Guy Wetmore Carryl

Guy Wetmore Carryl, son of Charles Edward Carryl (see page 34), was born in New York City, March 4, 1873. He graduated from Columbia University in 1895, was editor of Munsey’s Magazine, 1895–6, and, during the time he lived abroad (from 1897 to 1902), was the foreign representative of various American publications.

As a writer of prose he was received with no little acclaim; his stories The Transgression of Andrew Vane (1902) and Zut and Other Parisians (1903) held the attention of a restless reading public. But it was as a writer of light verse that Carryl was preëminent. Inheriting a remarkable technical gift from his father, young Carryl soon surpassed him as well as all other rivals in the field of brilliantly rhymed, brilliantly turned burlesques. Although he wrote several serious poems (the best of which have been collected in the posthumously published The Garden of Years, 1904), Carryl’s most characteristic work is to be found in his perversions of the parables of Æsop, 143Fables for the Frivolous (1898), the topsy-turvy interpretations of old nursery rhymes, Mother Goose for Grownups (1900) and the fantastic variations on the fairy tales in Grimm Tales Made Gay (1903)—all of them with a surprising (and punning) Moral attached.

This extraordinary versifier died, before reaching the height of his power, at the age of thirty-one, in the summer of 1904.

HOW JACK FOUND THAT BEANS MAY GO BACK ON A CHAP

Without the slightest basis

For hypochondriasis

A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung,

And with expression cynical

For half the day a clinical

Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.

Whene’er she read the papers

She suffered from the vapors,

At every tale of malady or accident she’d groan;

In every new and smart disease,

From housemaid’s knee to heart disease,

She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic

To try each novel tonic,

Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;

And from a homeopathist

Would change to an hydropathist,

And back again, with stupefying calm!

144She was nervous, cataleptic,

And anemic, and dyspeptic:

Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears.

She dwelt with force fanatical

Upon a twinge rheumatical,

And said she had a buzzing in her ears!

Now all of this bemoaning

And this grumbling and this groaning

The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored.

His heart completely hardening,

He gave his time to gardening,

For raising beans was something he adored.

Each hour in accents morbid

This limp maternal bore bid

Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys.

She never granted Jack a day

Without some long “Alackaday!”

Accompanied by rolling of the eyes.

But Jack, no panic showing,

Just watched his beanstalk growing,

And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole.

At all her words funereal

He smiled a smile ethereal,

Or sighed an absent-minded “Bless my soul!”

That hollow-hearted creature

Would never change a feature:

No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk.

145She never fussed or flurried him,

The only thing that worried him

Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk!

But then he wabbled loosely

His head, and wept profusely,

And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears,

Exclaimed: “It hasn’t got any!”

He found this blow to botany

Was sadder than were all his mother’s fears.

The Moral is that gardeners pine

Whene’er no pods adorn the vine.

Of all sad words experience gleans

The saddest are: “It might have beans.”

(I did not make this up myself:

’Twas in a book upon my shelf.

It’s witty, but I don’t deny

It’s rather Whittier than I!)

THE SYCOPHANTIC FOX AND THE GULLIBLE RAVEN

A raven sat upon a tree,

And not a word he spoke, for

His beak contained a piece of Brie,

Or, maybe, it was Roquefort.

We’ll make it any kind you please—

At all events it was a cheese.

146Beneath the tree’s umbrageous limb

A hungry fox sat smiling;

He saw the raven watching him,

And spoke in words beguiling:

“J’admire,” said he, “ton beau plumage,”

(The which was simply persiflage.)

Two things there are, no doubt you know,

To which a fox is used:

A rooster that is bound to crow,

A crow that’s bound to roost;

And whichsoever he espies

He tells the most unblushing lies.

“Sweet fowl,” he said, “I understand

You’re more than merely natty,

I hear you sing to beat the band

And Adelina Patti.

Pray render with your liquid tongue

A bit from ‘Götterdämmerung.’”

This subtle speech was aimed to please

The crow, and it succeeded;

He thought no bird in all the trees

Could sing as well as he did.

In flattery completely doused,

He gave the “Jewel Song” from “Faust.”

147But gravitation’s law, of course,

As Isaac Newton showed it,

Exerted on the cheese its force,

And elsewhere soon bestowed it.

In fact, there is no need to tell

What happened when to earth it fell.

I blush to add that when the bird

Took in the situation

He said one brief, emphatic word,

Unfit for publication.

The fox was greatly startled, but

He only sighed and answered “Tut.”

THE MORAL is: A fox is bound

To be a shameless sinner.

And also: When the cheese comes round

You know it’s after dinner.

But (what is only known to few)

The fox is after dinner, too.

HOW A CAT WAS ANNOYED AND A POET WAS BOOTED

A poet had a cat.

There is nothing odd in that—

(I might make a little pun about the Mews!)

But what is really more

Remarkable, she wore

A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.

148And I doubt me greatly whether

E’er you heard the like of that:

Pointed shoes of patent-leather

On a cat!

His time he used to pass

Writing sonnets, on the grass—

(I might say something good on pen and sward!)

While the cat sat near at hand,

Trying hard to understand

The poems he occasionally roared.

(I myself possess a feline,

But when poetry I roar

He is sure to make a bee-line

For the door.)

The poet, cent by cent,

All his patrimony spent—

(I might tell how he went from verse to worse!)

Till the cat was sure she could,

By advising, do him good.

So addressed him in a manner that was terse:

“We are bound toward the scuppers,

And the time has come to act,

Or we’ll both be on our uppers

For a fact!”

On her boot she fixed her eye,

But the boot made no reply—

(I might say: “Couldn’t speak to save its sole!”)

149And the foolish bard, instead

Of responding, only read

A verse that wasn’t bad upon the whole.

And it pleased the cat so greatly,

Though she knew not what it meant,

That I’ll quote approximately

How it went:—

“If I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree”—

(I might put in: “I think I’d just as leaf!”)

“Let them smile, as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough”—

Well, he’d plagiarized it bodily, in brief!

But that cat of simple breeding

Couldn’t read the lines between,

So she took it to a leading

Magazine.

She was jarred and very sore

When they showed her to the door.

(I might hit off the door that was a jar!)

To the spot she swift returned

Where the poet sighed and yearned,

And she told him that he’d gone a little far.

“Your performance with this rhyme has

Made me absolutely sick,”

She remarked. “I think the time has

Come to kick!”

150I could fill up half the page

With descriptions of her rage—

(I might say that she went a bit too fur)!

When he smiled and murmured: “Shoo!”

“There is one thing I can do!”

She answered with a wrathful kind of purr.

“You may shoo me, an’ it suit you,

But I feel my conscience bid

Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!”

(Which she did.)

The Moral of the plot

(Though I say it, as should not!)

Is: An editor is difficult to suit.

But again there’re other times

When the man who fashions rhymes

Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot!