The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

  Marquis moved easily from one form of composition to another. In this book you will find prose in the guise of bad vers libre, poetry that is truly free verse, and rhymed verse. Whatever fiddle he plucked, he always produced a song. I think he was at his best in a piece like “warty bliggens,” which has the jewel-like perfection of poetry and contains cosmic reverberations along with high comedy. Beautiful to read, beautiful to think about. But I am making Archy sound awfully dull, I guess. (Why is it that when you praise a poet, or a roach, he begins to sound well worth shunning?)

  When I was helping edit an anthology of American humor some years ago, I recall that although we had no trouble deciding whether to include Don Marquis, we did have quite a time deciding where to work him in. The book had about a dozen sections; something by Marquis seemed to fit almost every one of them. He was parodist, historian, poet, clown, fable writer, satirist, reporter, and teller of tales. He had everything it takes, and more. We could have shut our eyes and dropped him in anywhere.

  At bottom Don Marquis was a poet, and his life followed the precarious pattern of a poet’s existence. He danced on bitter nights with Boreas, he ground out copy on drowsy afternoons when he felt no urge to write and in newspaper offices where he didn’t want to be. After he had exhausted himself columning, he tried playwriting and made a pot of money (on The Old Soak) and then lost it all on another play (about the Crucifixion). He tried Hollywood and was utterly miserable and angry, and came away with a violent, unprintable poem in his pocket describing the place. In his domestic life he suffered one tragedy after another—the death of a young son, the death of his first wife, the death of his daughter, finally the death of his second wife. Then sickness and poverty. All these things happened in the space of a few years. He was never a robust man—usually had a puffy, overweight look and a gray complexion. He loved to drink, and was told by doctors that he mustn’t. Some of the old tomcats at The Players remember the day when he came downstairs after a month on the wagon, ambled over to the bar, and announced: “I’ve conquered that god-damn will power of mine. Gimme a double scotch.”

  I think the new generation of newspaper readers is missing a lot that we used to have, and I am deeply sensible of what it meant to be a young man when Archy was at the top of his form and when Marquis was discussing the Almost Perfect State in the daily paper. Buying a paper then was quietly exciting, in a way that it has ceased to be.

  Marquis was by temperament a city dweller, and both his little friends were of the city: the cockroach, most common of city bugs; the cat, most indigenous of city mammals. Both, too, were tavern habitués, as was their boss. Here were perfect transmigrations of an American soul, this dissolute feline who was a dancer and always the lady, toujours gai, and this troubled insect who was a poet—both seeking expression, both vainly trying to reconcile art and life, both finding always that one gets in the way of the other. Their employer, in one of his more sober moods, once put the whole matter in a couple of lines.

  My heart has followed all my days

  Something I cannot name …

  Such is the lot of poets. Such was Marquis’s lot. Such, probably, is the lot even of bad poets. But bad poets can’t phrase it so simply.

  E. B. White

  archy and mehitabel

  reads it and sniffs at it

  the coming of archy

  the circumstances of Archy’s first appearance are narrated in the following extract from the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun.

  Dobbs Ferry possesses a rat which slips out of his lair at night and runs a typewriting machine in a garage. Unfortunately, he has always been interrupted by the watchman before he could produce a complete story.

  It was at first thought that the power which made the typewriter run was a ghost, instead of a rat. It seems likely to us that it was both a ghost and a rat. Mme. Blavatsky’s ego went into a white horse after she passed over, and someone’s personality has undoubtedly gone into this rat. It is an era of belief in communications from the spirit land.

  And since this matter had been reported in the public prints and seriously received we are no longer afraid of being ridiculed, and we do not mind making a statement of something that happened to our own typewriter only a couple of weeks ago.

  We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about upon the keys.

  He did not see us, and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. 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.

  Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found:

  expression is the need of my soul

  i was once a vers libre bard

  but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach

  it has given me a new outlook upon life

  i see things from the under side now

  thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket

  but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it

  there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would

  have

  removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont

  she

  catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for

  there is a rat here she should get without delay

  most of these rats here are just rats

  but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him

  he used to be a poet himself

  night after night i have written poetry for you

  on your typewriter

  and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet

  comes out of his hole when it is done

  and reads it and sniffs at it

  he is jealous of my poetry

  he used to make fun of it when we were both human

  he was a punk poet himself

  and after he has read it he sneers

  and then he eats it

  i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat

  or get a cat that is onto her job

  and i will write you a series of poems showing how

  things look

  to a cockroach

  that rats name is freddy

  the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat

  but something smaller i hope i will be a rat

  in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach

  i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then

  dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office

  i havent had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long

  or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings

  and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine

  every night you can call me archy

  so stale i can t eat it

  i was cleopatra once she said

  mehitabel was once cleopatra

  boss i am disappointed in

  some of your readers they

  are always asking how does

  archy work the shift so as to get a

  new line or how does archy do

  this or do that they

  are always interested in technical

  details when the main question is

  whether the stuff is

  literature or not

  i wish you would leave

  that book of george moores on

  the floor

  mehitabel the cat and i
want to

  read it i have discovered that

  mehitabel s soul formerly inhabited a

  human also at least that

  is what mehitabel is claiming these

  days it may be she got jealous of

  my prestige anyhow she and

  i have been talking it over in a

  friendly way who were you

  mehitabel i asked her i was

  cleopatra once she said well i said i

  suppose you lived in a palace you bet

  she said and what lovely fish dinners

  we used to have and licked her chops

  mehitabel would sell her soul for

  a plate of fish any day i told her i thought

  you were going to say you were

  the favorite wife of the emperor

  valerian he was some cat nip eh

  mehitabel but she did not get me

  archy

  the song of mehitabel

  this is the song of mehitabel

  of mehitabel the alley cat

  as i wrote you before boss

  mehitabel is a believer

  in the pythagorean

  theory of the transmigration

  of the soul and she claims

  that formerly her spirit

  was incarnated in the body

  of cleopatra

  that was a long time ago

  and one must not be

  surprised if mehitabel

  has forgotten some of her

  more regal manners

  i have had my ups and downs

  but wotthehell wotthehell

  yesterday sceptres and crowns

  fried oysters and velvet gowns

  and today i herd with bums

  but wotthehell wotthehell

  i wake the world from sleep

  as i caper and sing and leap

  when i sing my wild free tune

  wotthehell wotthehell

  under the blear eyed moon

  i am pelted with cast off shoon

  but wotthehell wotthehell

  do you think that i would change

  my present freedom to range

  for a castle or moated grange

  wotthehell wotthehell

  cage me and i d go frantic

  my life is so romantic

  capricious and corybantic

  and i m toujours gai toujours gai

  i know that i am bound

  for a journey down the sound

  in the midst of a refuse mound

  but wotthehell wotthehell

  oh i should worry and fret

  death and i will coquette

  there s a dance in the old dame yet

  toujours gai toujours gai

  i followed adown the street the pad of his rhythmical feet

  i once was an innocent kit

  wotthehell wotthehell

  with a ribbon my neck to fit

  and bells tied onto it

  o wotthehell wotthehell

  but a maltese cat came by

  with a come hither look in his eye

  and a song that soared to the sky

  and wotthehell wotthehell

  and i followed adown the street

  the pad of his rhythmical feet

  o permit me again to repeat

  wotthehell wotthehell

  my youth i shall never forget

  but there s nothing i really regret

  wotthehell wotthehell

  there s a dance in the old dame yet

  toujours gai toujours gai

  the things that i had not ought to

  i do because i ve gotto

  wotthehell wotthehell

  and i end with my favorite motto

  toujours gai toujours gai

  boss sometimes i think

  that our friend mehitabel

  is a trifle too gay

  lured off by a centipede

  pity the poor spiders

  i have just been reading

  an advertisement of a certain

  roach exterminator

  the human race little knows

  all the sadness it

  causes in the insect world

  i remember some weeks ago

  meeting a middle aged spider

  she was weeping

  what is the trouble i asked

  her it is these cursed

  fly swatters she replied

  they kill off all the flies

  and my family and i are starving

  to death it struck me as

  so pathetic that i made

  a little song about it

  as follows to wit

  twas an elderly mother spider

  grown gaunt and fierce and gray

  with her little ones crouched beside her

  who wept as she sang this lay

  curses on these here swatters

  what kills off all the flies

  for me and my little daughters

  unless we eats we dies

  swattin and swattin and swattin

  tis little else you hear

  and we ll soon be dead and forgotten

  with the cost of living so dear

  my husband he up and left me

  lured off by a centipede

  and he says as he bereft me

  tis wrong but i ll get a feed

  and me a working and working

  scouring the streets for food

  faithful and never shirking

  doing the best i could

  curses on these here swatters

  what kills off all the flies

  me and my poor little daughters

  unless we eats we dies

  only a withered spider

  feeble and worn and old

  and this is what

  you do when you swat

  you swatters cruel and cold

  i will admit that some

  of the insects do not lead

  noble lives but is every

  man s hand to be against them

  yours for less justice

  and more charity

  archy

  mehitabel s extensive past

  mehitabel the cat claims that

  she has a human soul

  also and has transmigrated

  from body to body and it

  may be so boss you

  remember i told you she accused

  herself of being cleopatra once i

  asked her about antony

  anthony who she asked me are

  you thinking of that

  song about rowley and gammon and

  spinach heigho for anthony rowley

  no i said mark antony the

  great roman the friend of

  caesar surely cleopatra you

  remember j caesar

  listen archy she said i

  have been so many different

  people in my time and met

  so many prominent gentlemen i

  wont lie to you or stall i

  do get my dates mixed sometimes

  think of how much i have had a

  chance to forget and i have

  always made a point of not

  carrying grudges over

  from one life to the next archy

  i have been

  used something fierce in my time but

  i am no bum sport archy

  i am a free spirit archy i

  look on myself as being

  quite a romantic character oh the

  queens i have been and the

  swell feeds i have ate

  a cockroach which you are

  and a poet which you used to be

  archy couldn t understand

  my feelings at having come

  down to this i have

  had bids to elegant feeds where poets

  and cockroaches would

  neither one be mentioned without a

  laugh archy i have had

  adventures bu
t i

  have never been an adventuress

  one life up and the next life

  down archy but always a lady

  through it all and a

  good mixer too always the

  life of the party archy but never

  anything vulgar always free footed

  archy never tied down to

  a job or housework yes looking

  back on it all i can say is

  i had some romantic

  lives and some elegant times i

  have seen better days archy but

  whats the use of kicking kid its

  all in the game like a gentleman

  friend of mine used to say

  toujours gai kid toujours gai he