St Simeon Stylites
ST SIMEON STYLITES
The most sophisticated of the minor arts in America is that of the colyumist. It is, except for occasional lapses into the usual journalistic disrespect for privacy, a decent art, and if it never rises to the polish and wit of such an outstanding colyumist as La-Fourchardière of l’Œuvre, it never sinks to the pretentious pseudo-intelligent vulgarity of the English counterpart. The colyumist is, to begin with, a newspaper humorist, and there are times, when questions of art and letters are discussed, when one wishes he had remained one. Phillips, who is now with the Sun and Globe in New York, sticks to his game manfully; he tells nothing about himself, discusses no plays, and his colyum, which he illustrates with grotesque little drawings, is self-contained. You do not have to be in the secret to read him. His usual manner is to take a notable or obscure item of news and play with it, in the manner of Mark Twain. When Ambassador Harvey made a speech on the topic, “Have Women Souls”? Phillips reported the proceedings and the aftermath:
“Latest bulletins from Europe and Asia on the conduct of other American diplomats follow:
“Warren G. Harding,
President, United States:
Excellency:—
American ambassador here has brought about grave crisis by speech, “Are Bananas a Fruit or a Flower?” and “Can Fresh Roasted Peanuts Think?” Understand he has stated publicly his opinion that John McCormack is greater singer than Caruso. People are near uprising. Will you recall him or shall we give him the bum’s rush?
KING OF ITALY.
and so on.
It is horseplay; but when he is in form it achieves a wild carelessness and gaiety which the intellectual colyumist entirely forswears. He has for compeer Arthur “Bugs” Baer, by all odds the funniest of the colyumists and a too-much-neglected creator of American humour. There is, also, a considerable number of colyumists of the Phillips type in other cities. I make no apology for not knowing them, for a colyum correctly conceived is written for the readers of its paper. It ought to be partly private, and wholly provincial. Even Mencken when he ran the colyum of the Baltimore Sun, and gathered much material for The American Language, and told of each new consignment of German beer after the blockade began in 1915, even he was not all things to all men.