DOHSS, IIT MADRAS

Humorous Prose in the Romantic Period

1798-1832

AJU BASIL JAMES HS09H001

This paper tracks the history of humorous prose in the Romantic period, from 1798 to 1832. The paper focuses on the contributions made by major authors during the period and the evolution in style and structure of humorous prose during this period.

Introduction
The term Romantic Period is bound to invoke images of romantic poets penning lyrics on the rural idyll. Wordsworth, Keats et al waxing poetic on sleepy hamlets which modern progress could never aspire to touch, where the church was Norman and the intelligence of the majority Palaeozoic, as Wodehouse would say, is rightly the cover page of a bit more than thirty years, from 1798 to 1832. However, there was more to this period than Daffodils and Ode on Melancholy. Importantly, several writers of the English language refused to be swept away by the fad of describing the rolling fields and babbling brooks. Writers recognised that, fine as writing poetry was, prose, and humorous prose at that, had a significant market in the British Isles. The novel, which emerged as a serious form of writing in the Pre-Romantic Period had entrenched itself in the English literary scene. It was the novel that served as the main chariot of humour in the English language. However, letters, essays and other short pieces too found sufficient readership to survive in a literary scene dominated by verse. By the Romantic period, the novel had established itself as the chief instrument of artistic expression in prose and the best shot for any kind of success for the prose writer. Thus, all those who were not moved by the divine fire and could not rhyme love with dove and June with moon took to writing novels. However, it was not only minor names who ventured into humorous prose. Some of the heavyweights of the Romantic period, the best of poets and prose writers had their lighter moments and showed no qualms in penning them down. Keats, Scott, Southey, to name three, found joy in scribbling a few funny pieces when they grew tired of pandering to the ruling monarch or flogging the dead horse called the rural idyll. Humour has been a part of British literature right from the days of William Caxton, the first British printer. It adapted itself through the times and catered to the reading members of the society in its own way. However, the rise of the novel can be said to be the single biggest development that truly put humorous prose on the literary map. While early humorous prose was content to occupy the margins and never really come out to rub shoulders with serious literature, the novel gave this genre an opportunity like never before. The fact that the novel originated in the Pre-Romantic period and came to full bloom in the Romantic period is what makes humorous prose of this era special. For the first time, humour had asked to be taken seriously. This paper attempts to track the progress of humorous prose through the Romantic period in a chronological fashion, from the last two decades of the eighteenth century to the first four of the nineteenth. A few writers included in this paper are exceedingly minor in stature, especially in reference to the canon. However, they are important in the context of this paper and many of them made significant contributions to the development of the novel, still seen in those days by the high and the mighty as being inferior to poetry. Adding weight and perhaps credibility in the eyes of the canon conservatives are the more prominent names of the Romantic period such as John Keats and Sir Walter Scott.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a literary phenomenon occurred: the rise and rapid predominance of women novelists. Of course, there have always been women who wrote. Ranging from Mrs. Aphra Ben during the reign of King Charles II to Mrs. Radcliffe who plied her trade in the Pre-Romantic Period and from the blue stocking essayists like Mrs Chapone and Mrs Montagu to poets like Anna Seward, the English literary scene always had its share of the fairer sex. But the novel had long been a masculine domain, much concerned with adventure, low-life, bawdiness (if only to point to a moral), villainy and other un-ladylike pursuits. There was not much a female novelist could write about without sacrificing propriety. However, the material of the social fabric was slowly but surely changing during these times, especially with regard to marriage. Arranged marriages were increasingly on the wane and more and more young people were falling in love and getting married. Arranged marriages, real estate mergers under the cover of the covenant, still happened but a trend against this was forming. The dream was to fall in love and to have the love returned. However, the path of a young woman waiting to fall in love was beset on all sides by iniquities of the selfish and tyranny of mischievous young men. Her reputation was vital to her if she was to make a good match. Unfortunately, reputation is a fickle mistress and could desert the team in a moment, not only by some indiscretion but even by sheer accident. Here at last was something to write about, something that would truly reflect the society and the times and could be put down on paper in so many words without having to stoop to conquer. And who better to write about the excitements and alarums of courtship than a woman? Jane Austen is the name that jumps out of history books and plants itself in your psyche every time someone talks about women writers. Jane Austen was not reluctant to add the occasional humorous passage in her novels and her novels have lived through the vagaries of time, in all its original glory. However, there were other authors too writing on pretty much the same topics and dedicated to springing the odd chuckle. One such author was Fanny Burney. Fanny Burney, like many other young ladies of well to do families was self-educated, rigorously trained in propriety and the art of being a lady and exceedingly genteel. Having read many novels of those times, she decided that she would write one for her amusement. Her father, like the majority of men of those times, thought that novels were a waste of time and so Fanny wrote in secret. Her first novel was Evelina, or a Young Ladys Entrance into the World which, many modern critics argue, is her only readable novel. The novel was a huge success when published and was admired by Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and many other prominent writers of the time. Fanny Burney went on to write a few other equally successful novels but most of them are virtually unreadable today. Fanny Burney may have been limited in her talent but the contribution which she made to the development of the lightly humorous novel is immense. The praise lavished by Johnson and others might surprise the modern reader, who would be prone to dismiss it as Light Love, but at that time Evelina was highly original. It was the first novel of social life on a small scale; of manners, of a girl in love and of class discrimination among the middle class. Fanny Burneys novels deeply affected the work of later women novelists, particularly Jane Austen.

The rise of the woman novelist and the novel of manners reached its peak with Jane Austen. Virginia Woolf, a famous admirer, once wrote that of all the great novelists, Austen was the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness. It could also be said that of all the great humourists, Jane Austen is as difficult as any to catch in the act of being funny. Her humour pervades almost all of her writing. It was not concentrated on a few passages, through comical characters or through the sort of near farcical predicaments in which writers like Fanny Burney put their characters through. Austens humour lies in her tone of voice, choice of words, her descriptions of people and events and above all, the cool and detached irony she brought to her prose. Her novels are suffused with irony, in description and in the act of telling the tale. Here is a passage from her novel Sense and Sensibility, in which Lady Middleton is cross at her husband for inviting two girl cousins to his home without consulting with her. As it was impossible, however, not to prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it with all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times a day. The famous opening lines of Austens Pride and Prejudice which proclaims It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife truly underlines the brand of humour Austen espoused. The ladies and gentlemen who people the novels of Jane Austen were introduced to the reader succinctly and vividly, in a most telling fashion. Using a literary technique known as the sketch, Austen would paint with precise brush strokes, giving the reader enough to go by but leaving her wanting more and hiding more than it revealed. Austens eye for this telling detail and her gift for the swift destructive phrase were not assumed for the purpose of writing. It was something that was part and parcel of her personality and it can be seen aplenty in her correspondence with her sister Cassandra. Her letters describe several people whom the Austens knew and can seldom be distinguished from her novels for the sheer wit. He seems a very harmless sort of young Man- nothing to like or dislike in him;- goes out shooting and hunting with the two others all the morning- and plays at whist and making queer faces in the evening. Austen was adept at calling it as she saw it without making it too obvious and without sounding like a revolutionary anarchist. The power she wielded over the language to so accurately paint infamous images of classism and hypocrisy was unique at that time. During Austens time, novels were still considered rubbish and trivial and were available only in circulating libraries. These establishments soon became the well to do ladies equivalent of the male coffee house, where genteel ladies could gather to read, gossip and exchange scandals. The majority of new novel readers were women and perhaps it was because Jane Austen knew that most of her readers would understand from their own experience what she was getting at that she was able to write about feminine behaviour and emotions with such unprecedented subtlety.

Another woman who wrote and who was hugely popular was Maria Edgeworth. Edgeworths early literary efforts were more melodramatic rather than anything else. She wrote a lot of childrens books but what brought her fame and fortune were her novels, all set in her native Ireland. Maria Edgeworth was lucky that her father was an author too and he encouraged his daughter to pursue her ambition of being a writer, much to the astonishment of the 19th century society around them. Her first novel was Castle Rackrent, published anonymously in 1800. It was an immediate success and established Maria Edgeworth as a name to be reckoned with. Importantly, Edgeworth wrote about Ireland and its past and these inspired Sir Walter Scott to try writing about the past of his own native heath. Edgeworth was perhaps the first major regional novelist and definitely the first to point out the essential Irishness of the Irish. Her work was highly regarded and had its share of humorous moments. Perhaps her funniest novel is Ennui, written in 1809. Her other humorous works include Letters for Literary Ladies and An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification, both collection of essays aimed at and written about women in society, much in vogue with other women writers of the time. Edgeworth beautifully brought out the Irish accent and the Irish style of speaking in her novels. Her novel Ennui, for example, talks about the effects of unrestrained Irishness on the non-Irish traveller, a rather haughty English milord, stricken with mal du sicle. The Englishman attempts to add some variety to his life by travelling across Ireland but is befuddled by the ways of the Irish. Her novels are indeed a glossary of some delightful words to be found only in the Irish country side. No one outside that region would ever be able to divine what any of those mean but they are a sure joy to read. The Romantic interest in regional literature quickly spread from Ireland to Scotland. In 1814, Sir Walter Scott published Waverley, a novel about the Scottish Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Scott freely acknowledged that the inspiration to write a novel about Scotland and Scots came from Maria Edgeworths success in writing about Ireland. After Waverley, Scott published a rapid succession of novels about Auld Scotland and the success of these initiated a new kind of literature- the Romantic historical novel. Scott virtually created the modern historical novel and in doing so also more or less invented Bonnie Scotland. Although Scotts novels were usually drawn on a huge canvas with priority afforded to action and emotion- what he called my big bow-wow strain- some of his minor character were well drawn and had much scope for humour. One such character is Meg Dods, the inn keeper in Scotts St. Ronans Well, a practitioner of the fine old Scottish love for vituperation. And sae the jig was begun after her leddyships pipe, and mony a mad measure has been danced sisyne; for her down cam masons and murgeon-makers, and preachers and playerfolk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and fiddlers, and Papists and pie bakers, and doctors and drugsters; by the shopfolk, that sell trash and trumpery at three prices- and so got up the new Well, and down fell honest auld town St. Ronans, where blythe decent folk had been heartsome eheugh for ony a day before ony o them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled in their cracked brains.

The poet Robert Southey was placed in the pantheon of first generation Romantic poets, along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, during the eighteenth century. But since those days, his fame and popularity have plunged faster than a hungry kingfisher. Today, he is the least read of the Lake poets. Almost the whole of his work is touched by blight, as Monsieur Louis Cazamian says. Robert Southey was offered the editorship of The Times at 2000 pounds a year but he refused the honour, although he later accepted the position of Poet Laureate for an annual sum equal to the value of 42 gallons of canary wine. Southey was not only a poet but also a bookman of the old school, a tireless reader and a voluminous writer of dramas, translations, reviews, biographies and histories. The heaviest burden laid upon the Poet Laureate was to produce two patriotic odes a year, to celebrate the New Year and the monarchs birthday. These odes inevitably turned out to be pompous and boring and are now possibly the most tedious body of poetry in the language. But Southey could write humorously when there was a place for it. Between 1834 and 1838 he published anonymously five volumes of a miscellany which he called The Doctor and two more volumes were published posthumously. This work was a collection of his own pieces on random subjects together with anecdotes and little stories, loosely held together in close imitation of Tristram Shandy, by a Shandy-like Dr. Dove and family. The book was a treasure trove of stories, many of which in more modern forms exist to this very day. The book enjoyed much circulation and was especially popular as a book most families had in their cupboards. Parents used many of Southeys stories to keep the tears away from the cheeks of their infants, a particularly famous one being the story of three bears. Most of these stories existed as fairy tales or folk tales and Southey merely had to compile them in one publication. However, Southeys own contribution to this book ranged in style from dazzling erudition to fugitive humorous essays, some of which seem astonishingly modern. One of Southeys favourite themes in his pieces of a humorous bend was the inherent gender of words. To him in the early nineteenth century, it was merely an amusing conceit. But two hundred years later, Southeys little joke is taken seriously by zealous feminists. Southey harped on how most words are designed for the male subject and how odd they sounded, to someone who could be interested in such matters, in a society in which women were increasingly assuming prominence. Here is an excerpt from The Doctor. The troublesome affection of the diaphragm, which every person has experienced, is upon the same principle to be called according to the sex of the person. Hecups and Shecups, which upon the principle of making our language truly British is better than the more classical form of Hiccups and Haecups. In its objective use, the words become hiscups and hercups. Similarly, the word hysterics should be modified to herterics, the complaint never being masculine.

John Keats, like Southey and other favoured poets of the Romantic era, did not write poetry to amuse, but writing letters was another matter. Keats had a gift for friendship and the warmth of his relationship with friends and his siblings was expressed in the long letters which he, like Mozart, dashed off at a great speed to tell them everything he was doing and thinking. The letters sparkled with puns and humorous observations. Unlike many literary and artistic geniuses, Keats had a genuine love for mankind and he gushed forth in his affection for the people he knew. His heart was full of the milk of human kindness and bowels of compassion, he possessed many. Keats older brother had married and then sailed to America in an attempt to strike a fortune. Keats wrote affectionate letters across the Atlantic to his sister in law, enquiring upon the hardships a woman was bound to face in the unrestrained terrains of the New World. Keats wrote to his brother and sister in law (whom he called sister) jointly, stocking up letters until he had a packet big enough to ship. Knowing the difficulties the couple could be facing in an alien land, Keats put aside his own troubles- the death of his brother Tom, his own health and the hostile reception to the Endymion- to cheer up George and Georgina. His letters to them are filled with wild, humorous guesses as to what life would be like a in a newfound land, a place Keats imagined with all English pompousness to be uncivilised and quite the wilderness. In July 1818, after the publication of Endymion, Keats went on a tour of the north of England and Scotland, scribbling exuberant letters home, even after tramping twenty miles a day. His thoughts poured out too swiftly for him to bother with such literary niceties such as punctuation and spelling. Here is his account of seeing for the first time the dance known as the Highland Fling. July 1st- we are this morning at Carlisle- After Skiddaw, we walked to Ireby, the odlest market town in Cumberland and where we were greatly amused by a country dancing school, holden at the Sun, it was indeed no new cotillion fresh from France. No they kickit and jumpit with mettle extraordinary, and whiskit, and fleckit, and toedit, and godit, and twirldit, and wheeldit, and stampt it and sweatd it, tattooing the floor like mad: The differenc [sic] between our country dances and these scotch figures, is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup o Tea and beating up a batter pudding.

Another unlikely writer of amusing nonsense was the poet and translator of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald. He was a minor poet but his personal charm attracted the bigger names in poetry of the time, including Tennyson, Thackeray and Carlyle among others. Fitzgerald kept up a steady correspondence with his distinguished friends and they benefited from many a thoughtful Fitzgerald observation. Fitzgerald was adept at searching for the odd and funny in appearances of people and he exploited this technique to full benefit. His description of Handels wig is famous and many more of the high and mighty have been at the receiving end. Fitzgerald was a semi-recluse, living the quiet life in the country and pottering about in boats. His friend Spedding wrote of him, Edward Fitzgerald is the Prince of Quietists..

His tranquillity is like the pirated copy of the peace of God. Fitzgerald retorted with a piece on Spedding, or rather, on Speddings magnificently domed head. . Not swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at such an altitude.. Affectionate mocking of a friends physical appearance is one thing, but Thomas De Quinceys description of William Wordsworth had more of a bite to it. De Quincey had been friendly with Wordsworth for some time but fell out with the great man over some real or imagined slight. It does not take much to tick off some of these minor poets. In an essay, De Quincey sought revenge by drawing a pen picture of his ex-friend on a Nature Ramble. Wordsworth was not an exceptionally well built man and had his share of physical deficiencies. De Quincey caught on to every difference he could find between Wordsworth and Michelangelos David and laid them bare for all to see. De Quincey spends a major part of this piece on vitriolic description of Wordsworths legs (it was really a pity, as I agreed with a lady in thinking, that he had not another pair for evening dress parties) and then on the Lake poets bust (there was a narrowness and a droop about the shoulders which became striking, and had an effect of meanness when brought into close juxtaposition with a figure of a most statuesque order). He ends the piece, a part of Recollections of the Lakes and Lake Poets (1840), thus: But the total effect of Wordsworths person was always worst in a state of motion; for according to the remark I have heard from many country people, he walked like a cade- a cade being some sort of insect which advances by an oblique motion. This was not always perceptible, and in parts depended (I believe) upon the position of his arms; when either of these happened (as was very customary) to be inserted into the unbuttoned waistcoat, his walk had a wry or twisted appearance; and not appearance only- for I have known it, by slow degrees, gradually to edge off his companion from the middle to the side of the highroad. There is a story that when Charles Lamb was very young his sister took him for a walk through a cemetery. Even at a young age, Lamb was a voracious reader and he took to reading every epitaph on the field. On the way out, he asked his sister where are all the naughty people buried? Whether the story is true or not does not really matter because like all good anecdotes it illuminates the subject and suggests the originality of mind, the common sense and the powers of observation which made Charles Lambs brand of humour so particular. Thomas Carlyle once visited lamb at the latters residence. Carlyle, at 34, was a serious minded young proponent of Man as Hero. Lamb was 56, a retired clerk making a living by writing the occasional piece for periodicals. In an effort to entertain his austere guest, Lamb remarked that there are just two things I regret n Englands history: first that Guy Fawkes plot did not take effect, there would have been so glorious an explosion; second, that the Royalists did not hang Milton, then we might have laughed at them. Carlyle was not at all the right audience for Lambs humour. He went back and wrote of the meeting, Charles

Lamb, I sincerely believe, to be in some considerable degree insane. A more pitiful, rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering Tom-fool I do not know. Besides, he is now confined, shameless drunkard.. Poor Lamb! Poor England, when such a despicable abortion is named a genius. Strong stuff, even for a period in which criticism was almost always personal and vitriolic, but a certain amount of truth may have lain beneath the venom. The Lamb family history was rife with instances of insanity. His sister murdered their mother in a fit and Charles lamb himself spent some time in a sanatorium. He had an ugly stammer, smoked too much and drank even more. Lamb was on the brink of poverty for most of his life and his career as a writer did not earn him much. Much of his writing was not appreciated during his lifetime and never even received royalties which he earned. Yet, he was loved by a huge circle of friends which included luminaries such as Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. He was liked for his charm, loyalty, lack of self-pity and of course, for his humour. None of his difficulties ever led to a wane in his mastery over humorous prose. He confessed to Southey that anything awful made him laugh. He once misbehaved at a funeral and during Hazlitts wedding he laughed so much that he was almost thrown out thrice. Lamb perfected the art of laughing at himself, especially at his infirmities of which he had many. Lamb realised that there was not much point in being melancholic during his only life on account of his difficulties and disabilities and decided to make the best of it. His stutter made it impossible for him to take part in long conversations and so he developed the habit of coming up with witty repartees and one liners. The legend goes that at a party, a lady asked him in all seriousness Mr. Lamb, how do you like babies? to which our man replied B-bboiled, maam. He wrote of himself in a mock autobiography, stammers abominably and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and edifying speeches. But writing was another matter. He could express himself smoothly and lucidly. He could elaborate coherently and could develop a flight of fancy and find the best words for every occasion. In simple, beautiful prose he occupied the upper echelons of literaturedom and in fanciful humour he was the master. Lambs humour was often autobiographical. While De Quincey and others sought to find humour in the deficiencies of others, Lamb turned to his own body for material. Here is a passage from a letter Lamb wrote to a friend, describing his feelings in the umpteenth week of a nasty cold in the head. If you told me the world will end tomorrow, I would just say Will it? I have not volition left to dot my is, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brain has gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields and did not say when it will be back; my skull is a Grub Street attic, to let- not so much as a joint stool or a cracked jordan left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, a chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache- an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs! Pain is life- the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death!

Conclusion
Prose carved out a niche for itself by the end of the Romantic period and established itself almost on par with verse by the middle of the 19th century. Bearing testimony to this assertion is the fact that the era that immediately followed the Romantic era produced some of the greatest novelists the English language has seen, such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot and the Bronte sisters. Great work was done during the Romantic period to paint in the place of the novel in the literary landscape and this served as the foundation for great novelists of the proceeding times. Humorous prose was a vital instrument in popularising the novel. Humour enabled novels to become much more than mere outpourings of grief and melancholy, especially in a time defined by mal du sicle, across England and Europe. In the hands of accomplished authors such as Austen and Scott, humour became an apt tool to portray the pre-Victorian society around them. Humour itself evolved to a better self during the Romantic period. Earlier, when humour was always a handmaid, authors would insert a raucous passage somewhere to alleviate the pathos and provide a foil for the tension in the text. However, in the Romantic era, when authors started taking humour seriously and devoted time to it, they realised the superiority of subtlety, No longer did authors merely rely on outrageously funny anecdotes. Rather, they learned to diffuse humour into their text and give an impression of the text being supported by a grand frame of humour. Masters of this art were definitely Austen, Lamb et al. Humour ensured that prose and novel had large circulation and the writers of this era successfully managed to concoct a mix of humour, pathos and social commentary in their works. In this paper, I have not included many prominent writers of humorous prose of the era, largely due to space constraints. Some of the more famous names not mentioned in this paper include John Galt, who produced minor classics on regional Scottish humour, Mary Russell Mitford, pioneer of essentially middle-class humour and Revd. Sydney Smith, a co-founder of the Edinburgh Review. Charting the development of prose, the Romantic age is perhaps where the foundation was laid. The coming times saw the novel and short story take literature by storm, attaining a golden era, akin to what the Romantic and Victorian eras where for poetry. As Shakespeare wrote, lowliness is young ambitions ladder whereto the climber upwards turns his face. A bunch of great writers, some of them luminaries in other forms of writing, constructed and refurbished the art of writing in prose. Today, when we think of phenomenal writers of humorous prose, one is bound to think of Wodehouse, Thurber, Townsend and Herbert, of the very many. But one must not be found guilty of, to quote the Bard again, looking in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend so. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge and study the origins of humorous prose, especially in the Romantic period, where the first buds of light hearted jesting in prose can be said to have first bloomed.

References
Cazamian, Louis. History of English Literature, Part II. Macmillan, 2009. Muir, Frank. The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose. Oxford University Press, 1990. Keats, John. Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35698 Lamb, Charles. The Best Letters of Charles Lamb. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10125 Southey, Robert. The Doctor. The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections- Literature Collection. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literatureidx?id=Literature.RSouthey5 De Quincy, Thomas. Biographical Essays. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6314 Austen, Jane. The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31100 Scott, Walter, Sir. St. Ronans Well. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20749