A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAINThe Annual Hopwood Address, Delivered June 2, I937

By CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

"The prizes shall not be confined to academicsubjects ... the new, the unusual, and the radi­cal shall be especially encouraged."

-Avery Hopwood's instructionsfor his bequest.

IfF I were to speak of an American writerII who was raised in a village near the

Big River, who had relatively littleformal education, worked in a countryprinting shop, drifted from city to city as anewspaper reporter, wrote his first book inrustic Middle-West dialect about an ignor­ant foundling boy who ran away and wenttrouping with patent medicine doctors andcounty fair showmen, you would know towhom I refer.

Suppose I were to add that this writer,whose faculty of self-criticism is only vesti­gial, by some sure instinct reached his bestvein in dealing with outcasts, freaks, hamactors, dogs, boys, kings and queens, news­paper men, drunkards, and Shakespeare­in fact anyone on the losing side of societybut still alert to the bewildering absurdityof life. That he was always infatuated withtheology, and profoundly reverent in spirit,but united with this so potent a vein ofmother-of-pearl blasphemy and-shall wesay-verbal frowardness, that his privatecorrespondence will remain mostly un­quoted. In his own person a creature ofsuch high and simple charm that it wouldbe no ex~ggeration to call him, in his owncircle, the best loved man of his time. If Iadd further, though trying to remain thisside unseasonable intimacies, a man af-

flicted in private by tragedy's most savagestrokes, you would certainly recognize him.A writer who fulfills with singular exact­ness the most vital native tradition ofAmerican letters; whose grotesque andironic humor was often put in parables tooblunt for intellectuals to perceive; a manwhose work bears on almost every page thestigmata of its origin, conceived under com­pulsion, blotted before the ink was dry. Ofcourse, you would say, Mark Twain.

But he is not Mark Twain.The most precious capacity of criticism

is the intuition of excellence near at hand,while it still lives and hopes and hungers.It is easy to praise established renown; per­haps a little too much of our academic en­ergy is devoted to that. Do you rememberStephen Leacock's delightful passage wherehe says that the classics are only primitiveliterature, and there is no reason why weshould revere primitive literature more thanprimitive machinery or primitive plumbing.But, he says, wrap that message round astone and throw it through the window ofthe nearest university, and watch the pro­fessors buzz. It is commendable to S:lY, forinstance, that La Rochefoucauld was a greatmaster of moral maxims, but that knowl­edge should also fit us to recognize a manwriting with the edge of La Rochefoucauldin the afternoon newspaper. It is often bytheir living analogues that we get our keen­est relish of the great minds of the past. Iremember that once when I wrote some­thing in praise of the verse of a contem­porary poet, I had a letter from a friend.

j

!

r•I

HedidenJCthe

Ier tmysnowwillas pan c

in fLthatspmMarOlddesCrTwamalIimpJmarlideadesicmgramt~m~gwepsycfor s

ItaboUithatwerecab,alonf!nue, .underWe 1

frombehinrwhetr?r-pInsuraAt anlookinback vterrorremento the

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN 603

He wrote: "I'm glad you said what you of course the famous sand-hills of Indiana,did about Bill, while he's alive and can along the shore of the Lake.enjoy it. I don't think anything is ever quite In our obsession of horror they symbol-the same to us after we're dead." ized a clean escape into sunlight and open

I had intended to withhold a little long- spaces and peace. How often I have saider the name of my hero, but since I find to myself: Dear old boy, he never got outmyself quoting him already, I'll tell you to the dunes. Few of us ever do. Everynow. I am talking about Don Marquis. I imaginer dreams of that perfect equilib­will try to speak as simply and judiciously rium, where pure sensibility of reception isas possible. There cannot be time, on such balanced by the joyful pulse of accomplish-an occasion, to trace ment. (The physicsin full detail my thesis department wouldthat he is our closest have a less pedanticspiritual descendant of phrase for it. TheyMark Twain. (The would probably sayOld Soak would say, where stress divideddescended off of Mark by strain is constant.)Twain.) That will re- There is always onemain to some extent more bit of hackworkimplicit in these re- to be ground out be-marks. I suggest the fore we can get at theidea to anyone who great masterpiece.desiderates a reward- More iron ica I still,ing study in literary when we deliberatelyramification. I at- sit down (0 tackle thetempt here only to annunciated master-give something of the piece, how often itpsychic background goes wooden in ourfor such an essay. hands. The journey-

I hadaqueerdream man job we drudgedabout Don once. In at day by day, andthat dream he and I grimly estimated aswere riding in a taxi- potboiling, perhapscab, furiously driven was the big thingalong Wabash Ave- DOili MARQUIS after all. I'm surenue, Chicago, in a roaring hurry of traffic dear old Dr. Johnson, as he ground awayunder the dingy L trestles of the Loop. at his Lives of the Poets, cursed them asWe were escaping, or trying to escape, hackwork; yet in every paragraph theyfrom some vast calamity that pressed close show the volume and pressure of thatbehind. What, I don't exactly know- leviathan intelligence, breaching in thewhether fire, flood, storm, earthquake, white foam of humor. So it was with Donor-perhaps more likely in Chicago, what Marquis. In the recurrent hodiernity of theinsurance policies call "civil commotion." Sun Dial, from 1913 to 1922 in the NewAt any rate we were fleeing desperately, York Evening Sun, six days a week, be­looking over our shoulders through the devilled by a million interruptions andback window of the cab to see whether the beclamored by all the agreeable rattles, theterror was gaining on us. And I vividly social rivetters who gang round a man try­remember Don saying "If we can get out ing to work, Marquis created somethingto the Dunes it'll be all right." He meant utterly his own. It was as racy of our day

MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

as Addison and Steele's Spectator of theirs.I have said before, the American press hasmuch to apologize for-more all the timewith its increasing elements of what LewisCarroll called Uglification, Distraction, andDerision-but much can also be forgivenwhen you think: of the newspapers, theSun, and the New York Tribune, that sawDon's quality and gave him free hand.

I speak feelingly, for when I came towork in New York in 1913 as a boy freshfrom Oxford-how fresh, you would haveto have been a pre-War boy to realize­the Sun Dial, then less than a year old,was the first journalistic specialty I noticed.I ts freakish pungency, offhand gusto, be­wildering alternation of seriousness andbuffoonery, of delicate lyric and prattfallslapstick, how different from the prim jour­nalism I had been trained to esteem. Con­tagion was immediate. I had lately passedthrough the fevers of an early Stevensonianinfluenza, and was ripe for new inocula­tions. Literary beginnings are always imi­tative. At once I wanted, if not necessarilyto write like Mr. Marquis, at least to geta chance to try to run a column of that kind.Eventually I did, and if anyone were toembarrass me by studying the matter theywould see how admiringly I followedDon's technique. I don't think: anyonenoticed it, because I started in a Philadel­phia paper, the most perfect form of secrecy.

I must have absorbed the Marquisianstyle fairly well, because some years laterhe and I planned to do a novel in collabora­tion. We mapped out the story in alternatesections to be told by two narrators: he toimpersonate one and I the other. Then Donwas prevented by illness from doing hisshare, so I wrote the whole thing; but theportions that had been alloted to him Itried to write as I thought he would havedone. The book was published over bothour names, and almost every reviewer re­marked how easy it was to tell where Mor­ley stopped and Marquis began. That bookgave me one of my few opportunities tobreak even with Don for many practical

japes; I sent him a copy inscribed "Withregards from the author."

Don's own literary beginnings were dan­gerously close to mimicry. His first book,Danny's Own Story, published in 1912, ismuch too obviously Mark Twain material.It is written with savor and charm, but thememory of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyerkeeps blurring the reader's focus. Andthere's another interesting influence to benoted. Marquis worked as a young man inclose association with one of America's verygreatest geniuses, Joel Chandler Harris.In his late years Harris conducted UncleRemus's Magazine, of which Marquis be­came assistant editor. If you take a manwho has the natural bent of Mark Twain,and then have him trained by Uncle Re­mus, you needn't be surprised if the resultis remarkable (it's rather astonishing thathe can write conventional English at all).Also Marquis's formative years as a shortstory writer were during the meteor pas­sage of O. Henry. All these three can bedivined in some of his work. But, as I say,almost every writer begins on borrowedcapital. The important thing is to be ableto pay it back, in due course, with earningsof your own.

I suppose we should have some bio­graphical data. It is always disconcertingto realize how little we know, even in ourintimate friends, of the factors that havebeen really operative. In the case of onewho becomes to any degree a public figure,legend quickly coalesces; and sometimesthe legend is truer than the fact. A goodmany years ago (in 1916) Don wrote outat my request a sketch of his life up to thattime. It is obviously jocular, but the jocu­larities are sincere and reveal more of theman than you might suppose.

Born July 29, 1878, at \Valnut, Bureau Co.,Ill., a member of the Republican party.

My father was a physician, and I had all thediseases of the time and place free of charge.

Nothing further happened to me until, in thesummer of 1896, I left the Republican party tofollow the Peerless Leader to defeat.

~

i

jI1

1~,

1

Into al\VassomeGaveing t

I haOfficnoddthe \'toil. •no dlhow

Neley p.Clenc]Offietacceplpaper.

UptroublmagicunWOJ

ever sTh

returnwas fa"Vilso;I left .

Thithe tinwhoseI add;

It Sl

the thiHeil

coloredassuredand mweightbut notnese arNo.8 sinside sdogs ament aof UppEto keepchest rrespiratoperate!bindranfoot; s

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN 60S

In 1900 I returned to the Republican partyto accept a position in the Census Bureau, atWashington, D.C. This position I filled forsome months in a way highly satisfactory to theGovernment in power. It is particularly gratify­ing to me to remember that one evening, afterI had worked unusually hard at the CensusOffice, the late President McKinley himselfnodded and smiled to me as I passed throughthe \Vhite House grounds on my way home fromtoil. He had heard of my work that day, I hadno doubt, and this was his way of showing mehow greatly he appreciated it.

Nevertheless, shortly after President McKin­ley paid this public tribute to the honesty, effi­ciency and importance of my work in the CensusOffice, I left the Republican party again andaccepted a position as reporter on a \Vashingtonpaper.

Upon entering the newspaper business all thetroubles of my earlier years disappeared as if bymagic, and I have lived the contented, peaceful,unworried life of the average newspaper manever Slnce.

There is little more to tell. In 19 I 6 I againreturned to the Republican party. This time itwas for the express purpose of voting against Mr.\Vilson. Then Mr. Hughes was nominated, andI left the Republican party again.

This is the outline of my life in its relation tothe times in which I live. For the benefit of thosewhose curiosity extends to more particular details,I add a careful pen-picture of myself.

It seems more modest, somehow, to put it inthe third person:

Height, 5 feet 100 inches; hair, dove­colored; scar on little finger of left hand; hasassured carriage, walking boldly into good hotelsand mixing with patrons on terms of equality;weight, 200 pounds; face slightly asymmetrical,but not definitely criminal in type; loathes J apa­nese art, but likes beefsteak and onions; wearsNo.8 shoe; fond of Francis Thompson's poems;inside seam of trousers, 32 inches; imitates cats,dogs and barnyard animals for the amuse­ment of young children; eyetooth in right sideof upper jaw missing; has always been carefulto keep thumb prints from possession of police;chest measurement, 42 inches, varying withrespiration; sometimes wears glasses, but usuallyoperates undisguised; dislikes the works of Ra­bindranath T agore; corn on little toe of rightfoot; superstitious, especially with regard to

psychic phenomena; eyes blue; does not usedrugs nor read his verses to women's clubs; rud­dy complexion; no photograph in possession ofpolice; garrulous and argumentative; prominentcheek bones; avoids Bohemian society, so-called,and has never been in a thieves' kitchen, a brok­er's office nor a class of short-story writing;wears 17-inch collar; waist measurement noneof your business; favorite disease, hypochondria;prefers the society of painters, actors, writers,architects, preachers, sculptors, publishers, edi­tors, musicians, among whom he often succeedsin insinuating himself, avoiding association withcrooks and reformers as much as possible; walkswith rapid gait; mark of old fracture on rightshin; cuffs on trousers, and coat cut loose, withplenty of room under the arm pits; two hippockets; dislikes Roquefort cheese, "TomJones," Wordsworth's poetry, absinthe cocktails,most musical comedy, public banquets, physicalexercise, Billy Sunday, steam heat, toy dogs,poets who wear their souls outside, organizedcharity, magazine covers, and the gas company;prominent calluses on two fingers of right handprevent him being expert pistol shot; belt strapson trousers; long upper lip; clean shaven; shag­gy eyebrows; affects soft hats; smile, one-sided;no gold fillings in teeth; has served six years ofindeterminate sent~nce in Brooklyn, with noattempt to escape, but is reported to have friendsoutside; voice, husky; scar above the foreheadconcealed by hair; commonly wears plain goldring on little finger of left hand; dislikes prunes,tramp poets and imitations of Kipling; trouserscut loose over hips and seat; would likely comealong quietly if arrested.

There was always a sort of pleasingastonishment to me in the name of Don'sbirthplace: the village of Walnut, in Bu­reau County. It will take some searchingbefore you find it on the map (even in thelatest census the population was only 833).Don once described it as one of those townsthat prop two corn-fields apart. It's inNorthwestern Illinois, about on a line withRock Island and only some thirty milesfrom the nearest bend of the Mississippi.I've always wanted to make a pilgrimage toWalnut, which would excite me every bitas much as my boyhood excursion on abicycle to Stratford on Avon. I've never

--_.__.-_.._---_._-------_.__._-----_._-

606 MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

even seen photographs of the place, becauseall the Marquis family souvenirs were de­stroyed by fire a good many years ago. Itmust have been a very Tom Sawyerishboyhood. What I would particularly liketo see is if there isn't a big swamp some­where near by, so many of Don's storiesdeal with queer people and happenings ina sort of wild morass on the outskirts oftown. I was thrilled a couple of years agoto find myself on a Rock Island train go­ing through that part of the country, butWalnut itself is not on a main line and Imissed it. I remember sitting in a swayingclub car writing a poem to Don about it;he complained afterward that the handwrit­ing was so bad he never could read it. Asa matter of fact the train rolled and pitchedso that we were across the Big River beforeI could get my rhymes firm on their feet,so for my refrain I used Iowa instead ofIllinois. The last stanza went like this-

o plant the flat feet, porter,As firmly as you may;

o sleeper, cleave to mattress,o waiter, clutch your tray.

Past Mark Twain's MississippiThat flows dark brown with clay

. We're swinging, clinging, singingOur Middle-West hurray:

We ride the old Rock IslandThat goes to Denver's highland,The rackety Rock IslandThat rolls through Ioway!

I mention this doggerel only as an incentiveto Middle Western patriotism: for Marquisremains the greatest writer of that originwho has not really been discovered by hisown country.

In later years Don used to insist on afamily tradition that he was born duringa total eclipse of the sun. Considerablestress was to be laid on this in a book heand I sometimes meditated, which was tobe ostensibly a life of Shakespeare but actu­ally a sort of double autobiography of our­selves. \Ve were struck, as everyone musthave been, by the extraordinary number ofour own intimate thoughts that Shake-

speare had expressed--often rather betterthan we could. He must have been some­how spying on us; and the idea was to seewhat episodes in our own experience mightaccount for or confirm what Shakespearehad written. To avoid any possible em­barrassment we would each attribute to theother any behavior that might seem dis­creditable; or if necessary ascribe it toShakespeare. We had heard rumors thatthere was doubt among scholars as toShakespeare's identity, or even whetherthere ever was any such person; we felt thatif he had used so much of our own privatecircumstance we had as good a right to himas anyone else. We were astonished andgrieved when we learned presently thatMark Twain had done something alongthis line, though certainly not so carefullythought out: I think it was called Is Shake­speare Dead? So the Life of Shakespeare­Marquis-Morley was abandoned, but itstarted Don thinking about an "egobiogra­phy" of his own. He made a good manystarts at it, and the later versions I neversaw, but I have here the very first, CodexA. I think I must share a little of it.Dear Kit:

I am engaged upon writing a Biography ofDon Marquis, which will (or may if I don'tget tired of it) some day appear as if it hadbeen written by Perry Gordon. The first fewpages I have just written in the last few minutes.It will be the literal truth about my life, but itwill always have the double feeling, vVell, be­lieve it or not! Many won't. That's where thejoke will come in. I'm going to put into it alot of letters which Mr. Marquis wrote to vari­ous people; wme of which he just wrote as hewrote the book. I enclose a sample of it; therewill be a number of these letters to you, and ifthe point ever comes u~I don't see how itcould":'-you must swear I wrote them to you.

Yours as per eternally,DON

The Biography of Don Marquisby

Perry Gordon

Chapter OneAny biographer of Don Marquis is assailed at

once by the initial difficulty that Mr. Marquis

has alpeopl.ley c.ago,graphwrote

myreawh

'tmeif :ofstata I

pentiolas .weIlifesunwiIisplrsuclableYOtoptiawanytheythessuffiwis~

sistnotwhi(latioAnd

... The! is the bIi tain thi world t.,

appreci:f1ambo}self-depvoted rnever kvariouslclarity:my busi.in thiswith su

The

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN

has always taken a perverse delight in mystifyingpeople with regard to himself. Christopher Mor­ley charged him with it, ten or twelve yearsago, when Mr. Morley was preparing a bio­graphical essay concerning him, and Marquiswrote in reply:

It is quite true that I have invented formyself a good many experiences which I neverreally had. But they were all experienceswhich belonged to me by right of tempera­ment and character. I should have had them,if I had but had my rights. I was despoiledof them by the rough tyranny of Circum­stance. On the other hand, I have suppresseda number of incidents which actually hap­pened, because I did not, upon mature reflec­tion, find them in consonance with my natureas I like to think it is-they were lies thatwere told about me by the slinking facts oflife. Evangelists of various descriptions as­sure us that we can make the future what wewill, if we can but attain a sufficient degree ofspirituality. It has been my endeavor to attainsuch a degree of spirituality that I may beable to influence the past as well as the future.You may think the aspiration is a trifle toooptimistic, but you can scarcely deny that it isa worthy aspiration. I should not care to haveany notes written about my life at all, unlessthey were notes that had a tendency to redressthese balances. If there are numbers of people,sufficient to justify a biographical paper, whowish to know the truth about me, I must in­sist that it is the truth which they get, andnot merely a series of dislocated facts-factswhich, but too frequently, have no logical re­lation to my character as I know it to be.And who should know it better than myself?

There is always the doubt as to whether a manis the best judge of himself. And it is almost cer­tain that he will not show the figure to theworld that he sees in his bright moments of self­appreciation-and Marquis is a queer mixture offlamboyant self-appreciation and really humbleself-depreciation. I never knew a man who de­voted more time to thinking about himself; Inever knew a man who thought of himself morevariously, or who was less capable of a steadyclarity in looking at himself. So I have made itmy business to investigate every incident recordedin this book, wherever possible; and sometimeswith surprising results.

The difficulties go as far back as the date of

the man's birth, and even include his propername.

"I was born (Mr. Marquis habitually told thisto his friends for many years; he put it in printseveral times, and he wrote it in a number ofletters to friends which I have seen )-1 wasborn during a total eclipse of the sun, at 3 o'clockin the afternoon of July 29th, 1878."

The fact is, that Mr. Marquis does not knowwhether he was born during the eclipse, or mere­lyon the same day. There is no doubt of theday and year, but there is no one now livingwho can testify to the exact hour. Not that itmakes any great difference; but it shows thecharacter of the difficulties which confront abiographer; difficulties which Mr. Marquis, asoften as not, refuses to take seriously-althoughhe can usually be made to confirm the literal factin the end if it is presented to him and enoughinsistence made. I wrote him, asking him howhe knew he was born during the eclipse itself, forI had received a hint from other quarters to theeffect that he did not know, and was romancing.I quote from the reply which I received:

Don't take that eclipse from me! I havealways loved that eclipse. It makes me seemmore remarkable to myself. I've told about itand written about it so often that it wouldmake me look like a liar if it should not turnout to be literally true; and while I don'tmind lying now and then I always hate tolook like a liar. How do you know it isn'ttrue? How do I know it isn't true? The factis, I was born on July 29th, 1878, and therewas an eclipse that day-you can go and lookthat up, if you don't believe it-and it mayvery well be that I was born just at the timethe eclipse was going on. Poems have beenwritten about it; and anything that a poemhas been written about becomes true at once,if it is a good poem. Look at the seige ofTroy' How much truer that story is becausewe do not know the literal truth of those skir­mishes which Homer sang into immortality.I do not want my life related with a dribbleof cold facts; I want it sung, as Homer wouldsing it. I insist on the eclipse. To me it hasalways seemed a portent from the gods. Iwould like you to say: "The sun retired,brooded apart, thought, shadowing his fore­head in his hands; and then, his mind madeup, tossed Marquis upon the surface of thisplanet." This is the thought at the center of

608 MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

my life which has enabled me to survive manydiscouragements and traverse many vales ofvicissitude; this thought that, after all, I wasitttended by the sun himself. Do not take itfrom me." How do I know that it was notliterally true? Even in the face of a definiteliteral record (which does not exist) I shouldcontinue to believe it. I must. It is a necessityof my nature to connect myself with the coreof the universe by every possible strand. I ameither a child of the gods, or I am nothing atall. I believe in gods, and I love gods; anhonest god is the noblest work of man. "1will have my eclipse!"

The definite literal record does not exist;this is the one definite literal fact which we getfrom Mr. Marquis's rhodomontade. And thepresent biographer has had no end of troublewinnowing such small facts from such over­flowing measures of chaff.

That subtle psychological observationthat the things that actually happen to usare often wretchedly unrepresentative ofour true selves is one to which Marquisoften recurs. But I want to make plain thatI think the twelve years of column-writingin New York, theoretically the worst pos­sible vehicle for a finely imaginative talent,were in fact magnificent. There, with in­creasing power, his essential originalitycame through. From those newspaper filesmost of his best books have been scissoredout--or, to be exact, photostatted. As anote for bibliographers, I suppose Marquisis one of the few authors whose originalbook manuscripts exist chieBy in the formof tall albums of newspaper columns pho­tographed from the Public Library. I re­member one time he came out to our housefor dinner, and as he entered the door tookout a narrow roll of newsprint from hispocket, trailing it behind him. He crossed allthe rooms on the ground Boor, emittingthis ribbon of paper, and then, as it wasstill uncoiling, started upstairs. Finally ofcourse came the question he was playingfor. What do you think you are, a spider?It's the manuscript of my new play, he said.It had been running in his column, at ir­regular intervals, for months. He had cut

out all the sections, and pasted them to­gether endways.

From the files of the column came hisbook of Prefaces; then that notable seriesof philosophic ruminations called TheA lmost Perfect State; the volumes of verse;the soliloquies of the Old Soak; and theadventures of archy and mehitabel. Thesethings were born in the rough and tumbleof a newspaper office; I remember that inthe early days of the Sun Dial when thepaper moved from Park Row to NassauStreet, Don's typewriter desk got lost inthe skirmish; so for some years he rattled

. out his daily stint with his machine perchedon an up-ended packing case. This box hadstenciled on it the statement 1 GROSS TOM

CAT, which meant Tomato Catsup, butbecame by legend the first suggestion ofmehitabel.

In a daily column, necessarily a greatdeal of matter is of ephemeral reference.A great deal of Marquis's most brilliantwork in those years was in the form ofoblique comment on public affairs; it re­quires the current event to make it under­standable, and has not come through intobook publication. But with sufficient lapseof time it becomes again important· as apart of historic record. I have often beenastonished that the chroniclers of nationaltemper during the War years, and duringthe steadily heightening tension before1917, have mostly drawn their newspaperquotation from the solemn editorialists. Butin those days, when anything importanthappened I give you my word most of usdidn't consult the leading editorials to knowwhat to think. The almost universal reflex,in New York at any rate, was Let's seewhat Don says about it. I'm not saying thatI always agreed, then or now, with Don'snotions; but every now and then he wouldturn on some particular fog of hooey andcut it with a blade that would divide float­ing silk. Some of those old clippings, yel­lowed with more than twenty years, I stillkeep. One was at the time of the great rev­olution in Russia. The bolshevik cotlp

rev,noupealmg.of Jmp.prndo~

the

Aor aloceapebbnortWil:pebbhis I

ever,butpickiit inbeac,Aug'

TpaperemlgethSlUrr.of 1.denlfrorr.bruslMr.lesqlMr.kno\lCommen!Dool

BlSoler~lar<

hum,solileroadcoeffidiscoof L

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN

d'etat was accompanied, as the bloodiestrevolutions usually are, by paregoric an­nouncements of universal brotherhood andpeace. Don's comment was brief and pierc­ing. CCA kind word was seen on the streetsof Petrograd, attempting to butter a pars­nip." And though it ran counter to my ownprivate hero worships, I chuckled and stilldo at a comment on Woodrow Wilson aboutthe time of the Peace Conference:

An ocean rolls all pebbles interned within itor abutting upon it; but it may be difficult for anocean, upon request, to roll anyone particularpebble a measured and certain twenty inchesnorth or west on any particular beach. President\Vilson (with his great tides) may move all thepebbles of mundane statesmanship, and trace withhis ebbs and flows impressive and cryptic andeverchanging symbols upon the agitated sands;but we have often felt that when it comes topicking up anyone designated pebble and puttingit into anyone designated little red pail upon abeach President Wilson fumbles. (Sun Dial,August 7, 19 19,)

There is a whole generation of news­paper readers around New York who willremember as long as brain cells hold to­gether those occasional flashes of magne­sium. With a magic that seemed like thatof Alice going through the mirror, sud­denly we saw the whole furniture of affairsfrom the other side. When President Wilsonbrusquely dismissed his Secretary of State,Mr. Lansing, for instance, and Marquis bur­lesqued it by dismissing archy. Or whenMr. Henry Ford was catechized on hisknowledge of history by a CongressionalCommittee. There had been no such com­mentator on public affairs since Mr.Dooley; they don't come often.

But it is only too characteristic of theSolemn Skullworkers that because many ofMarquis's most pungent comments on thehuman comedy were put in the form ofsoliloquies by the Old Soak or by archy theroach, they could not recognize their highcoefficient of seriousness. I was amazed todiscover that Max Eastman's Enjoymentof Laughter, a book with a depressing

picture on the jacket showing the authorroaring with mirth, and including diagramsanalyzing the various phases of a joke,made no mention whatever of the mostphilosophical humorist of our time. Thatwas, to me, the biggest laugh in the book.

I remember from college days that therewas someone called Democritus, of Abdera,nicknamed the Laughing Philosopher.What was there about Abdera that en­couraged humor? Was it the fact that itsinhabitants became proverbial for stupid­ity? Perhaps it was there that someonefirst became aware of the deep truth thatthe great things, even the best laughters,happen unpremeditated. The notion of theoffice cockroach butting the typewriter withhis head was not, to begin with, very prom­ising or even very original. (John Ken­drick Bangs tried a similar idea with aJune bug a good many years ago, andabandoned it as unpromising.) The use ofnothing but lower-case font, and no punc­tuation (because the roach couldn't man­age the shift key) once adopted had to becontinued, and was probably worth whileas a stunt, though that-like the typo­graphical tricks in Tristram Shandy-is aprimary kind of waggishness. It has re­sulted in some of Don's subtlest commentand some of his most humorous bits ofverse being buried in irregular strips ofprint not easy to read. I think for instanceof the superb fragment of Shakespeareancriticism "The Parrot and Shakespeare,"in archy and mehitabel. I succeeded sometime ago in getting this adopted as prac­tically required reading in a Shakespearecourse at Smith College; but it is still toolittle known.

pete says he usedto belong to the fellowthat ran the mermaid tavernin london then i saidyou must have knownshakespeare know him said petepoor mutt i knew him wellhe called me pete and i called him

6ro MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

bill but why do you say poor muttwell said pete bill was adisappointed man and was alwaysboring his friends about whathe might have been and doneif he had only had a fair breaktwo or three pints of sackand sherr is and the tearswould trickle down into hisbeard and his beard would getsoppy and wilt his collari remember one night whenbill and ben johnson andfrankie beaumontwere sopping it uphere i am ben says billnothing but a lousy playwrightand with anything like luckin the breaks i might have beena fairly decent sonnet writerj might have been a poetif i had kept away from the theatreyes says ben i ve oftenthought of that billbut one consolation isyou are making pretty good moneyout of the theatremoney money says bill what the hellis money what i want is to bea poet not a business manthese damned cheap showsi turn out to keep thetheatre running break my heartslap stick comedie~ andblood and thunder tragediesand melodramas say i wonderif that boy heard you orderanother bottle frankiethe only compensation is that geta chance now and thento stick in a little poetrywhen nobody is lookingbut hells bells that isn twhat i want to doi want to write sonnets andsong and spenserian stanzasand i might have done it tooif i hadn't gotinto this frightful show gamebusiness business businessgrind grind grindwhat a life for a manthat might have been a poet

well says frankie beaumontwhy don't you cut it billi can t says billi need the money i ve gota family to support down inthe country well says frankieanyhow you write pretty goodplays bill any mutt can writeplays for this london publicsays bill if he puts enoughmurder in them what they wantis kings talking like kingsnever had sense enough to talkand stabbings and stranglingsand fat men making loveand clowns basting eachother with clubs and cheap punsand off color allusions to allthe smut of the day oh i knowwhat the low brows wantand i give it to themwell says ben johnsondon t blubber into the drinkbrace up like a manand quit the rotten businessi can t i can t says billi ve been at it too long i ve got to the placenow where i can t write anything elsebut this cheap stuffi m shamed to look an honestyoung sonneteer in the facei live a hell of a life i dothe manager hands me some mouldy oldmanuscriptand says bill here s a plot foryou this is the third of the monthby the tenth i want a goodscript out of this that wecan start rehearsals onnot too big a castand not too much of yourdamned poetry eitheryou know your oldfamiliar line of hokumthey eat up that falstaff stuffof yours ring him in againand give them a good ghostor two and remember we gottahave something dick burbage can gethis teeth into and be sureand stick in a speechsomewhere the queen will takefor a personal compliment and if

yOI

ab<it san.bil;a rorI~

bUI

yOI

JUshoIkiI:oralthetor.In

todellikewaanIlib

anof scwereyearsten.her (scenecamecomnmannor 1.

facesquis'sthathigh!:enJO)In onthanreadethatand r

Anhumtof thvanta

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN 611

you get in a line or two somewhereabout the honest english yeomanit s always good stuffand it s a pretty good stuntbill to have the heavy villaina moor or a dago or a jewor something like that and sayi want another comic welshman in thisbut i don t need to tellyou bill you know this gamejust some of your ordinaryhokum and maybe you couldkill a little kid or two a princeor something they likea little pathos along withthe dirt now you better see burhagetonight and see what he wantsin that part oh says billto think i amdebasing my talents with junklike that oh god what i wantedwas to be a poetand write sonnet serialslike a gentleman should

archy the roach began as a "dee-vice"of scoff against the vers libre poets whowere pallidly conspicuous some twentyyears ago. But that idea was soon forgot­ten. Mehitabel the corybantic cat, withher doctrine of toujours gai, came on thescene to provide lyric spasms; archy be­came less the clown ~nd more the skepticalcommentator. I don't propose to maxeast­man the matter by avoirdupois analysis,nor insist that these two grotestque false-

'faces provided just the mechanism Mar­quis's genius required. We could suggestthat archy is the Mickey Mouse of thehighbrows, but the kind of people who haveenjoyed him do not need to have it rubbedin on them that there is much more therethan sheer enjoyment. The right sort ofreader, unspoiled by painful palaver, feelsthat sort of thing by sensitive instinct­and resents pedestrian footnotes.

Anyhow, the roach and the cat, by theirhumble station in life and the lowlinessof their associates, provided an admirablevantage for merciless joshing of every-

thi.ng bi~gity. Those who only noted archy'sdomgs m the hasty reading of the dailypapers, or in Collier's which he afterwardinfested, may scarcely have realized theprecision of his best spoof. The last bookof the three (archy does his part, 1935)though it contains some of the best stuffalso was more carelessly edited, or photo­statted, than the others. A lot of irrele­vant matter got in that obviously shouldhave been dropped; but as a journeymanstudent of such affairs I do not regret this.It shows the author laboring, as everyonein such a task must often labor, under thestress of deadline and fatigue; mechanical­ly going through the motions of assemblinga batch of copy-and then there used tohappen to Don what only happens to theman gifted by the gods. The automaticmotions were replaced by the authoritativeinward heat; his magical and stupendousfecundity took charge, and some totally un­expected gorgeousness would explode. Asan instance I offer the whinnying absur­dity of archy climbing Mount Everest, inthe course of which he meets the DalaiLama, Mehitabel, the Taj Mahal, and theCzar of All the Russias (who is living oncanned heat). Among any number of ex­quisitely abominable belly-laughs in thispiece the one that most cruelly besets meis the Czar's explanation why the sun neverset on his dominions. "They were too coldto hatch." Archy discovers a "virgin goldmine." How do you know it is virgin, Me­hitabel wants to know; she is expertly skep­tical in such matters. "Give it the benefitof the doubt," says the Dalai Lama, butarchy is sanguine-

it seems reasonable said ithere is a snow slideover it every twenty minutes

Or, in the precious album of things thatReally Are Funny, see archy's radio inter­views on the Roach Paste Hour, or his rib­bing of the Experts in Washington.

Like all old troupers, Don has alwaysbeen delightfully shameless to use a

Ii

6r2 MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

familiar chestnut when (in the words ofMehitabel in one of her best pieces) HeDoesn't Feel it Here (putting paw onbosom). He has the unerring instinct forthings that are universal sure-fire, recog­nized all the world over as comic. Greenvegetables are always funny, and bad poets,and winter underwear, and feet. He doesnot scruple, in extremity, to use the dread­ful antique of the passenger who takes offhis shoe just as the street-car is passing theglue factory (the first glue factory wasprobably in Abdera) and he uses again andagain certain little whimwhams of his ownof which he has grown fond. The flea thatbrags about having bitten the lion andmade him cower; the bullhead that learnsto live out of water; the man who pulls outhis glass eye in the subway car and eats it,explaining that it's a pickled onion-whatfrolic the sedentary Pwchologist mighthave in computing some soul-dynamic onthe frequent reappearance of these episodes.(Freuds rush in where angels fear to tread,as archy once said.) The practising jour­nalist smiles affectionately and says Goodold boy, that day he was hard up for copy.And then, among routine comedy therestream rockets of cold fire-

that stern and rockbound coastfelt like an amateurwhen it saw how grim the puritansthat landed on it were

Or the egotistic lightning bug that said

all I need is a harborunder me to be astatue of liberty

But archy took him down:

youve made lightning for two hourslittle bug but i dont hearany claps of thunder

If you want to see archy in his best philo­sophic vein, examine the fable called "TheRobin and the Worm," in archy and me­hitabel. Like the U nde Remus fables ofDon's old boss, it has superb social analo­gies that are being illustrated all around us

every moment. Exactly like the absorptionof the worm (both gastric and psychic) aplacid economic peristalsis is now takingeffect in the United States: almost unsus­pected by some digestees.

So I ask myself again, what was the hap­py quiddity of Abdera that gave its firstcitizen this richest gift of all; this incal­culable, unpredictable joy of the grotesque,the magic to show us truth in the very shoutof laughter. First the mirthquake, as Donsaid long ago, and then the still smallvoice. In a riotously absurd piece of kid­ding, the "Preface to the Prospectus of aClub," Don was talking about Brooklyn:-

"Vah Whitman used to live over there andedit the Eagle and go swimming in ButtermilkChannel, two points off starboard bow of HankBeecher's church. Once an old Long Islandskipper sunk a harpoon into Walt's haunch whenhe came up to blow, and the poet, snorting andbellowing and spouting verse, towed the whalerand his vessel clear out to Montauk before heshook the iron loose. Is there a bard in Green­wich Village that could do that?

What I'm suggesting, and the whole gistof this little tribute, is that this casual comicparagraph, in the very guts and gusto ofits Munchausenism, contains more shrewdcriticism of Walt than many a whole sol­emn tome by the serious little people whowrite books about Moby Walt.-If youdon't discern that, there's no use your read­ing Don Marquis; or Walt Whitmaneither.

I want to say a word of Mr. Marquis asdivinity student. This came back to me theother day when a friend told me he wasgoing to attend a kinsman's graduation fromtheological seminary. The thought occurredto me-but I did not say it, for it wouldhave required some explanation-that theideal graduation gifts for a young parson(with a sense of humor) would be two ofDon Marquis's books: The Old Soak's His­tory of the World, and Chapters for theOrthodox.

The Old Soak became folk-lore duringthe Bootleg era. He was not merely the

deni:the twillpath,blin~

pres~

he hto sa'paintCleoHol~

menlis toablehis efounby tlMr.SoakWid:rngahe saThe.IS SOl

of th~

to exfind

Te.up f,BibleMarctive icomehan&ley wwhenstaff 'on thforgoagarnTheyon th

He'SeriouI thinwithnight,But h(ty tha'

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN 61 3

denizen of "a nose-red city, pickled halfthe time," if Bartlett will pardon us. Youwill remember that beautiful portrait (aspathetic as comic) of the old boozer's fum­bling mind, his incoherent attempts to ex­press the simple kindliness and good humorhe had known in the reputable saloon­to say nothing of its stim\.llus to art ("hand­paintings"), politics, and home life. Mr.Clem Hawley was also no mean student ofHoly Writ. His retelling of Old Testa­ment stories, in his History of the World,is to me some of the most genuinely laugh­able stuff ever written. And in the course ofhis exegetics the 0 ld Soak makes a pro­found remark which must be rememberedby those who find themselves shocked byMr. Marquis's apparent levity. The OldSoak vigorously objects to Mr. HenneryWithers, the «dam little athyiss," laugh­ing at the fable of Jonah. "Only its friends,"he says, "got a right to laugh at that story."The laughter in Chapters for the Orthodoxis sometimes cerebral, sometimes violentlyof the midriff, but those who will take painsto explore under the superficial shock willfind it always the laughter of a friend.

The Old Soak, incidentally, always stoodup for his trinity of fundamentals: theBible, calomel, and straight whiskey. Mr.Marquis himself has been equally conserva­tive in his choice of apostolic matter. It hascome down to us by unbroken laying on ofhands. The literary genealogy of Mr. Haw­ley was suggested with gorgeous impudencewhen Mrs. Quickly's death-watch for Fal­staff was echoed in the hired girl's epitaphon the parrot. I'm ashamed to say I hadforgotten this colossal jape until I heard itagain recently in the talking picture.They've been trying AI's home-made hootchon the parrot:

He's gone, Mr. Hawley. He's d-d-d-dead!Seriously dead! It happened a half hour ago.I think it was his constitution undermined itselfwith that hootch Al brought here the othernight, and I never will forgive myself, I won't.But he kept coaxin' and coaxin' for it that pret­ty that I couldn't refuse him.... And he kept

drinking of it till he deceased himself with it.He called out to me about a half hour ago, hedid. "Fair weather," he says, and then helaughed. Only he didn't laugh natural. Mr.Hawley, he laffed kind of puny and feeble likethere was somethin' furrin weighin' onto hisstomach. "I can't give you any more Peter," Isays to him, "for there ain't no more," I says.And then he stretched his neck out and bit thewire on his cage and squawked, for he says in akind of sad voice: "Nellie was a lady, she was,"he says. And them was the last words he evergive utterings to. (Exit Hired Girl, weeping.)

Chapters for the Orthodox, perhapsMarquis's most brilliant and least knownbook, I have always felt restricted from dis­cussing on account of the author's affection­ate partiality exhibited in the dedication.However, the formal phobias mean less andless as time shortens, and because I am fondof parsons and wish them well I set scrupleaside. A man who has been through theanxieties of the seminary, and emergedwith his Bachelorhood of Sacred Theology,is surely grounded in faith to stand a fewjolts. That book was timidly published(1934) and timidly dealt with by theTrade. My own feeling about it was thatits only chance was to be offered as a trans­lation from some other language, in whichcase it might perhaps have been a sensa­tion. It would be hard to find anythingmore in the spirit of Voltaire than the firststory-Miss Higginbotham Declines­with its glorious opening sentence:

It was Jehovah's custom, when he came toNew York, to put on the material appearanceand manner of a member of the Union LeagueClub; indeed, he used the club itself a greatdeal.

I remember offering (don't laugh) totranslate that story into French and try toget it published in that language, but couldpersuade no one-not even the author. Butits delicate and reverent ribaldries wouldshock no one under the screen of a differenttongue. The barb of the parable, as the newBachelor will soon perceive, is a pricklyone. Jehovah, brooding on the problems ofhumanity (and especially New York City)

I

MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

decides that what the world needs is an­sity of finding for the purpose ... but per­haps you'd better read it yourself.

In short, the book is devout to the pointof scandal. Semi-religious people are al­other Begotten Son. This implies the neces­ways horrified by completely religious peo­pIe; ethical ideas, as every philosopher hasobserved, are loaded with dynamite andperilous indeed for every kind of establish­ment. The world (said Santayana in a finepassage) is always a caricature of itself, al­ways pretending to be something quiteother than what it actually is. And to pre­tend to take those pretences literally isalways horrifying. Nothing disturbs, orsurprises, man so much as the discrepancybetween his professions and his actual be­havior; in that discrepancy lies the mother­lode of intellectual comedy. Marquis onceremarked that he had a great idea: he wasgoing to dramatize some of Bernard Shaw'splays. What he did in Chapters for theOrthodox had something of the samedouble-edged riposte: by taking ticklishlybeautiful things with simple seriousness heexplodes (in shattering laughter) the tow­ering falsehoods of our genteel imposture.-And then humorously rebuilds them,knowing well that by make-believe we live.This book, which ranges from tender andmoving fable to the most outrageous cat­calls and trombone raspberries (uproarious,deplorable, with such blasphemous farcingas a Police Commissioner would not toler­ate for even one·performance) does actuallycome somewhere near expressing the blazeand bellylaugh of life. The prosecution ofJesus by the swine-dealer of Gadara (forhaving damaged the pork business), withJehovah on the bench and Satan as prose­cuting attorney, and a number of well­known contemporaries as jurymen, is a fairexample of Marquis's audacious method.As a characteristic spoof of Britain, one ofthe demons (when called on to testify)speaks in a strong cockney accent. But it isimpossible to give any idea of a book likethis without frightening or scandalizing the

casual reader. Are they so few, I have sadlyasked myself, who can see beneath this cos­mic clowning the flash of its genial piety?Indeed, as Don said in his preface, he sports"in spiritual essence like a porpoise in theGulf Stream."

It is in this book, apropos of nothing inparticular, that Marquis pays his great­I wish I could say famous-tribute to MarkTwain. I can think of nothing truer to sayof Chapters for the Orthodox than this: itis the book Mark Twain must often havetalked, and would have liked to write, butwas too canny to do so.-That one-act skitof Faust in Hell ... really Mr. Marquis,really....

Welladay! (as Don says in the sonnets)-it's futile to try to suggest-in the coldsobriety of the platform-the quick-changeparadoxes, the chameleon flicker, of a sul­try mind.

Let me mention one more noble paradox.Marquis's finely realized play of the cruci­fixion, The Dark Hours, was produced,largely at his own charges, from profitsmade on the hokum of the dramatized OldSoak.

Briefly to recapitulate, for the benefitof our imagined research student, the linesof parallelism where you will find in Mar­quis and Mark Twain temperamental af­finity. You will observe it in their funda­mental comedian's instinct to turn suddenly,without warning, from the beautiful to thegrotesque, or vice versa. You will find itin a rich vein of anger and disgust, turn­ing on the genteel and cruel hypocrisieswith the fury of a child or an archangel.You will find it in a kindly and respectfulcharity to the under dog: they are bothinfracaninophiles. You will find it in theirpassionate interest in religion and philoso­phy-with which is joined a blandly mis­chievous delight in shocking those forwhom shocking is good. You will find it­though I can't help you in this just now­in their habitual employment of a devas­tating Anglo-Saxonism of speech andepithet. And finally you'll observe that

botmalpIa:per

IMalateof Ionc,likeCarsonis tlvenhasteneanfarcdonsemof cdoncoloof sthinmenson-

Rea((in tto seself-

'qshouI as~

alou(RedcocktconelBenewrittnetee

The F

For nForeg

._---_....._--_.._-----_._-- ---------------_....._-

A SUCCESSOR TO MARK TWAIN 615

both had a keen (and somewhat ham) dra­matic sense, which Marquis expressed inplays and Mark Twain in his superlativeperformances on the lecture platform.

But there is one quality in Don thatMark never had-or at any rate it was onlylatent in Mark. Don is a poet, and a poetof high technical dexterity. He remarkedonce that publishing a volume of verse waslike dropping a rose petal down the GrandCanon and waiting for the echo. One rea­son why the echo has been little audibleis that he has puzzled the critics by writingverse of so many different kinds. His gamuthas run from lyrics of the most serious andtender mood to the genial fooling of Noahan Jonah an CapJn John Smith or thefarcical Famous Love Affairs or the sar­donic ferocity of the Savage Sonnets. Thesensitive little folks who make a businessof collecting and admiring current poetrydon't understand such chameleon shifts ofcolor-also Don has made a lifelong habitof spoofing the Poetry Societies and any­thing that had the aroma of cult. You re­member that lovely verse of Ralph Hodg­son-

Reason has moons, but moons not hersLie mirrored on her sea,

Confounding her astronomers,But O! delighting me.

Read Don's "Preface to a Book of Poetry"(in the volume called Prefaces) if you wantto see how he used to harpoon the solemnself-appointed custodians of the Muse.

"Write sonnet serials as a gentlemanshould" he said in the Shakespeare piece.I assign you as home work the readingaloud of the sequence called Sonnets to aRed Haired Lady-whereafter 32 stingingcocktails of song he turns on us with fourconcluding sonnets that-as 'William RoseBenet has said-might well have beenwritten by the earliest of our great son­neteers, Wyatt or Surrey-

The poet blots the end the jester wrote:For now I drop the dull quip's forced pretence,Forego the perch'd fool's dubious eminence-

Thy tresses I have sung, that fall and floatAcross the lyric wonder of thy throatIn dangerous tides of golden turbulence\Vherein a man might drown him, soul and

sense-Is not their beauty worth one honest note?

And thee thyself, what shall I say of thee?Are thy snares strong, and will thy bondsendure?Thou hast the sense, hast thou the soul of me?In subtle webs and silken arts obscureThou hast the sense of men, but canst thou bindThe scornful pinions of my laughing mind?

"Thou hast the sense of me, but canstthou bind

The scornful pinions of my laughingmind"-I tried once in verse of my ownto bind those pinions. This was writtenmore than a dozen years ago: I'll quotebriefly:

Well-mingled spirit, rich with savory earthOf humor; poet, jester of fecund mirthSo masterfully simple that it showsNo minim speck of sham, pretence, or pose­So lit and winged with antic mimicryThat conies of the upper cults, or casuals of the

pressAre scarcely competent to guessBehind that gusty offhand ribaldryThe full control and pressure of great art­Satire so waggishly disguisedIts victims would have been surprisedTo know themselves were being satirized­Satire that loved them even while it skinned

them,And chloroformed them first, before it pinned

them..•.

A reverent doubtful spiritAnd opal-minded, where an inward redBurns in the milk and moonlight of the gem­Humble and defiant as all men are,( Falling, as we do, from star to star),Droll tragedian, lip pouted to considerLife's technicals, so crooked and so slidder,\Vith such strange prizes for the highest bidder­Old curly cherub, with the poker face, not

always shaven,But with such prankish pensiveness engraven,You, in an age when almost everyone is clever,Never declined-No, never-

616 MICHIGAN ALUMNUS: QUARTERLY NUMBER

Into the easy triumphs of the smart,Old Goldenheart.

... I think that those inheritThe bitter coronal, who can most finely wear it:Shuddering and abased,But not disgraced;Proud, proud to have outfacedThe champion stroke, the merciless dirty witOf the Player Opposite.And honor, wine and sunlight yet remain,Clean wind and washing rain,And that gigantic mirth that men so need,And loneliness indeed,Loneliness, which I rate high,And the love of friends,And by and bySilence, the end of ends.

There's an infinitely touching little poem,toward the end of The Almost Perfect

State, called Lines for a Gravestone. Itconcludes as follows:

Speed, I bid you, speed the earthOnward with a shout of mirth,Fill your eager eyes with light,Put my face and memoryOut of mind and out of sight.Nothing I have caused or done,But this gravestone, meets the sun:Friends, a great simplicityComes at last to you and me'.

On this note of lovely kindness, humility,courage and laughter, I should like toclose. Of this man, more than of any Ihave known, the great seventeenth centurywords apply-words three centuries old thisyear and still the most expressive of mas­culine love and fellowship. I change onlythe name-O rare Don Marquis.

t

1IIt

Ii

IJ

I"I~•,,

---_._---------~~-----~.._.__._-_.