Persistent Humor

Why Stephen Leacock is Not Yet Out of Style

The humorist is usually a passing fancy with the public. His brand of wit catches the popular eye, holds it for a space, then is forgotten, as a new humorist comes along with a new method of twisting his phrases, of rolling his tongue or of winking his eye. Stephen Leacock's popularity has lasted longer than most. From Literary Lapses to My Discovery of England his books have been funny with a certain consistency. Canadian by birth, professor of political economy by profession, a raconteur who has only one equal in my experience [Irvin Cobb], he is a solid, jolly, gloom- defying gentleman. Ruddy of countenance, with hair slightly graying and usually rumpled, a bristly mustache, large shoulders and a stocky trunk, he talks positively and punctuates his conversation with loud and infectious laughter.

Leacock and his friends are loyal Canadians. During the past two years, they have built up a Canadian Authors' Association which, starting originally to protect copyrights, has developed into a pleasant social organization, and one which takes a great interest in book propaganda. To their efforts must be credited the original success of the delightful Maria Chapdelaine. It was a relief, the other day, to sit down with Mr. Leacock and some of his cronies in Montreal. A relief, because one no longer heard talk of Sherwood Anderson or of T. S. Eliot, of this modern literary quarrel, or of that new play; but Colonel George H. Ham, another Canadian humorist, told of good old colonization days in Winnipeg and points west. Literary talk was of Mark Twain, Dickens, Meredith.

Colonel Ham, a white-haired enthusiast, warmed to reminiscences of Mark Twain, broken in his latter days, but still blessed with a sense of humor, and of Dickens' son, Charles, for a time in the Canadian Northwest mounted police. " I never mentioned his father to him," Colonel Ham told us, "and he was so surprised and pleased that he actually liked me." At this point Stephen Leacock broke in, violently. "I'd rather have met a relative of Dickens' than any crowned head in Europe," he insisted. Dickens, it seems, is his literary god. Shakespeare? Oh, yes? Well and good-- but Dickens! Why? For the reason that the humor of Stephen Leacock persists because it is based on a deep understanding of the human mind and a sympathy for human frailty. If only more of our present day writers would turn their attention to the picturing of individual characters and spend some time in abstract analysis of character, we should have more real literature.

J.F.