The Man Who Refused To Laugh (And The Book That Laughed At Him)

by Stephen J. Gertz

On March 9, 1748 Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694-1773), 4th Earl of Chesterfield, wrote to his son:

"Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish, that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and in manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. 

"But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above. A man's going to sit down, in the supposition that he has a chair behind him, and falling down upon his breech for want of one, sets a whole company a laughing, when all the wit in the world would not do it; a plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is: not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. Laughter is easily restrained, by a very little reflection; but as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to its absurdity. 

"I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that, since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh."

The letter is one of over four hundred written beginning 1737/1738 through the death of his son in 1768 and collected in Letters Written By the Late Right Honorable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to His Son, Philip Stanhope Esq. Published in 1774 by his son's widow, Eugenia, a year after Chesterfield's death, the majority of the letters were written between 1746 and 1754. 

Also known as Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, within Lord Chesterfield - yes, he of the eponymous sofa - with elegance, understated wit, and sharp observation discusses, amongst other issues including history and contemporary politics, the restraint in behavior and manners expected of the mid-18th century British upper class in general and gentlemen in particular.

His disdain for the manners of the general populace begged to be lampooned and thirty-seven years after Chesterfield's letters to his son were published caricaturist George Moutard Woodward ("Mustard George"), in 1808, gleefully rubbed his hands together and went to work, the great Thomas Rowlandson engraving Woodward's designs (as imprinted on plates but contrary to title page).

A satire of Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son, Chesterfield Travestie; or, School For Modern Manners presents "a new plan of education, on the principles of virtue and politeness in which is conveyed, such instructions as cannot fail to form the man of honour, the man of virtue, and the accomplished gentleman." In seven chapters illustrated by ten hand-colored plates it covers Rules for walking the Streets, and other Public Places; Behaviour at the Table; Directions respecting Apparel, &c; Short Directions respecting behavior at the Theatres; Rules for Conversation; Rules to be observed at Cards in private Families; and General Rules for Good Breeding on various Occasions. In short, all a swell has to know for good breeding to show, to wit:

"It is very becoming to break out into a violent fit of laughter, on the most rifling occasion. forming  your mouth into a grin like the lion's-head on a brass knocker; and more so to be continually simpering at every thing. like a country milk-maid at a statute fair" (Chapter 7, p. 47).

How To Walk The Streets.

"If, whilst you are walking, you see any person of your acquaintance passing, be sure to bawl and hem after them, like a butcher out of a public-house window; and leave the person you are walking with to run after them.

"In walking through a crowded street, throw your legs and arms about in every direction, as if you were rowing for Dogget's coat and badge. N.B. If you have a short thick stick, it will be of great advantage" (Chapter 1, p. 1).

How To Keep Up A Conversation With Yourself On The Public Streets.

"It is said that the emptiest vessels make the greatest noise; don't let that deter you from making a free exercise of your lungs; it is conducive to you health, therefore, in every conversation, however trivial it may be, be sure to bawl as loud as possible" (Chapter 5, p. 21).

How To Look Over Your Husband's Hand Of Cards And Find Fault With Him For Losing.

"It has a very good effect for a wife to look over her husband's hand while he is playing; at the same time, shewing evident marks of anger and discontent if he loses.

"When you lose, never pay before you are asked for it; it is quite time enough; and then do it with reluctance, so as to plainly shew you would much rather keep it in your pocket"  (Chapter 6, p. 43).

How To Break a Shop Window With An Umbrella.

"Should it be a rainy day, and you use an umbrella, pay no regard to breaking a few windows in your passage, &c., from your careless manner of carrying it" (Chapter I, p. 2).

A British statesman and diplomat, "Chesterfield’s winning manners, urbanity, and wit were praised by many of his leading contemporaries, and he was on familiar terms with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Voltaire. He was the patron of many struggling authors but had unfortunate relations with one of them, Samuel Johnson, who condemned him in a famous letter (1755) attacking patrons. Johnson further damaged Chesterfield’s reputation when he described the Letters as teaching 'the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.' Dickens later caricatured him as Sir John Chester in Barnaby Rudge (1841). The opinion of these two more popular writers—both of whom epitomized middle-class morality—has contributed to Chesterfield’s image as a cynical man of the world and a courtier. 

"Careful readers of Chesterfield’s letters, which were not written for publication, consider this an injustice. The strongest charge against his philosophy is that it leads to concentration on worldly ends. But within this limitation his advice is shrewd and presented with wit and elegance. Ironically, Chesterfield’s painstaking advice seems to have fallen on deaf ears: his son was described by contemporaries as 'loutish,' and his godson was described by Fanny Burney as having 'as little good breeding as any man I ever met'” (Encyclopedia Britannica).

As far as his refusal to laugh aloud is concerned, I imagine Lord Chesterfield being kidnapped and taken to a dark, dank basement room where he is strapped to a chair under a glaring spotlight and compelled to endure unmerciful torture by Mel Brooks until his smile, always firmly set to prevent an accidental discharge of guffaws, breaks, his sides split, his gut busts, a lifetime's worth of repressed laughter escapes in a torrent, and an eternal human truth becomes manifest:

Ludibrio ergo sum vivo.

__________

WOODWARD, George Moutard (designer). ROWLANDSON, Thomas, (engraver). Chesterfield Travestie. or, School For Modern Manners. Embellished with Ten Caricatures, Engraved by Woodward from Original Drawings by Rowlandson. London & Edinburgh: Printed by T. Plummer...for Thomas Tegg, 1808.

First edition. Octavo (6 1/2 x 4 1/8 in; 166 x 104 mm). [1, half-title], [1, blank], iv, [2], 70, [2, adv.] pp.  Ten hand-colored plates (two folding) engraved by Rowlandson after drawings by Woodward (contrary to title), with tissue guards. Publisher's original printed boards.

Reprinted by Tegg in 1809, and again by Tegg in 1811 under the title "Chesterfield Burlesqued." American editions published in Philadelphia by M. Carey in 1812 and 1821.

The Plates:

1. Votaries of Fashion
2. How To Walk the Streets.
3. The Art of Quizzing.
4. How to Keep Up a Conversation with Yourself in the Public Streets.
5. How to break a Shop Window with an Umbrella.
6. Behaviour at Table.
7. Notoriety, &c.
8. Gentleman and Mad Author.
9. How to look over your Husband's Hand while at Cards.
10. The Nobleman and Little Shopkeeper.

Falk, 215-216, Grego, 115-117, Grolier, Rowlandson, 61, Hardie, p. 315. Gordon Library Catalog BC-19.

__________

Book images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

__________

Of Related Interest:

The Story of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone.

Pigmy Revels: Laughter For The Languid,  Fun For The Feeble.

The Annals Of Sporting, 1809; Or, Take This Horse And Shove It!
__________
__________

A Spelunker In The Cave Of Poverty

By Stephen J. Gertz

In 1715, Lewis Theobald, a British lawyer and budding poet with literary ambitions just beginning to be realized through translations of classical Greek dramas, stood at the entrance of an immense allegorical cavern and, ropes, hard hat, and lantern at the ready, stepped inside the gaping hole.

Journeying through an immense labyrinth with more underground byways than Mammoth Cave National Park, he beheld horrors at every turn. He took notes. The result was a proto-Desolation Row, Bob Dylan in wig and tricorne writing an infernal travel brochure in iambic pentameter inspired by Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser.

Meet the Goddess of the Cave, the Queen of Poverty, a Gorgonesque creature out of Clive Barker, basking in squalor and her power over the world:

Far in the Dungeon's Depth, in sullen Pride,
On matted Straw the gloomy Regent sat:
Famine, Despair, and Sickness by her side,
The Motions of her envious Pleasure wait.
Behind her violent Deaths attend; which, when
Inrag'd, she sends to tempt unwary Men.

Pale was her Face, and shrivell'd was her Skin,
Eyes sunk, and starting Bones; as she were now
The Skeleton of what she once had bin;
So lean and wretched did the Daemon shew:
Her Locks with Filth so clotted, she appears
A Fury, hung with Snakes, instead of Hairs.

Plain was her Furniture, of homely Wood;
And mean, and squallid, was her whole Attire;
Some far-fetch'd Roots and Water were her Food,
And Furz of Heaths the Fewel of her Fire.
On Earthen Lamp twice Twenty Glow-worms lay,
Whose spangled Light supplies the want of Day.

By the light of this worm-infested Tiffany lamp, the walls of the cavern are revealed. Verbal cave paintings, 127 stanzas worth, they are inscribed with woes and deprivations.

Two tubes extend from deep within the cave as telephone party lines. Listening through one, the Goddess eavesdrops upon a voice damning poverty and praising wealth. Through the other, she overhears a case praising poverty and cursing wealth. The Goddess is pleased; it's a delightful dirge to her ears. For the rest of us, it's a dreary prospectus perhaps foreshadowing the 2012 U.S. Presidential campaign, class warfare to some, yawning income gap to others.

By journey's end, our intrepid spelunker has encountered the foul agents of poverty and experienced a filthy laundry list of human misery and ills. The tube in praise of poverty (in this context we presume a tin can with string)  has the last word:

Thus spake the Tube: When lo! on Eastern Cloud,
That sullenly receiv'd her early Light,
The chearful Rosy-finger'd Morning glow'd;
With Blushes, like a rifled Maid, bedight:
Th' Enamour'd Sun, holding the Nymph in Chase,
O'er her young Beauties shed redoubled Grace.

In short, the sun shines on the noble poor. Those living below the poverty line may appreciate the initial warmth of the sun but for them it shines hard and relentlessly, and they are unlikely to appreciate an upside to sunstroke.

Theobald was not a great poet, and this is not a great poem. One contemporary Tweeted this review: "Here in one bed two shiv'ring sisters lye / The cave of Poverty and Poetry" (Alexander Pope, The Dunciad 1:31-32).

Pope and Theobald were arch enemies. Theobald, if not a worthy poet did, however, evolve into one of the great editors of Shakespeare. In 1726, he published Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published. Pope was not pleased, hence the wisecrack in The Dunciad two years later.

It is ironic, and to this eye just plain weird, that this copy of Theobald's paean to poverty is elegantly bound in a rich Art Nouveau binding by Alfred De Sauty.

"Alfred de Sauty (1870-1949) was a bookbinder who produced tooled bindings of exceptional delicacy. De Sauty was active in London from approximately 1898 to 1923 and in Chicago from 1923 to 1935. His finest work is thought to be have been accomplished between 1905 and 1914. Many aspects of his life are poorly documented. For instance, scholars are unsure whether, when in London, de Sauty worked independently, for the firm of Riviere & Sons, or both. While in London, he may also have been a designer for the Hampstead Bindery and a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. When he lived in Chicago, de Sauty worked for the hand bindery of R. R. Donnelley & Sons. He signed his work at the foot of the front doublure, if present, and at the center of the bottom turn-in of the front upper board, if not. Works he produced in London are signed "de S" or "De Sauty." Works he produced in Chicago are signed with his employer's name, 'R. R. Donnelly'" (Bound in Intrigue, Harvard Botany Libraries Online Exhibit).

It's as if Theobald consulted with a binder to find the perfect design to capture the patronizing spirit of noblesse oblige.

A truly appropriate binding for The Cave of Poverty might be cataloged as, Contemporary full mouldering and mildewed crushed and trampled upon morocco from a goat that died of starvation for want of food stamps, ruled in blind by the blind, with elaborate excuses in faux gilt, raised hackles, spine compartments as run-down, over-crowded, and pestilential tenements. All edges lead.

__________

THEOBALD, Lewis. The Cave of Poverty, A Poem. Written in Imitation of Shakespeare.  London: Printed for Jonas Browne at the Black Swan...and Sold by J. Roberts..., 1715.

First (only) Edition. Octavo (7 5/8 x 4 1/2 in; 193 x 115 mm). [8], 48 pp. Woodcut head- tailpieces, initials.

In an elegant Art Nouveau binding, c. 1905-1910, by Alfred de Sauty (stamp-signed to upper turn-in) in full emerald morocco with a central panel of inlaid red morocco tulips, dark green morocco leaves, and vines outlined in black, repeated on the rear board. Dual gilt fillet borders. All edges gilt. Gilt ruled turn-ins. Raised bands. Gilt ruled compartments with inlaid dark green morocco leaves. Gilt rolled edges.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books with the exception of the titlepage to Shakespeare Restored, which is courtesy of Terry A. Gray of Palomar College. Our thanks to both.

__________
__________

The Battle of the Books (and Other Nocturnal Emissions)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Until recently, I would, from time to time, awaken in the middle of the night to a murmured commotion emanating from the living room. Not unlike the sound of whispering children engrossed in play, the music of merriment would waft into my bedroom like dancing notes adrift upon a zephyr.

Clad in only a knee-length nightshirt and long pajama cap with fuzzy ball at its tail, I would silently ease out of bed, light a candle, and, like Ebenezer Scrooge on recon for Christmas ghosts, cautiously, with no little trepidation, make my way to the living room, concealing myself at the doorway so I could espy the goings on without being caught.

And what did I see? All of my books all over the place, relaxed, with their jackets off, refugees from confinement on the shelves, and mingling, working the room, chit-chatting with other volumes, gossiping, laughing, having a bookishly good time. Over to the right, for instance, Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential is whispering to Jane Eyre and Jane appears abashed; a liaison dangereuse is obviously taking place, for sure, and here’s hoping that Jane has protection - and not from Mickey Cohen or a USC-type Trojan. Near the curtains, a copy of David Ebin’s The Drug Experience is huffing a bottle of leather dressing for the fumes that refresh. The Story of O, A Man With a Maid, and Lolita are behind the couch and the less said the better.

Joseph Forshaw’s classic, Parrots of the World, is mimicking every word that Leaves of Grass is reciting; Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is talking money with Chernow’s John D. Rockefeller, the two marveling that they have a friend in common; Barry Paris’ Louise Brooks is closer-than-this in confab with Lee Server’s Ava Gardner and who wouldn’t want to be the text block between either of those alluring covers?; Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York is on the lam and out of control; and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is desperately trying to escape.

Last week, however, I awoke to a clamor. Throwing fears aside I dashed into the living room only to find that all my books had gone berserk, were at each other’s throats, rending dust jackets to shreds, cracking joints, throwing spines out of alignment, deckling edges, springing signatures, dislocating shoulder notes, rubbing each other the wrong way, and generally causing mayhem where merriment once reigned.

The Battle of the Books  (1704).

I took a picture with my new digital camera with software that auto-adjusts the snapped image  so it appears as a vintage engraving (see above). While I futzed with the hi-tech Kodak, a crew of mercenary knights on horseback charged in, further thickening the plot, which had now sickened into a sanguinary battle of the books. The blood ran like ink; it was not a pretty sight. And I swear I saw a  mounted horse, flying. Don't ask about the flying chick blowin' Miles' So What.

Curiously, Jonathan Swift had written about this Verdun of the volumes way back in 1704, part of the prolegomena to his satire, A Tale of the Tub, the author's first published work. He saw it as a battle between ancient and modern books in St. James Library, which was very kind of him; I’m no saint, my name ain’t James, and if my collection of books qualifies as a library then libraries are in even worse shape than reported.

Authors and ideas go toe-to-toe, and the entire tableau is worthy of a segment on Oprah, with members her book club, viciously and without conscience or care for the consequences (no free car!), throwing tomes at each other. The psychopathology of book love/hate is now recognized and bibliopath has entered the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) as a standard axis sub-sub-category.

Then the doctor switched my meds. Swift relief was not, alas, forthcoming; the next night I awoke to the reason why my mother routinely lights a match for no obvious reason and Beano was invented.

Attributed to Jonathan Swift.

I went into the living room and for the next hour was transfixed while Jonathan Swift explained the benefits of the wind in the intestinal willows, or the fundament-all cause of the distempers incidental to the fair sex enquired into, proving, a posteriori, once and for all, that most of the disorders in tail’d upon them, are owing to flatulence not seasonably vented. When he finished reading from his book of no ifs, ands, yet butts I felt like I might explode.

'Next morning I called my proctologist. He moonlights as a chimney sweep. My flue swept and thoroughly vented, I slept like a baby that night, which is to say I woke up  four times, crying, hungry, and with a diaper-full.

On the positive side, I no longer awaken in the wee hours with books in the belfry. The meds passed the brain-book barrier, now my books sleep through the night and the bibliographical soap opera that once broadcast while I slumbered has, evidently, been canceled, along with All My Children, One Life To Live, and, due to budget cuts, Reference Desk, the daily serial that ripped the curtain off the scandals, sensations,  raw passions, and illicit desires within a deceptively tranquil suburban library in Liberty Valley, USA, a nice place to raise the kids the American way.

__________

__________