The Wit of Women

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CHAPTER VIII.

HUMOROUS POEMS 150

CHAPTER IX.

GOOD-NATURED SATIRE 179

CHAPTER X.

PARODIES—REVIEWS—CHILDREN’S POEMS—COMEDIES BY

WOMEN—A DRAMATIC TRIFLE—A STRING OF FIRECRACKERS 195

TO

G.W.B.

In Grateful Memory.

“There was in her soul a sense of delicacy mingled

with that rarest of qualities in woman—a sense of

humor,” writes Richard Grant White in “The Fate of

Mansfield Humphreys.” I have noticed that when a

novelist sets out to portray an uncommonly fine type of

heroine, he invariably adds to her other intellectual

and moral graces the above-mentioned “rarest of

qualities.” I may be over-sanguine, but I anticipate

that some sagacious genius will discover that woman as

well as man has been endowed with this excellent gift

from the gods, and that the gift pertains to the large,

generous, sympathetic nature, quite irrespective of the

individual’s sex. In any case, having heard so

repeatedly that woman has no sense of humor, it would

be refreshing to have a contrariety of opinion on that

subject.—THE CRITIC.

PROEM.[A]

We are coming to the rescue,

Just a hundred strong;

With fun and pun and epigram,

And laughter, wit, and song;

With badinage and repartee,

And humor quaint or bold,

And stories that are stories,

Not several aeons old;

With parody and nondescript,

Burlesque and satire keen,

And irony and playful jest,

So that it may be seen

That women are not quite so dull:

We come—a merry throng;

Yes, we’re coming to the rescue,

And just a hundred strong.

KATE SANBORN. [Footnote A: Not Poem!]

THE WIT OF WOMEN.

CHAPTER I.

THE MELANCHOLY TONE OF WOMEN’S POETRY—PUNS, GOOD AND BAD—EPIGRAMS AND LACONICS— CYNICISM OF FRENCH WOMEN—SENTENCES CRISP AND SPARKLING.

To begin a deliberate search for wit seems almost like trying to be witty: a task quite certain to brush the bloom from even the most fruitful results. But the statement of Richard Grant White, that humor is the “rarest of qualities in woman,” roused such a host of brilliant recollections that it was a temptation to try to materialize the ghosts that were haunting me; to lay forever the suspicion that they did not exist. Two articles by Alice Wellington Rollins in the Critic, on “Woman’s Sense of Humor” and “The Humor of Women,” convinced me that the deliberate task might not be impossible to carry out, although I felt, as she did, that the humor and wit of women are difficult to analyze, and select examples, precisely because they possess in the highest degree that almost essential quality of wit, the unpremeditated glow which exists only with the occasion that calls it forth. Even from the humor of women found in books it is hard to quote—not because there is so little, but because there is so much.

The encouragement to attempt this novel enterprise of proving (“by their fruits ye shall know them”) that women are not deficient in either wit or humor has not been great. Wise librarians have, with a smile, regretted the paucity of proper material; literary men have predicted rather a thin volume; in short, the general opinion of men is condensed in the sly question of a peddler who comes to our door, summer and winter, his stock varying with the season: sage-cheese and home-made socks, suspenders and cheap note-paper, early-rose potatoes and the solid pearmain. This shrewd old fellow remarked roguishly “You’re gittin’ up a book, I see, ‘baout women’s wit. ‘Twon’t be no great of an undertakin’, will it?” The outlook at first was certainly discouraging. In Parton’s “Collection of Humorous Poetry” there was not one woman’s name, nor in Dodd’s large volume of epigrams of all ages, nor in any of the humorous departments of volumes of selected poetry.

Griswold’s “Female Poets of America” was next examined. The general air of gloom—hopeless gloom—was depressing. Such mawkish sentimentality and despair; such inane and mortifying confessions; such longings for a lover to come; such sighings over a lover departed; such cravings for “only”—”only” a grave in some dark, dank solitude. As Mrs. Dodge puts it, “Pegasus generally feels inclined to pace toward a graveyard the moment he feels a side-saddle on his back.”

The subjects of their lucubrations suggest Lady Montagu’s famous speech: “There was only one reason she