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The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

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by Don Marquis




  the lives and times of archy and mehitabel

  books by

  don marquis

  a variety of people

  archy and mehitabel

  archy does his part

  archy s life of mehitabel

  carter, and other people

  chapters for the orthodox

  cruise of the jasper b

  danny’s own story

  dreams and dust

  hermione and her little group of serious thinkers

  love sonnets of a cave man and other verses

  master of the revels—a comedy in four acts

  off the arm

  out of the sea—a play

  poems and portraits

  prefacts (decorations by tony sarg)

  sonnets to a red-haired lady and famous love affairs

  sons of the puritans

  sun dial time

  the almost perfect state

  the awakening and other poems

  the dark hours

  the lives and times of archy and mehitabel

  the old soak and hail and farewell

  the old soak’s history of the world

  the revolt of the oyster

  when the turtles sing and other unusual tales.

  copyright, 1927, 1930, 1933, 1935, 1950

  by doubleday and company, inc.

  copyright, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922

  by sun printing and publishing association.

  copyright, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1934

  by new york tribune, inc.

  copyright, 1925, 1926, 1933, 1934

  by p. f. collier and son, company.

  copyright, 1928, 1932, 1933

  by don marquis.

  all rights reserved.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82838-5

  v3.1

  dedicated to babs

  with babs knows what

  and babs knows why

  acknowledgment

  the author is indebted to the proprietors of the new york sun, the new york herald-tribune, new york herald-tribune magazine and p. f. collier and son company for permission to reprint these sketches.

  contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgment

  Introduction

  archy and mehitabel

  the coming of archy

  mehitabel was once cleopatra

  the song of mehitabel

  pity the poor spiders

  mehitabel s extensive past

  the cockroach who had been to hell

  archy interviews a pharaoh

  a spider and a fly

  freddy the rat perishes

  the merry flea

  why mehitabel jumped

  certain maxims of archy

  warty bliggens, the toad

  mehitabel has an adventure

  the flattered lightning bug

  the robin and the worm

  mehitabel finds a home

  the wail of archy

  mehitabel and her kittens

  archy is shocked

  archy creates a situation

  mehitabel sings a song

  aesop revised by archy

  cheerio, my deario

  the lesson of the moth

  a roach of the taverns

  the froward lady bug

  pete the parrot and shakespeare

  archy confesses

  the old trouper

  archy declares war

  the hen and the oriole

  ghosts

  archy hears from mars

  mehitabel dances with boreas

  archy at the zoo

  the dissipated hornet

  unjust

  the cheerful cricket

  clarence the ghost

  some natural history

  prudence

  archy goes abroad

  archy at the tomb of napoleon

  mehitabel meets an affinity

  mehitabel sees paris

  mehitabel in the catacombs

  off with the old love

  archy s life of mehitabel

  the life of mehitabel the cat

  the minstrel and the maltese cross

  mehitabel s first mistake

  the curse of drink

  pussy café

  a communication from archy

  the return of archy

  archy turns highbrow for a minute

  archy experiences a seizure

  peace—at a price

  mehitabel again

  archy among the philistines

  archy protests

  CAPITALS AT LAST

  the stuff of literature

  archy s autobiography

  quote and only man is vile quote

  mehitabel s morals

  cream de la cream

  do not pity mehitabel

  mehitabel tries companionate marriage

  no social stuff for mehitabel

  the open spaces are too open

  random thoughts by archy

  archy s song

  archy turns revolutionist

  archy s last name

  quote buns by great men quote

  an awful warning

  as it looks to archy

  archy on the radio

  archy a low brow

  mehitabel s parlor story

  archy s mission

  archy visits washington

  ballade of the under side

  archy wants to end it all

  book review

  archy and the old un

  archygrams

  archy says

  sings of los angeles

  wants to go in the movies

  the retreat from hollywood

  artists shouldnt have offspring

  could such things be

  what does a trouper care

  be damned mother dear

  the artist always pays

  a word from little archibald

  archy does his part

  prophecies

  repeal

  the ballyhoo

  the league

  conferences

  a warning

  now look at it

  why the earth is round

  the big bad wolf

  abolish bridge

  small talk

  the south pole

  poets

  the two dollars

  for reform

  a horrid notion

  archy in washington

  hold everything

  archy broadcasts

  on the air again

  resurgam

  the ant bear

  two comrades

  as the spiders wrote it

  a scarab

  archy hunts a job

  archy craves amusement

  fate is unfair

  at the zoo

  no true friend

  confessions of a glutton

  literary jealousy

  pete at the seashore

  pete s theology

  pete petitions

  pete s holiday

  a radical flea

  archy and the labor troubles

  an ultimatum

  no snap

  he gets in bad

  economic

  archy revolts

  archy wants a change

  archy on strike

  a communication from henry

  how the public viewed the strike

  poem from henry

  progress of the strike

  a threat

  the public and the st
rike

  archy gets a 50 per cent increase

  comment from archy

  a conversation with archy

  archy gets restless again

  archy triumphs

  yes we have

  a wail from little archy

  doing well

  takes talent

  summer is icumen in

  archy climbs everest

  archy on everest

  archy on the theater

  archy flies

  archy and the suicide

  comforting thoughts

  inspiration

  gossip

  a close call

  kidding the boss

  a sermon

  difficulties of art

  a spiggoty hero

  sociological

  never blame the booze

  the sad crickets

  fond recollections

  immorality

  archy is excited

  archy reports

  archy says

  the book worm

  archy s comet

  progress

  he has enemies

  barbarous

  the demon rum

  ancient lineage

  quaint

  the artist

  the suicide club

  psychic

  destiny

  a discussion

  quarantined

  archy s statue

  the open spaces

  short course in natural history

  archy protests

  archy on amateur gardens

  archy on this and that

  mehitabel sees it through

  mehitabel meets her mate

  mehitabel pulls a party

  mehitabel joins the navy

  what is a lady

  archy denies it

  a farewell

  archy still in trouble

  not any proof

  statesmanship

  spring

  the author s desk

  what the ants are saying

  introduction

  When the publisher asked me to write a few introductory remarks about Don Marquis for this new edition of archy and mehitabel, he said in his letter: “The sales of this particular volume have been really astounding.”

  They do not astound me. Among books of humor by American authors, there are only a handful that rest solidly on the shelf. This book about Archy and Mehitabel, hammered out at such awful cost by the bug hurling himself at the keys, is one of those books. It is funny, it is wise, it is tender, and it is tough. The sales do not astound me; only the author astounds me, for I know (or think I do) at what cost Don Marquis produced these gaudy and irreverent tales. He was the sort of poet who does not create easily; he was left unsatisfied and gloomy by what he produced; day and night he felt the juices squeezed out of him by the merciless demands of daily newspaper work; he was never quite certified by intellectuals and serious critics of belles lettres. He ended in an exhausted condition—his money gone, his strength gone. Describing the coming of Archy in the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun one afternoon in 1916, he wrote: “After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.” In that sentence Don Marquis was writing his own obituary notice. After about a life-time of frightfully difficult literary labor keeping newspapers supplied with copy, he fell exhausted.

  I feel obliged, before going any further, to dispose of one troublesome matter. The reader will have perhaps noticed that I am capitalizing the name Archy and the name Mehitabel. I mention this because the capitalization of Archy is considered the unforgivable sin by a whole raft of old Sun Dial fans who have somehow nursed the illogical idea that because Don Marquis’s cockroach was incapable of operating the shift key of a typewriter, nobody else could operate it. This is preposterous. Archy himself wished to be capitalized—he was no e. e. cummings. In fact he once flirted with the idea of writing the story of his life all in capital letters, if he could get somebody to lock the shift key for him. Furthermore, I capitalize Archy on the highest authority: wherever in his columns Don Marquis referred to his hero, Archy was capitalized by the boss himself. What higher authority can you ask?

  The device of having a cockroach leave messages in his typewriter in the Sun office was a lucky accident and a happy solution for an acute problem. Marquis did not have the patience to adjust himself easily and comfortably to the rigors of daily columning, and he did not go about it in the steady, conscientious way that (for example) his contemporary Franklin P. Adams did. Consequently Marquis was always hard up for stuff to fill his space. Adams was a great editor, an insatiable proof-reader, a good make-up man. Marquis was none of these. Adams, operating his Conning Tower in the World, moved in the commodious margins of column-and-a-half width and built up a reliable stable of contributors. Marquis, cramped by single-column width, produced his column largely without outside assistance. He never assembled a hard-hitting bunch of contributors and never tried to. He was impatient of hard work and humdrum restrictions, yet expression was the need of his soul. (It is significant that the first words Archy left in his machine were “expression is the need of my soul”.)

  The creation of Archy, whose communications were in free verse, was part inspiration, part desperation. It enabled Marquis to use short (sometimes very, very short) lines, which fill space rapidly, and at the same time it allowed his spirit to soar while viewing things from the under side, insect fashion. Even Archy’s physical limitations (his inability to operate the shift key) relieved Marquis of the toilsome business of capital letters, apostrophes, and quotation marks, those small irritations that slow up all men who are hoping their spirit will soar in time to catch the edition. Typographically, the vers libre did away with the turned or runover line that every single-column practitioner suffers from.

  Archy has endeared himself in a special way to thousands of poets and creators and newspaper slaves, and there are reasons for this beyond the sheer merit of his literary output. The details of his creative life make him blood brother to writing men. He cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward. So do we all. And when he was through his labors, he fell to the floor, spent. He was vain (so are we all), hungry, saw things from the under side, and was continually bringing up the matter of whether he should be paid for his work. He was bold, disrespectful, possessed of the revolutionary spirit (he organized the Worms Turnverein), was never subservient to the boss yet always trying to wheedle food out of him, always getting right to the heart of the matter. And he was contemptuous of those persons who were absorbed in the mere technical details of his writing. “The question is whether the stuff is literature or not.” That question dogged his boss, it dogs us all. This book—and the fact that it sells steadily and keeps going into new editions—supplies the answer.

  In one sense Archy and his racy pal Mehitabel are timeless. In another sense, they belong rather intimately to an era—an era in American letters when this century was in its teens and its early twenties, an era before the newspaper column had degenerated. In 1916 to hold a job on a daily paper, a columnist was expected to be something of a scholar and a poet—or if not a poet at least to harbor the transmigrated soul of a dead poet. Nowadays, to get a columning job a man need only have the soul of a Peep Tom, or of a third-rate prophet. There are plenty of loud clowns and bad poets at work on papers today, but there are not many columnists adding to belles lettres, and certainly there is no Don Marquis at work on any big daily, or if there is, I haven’t encountered his stuff. This seems to me a serious falling off of the press. Mr. Marquis’s cockroach was more than the natural issue of a creative and humorous mind. Archy was the child of compulsion, the stern compulsion of journalism. The compulsion is as great today as it ever was, but it is met in a different spirit. Archy used to come back from the golden companionship of the tavern with a poet’s report of life as se
en from the under side. Today’s columnist returns from the platinum companionship of the night club with a dozen pieces of watered gossip and a few bottomless anecdotes. Archy returned carrying a heavy load of wine and dreams. These later cockroaches come sober from their taverns, carrying a basket of fluff. I think newspaper publishers in this decade ought to ask themselves why. What accounts for so great a falling off?

  I hesitate to say anything about humor, hesitate to attempt an interpretation of any man’s humor: it is as futile as explaining a spider’s web in terms of geometry. Marquis was, and is, to me a very funny man, his product rich and satisfying, full of sad beauty, bawdy adventure, political wisdom, and wild surmise; full of pain and jollity, full of exact and inspired writing. The little dedication to this book

  … to babs

  with babs knows what

  and babs knows why

  is a characteristic bit of Marquis madness. It has the hasty despair, the quick anguish, of an author who has just tossed another book to a publisher. It has the unmistakable whiff of the tavern, and is free of the pretense and the studied affection that so often pollute a dedicatory message.

  The days of the Sun Dial were, as one gazes back on them, pleasantly preposterous times and Marquis was made for them, or they for him. Vers libre was in vogue, and tons of souped-up prose and other dribble poured from young free-verse artists who were suddenly experiencing a gorgeous release in the disorderly high-sounding tangle of non-metrical lines. Spiritualism had captured people’s fancy also. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was in close touch with the hereafter, and received frequent communications from the other side. Ectoplasm swirled around all our heads in those days. (It was great stuff, Archy pointed out, to mend broken furniture with.) Souls, at this period, were being transmigrated in Pythagorean fashion. It was the time of “swat the fly,” dancing the shimmy, and speakeasies. Marquis imbibed freely of this carnival air, and it all turned up, somehow, in Archy’s report. Thanks to Archy, Marquis was able to write rapidly and almost (but not quite) carelessly. In the very act of spoofing free verse, he was enjoying some of its obvious advantages. And he could always let the chips fall where they might, since the burden of responsibility for his sentiments, prejudices, and opinions was neatly shifted to the roach and the cat. It was quite in character for them to write either beautifully or sourly, and Marquis turned it on and off the way an orchestra plays first hot, then sweet.

  Archy and Mehitabel, between the two of them, performed the inestimable service of enabling their boss to be profound without sounding self-important, or even self-conscious. Between them, they were capable of taking any theme the boss threw them, and handling it. The piece called “the old trouper” is a good example of how smoothly the combination worked. Marquis, a devoted member of The Players, had undoubtedly had a bellyful of the lamentations of aging actors who mourned the passing of the great days of the theater. It is not hard to imagine him hastening from his club on Gramercy Park to his desk in the Sun office and finding, on examining Archy’s report, that Mehitabel was inhabiting an old theater trunk with a tom who had given his life to the theater and who felt that actors today don’t have it any more—“they don’t have it here.” (Paw on breast.) The conversation in the trunk is Marquis in full cry, ribbing his nostalgic old actors all in the most wildly fantastic terms, with the tomcat’s grandfather (who trooped with Forrest) dropping from the fly gallery to play the beard. This is double-barreled writing, for the scene is funny in itself, with the disreputable cat and her platonic relationship with an old ham, and the implications are funny, with the author successfully winging a familiar type of bore. Double-barreled writing and, on George Herriman’s part, double-barreled illustration. It seems to me Herriman deserves much credit for giving the right form and mien to these willful animals. They possess (as he drew them) the great soul. It would be hard to take Mehitabel if she were either more catlike, or less. She is cat, yet not cat; and Archy’s lineaments are unmistakably those of poet and pest.

 

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