Worlds of fine thinking lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving-bell will bring up again.
Greatly as we cherish the Sun Dial, we are jealous of it for sapping all its author's time and calories. No writer in America has greater of more meaty, stalwart gifts. Don, we cry, spend less time stoking that furnace out in Port Washington, and more on your novels!
There is no more convincing proof of the success of the Sun Dial than the roster of its contributors. Some of the most beautiful lyrics of the past few years have been printed there (I think particularly of two or three by Padraic Colum). In this ephemeral column of a daily newspaper some of the rarest singers and keenest wits of the time have been glad to exhibit their wares, without pay of course. It would be impossible to give a complete list, but among them are William Rose Benét, Clinton Scollard, Edith M. Thomas, Benjamin De Casseres, Gelett Burgess, Georgia Pangborn, Charles Hanson Towne, Clement Wood.
But the tragedy of the colyumist's task is that the better he does it the harder it becomes. People simply will not leave him alone. All day long they drop into his office, or call him up on the phone in the hope of getting into the column. Poor Don! he has become an institution down on Nassau Street: whatever hour of the day you call, you will find his queue there chivvying him. He is too gracious to throw them out: his only expedient is to take them over to the gin cathedral across the street and buy them a drink. Lately the poor wretch has had to write his Dial out in the pampas of Long Island, bringing it in with him in the afternoon, in order to get it done undisturbed. How many times I have sworn never to bother him again! And yet, when one is passing in that neighbourhood, the temptation is irresistible.... I dare say Ben Jonson had the same trouble. Of course someone ought to endow Don and set him permanently at the head of a chophouse table, presiding over a kind of Mermaid coterie of robust wits. He is a master of the tavernacular.
He is a versatile cove. Philosopher, satirist, burlesquer, poet, critic, and novelist. Perhaps the three critics in this country whose praise is best worth having, and least easy to win, would be Marquis, Strunsky, and O.W. Firkins. And I think that the three leading poets male in this country to-day are Marquis, William Rose Benét, and (perhaps) Vachel Lindsay. Of course Don Marquis has an immense advantage over Will Benét in his stoutness. Will had to feed up on honey and candied apricocks and mares' milk for months before they would admit him to the army.
Hermione and her little group of "Serious Thinkers" have attained the dignity of book publication, and now stand on the shelf beside "Danny's Own Story" and "The Cruise of the Jasper B." This satire on the azure-pedalled coteries of Washington Square has perhaps received more publicity than any other of Marquis's writings, but of all Don's drolleries I reserve my chief affection for Archy. The cockroach, endowed by some freak of transmigration with the shining soul of a vers libre poet, is a thoroughly Marquisian whimsy. I make no apology for quoting this prince of blattidae at some length. Many a commuter, opening his evening paper on the train, looks first of all to see if Archy is in the Dial. I love Archy because there seems to me something thoroughly racial and native and American about him. Can you imagine him, for instance, in Punch? His author has never told us which one of the vers libre poets it is whose soul has emigrated into Archy, but I feel sure it is not Ezra Pound or any of the expatriated eccentrics who lisp in odd numbers in the King's Road, Chelsea. Could it be Amy Lowell? Perhaps it should be explained that Archy's carelessness as to punctuation and capitals is not mere ostentation, but arises from the fact that he is not strong enough to work the shift key of his typewriter. Ingenious readers of the Sun Dial have suggested many devices to make this possible, but none that seem feasible to the roach himself.
The Argument: Archy, the vers libre cockroach, overhears a person with whiskers and dressed in the uniform of a butler in the British Navy, ask a German waiter if the pork pie is built. Ja, Ja, replies the waiter. Archy's suspicions are awakened, and he climbs into the pork pie through an air hole, and prepares his soul for parlous times. The naval butler takes the pie on board a launch, and Archy, watching through one of the portholes of the pastry, sees that they are picked up by a British cruiser "an inch or two outside the three-mile line." (This was in neutral days, remember.) Archy continues the narrative in lower case agate:
it is cuthbert with the pork pie the captain has been longing for said a voice and on every side rang shouts of the pie the pie the captains pie has come at last and a salute of nineteen guns was fired the pie was carried at once to the captains mess room where the captain a grizzled veteran sat with knife and fork in hand and serviette tucked under his chin i knew cried the captain that if there was a pork pie in america my faithful cuthbert find it for me the butler bowed and all the ships officers pulled up their chairs to the table with a rasping sound you may serve it honest cuthbert said the captain impatiently and the butler broke a hole in the top crust he touched a hidden mechanism for immediately something right under me began to go tick tock tick tock tick tock what is that noise captain said the larboard mate only the patent log clicking off the knots said the butler it needs oiling again but cuthbert said the captain why are you so nervous and what means that flush upon your face that flush your honor is chicken pox said cuthbert i am subject to sudden attacks of it unhand that pie cried the ships surgeon leaping to his feet arrest that butler he is a teuton spy that is not chicken pox at all it is german measles ha ha cried the false butler the ship is doomed there is a clock work bomb in this pie my name is not cuthbert it is friedrich and he leaped through a port into the sea his blonde side whiskers which were false falling off as he did so ha ha rang his mocking laughter from the ocean as he pulled shoreward with long strokes your ship is doomed my god said the senior boatswain what shall we do stop the clock ordered the captain but i had already done so i braced my head against the hour hand and my feet against the minute hand and stopped the mechanism the captain drew his sword and pried off all the top crust gentlemen he said yonder cockroach has saved the ship let us throw the pie overboard and steam rapidly away from it advised the starboard ensign not so not so cried the captain yon gallant cockroach must not perish so gratitude is a tradition of the british navy i would sooner perish with him than desert him all the time the strain was getting worse on me if my feet slipped the clock would start again and all would be lost beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and almost blinded me something must be done quick said the first assistant captain the insect is losing his rigidity wait said the surgeon and gave me a hypodermic of some powerful east indian drug which stiffened me like a cataleptic but i could still see and hear for days and days a council of war was held about me every afternoon and wireless reports sent to london save the cockroach even if you lose the ship wirelessed the admiralty england must stand by the smaller nations and every hour the surgeon gave me another hypodermic at the end of four weeks the cabin boy who had been thinking deeply all the time suggested that a plug of wood be inserted in my place which was done and i fell to the deck well nigh exhausted the next day i was set on shore in the captains gig and here i am.
archy
So far as I know, America has made just two entirely original contributions to the world's types of literary and dramatic art. These are the humorous colyum and the burlesque show. The saline and robust repartee of the burlicue is ancient enough in essence, but it is compounded into a new and uniquely American mode, joyously flavoured with Broadway garlic. The newspaper colyum, too, is a native product. Whether Ben Franklin or Eugene Field invented it, it bears the image and superscription of America.