Chips Off the Old Benchley E-Book

Robert Benchley

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Chips Off the Old Benchley represents some of the most inspired writing the Old Master ever did; it is Benchley at his best, in his most wayward, unpredictable and hilarious moods!

Leseprobe

Chips Off the Old Benchley 

by Robert Benchley

First published in 1949

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Chips Off the Old Benchley

by Robert Benchley

THE NEW BONE-DUSTTHEORY OF BEHAVIOR

Is your Elbow All It Should Be?

A Little while ago it was your teeth that were to blame for everything. And now, after you have gone and had tin-types taken of your teeth, showing them riding in little automobiles or digging in the sand, some more specialists come along and discover that, after all, it is your glands that are the secret of your mental, moral and physical well-being.

A book called "The Glands Regulating Personality" claims that the secretions of the various glands throughout your body determine whether you are a good or a bad boy, cheerful or agile, Republican or Democrat. Anyone singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" does not face the facts squarely. The words should go: "For he has jolly good glandular secretions, which nobody will deny."

In order to be at least two jumps ahead of the game, we are prepared to set forward another theory to take the place of the gland theory when that shall have become scratched. All[Pg 2] enthusiasts who want to keep abreast of the times, will dip right into ours now; so that when the time comes they will be able to talk intelligently on the subject.

Briefly, the facts are these:

This wonderful body which Nature has given us is made up of just dozens and dozens of bones. Oh, so many bones! If you were to start counting now and should count bones until Daddy came home to supper, you would have counted only seven or eight of them, because it is almost time for Daddy now.

In the course of time, as we go about doing our daily work, these bones rub against one another, especially in the joints. It is true that Nature has provided little cups for the bones to fit into so that they will not rub, but what good are they? None. Of all the bungling, slipshod jobs that Nature has done (and she has done a great many in her day) the friction of one bone upon another in the human form is among the worst. The truth about this has only just begun to come out.

Now, in this constant rubbing, due to people's constantly running up and down stairs, or prancing to keep warm, or jouncing babies on their knees, it is only to be expected that a quantity of bone-dust should be gradually worn off from the bones. You can't blame the bones. It's just one of those things that are bound to happen.

This bone-dust, once it is set loose, has no place to go except to swirl along in circulation with the blood. You are either a part of a bone or you are a part of the circulation of the blood. There is no middle course. And it is this visiting bone-dust, tearing about through one's system, that determines whether or not one is to be a criminal member of society or a pianist.

[Pg 3]

For example, the joints which shed criminal-breeding bone-dust are the elbow and knee. If dust from these predominates in your system (in other words, if you bend your elbows and knees more than you bend your fingers) you will have a tendency to steal little things or perhaps kill slightly. Dark circles will appear under your eyes and your friends will begin to shun you. You will be embarrassed when called upon to meet the president of the company and will, in all probability, have no speaking voice.

A very wealthy society woman, known to all of you by name, was brought to this office for treatment for stealing trinkets from Tiffany's. Ten years ago she would have been sent to a sanitarium as an incurable kleptomaniac. She was questioned about her reflexes and it was found that she was accustomed to bend her elbow constantly, just for the fun of the thing. A transfusion was made of the bone-dust of a young wolf who had no elbows, and in a few weeks the patient was as good as new. She has never had a recurrence of her throat trouble.

Thus it will be seen that the basis of our whole social structure today lies in the friction of the bones in our body and probably will lie there until Fall, when something else will be found to take the blame.

[Pg 4]

BAYEUX CHRISTMAS PRESENTS EARLY

It Seems rather strange that, in the very year which marks the nine hundredth anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror, a strip of Bayeux tapestry should have been discovered in Bayeux, New Jersey, depicting the passage of that hero across the Channel. It seems so strange, in fact, that the police are investigating the matter.

The tapestry, it is alleged by the defense, shows four of the Conqueror's ships in mid-Channel. There seems to be some doubt among authorities as to the direction in which the ships are going—to or from Albion. We incline to the theory that they are on their way back to France. There must have been at least four boat-loads of Normans who were disappointed in England and who turned right around and went home.

Or, if we must be seasonal, we may hold to the theory that they are on their way back to Normandy for the Christmas holidays. Can you imagine the bustle and din there must have been in William's household along about December 20th of the first Christmas week following the landing? "Going home[Pg 5] for Christmas?" must have been the question on all lips framed in probably the worst Norman-English ever heard. "Noël," they probably called it. The old oaken bucket that hung in Noël—to put it badly.

Any study of a Bayeux tapestry is made difficult by the fact that the old weavers were such bum draughtsmen. They may have known how to work looms but they couldn't draw for a darn. There is no way of telling from the tapestry whether or not William himself was aboard one of the ships, because all the men look alike, if you can even call it that. The man in the middle boat, the one bunking up with a horse, might be William, but the chances are against it. He is evidently so sick that he doesn't care who he is. He is making a mental resolution that, rather than cross this Channel again, he will spend the rest of his life in Normandy, or wherever it is he is headed for.

The little boat, which seems to be hanging in mid-air, is really, they tell us, in the distance. Its occupants are having a rather thin time of it and are evidently considering being ill, too. On the whole, the entire expedition would have done better never to have left land.

A word about the figureheads on the two ships which have them. The one on the boat at the extreme right would indicate that it is going in the opposite direction from the rest of the fleet, or else that somebody made an awful blunder in assembling the ship. It is on the stern, as near as we can figure it out, although the two boys amidships who are humming together confuse things by facing in opposite directions themselves. Judged merely as figureheads neither one is worth much, although we like the one on the right better than the[Pg 6] big one at the left because the latter looks as if the designer had tried to be funny.

We gather that there was some vague idea of having the great black things held by the pilots look like rudders. Well, they don't—and that goes for the whole tapestry, too.

[Pg 7]

THE LAST OF THE HEATH HENS

Well, the Heath Hen has gone! We might as well face it. The sole surviving specimen of Tympanuchus cupido, which has been hopping and flitting about the island of Martha's Vineyard for the past few years under the fascinated gaze of the ornithologists, has disappeared, and, it is feared, has died without issue. It was not enough that the world should be tottering, its reason going, its standards gone. The Heath Hen must be taken from us.

We knew that it would have to happen some time, but it is hard to believe that there will never be another Heath Hen. We didn't mind so much when we were told that the Great Auk was extinct, or the Labrador Duck, or the Passenger Pigeon. Even the news about the Eskimo Curlews (although there is hope that there are still a few Eskimo Curlews left who are just playing possum or sulking) didn't give us that sinking feeling that we experienced when we heard about the Heath Hen. No more Heath Hens—ever! Thank God, John James Audubon did not live to hear that gloomy pronouncement. (He missed it by just three-quarters of a century.)

[Pg 8]

It seems only yesterday that I saw the Heath Hen at Martha's Vineyard. She looked as well then as she ever did, but she never was what you would call a robust bird. They did not keep her captive. She was too proud a spirit for that. But on one occasion, when she had lighted for a chat with Mr. McKinstry, her observer (Mr. McKinstry was paid by the state or somebody just to hang around Martha's Vineyard and keep tabs on the Heath Hen), they did attach two metal bands to her ankles, so that if she ever got lost or drunk, people would know that she was no ordinary grouse. She didn't like the bands, and felt that when one is the only surviving member of a proud race of birds, any sensitive person should recognize one without leg bands. "I don't like the idea of it, Joe," she said to Mr. McKinstry on one occasion. "Either I am a true princess or I am not."

One of the greatest sorrows in Mr. McKinstry's professional career as Heath Hen-watcher was that he could never find a mate for Miss Helen. (He called her Miss Helen because it seemed to suit her best.) The More Game Birds Foundation was very anxious that Miss Helen marry, not only because it would have made the bleak winters on Martha's Vineyard happier for her but because then, if things worked out right, she might not be the last of her breed in the world. And it was more or less up to Mr. McKinstry.

But either because there were no suitable mates for Miss Helen or because she rather fancied herself in her tragic rôle as the Last of the Heath Hens and deliberately snubbed any eligible suitors, the fact remains that she made no alliances and was always seen alone when she alighted on the farm of James Green every spring. It made it hard for Mr. McKinstry[Pg 9] to make out his report, but there wasn't really very much that he could do about it.

"I see the position it puts you in, Joe," she said to him once, "but somehow I feel that I am in the right. I can't take anybody that comes along, and you wouldn't want me to. And if the Heath Hens are to go on, they must be the very best Heath Hens, worthy to carry on a fine tradition. And you don't know this Martha's Vineyard riffraff as I do."

And with that (according to Mr. McKinstry) she waddled into a thicket and wasn't seen again for weeks. Mr. McKinstry thinks that she spent a lot of her time in day-dreaming and was really close at hand when she was supposed to be off on a tour of the island. It was also his idea that she had an independent income and kept to herself out of choice. When you are the Sole Surviving Specimen, you have a certain dignity to maintain.

And now she is gone. Spring has broken through again and no Heath Hen has come to James Green's farm. Somewhere on the hard-bitten ground of Martha's Vineyard Miss Helen lies in state, with two metal bands about her patrician ankles, and her proud spirit wings its way to the home of all those other Heath Hens who went before. We need sound no mournful tone for Miss Helen, for she kept her name unsullied to the end and her fame is secure on the records of ornithological royalty. But what, what is to become of Mr. McKinstry?

[Pg 10]

ON OR BEFORE MARCH 15

I realize that this is a fine time to be worrying about the Income Tax, a whole week after the returns were supposed to be in, but I am afraid that I shall have to be a little late this year in filing mine. Nobody regrets it more than I do and I want the officials to know that I am bending every effort to get the thing in just as soon as possible.

But I have struck several snags and my pencil keeps breaking and often I get so confused that I have to go and lie down, and all this takes time. I will get the return in. They needn't worry. But I won't be hurried. March 15th! March 15th! You would think to hear them screaming "March 15th" at you that there was no other date on the calendar. Well, I'll get mine in on or about March 28th or 29th, and they'll like it. I should think that they'd be busy enough in the tax offices messing around with the returns that did come in on time, so that they wouldn't have to have mine right away. Anyway, they're not going to get it.

It's their own fault that I am late. They print blanks for you to fill out, then pass a bill making the blanks no good, then send the blanks out anyway, with a little red slip telling you to disregard the blanks. If I had done a thing like that to[Pg 11]them, what a howl they would have set up! I would have been just an old slipshod bungler, an impractical writer-man. But the Government can go out of its way to confuse and rattle me, and that's all right. Well, the Government makes me sick, that's what the Government does. And it always has, too.

In the first place, the little red slip got lost just as soon as I had taken it out of the envelope, so I never saw what it said. I can't sit right down the minute my blank comes and fill it out. I have certain other things which have to be attended to, although the Government may not think so. And a little red slip is very easily mislaid or lost these days. I don't suppose the Government ever loses anything, oh no! They're perfect!

Well, I lost the red slip and when I came to fill out my blank I filled it out according to printed instructions as every law-abiding citizen should. I took it for granted that the blank was right. I knew that it was gosh-darned unfair but I did think that it was technically correct. When a government is over a hundred and fifty years old one naturally assumes that it can, at least, put out correct printed matter. This is where I evidently made my first mistake.

My second mistake came in handling the "7's" and "8's." I always have had trouble in adding and subtracting "7's" and "8's." Even when I was in the thick of school arithmetic, adding and subtracting like mad every day of the year, the "7's" and "8's" seemed to me to be very complicated and tricky numbers and now that I have occasion to add and subtract only occasionally they throw me into something of a panic. If nobody is looking, I can get out of the jam by using my[Pg 12] fingers to count on, but I rather hate, at my age, to be seen at it. In fact, I have been known to wait fifteen or twenty minutes until people left the room rather than count "7" and "8" on my fingers in front of them. All this time the mathematical problem at hand has been held up. If it is a rush job, and there are people in the room, I put my fingers in my pocket and rattle off the "7's" and "8's" there. Also, this year, I got a book from my bank telling all about deductions, and this served only to confuse me. In the past, rather than go into the thing thoroughly, I have cheated myself unmercifully by claiming only the deductions that I could understand, such as two children and the Red Cross. (It is very evident that the Treasury officials have no children of their own if they think that $400 covers even the shoe-leather expense of one child.) But this year a businessman[Pg 13] acquaintance told me that I was a fool not to deduct expenses to which I was legitimately entitled by the nature of my business, and gave me this book from the bank outlining the various forms of money-saving which come under the law.

I hadn't got very far in this book before I was tempted to go back to my old system of giving the Government everything except my two children and the Red Cross. Sec. 23(b) mentions "a reasonable allowance for depletion in case of oil wells, mines, etc." Now, I don't own an oil well or a mine, but an oil well in which I had a small financial interest certainly was depleted during 1929, a depletion which amounted practically to complete elimination, and I ought to get a little something off on that, I should think. But I have also learned that most of the items which one would think could be legitimately deducted are just the ones which can't be.

My garden, for instance, which really ought to come in under the "etc." in the "oil wells, mines, etc." clause, being a source of something or other (mostly radishes) which comes out of the ground, is probably not deductible. It was a big disappointment as a garden and I hardly got my bait back out of it, but I know that, if I went to the Government and said "Look at here! If a depleted oil well or mine can be written off, what about those string beans which I went to all the bother of planting (and my time is money, too) and which came up backwards and full of old threads?" I can just hear the Government laugh at the very suggestion. One of those nasty, unpleasant laughs.

A little farther on in the book I found, under Sec. 25(a) "dividends received from domestic corporations, except corporations taxable under Section 251 of the law and corpora[Pg 14]tions organized under the China Trade Act." Now I am frank to say that I do not know about the China Trade Act. I don't really suppose that it applies to me, but how am I to be sure? In Supplement K there is a paragraph (d) which is headed: "Definition of China" which says: "As used in this section the term 'China' shall have the same meaning as when used in the China Trade Act, 1922." This more or less brings us back to where we were in the beginning. If the Government thinks that it has cleared up anything at all in that "definition of China," it is crazy. I sometimes wonder if it isn't anyway.

This is where I stood on the evening of March 14th, the night before the Treasury Department's Christmas. I had about decided to let the whole thing go as it was and take my losses, when one of my neighbors, a brisk, rosy-cheeked man who always gets everything right, came in, glowing with health after a tramp through the country, and said: "Well, did you remember to make your one per cent reduction?"

At first I thought that he was kidding me about a tonic which I am supposed to be taking for my metabolism and said "Yes," very curtly.

"There'll be an awful lot of boobs who didn't," he said, smacking his lips.

"What do you mean—one per cent reduction?" I asked, trying not to appear too interested.

"In your income tax," he explained. "The thing Congress passed after the blanks were printed. The blanks are all wrong, you know." He began to suspect that I hadn't known about it and beamed accordingly.

"Oh, that!" I replied, not willing to give him the satisfaction of gloating over me. "Oh, sure!"

After he had gone, a little crestfallen, I made inquiries and[Pg 15] learned about the little red slip which I had lost. I say "lost" because I suppose that I did have one in my envelope, although I wouldn't put it past the Government to have deliberately neglected to send me one. They will go to any lengths once they have got a grudge against you.

This meant that I had to do the whole thing over again. It didn't seem as if I could go through with it. Everything went black before my eyes and I sank down in my chair burying my head in my hands. When I was strong enough I got the blank out of the envelope which I had stamped all ready to send off. (I never trust those envelopes which say up in the corner that no stamp is necessary. It is worth two cents to be sure that your letter is really going to be delivered and not kicked about for months in a post office for insufficient postage.) I looked at the neat little figures in which I had done my reckoning—my figures may be wrong, but they are neat—and realized that I should have to get a new blank and begin fresh on the nightmare which had been tormenting me for two weeks. I must have fainted at this point, for I found myself in bed with an ugly gash on the back of my head. Perhaps I had even attempted suicide.

And now, after a week of trying to compute a tax of ½ per cent instead of 1½ per cent on the first $4,000 and a tax of 2 per cent instead of 3 per cent on the next $4,000 and a tax of 4 per cent instead of 5 per cent on the remainder (if there is a remainder), I have about decided to take a leaf from the Government's book and pull an "erratum" on them.

I will send in my tax-return just as I had it in the first place. In the envelope with it I will enclose a printed sheet headed "Instruction" on which I will say:

1. Enter on Line 10, Art. 6, Sec. 11 all receipts, fiduciary[Pg 16] or otherwise, charged off to obsolescence of either subsection (b) or (c), if, for the taxable year 1926 or 1927 within the Provisions of the Revenue Act of 1926 or 1928 the amount of such net loss shall be allowed as a deduction in computing the net income for the two succeeding taxable years to the same extent and in the same manner as a net loss sustained for one taxable year under Art. 8, Sec. 3 of the China Trade Act, allowed as a deduction for the two succeeding taxable years.

2. Enter as Item 3 all items heretofore designated as Items 4, 6 and 9 in Schedule C, except such items as shall hereinafter be designated as Items 5, 2 and 7 if the net income for the period ending during the second calendar year which the portion of such period falling within such calendar year is of the entire period; and (2) any and all such items, 4 or otherwise, as you jolly well please.

To this sheet I will attach a little red slip reading: NOTICE TO INTERNAL REVENUE COLLECTORS. Read carefully before trying to make out Form 1040.

Since the Individual Income Tax Return, Form 1040, for the Calendar Year 1929 was made out, the Joint Resolution of Congress reducing the rates of normal income tax for the calendar year 1929 has been called to my attention.

Throughout this form, therefore, read ½% for 1½%, 3% for 4%, and 4% for 5%. Figure it out for yourself and fill in the enclosed blank check for whatever you make the amount due to be.

I know that the Government will gyp me if I leave it up to them like this, but I can't be bothered with the thing any more.

[Pg 17]

THE MENACE OF BUTTERED TOAST

Maybe I am a fool, but I want to go in for bulb culture. Oh, I know there is no money in it! I know that I shall just get attached to the bulbs when I shall have to give them away to somebody who wants to grow crocuses or tulips or something, and there I shall be, alone in that great, big, lonely old house that my grandfather, the Duke, left me.

This will mean, naturally, that I shall have to give up writing for a living. This God-given talent which I have must be tossed aside like an old mistress (or is it "mattress"?) and my whole energy must be devoted to the creation and nurture of little bulbs which someday will grow into great, big, ugly crocuses, defacing beautiful green lawns all over the country. But I feel the call, and what else is there to do?

Now, since I am resolved to abandon the belles-lettres, the only decent thing is to pass on the secret of word magic to someone else. Having held the reading public spellbound for years with my witchery, I must disclose its secret in order that some poor sucker may take it up and carry on the torch, bringing cheer to the sick and infirm and evasive notes to Brooks[Pg 18] Brothers and the Westchester Light and Power Company. I have therefore decided to set down here the magic formula, by means of which I have kept the wolf from getting upstairs into the bedrooms. Here is a sample of a typical Benchley piece:

Personally, if you ask me (and, so far as I have heard, nobody has asked me yet, but I shall go right ahead just the same), I feel that we, as a nation (and when I say "as a nation" I mean "as a nation") eat too much buttered toast.

Buttered toast is all right, provided neither of my little boys butters it (my two little boys seem to have an idea that butter grows on trees, when everybody knows that it is cut in great sheets by a butter-cutter [butter-cutter, butter-cutter, where have you been?] whence it is shipped to the stamping-room where it is stamped by large blonde ladies with their favorite initials and done up in bundles of twenty-five to be sent to the Tissue Paper Department for wrapping), but I do think, and I am sure that you would think so, too, if you gave the thing a minute's thought, that there is such a thing as overdoing buttered toast.

In the first place, you order breakfast. (By ordering breakfast, I mean that you get up out of bed, go into the kitchen in your bathrobe, cut three slices of whatever happens to be in the bread box [usually cake], toast it, and butter it yourself.) The words "buttered toast" come naturally in any breakfast order. "Orange juice, two four-minute eggs, buttered toast, and coffee." Buttered toast and coffee must be spoken together, otherwise you will hear from the State Department.

[Pg 19]

Here is where we make our big mistake. If, for once (or even twice), we could say "coffee" without adding "buttered toast," it wouldn't be so bad, but, as my old friend President James Buchanan, used to say (he was President more as a favor to Mrs. Buchanan than anything else), "You can't eat your cake and eat it too."

It being Christmas Eve (or isn't it? I am all mixed up), we ought not to be very hard on buttered toast, because it was on a Christmas Eve that buttered toast was invented. There were six of us (five counting the Captain) all seated around an old stove (the stove was only eleven years old, but that seemed old in those days, and I guess that it is old for a stove), when up spoke Baby Puggy, the daughter of the termagant.

"What's all this?" said Baby Puggy. (All what never seemed to occur to her to explain, and if she was satisfied, what the hell are you kicking about?)

"I am in no state to bandy legs about," replied her uncle, who, up to this time, had entirely monopolized the conversation.

"I am getting awfully sick of this sort of thing," said Old Doctor Dalyrimple (they called Dr. Dalyrimple "old" because he was 107, and a very good reason, too, for calling him old), "and I have a good mind to go home and go to bed."

"You are in bed, but you're not at home," piped up little Primrose, a frightful child. "They gave your bed at home away to the Salvation Army."

"It serves them right—I mean the Salvation Army," said Old Doctor Meesky (who had changed his name from Dalyrimple to Meesky since we last saw him). And there, so far[Pg 20] as anybody can tell, ends the story of Little Red Mother Hubbard, and, I can almost hear you say, "Who cares?"

But about buttered toast. (Not that I care about buttered toast, and not that I think you care.) If we are to have buttered toast brought to us on our breakfast trays (or is it "drays"?) I would suggest the following ways to get around the unbearable boredom of the thing:

1. Have the Football Rules Committee decree that no buttered toast shall be dunked in coffee which does not fill at least one-half (¾) the cup. This will do away with fumbling.

2. Nobody connected with the theatre, either in a managerial capacity (this includes calling "half-hour" and holding up the left leg of the tenor's trousers while he is stepping into the right leg) or as an actor (God knows what this includes) shall sell tickets to any performance for more than $11.50 over and above the box office price—or, at any rate, shall not boast about it.

3. My two small boys shall not throw paper aeroplanes so that they hit Daddy any nearer his eye than his temple.

4. I forget what this rule is.

5. I remember this, but wish I hadn't.

6. Nobody named "Cheeky" shall be allowed to compete.

This, I think, will fix matters up. And if you find that your buttered toast has become soggy after having lain under a small china Taj Mahal with a hole in the top (maybe the real Taj Mahal has a hole in the top, for all I know. It ought to have, to let all those people in and out) then just send for the Captain (you remember the Captain!) and tell your troubles to him (song cue: "Tell Your Troubles to the Captain. He Will Weather or Not").

[Pg 21]

But I do think that something has got to be done about buttered toast. I am not one to cavil (cavil me back to Old Virginny) but I do think, if you ask me (and I don't remember anyone's asking me [oh, I guess I said that in the beginning of this article. Sorry!]), I do think, personally, that—where was I?

[Pg 22]

A BELATED TRIBUTE

I am terribly sorry about being so late in paying some attention to the Sir Walter Scott centenary. I don't know what you will think of me, and as for the Scots—Good Lord, I won't dare show my face around there for a year!

Well, all that I can say is that I was out of town during September, when the centenary was going on, and even after I got back, it was a good month before I got any news of the literary world (a very good month, in fact). Of course, nobody ever took the trouble to let me know there was a centenary on. Oh, no! I must keep track of such things myself. Oh, yes! If it weren't for the fact that I have been waiting a hundred years to take a crack at the Waverley Novels (or "Leather-stocking Tales," as I used to call them on my examination papers), I would be tempted to let the whole thing slide, now that it has gone this long.

But I happen to have a peculiar lack of interest in Scott, and so may be able to contribute something unique to Waverliana, in view of the fact that, in my youth, every time I changed schools (which was quite often, my grandfather having been King of the Gypsies), the new English class was just beginning to study "Ivanhoe." I am the boy who has[Pg 23] taken every word out of "Ivanhoe" and put it back eight times. There was a time when I had "Ivanhoe poisoning" so badly that, at the sight of the Ginn & Co. edition, I would scream and yank the tablecloth off with all the dishes on it. I still twitch my withers slightly at the mention of the name Rowena. I don't suppose that one should speak disparagingly of the dead, but there was a long time when I could have easily done without Sir Walter Scott.

It was in this mood, then, that I began my studies into the life and times of the creator of the Waverley Novels, and, after many trips to Abbotsford, Liddesdale, and all over the place, I now find myself with a collection of some of the worst-fitting data to be found in the Highlands, which, I am sure, will match in interest most of the anecdotes which have been distributed recently in honor of the centenary. In addition, I also saw many interesting sights in London.

We hear a great deal about the financial remuneration which Sir Walter's writings brought him in. It is said that his income was £10,000 a year (I have just discovered that I have a £ sign on my typewriter! I am afraid that you will have to pardon me while I use it just a little more. It comes out so neat and black. £50,000 minus £30,000 equals £20,000 plus £15,000, £5,000, £8,000—oh well, while I'm at it I might as well make it good—£500,000, £750,000, £3,000,000! There, I feel better!) Let's see, where were we?

Oh, yes! Even with £10,000 a year, he was able to get an advance of £19,000, which, as any publisher will tell you today, is a tidy advance, even in these boom times in the book trade. I have been able to dig up a letter from Scott to his publishers which not only gives an idea of the delightful[Pg 24] style of the great novelist but shows him to have been a man not without humor, or, to put it more succinctly, a man with humor. After reading some of his recently published correspondence, I also think it leads the lot in sparkle:

"Dear Joe: How's chances for a little advance of, say, £15,000? Abbotsford and all that, you know. There's a good old publisher!

"Yours, Walter."

Not bad, considering that Scott didn't learn English until he was forty.

A favorite place in London to which Scott often repaired (in the original this reads "was repaired," but I have taken the compiler's liberty of changing it) was No. 22 Sussex-place, Regent's Park. This house is the same now as it was in Scott's time, except that the front wall has been torn down and a marble façade erected in its place with a Turkish-bath establishment crowded in behind it. The street number has also been changed to No. 50, Albemarle Street, Edinburgh. It was here that Scott dined with Coleridge and made his famous remark: "Sam, the more I see of gooseberries, the sicker I get of them. Honest, I do." He got £15,000 for this.

Although Abbotsford took most of his money (£10,000 a year with advances of £19,000, £15,000, £12,000, and such at various times, which were never paid back), it was in London that Scott had most of his literary contacts. Byron (George Byron, that is), Coleridge, Lady Caroline Lamb, Joanna Baillie, £30,000, and a whole slew of others, all used to get together and write letters to each other from the next room, all of which have, oddly enough, been found in a good state of preservation and published in a book called "Swift's[Pg 25] Letters to Stella." It is from this book that most of our knowledge of London of that day (Tuesday) has been culled. It doesn't make very good reading.

It is only because of the imminence of the Scott centenary that I have presumed to bring these little incidents to light, and I suppose it will be another hundred years before I can print any of the others which I have saved up. By then, I suppose, I shall have read "Ivanhoe" eight more times, and will be in the mood again.

[Pg 26]

ART REVOLUTION NO. 4861

According to advices from Paris (if you want to take advices from such a notorious town), a new painter has emerged from the ateliers of Montparnasse who bids fair to revolutionize Art. Art has been revolutionized so many times in the past twenty years that nothing short of complete annihilation can be considered even a fist fight, to say nothing about a revolution; but it looks now, however, as if the trick finally had been turned. A French boy of forty-five has done it.

The artist in question is Jean Baptiste Morceau Lavalle Raoul Depluy Rourke (during the Peninsular campaigns a great many Irish troops settled in Paris and the authorities were unable to get them out—hence the Rourke). He is a little man, who has difficulty in breathing (not enough, however), and not at all the type that you would think of as a great painter—in fact, he isn't. But hidden away in the recesses of that small head is an idea which, some say, is destined to make a monkey out of Art.

Here is the Idea: All Art is Relative although all Relatives are not Art. (The gag is not mine, I am merely reporting.) If we look at a chair or a table or an old shoe box of picnic[Pg 27] lunch, what we see is not really a chair, or table, or shoe box full of picnic lunch, but a glove, a sponge, and a child's sand set. This much is obvious.

Now—if Art is to be anything at all in the expression of visual images, if, as someone has said, it is to hold Nature up to the mirror, then we must (I am still quoting Rourke, although I am thinking of stopping shortly) put down on our canvas not the things that we see but the things that see us. Or do I make myself clear?

Perhaps the best way for us to study this new theory of painting is to put on our thinking caps and consider Rourke's famous painting, Mist on the Marshes. The committee of the French Academy refused to hang this picture because, they said, it wasn't accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope and, besides, it didn't have enough paint on it. This, however, was an obvious subterfuge on the part of the committee. The fact was that they didn't understand it, and, in this world, what we don't understand we don't believe in. And a very good rule it is, too.

If you examine the picture closely you will see that it is really made up of three parts—Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The leg, which doesn't seem to belong to anybody, is mine—and I want it back, too, when you have finished looking at the picture. The pensive-looking old party who appears to be hanging on the cornice of a building which isn't shown in the picture is a self-portrait of the artist. He painted it by holding a mirror in one hand and a harmonica in the other and then looking in the other direction. In this way he caught the feeling rather than actual physical details.

Now, as you will see, what we have here is not so much a[Pg 28] picture as a feeling for Beauty. Although the artist is still feeling for it, it is quite possible that it may not be as far beyond his grasp as it seems. You can't go on feeling around like that without striking something, possibly oil.

For example, a great many people resent the fried egg in the upper left-hand corner. They claim that it looks too much like the sun. On the other hand, sun worshipers claim that it looks too much like a fried egg. As a matter of fact, friends of the artist, who caught him in a communicative mood one night when he was drunk, report that it is really a badge of a parade marshal, symbolizing the steady march of Art toward the picnic grounds. Whatever it is, you cannot deny that it is in the upper left-hand corner of the picture. And that is something.

In the Sur-Réaliste school of painting (of which Monsieur Rourke was a member until he was suspended for swimming in the pool when there was no water in it) there is an attempt to depict Spirit in terms of Matter and both Spirit and Matter in terms of a good absinthe bun.

Thus, the laughing snake in the lower left-hand corner of Mist on the Marshes is merely a representation of the spirit of laughing snakes, and has nothing to do with Reality. This snake is laughing because he is really not in the picture at all. It also pleases him to see that snakes are coming back as figments of delirium tremens, for there was a time when they were considered very bad form.

A good imaginative drunk of five years ago would have been ashamed to see such old-fashioned apparitions as snakes, the fad of the time being little old men with long beards who stood in corners and jeered.

[Pg 29]

"Seeing snakes" was held to be outmoded and fit only for comic characters in old copies of Puck. If you couldn't see little old men, or at least waltzing beavers, you had better not see anything at all.

But the Sur-Réalistes have brought back the snake, and this one is pretty tickled about it. After all, old friends are best.

The crux of the whole picture, however, lies in the fireman who holds the center of the stage. Here the artist has become almost photographic, even to the fire bell which is ringing in the background.

The old-fashioned modernist painters, like Matisse and Picasso, were afraid of being photographic, but the new boys think it is heaps of fun. This could not possibly be anything but a fireman and a fire bell, unless possibly it is a fisherman and a ship's bell. At any rate, it is a man and a bell, and that is going a long way toward photographic Art.

As for the silk hat, the ladder, the rather unpleasant unattached face, and the arrow and target, they belong to another picture which got placed by mistake on top of this one when the paint was still wet. Monsieur Rourke feels rather upset about this, but hopes that you won't notice it.

[Pg 30]