The Best of Archy and Mehitabel Read online

  personality

  where would they get

  the training my old friends

  got in the stock companies

  i knew mr booth very well

  says tom

  and a law should be passed

  preventing anybody else

  from ever playing

  in any play he ever

  played in

  there was a trouper for you

  i used to sit on his knee

  and purr when i was

  a kitten he used to tell me

  how much he valued my opinion

  finish is what they lack

  finish

  and they haven t got it

  here

  and again he laid his paw

  on his breast

  i remember mr daly very

  well too

  i was with mr daly s company

  for several years

  there was art for you

  there was team work

  there was direction

  they knew the theatre

  and they all had it

  here

  for two years mr daly

  would not ring up the curtain

  unless i was in the

  prompter s box

  they are amateurs nowadays

  rank amateurs all of them

  for two seasons i played

  the dog in joseph

  jefferson s rip van winkle

  it is true i never came

  on the stage

  but he knew i was just off

  and it helped him

  i would like to see

  one of your modern

  theatre cats

  act a dog so well

  that it would convince

  a trouper like jo jefferson

  but they haven t got it

  nowadays

  they haven t got it

  here

  jo jefferson had it he had it

  here

  i come of a long line

  of theatre cats

  my grandfather

  was with forrest

  he had it he was a real trouper

  my grandfather said

  he had a voice

  that used to shake

  the ferryboats

  on the north river

  once he lost his beard

  and my grandfather

  dropped from the

  fly gallery and landed

  under his chin

  and played his beard

  for the rest of the act

  you don t see any theatre

  cats that could do that

  nowadays

  they haven t got it they

  haven t got it

  here

  once i played the owl

  in modjeska s production

  of macbeth

  i sat above the castle gate

  in the murder scene

  and made my yellow

  eyes shine through the dusk

  like an owl s eyes

  mehitabel he says –

  modjeska was a real

  trouper she knew how to pick

  her support i would like

  to see any of these modern

  theatre cats play the owl s eyes

  to modjeska s lady macbeth

  but they haven t got it nowadays

  they haven t got it

  here

  mehitabel he says

  both our professions

  are being ruined

  by amateurs

  archy

  ghosts

  you want to know

  whether i believe in ghosts

  of course i do not believe in them

  if you had known

  as many of them as i have

  you would not

  believe in them either

  perhaps i have been

  unfortunate in my acquaintance

  but the ones i have known

  have been a bad lot

  no one could believe in them

  after being acquainted with them

  a short time

  it is true that i have met

  them under peculiar

  circumstances

  that is while they

  were migrating into the

  bodies of what human beings

  consider a lower order

  of creatures

  before i became a cockroach

  i was a free verse poet

  one of the pioneers of the artless art

  and my punishment for that

  was to have my soul

  enter the body of a cockroach

  the ghosts i have known

  were the ghosts of persons

  who were waiting for a vacant

  body to get into

  they knew they were going

  to transmigrate into the bodies of

  lizards lice bats snakes

  worms beetles mice alley cats

  turtles snails tadpoles

  etcetera

  and while they were waiting

  they were as cross as all get out

  i remember talking to one of them

  who had just worked his way

  upward again he had been in the

  body of a flea and he was going

  into a cat fish

  you would think he might be

  grateful for the promotion

  but not he

  i do not call this much of an advance

  he said why could i not

  be a humming bird or something

  kid i told him it will

  take you a million years to work your

  way up to a humming bird

  when i remember he said

  that i used to be a hat check boy

  in a hotel i could

  spend a million years weeping

  to think that i should come to this

  we have all seen better days i said

  we have all come down in the world

  you have not come down as far

  as some of us

  if i ever get to be a hat check boy

  again he said i will sting

  somebody for what i have had to suffer

  that remark will probably cost you

  another million years among

  the lower creatures i told him

  transmigration is a great thing

  if you do not weaken

  personally my ambition is to get

  my time as a cockroach shortened for

  good behavior and be promoted

  to a revenue officer

  it is not much of a step up but

  i am humble

  i never ran across any of this

  ectoplasm that sir arthur

  conan doyle tells of but it sounds

  as if it might be wonderful

  stuff to mend broken furniture with

  archy

  unjust

  poets are always asking

  where do the little roses go

  underneath the snow

  but no one ever thinks to say

  where do the little insects stay

  this is because

  as a general rule

  roses are more handsome

  than insects

  beauty gets the best of it

  in this world

  i have heard people

  say how wicked it was

  to kill our feathered

  friends

  in order to get

  their plumage and pinions

  for the hats of women

  and all the while

  these same people

  might be eating duck

  as they talked

  the chances are

  that it is just as discouraging

  to a duck to have

  her head amputated

  in order to become

  a stuffed roast fowl

  and decora
te a dining table

  as it is for a bird

  of gayer plumage

  to be bumped

  off the running board of existence

  to furnish plumage

  for a lady s hat

  but the duck

  does not get the sympathy

  because the duck

  is not beautiful

  the only insect

  that succeeds in getting

  mourned is a moth

  or butterfly

  whereas every man s

  heel is raised against

  the spider

  and it is getting harder

  and harder for spiders

  to make an honest living

  at that since

  human beings have invented

  so many ways

  of killing flies

  humanity will shed poems

  full of tears

  over the demise of

  a bounding doe

  or a young gazelle

  but the departure of a trusty

  camel leaves the

  vast majorities

  stonily indifferent

  perhaps the theory is

  that god would not have made

  the camel so ugly

  if the camel were not wicked

  alas exclamation point

  the pathos of ugliness

  is only perceived

  by us cockroaches of the world

  and personally

  i am having to stand for a lot

  i am getting it double

  as you might say

  before my soul

  migrated into the body

  of a cockroach

  it inhabited the carcase

  of a vers libre poet

  some vers libre poets are beautiful

  but i was not

  i had a little blond mustache

  that every one thought was a mistake

  and yet since i have died

  i have thought of that

  with regret

  it hung over a mouth

  that i found it difficult to keep closed

  because of adenoidal trouble

  but it would have been better

  if i could have kept it closed

  because the teeth within

  were out of alignment

  and were of odd sizes

  this destroyed my acoustics

  as you might say

  my chin was nothing much

  and knew it

  and timidly shrank

  into itself

  receding from the battle of life

  my eyes were all right

  but my eyebrows

  were scarcely noticeable

  i suppose though that if

  i had had noticeable eyebrows

  they would have been wrong

  somehow

  well well not to pursue

  this painful subject

  to the uttermost and ultimate

  wart and freckle

  i was not handsome and it hampered

  me when i was a human

  it militated against me

  as a poet

  more beautiful creatures could

  write verse worse than mine

  and get up and recite it

  with a triumphant air

  and get away with it

  but my sublimest ideas

  were thought to be a total

  loss when people saw

  where they came from

  i think it would have been

  only justice

  if i had been sent to inhabit

  a butterfly

  but there is very little

  justice in the universe

  what is the use

  of being the universe

  if you have to be just

  interrogation point

  and i suppose the universe

  has so much really important

  business on hand

  that it finds it impossible

  to look after the details

  it is rushed

  perhaps it has private

  knowledge to the effect

  that eternity is brief

  after all

  and it wants to get the big

  jobs finished in a hurry

  i find it possible to forgive

  the universe

  i meet it in a give and take spirit

  although i do wish

  that it would consult me at times

  please forgive

  the profundity of these

  meditations

  whenever i have nothing

  particular to say

  i find myself always

  always plunging into cosmic

  philosophy

  or something

  archy

  mehitabel meets an affinity

  paris france

  mehitabel the cat

  has been passing her

  time in the dubious

  company of

  a ragged eared tom cat

  with one mean

  eye and the other

  eye missing whom

  she calls francy

  he has been the hero

  or the victim of

  many desperate encounters

  for part of his tail

  has been removed

  and his back has been chewed

  to the spine

  one can see at a glance

  that he is a sneak thief

  and an apache

  a bandit with long

  curved claws

  you see his likes hanging

  about the outdoor markets

  here in paris waiting

  their chance to sneak

  a fish or a bit

  of unregarded meat

  or whimpering

  among the chair legs at the

  sidewalk cafes in the

  evenings or slinking

  down the gutters of

  alleys in the old

  quarters of the town

  he has a raucous voice

  much damaged by the night

  air and yet there is a

  sentimental wheedling

  note in it as well

  and yet withal he carries

  his visible disgrace with

  a jaunty air

  when i asked mehitabel

  where in the name of st denis

  did you pick up that

  romantic criminal

  in the luxembourg gardens

  she replied where

  we had both gone to kill

  birds he has been showing me

  paris he does not

  understand english but speak of

  him with respect

  he is like myself

  an example of the truth

  of the pythagorean idea

  you know that in my body

  which is that of a cat

  there is reincarnated

  the soul of cleopatra

  well this cat here

  was not always a cat either

  he has seen better days

  he tells me that once he was

  a bard and lived here in paris

  tell archy here

  something about yourself francy

  thus encouraged the

  murderous looking animal spoke

  and i append a

  rough translation of

  what he said

  tame cats on a web of the persian woof

  may lick their coats and purr for cream

  but i am a tougher kind of goof

  scheming a freer kind of scheme

  daily i climb where the pigeons gleam

  over the gargoyles of notre dame

  robbing their nests to hear them scream

  for i am a cat of the devil i am

  i ll tell the world i m a hard boiled oeuf

  i rend the clouds when i let off ste
am

  to the orderly life i cry pouf pouf

  it is worth far less than the bourgeois deem

  my life is a dance on the edge de l abime

  and i am the singer you d love to slam

  who murders the midnight anonyme

  for i am a cat of the devil i am

  when the ribald moon leers over the roof

  and the mist reeks up from the chuckling stream

  i pad the quais on a silent hoof

  dreaming the vagabond s ancient dream

  where the piebald toms of the quartier teem

  and fight for a fish or a mouldy clam

  my rival i rip and his guts unseam

  for i am a cat of the devil i am

  roach i could rattle you rhymes by the ream

  in proof of the fact that i m no spring lamb

  maybe the headsman will finish the theme

  for i am a cat of the devil i am

  mehitabel i said

  your friend is nobody else

  than francois villon

  and he looks it too

  archy

  mehitabel sees paris

  paris france

  i have not been

  to geneva but i have been

  talking to a french cockroach

  who has just returned

  from there traveling all the

  way in a third class

  compartment he says there is no

  hope for insect or man in

  the league of nations

  what prestige it ever had is gone

  and it never had any

  the idea of one great brotherhood

  of men and insects on earth

  is very attractive to me

  but mehitabel the cat

  says i am a communist an

  anarchist and a socialist

  she has been shocked to the soul

  she says by what the

  revolutionists did here during

  the revolution

  i am always the aristocrat archy

  she said i may go and play

  around montmartre and that sort

  of thing and in fact i was

  playing up there with francy last

  night but i am always the lady

  in spite of my little larks

  toujours gai archy and toujours

  the lady that is my motto in

  spite of

  ups and downs

  what they did to us aristocrats

  at the time of the revolution

  was a plenty archy

  it makes my heart bleed

  to see signs of it all

  over town those poor

  dear duchesses that got it

  in the neck i can sympathize

  with them archy i may not

  look it now but i come of a

  royal race myself

  i have come down in the world

  but wotthehell archy wotthehell

  jamais triste archy jamais triste

  that is my motto

  always the lady and always

  out for a good time

  francy and i lapped up

  a demi of beer in a joint

  up on the butte last night

  that an american tourist

  poured out for us

  and everybody laughed and it