofwildfowl with one shot, but the killing of two brace was a feat nobleenough to be magnified into the slaughter of a flight.
Muenchausen lied, but he lied honestly, that is to himself before allmen. For he was a gentleman, a gentleman of high lineage the like ofwhom rode and drove in numbers along the eighteenth century roads. Hisown career, or rather that of his historian, Raspe,[8] harmonises withhis personal characteristics, reveals his Teutonic origin, and itmatters little whether he was the German 'Muenchausen' or the DutchWestphalian 'Munnikhouson.' The first sentence of his first chaptertells of his beard; his family pride stares us everywhere in the face;Muenchausen claims descent from the wife of Uriah (and he might have beeninnocent enough to accept Ananias as a forbear), and knows that_noblesse oblige_, for, says he to the Lady Fragantia when receivingfrom her a plume: 'I swear ... that no savage, tyrant, or enemy upon theface of the earth shall despoil me of this favour, while one drop of theblood of the Muenchausens doth circulate in my veins!' QuixoticMuenchausen, it is well that you should, in later adventures, meet andsomewhat humiliate the Spanish Don. For you are a gentleman of noEnglish and cold-blooded pattern, even though you buy your field-glassesat Dollonds's and doubtless your clothes at the top of St James'sStreet. Too free, too unrestrained to be English you maintain an air offashion, you worship at the shrine of any Dulcinea.
[Footnote 8: See Mr Thomas Seccombe's brilliant introduction to theLawrence and Bullen edition, 1895.]
Muenchausen has no use for women, save as objects for worship; they mustnot serve, or co-operate; for him they are inspiration, beautiful thingsbefore whom he bows, whom he compliments in fulsome wise; he ispreoccupied by woman whenever he is not in the field; he has chivalrousoaths for others than the Lady Fragantia; he makes the horse mount thetea-table for the ladies' pleasure; he receives gracefully the proposalsof Catherine of Russia; he is the favourite of the Grand Seignior'sfavourite; he is haunted by the Lady Fragantia, who was 'like a summer'smorning, all blushing and full of dew.'
Polite and gallant as any cavalier, Muenchausen carries in him the soulof a professor; he is minute, he kills no two score beasts, but exactlyforty-one; every little thing counts for him, as if he were a student:Montgolfier and his balloon, architecture, and the amazing etymology forwhich 'Vide Otrckocsus de Orig-Hung.' A swordsman and a scholar herecalls those reiters who fled from kings into monasteries, there tolabour as Benedictines. And he has Teutonic appetites. Indeed nothing isso Germanic as the Baron's perpetual concern with food: he remembers howgood was the cherry-sauce made from the cherries that grew out of thestag's forehead; he gloats over a continent of cheese and a sea of wine;even on eagleback he finds bladders of gin and good roast-beef-fruit;bread-fruit, plum-pudding-fruit (hot), Cape wine, Candian sugar,fricassee of pistols, pistol-bullets, gunpowder sauce, all these figurein his memoirs. And if, sometimes, he is a little gross, as when hestops a leak in a ship by sitting upon it, which he can do because he isof Dutch extraction, he confirms completely the impression we have ofhim: a gallant gentleman, brave in the field, lusty at the trencher, gayin the boudoir.
Good Muenchausen, you strut large about the Kingdom of Loggerheads,debonair, tolerant, confident; you believe in yourself, because so largethat you cannot overlook yourself; you believe in yourself because youtower and thus amaze humanity; and you believe in yourself because youare as enormously credulous as you would have us be. Thus, because youbelieve in yourself, you are: you need no Berkeley to demonstrate you.