Bridgewater Review

Volume 2 | Issue 3 Article 8

Jul-1984

The Timely Humor of Stephen LeacockHarold RidlonBridgewater State College

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Recommended CitationRidlon, Harold (1984). The Timely Humor of Stephen Leacock. Bridgewater Review, 2(3), 12-15.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol2/iss3/8

of the Empire. He carried his convictionsinto the classroom, particularly during histhirty-five year association with McGillUniversity in Montreal, first as lecturer, thenas professor, and finally as Chairman of theDepartment of Economics and PoliticalScience. One of his students remarked,"His lectures were crowded. Adam Smith,John Stuart Mill, and Malthus would cometo life. He, before Winston Churchill, savedthe British Empire every Monday,Wednesday, and Friday at three o'clock inRoom 20."

As to the Ph.D. degree itself, Leacockwrote, "The meaning of this degree is thatthe recipient of instruction is examined forthe last time in his life, and is pronouncedcompletely full. After this, no new ideas canbe imparted to him." He took pride in itnonetheless, and when on a trip to Europe,having signed the register as DoctorLeacock, he was summoned by the Captainto "Have a look at the second stewardess'sknee," he was "off like a shot." "But it wasno use. Another fellow got there ahead ofme. He was a Doctor of Divinity."

Leacock's best known and most widelyused text, Elements of Political Science(1906), earned him more money than any ofhis books of humor. It was revised andreissued in 1921, again proving successful.He published widely and influentially in hisprofessional disciplines, chiefly politicalscience, but it was his humor that built hisreputation.

Privately printed, Leacock's firsthumorous book, Literary Lapses (1910),proved so successful that John Lane of theprestigious Bodley Head, Ltd. of Englandpurchased publication rights, thusestablishing a long association withLeacock. A curious potpourri of sketches,Literary Lapses reflects many of the comicthemes and devices which were tocharacterize Leacock's writing from thatpoint on. "My Financial Career" establishesa standard type in Leacock's fictions, thelittle man bewildered by a world he canneither understand nor cope with (CharlieChaplin later sought Leacock unsuc­cessfully to write a scenario for him) treatedwith a subtle blend of the ludicrous and thepathetic. Here a meek, shy, suspicious soul,persuaded to bank his life savings of fifty-sixdollars, does so cautiously and furtively,only to be so intimidated by marblecolumns, the austere bank guards, thehollow-sounding vaulted floors, the teller'scage, and the condescending andformidable teller himself, that, upondeparture, he immediately returns andwithdraws the full amount. When thesupercilious teller asks how he wants themoney, he says secretively, "In fifties,""Andthe rest?" "In sixes." From then on, hekeeps all his money "in silver dollars in asock."

where his contributions to the newspaperand literary journal led him to publishcommercially. Eight years later, when hewas thirty, he proposed marriage to BeatrixHamilton, a girl he had met in Orillia,Ontario, where he spent the summers. Theywere married in August of 1900, and theirnear-perfect marriage ended in her tragicdeath by cancer twenty-five years later. Shebore him one son, Stephen, ill from infancywith a rare disease which impeded growth,but brought to healthy and reasonablynormal adulthood by the help of the bestdoctors and his father's tender care. Deeplysensitive to human frailty and human need,both inside and outside his circle of familyand friends, he was profoundly affected,perhaps even embittered, by these events.

Just before marriage, Leacock so fellunder the influence of Thorstein Veblen'srecently published The Theory of theLeisure Class that he determined to studyunder Veblen at the University of Chicagowhere he received a Ph.D. in PoliticalEconomy in 1903. Despite this inexplicableconnection, Leacock remained throughouthis life a committed and vociferousconservative, consistently opposingsocialism, castigating liberals with acid witand pungent satire, and extolling the virtues

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On this fortieth anniversary of hisdeath, Stephen Leacock, one of the finesthumorists of this century, and "the bestknown Canadian of any kind, exceptperhaps Mary Pickford," according toDouglas Bush, deserves reassessment.Born in 1869 in Swansmore, Hampshire,England, and resettled with his family on afarm ("damndest place I ever saw") nearLake Simcoe, Ontario, at age six ("I decidedto go with them," he was to say later), hesurvived the rigors of frontier life in a familyof twelve children, all reared by a mother ofbreeding, hardihood, and humaneness, anddeserted by a profligate, Micawber-like butinsensitive father. Through his mother'sencouragement and meagre familyendowment, he attended Upper CanadaCollege, a private secondary school inToronto. The poor pay of educators alwaysinfuriated him. Years after receivtllg thedoctorate, he wrote of his pay as a collegeprofessor: "The emolument is so high as toplace me distinctly above the policemen,postmen, streetcar conductors, and othersalaried officials of the neighborhood, while Iam able to mix with the poorer of thebusinessmen of the city on terms ofsomething like equality." He took his BAdegree at the University of Toronto in 1891

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Literary Lapses' anticipates otherpersistent themes as well: attitudes towardfinances, public and private; spoofs ofantiquities, aristocracy, the nouveau rich,supernaturalism, contemporary literature,poetry in general which he regarded as onthe lowest literary scale; mild satire on theclergy, law, medicine, education, business,clubs and clubmen and women, phonies,and food faddists; appreciation of barbersfor being as in Ring Lardner's sketches,small town communication centers. Allthrough this first book, Leacockdistinguishes sharply between rural andurban life, things as they are and as theyshould be, life as it was and as it is now, andwhat we have come to accept as permanentin our culture and what we may reasonably ­- or even unreasonably -- anticipate in thefuture.

Leacock's interest in travel emerges herealso. As he came to travel more and morewidely, for business or pleasure, hebroadened his perspectives while neverlosing sight of his origins and hisfundamental loyalties. He was thusconstantly learning, so it's not surprisingthat the topic of education itself shouldoccur in some form in every book of humorhe wrote. In "A Manual of Education," forinstance, all major disciplines are dismissedsummarily with truncated versions. Thus,"Botany is the art of plants. Plants aredivided into trees, flowers, and vegetables.The true botanist knows a tree as soon as hesees it. He learns to distinguish it from avegetable by merely putting his ear to it."Though he was trained in them himself, heeven satirizes the classics. He delights indeflating the pretensions of those who quotevaingloriously and egotistically trom theclassics and who claim these works "madethem what they are." In "Homer andHumbug" (Behind the Beyond, 1916), heinsists that "some of these men would havebeen who they are no matter what theywere." Later, in "Oxford As I See It" (MyDiscolJery of England, 1922), he attributesto the tutorial system, where studentsgather in their tutor's digs discussing ideasamidst his befogging tobacco smoke, thedevelopment of genuine scholarship, since"men who have been systematically smokedat for four years turn into ripe scholars."

At the heart of Leacock's most amusinghumor lie some of his deepest prejudices.For example, he believed that women inhigher education should stay segregated atBryn Mawr or Wellesley. "A girl in such aplace as McGill, with men all about her, sitsfor four years as silent as a frog full of shot."Or, "I spent three years in the graduateschool of Chicago, where coeducationalgirls were as thick as autumn leaves -- andsome thicker." Another prejudice, this oneperhaps not unfounded, involves thecontrast between English and American

attitudes toward education. At Oxford,students work at their own pace, while inAmerican universities professors areconcerned with a student's "deportment,"his "organizing ability and his hope ofpromotion to a soap factory." To theAmerican professor, "a student of geniusmerely means ... a student who gives notrouble, who passes all his 'tests,' and ispresent at all his recitations." Such astudent, "if he can be trained to be a hustlerand an advertiser, will undoutedly 'makegood'."

Literary Lapses also reveals Leacock'slifelong childhood spirit, coupled with hischildhood disappointments at Christmaswhen, as one child in a large family of limitedmeans, he frequently received but one"practical" gift when he had anticipatedotherwise. This preoccupation tends toconfirm the "boy-man" thesis advanced bymore than one Leacock critic. DonaldCameron claims that the essential Leacockis "a man whose bluff, relaxed man of theworld facade concealed a frightened andreticent boy, brilliant enough to !"lake hisway in the world by pelting with laughter thevery qualities of the world which made himuneasy." Thus the vacillation between senseand silliness in his work demonstrates themingled clarity and confusion of his vision.

In "Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas," a boywho has sacrificed to buy his father a box ofcigars and his mother an imitation diamondbrooch for Christmas, fails to receive hishoped-for puppy dog, watch-and-chain, toypistol and caps, toy drum, and book -- "fairytales or adventures." What was really in themysterious packages left him disappointedbut not undaunted, so he still determined tohave fun "playing with his toys":

First he played with his toothbrush. He gota whole lot of water and brushed his teethwith it. This was huge. Then he played withhis collars. He had no end of fun with them,taking them all out one by one andswearing at them, and then putting themback and swearing at the whole lottogether.

The next toy was his pants. He hadimmense fun there, putting them on andtaking them off again, and then trying toguess which side was which by merelylooking at them.

After that he took his book and read someadventures called "Genesis" till breakfast.

After he kisses his mother and father, andsees his father smoking a cigar and hismother wearing her brooch proudly, hequietly determines "that next Christmas hewill hang on to his money and take chanceson what the angels bring."

Leacock's second book, NonsenseNOlJels (1912), is a series of parodies ofpopular types of fiction: among them thesocial novel, the detective story, thechivalric romance, the futuristic novel, theyarn of the sea, the tale of life on the oldheavily mortgaged farm. "Gertrude theGoverness," orphaned long before she wasborn, has for her education but the meagreresources of her aunt's library and musicroom: a piano; French, Italian, Russian, andRoumanian grammars; a theodolite; and abook on mining engineering. T"e day shefinds she must seek gainful employment, hereye lights upon an advertisement for agoverness with "a knowledge of French,Italian, Russian, Roumanian, Music, andMining Engineering." Struck by thecorrelation, it takes Gertrude but half-an­hour to realize that she is admirablyequipped for the task of educating "twogolden-haired children" destined to inheritan immense fortune obtained from miningoperations. All ends happily: one who hasloved her long, a nobleman no less,becomes her husband against his father's,the Earl's, and mother's, the Countess's,objections:

Gertrude and Ronald were wed. Theirhappiness was complete. Need we saymore? Yes, only this. The Earl was killed inthe hunting-field a few days after. TheCountess was struck by lightning. The twochildren fell down as well. Thus thehappiness of Gertrude and Ronald wascomplete.

"Guido the Gimlet of Ghent" seeks thehand of Isolde; but for her love others havesuffered:

Otto the Otter had cast himself into thesea. Conrad the Cocoanut had hurledhimself .from the highest battlement of thecastle head first into mud. Hugo theHelpless had hanged himself by thewaistband to a hickory tree and hadrefused all efforts to dislodge him. For hersake Siegfried the Susceptible hadswallowed sulphuric acid.

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In Leacock's parody of the sentimentaltale, John Enderby, about to lose the OldHomestead, tilted "the crock of buttermilkthat stood beside him and drained a draughtof the maddening liquid, till his brain glowedlike the coals of the tamarack fire beforehim," and when his distraught wife urgedhim to read "the Good Book" instead, he"took from her hand the well-worn copy ofEuclid's Elements" and read "the angles atthe base of an isosceles triangle are equal,and whosoever shall produce the sides, 10,the same also shall be equal each untoeach." Even Scottish national pride ispunctured in "Hannah of the Highlands."

It was here in the glen that Bonnie PrinceCharlie had lain and hidden after thedefeat of Culloden. Almost in the samespot the great boulder still stands behindwhich the Bruce had lain hidden afterBannockburn; while behind a number oflesser stones the Covenanters hadconcealed themselves during the height ofthe Stuart persecution.

Parody depends heavily on the reader'sfamiliarity with the original, but Leacock'sparodies afford pleasure even to theuninitiated.

It was in Sunshine Sketches of a LittleTown (1912), and Arcadian AdventuresWith the Idle Rich (1914), that Leacockrealized most fully that transposition intohumor of the tensions in his life and art:desire for wealth, yet contempt for thoseamply endowed with it and insensitive to itsproper use; affection for individuals, butsuspicion of their clumping togetherinstitutionally; divided loyalties between thesatisfactions of domestic life and thedemands of a public career; ambivalencetoward professions and their practitioners,including his own. Never a novelist, he wasnonetheless able in these books to sustainconsistency of character, setting, situation,mood, and theme to produce remarkableoverall integrity.

In Sunshine Sketches, the town calledMariposa provides the major linking device.Mariposa was a thinly fictionalized versionof Orillia, a town which Leacock knew well.In his preface, Leacock disclaimed "writingabout a real place and real people," claimingthat Mariposa may be found "all the wayfrom Lake Superior to the sea, with thesame maple trees and the same churchesand hotels." Similarly, he disavows actualityof character, though the citizenry of Orilliaso disagreed that Leacock barely escapedlibel actions. The barber of the town saidrepeatedly to indignant customers. "How inhell was I to know he would put these thingsin a book."

In the course of composing SunshineSketches, Leacock revealed not only hisambivalence about Orillia's inhabitants, amicrocosm of Leacock's whole world, buthe also exposed many of his own

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predilections n even prejudices -- about themanners and mores of his time. Moreover,by reading aloud sections of the book tofriends and family, he discovered that richpotential for public speaking which heexploited fully in the years to come. Of hisso-called "Empire" lectures, which took himall over the British Empire in 1907, he said,"When I state that these lectures werefollowed almost immediately by the Union ofSouth Africa, the Banana Riots in Trinidad,"and the Turko-Italian War, I think you canform some idea of their importance."

As to Orillia itself, Leacock built himself asummer home, "Old Brewery Bay," on theshores of Lake Couchining near the town.There he relaxed from the rigors of collegeteaching and lecture tours.

Mariposa, the fictional town in SunshineSketches, slopes down from LakeWissanotti, out of which flows theOssawippi River. The frame for the story isJosiah Smith's hostelry which, at thebeginning of the book, he is obligated toendow, because of a threatened closing,with French chef, "rat's cooler," and twenty­five cent gourmet meals, thus creating sostrong a grass roots movements that hekeeps his license without having to add the"girl room," whatever that was.

The humor of the book takes manydifferent forms: plays on words, incongruityof various kinds, hyperbole, malapropisms,barely credible eccentricities, harmlessdeceptions, silly ambitions punctured bydeflationary rhetoric, paradoxical figures,irony, sudden shifts in tone and diction,outright puns, and situations that show the

ineffectual puny creature man pitted againsta jungle of frustrating circumstance, fromwhich he is rescued by inexplicable quirks offate. However, the fundamental comiceffect is achieved by Leacock's firmconviction that the finest humor arises from"an attempt to see things as they really areand not as convention has led us to thinkthey are," as well as by his view that "thevery essence of good humor is that it mustbe without harm and without malice" eventhough "there is in all of us a certain vein ofthe old original demoniacal humor or joy inthe misfortune of another which sticks to uslike our original sin."

The frame story in Sunshine Sketchesrecounts Smith's surprising election as M.P.from Missinaba County. His opponent,Bagshaw the Liberal, demonstrates anacerbic rhetoric that is still characteristic ofCanadian politics today. Promising gentilityand restraint, he refers to Smith as a skunk,a common saloon-keeper, a horse thief, a"notable perjurer," and "the Blackest­hearted liar in Missinaba County."

Set like jewels within the frame are ninestories which demonstrate the full range ofLeacock's comic ability. Jefferson Thorpe,barber and speculator, makes a fortune insilver only to lose it all by investing inbananas. He maintains his composure infailure as he had preserved his modesty insuccess, by planning to contribute most ofhis money to the indigent and the idiots ofMissinaba County. Even his daughter Myra,back at her job as telephone operatorinstead of on the New York stage, says "thatif there's one thing she hates, it's the stage,and she can't see how actresses put up withit." The Mariposa Belle, an imposing side­wheeler, but easily mistaken for theLusitania in a certain light, sinks, as shealways does, in six feet of water, the deepestpart of Lake Wissanotti, during the "MarineExcursion of the Knights of Pythias." Mr.Pupkin, a lowly bank teller "with a face like ahorse," wins the hand of Zena Pepperleigh,the Judge's daughter, when, in an attempt atsuicide, he fires instead at an intruder in thebank, wounding him slightly and beingwounded sightly in return. His assailantturns out to be the bank guard who hadmistaken Pupkin for the thief, whereas inreality there was no thief, no robbery, butonly two heroes. Dean Drone, thefinancially inept vicar, is spared resignationby a fortuitous fire (altruistically set byJosiah Smith for the $100,000 insurance).The sun continues to shine in Mariposa, thebetter to illumine the follies of herinhabitants. If Robertson Davies is correct,"the people of Mariposa were a self­important, gullible reflection of mankind, atleast from Leacock's angle of vision."

After Sunshine Sketches Leacockcompiled Behind the Beyond (1913), the

first of the annual miscellanies. Here theparodies persist, the familiar human typesabound, and the scathing commentariesupon almost everything appear. Two of thebest pieces, both of which depend on themyth of the common man's vicissitudes andtriumphs, are "With the Photographer" and"The Dentist and the Gas." In the former, aphotographer so annoys his subject withfussiness over best angle, correct smile, andflattering retouching, that the victim finallyrevolts:

What I wanted is no longer done. Go on,then, with your brutal work. Take yournegativE: . . . dip it in sulfide, bromide,oxhide, cowhide .. anything you like;remove the eyes, correct the mouth,adjust the face, restore the lips, reanimatethe necktie, and reconstruct thewaistcoat. Coat it with an inch of gloss,shade it, emboss it, gild it. .. then ... keepit for yourself and your friends.

In the latter, an overcharged and irritatedpatient sends a bill to his dentist for $400($50 for mental agony, $100 for gross lies inregard to the nothingness of gas, $50 forputting him under gas, $100, for "Brilliantideas, occurred to me under gas and lost").Donald Cameron calls Behind the Beyondone of Leacock's best and "mostcharacteristic" books.

Arcadian Adventur~with the Idle Rich,Leacock's fifth book, is the flip side ofSunshine Sketches, more satiric andexclusively urban. The Mausoleum Club,around which much of the action centers, ismodeled on the posh Mount Royal Club ofMontreal. Plutoria, supposedly a city in theUnited States, is really Montreal. The bookcastigates charlatanism, exposes secu­larized religious institutions tainted by bigmoney, pillories corrupt politics, andthrashes go-getting in the guise ofeducation. It demonstrates Leacock'sdeeply-held view that material means andbusiness methods may be used to solvemany human problems, but cannot be usedwith impunity to hold society together or tocement lasting spiritual bonds.

The mood of the book is struck in theopening pages where infant scions offinancial empires are wheeled about the city:"... a little toddling princess in a rabbit suitwho owns fifty distilleries in her own right";"... a little hooded head that controls fromits cradle an entire New Jersey cor­poration"; "a million dollars of preferredstock laughs merrily in recognition of amajority control going past in a go-cartdrawn by an imported nurse." From birth todeath, these Plutorians control lives theyknow nothing, care nothing, about. Theyingratiate themselves with visiting nobility,they patronize ecclesiastics and academicsalike, thus vitiating the potential of theinstitutions they represent; their wives findtheir jewels and fur wraps "deastralized" by

two "old criminals" who have "worked thissame thing in four cities already, and both ofthem have done time, and lots of it." Eventhe fight for "clean government" is reallystaging for the entrepreneurs to "clean up"financially. The businesslike merging of St.Asaph's and St. Osoph's churches, the onlytruly topical note in the book, satirizesharshly an unholy alliance Leacockparticularly deplored.

Those chapters dealing with Mr.Tomlinson, the "Wizard of Finance,"illuminate Leacock's method and purpose,as well as the relation of his art to his life. TheWizard farmer whose gold strike hasplummeted him into a fortune, triesdiligently to fail. Completely out of hisnatural environment in a fancy expensivehotel, he endures stoically the torments ofwealth and prestige: pitying his wife heragony as inept society matron; seeing hisson Fred, a good, hardworking farm boy,become infected with the malaise ofindolence and the curse of decadence;having his tacit ignorance interpreted by ahost of manipulators as creativeshrewdness; and being besieged on all sidesby self-serving businessmen, politicians,lawyers, clergymen, and academicians.Among these is President Boomer ofPlutoria College, who wants money torestructure the campus and revamp thefaculty ("to dismiss everybody but himselfand Dr. Boyster"), and who has alreadychanged Plutoria College into a modernuniversity where anyone can studyanything. When Tomlinson's dream offinancial failure is realized, he returns homewith a happy wife and a reconstituted son.

The other story best illustratingLeacock's blend of satire and sentiment isthat of the strange marriage of Mr. PeterSpillikins, a wealthy twenty-four year old, toa widow with four sons, the eldest but fouryears younger than Peter, who weds him forhis money, then falls deeply in love with him.Peter is philanthropic, cares not one whit forhis money intrinsically, and is not a schemeror manipulator. He th~s earns a happyhome, a dutiful wife, and four sons who lovehim, and, better yet, play his favorite gameof billiards with him whenever he wantsthem to.

Clark Bissell considers ArcadianAdventures Leacock's finest book becauseit so skillfully pulls together those twodivergent strains of his humor, the utterlyridiculous and the bitingly satiric. ForEdmund Wilson, those polarities wereoutward manifestations of an inward andspiritual tension, a kind of tug-of-warbetween "slapdash buffooneries" and"Canadian Violence." Robertson Davies,however, moderating Wilson's extremismsomewhat, claims that Leacock's inherentviolence "springs from a tension in the

mind" typical of all serious humorists."Leacock is violent," he says, "as Chaplin isviolent; under the clowning works avigorous turbulent spirit, whose mellowestproductions leave always on the palate ahint of basic brimMone." Leacock's ownfavorite story involves a man who tells aphysician of his insomnia, nervousness,unlocalized discomfort, and generaldespondency. The doctor says, "What youneed is a lift of the spirit which will take youaway from yourself and amuse you. Go seethe clown Grimaldi. I saw him last night.You'll come away cured," whereupon theman replies "I am Grimaldi."

Stephen Leacock, a man of gusto, pride,and insecurity, constructed from his fearsand his hopes, his triumphs and his defeats,his meanness and his magnanimity, his lovesand his hatreds, a quality of humor thatdefies precise classification but commandsaffectionate recognition. Repeatedly, we seeourselves mirrored in his work because hisinsatiable curiosity and his courageous andperceptive articulation fix us in the amber ofhis sketches. Gelett Burgess, anotherhumorist of considerable stature, put it wellwhen he wrote, "Though I say it asshouldn't, it takes a fine scientific mind towrite good nonsense, and Stephen Leacockhas placed himself in the class of EdwardLear, Dodgson, Barrie, Oliver Herford andthe author of Felix the Cat." One couldhardly hope to be in better company.

Dr. Harold Ridlon has been at BridgewaterState College for nineteen years duringwhich he has served as Division Director ofHumanities and Creative Arts andChairman of the English Department (1965­1980). He holds a BA from Tufts and aPh.D. from Harvard. He has publishednumerous articles and is co-author of APersonal Response to Literature. In 1982 hereceived a grant from the CanadianGovernment to develop a new courseentitled, "Canadian-American LiteraryRelations."

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