DOI Heft:
No. 303 (June 1925)
DOI Artikel:Sheringham, H. T.: The reserves of Mr. Frank Reynolds
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21402#0309
THE RESERVES OF MR. FRANK
REYNOLDS. BY H. T. SHERINGHAM
EVERY time a man smiles, much
more when he laughs, it adds some-
thing to his fragment of life." The man who
wrote this knew a good deal about mirth and
has himself prolonged the fragments of
not a few of us. But his own brief portion
was closed nearly a century before laughter
became a regular weekly tonic supplied,
so to say, by the British Philosophopceia
and eagerly taken wherever British men
and women sit in armchairs in a digestive
frame of mind. Laurence Sterne died in
1768 and Punch was not started till 1841,
so he had no chance of watching the effects
of his prescription when made up with a
due sense of responsibility and properly
administered. a 0 0 0
Were it possible for an observer like
Sterne to revisit the haunts of men and
study the progress of humour, he would
surely be specially impressed with one
remarkable development, the very big
part which the artist now takes in pro-
longing those fragments, and the reality
and scope of his influence on manners and
customs. With the advance in word-
spinning he would probably not be much
struck. Verbal fabrics remain intrinsically
much the same, only the patterns altering
from generation to generation, and the
author of The Sentimental Journey would
not find himself at a serious loss now if he
were asked to compose some pointed trifle
on, let us say, a Chancellor of the
Exchequer and a Budget which invites
lamentation for silken apparel. The
necessary half-column would certainly add
to our fragments. 0000
But, having accomplished his alb ted
task, the writer would be able to benefit
himself also by a study of the published
work of such a modern master as Frank
Reynolds. " Here," he would say, " is
something new." He would, of course,
hark back to the humorous art of his own
period for a standard of comparison, and
that would mean, broadly, the work of
" That chap is rather a famous poet."
"Just what I should have guessed him to be."
" Not the big fellow—that's his agent."
pen drawing by
frank reynolds, r.i.
{By courtesy of " Punch ")
Vol. LXXXIX. No. 387.—June 1925. 303
1
REYNOLDS. BY H. T. SHERINGHAM
EVERY time a man smiles, much
more when he laughs, it adds some-
thing to his fragment of life." The man who
wrote this knew a good deal about mirth and
has himself prolonged the fragments of
not a few of us. But his own brief portion
was closed nearly a century before laughter
became a regular weekly tonic supplied,
so to say, by the British Philosophopceia
and eagerly taken wherever British men
and women sit in armchairs in a digestive
frame of mind. Laurence Sterne died in
1768 and Punch was not started till 1841,
so he had no chance of watching the effects
of his prescription when made up with a
due sense of responsibility and properly
administered. a 0 0 0
Were it possible for an observer like
Sterne to revisit the haunts of men and
study the progress of humour, he would
surely be specially impressed with one
remarkable development, the very big
part which the artist now takes in pro-
longing those fragments, and the reality
and scope of his influence on manners and
customs. With the advance in word-
spinning he would probably not be much
struck. Verbal fabrics remain intrinsically
much the same, only the patterns altering
from generation to generation, and the
author of The Sentimental Journey would
not find himself at a serious loss now if he
were asked to compose some pointed trifle
on, let us say, a Chancellor of the
Exchequer and a Budget which invites
lamentation for silken apparel. The
necessary half-column would certainly add
to our fragments. 0000
But, having accomplished his alb ted
task, the writer would be able to benefit
himself also by a study of the published
work of such a modern master as Frank
Reynolds. " Here," he would say, " is
something new." He would, of course,
hark back to the humorous art of his own
period for a standard of comparison, and
that would mean, broadly, the work of
" That chap is rather a famous poet."
"Just what I should have guessed him to be."
" Not the big fellow—that's his agent."
pen drawing by
frank reynolds, r.i.
{By courtesy of " Punch ")
Vol. LXXXIX. No. 387.—June 1925. 303
1