The nature of surviving sources combined with the way we usually tell history mean that the cheerful moments often fall away. Tell me happy stories about the people of your era!
Next week: Weird Food
This is a piece of historical fiction about Kyros the Great, founder of the Persian Empire. It was written by Xenophon in the mid-4th century BC. The scene of Persian noblemen joking around over dinner is not historical, of course. But it's definitely one of my favourite passages of Classical Greek literature.
"And what is more, Hystaspas — yes, and you others here," said Kyros, "if you will let me know whenever any one of you is proposing to marry, you will discover what manner of assistant I, too, shall be to you."
"And if any of us have a daughter to give in marriage," said Gobryas, "to whom should we apply?"
"To me," said Kyros; "for I am exceedingly skilled in that art."
"What art?" asked Chrysantas.
"In knowing what sort of match would suit each one of you."
"Tell me, then, for heaven's sake," said Chrysantas, "what sort of wife you think would suit me best."
"In the first place," said he, "she must be small; for you are small yourself; and if you marry a tall woman and wish to kiss her when she is standing up straight, you will have to jump for it, like a puppy."
"You are quite right in that provision for me," he said; "and I would never get my kiss, for I am no jumper at all."
"And in the next place," Kyros went on, "a snub-nosed woman would suit you admirably."
"Why so?"
"Because your own nose is so hooked; and hookedness, I assure you, would be the very proper mate for snubbiness."
"Do you mean to say also that a supperless wife would suit one who has had a good dinner, like me now?"
"Yes, by Zeus," answered Kyros; "for the stomach of one who has eaten heartily bows out, but that of one who has not eaten bows in."
"Then, in heaven's name," said Chrysantas, "could you tell us what sort of wife would suit a frigid king?"
At this, of course, Kyros burst out laughing, as did also all the rest.
Also, unrelated:
I will dance, by Zeus.
-- Sokrates (Xenophon, Symposion 2.16)
Later on, when literary activities brought me into touch with widely diverse types by mail—Texans like Robert E. Howard, men in Australia, New Zealand, &c., Westerners, Southerners, Canadians, people in old England, & assorted kinds of folk nearer at hand—I found myself opened up to dozens of points of view which would otherwise never have occurred to me. My understanding & sympathies were enlarged, & many of my social, political, & economic views were modified as a consequence of increased knowledge. Only correspondence could have effected this broadening; for it would have been impossible to have visited all the regions & met all the various types involved, while books can never talk back or discuss.
For all that Lovecraft gets taken to task for his racism, it is fair to point out that his opinions and sensibilities did change as he came into contact with folks from different walks of life and traveled more widely.
Also unrelated, but in a nod to u/Iphikrates:
Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
There's a fun anecdote about a WWI signaller from the memoirs of Anthony French of the 15th London; it's one of my favourites:
One spark of humour could set a whole column alight.
We approached a signaller industriously repairing a broken line and a voice cried: "Some say 'Good old Signals!'" to which a second voice replied: "Others say '... old Signals!'" The verb was irrelevant and its execution biologically absurd, but the couplet was invariable whoever might be the "good old this" or "good old that." It was always the curious colloquial adjective "old" that preserved the affection.
The signaller took no heed.
"He's going up the 'line,'" someone suggested.
"Lend 'im your button 'ook," said another.
The signaller turned and shouted with feigned surprise,
"Oh! It's the bloody infantry. What you doing up the line, anyway?"
"We're looking for the GPO."
"Lookin' for bloody trouble, you mean," said the signaller, raising a fist.
Another voice shouted: "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?" and from somewhere came the oft-repeated quip: "Hold your tongue, son, and polish up those medals!"...
"Medals?" cried another; "I've spat 'em before breakfast!"
Someone tried to sing "Give me the switch Miss for Ipswich, it's the Ipswich switch which I require," but meter and pace failed to register, so Maxwell raised his voice and set the column singing:
"Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity in the City you work so hard
With your 'One, two, three four five six seven eight Gerrard?'
Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity that you're wasting so much time
With your lips close to the telephone when they might be close to mine?"
My last sight of the field-telephone man was of his face wreathed in smiles and his hand waving a friendly farewell.
During the American Civil War, the Confederates were running low on potassium nitrate to make gunpowder. A man named John Harrelson invented a process to extract nitre out of, among other ingredients, urine. Confederate ladies were encouraged to collect and donate their urine for the cause, which led to numerous dirty songs being written, including the following:
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, you are a wretched creature,
You’ve added to this war a new and awful feature,
You’d have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The ladies, bless their pretty dears, should save their pee for nitre.
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, where did you get this notion,
To send your barrel 'round the town to gather up this lotion,
We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic pissing!
John Harrelson, John Harrelson, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpeter,
For 'tis an awful notion, John, gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her skirt, she’s killing off a Yankee!
They say there is a subtle smell that lingers in the powder;
That when the smoke grows thicker and the din of the battle louder
That there is found to this compound one serious objection;
A soldier can not sniff it without having an erection!
I can post a bunch more Civil War-era jokes later tonight if anyone wants. My source is Blue and Gray Laughing by Paul Zall.
In the early months of the War of 1812, both the United States and Canada were trying to martial forces on the Niagara River to play out the forthcoming invasion.
The Niagara River, though quite fast-flowing and treacherous, was quite narrow at certain places, and the settlements on the opposing sides were close enough that people could easily be seen walking about by those across from them.
One night,
A few evenings ago a centinel at Black Rock, on his post opposite the British redoubt, in the tone of a veteran with a long monotony of sound, cried "All's well." Our centinel, who perhaps did not like his own situation, as the evening was a little cold and his post rather exposed, cried out immediately after the other, "All's well, too."
Maybe not cheery necessarily, but I always found it amusing, if only for the British officer's stern disapproval leaking through his official report.
The late 19th century, when Japan embarked on its project of modernization, brought about some very odd moments. This description of one of them from Eri Hotta's 1941 (pp. 77-78), had me giggling. The Rokumeikan was a building with a ballroom newly built in 1883.
The self-consciously lavish soirees at the Rokumeikan, which began after the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, were part of Japan's national project, a demonstration of the newly modernizing state. Designed by the young British architect Josiah Conder, the Rokumeikan, which looked neither completely Western nor Eastern, was meant to be the site of impressive bashes. But it was not only the condescending Loti who was taken aback by the strangeness of it all. The uneasiness extended to the Japanese themselves. Many women were reluctant to dance, out of either decorum or embarrassment, which was why men far outnumbered women at these balls. But nothing kept some patriotic Japanese from literally dancing for modern Japan. Okura Kihachiro, an eccentric and fun-loving hotelier who cofounded the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo as well as the Rokumeikan, described an odd couple he witnessed on the dance floor one evening:
The partners were both men, one with the huge build of a sumo wrestler, the other an especially skinny fellow; the couple was dancing in all seriousness but since their contrast was peculiar it created a commotion among the spectators, who were trying to determine their identity. On closer observation, the huge man turned out to be Oyama, Japan's minister of war, and the skinny man was the then governor of Tokyo.... Now on this occasion Oyama was in formal Western military attire while his companion was in Japanese kimono and hakama, and they were earnestly engaged in dancing, at which neither was very good.