THE above portrait is the first authentic likeness of the eccentric Rymbels. It portrays them rymbling, chez eux. It is, in particular, a speaking, not to say a shouting, likeness of Mr. Rymbel.
This interesting, demented, and extremely misunderstood verse family was first discovered and laid bare to the public by Mr. Herford in the August issue of THE CENTURY. As a result of his happy discovery, and because of his two remarkable rymbels in that issue, he has lately been appointed Rymbel Laureate of America. Since their successful début, public interest in the Rymbels has increased amazingly. In New York the fever is now at its height. Everybody’s rymbling it. Rude, ridiculous, and ribald rymbels are arriving by every post.
For those who are not already confirmed rymbelists it may be merciful to explain that, roughly speaking, a rymbel is any poem of two, four, or six stanzas, preferably of five lines each, in which the ultimate word in one verse must inevitably be a miscue for the subject-matter of the next. This miscue is due to three things: eccentricity, deafness, and dementia, all of them pronounced Rymbel family characteristics.
Whenever Mr. Rymbel embarks on the first verse, Mrs. Rymbel, because of her deafness and lightness of mind, seizes on the most unexpected meaning embodied in the last word of her husband’s verse, and proceeds properly to mangle it in the second, after which the children take up the tangled skein, and do a little mangling on their own.
In the masterly canvas at the head of this page, Mr. R. is seen inflated with an afflatus and embarking on his first verse. Mrs. R., with a tight hold on the baby, is feverishly awaiting her all important cue. Symbol, their beautiful daughter, is the seated lady shown at the right of Mr. R. The astute reader will already have guessed, because of the prevalence of flowering hay in her hair, that, mentally, Symbol is, to put it charitably, only sparking on one cylinder. Ramble, the eldest son, has, it will be seen, just rebuked Rondeau and Rhyme, the twins, who, after hearing parts of their father’s verse, have turned to their mother to mutter: “What’s the matter with his metre-motor, mater?”
Miss Carolyn Wells, who has for years been on the most intimate terms with the Rymbels, and who might almost be called a member of the family, has preserved, as souvenirs of a boy-and-girl affair with Master Ramble, two noteworthy examples of rymbelican verse. In the first of these the Rymbels have touchingly voiced their preferences for the nobler and loftier bards of our day. It is entitled:
A RYMBEL OF RHYMERS
DEAR Edith Thomas! Oft do I
Feel in my heart the call of her.
Swift to my book-shelf then I fly,