To mention the unmentionable is increasingly baroque these days
PAUL JOHNSON
This is a most distasteful subject. All genteel readers are asked to turn the page now. Still with me? Right, then. The other day I overheard two women talking at a party. I was not eavesdropping, mind, just staring into the distance when their talk obtruded into my thoughts. One said, 'I couldn't stand his endless baroque farting. It was positively, well, baroque. The other said, 'I know exactly what you mean.' I looked at them. The complaining one was pretty. The other had the sort of breeze-block face, covered in powder, that one associates with that major work hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, 'Some Guardian Women'. What struck me about their exchange was not so much the topic as the use of the word baroque, which has been creeping in recently. Sharon used it and Tracey knew 'exactly' what she meant. Moreover, its application — quite accidentally, I suspect — was apt, in accordance with Diderot's first definition of baroque (1758) as 'the ridiculous taken to excess'.
Why should not two women discuss farting, common enough in all conscience? The fact is, they rarely do, or they use circumlocutions. The last occasion the word cropped up in my hearing, also at a party but in New York this time, the speaker was a lady from Alabama, who complained that her friend Mr Clinton, then still president, had been illtreated by the New York Times, which had recorded that he farted during a press conference. But the term she used was 'made gas'. I don't know how the newspaper described the act. And it is interesting that the two women I described above resorted to art-historical terminology to obfuscate their boldness. However, there are exceptions. In her wicked memoirs, Tears Before Bedtime, that femme fatale Barbara Skelton describes how Cyril Connolly, to whom she was married from time to time, constructed a taxonomy of fatting. He divided it into four main categories: the Wet Goose, the Dry Goose, the Chicken Fart and Phosgene. I had heard about this game of Connolly's before, with different details. He. is said to have listed a Chinese Repeater, a Frog Postprandial and a Bowra. There is a fart known as a GKC and another as GBS, very slow and plaintive. Some men, especially dons and most of all economists, are notoriously capable of boxing the compass with their multifarious wind-making. A lady I know who had been unhappily bought into close quarters for a spell with a famous Cambridge economist told me that he could and did fart in seven different ways, and, as with the man in the New Testament who was possessed by seven devils, 'each was worse than the last'. Those familiar with Ulster say you can always tell the difference between a Catholic fart and a Protestant fart. But in the name of all that's holy, we must not bring fatting into politics.
Actually it has occasionally forced its way in. It is said, perhaps apocryphally, that Mr Gladstone once farted disconcertingly during one of his mesmerising three-hour Budget speeches, and not a titter was heard, such was the power of his eagle eye fixed on the House. Others were less fortunate. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, a great grandee and a very foolish fellow, appeared at Queen Elizabeth I's court in a new suit of white satin, made a very low bow indeed, and let off a tremendous fart which could be heard all over the Presence Chamber. The court laughed loud and long, for he was not popular, and the Queen hid behind her fan. The Earl, mortified to his soul, rushed from court, left the country and 'went on his travels', being absent several years. When he finally returned, the Queen received him graciously, saying, 'You are right welcome, my Lord of Oxford. 1 had forgot the fart.' This tale is certainly ben trovato. But is it true? The source is latish — Aubrey's Brief Lives.
I did not know the word until I first went to boarding school, aged 12, for such a thing was never mentioned at home (this was the Thirties). When boys used it, to my disgust, I thought it was spelled with a ph, until I actually came across it in Chaucer's Miller's Tale (1386): 'This Nicholas anon let flee a fart.' It does not occur in Shakespeare, so far as I know, though it certainly does in Ben Jonson's Alchemist: fart at thee.' The voluminous writings of Erasmus, that fount of scatological abuse, are full of theologians fatting at each other. There is nothing in Dickens or Thackeray or Trollope, nor in Jane Austen, needless to say, though she does have that mysterious passage in Mansfield Park in which the streetwise Mary Crawford, commenting on admirals, punningly observes that she had 'seen enough' of 'rears' and 'vices'. But here the double meaning, if there is one, refers to sodomy, not fatting. The passage has led to a lot of shocked and learned exegesis by such experts as Park Ronan, Bridget Brophy and David Nokes; the editor of the 1996 Penguin classics edition of the novels observed sententiously, 'This rather filthy joke draws attention to the Royal Navy's wartime reputation for homosexual activity.' Poor Jane! If she had used the word fart what would they have said then? For a learned discussion of Mary's remark, see Brian Southam's monograph, Jane Austen and the Navy, published last year (Hambledon & London, f19.95), pages 183 to 186.
Playwrights do not bring fatting on to the stage. Tom Stoppard mentioned it in one of his plays (much against my advice), but you can't get actors to do it to order, as they won't or, more likely, can't. There is an exception even here, though. Before the first world war, there was a Paris music-hall act featuring fatting. This was a little after Toulouse-Lautrec's time, otherwise we would have known more about it because he was fascinated by such bizarreries. (Is there not a photograph of him defecating on a beach, and did he not draw, many times, the Boneless Wonder. Valentin le Desosse?) This particular comic artist was so constructed physically that he could not only fart at will simply by breathing in deeply first, but also produce a tonic scale of notes and continue to play tunes for the duration of his act. His version of the 'Marseillaise' brought the house down. I forget his name but he was known as le Petomane, peter being to crackle, pop or break wind. Is there any early film footage of this unique turn? I ask because it is amazing what bits of celluloid do exist: at the recent Art Nouveau exhibition at the V&A I was delighted to see film from the 1890s of the first electric-light dancer, Lole Fuller, about whom I have written on this page. The sequence must have been taken at the Folies Bergere, where she was sketched by artists, including Lautrec, from all over Europe.
If farting is not yet genteel usage, even in its baroque or rococo varieties, the term 'old fart' is now acceptable, or at least common. It would be nice to know who first coined this vivid and useful term. I had always imagined it to be the invention of Kingsley Amis, long before he became one himself. If I am right, the date was about 1960. The OED puts it later, 1968, and quotes a usage three years on, by Marty Feldman, who 'said to the judge as he left the witness stand, "I don't think he even knew I was here, the boring old fart."' Next week I will be writing about more salubrious matters.
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