Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward

To his loved ones who gathered about him as he lay on his deathbed in 1833, actor Edmund Kean famously said, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

With this adage mind, author Paul Johnson might well want to write about dying next time.

In Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward, Johnson writes about humor not so much as if he were defining it or exploring the ins and outs of it, but as if he were trying to figure out for himself just what the hell it is. Or if, indeed, it exists at all.

To back up a moment before we rush to judgment, it should be noted that Paul Johnson is a noted British historian whose previous works Intellectuals and Creators and Heroes laid the groundwork for the present volume. In each, Johnson offers biographical portraits of those who he personally most identifies with his titular topic. Of them Johnson writes, “The gallery I have assembled in this book is a strange collection of geniuses, worldly failures, drunks, misfits, cripples and gifted idiots. They had in common only the desire, and the ability, to make large numbers of people laugh.”

And, in putting this new edition into the context of past works, he concludes, “In this series of books collecting together intellectuals, creators, and heroes, I reckon the comics are the most valuable.” And the reader, reading this, thinks, “We shall see. We shall see.”

With Johnson’s claim that he has gathered together a “strange collection” the reader heartily agrees. As to the rest, that “genius” part and the part about desiring “to make large numbers of people laugh,” well, the reader has more than a shadow of a doubt. Take for instance, the quote by G. K. Chesterton: “I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course I have an ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I said it.” Not the words of someone who seems infused with the idea of making “large number of people laugh.” Indeed, Chesterton would have more likely attempted to literally scare the hell out of them by leading them to forced Catholic conversion, than make them laugh.

An odd thing about the book Humorists is the people selected to represent the type. Hogarth? Toulouse-Lautrec? (About him, Johnson writes, “What is funny about Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)? And what is funny about his work? These are interesting but difficult questions.” Would that we, in the chapter dedicated to the artist, were given an actual answer to either.)

Some choices seem less odd, only a bit dated. Noel Coward, for instance. Most definitely a humorist. One worthy of study. About him, Johnson writes, “It is a matter of dispute who was the greatest humorist on the English scene in the twentieth century, but Noel Coward was, and is, a strong contender for the title, not least because he lived and wrote for so much of it, and because he made memorable jokes in private conversation as well as for public performance.” In acknowledging Coward as such, Johnson briefly endears.

But, oh, the other choices: Nancy Mitford? She of the “U” and “non-U” speech as identifiers of the upper class? Surely even her sisters (think: British Kardashians of the early 20th century) would disagree. And Charles Dickens, humorist? And the proof? The Pickwick Papers but little more.

There are moments in which Johnson gives an observation that intrigues. For instance, that it was Dickens who invented the concept of the running gag in his novels in which characters were given a single characteristic that was used again and again in the narrative. Or that Benjamin Franklin should be credited with the invention of the one-liner, and that his Poor Richard’s Almanac was perhaps the first example of what Gawker would today refer to as snark.

All well and good, as is the fact that Johnson gives James Thurber his due as a leading humorist of his day, even if Dorothy Parker referred to the human figures in his cartoon drawings as “unbaked cookies.” (And would that Johnson had seen fit to give Parker a chapter of her own, rather than have her weave in and out of those featuring other, lesser lights.)

But the issue here has to do even more with the Johnson’s exploration of his topic than it does with his idiosyncratic casting. Humorists is, at once, both too weighty a thing and too flimsy a document. In apparently attempting to trap the idea of humor in amber (the reader still thinks this might have been what he was attempting to do, but cannot be quite sure), Johnson has created a book that, while weighing in as it does at a mere 200 odd pages, is a very slow go. A torturous thing. And, at the same time, it fails to dig deeply enough to uncover that which it promises to and find the thing inside this group of misfits that links them, that drives them, and us through them, to laughter.

As such, the book itself embodies the oldest of Catskill jokes. The two elderly ladies who sit side by side at dinnertime. One complains that the food is so very, very bad. The other responds, “Yes, and what small portions!” Humorists is a book that the reader finishes with a sigh and hopes that there is something better waiting in the pile on the bedside table.

Like pornography, humor may well be something that we can never truly define, but it is most definitely something that we recognize immediately when we see it. In the same way, we tend to spot our humorists easily. Johnson, instead of turning to the obvious, seems determined to instead ascribe what Coward called “a talent to amuse” to some very odd people indeed.

And, sadly, it seems that humor and humorists died off with Coward. Perhaps it’s because he is a historian by trade, but Johnson seems unaware of the Fran Lebowitzes of our day, or of the work of comics like Richard Pryor or of the social commentary of Stephen Colbert.

Maybe it is Johnson’s belief that all the humor got sucked out of the world during World War II, or perhaps he subscribes to Noel Coward’s lyrics that were written now well over half a century ago, the words with which Johnson brings his laborious book to an end:

“There are bad times just around the corner.
We can all look forward to despair.
It’s as clear as crystal
From Birmingham to Bristol
That we can’t save democracy
And we don’t much care.”