Beachcomber
WiLussi (" GAFFER ") WORDSWORTH wrote : "No nightingale did ever chant More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands." ,
" Welcome " underestimates " Beachcomber's " value to readers of the daily Press, but "shady" is the word for his set- ting. His daily column is all but inaccessible to the fastidious.
Sandwiched between a divorcee's views on the next world, or a gangster's verdict on University Education, and a page on
which crimes, distortions and false sentiment are massed in cramped yet effective congestion (liken Shakespearian crowd), his "By the Way" is a tonic which can only be taken by holding one's nose.
Yet I believe that his setting is responsible, not for any of the individual, definable qualities of his work, but for the very happy manner of their blending. " Beachcomber " is first and foremost two things—a satirist and a writer of nonsense. In his former, and I do not doubt his more congenial, capacity his style is badly cramped by the function which he has to fulfil; I say "more congenial" advisedly. The ratio between human folly and human discontent is such that in every age, with the possible exception of the Victorian, a majority of the wise men have supposed that their own times were vulnerable to wit in an unprecedented degree. All through literature, and in many plat: as outside it, you get this whistling for the wind of satire, end its echoes (which alone restrain me from saying that we arc better
targets now than ever we were) do not find " Beachcomber 7 Unresponsive. I am sure it would be not only pleasanter, but easier, for him to express himself in forthright, undiluted satire. But this he may not do. He.is not an" all-licensed fool," lie Lear's. He is there to tickle, not to scourge us. This repression-c--this obligation to fight always with one hand tied behind his back—had developed, in the other, the hand
which writes nonsense, something which can best be described as ambidexterity with a difference. The knowledge that he is not meant to deliver a knockout blow, and that anyhow those who keep his ring would not recognize it if he did, has bred in his attack a kind of furious extravagance, so that the purest, most irresponsible ridicule becomes, in the process of its fantastic elaboration, as fiery as just and overt scorn.
Therefore, I would not see him other than he censor in motley. As a full-blown satirist, he would fall short of that peculiar greatness which is now incontestably his ; besides, if he carried heavier guns, we should be forced to admit that some of his favourite targets are beneath reasoned contempt.
For the Omnibus Beachcomber now published, in which no fewer than three hundred and eighty-three pages of By the Way" are reprinted, with amusing pictures by Mr. Nicolas Bentley, no praise (if I may coin the expression) can be too high. I yield to no one (you must pardon this phrase-making) in my admiration for "Beachcomber," but I admit to being surprised by the consistently high level of this anthology's entertainment-value. It is, I suppose, the first book to be published (excepting always the Daily Mail Blue Book on India) of which it can truly be said that there is a laugh on every page. All the old gang are here —Lady Cabstanleigh, Dr. Strabismus, Prodnose, the poet Milk, and the rest of them, incredibly ridiculous and yet, in a wild way, ridiculously credible. They come garlanded to the slaughter, and "Beachcomber," high priest to Ate, despatches them to immortality with affectionate intolerance. Only Thake, the me: t three-dimensional figure in this frenzied harlequinade, is absent, enshrined elsewhere in two books which every right-thinking Englishman already possesses.
" Beachcomber's " unerring powers of comment as a social critic are reflected in his skill as a parodist. From "Serge Knockov's War Diary" and several gems of early English verse, which are more or less generalized burlesque, to the more direct journalistic skits of the Punch contributor and the art critic, he scores his hits with a sure hand and a straight face. Milne is pilloried with adroit malice, but best and most subtle of all is the Guedalla parody. I wish I had space to quote it.
In these days, when great slabs and hunks of printed matter are being hourly flung at the heads of the reading public (whom God preserve), . it has become apparent to the critics that their ammunition is running short : there are not enough epithets to go round, and some of us (I believe) empty our magazine of adjectives in sheer panic. Thus it happens that in the general hurly-burly many books are dubbed " unique " which are not so, but only remarkable in one way. By the Way is really unique. "Beachcomber," and only "Beachcomber," could have written it, or anything like it., Of some books the publisher says, hoping to whet our appetite for thrills, "Nervous people spending the night
alone in a haunted house are advised not to read this book." " Beachcomber " is recommended to you with no such reservation. I can think of no conceivable set of circumstances in which it is not practically a duty to read him.
PETER FLEMENG.
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