Charades

One hadn't supposed it would be germane to discuss the infantile phase of one's develop-ment so candidly in this setting, but again, one hadn't reckoned on the timelessness of that radiant text, The Adven-tures of Huckleberry Finn. Conscious of one's offshore readership, in particular, one can only say that if you'd like to be spared the necessity of glancing at our news, ever again - and one does apologise, for this necessity - you may extrapolate it from a text our schools, and lately our thought police, have been trying to suppress or amend since 1885 - not such a long time, from where you sit, but quite more than half our his-tory as a union, such as it is. But if it's any consolation, it's more poignant for us; the only thing more arduous than being an American, is trying to learn about the place if you are one.

In that text, our Mississippi unravels as a skein of reluctant illumination to the young hero, the more he progresses along its broad and stately flow into a dialect we have invented, to fog the inquiring function. The Mississippi is news again, for its wondrous obfuscations.

But first we come to the infancy of Laurent, and his parents' anxious efforts to occupy his meddlesome energies in some sociable way. It was only too bad for them, that they hit upon charades, at which he was uninhibitedly adept (the canine solution came later). Drawing the task of depicting a Governor of Mississippi, Laurent carried the field, unopposed. The umbrage, the indignation, the pristine valour of the noble cause of concealing one's soiled nappy, together with the confidence that to be cute is divine, were captivating in the garden of infancy.

Now there is another Governor of Mississippi, some 50 times older than this infant. But he is still running this jest; and he still has a claque of housemaids in the media (The Weekly Standard, Fox News) who run interference for his diapers and wreak havoc on our language at the same time. By the time this posting goes to press, he will have committed another cascade of misquotation to his laundresses at Murdoch, so one doesn't mean to make too much of the latest mess. But here it is - 


A visit by the poet of Birmingham gaol to Yazoo City in the early 1960s was of less moment to an adolescent adherent of the White Citizens Council than the rustle of skirts beneath his fender-sitting observation.

One hates to be tedious, but here panic is so pure as to deprive it of any semblance of play. All good ol' boy recitals of the Aw Shucks defense rest on his resort, the exculpation of gender helplessness. Real boys, it is claimed, are so famously the playthings of their parts as to be exempted from accounting for indecencies.

Mr Haley Barbour was frightened, not erotically distracted; but if he can't bring himself to say so, history can help. On August 28, 1963, Laurent - himself, acutely afflicted by adolescence - was riveted to the family television, marshalling all his own arguments for the inadequacy of the most immortal speech in American history since Gettysburg. Into the same room there happened to walk a fraternal undergraduate, at home on Summer holiday, to whom Laurent was able to turn, and try out his charade with some species of mockery. 

Laurent was told once, what nobody has evidently been able to say to Haley Barbour, since. "No. Cut it out. He's right. And you, listen."


Same womb. Same con-ditioning. Same gender. Same inheritance. The Governor of Mississippi needs a brother. Well, he can borrow one. 
 










Samuel Clemens, dba Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Charles L. Webster, 1885©


Laurent in full flight
San Marino, mid-20th C.


David in aviators, 1965