the lives and times of archy and mehitabel
books by
don marquis
a variety of people
archy and mehitabel
archy does his part
archy s life of mehitabel
carter, and other people
chapters for the orthodox
cruise of the jasper b
danny’s own story
dreams and dust
hermione and her little group of serious thinkers
love sonnets of a cave man and other verses
master of the revels—a comedy in four acts
off the arm
out of the sea—a play
poems and portraits
prefacts (decorations by tony sarg)
sonnets to a red-haired lady and famous love affairs
sons of the puritans
sun dial time
the almost perfect state
the awakening and other poems
the dark hours
the lives and times of archy and mehitabel
the old soak and hail and farewell
the old soak’s history of the world
the revolt of the oyster
when the turtles sing and other unusual tales.
copyright, 1927, 1930, 1933, 1935, 1950
by doubleday and company, inc.
copyright, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922
by sun printing and publishing association.
copyright, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1934
by new york tribune, inc.
copyright, 1925, 1926, 1933, 1934
by p. f. collier and son, company.
copyright, 1928, 1932, 1933
by don marquis.
all rights reserved.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82838-5
v3.1
dedicated to babs
with babs knows what
and babs knows why
acknowledgment
the author is indebted to the proprietors of the new york sun, the new york herald-tribune, new york herald-tribune magazine and p. f. collier and son company for permission to reprint these sketches.
contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgment
Introduction
archy and mehitabel
the coming of archy
mehitabel was once cleopatra
the song of mehitabel
pity the poor spiders
mehitabel s extensive past
the cockroach who had been to hell
archy interviews a pharaoh
a spider and a fly
freddy the rat perishes
the merry flea
why mehitabel jumped
certain maxims of archy
warty bliggens, the toad
mehitabel has an adventure
the flattered lightning bug
the robin and the worm
mehitabel finds a home
the wail of archy
mehitabel and her kittens
archy is shocked
archy creates a situation
mehitabel sings a song
aesop revised by archy
cheerio, my deario
the lesson of the moth
a roach of the taverns
the froward lady bug
pete the parrot and shakespeare
archy confesses
the old trouper
archy declares war
the hen and the oriole
ghosts
archy hears from mars
mehitabel dances with boreas
archy at the zoo
the dissipated hornet
unjust
the cheerful cricket
clarence the ghost
some natural history
prudence
archy goes abroad
archy at the tomb of napoleon
mehitabel meets an affinity
mehitabel sees paris
mehitabel in the catacombs
off with the old love
archy s life of mehitabel
the life of mehitabel the cat
the minstrel and the maltese cross
mehitabel s first mistake
the curse of drink
pussy café
a communication from archy
the return of archy
archy turns highbrow for a minute
archy experiences a seizure
peace—at a price
mehitabel again
archy among the philistines
archy protests
CAPITALS AT LAST
the stuff of literature
archy s autobiography
quote and only man is vile quote
mehitabel s morals
cream de la cream
do not pity mehitabel
mehitabel tries companionate marriage
no social stuff for mehitabel
the open spaces are too open
random thoughts by archy
archy s song
archy turns revolutionist
archy s last name
quote buns by great men quote
an awful warning
as it looks to archy
archy on the radio
archy a low brow
mehitabel s parlor story
archy s mission
archy visits washington
ballade of the under side
archy wants to end it all
book review
archy and the old un
archygrams
archy says
sings of los angeles
wants to go in the movies
the retreat from hollywood
artists shouldnt have offspring
could such things be
what does a trouper care
be damned mother dear
the artist always pays
a word from little archibald
archy does his part
prophecies
repeal
the ballyhoo
the league
conferences
a warning
now look at it
why the earth is round
the big bad wolf
abolish bridge
small talk
the south pole
poets
the two dollars
for reform
a horrid notion
archy in washington
hold everything
archy broadcasts
on the air again
resurgam
the ant bear
two comrades
as the spiders wrote it
a scarab
archy hunts a job
archy craves amusement
fate is unfair
at the zoo
no true friend
confessions of a glutton
literary jealousy
pete at the seashore
pete s theology
pete petitions
pete s holiday
a radical flea
archy and the labor troubles
an ultimatum
no snap
he gets in bad
economic
archy revolts
archy wants a change
archy on strike
a communication from henry
how the public viewed the strike
poem from henry
progress of the strike
a threat
the public and the stri
ke
archy gets a 50 per cent increase
comment from archy
a conversation with archy
archy gets restless again
archy triumphs
yes we have
a wail from little archy
doing well
takes talent
summer is icumen in
archy climbs everest
archy on everest
archy on the theater
archy flies
archy and the suicide
comforting thoughts
inspiration
gossip
a close call
kidding the boss
a sermon
difficulties of art
a spiggoty hero
sociological
never blame the booze
the sad crickets
fond recollections
immorality
archy is excited
archy reports
archy says
the book worm
archy s comet
progress
he has enemies
barbarous
the demon rum
ancient lineage
quaint
the artist
the suicide club
psychic
destiny
a discussion
quarantined
archy s statue
the open spaces
short course in natural history
archy protests
archy on amateur gardens
archy on this and that
mehitabel sees it through
mehitabel meets her mate
mehitabel pulls a party
mehitabel joins the navy
what is a lady
archy denies it
a farewell
archy still in trouble
not any proof
statesmanship
spring
the author s desk
what the ants are saying
introduction
When the publisher asked me to write a few introductory remarks about Don Marquis for this new edition of archy and mehitabel, he said in his letter: “The sales of this particular volume have been really astounding.”
They do not astound me. Among books of humor by American authors, there are only a handful that rest solidly on the shelf. This book about Archy and Mehitabel, hammered out at such awful cost by the bug hurling himself at the keys, is one of those books. It is funny, it is wise, it is tender, and it is tough. The sales do not astound me; only the author astounds me, for I know (or think I do) at what cost Don Marquis produced these gaudy and irreverent tales. He was the sort of poet who does not create easily; he was left unsatisfied and gloomy by what he produced; day and night he felt the juices squeezed out of him by the merciless demands of daily newspaper work; he was never quite certified by intellectuals and serious critics of belles lettres. He ended in an exhausted condition—his money gone, his strength gone. Describing the coming of Archy in the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun one afternoon in 1916, he wrote: “After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.” In that sentence Don Marquis was writing his own obituary notice. After about a life-time of frightfully difficult literary labor keeping newspapers supplied with copy, he fell exhausted.
I feel obliged, before going any further, to dispose of one troublesome matter. The reader will have perhaps noticed that I am capitalizing the name Archy and the name Mehitabel. I mention this because the capitalization of Archy is considered the unforgivable sin by a whole raft of old Sun Dial fans who have somehow nursed the illogical idea that because Don Marquis’s cockroach was incapable of operating the shift key of a typewriter, nobody else could operate it. This is preposterous. Archy himself wished to be capitalized—he was no e. e. cummings. In fact he once flirted with the idea of writing the story of his life all in capital letters, if he could get somebody to lock the shift key for him. Furthermore, I capitalize Archy on the highest authority: wherever in his columns Don Marquis referred to his hero, Archy was capitalized by the boss himself. What higher authority can you ask?
The device of having a cockroach leave messages in his typewriter in the Sun office was a lucky accident and a happy solution for an acute problem. Marquis did not have the patience to adjust himself easily and comfortably to the rigors of daily columning, and he did not go about it in the steady, conscientious way that (for example) his contemporary Franklin P. Adams did. Consequently Marquis was always hard up for stuff to fill his space. Adams was a great editor, an insatiable proof-reader, a good make-up man. Marquis was none of these. Adams, operating his Conning Tower in the World, moved in the commodious margins of column-and-a-half width and built up a reliable stable of contributors. Marquis, cramped by single-column width, produced his column largely without outside assistance. He never assembled a hard-hitting bunch of contributors and never tried to. He was impatient of hard work and humdrum restrictions, yet expression was the need of his soul. (It is significant that the first words Archy left in his machine were “expression is the need of my soul”.)
The creation of Archy, whose communications were in free verse, was part inspiration, part desperation. It enabled Marquis to use short (sometimes very, very short) lines, which fill space rapidly, and at the same time it allowed his spirit to soar while viewing things from the under side, insect fashion. Even Archy’s physical limitations (his inability to operate the shift key) relieved Marquis of the toilsome business of capital letters, apostrophes, and quotation marks, those small irritations that slow up all men who are hoping their spirit will soar in time to catch the edition. Typographically, the vers libre did away with the turned or runover line that every single-column practitioner suffers from.
Archy has endeared himself in a special way to thousands of poets and creators and newspaper slaves, and there are reasons for this beyond the sheer merit of his literary output. The details of his creative life make him blood brother to writing men. He cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward. So do we all. And when he was through his labors, he fell to the floor, spent. He was vain (so are we all), hungry, saw things from the under side, and was continually bringing up the matter of whether he should be paid for his work. He was bold, disrespectful, possessed of the revolutionary spirit (he organized the Worms Turnverein), was never subservient to the boss yet always trying to wheedle food out of him, always getting right to the heart of the matter. And he was contemptuous of those persons who were absorbed in the mere technical details of his writing. “The question is whether the stuff is literature or not.” That question dogged his boss, it dogs us all. This book—and the fact that it sells steadily and keeps going into new editions—supplies the answer.
In one sense Archy and his racy pal Mehitabel are timeless. In another sense, they belong rather intimately to an era—an era in American letters when this century was in its teens and its early twenties, an era before the newspaper column had degenerated. In 1916 to hold a job on a daily paper, a columnist was expected to be something of a scholar and a poet—or if not a poet at least to harbor the transmigrated soul of a dead poet. Nowadays, to get a columning job a man need only have the soul of a Peep Tom, or of a third-rate prophet. There are plenty of loud clowns and bad poets at work on papers today, but there are not many columnists adding to belles lettres, and certainly there is no Don Marquis at work on any big daily, or if there is, I haven’t encountered his stuff. This seems to me a serious falling off of the press. Mr. Marquis’s cockroach was more than the natural issue of a creative and humorous mind. Archy was the child of compulsion, the stern compulsion of journalism. The compulsion is as great today as it ever was, but it is met in a different spirit. Archy used to come back from the golden companionship of the tavern with a poet’s report of life as seen
from the under side. Today’s columnist returns from the platinum companionship of the night club with a dozen pieces of watered gossip and a few bottomless anecdotes. Archy returned carrying a heavy load of wine and dreams. These later cockroaches come sober from their taverns, carrying a basket of fluff. I think newspaper publishers in this decade ought to ask themselves why. What accounts for so great a falling off?
I hesitate to say anything about humor, hesitate to attempt an interpretation of any man’s humor: it is as futile as explaining a spider’s web in terms of geometry. Marquis was, and is, to me a very funny man, his product rich and satisfying, full of sad beauty, bawdy adventure, political wisdom, and wild surmise; full of pain and jollity, full of exact and inspired writing. The little dedication to this book
… to babs
with babs knows what
and babs knows why
is a characteristic bit of Marquis madness. It has the hasty despair, the quick anguish, of an author who has just tossed another book to a publisher. It has the unmistakable whiff of the tavern, and is free of the pretense and the studied affection that so often pollute a dedicatory message.
The days of the Sun Dial were, as one gazes back on them, pleasantly preposterous times and Marquis was made for them, or they for him. Vers libre was in vogue, and tons of souped-up prose and other dribble poured from young free-verse artists who were suddenly experiencing a gorgeous release in the disorderly high-sounding tangle of non-metrical lines. Spiritualism had captured people’s fancy also. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was in close touch with the hereafter, and received frequent communications from the other side. Ectoplasm swirled around all our heads in those days. (It was great stuff, Archy pointed out, to mend broken furniture with.) Souls, at this period, were being transmigrated in Pythagorean fashion. It was the time of “swat the fly,” dancing the shimmy, and speakeasies. Marquis imbibed freely of this carnival air, and it all turned up, somehow, in Archy’s report. Thanks to Archy, Marquis was able to write rapidly and almost (but not quite) carelessly. In the very act of spoofing free verse, he was enjoying some of its obvious advantages. And he could always let the chips fall where they might, since the burden of responsibility for his sentiments, prejudices, and opinions was neatly shifted to the roach and the cat. It was quite in character for them to write either beautifully or sourly, and Marquis turned it on and off the way an orchestra plays first hot, then sweet.
Archy and Mehitabel, between the two of them, performed the inestimable service of enabling their boss to be profound without sounding self-important, or even self-conscious. Between them, they were capable of taking any theme the boss threw them, and handling it. The piece called “the old trouper” is a good example of how smoothly the combination worked. Marquis, a devoted member of The Players, had undoubtedly had a bellyful of the lamentations of aging actors who mourned the passing of the great days of the theater. It is not hard to imagine him hastening from his club on Gramercy Park to his desk in the Sun office and finding, on examining Archy’s report, that Mehitabel was inhabiting an old theater trunk with a tom who had given his life to the theater and who felt that actors today don’t have it any more—“they don’t have it here.” (Paw on breast.) The conversation in the trunk is Marquis in full cry, ribbing his nostalgic old actors all in the most wildly fantastic terms, with the tomcat’s grandfather (who trooped with Forrest) dropping from the fly gallery to play the beard. This is double-barreled writing, for the scene is funny in itself, with the disreputable cat and her platonic relationship with an old ham, and the implications are funny, with the author successfully winging a familiar type of bore. Double-barreled writing and, on George Herriman’s part, double-barreled illustration. It seems to me Herriman deserves much credit for giving the right form and mien to these willful animals. They possess (as he drew them) the great soul. It would be hard to take Mehitabel if she were either more catlike, or less. She is cat, yet not cat; and Archy’s lineaments are unmistakably those of poet and pest.