how be thine graminivorous tramcollicken now?

Nature-Themed Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019

Edwin Muir, An Autobiography. New York: William Sloane, 1954—

My cousin Sutherland was the most original character in the [his parents’] house. I remember him as a little man in a blue jersey and trousers with a dashing fall. His body swung forward from his hips, as if he were always on the point of offering something with his hands. His head was like a battering-ram, and dusty brown hair like an animal’s fell stood stiffly up from it. His sparkling grey eyes were nautical, his bulbous nose ecclesiastical, his bushy brown moustache military. Before he made a joke he would pass the back of his hand under his moustache with a casual succulent sweep which left his arm negligently hanging in the air, as if he had forgotten it for the moment but would presently remember it again. All his movements melted into each other with the continuity of a tree. His skin was reptilian; his head sloped, like a tortoise’s, into his neck, his shoulders into his trunk. He was very strong and crafty, and in wrestling could bring down men much younger and heavier than himself His ordinary stance then was a lazy crouch; he would roll waggishly on his feet, as if he were keeping his balance in a slight swell; he was very light-footed. His appearance never changed while I knew him; he looked thirty-five all the time.…

Whenever Sutherland got drunk he began to invent language. I can’t remember now many of his feats in this way, but he liked words with a dashing Spanish sound, like ‘yickahooka’ and ‘navahonta.’ He was so pleased with the word ‘tramcollicken,’ which he invented himself, that he gave it a specific meaning which I had better not mention; but the word became so popular that it spread all over Wyre. From somewhere or other he had picked up ‘graminivorous,’ which struck him by its comic sound, and for a long time his usual greeting was, “Weel, boy, how’s thee graminivorous tramcollicken?” Macedonia, Arabia, Valparaiso, and Balaclava became parts of his ordinary vocabulary, giving him a sense of style and grandeur.

salutations / tipping the hat mere semantics

In John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics (New York: Gotham Books, 2011), there is an account of a famous French gourmand named Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837). According to Pollack—

As a young man, Grimod was known around Paris for wearing a mechanical wig that would tip politely, and apparently automatically, as ladies passed.

In reading that, I was reminded of a US patent (shown above), No. 556,248, titled Saluting Device, that was filed in 1896 by someone named J.C. Boyle. It seems to be more or less comparable to Grimod’s “saluting wig,” but in this case of course it’s a tip of the hat.

Here is a newspaper account of  Boyle's invention from The Democrat (Scotland Neck NC) on April 9, 1896, p. 1—

A patent has been granted J.C. Boyle of Spokane WA, for a "saluting device." It is a machine worn in the top of the hat. All you have to do is to slightly incline the head, and as the head starts forward the machine lefts the hat a little, holds it just long enough and in a graceful curve lets it back on your head.

Later that year, the following note was published in the Spokane Chronicle on September 30, p. 4—

J.C. Boyle, a member of the Drumheller Packing Company, but whose chief claim to notoriety rests in the fact that he invented the patent hat lift that removes the old labor of lifting the hat by hand, arrived home last evening after a prolonged visit to Kansas City and other portions of the east, where he has been for his health.

animals include moose, elks, knights of pythias

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Death Announced. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Groucho Marx [as Captain Jeffrey Spaulding in Animal Crackers (1930)]—

Well, sir, we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February second. After fifteen days on the water and six on the boat, we finally arrived on the shores of Africa. The first morning saw us up at six, breakfasted and back in bed at seven. This was our routine for the first three months. We finally got so we were in bed at six-thirty. The principal animals inhabiting the African jungle are moose, elks and Knights of Pythias. Of course, you know what a moose is. That's big game. The first day, I shot two bucks. That was the biggest game we had...The elks, on the other hand, live up in the hills, and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to see them come to the water hole. What they’re looking for is an elkahole. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks, but they were embedded in so firmly that we couldn’t budge them. Of course, in Alabama, the Tuskaloosa. But that's entirely errelephant to what I was talking about. We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed; but we’re going back in a couple of weeks.

Jonathan Miller on humor as classification errors

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Border Crossing. Digital montage, © 2021.

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Excerpts from Jonathan Miller and Eric Korn, Under-Twenty Parade, a BBC radio panel, 1953—

Er, er, that was “Lift Up Your Socks”…Next week, “A Short Gap” recorded anonymously…the South of England is going to move in a westerly direction…Now here is a police message, published Methuen at twenty-one shillings. There was an accident last night on the Great North Circular Road, when an elderly chrysanthemum was knocked down by a steamroller and received injuries from which the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire has since died…The police are anxious to interview a man with long blue hair—they have never seen a man with long blue hair.

•••

Kate Bassett [in reference to the above radio script] In Two Minds: A biography of Jonathan Miller. London: Oberon Books, 2012, p. 55—

What is remarkable, more immediately, is this extract’s sheer craziness. It is garbled, elided and dreamlike, with slivers of the everyday made strange by being miscategorized, everything playfully grafted into the wrong slots. Miller’s own theory of comedy, expounded in later life, would home in on precisely that: laughter aroused by errors of classification.

Eccentricity | When being blunt doth not sit well

digital montage © Roy R. Behrens 2020

Wilfred Scawen Blunt, diary entry dated June 17, 1893—

The party was to meet at the pier of the House of Commons and go up the river in two steamers. As we did not know precisely where the pier was we stopped outside the House of Lords [aka House of Peers] to ask a policeman.

Dialogue:

I: “Can you tell me where I shall find the pier of the House of Commons?”

Policeman: “No, sir, indeed, we have plenty of peers in the House of Lords, but I have never yet heard of a peer in the House of Commons.”

•••

Osbert Sitwell (brother of Edith Sitwell and Sacheverell Sitwell) whose father was Sir George Sitwell (1860-1943) (British writer, politician, and notorious eccentric), in The Scarlet Tree (Book IV of his Osbert's autobiography)—

When younger he [his father] had invented many other things; at Eton, for example, a musical toothbrush while played Annie Laurie as you brushed your teeth and a small revolver for killing wasps.

According to a Wikipedia biography of Sir George Sitwell—

He banned electricity in his household well into the 1940s and made his guests use candles. He deliberately mislabelled his self-medication to stop anyone else using it. Sitwell lived on an exclusive diet of roasted chicken.

William Blake Poster (2011) Roy R. Behrens

wassily wassily I say unto you—please be seated

Above The latest in a sequence of historic views of various individuals posed in Marcel Breuer's celebrated "Wassily chair," Bauhaus-era. © Roy R. Behrens.

•••

Anon (children's nonsense verse)—

Come smoke a coca-cola
Drink catsup cigarettes
See Lillian Brussels wrestle
With a box of castanets
Pork and beans will meet tonight
And have a finished fight
Chauncey de Pew will lecture
on Sopolio tonight 
Bay rum is good for horses
It is best in town
Castoria cures the measles
If you pay five dollars down
Teeth extracted without pain
At the cost of half a dime
Overcoats are selling now
A little out of time
Do me a favor—drop dead.

Is it true: Oregon, Arizona, and Canada Named

vaudeville

Flora Spiegelberg, "Reminiscenses of a Jewish Bride of the Santa Fe Trail" in Sharon Niederman, ed., A Quilt of Words: Women's Diaries, Letters and Original Accounts of Life in the Southwest, 1860-1960. Boulder CO: Johnson Books, 1988, pp. 27-28—

During the long expeditions of the Conquistadors, Coronado went from Mexico to Colorado in search of gold and silver treasures. He was greatly surprised to find among the peaceably inclined Indians a well-regulated community life in their pueblos or villages. While the Conquistador was transversing what is now Oregon and Arizona, he met several tribes of Indians with very large ears, so he called them "orejones," or "Big Ears." Another tribe that had very long noses, he called "Nazizones," or "Big Noses." We Americans have translated these Spanish names to "Arizona" and "Oregon." 

Another similar incident: the first explorers of what is the province of Canada today, were Spaniards, as usual, in search of gold and silver, and not finding it. As they marched away, they said, "Aqui Nada," meaning, "There is nothing." Later on, when the French explorers came and asked the Indians the name of their country, they replied what they had heard the departing Spanish say, "Aqui Nada," and thus the French changed it to, "Canada."

Henry Miller | As blind drunk as Mister Magoo

Henry Miller, as photographed by Carl Van Vechten (1940)

Dan Davin, Closing Times. London: Oxford University Press, 19175, p. 131—

[Welsh poet Dylan Thomas] told me a burlesque story of meeting [American novelist] Henry Miller in London. After a prolonged session in the pubs they went to a little dairy in Rathbone Place which served sandwiches and which I well remember as being a very simple, clean, unpretentious place. But Miller was drunk and also extremely short-sighted. He was convinced that Dylan had taken him to a brothel and that the plain uniforms and innocent bearing of the waitresses were the last word in lubricious sophistication. Dylan had great difficulty in averting calamity and never succeeded at all in convincing Miller that he was mistaken. We speculated on how many similar misunderstandings might underlie the exploits so boringly recounted in [Miller’s] Tropic of Capricorn and Dylan went on to improvise a new work of Miller’s of which the dairy was the transmuted center and in which Miller played a grotesquely comical role, rather like Mr. Magoo.

Also, see an earlier post about Anthony Burgess’ comparison of himself to Mr. Magoo. I am also reminded of Buckminster Fuller’s account of his impaired vision as a child—

I was born cross-eyed. Not until I was four years old was it discovered that this was caused by my being abnormally farsighted. My vision was thereafter fully corrected with lenses. Until four I could see only large patterns, houses, trees, outlines of people with blurred coloring. While I saw two dark areas on human faces, I did not see a human eye or a teardrop or a human hair until I was four. Despite my new ability to apprehend details, my childhood's spontaneous dependence only upon big pattern clues has persisted.…

Audubon's Birds of America | C. Strelow-Varney

Audubon poster © Cheyenne Strelow-Varney (2017)

Above and below Components from John James Audubon's magnificent Birds of America are reimagined in these commemorative posters by Cheyenne Strelow-Varney, a graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

•••

Edmund Clerihew Bentley [inventor of the clerihew], Biography for Beginners. London" T.W. Laurie, 1905—

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Audubon poster © Cheyenne Strelow-Varney (2017)

Edmund Clerihew Bentley in More Biography. London: Methuen, 1929—

George the Third
Ought never to have occurred
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.

Audubon poster © Cheyenne Strelow-Varney (2017)

Audubon's Birds of America | Hanna Seggerman

Audubon Poster © Hanna Seggerman 2017

Above and below Components from John James Audubon's magnificent Birds of America are reimagined in these commemorative posters by Hanna Seggerman, a graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

•••

Samuel Foote [nonsense text devised to test the claim of actor Charles Macklin that he could memorize anything] quoted in Maria Edgeworth, Harry and Lucy Concluded. New York: Harper and Borthers, 1842, p. 315—

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf; to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. What! no soap? So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyalies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gun powder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Audubon Poster © Hanna Seggerman 2017

 Melissa Meyer, quoted in Heresies (Winter 1977-78), Vol 1 No 4—

Published information about the origins of collage is misleading. Picasso and Braque are credited with inventing it. Many artists made collage before they did, Picasso's father for one and Sonia Delaunay for another.

Audubon Poster © Hanna Seggerman 2017

 Lawrence Perlman (American business executive)—

When you ask children what they want to be when they grow up, they don't say, "I want a boring job where the only thing I look forward to is Friday."