its strongest ground. London
is the largest of the bloated modern cities; London is the smokiest;
London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most sombre; London
is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most
amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most
tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the
most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid hypocrisy of humour. We
conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who
laugh through their tears; it is our boast that we only weep through our
laughter. There remains always this great boast, perhaps the greatest
boast that is possible to human nature. I mean the great boast that the
most unhappy part of our population is also the most hilarious part.
The poor can forget that social problem which we (the moderately rich)
ought never to forget. Blessed are the poor; for they alone have not the
poor always with them. The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The
honest rich can never forget it.

I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of
vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be
certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men
who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except
by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate which they
could only express by something indelicate. I remember that Mr. Max
Beerbohm (who has every merit except democracy) attempted to analyse the
jokes at which the mob laughs. He divided them into three sections:
jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien, such as
foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr. Max Beerbohm thought he
understood the first two forms; but I am not sure that he did. In order
to understand vulgar humour it is not enough to be humorous. One must
also be vulgar, as I am. And in the first case it is surely obvious that
it is not merely at the fact of something being hurt that we laugh (as I
trust we do) when a Prime Minister sits down on his hat. If that were so
we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral. We do not laugh at the mere
fact of something falling down; there is nothing humorous about leaves
falling or the sun going down. When our house falls down we do not
laugh. All the birds of the air might drop around us in a perpetual
shower like a hailstorm without arousing a smile. If you really ask
y