British Humour

The British, who have produced great poets and wise realists, have also given birth to countless humorists. Humour is a blend in various proportions, of poetry and common sense. Called by Shakespeare “a jest with a sad brow,” by Thackeray, a combination of “wit and love”, humour escapes and precise definition. It is a compromise between the national and the individual temperament, the undertone of everyday life in Britain, as well as a pervasive, influence in English literature. It implies that we are not slaves of hard facts, but perceive them keenly all the same, and are able to laugh at our own absurdities. It underlines, not unkindly, and always indirectly, the contrast between the real and the ideal world, and thus reconciles us with both.

The English Mind

When an Englishman says: “We are not very clever,” don’t take him too literally. It simply means: “We have no use for rhetoric and brilliant discussion leading nowhere. We stick to facts, use common sense and get results.” That is, indeed, the English way. They shrink from abstraction; loathe general ideas and distrust idle theorizing. “It is better to do a stupid thing which has been done before than an intelligent one which has never been tried,” Lord Balfour once remarked. And his countrymen heartily agreed with him, for tradition founded on human experience is obviously safer than purely intellectual constructions. The English act from instinct, and not from logic. Life, they believe, is far more complex than logic admits.

They have been accused of hypocrisy by strict logicians who see conscious sin where there is only mental disjunction between two attitudes equally sincere. The old gentleman loudly indignant at the Continental’s cruelty to animals quietly maintains that it is fair to run down a fox “because the fox rather enjoys the pursuit”, or to use goats as bait for the panther in India “because it is well established that goats hardly ever suffer (unless they do it for spite).” That’s not hypocrisy. Call it muddle-headedness if you like.

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THE ENGLISH CHARACTER	\|	The Pattern of the Gentleman

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