Morning Read: Pals

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¶ You may have noticed that Melville’s name never comes up when the great funny writers of the past are spoken of. It’s not, perhaps, from want of trying on the writer’s part.

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, from let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

The language of the Standard Version — or whatever version of Scripture in which New Englanders marinated themselves — doesn’t appear to have been cut out for capers.

¶ It is impossible not to think of Jesus telling the tale of the Good Samaritan while reading of Don Quixote’s rescue by his neighbor, Pedro Alonso. The Good Samaritan, moreover, didn’t have to put up with a lot of hooey about the Marquis of Mantua and Rodrigo de Narváez. Don Quixote continues raving at home, where the local priest decides that a public burning of his library is in order. We shall have to see what comes of that!

¶ In After the Victorians, a chapter on amorous irregularities, from Edward VII and Mrs Keppel to Dr Crippen and Ethel LeNeve, with an agreeable ostinato of clucking by Beatrice Webb:

He declares that Bertrand Russel is a gentleman and H G [Wells] a cad, which is hardly relevant if it is sexual morality which is to be the test.

¶ In Squillions (Noël Coward’s Letters), a legal-looking document is reproduced: the “Rules of Palship Between Esmé Wynne and Noël Coward.”

15. If any other rules are formed or thought of, they must be added (with the consent of both) at the end of this document.

16. NO OTHER PERSON may be admitted into our PALSHIP or SECRETS.