One of the glories of language is the witty rejoinder,
riposte or retort. It is the answer in a quick, witty or caustic response (The
Heritage Dictionary) to someone’s comment or verbal assault; a severe, incisive
or witty reply (The Random House Dictionary), especially one that counters a
first speaker’s statement, argument, etc.
Probably the most famous retort in the English language is
that of John Wilkes to the Earl of Sandwich’s, “’pon my honor, Wilkes, I don’t
know whether you’ll die on the gallows or of the pox.” To which Wilkes, “That
must depend , my Lord, upon whether I first embrace one of your Lordship’s
principles or your Lordship’s mistresses.” The additional cleverness here is
the plural “mistresses,” which not only rhythmically balances the plural
“principles,” but also establishes the hapless nobleman as not only a crook but
also a philanderer. And the
repeated “my Lord,” with its seeming respectfulness, adds a further bit of
mockery. Perhaps it offers some consolation to the lord that the sandwich was named for him.
Barely less famous, and certainly no less witty, is Bernard
Shaw’s remark at the curtain on the premiere of his “Arms and the Man .” Amid
tumultuous applause, one angry voice booed from the balcony. Said Shaw, “My dear
fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?” Here
again, the chumminess of the opening makes the final effect that much more
stinging.
I have often quoted my probably favorite retort before, but
it’s still irresistible. The aristocratic Margot Asquith was lunching with the
Hollywood star Jean Harlow, who kept calling her Margott, eliciting from the
lady, “No, no, Jean. The T in Margot is silent, as in Harlow.” Margot Asquith
was quite a wit, as in “Lloyd George could not see a belt without hitting below
it.” Or: “Lord Birkenhead is very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his
head.” But then let’s not forget Dorothy Parker’s
response to one of her books, “The affair between Margot
Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in
all literature.”
The great Hilaire Belloc gave his retort in verse to another
lord. “Last night I heard Godolphin say/ He never gave himself away./ Come now,
Godolphin, scion of kings,/ Be generous in little things.” That benefits from
the leisureliness of a quatrain. Another effective retort draws from its
opposite, concision. Take the actor Lucien Guitry (father of the endlessly
witty Sacha) answering a bore who tried to defend himself by “I only speak as I
think,” with ”Yes, but much more often.”
As you might expect, there are many masterly retorts from
Oscar Wilde. Thus there was the homely Frenchwoman who sought to combat
unsightlinss by celebrity. So she addressed Wilde with her standard, “Am I not
the ugliest woman in France?’ To which he replied with a bow and “In the world,
Madame, in the world.” Courtesy, or its semblance, always cuts deeper. In
Wilde’s French, it was even more terse: “Du monde, Madame, du monde.”
You can even respond with both verse and brevity as in what
I like to think was a spontaneous response to someone from the otherwise
unknown William Norman Ewer, “How odd/ Of God,/ To choose,/ The Jews.” If eight
syllables are insufficient retort to immortalize their author, this was, at any
rate, a nice try.
The retort may also be to an object, as it was from the
dying Oscar Wilde in a cheap Paris hotel: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a
duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Were there ever more
aesthetic dying words, confirming Wilde as an aesthete to the last with a kind
of immortal hyperbole.
The music world too offers prize retorts, even if they were
not by what another person provoked, but as a riposte to a widely held opinion.
Thus about Wagner, from Mark Twain: “Wagner’s music is not as bad as it
sounds.” Or this, from a British columnist, Beachcomber, double-edged no less:
“Wagner was the Puccini of music.” That is concise enough, but sometimes a
single word will do. As when an American avantguardist made Hindemith listem to
his new work for half an hour. “Is this your last work,” Hindemith inquired.
“No” replied the American. To which Hindemith: “Pity.”
Sometimes the retort can be insulting, but forgivable for
its wit. So when Meyerbeer complained to Rossini at a chance meeting of having
aches all over and added “I don’t know what to do,” Rossini, knowing that
Meyerbeer was coming from a rehearsal of his [Meyerbeer’s] music, amiably
responded, “I know what it is: you listen too much to yourself.” Retorts have a
way of sounding better in French. Thus when a woman neighbor of Alfred Jarry’s
exclaimed to Jarry, who enjoyed shooting off his gun skyward in his adjoining
garden, “For heaven’s sake, Monsieur Jarry, you’re going to kill our children,”
he retorted, “Qu’a cela ne tienne, Madame, nous vous en fairons d’autres.” He
retorted, which sounds more powerful than in English,”Don’t let it matter,
madame, we’ll make you some others.”
There is one magnificent putdown that, though written, I
would like to think of as having first come in a conversation. It’s from the
formidable Karl Kraus: “Psychoanalysis is the mental illness for which it
considers itself the therapy.”
Kraus was quite capable of a retort to the entire female
sex: “A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for
masturbation. It takes a lot of imagination, though.” How much stronger I this
made by that “occasionally.”
And now, in all immodesty, a couple of my own retorts. On
the David Frost Show, Jacqueline Susann was defending a trashy novel. I had
mentioned to Rex Reed, a fellow guest seated beside me, that I had read only
forty pages of it. Reed was shocked: “How could one criticize a novel of which
one had read only forty pages?” I answered: “How many spoonfuls of a soup must
you ingest before you can tell that it is rancid ?” On another TV program, I
was a guest along with a trendy art gallery owner, a husband of Gloria
Vanderbilt’s, and Germaine Greer. I had become silent for quite a while and the
host, David Suskind, asked why? I answered, “I have often been out of my depth,
but this is the first time I have been out of my shallowness.”
But to conclude with the master, Oscar Wilde, who was once
asked by a formerly prizewinning poetaster (Alfred Austin, I believe) what to
do now about “the conspiracy of silence” surrounding him. “Join it,” Oscar
replied. How simple yet powerful a retort can be.
