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A Thought for Monday Morning — Peter Robinson
Last Monday morning I quoted Auberon Waugh, for which Barbara Kidder either chid me or chode me—despite our disputations on this site, I remain uncertain of the past tense of “chide”—for selecting an Englishman who was “cruel,” “outrageous,” and “bizarre,” asking me to choose an Englishman next time of more “honorable characteristics.”
Barbara, I think, was a little too hard on Auberon Waugh, who, by contrast with his father, Evelyn Waugh, was beloved of his friends and children, which surely says something basic about his character. But enough Waughs. Bowing to Barbara, I begin this week with a quotation from G. K. Chesterton, than whom no Englishman ever has or ever could prove more honorable.
Here is Chesterton on the high solemnity, as it were, of humor, in a passage from his book Orthodoxy that I can still tell you exactly where and when I first read it: in a Greyhound bus terminal in Albany, New York, while waiting for the bus to Binghamton during the bicentennial summer of 1976:
Published in GeneralSeriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a…sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.
I love this quote. Thank you, Peter, for posting this.
But, your name is Kidder. Am I the only one who sees any irony in that?
I think it was Thomas More who made the very sensible observation that in the sum total of the entire Gospel, Christ laughs not a single time. But He does weep.
More went on to note, skillful disciple that he was, that in the whole of Plato’s dialogues Socrates does not weep on a single occasion, but Socrates laughs several times.
Mrs. Pessimist would be delighted if that were true. But she likes me anyway.
|By serious, do you mean sanctimonious scold? I’ve always found conservatives to be far funnier than liberals. Liberals are too busy “fighting for…” to laugh. It’s hard to be a liberal – so many outrages to be outraged about, so many prejudices to rail against, so many ills to stand against, so many flaws in others to legislate away. Being a true liberal is like being a sin eater; one must bear everyone’s burdens, empathize with every hardship, and find at the core of every problem, a prejudice, injustice or inequity. It’s fix, fix, fix and fix again. They are in constant search for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Whenever they get close, those wicked conservatives snatch it away (who else but the conservatives?) We watch, get on with our lives, laugh, think on other things but true liberals never stop. Even their attempts at humor are part of a strategy to facilitate the chase for rainbows.
That’s why there can never be a liberal Ricochet or Rush Limbaugh. Humorless sanctimony is soul killing but they can’t stay away from it. It’s like a drug to them.
By serious, do you mean sanctimonious scold? I’ve always found conservatives to be far funnier than liberals. Liberals are too busy “fighting for…” to laugh. It’s hard to be a liberal – so many outrages to be outraged about, so many prejudices to rail against, so many ills to stand against, so many flaws in others to legislate away. Being a true liberal is like being a sin eater; one must bear everyone’s burdens, empathize with every hardship, and find at the core of every problem, a prejudice, injustice or inequity. It’s fix, fix, fix and fix again. They are in constant search for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Whenever they get close, those wicked conservatives snatch it away (who else but the conservatives?) We watch, get on with our lives, laugh, think on other things but true liberals never stop. Even their attempts at humor are part of a strategy to facilitate the chase for rainbows.
That’s why there can never be a liberal Ricochet or Rush Limbaugh. Humorless sanctimony is soul killing but they can’t stay away from it. It’s like a drug to them.
I will merely remark that GKC is always a tonic – whether bubbly or slightly acerbic. And thank Mr. Robinson for offering me a timely dose.
Yes and no. The dictionary goes for the regular form, thus “chided”, but the example delivers us “ciddon” as an alternative in an undated but otherwise modern English example. Referring to the Middle English Dictionary we find the word well established as “chiden” from the Old English cidan. Ciddon is well within the natural variation of the phonetic spelling for the age, rigorous standardized spelling being centuries in the offing. Ciddon and chiden can be pronounced the same in a Middle English context.
Sadly, even the forms presented in Middle English are rigorously regular by the rules of the period. The eager stylist can still pull one of these regular conjugations forward through time to provide an illusion of irregularity in a modern context, but any decent linguist will see through this ploy instantly and deduct rather than add style points. Best to find a more interesting verb and leave this one to Moses and Aaron.
I’m very serious about my humor.
I write some science fiction. A character in one of my books has previously lived in the future, but at the time of this story is in 1717, and he said regarding the name of the pirate Stede Bonnet, “It’s 1717, nobody knows how to spell.” Luckily, he is only speaking to his horse.
But getting back to “chided,” it sounds as if you have given up on irregularizing it after all. Where I grew up, “slow” was often conjugated as “slown” as in, “He has slown down in his old age.” I was somewhat surprised, having heard that from an early age, that it was non-standard.
As someone who has been there, the Albany Greyhound terminal is a sight to behold.
You can see it here.
Edit: No wait, that’s my bad. What I linked to was the Vladivostok terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
I always get them confused. Yeah, no, the Albany Greyhound terminal is a rat hole
I think you hit on something here, Eric. When one is humorless, one becomes a parody. That’s what’s happening with Obama and Holder.
That observation is both true and not true. It is better, after all, to enter into the house of mourning than the house of feasting. Yet it is also true that we ought not take ourselves too seriously.
Oh, but you break my heart. Strong verbs are so comprehensively on the run–“dived” replacing “dove,” “sneaked” replacing “snuck,” and on and on–that I’m always on the lookout for a strong verb to which I can lend, so to speak, a little help. “Chide” ain’t one of them? Darn.
I really don’t think you want to say “chode”, to be honest. If we are speaking strictly. And all that…
Science fiction offers yet another option, irregular verbs can emerge as well as disappear, after all. When seeking a grace note based on an historically savvy mainstream context, that archaic irregular form has merit if authentic. With SF, the grace comes in how creative and appropriate, even illuminating, the invented irregular form is. That’s a whole new ball game!
Peter, if you’re going to concern yourself with the grammar of verb tense, you might want to hear an example from that late, great grammarian Dizzy Dean:
[A]s for saying “Rizzuto slud into second” it just ain’t natural. Sounds silly to me. Slud is something more than slid. It means sliding with great effort.
Eric Hines