WS Gilbert A Mid-Victorian Aristophanes - Haddon Hall

24 THE ENGLISH ARISTOPHANES
These examples of Gilbert’s pathos are not often remembered, nor is the ironical
pathos of his absurdities borne in mind. Instances meet us on every page; the whimsical
catastrophes and derided ecstasies, the false sentiments, have usually a real appeal of
their own. Recall one of his least-known and jauntiest farces — Tom Cobb:
“What’s the use of socks to a man who’s going to blow his brains out,” exclaims that
unfortunate medical student to the Irish “colonel”-landlord’s prosaic daughter, Matilda.
“I never saw his face,” says her friend Caroline of her newspaper lover, “but I have
seen his soul!” “What's his soul like?” rejoins Matilda.
Caroline. Like? Like the frenzied passion of the antelope, like the wild fire of
the tiger-lily. Like the pale earnestness of some love-sick
thundercloud that longs to grasp the fleeting lightning in his
outstretched arms.
Matilda. Was he often like that?
Caroline. Always.
Matilda. A pleasant man in furnished lodgings! And where did ye see his soul?
Caroline. He poured it in the columns of the Weybridge Watchman, the
local paper of the town that gave him birth. Dainty little poems,
the dew of his sweet soul, the tender frothings of his soldier brain
— the huckstering men of law appraise my heart-wreck at five
thousand pounds.
Here we strike the keynote of Engaged — a grotesque with a very tangible
background where affected simplicity and maudlin avarice are worked up and out to their
extremes, yet where, somehow, we feel with, while we laugh at, their tormenting
imbroglios. How the impostures of Belvawney and his fatal eyes are brought home and
made quite natural! How tragic is the falsetto of Belinda at the wedding feast! And how
irresistible are the designing artlessness of Minnie, the canny tears of Maggie, and the
gushing shifts of that parsimonious Lothario, Cheviot Hill!
Or, to return to Tom Cobb, how the high-faluting of the out-at-elbows “Effinghams”
(foreshadowing Patience) hardly excludes a kind of compassion for them and for the son
whose “life is one protracted misfit.” — “My boy,” says the father with distorted dignity,
“sneer not at these clothes. They have been worn for many years by a very old, but very
upright man. Be proud of them. No sordid thought has ever lurked behind that waistcoat.
That hat has never yet been doffed to vicious wealth. Those shoes have never yet walked
into the parlors of the sinful.” “A blessing on him,” sighs Caroline. “Is he not
benevolent?” To which replies Tom, “Yes, he looks so. Why do benevolent people have
such long hair? Do they say to themselves, ‘I am a benevolent person, so I will let my hair
grow,’ or do they let it grow because they are too benevolent to cut it off?”