20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or David Copperfield

by Robert Benchley

  To say that Nathan is a purveyor of sensory stimuli because he writes of beer-guzzling and hip-shaking is as much rubbish as to say that Aimee Semple McPherson is a purveyor of spiritual balm because she haggles with God, that a Shubert chorus man is a disciple of Karl Marx because he affects a red necktie, or that Calvin Coolidge is a statesman because he wears a frock coat. If Nathan is an iconoclast, then Henry Ford makes automobiles and Otto H. Kahn has a dress-suit.

  Since we find, then, that, in so far as Nathan is a force at all he is a spiritual force, he must stand back-to-back with his brother ballyhoo boys in the vineyards of the Lord and be measured. And, in competition with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Bishop Manning, Mr. Nathan can not hope ever to rise above the rank of drum-major’s assistant. I confidently predict that in a hundred years he will be remembered solely for his cravats.

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  Clinical Notes

  By George Jean Nathan

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  The New Moses.—Every now and again the critical boys, many of them still in their emotional didies themselves, get to cutting up over some new baby they have found sucking at a bulrush down by the river’s bank. Here, they cry, is someone who is going to make Voltaire look like an empty seidel of Löwenbräu, Daumier like a small Emmenthaler käse, Brahms like an old Fedora hat and John Singer Sargent like the wet end of a Bock panetela. Such a phenomenon seems to be Professor Henry L. Mencken, who, my trusted Egyptian body-servant and spy tells me, is now being hailed as the New Hot Dickety.

  Aside from the local critics, who allow themselves to be hornswoggled with a regularity and amiability which could bring them in money if properly applied, Le Mencken seems to have a following made up of such giant intellects as believe that Cabell is better than Rachmaninoff, Sinclair Lewis better than Stravinsky, Dreiser better than Mestrovic, O’Neill better than Tunney, Dreiser better than O’Neill, Lewis better than Dreiser, Cabell better than Lewis, O’Neill better than Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis better than James Branch Cabell.

  I have also reason to believe that under cross-examination they would confess to a sneaking suspicion that (1) all hack-drivers are Swedenborgians; (2) when a man asks a woman to marry him, she always thinks he is fooling and accepts him; (3) that if you cut the pages of a book with your finger it makes the book look as if the pages had been cut with someone’s finger, and (4) that all hack-drivers are Swedenborgians.

  From such intellectual brothels, then, are the Mencken witnesses assembled. The State rests.

  Etude in E Minor. – It is occasionally my duty, as Liaison Officer for the Watch and Ward Society, to look into the state of the res publicae with special reference to sauce rémoulade. I have been especially interested, therefore, in the pronunciamento of several of my critical colleagues in New York that the best sauce rémoulade is to be found at the Colony Restaurant. This I take to be piffle and recommend to my brothers in the bond that they look into the sauce rémoulade in the oyster-bar at Prunier’s in Paris, at the Restaurant Horscher in Berlin, at Schoner’s in Vienna, at Hetlig’s Café in Budapest, at the Hotel zum Eisenhut in Rothenburg, at Louie’s in Prague, and at the Central House in Bellows Falls, Vt.

  Reprise. – It is my private opinion that Florenz Ziegfeld should receive the portfolio of Secretary of State without further shilly-shallying. As a picker of cuties, Kellogg has shown himself a dud.

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  The New Social Blight

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  One of the big questions which is agitating society today is why I don’t go out more to parties. You hear it on all sides. “What has become of Benchley?” they say; “we never see him around at people’s houses any more.”

  There is one camp which claims that I am embarrassed in the presence of strangers because of some malformation, another that I shun my friends because of conspicuous pores, and still another that since I flunked my Alexander Hamilton finals I have taken to seclusion and will see no one. I have instructed my attorneys to deny all of these insinuations categorically.

  The real reason is that society today has turned intellectual on me. You can’t go out any more to parties without being asked questions on matters of general information. Immediately the supper dishes are cleared away someone comes out with a list of questions concerning famous characters in history or literature, and there’s your evening – just sunk.

  When I was younger, a party was a party, not a college-board examination. We used to sit around and kiss each other, or drop handkerchiefs, or get to fighting, and everything was just dandy. Sometimes even the rugs would be pushed back and the more nimble ones would wrestle about on the floor to music. Among the older boys and girls a deck of cards would be broken out, and everyone would enjoy an evening of re-nigging (not spelled right and I know it) and snarling at each other. This sometimes ran into money, which was not a bad idea provided it ran in the right direction. And whatever we did, almost anybody could do it. All that was necessary was a fairly good constitution and enough sobriety to keep from falling on your forehead.

  But now everything is different. Someone, a few years ago, began a revival of an old high school game called Twenty Questions. This was considered pretty effete when I was a boy and was indulged in by only those who didn’t have the virility to play Post Office and other sex games. There would be one room (the warmest) devoted to Twenty Questions, and the rest, those who had any pride in their heritage, went into the next room and flung themselves about in various health-giving activities.

  But suddenly Twenty Questions became de rigueur. You must be able to guess what someone was thinking of (as if anyone cared), or you must think of names of cities which began with “W” (even less tantalizing), or you must take a paper and pencil and jot down answers to such questions as “What famous Phoenician general, well known for his alto singing, was responsible for the Second Punic War?”

  From this last game has developed the present pernicious custom of just plain General Information. After a good warm, heavy dessert and a hot mug of coffee you are supposed to settle down in the library and tell who wrote the poem beginning “If Niobe were here tonight, the moon in all her glory would – etc.” Young people, with red blood coursing through their systems, must sit around in a circle and tell each other who invented amalgam fillings and what president of the United States studied palmistry until he was eleven years old. The future of the race is being placed in the hands of young men and women who spend their evenings together trying to remember who wrote the music to Il Rogobo and how many dreens there are in a gross gambut. If you were to ask me what we are coming to, as a nation, I should reply: “I don’t know, I’m sure.”

  And now, to make things worse, they have gotten out a book full of questionnaires; so that hostesses who can’t think up things to ask their guests can just turn to this book and have enough material to tire out several parties. There are questionnaires on literature, mining, engineering, bird calls, and comparative plumbing, and then ones on general information which include everything. In one of these General Information questionnaires, Question No. 1 may be “What have the following in common: Alcibiades, Pepin the Great, Walter von der Vogelweide, and William A. Douglas?” and Question No. 2 may be “What is the coefficient of linear expansion in a steam pipe at 1367 South Water street?”

  Now, in college, I took what was known as the “classical course,” which meant that I had no courses after Friday and none before eleven in the morning. In the “classical course” it was also understood that there was to be no monkeying with mathematics or any of those fly-by-night sciences. A gentleman’s education was what I was to have – and what I got. And whenever, in after life, I want to know anything, I go right to the encyclopedia and look it up. There was nothing said in the specifications about being able to answer on the dot any questions that a hostess might see fit to ask me after dinner.

  When a man has reached my age, he can’t afford to go around t
o parties being humiliated. I have, through certain studied facial expressions and a characteristic carriage, established a reputation for dignity and civic stability for myself. People have come to think of me as a pillar of some sort or other, a definite bulwark in the literary and social life of the community. This standing has been achieved through years of scowling and keeping quiet while others were talking, and by walking very slowly with my hands behind my back. I tried for a while wearing glasses to add to the effect, but I couldn’t see with them on and kept tripping over things, which, in a way, detracted.

  And now I am asked nightly to jeopardize this hard-earned reputation by sitting around and making a sap of myself in front of a lot of people. There isn’t one of those questions that I couldn’t find the answer to in five minutes if I really wanted to know it. But I have other things to take up my mind, and, until the present craze for general information dies down, I shall devote myself to my studies in the privacy of my own room. At present I am working on a rather slick bit of trickery by means of which I can run out in Canfield.

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  Passport Dope

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  If you are planning to go abroad, it is easy to see that you must have a passport. They won’t let you abroad without a passport or something to show to the man. If you haven’t got a passport to show him, you can show him some of the snapshots you took at the beach last summer, but he would rather look at a passport. Who wouldn’t?

  The first step in getting a passport is to write to the State Department in Washington and ask them nicely for one. Following is a suggested form letter to the State Department:

  May 29, 19——

  (Name of year.)

  Dear Stubby:

  What a swell guy you turned out to be, letting me take that trolley Thursday night instead of telling me that the bus went right by the door! It took me an hour and a quarter to get to Butch’s and when I got there nobody was home. So I went into Lester’s and had a combination sandwich and let it go at that. The next time you want some fun, try getting my suitcase out of the rumble seat of the Chrysler.

  Well, what’s mine is yours. You know that.

  Sincerely,

  (Name of applicant.)

  After sending this letter to the State Department, it will be necessary for you to wait until they answer you. This ought not to take more than a week, if you know what I mean. It will then be time enough for you to take the physical examination. This ought not to be much trouble, provided you have taken any kind of care of yourself, or of anybody else. It consists chiefly of informal folk dancing in and out of the examination-room while the State Department officials make sketches of you. The best of these sketches (which are none too good) are finished up on a stiff cardboard (3 x 4 is a very poor size and should be avoided) and sent to you at your home, together with paper for wrapping and mailing.

  Now comes the hard part. This is called “getting a visa.” Take the sketch which the passport officials have made of you and show it to the representatives of the foreign countries which you wish to visit. You will find them in their offices on every Whitsunday at 4 P.M. At 4:05 P.M. they go out to lunch until next Whitsunday, so you will have to work fast. They will probably not like the sketch and will make no bones of saying so. Or, better yet, they will not be in their offices and you can give the whole thing up as a bad job.

  Anything else you want to do?

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  “Island Irish”

  Being a Comedy “Treatment” of Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” in the Best Manner of the Movie Gag-Men and Title Writers

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  1. SUBTITLE:

  Young “Rob” Crusoe who was so warm-hearted he had heartburn.

  SCENE 1. Main Street of Dover, England, background of trees and old-fashioned edibles. (Fade in.)

  ROB CRUSOE, swinging down the street, so intent on reading a book that he walks into a tree, to which he apologizes and continues reading and walking.

  Copy of “Three Men in a Boat.” (Close up.)

  2. SUBTITLE:

  Mary Malone, the village belle, who was so Irish the other girls turned green with envy.

  MARY, walking in the other direction, sees ROB and looks at him with evident scorn. She, too, walks into the tree and apologizes. This brings ROB and MARY together, apologizing to each other.

  3. SPOKEN TITLE:

  “I’m sorry; I thought you were a tree, you were so green!”

  MARY smiles and looks the other way. ROB smiles and looks the other way, too. Therefore, neither of them sees the other and they both pass by, ROB walking into a pond and MARY walking into a store where she buys three yards of gingham, thinking it is Rob. (Fade out.)

  SCENE 2. Living-room, Mary’s home. Background of faucets and old things. (Fade in.)

  4. SUBTITLE:

  Mary’s home life was just about as peaceful as a left-handed driver’s chariot-race down a right-handed driveway.

  (Fade in.)

  MARY is setting the table for supper. She has on a topcoat with the buttons set the wrong way, suggesting poverty. She lets the butter-pads slide into the water glasses, suggesting just plain carelessness.

  5. SUBTITLE:

  Roger Malone, an Irish sailor, who was so crooked he had crossed the equator eight times.

  ROGER MALONE, Mary’s father, is washing his hands at the sink, and, on hearing the butter-pads drop into the water glasses, turns in a rage and throws the sink at MARY. She dodges, and good-naturedly shakes her finger at her father until it drops off.

  ROGER MALONE smiles at his daughter and dries his hands on his derby hat. He walks over to the table and sits down, tucking his napkin in his collar. It is too tight a fit, so he takes his collar off. Still it is too tight, so he takes his shirt off. Then he has no place in which to tuck his napkin, so he puts his head through a hole in the table-cloth, upsetting all the dishes.

  SCENE 3. Background interior of Rob’s home.

  6. SUBTITLE:

  Thurlow Crusoe, Rob’s father, who needed only some eggs to have ham and eggs, if he had some ham.

  THURLOW CRUSOE buttering sandwiches for yesterday’s picnic. As he spreads the butter some feathers from the bed get stuck on his thumb, and as he pulls the feathers off his thumb, he scrapes the butter off the bread with his elbow. This goes on for fifty feet.

  ROB enters and stands looking at his father with a tender expression. He then takes down a shotgun from the wall and aims it at the old man. As he does so his eye lights on the calendar hanging on the wall.

  Calendar showing month with date for opening of hunting season marked in pencil. Rob’s finger shows present date which is three days before opening of season. (Close up.)

  ROB puts gun back on wall sadly and goes over and pats his father on head, leaving an ugly welt. (Fade out.)

  SCENE 4. Fishing wharf at Dover. Background of masts and unpleasant fish odors. Basket containing five puppies. (Close up.)

  7. SPOKEN TITLE:

  “Dog-fish!”

  ROB and MARY laugh and clamber down on the deck to play with the puppies. An evil face appears over a hatchway. (Fade in.)

  8. SUBTITLE:

  “Snail-bite” Pete, First Mate, who was so tough he kept his collar on with a nail in his neck.

  PETE sneaks up behind the pair of young lovers, who have by now handled the puppies so much that three of them are sick, and very quietly slips the hawser off the dock and casts off. By the time the young couple look up, they are on a desert island.

  SCENE 5. Sandy beach on a desert island. (Long shot.)

  9. SUBTITLE:

  Rob and Mary had about as much chance of getting off this island as a prohibitionist has of getting off a good joke.

  ROB and MARY walking hand in hand along the beach. ROB stops to pick up a bit of seaweed and MARY, who is looking the other way, reaches for his hand again. Instead she takes hold of a CRAB which has been walking al
ong the beach in the other direction, and thinking that one of its claws is Rob’s hand, walks along oblivious of the substitution, talking and chatting. She finally looks down and sees what she has been walking with and indicates horror.

  ROB in the meantime has discovered something in the sand and calls MARY back to see it.

  Large footprint in sand. (Close up.)

  ROB and MARY examine the footprint closely and MARY starts to dig at it.

  10. SPOKEN TITLE:

  “Look out! Don’t touch it! Perhaps it’s where someone stepped on Lon Chaney!”

  MARY jumps back in horror while ROB shades his eyes and scans the horizon. In the distance a speck is seen. He grabs MARY by the hand and they start running after the speck.

  SCENE 6. Chase sequence.

  ROB and MARY tear along the beach, swinging sometimes to the left into the long grass, sometimes to the right into the ocean. Once they nearly upset and once they come within an inch of colliding with a large FISH which is coming up the beach in the opposite direction.

  As ROB and MARY approach the speck in the distance, the speck approaches them at the same rate, until it turns out to be two REVENUE AGENTS who are running toward ROB and MARY to arrest them for being bootleggers. The four runners collide.

  11. SPOKEN TITLE:

  “It won’t be long now!”

  The AGENTS seize ROB and MARY and signal for the revenue-cutter which appears around the point.