Chips Off the Old Benchley Read online

  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 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 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.

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  Art Revolution No. 4861

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  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 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 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.

  “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.

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  Ding-Dong,

  School Bells

  or What the Boy Will Need

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  Although it
hardly seems credible, it is almost time to begin packing the kiddies off to school again. Here they have been all summer, the rascals, tracking sand into the dining room, rolling Grandma about, and bringing in little playmates who have been exposed to mumps (when Daddy himself hasn’t had mumps yet, and mumps for Daddy would be no fun), and in all kinds of ways cheering up the Old Manse to the point of bursting it asunder.

  And now the school bells will be ringing again! A sure sign of the coming outbreak of education is the circulars which come in the mail from the clothing and general outfitting stores with lists of “required articles for the schoolboy and for the schoolgirl,” just as if the schoolboy and the schoolgirl couldn’t tell you themselves exactly what they are going to need – and more, too. Some day I want to get one of those list-compilers to come around and listen to my son and my daughter make out their lists. They will have him crying his heart out with chagrin inside of three minutes. “One rubber slicker,” indeed! “One green slicker, one tan slicker, one old-rose slicker,” is more like it. That is in case the rain comes in three different colors.

  I can remember the time (by pressing my temples very hard and holding my breath) when the opening of school meant simply buying a slate with a sponge tied to it and a box of colored crayons. No one, to my knowledge, ever used a slate and a sponge. They were simply a sentimental survival of an even earlier day which the man in the stationery store forced on children who were going to school. The colored crayons were, of course, for eating.

  But we bought our slates and our sponges and our crayons (sometimes with a ruler for slapping purposes), and then never used them, for the school furnished all the pencils and pads of yellow paper which were necessary. One of the great releases of my grown-up life has been that I don’t have to write on a yellow sheet of paper with blue lines ruled on it half an inch apart. I don’t like to have to write my lines half an inch apart, and now that I am a great big man, I don’t do it. That is one of the advantages of graduating from school.

  Today, however, although the slate and the sponge have been removed from the list, there are plenty of “incidentals” even for those children who go to what are known as public schools. What with the increase in high-school fraternities and fixings, high school today resembles the boarding school of yesterday, the boarding school of today resembles the college of yesterday, and the college of today (let’s see if I can keep this up) has turned the corner and resembles the public school of yesterday. Is that clear? Or shall we go over it just once again?

  Of course, according to the clothing-store lists, once your child gets into a so-called private school (which means that no child who has killed an uncle, an aunt, or any nearer relative, can enter) he is in for an outfitting such as hasn’t been seen since Byrd started for the South Pole. You wouldn’t think that merely sleeping away from home, in a nation as strict as ours, would entail so many extra clothes for a child.

  And not night clothes, either. A boy, when he is living at home, may just sit around the house reading and grousing all day, but the minute he gets away to school (according to the lists) he goes in for fox-hunting, elk-hunting, and whatever it is they hunt with falcons (Falcon hood, $45.50). Then for caber-tossing, you can get a good caber for $24, but the suit that you have to wear must be made by a Scottish tailor out of regulation St. Andrews heather, made up into a smart model for $115.

  As I remember my school requirements (I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen – but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!), I would substitute a list something like the following in place of that sent out by the clothing store:

  One sheet of note paper (with envelope to match) for letter home. This should do for the school year. Requests for money can be made by telegraph, collect.

  Five hundred pairs of socks, one to be thrown away each day.

  One hat, in a hatbox, the key of which will be left with the school principal for safekeeping until the end of the term.

  One overcoat, to be left with the hatbox key, unless the overcoat is of raccoonskin, in which case it should be made adaptable for wear up to and including June 10.

  One copy, in clear English translation, of each of the following books: The Æneid, Odyssey, Immensée, La Fontaine’s Fables (be sure that this follows the original French; there are a lot of fancy English adaptations which will get you into trouble with words which aren’t in the text), Nathan the Wise, and Don Quixote. There should be plenty of room between the lines in these books, to allow for the penciling in of a word now and then.

  One rubber mouth appliance, for making the sound commonly known as “the bird.”

  One old model Ford, with space for comments in white paint.

  One pipe, with perhaps an ounce of tobacco, for use about four times, then to be discarded or lost.

  One pocket lighter, made to harmonize with the other bureau ornaments.

  Three dozen shirts, with collars already frayed to save the laundry’s time.

  One very old T-shirt.

  Three dozen neckties, for use of roommates.

  One set of name tags, to be sewn on clothing to insure roommates getting them in return for clothing marked with roommate’s name.

  There is no sense in trying to provide handkerchiefs.

  Here, then, Mr. Boy’s Outfitter, is my list. I think that it takes care of everything. I am not prepared to go into as much detail as to the requirements for a girl’s school, because my daughter (if I had one) is not old enough. But I don’t want to get any more intimations that I am not doing right by my boy if I don’t buy him a red hunting coat. If he wants a red hunting coat, he can let the sleeves of mine down an inch or so and wear that.

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  My Five-

  (Or Maybe Six-)

  Year Plan

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  I have decided to start my own five-year plan: All that is necessary is for me to find out just what a five-year plan is.

  As I understand it, you take five years to start all over again. You throw out all your old systems, clean out the rubbers in the hall closet, give to the Salvation Army all those old bundles of the National Geographic you have been saving, and tell your creditors to wait for five years and that they will be surprised to see how well you pay. It sounds like a good plan to me. I haven’t asked my butcher about it yet.

  When a nation goes in for a five-year plan it reorganizes everything, eliminates competition, buys everything on a large scale, sells everything in amalgamations, and, in general, acts up big. I can’t do that, because I shall be working alone and on my own, but I can reorganize, and I figure that it will take me about five years to do the thing right. Let’s say six and be on the safe side.

  In the first place, my whole financial system has got to be gone over. It is in such bad shape now that it can hardly be called a system. In fact, I don’t think that it can even be called financial. It is more of a carnival. I shall have to go through all those old checkbook stubs and throw them out, for, under my present method of keeping books, there was no need of saving them, anyway. You see, it has been quite some time since I subtracted the amounts of checks drawn from what I smilingly call the “balance.” In fact, there are often great stretches of time when I don’t even enter the amounts at all. This latter irregularity is due to a habit of making out checks on blank forms supplied by hotels and restaurants, on which even the name of the bank has to be filled in, to say nothing of the number of the check and its amount. I like to make these out, because I print rather well and it is a great satisfaction to letter in the name of my bank in neat capitals exactly in the middle of the space provided for that purpose. I have sometimes made out a blank check just for the satisfaction of seeing “BANKERS’ TRUST CO., 57th St. Branch” come out in such typographical perfection from the poin
t of my pen. I am sure that it is a satisfaction to the bank, too. They often speak of it. What they object to is the amount which I fill in below. It seems too bad, they say, to have such a neat-looking check so unnegotiable. All of this will be changed under my five-year plan, for I intend not only to give up making out blank checks, but to enter and subtract those which I do make out. I cannot guarantee to subtract them correctly, for I am not a superman and can do only one thing at a time, but I will at least get the figures down on paper. The bank can handle the rest, and I am sure that they will. That is what they pay men to do, and they have never failed me yet.

  Which brings us to the second part of my new economic reorganization – production. Some way has got to be found to turn out more work. One solution would be, I suppose, to do more work, but that seems a little drastic. I ought to be able to combine with somebody to speed up mine without making a slave of myself as well. If I could get a dozen or so fellows who are in the same line of business, we could work up some division of labor whereby one of them could think up the ideas, another could arrange them in notes, another could lose the notes, and yet another could hunt for them. This would take a lot of work off my hands and yet save time for the combination.

  By then we would be ready for a fifth member of the pool to walk up and down the room dictating the story from such of the notes as could be found, while a sixth took it down in shorthand. We could all then get together and try to figure out the shorthand, with a special typing member ready to put the story down on paper in its final form. All that would now remain would be to put the stories in envelopes and address them, and it is here that I would fit in. That neat printing that I have been doing on blank checks all my life could be turned to good account here. It makes a great difference with an editor whether or not the contribution is neat, and it might turn out that I was the most important member of the pool. I don’t think there is any doubt that the stories would be better.