“The Old Friends” was of 1950, a year exceeded in acts and moods of desperation, bewilderment, and despair only by the years which had gone before and those which, God save us all, were still to follow. I am not, at the longest of lasts, all unaware of the suspicion which has fallen upon me, the suspicion that, in working out my design, I have shown myself to be, in point of purpose, un-American. It is of ancient record that I was, in fact, born in the States, but of record almost as ancient that I duly became a resident and a national of England, which plainly makes me and my small trade, if un-anything, un-British, and there you may, my poor dear readers, in whatever, spirit, leave me.
Belles Lettres and Me
THURBER AT LARGE IN THE WRITERS’ COMMUNITY
The Harpers and Their Circle
“There isn’t room in this house for belles lettres and me both.”
(After reading Margaret Case Harriman’s The Vicious Circle, a fond history of the wits, male and female, who used to gather at the famous Round Table in the Algonquin Hotel in New York.)
The original firm of Harper & Brothers, founded more than 100 years ago, consisted of five brothers who took turns being Harper. Whenever an irate author stormed into the office demanding to see Harper, whatever brother he accosted would say simply, “Harper is out” or “Harper is not in.” It was Charles Dickens, on one of his visits to America, who gave the firm its first example of authorial wrath. He opposed strenuously, for some reason, the intention of Harper & Brothers to bring out his famous novel under the title of “Oliver H. P. Twist,” which they held to be smarter than plain Oliver Twist.
One of the brothers, possibly the current Harper, had the notion, during the firm’s first year, of interviewing authors, not in the editorial offices, but at the now famous Long Table in the old (then, to be sure, the new) Fifth Avenue Hotel. The luncheons held there, almost daily for sixty-five years, were expensive and took up a great deal of time, but the practice turned out to be worthwhile, since the complex authors rarely put on distressing scenes in the staid and dignified dining-room. There was, of course, some trouble with Edgar Allan Poe every few weeks, but the fault was almost always someone else’s, not Poe’s. One noon, for example, a pretty young woman, a total stranger to Poe and to the others at the table, ran up to the famous poet and short-story writer, flung her arms about his neck, kissed him on the cheek, and cried, “Ah simply adore ‘The Goldberg.’” Poe gave the fair intruder his pensive smile and said, “Madam, you must be thinking of ‘Love Among the Ryans.’” The young lady, far from being taken aback, turned coolly to the others at the table, Harper and his brothers, Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Nat Hawthorne, Jimmy Fenimore Cooper and Herman (“Mank”) Melville, and said, “Mah name is Ann Brothers, an Ah simply adore all of you men!” Poe gave her his darkest look and said, “Screw loose and fancy free.” It was Melville who announced, before any of the others had figured it out, “This young lady is a natural for our group, and I propose that we think of her, from now on, as Harper Ann Brothers.”
Miss Brothers said she was from the deep South, but Poe didn’t believe it. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your South,” he said.
The passages at arms between the poet and the girl reached their highest point one day in the summer of 1858, when Poe asked her if she had ever been to school. “Yes,” said Miss Brothers, who had apparently been waiting for this question for several years, “but I liked philosophers better than poets. You see, I put Descartes before Horace.” This kind of wit was vehemently objected to by the Tablers on the ground that it was synthetic and planned, or, as we would say today, “rigged.”
“Merciful God,” moaned Poe, “what have I ever done to deserve this?” “Haven’t the critics told you?” Miss Brothers asked sweetly, setting the table aroar.
Jimmy Cooper and Poe never got along very well, possibly because Cooper always called the author of “Ulalume” by the name of “Edmund.” There had also been the tense moment when Cooper interrupted Poe’s babbling to say, “Your Lenore isn’t lost. She’s hiding.” When Cooper’s The Deerslayer was published, and he came late to the table that day, wreathed in smiles, Poe referred to him as “the Merchant of Venison.” Everybody laughed except Browning, who held Poe’s wit in low esteem, and when the merriment had died down, the author of The Ring and the Book said, “Edgar thinks he is the man who put the laughter in ‘slaughter,’ whereas, as a matter of fact, he is the man who took it out, leaving only a faint hissing sound.” This was too much for Poe, who could not think offhand of a sharp retort, and he contented himself with the nasty assertion, “Browning, all your poems are at least eight hundred lines too long.” Browning flashed his pensive smile. “As against your sonnets, sir,” he said, “which are never more than fourteen lines too long.” A lively, but edged argument then arose about the relative merits of various poets, including Longfellow, to whom Poe always alluded as “Henry Wordsworth,” and presently, Browning lost his temper and said to Poe, “You do not know the half of poetry.” Poe was ready for this one. “Poe is the half of poetry,” he pointed out quietly, and Browning, God bless him, was ready for that one. “Yes, I know that,” he said sweetly, “but the other half is ‘try,’ something you have never successfully done.” When the merriment had died down, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was gone, nobody knew where.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was asked to the Long Table once, and then never again. Some of the other Americans who frequented the celebrated dining room were jealous of his trips to Europe and of his friendship with Thomas Carlyle. Poe, for some reason, did not admire the English historian’s writings, which he considered full of sound and fury. Poe once called him, in Emerson’s presence, “Tom Tom Carlyle,” and this enraged the Concord philosopher. Furthermore, it was generally believed that Carlyle affected glasses with green lenses, which caused Poe to remark, unfairly, “Tom Tom is the green-eyed punster.” On the occasion of poor Emerson’s one and only harried luncheon in the famous dining-room, Poe kept insisting that the author of “English Traits” had been a Rhodes scholar. “I am not a Rhodes scholar, and I have never been one,” Emerson said testily. Poe gave him his pensive smile. “I know that, Waldo,” he said, “but you look at life through Rhodes-scholared glasses.” This over-elaborate and clearly rigged retort was considered out of bounds, and Melville got up and left the table, along with Emerson. The former came back, but the latter never did.
Speaking of leaving the table, there was the day Poe thought he had, when he actually hadn’t. At this luncheon, Charlotte Bronte was present, and Harper, for her amusement, pretended to have had too much wine, since this was necessary to get off his little gag. The brothers scarcely ranked with their famous authors as wits, and usually merely applauded a jape or a quip lightly, or exclaimed softly, “Jolly, Oh!” or “Oh, Jolly!”, but now and again they liked to have their innings. “How many Brontes are there?” Harper asked the author of Wuthering Heights that day. “There are three of us,” she said. This was what Harper was waiting for. “Yes,” he said, “and I can see all three of you.” Miss Bronte was not to be outdone, however. “We,” she said sweetly, “can see all three of you, too.” It was at this point that Poe thought he left the table. As a matter of fact, it was one of the Harpers who got up and went back to the office. For more than an hour, Poe, believing he was absent, did not touch his drink. “Do you know something, Edgar?” Harper asked suddenly, and the surprised poet said, “Why don’t you ask me some day when I’m here?” Harper was taken aback and said, “But you are here, Edgar!” Poe favored him with his darkest gaze, “Dammit, sir,” he said, “I was having such a good time listening to myself being talked about behind my back.” This time there was no merriment to die down, because none of the Harpers got the point of Poe’s remark, and Miss Bronte, it turned out, had not been listening.
In my next chapter, if any, I will tell about the amusing, and sometimes disastrous, situations that arose during the ten years that the charter members of the
Long Table were joined at their luncheons by Henry George and Henry James. Their continual presence bothered Poe, who found it difficult to tell one of the men from the other, and there were long months when he stayed away. To Ann Brothers, however, it was easy to make a distinction between the author of The Ambassadors and the author of Progress and Poverty. One day, just before Poe left the table, to be gone all summer, she said sweetly, “Ah cain’t unnahstand whah you all cain’t tell Mistah Joge from Mistah James. One is the single tax man, and the other is the syntax man.” This time, when Poe got up and left the table, he knew he was no longer there.
A Visit from Saint Nicholas
(IN THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY MANNER)
It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.
The children were in their beds. Their beds were in the room next to ours. Mamma and I were in our beds. Mamma wore a kerchief. I had my cap on. I could hear the children moving. We didn’t move. We wanted the children to think we were asleep.
“Father,” the children said.
There was no answer. He’s there, all right, they thought.
“Father,” they said, and banged on their beds.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“We have visions of sugarplums,” the children said.
“Go to sleep,” said mamma.
“We can’t sleep,” said the children. They stopped talking, but I could hear them moving. They made sounds.
“Can you sleep?” asked the children.
“No,” I said.
“You ought to sleep.”
“I know. I ought to sleep.”
“Can we have some sugarplums?”
“You can’t have any sugarplums,” said mamma.
“We just asked you.”
There was a long silence. I could hear the children moving again.
“Is Saint Nicholas asleep?” asked the children.
“No,” mamma said. “Be quiet.”
“What the hell would he be asleep tonight for?” I asked.
“He might be,” the children said.
“He isn’t,” I said.
“Let’s try to sleep,” said mamma.
The house became quiet once more. I could hear the rustling noises the children made when they moved in their beds.
Out on the lawn a clatter arose. I got out of bed and went to the window. I opened the shutters; then I threw up the sash. The moon shone on the snow. The moon gave the lustre of mid-day to objects in the snow. There was a miniature sleigh in the snow, and eight tiny reindeer. A little man was driving them. He was lively and quick. He whistled and shouted at the reindeer and called them by their names. Their names were Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, and Blitzen.
He told them to dash away to the top of the porch, and then he told them to dash away to the top of the wall. They did. The sleigh was full of toys.
“Who is it?” mamma asked.
“Some guy,” I said. “A little guy.”
I pulled my head in out of the window and listened. I heard the reindeer on the roof. I could hear their hoofs pawing and prancing on the roof. “Shut the window,” said mamma. I stood still and listened.
“Reindeer,” I said. I shut the window and walked about. It was cold. Mamma sat up in the bed and looked at me.
“How would they get on the roof?” mamma asked.
“They fly.”
“Get into bed. You’ll catch cold.”
Mamma lay down in bed. I didn’t get into bed. I kept walking around.
“What do you mean, they fly?” asked mamma.
“Just fly is all.”
Mamma turned away toward the wall. She didn’t say anything.
I went out into the room where the chimney was. The little man came down the chimney and stepped into the room. He was dressed all in fur. His clothes were covered with ashes and soot from the chimney. On his back was a pack like a peddler’s pack. There were toys in it. His cheeks and nose were red and he had dimples. His eyes twinkled. His mouth was little, like a bow, and his beard was very white. Between his teeth was a stumpy pipe. The smoke from the pipe encircled his head in a wreath. He laughed and his belly shook. It shook like a bowl of red jelly. I laughed. He winked his eye, then he gave a twist to his head. He didn’t say anything.
He turned to the chimney and filled the stockings and turned away from the chimney. Laying his fingers aside his nose, he gave a nod. Then he went up the chimney and looked up. I saw him get into his sleigh. He whistled at his team and the team flew away. The team flew as lightly as thistledown. The driver called out, “Merry Christmas and good night.” I went back to bed.
“What was it?” asked mamma. “Saint Nicholas?” She smiled.
“Yeah,” I said.
She sighed and turned in the bed.
“I saw him,” I said.
“Sure.”
“I did see him.”
“Sure you saw him.” She turned farther toward the wall.
“Father,” said the children.
“There you go,” mamma said. “You and your flying reindeer.”
“Go to sleep,” I said.
“Can we see Saint Nicholas when he comes?” the children asked.
“You got to be asleep,” I said. “You got to be asleep when he comes. You can’t see him unless you’re unconscious.”
“Father knows,” mamma said.
I pulled the covers over my mouth. It was warm under the covers. As I went to sleep I wondered if mamma was right.
Ravel’s “Bolero. ‘
Folks out of Faulkner.
An Evening with Carl Sandburg
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thurber met “the singing poet” Carl Sandburg while both were visiting Columbus, Thanksgiving of 1936. After Sandburg’s concert, at a friend’s reception, Thurber and Sandburg carried on rather exclusively. Thurber admired and was admired by Sandburg and recounted the festive evening in drawings and an accompanying letter (not included here).
Dance Recital.
Sandburg Tells a Story.
Jeez, it looks like Sandburg’s plane, don’t it?
No More Biographies
I dropped around to see Rumsonby at his office in the Congressional Library at Washington. Rumsonby had charge of the Bureau of Publishing Statistics and Biographers’ Permits, which had been created by act of Congress in 1940, shortly after seven different lives of Harding and twenty-eight different biographies of Lincoln came out in one day. I had been away from the country for a great many years, and I didn’t really know what was going on in the book-publishing world. Rumsonby, I knew, would make it all clear to me.
“Hello,” he said. “I hope you don’t want a permit to do a biography, especially of a Civil War character. All I got left in that line is Captain Charles O. Schultz of the Sixty-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry. All the other officers have passed their quota.”
“You mean a biography has been written about every officer who was in the Civil War except this Schultz?” I asked.
“A biography?” he echoed. “There were ninety-two Lees and ninety-five Grants when the law went into effect. The books on Lincoln alone ran to forty million copies. Something had to be done. A government statistician discovered that if all the biographies in America were laid end to end, they would cover the entire surface of the United States, ten times over. That means that if people started laying their biographies end to end outdoors, we would all be bogged in books up to our knees. Traffic would stop, production and distribution of foodstuffs would be handicapped, army maneuvers would—”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The year of publication, 1932, is key for reading this reprint with its intended parody since the 1940 act of Congress to which Thurber refers is in the future for its original reader.
“But the people aren’t going to lay
their books end to end outdoors,” I said.
“They might,” said Rumsonby. “Anyway, there had to be a federal regulation, if only to conserve house space. Long ago as 1935, as many as eighty-four books a day were being published, with an average sale of a thousand copies. That meant that about twenty-five million volumes a year were flooding the country. Or two hundred and fifty-two million in ten years. The total shelf space, counting pantries, in the United States is only—”
“It would have been interesting to let it go on at that rate and see what would happen,” I said.
“We knew what would happen,” said Rumsonby. “It would have meant a disastrous decline in the purchase of furniture, woollens, foodstuffs, and so on, in order to make room in the house for books. Eventually a war of aggression and conquest would have been necessary to get space for all the books.”
Rumsonby began writing down a lot of big numbers on a sheet of paper, apparently trying to figure out how large a country we’d have had to conquer to get room for the books.
“Supposing,” I said, “I published a volume on Grant, or Jeb Stuart, or Stonewall Jackson tomorrow?”
Rumsonby referred to a little book at his elbow.
“Let’s see,” he said. “The fine for Grant is five thousand dollars, for Stuart thirty-two hundred and fifty, and for Jackson four thousand. Your books would be confiscated too, of course.”
“How about Lincoln?” I asked.
“Lincoln carries a maximum fine of fifty thousand dollars and two years’ imprisonment or both. Everybody wants to do Lincoln. There was the famous case of one biographer who got around the letter of the law by writing a volume on Lincoln which was fictive and suppositional. It was called “If Lincoln Had Shot Booth.” The Supreme Court decided that the author was not guilty of breaking the law because his book was not biography in the technical sense of the word; that is, it was not an actual account of a person’s life. This opinion led to seventy-four other If books on Lincoln, including “If Lincoln Had Missed Booth,” “If Booth Had Hit Mrs. Lincoln,” “If Mrs. Lincoln Had Shot Mrs. Booth,” and so on. It was terribly confusing. Eventually schoolchildren got the idea that Lincoln was alive and that the South had won. An amendment to the biography law was passed prohibiting the writing of imaginary biographies of persons whose quotas had been passed.”
Collecting Himself Page 10
