“Announcing a New Vitamin” (E16)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, September 12, 1931
First reprinted in: No Poems; Or, Around the World Backwards and Sideways
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:

Writing in the persona of an introspective nutritional ballyhoo man, RB details the trials and deliberations of researchers who isolate a compound with very little get-up-and-go-to-market potential. Stumbling upon their discovery while picking through a mess of mackerel bones, Dr. Arthur W. Meexus and the author congratulate each other on shoring up the inexcusable gap between Vitamins E and G (later demoted to second-class status as Vitamin B2). The pair’s mirth dissipates when they realize that all of the really good dietary claims have been staked by their alphabetical antecedents. What’s left for Vitamin F?

Groping about for some slogan-ready boon in their breakthrough, RB and Meexus try a few biological jingles on for size. Saliva anyone? How about a little top-up for your tear ducts? Perhaps a dash of grotesque anthropology might make the masses F-conscious? No scientist worth their salt (or milk, or radishes, or cod liver oil) is going to yoke their lab’s prestige to such a lemon (lemon? that’s Vitamin C – a good vitamin!) The thing begins to seem a little desperate, and our author wisely considers tossing Vitamin F back on the bone heap.

Favourite Moment:
“We have announced [Vitamin F’s] discovery and have given to the world sufficient data to show that it is an item of diet which undoubtedly serves a purpose. But what purpose? We are working on that now, and ought to have something very interesting to report in a short time. If we aren’t able to, we shall have to call vitamin F in, and begin all over again.”

“All About the Silesian Problem” (E12)

Originally Published: Syndicated Piece, News Publishing Co. (spotted in the Oakland Tribune and The Charlotte News, among other outlets), August 14, 1921
First Reprinted: Love Conquers All
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Comments:
Nearly 20 years before Silesia became a flashpoint in Hitler’s monstrous Anschluss aggressions, Benchley subjects East-Central Europe’s ruling classes to a whimsically withering historical inquiry. Mocking the practice of dignifying dizzyingly stupid aristocratic and irredentist spats with naming conventions derived from mathematics, RB proposes a novel answer to the “Silesian Question.”

“No.”

Describing a series of political production numbers scarcely less absurd than the Habsburg Vanities and the Polish Partition Follies of 1772, 1793, and 1795, RB takes the reader on a mellifluously mad journey into the heart of anti-democratic darkness. I refer here, of course, to the epochal Summoning of the Storkrath, where the political will of the Duchy’s assembled nobles, welterweights and licensed pilots coalesced around a policy of strict indifference (at best) to the actual needs of everyone else in Silesia.

Favourite Moment:
“And he was the kind of man who would stop at nothing when it pleased him to augment his duchy.”

Reprint Notes:

Topical reference to France and England “splitting” over the Silesian problem has been removed from the version in Love Conquers All. Presumably they got over it.
Title in The Charlotte News: “Silesian Problem Clear”
Title in the Oakland Tribune: “Silesia Row is Explained By Benchley”

“After-Bedtime Stories: How Lillian Mosquito Projects Her Voice” (E7)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, July 29, 1920
First reprinted in: Love Conquers All
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Commentary:
Here, the nursery’s caustic conch passes from humanity’s best friend (E6) to one of its most implacable foes, in the anthropomorphized person of Lillian Mosquito. Nothing terribly surprising in RB’s characterization of the despised insect as motivated more by bloody-mindedness than by blood-lust. Lillian is a vampiric ventriloquist, baiting her inept victims to add insulting self-injury to their itches. More interestingly, perhaps, the piece expands upon the previous installment’s note of malaise under Mother Nature’s malevolent tutelage. A shame we never got to learn “how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in gentlemen’s gardens…”

Favourite moment:
“But he was prevented from leaving by kindly Old Mother Nature, who stepped on him with her kindly old heel…”

Reprint Note:

Reprinted under the title “Animal Stories: Part II – Lillian Mosquito”

“After-Bedtime Stories: How Georgie Dog Gets the Rubbers on the Guest Room Bed” (E6)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, July 15, 1920
First reprinted in: Love Conquers All
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Commentary:
Reprinted in Love Conquers All as part of a diptych with E7 (“How Lillian Mosquito Projects Her Voice”), we embark on a little field trip to Old Mother Nature’s nursery, where anthropomorphic auditors gather each day for a series of seminars in mischief making. Georgie Dog relates with relish his best practices for doing one’s worst with sodden footwear. A perverse peek at the author’s proto-sitcom universe from the perspective of the kind of domestic chaos agent so apt to addle the Benchleyan Little Man’s intimations of harmony.

Favourite moment:
“And sure enough, in came Georgie Dog, wagging his entire torso in a paroxysm of camaraderie, even though everyone knew that he had no use for Waldo Lizard.”

Reprint Notes:

Title changed to “Animal Stories: Part I – Georgie Dog”
Cartoon of Georgie not reprinted in Love Conquers All – not by Gluyas Williams

“Advice To Investors” (E5)

Originally printed: DAC News (unknown date – presumably 1924/1925)
First reprinted in: Pluck and Luck
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Commentary:
Absolutely inspired nonsense from Benchley, drawing nitrous oxide suffused breath from the basic babblings of the business page. Diligent research has now (and I mean just now!) disclosed that the piece first appeared (under a different title) in an as-yet-unknown issue of that Executive’s Delight, the Detroit Athletic Club News, which just makes me love it all the more. Who said America’s Capitalist Leaders don’t have a sense of humour about their role in the nation’s affairs? We can be pretty sure of our rough date for the article, at least, thanks to its speculative engagement with the true meaning of the 1924 Presidential Election (it had none). Boom and bust a gut economics at its finest!

Favourite moment:
“Europe’s plight has not been without its influence either. Europe’s plight is never without its significance. No matter what you are figuring on doing, you must count on Europe’s plight to furnish at least fifty percent of the significance and ten percent of the gross.”

Reprint Note:

Originally appeared in the DAC News under the title “Our Monthly Market Letter”
Gordon E. Ernst, Jr.’s Annotated Bibliography lists the essay under the reprinted title, as the original could not be identified using the resources available in 1995

“Advice To Gangsters” (E4)

Originally printed: Unknown (presumably the roaring twenties)
First reprinted in: Chips Off the Old Benchley
Original Byline: Unknown

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Commentary:
A piece of unknown provenance selected by Gertrude Benchley for inclusion in the posthumously issued Chips Off the Old Benchley (1949). With apparently topical references to bootlegging and tommy guns, it must have been composed during Prohibition – but when? And for what brave periodical? If Gordon E. Ernst, Jr. doesn’t know, none of us dilettantes are likely to prise the secret from the arthritic jaws of lost time. Our author boldly enjoins the nation’s criminals to knock off knocking each other off and begin working together toward some worthwhile common goal – like improving the quality of liquor on offer. RB deplores the wasted materiel and man hours invested in all of these madcap massacres, when any illicit imbiber knows there is real work to be done on the production end of the business. Inspired no doubt by an abject cowardice RB is only too eager to own up to, the piece abandons its trenchant critique somewhere around page 3 in favour of a few homiletic lessons in limited boy gang warfare learned on the snowball strewn streets of turn-of-the-century Worcester, Mass.

Favourite moment:
“A man can’t buy a good glass of beer for his little boy today without having the fear that the child will be going around the house all the next day moaning and holding onto its head and snapping at its parents.”

“Abandon Ship!” (E2)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, September 20, 1930
Reprinted: No Poems; Or, Around the World Backwards and Sideways
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Commentary:
Patented Benchleyan deflation of forced fun on a sojourn – this time via the vexing vessels that ply the lakes, coasts, and inland waterways of the good ol’ USA. The author presents a detailed taxonomy of taxing travel missteps off dry land. Regardless of the port of call, the duration of the trip, or the destination, all such short-term voyages are dismissed as sun-baked, soot-seared, wind-blasted, tongue sandwich-lashed and faulty deck chair-wracked forays into futility. Children, of course, make their accustomed contribution to the miasma of dissatisfaction which descends upon all such waterborne wastes of time. As always, the lesson is clear. stay home (or in some cozy booth in a speakeasy).

Favourite moment:
“The voyageurs then return to their seats and bake until the thing sails. Thus, before the trip has even begun, the let-down has set in.”

“A Bas the Military Censor: The Ride of Paul Revere — As It Would Be Featured in Washington Today.” (E1)

Originally printed: Vanity Fair, May 1918
Reprinted: Chips Off the Old Benchley
Original Byline: Brighton Perry

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Commentary:
Written under the pseudonymous Brighton Perry byline, Benchley winces waggishly in the gloved grip of Great Wartime public discourse. The piece opens with a knowing nod toward the three thousand war correspondents whose most insightful writing on the conflict will remain under intellectual quarantine until accessed by future scholars looking to find out what the hell actually happened. Benchley gets in a jab at topical super patriot James M. Beck and teasingly begs Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson not to ban Vanity Fair from the mails just for daring to have a little fun with the concept of soft news during hard times.

The remainder of the essay presents an alternate history of the Revolutionary War in which Paul Revere’s wild midnight ride is replaced by a Sunday section puff piece on picturesque stops for Redcoats on a walking tour of New England and George Washington’s trip across the Delaware is stage managed by military police who function like (21st century) movie location security guards.

Research note:
Benchley worked as a military aircraft information censor for the U.S. Government in early 1918, so he knew whereof he joked.

Favourite moment:
“…the great (numerically speaking) American public..”

Reprint Notes:

Major excisions from topical preamble on World War One Censorship
Topical reference to jingoistic blowhard James M. Beck removed
Teasing request not to be banned by the Postmaster General removed
Favourite moment (above) was a casualty of the excision process and does not appear in Chips Off the Old Benchley – too anti-patriotic for the HUAC era?