The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel

floor by your desk it was entitled

  cockroaches and written by

  c l marlatt2 entomologist and acting

  chief in the absence of the chief and he

  tells a dozen ways of killing roaches boss

  what business has the united states

  government got

  to sick a high salaried

  expert onto a poor little roach

  please leave me some

  more cheerful literature also please

  get your typewriter fixed the keys are

  working hard again butting them as i

  do one at a time with

  my head i get awful pains in my

  neck writing for you

  NOVEMBER 6

  Where Is Archy?

  HAS ANY ONE SEEN ARCHY?

  “Where is Archy?” ask a score or more of his friends. And we are obliged to confess that we don’t know. Has any one seen a Vers Libre Cockroach with a sore head and a dejected manner lately?

  Frankly, we fear the worst.

  Archy came to us a couple of weeks ago with his head hanging down. This is no figure of speech. His head was hanging down and his neck was wried and lumpy. He asked for a leave of absence. We refused it. There were words. He left anyhow. We fear the worst.

  Archy, writing all his communications by the slow and painful process of butting his head against one typewriter key after another, developed a callous on his skull at the same time that his neck muscles began to weaken. He asked us for some sort of head harness, such as football players wear.1

  After thinking the request over, we refused it. We cannot afford to encourage contributors in the idea that it is possible to get anything in the way of material recompense out of writing for the Sun Dial.

  Buy Archy headgear and next some other poet would want a lead pencil, a pad of paper or even a theatre ticket.

  Once that sort of thing starts there’s no telling where it may run to before it stops.

  “Archy,” we said, “is the glory you get worth nothing to you? We’re astonished to find you so materialistic! How about art for art’s sake?”

  “Well, boss,” he said, “if you won’t get me the harness so I can write without screaming every time I hit a letter, at least let me lay off for a week or two.”

  We thought it over. And decided against it. Begin to treat contributors as if they were human and there’s no telling . . . there’s no telling . . . it runs into drinks and lunches the first thing you know.

  “Back to the mine!” we cried. . . . Then is when he left us. . . . We still think we did right.

  Still, if any one sees a Free Verse Cockroach with a low-hung calloused brow and a wried neck wandering at large, lost and in distress, we will be glad to be informed of his whereabouts.

  DECEMBER 20

  Arrest That Statue

  i was up to central

  park yesterday watching some

  kids build a snow man when

  they were done and had

  gone away i looked it

  over they had used two

  little chunks of wood for

  the eyes i sat on one

  of these and stared at

  the bystanders along came a

  prudish looking

  lady from flatbush she

  stopped and regarded the

  snow man i stood

  up on my hind legs in

  the eye socket and

  waved myself at her

  horrors she cried even the

  snow men in manhattan

  are immoral officer arrest

  that statue it winked

  at me madam said the cop

  accept the tribute

  as a christmas present

  and be happy my own

  belief is that some

  people have immorality

  on the brain

  DECEMBER 28

  Happy Inspirations

  excuse me if my

  writing is out of alignment i

  fell into a bowl of

  egg nog the other

  day at the restaurant down

  the street which the doctor

  says he is glad to

  hear you are keeping away

  from and when i

  emerged i was full of happy

  inspirations alas they

  vanished ere the break of

  day i am sure they

  were the most brilliant and

  witty things that ever

  emanated from the mind of

  man or cockroach or poet i

  sat inside a mince pie

  and laughed and laughed at

  them myself the world seemed all

  one golden glory boss

  i came up the

  street to get all this

  wonderful stuff onto paper for

  you but when i tried to

  operate the typewriter

  my foot would slip and

  by the time i had control

  of the machine again

  the thoughts had gone

  forever it is the

  tragedy of the artist

  1917

  JANUARY 2

  That Cockroach Glide

  boss you oughta been

  here last night we

  had a ball on

  top of your desk in honor

  of your getting it cleaned

  for 1917 three

  cockroaches a katydid

  two spiders and a

  peruvian flea that came

  in with the decayed

  gentleman who tried to sell

  you his autobiography in

  poetical form the

  other day and compromised by

  borrowing a dime finally

  a thousand legs came along

  and made a hit by

  dancing a dozen different

  dances all at once each

  pair of legs keeping step to a

  different tune what we

  need here worst of

  all is two or three crickets

  for an orchestra i

  am inventing a new

  step called that cockroach

  glide

  JANUARY 27

  Archy Gets His Statue Made

  Some months ago the friends of Archy, unable to conceal their interest any longer, began to send insects to us by mail. The idea was, perhaps, that Archy condemned to the society of humans and poets, might be languishing for the lack of associations more distinctly entomological. At any rate, there was one week during which we received, in trust for Archy, boxes containing the following insects:

  One croton bug, alive.

  One small roach, gone before.

  One small mutilated roach, gone quite a long way before.

  One grasshopper, alive and voting.

  One large roach, alive and suffering from overfeeding, in a box which contained also a piece of toast, plastered over with welsh rabbit.

  One small red and black spider, gone before.

  One infinitesimal smear, purporting to be the physical remains of a defunct flea.

  None of these things was acknowledged at the time. It was evident that some little group of serious drinkers were spoofing us, and using Archy as a peg to hang their practical wit upon. We had no bird to feed the insects to, and we did not dare or care to encourage the spread of the pastime by noticing it in print. We sent Archy into the silences for a few weeks, hoping that when he emerged again the Cockroach Shower would have ceased.

  But we received last week a pedestrian statue of Archy, which, because of its artistic excellence, we are obliged to notice—and acknowledge. It is by Mrs. Helena Smith Dayton, and represents Archy as we ourself have always imagined him to be—a bit of the scholar, with the scholar’s stoop, a bit of the pedant, the highbrow, determined to mix with lowbrows on terms of equality—a superior insect, resolutely democratic for the moment because of what he might learn—a distinctly literary creat
ure, reaching out to life for literary purposes only, and interested in nothing not susceptible of being ground into grist in the literary mill—not a cockroach reaching up into art from life, but a cockroach consciously condescending to life and leaning toward it from the pedestal of art—a bug being vulgar now and then with an effort and solely for the sake of capturing the franchise of the majorities—a supercilious cockroach hiding his superciliousness under the affectation of being hail-fellow-well-met with all sorts and conditions of men, a spy scurrying among the lower classes, so-called, for the purpose of reporting them amusingly to his particular clientele . . . ; he thinks sincerely that he is seeing life from the under side, whereas he brings to the examination of the under side his literary preconceptions and prejudices.

  JANUARY 30

  Statue of Myself

  say boss but its great to

  be famous when i saw that pedestrian

  statue of myself on your desk i reflected that not

  every one is privileged to see his

  monument erected before he dies nor

  after either for that matter it

  gave me the feeling that i was looking at my own

  tombstone erected in memory of my good

  deeds how noble i will have to be to live up

  to all that i felt just as a person might

  feel who was hearing his own funeral

  sermon preached over him i

  stared at the statue and the statue stared at

  me and i resolved in the future to be

  a better cockroach of course it doesnt flatter me

  any my middle set of legs arent really

  that bowed but the intellectual look

  on my face is all there

  MARCH 3

  Going to War or Just Going to Hell

  well boss i have

  been down to washington to see

  if i could find out whether

  we were going to war or

  just going to hell anyhow i

  was looking for statesmen to my

  surprise i found quite a

  number of cockroaches in

  charge of affairs cockroach mann

  cockroach

  kitchin need i specify further it

  made me ashamed of the cockroach

  tribe more anon

  MARCH 29

  More or Less Neutral

  well boss there are

  some great questions before us these

  days such

  as which shall i be a militarist or

  a pacifist as between the two things i

  am more or less neutral some days i

  say on with the dance let war be

  unconfined i

  am a militarist other days i shout let

  loose the dogs of peace and the

  average i strike is one of complete

  neutrality between the two last evening

  after

  you left some of the gang gathered

  on your desk a couple of cockroaches

  a red eyed

  spider a mouse with a set of german

  military

  whiskers who is believed to be a

  spy a big blue bottle fly that has been

  asleep behind the radiator all winter

  and we had

  all decided on militarism when in blew a

  hornet what is the question before

  house he

  asked and when we told him he said if

  this bunch is

  for militarism count me a pacifist

  or vice versa he said

  anything for trouble i especially hate

  spiders my grandfather got tangled up

  in a web little red eye do you want

  any of my

  game i have not said a word remarked

  the little red

  eyed spider stranger go in peace you

  hadn t better

  say a word either said the hornet

  i give you

  warning that wherever i look i

  create a barred zone i

  will sink you without visit or search

  stranger

  said little red eye i never brag but

  my bite

  is poison where my tongue stabs a

  life ceases if i was to spit on the floor a

  poison flower would bloom there i

  never boast myself

  said the hornet i am a quiet person

  but it is

  only fair to tell you that i can lick my

  weight in

  german measles declare yourself

  spider whatever you

  are i am the other thing stranger said

  the spider i

  advise you to begin nothing that you are

  not able to carry to a conclusion i feel

  sorry for you stranger i hate to see an

  innocent thing from the suburbs get

  entangled with

  a concentrated essence of pestilence like

  myself come come said the hornet let

  the note writing

  cease i dare you dare me to do what asked

  the spider dare

  you to live any longer said the hornet

  and they

  went at it then the results were fatal

  to both the

  hornet stung the spider to death

  and died of his own

  wounds crying out for water to

  the last watching

  that fight made me more neutral

  than ever if

  possible

  MARCH 30

  Between Him and His Masterpiece

  boss why dont you get a

  ribbon put into your typewriter it is only

  after the most desperate exertions that

  i am able to pound out these few lines i

  had to get a sheet of carbon paper

  and insert it between two sheets of white paper

  and fix it in the machine in order to

  write at all1 and would never have got it

  done if it hadnt been that mehitabel the

  cat and all the rest of the gang

  around here helped me i had something

  important i wanted to write you but all this

  frightful physical labor has driven it out

  of my mind it is always so with the

  artist by the time he has overcome the

  difficulties that lie between him and

  his masterpiece

  he is tired i wish you would get me an

  electric typewriter and why not have me

  endowed so i would not have to worry about

  material things at all i would like to write

  and eat and sleep and not work at anything else

  APRIL 16

  War Times1

  well boss we may

  be legally at war but

  i am derned if i can

  make myself feel like it was war

  times wait says mehitabel the

  cat till the food shortage comes then

  you will know it is war

  times all right as far as food is

  concerned i answered her it is war time

  most of the time with me

  anyhow boss i don’t like to be always

  hinting but if you could

  establish something more like a

  regular ration for me i would feel

  more like devoting myself to my

  art

  APRIL 17

  Agate for You, Archy, Just to Curb Your Pride

  thank you boss for

  printing me up near the

  top of the column the

  other day i

  am not a vain cockroach but

  it does me good

  to feel that merit will finally

  be recognized if i

  could only attain

  brevier type now my cup

  would
be full you

  may hear little more from

  me for some days as

  i am engaged on a literary

  work of some importance it is

  nothing more nor less

  than the life story of

  mehitabel the cat she is

  dictating it a word

  at a time and all

  the bunch gather around to listen but

  i am rewriting it as i go along

  boss i wish we

  could do something

  for mehitabel she is

  a cat that has seen

  better days she has

  drunk cream at fourteen

  cents the half pint

  in her time and now she

  is thankful for a

  stray fish head from a

  garbage cart but she is

  cheerful under it all toujours

  gai is ever her word

  toujours gai kiddoo drink she

  says played a great

  part in it all she

  was taught to drink

  beer by a kitchen maid she

  trusted and was

  abducted from a luxurious home

  on one occasion in a

  taxicab while under

  the influence of beer which

  she feels certain had been

  drugged but still her

  word is toujours gai my

  kiddo toujours gai wotto hell

  luck may change

  APRIL 19

  The Story of Mehitabel the Cat

  well boss i promised to tell you

  something of the life story of

  mehitabel the cat archy says she i

  was a beautiful kitten and as good

  and innocent as i was beautiful my

  mother was an angora you dont

  look angora i said your fur

  should show it did

  i say angora said mehitabel it must

  have been a slip of the tongue my

  mother was high born and of