“A Breath from the Pines” (E56)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, October 6, 1921
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley (column header: “The Latest Books”)

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Comments:

Benchley’s first impulse as a critic was never to reach for the knife (unless his Guy Fawkes persona had command of the pen), but sometimes only a knife will do. Your humble chronicler has never read Gene Stratton-Porter, but this piece makes an excellent argument against the advisability of taking the time to experience Her Father’s Daughter, at any rate. Celebrated in her day as a feminist and an ecological activist, Stratton-Porter appears to have embraced (in this late-career novel, at least) one of early-20^th century Progressivism’s least savoury side-issues: white supremacist eugenics.

Benchley identifies the book’s protagonist – a homespun huckster for birth rates and “efficacy” – as a proto-Fascist. The term itself wasn’t available to him just yet, as Mussolini’s party was still a year away from power in 1921, so Benchley brings its American analogue into the discussion, nominating this vile character for a fictional leadership position in the distressingly resurgent Ku Klux Klan. What else can you do with a dismal dynamo named “Linda Strong”? As amusing as this takedown is, Benchley’s liberal disgust with all forms of jingoism and chauvinism emerges palpably from the piece, lending a crusading edge to the hilarity rarely seen outside the precincts of the Wayward Press.

Favourite Moment:
Linda Strong is the kind of girl who is ‘just a bully good pal to a fellow’. She is constantly going out on ‘hikes.’ She wears low-heel shoes and common-sense clothes and delivers little three-minute talks on their efficacy during occasional lapses in her ardor for ‘bucking up’ her boy-friends to make them do better in school. And she believes that every woman ought to have at least six children, training them to grow up into fine, strong, virile women and men, fit to fight the Japanese some day.

“Bobby Goes A-Bicycling” (E50)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, December 23, 1926
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: Robert Benchley

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Comments:

A rather lackluster entry in the Benchley family phantasmagoria. Throughout his career, RB showed a decided fondness for the depiction of barbed interactions between grade schoolers and their guardians. This could sometimes generate real hilarity (see “Another Uncle Edith Christmas Yarn” – E18); but, in this case, we get an unfunny filial fizzle. Purportedly written by young Bobby Benchley Jr. (aged 7 in 1926), the piece announces itself as the chronicle of Benchley père et fils’ efforts to join in the then-current race to the North Pole, with the dubious help of some kibitzing crony called Lieutenant Commander Connelly. From the start, however, the author is more interested in establishing his portrait of Young Mister Benchley as a precocious practitioner of dire dad jokes at his own pop’s expense.

As you might expect from such a trio (or however many people there are in this two-wheeled caravan), they don’t get very far, stalling out somewhere near White Plains, New York. Along the way, the son-persona jabs mercilessly at the patriarch’s pet peeves, triggers, and insecurities, without occasioning much mirth. Benchley deprecating himself is generally a delight – but Benchley delegating that task to a prepubescent print golem of his own flesh and blood forces the author’s sense of guilt over his increasingly absentee parenting a little too palpably onto the page.

Favourite Moment:
Four days out from Scarsdale, the expedition is now somewhere around North White Plains, N.Y. If things go on at this rate, we’ll need a new map before long.

“The Birth of a College Comic Paper” (E47)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, June 2, 1927
First reprinted in: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or David Copperfield
Unable to Access Original Text at This Time – Benchley Data will analyze any excisions/amendments when Life 1927 enters the Public Domain (in 2023)
Original Byline: Not Available

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Comments:
An extremely off the cuff entry in the Benchley canon – but one with its heart on its sleeve. Here, the author takes us behind the scenes at The Razorblade, a fictional entrant in the college humour sweepstakes of the 1920s, where Messrs. Youling, Beamish, Roffen, and Phielo take their bi-weekly half-assed stab at putting together a passable periodical. It is a truism that no one wants to see how the sausage gets made, but in The Razorblade’s case, it seems pretty clear that encountering this sausage at any stage of its life cycle would be a mistake.

Benchley’s disdain for puerile sex jokes, which he considered a substitute for actual humour, comes through pretty clearly in this piece, as does his irritation with an epidemic of ersatz nonsense churned out by Boston Bro-mins whose approach to the mirthful metier lacks any tinge of cosmic absurdity. These charmless chums, whose every “anarchic” act or statement comes embalmed in quotation marks, seem to conceive of comedy as a fraternity hazing ritual perpetrated upon the public. Rah rah rah!

Favourite Moment:
Eighteen poems, five of them to Milady’s ankle, and twenty-nine necking jokes. If we use them all, we are still five whole pages short.

“The Benchley-Whittier Correspondence” (E41)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, May 11, 1922
First reprinted in: Love Conquers All
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Comments:
Inspired by then-current efforts among literary historians to establish the trajectory of a letter written by Mary Shelley to Byron and then possibly forwarded onto a third person who doesn’t ever appear to have received it, Benchley moves to set the record straight regarding his own epistolary interactions with New England poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Casting his mind back to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1890, RCB recalls a lecture hall cloakroom mishap which resulted in a fateful hat switch.

Disliking Whittier’s hat intensely, and also craving an audience with the legendary abolitionist, the younger man’s (Benchley was 1) first missive strikes a tender balance between Puritan plain speaking and Transcendental enthusiasm. With no letters coming back the other way, Benchley’s tone becomes increasingly irritable as he laments Whittier’s negligence. He abandons all talk of introducing the Quaker versifier to influential musical comedy people and finally drops the matter of exchanging hats, after committing a mild curse to the mails in a letter dated three months prior to the inciting incident at the Save-Our-Songbirds meeting. A very strange year, that 1890.

Favourite Moment:
But we can discuss all this at our meeting, which I hope will be soon, as your hat looks like hell on me.

Reprint Notes:

Reprinted in its entirety with no alterations

“Bayeux Christmas Presents Early” (E37)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, December 1, 1927
First reprinted in: Chips Off the Old Benchley
Unable to Access Original Text at This Time – Benchley Data will analyze any excisions/amendments when Life 1927 enters the Public Domain (in 2023)
Original Byline: Not Available

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Comments:
True to its title – rooted in the Vicious Circle’s patented portmanteau patois – this festive bauble careens from concept to concept through a series of dissociative leaps. Given the announced subject matter, experienced Benchley readers would almost certainly have been expecting to encounter a little good-natured tugging at the tired threads of medieval mise en tapis, along with some anachronistic agonizing over the problem of what to buy the liege lord who has everything (including a rainy new realm). But the mysterious transatlantic transposition of a strip of this Old World wonder to the New Jersey suburbs (if Bayeux, NJ is, in fact, Bayonne) comes out of nowhere, like those Golden Plates unearthed by Joseph Smith in upstate New York. Then Benchley hefts that old oaken bucket (see passage quoted below) and we get a genuine splash of dementia praecox in our collective faces.

The second half of the piece proceeds along more conventional lines, with the author taking pot shots (or is that pot sherds?) at the astigmatic aesthetics of Pre-Renaissance Europe; but they’re fun pot shots, and well-deserved, in the bargain.

Favourite Moment:
’Going home for Christmas?’ must have been the question on all lips, framed in probably the worst Norman-English ever heard. ‘Noël’ they probably called it. The old oaken bucket that hung in Noël – to put it badly.

“Bad News for Synura” (E34)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, February 9, 1922
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: R.C. Benchley

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Comments:
Here R.C. Benchley takes up the cause of the single celled synura, whose only transgression has been to impart a slight aftertaste of cucumber to the city’s water supply. Objecting to numerous public pronouncements by county officials concerning their efforts to isolate the little fellows in the Kensico reservoir (with a view toward eradicating them entirely), Benchley asks his readers to consider the underdog’s point of view. Okay, sure, some people think their oil savors more of strychnine, and maybe that’s a point against them, but the important thing is, they are not strychnine! And the synura have rights, too. To elicit sympathy from his bourgeois audience, RCB dwells primarily on those upwardly mobile algae who’ve spent long hours at night school prepping to catch a current down into the metropolis, where dreams come true.

To call this piece “slight” would be to ascribe far too much importance to it, but the author shows admirable commitment to his one-joke premise and carries it through to a final appeal for a filibuster of these filtration machinations.

Favourite Moment:
“And then came the official edict. The reservoir gates are to be closed. The open road to New York is to be barred. And in the rural fastnesses of Kensico there is at least one synura who swims idly about, with his life’s ambition thwarted.”

“Ask That Man” (E26)

Originally printed: Life Magazine, May 17, 1923
First reprinted in: Pluck and Luck
Original Byline: Robert C. Benchley

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Comments:
Prime sitcom Benchley, with the author interrogating not “that man” at the train station or driving the bus, but rather “that man” (along with “that woman”) defined by middle class gender norms. Writing in the soon-to-be-familiar persona of the wily but inept TV dad, RCB takes us on a candidly fearful and self-loathing tour of that impossible subject position (by way of Central America). The heterosexual union Benchley describes is a nerve-wracking thing powered by constant friction between “masculine competence” (or the illusion of it) and “feminine skepticism” (a necessary corollary of the illusion). Taking us into his confidence about his own lack of self-confidence, he admits that he cannot abide being urged to consult an outside authority for instructions, directions, or any other guidance. It is not the asking that threatens his “manhood”. This guy has very little idea where he is going, and he doesn’t mind if we know it. What gets him down is the insinuation, coming from inside the connubial cortex, that he must go to a rival male for answers.

Our vexed speaker goes to great and costly lengths to preserve his patriarchal prerogative in this tale. Fittingly, the trick isn’t done by performing any real or dissembled feats of omniscience. The ideal, eternally frustrated, quality of maleness under this demented dispensation has nothing to do with being “right” about anything. It’s about the freedom from being questioned at all. Of course, by the binary logic of the system, this cherished aim can never achieve total actualization, despite all of the cultural, social, and legal supports furnished by patriarchy, since the supposedly eternal “feminine” role always contains at least a streak of doubt in its subservience. So it isn’t a question of impressing Doris – the Benchley persona sticks it to “that man” by undercutting his wife’s “natural” faith in every exogamous representative of the gender.

Favourite Moment:
“In Chicago, I again falsified what ‘the man’ told me, and instead of getting on the train back to New York, we went to Little Rock, Arkansas. Every time I had to ask where the best hotel was, I made up information which brought us out into the suburbs, cold and hungry.”

Reprint Notes:

All text reproduced faithfully (for a change!) in Pluck and Luck
The Gluyas Williams cartoons (first appearing in the book) do add significantly to the piece.

“All Up For ‘Citizenship Day’” (E13)

Originally Published: Life Magazine, October 26, 1922
First Reprinted: Never reprinted
Original Byline: R.C.B.

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Comments:
Even the Apostle of Applesauce had his limits, and RB reaches his in contemplating the proposed advent of yet another Patriotic Holiday. This little Battle Ahem of the Republic suffers greatly from its attempt to confront the abyssal absurdities of American Civic Religion head on. With the gaudy austerities of the roaring twenties in full swing and the tumorous open secret of Jim Crow lynch law pressing heavily upon the nation’s frontal lobe, ol’ Uncle Sam’s huzzah-haunted hypocrisy was just too big to foil at this time (one can only hope the condition isn’t permanent). Benchley’s targets are too self-evident and too painfully unassailable; and his mock allegorical floats of fancy never leave the ground.

On a brighter note, “Citizenship Day” did fail to reach red letter day status on November 4, 1922 – a fizzle RB must have drunk to. However, the concept did eventually gain country-wide traction, metastasizing into Pact With Hell and Covenant With Death (aka Constitution) Day.

Favourite Moment:
“At the other end [of an allegorical float representing the Dignity of the Law] is shown New York City enforcing the Prohibition laws. Someone seems to be accepting money from someone else in this group, but you can’t quite make out who the parties are.”

“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