Wagner As a Humorist

1903

How the Master Responded to a London Critic's Suggestion

Richard Wagner was not a man to whom one would naturally ascribe the faculty of ready joking. It is not from the creator of the serious, somber "Flying Dutchman" or the composer of the half mystical, half religious, opera "Parsifal" that one would expect cheerful pranks at the expense of other people. Nevertheless an instance is on record of how the great tone painter of Baireuth played a very funny trick on a newspaper and probably a good many of the readers accustomed to relying on what it said. It was in the fifties. Wagner, then still climbing the ladder of fame, was conducting the Philharmonic concerts in the British metropolis for a season.

Being, as he remained to the end, a very ardent admirer of Beethoven and, in fact, knowing that master's nine symphonies by heart, he selected several of them for performance in the said series of concerts. The first time, then, that Wagner conducted a Beethoven symphony in London the public received the rendition kindly enough, but the next morning a certain newspaper with a very large circulation came out with a rather severe criticism. The author of "Lohengrin" was in cold print but in unreserved terms scolded for directing a symphony by the immortal Beethoven without the score in front of him. Such a proceeding, to which London was unaccustomed, was sheer presumption, so ran the criticism, and, after further uncomplimentary remarks, the great and influential journal advised young Heir Wagner to use a score when he conducted a Beethoven symphony again.

Well, soon Herr Wagner did, this time with a book of music before him on the desk. He was seen to turn over the leaves with a certain amount of regularity too. His reward came the next day in the form of a commendatory article in the aforesaid newspaper which praised him for a very much better interpretation of Beethoven than his last, due, of course, to the suggested use of the score, whereupon Wagner announced the fact that the score in front of him the previous evening was that of Rossini's opera, "The Barber of Seville," turned upside down. — Collier's Weekly.

First Money Mark Twain Earned

1906

Marshall P. Wilder, in his book entitled The Sunny Side of the Street, says that he once asked Mark Twain if he could remember the first money he had ever earned.

"Yes," replied the famous humorist, "it was at school. There was a rule in our school that any boy marring his desk either with pencil or knife, would he chastised publicly before the whole school or pay a fine of $5.

"One day I had to tell my father that I had broken the rule, and had to pay a fine or take a public whipping, and he said:

" 'Sam, it would be too bad to have the name of Clemens disgraced before the whole school, so I'll pay the fine. But I don't want you to lose anything, so come upstairs.'

"I went upstairs with father and came down again feeling a tender spot with one hand and $5 in the other, and decided that as I had been punished once and got used to it, I wouldn't mind taking the other licking at school. So I did, and I kept the $5."

Humor Best That Seems to Happen By Itself

1901

UNCONSCIOUS HUMOR BEST

It Gives a Charm Which is Not Found In the Manufactured Article

One characteristic of the finest humor, touched on already, we must come back to: the quality of unconsciousness, says Charles Johnston in the February Atlantic.

Neither Bret Harte nor Mark Twain, when they wrote of the Luck, of M'liss, of Captain Ned Blakely, of Buck Fanshaw and Scotty Briggs, had any idea how great they were, or even that they were great at all; they never dreamt that these sketches for the local journal would outlive the week that saw their birth, and at last make the circuit of the world, becoming a part of the permanent wealth of man. That gives these stories their inimitable charm. There is none of the striving of the funny man in what belongs to that first period, no setting of traps for our admiration. This is the same as saying that there is none of that instinct of egotism which prompts a man to laugh at his fellow, to show how much wiser and cleverer be himself is. It is all free, generous, and bountiful as the sunshine of the land where it was conceived, full of the spontaneous life of nature herself.


The Definition of a Joke

How You Are to Know One When You See It, Explained By Charles Johnston

What is a joke? And how are you to know one if you see it? asks Charles Johnston in the February Atlantic. My justification for this wanton malice is that I think I have discovered the charm to lay these haunting presences to rest; that I have in some sort discovered the true inwardness of humor, and even been able to draw the shadowy line dividing it from wit.

Here is a story which seems to me to come close to the heart of the secret. The scene is laid in the Wild and Wooly West. A mustang has been stolen, a claim jumped, or a poker pack found to contain more right and left bowers than an Arctic brig; and swift Nemesis has descended in the form of Manila hemp. The time has come to break the news to the family of the deceased. A deputation goes ahead, and the leader knocks at the door of the bereaved homestead, asking, "Does Widow Smith live here?"

A stout and cheerful person replies, "I'm Mrs. Smith, but I ain't no widow!"

The deputation answers: "Bet you a dollar you are! But you've got the laugh on us, just the same, for we've lynched the wrong man."

That story is irresistible. It is as full of sardonic fire as anything in all literature, but you would hardly call it humor. It seems to me to lie so directly on the border line that we may use it as a landmark.