Crank on Humphries and Marquis

In a comment to my last post (link), the NY Crank says he has no memory of introducing me to Rolfe Humphries. I had speculated as much: funny what sticks, and what does not, after all these years.

Crank also recalls that we shared an enthusiasm for Don Marquis, of "Archy and Mehitabel" fame. He's got that one right (and once again, I suspect have been he who did the introduction). Marquis certainly was a great discovery for me as a 19-year-old. And unlike many discoveries from that period, I'd say he stands the test of time. Better than that, I suspect that Marquis is one of those writers who gets better with wear-- underrated because he is funny. He's not a great poet--he's not precisely a poet at all, even though he writes in a kind of verse. But he has a sensibility, at once fey and astringent, that is as satisfying now as when I first read him (I'd put him light years ahead of, say Ogden Nash, who today strikes me as just too cutsey for words).

Crank mentions Marquis on Shakespeare. Yes; I only dimly remember the one he quotes, but I often think about his account of how Archy the Cockroach met Pete the Parrot--the Parrot who used to live in the Mermaid Tavern where he met the Bard himself (I may steal from it in an anticipated Shakespeare post). I also like the one about the time when Archy visited the Met and talked about the Mummy. After an eternity of sand and dust, the Mummy was dying (sic?) for a beer. And Archy had tell him that he'd wound up in America under prohibition.

Well, well, said the Mummy (I quote from memory), my enemies always told me I would wind up in Hell someday, and it looks as if they had the right dope.

Don Marquis is one of those authors I try to inflict on the younger generation at the right age. But one of the high points of parenthood was the day my daughter--I think she was 15--came home to say "you'll never believe this hilarious poet I just found"--and so discovered him for herself ("Oh, we''ll never rest on Everest, my Himalaya honey"). Oddly enough, I'm not having so much luck with the next generation. I've tried it on a couple of housebroken teenagers who smile politely and turn away. But the daughter's own kids are preteens, so maybe I still have a chance (or maybe she intends to do the obsequies herself?).

Sydney and Ogden

The other day in discussing Oliver Hereford, I wrote that he stood “somewhere between Sydney Smith and Ogden Nash.” I’m really not at all clear what I had in mind in that comparison—probably just sloppy writing. Well: Nash and Smith both were famous for their wit, but they were at least a century apart in time, and perhaps even further apart in style or general sensibility.

Smith, who flourished in late Georgian England, was perhaps the world’s first modern celebrity preacher, the guy who did so much to give the Anglican clergy the rep of being just too cool for words. In a way he brought this on himself, but in a more important way, the charge is unfair. In fact was a person of great civility and generosity in an age when neither thrived. For all his drawing-room manner, he opposed slavery and supported Catholic emancipation in an age when neither position was a ticket to the best society.

Nash seems to me a more complicated case. When I was young (and had not heard of Smith), I thought Nash was the model of wit. These days I find him mostly (although not entirely) unreadable. Hard for me to say just why, except perhaps that Smith was light-hearted in an age that took itself too seriously, while Nash was facetious an era that didn’t take itself seriously enough.

Sydney Smith quotes abound on the web. Here are some samples:

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.

I’m the proud possessor of a tattered old Penguine Paperback edition The Smith of Smiths a biography by Hesketh Pearson who was a minor celebrity in his own right—and so, a double artifact. Necessarily, I want to be more careful with Nash. Most of the verse, as I say, now strikes me as dreadful. I am startled to learn that he was lyricist for the Broadway musical “One Touch of Venus,” collaborating with Kurt Weill and S. J. Perelman. And I do like:

Girls who are bespectacled
Seldom get their necktacled.