It has been a little while since we considered the art of postcard poetry. New examples come to hand all the time at Blogsy’s Postcard Bin, and I want to be sure you don’t miss any of the amazing discoveries which…I’ve told you about making faces like that.
The art of verse for postcards is not unlike that of writing verse for greeting cards. For every poet who puts heart and soul into the job, there are ten postcard artists who are thinking, “Come on: come up with some words that rhyme so we can get this month’s rent paid.” (Paying the rent can be just as strong an impulse to write good verse as bad verse. It’s just that so many people who would write better verse keep getting the reminder “Don’t do it good; do it Tuesday.”)
Given that postcards AND greeting cards are designed to be mailed to someone somewhere else, it is exceedingly fortunate that “here” rhymes with “dear”. But some poets DO push on to more complex work.
To those who complain a card just 2 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches doesn’t allow for a good picture and a good verse, we must point out that SOME artists are able to produce work of great urgency and drama in that space (even if the sender of the postcard may edit the text.)
And you can always squeeze your words INSIDE the picture.
Satire and sarcasm seem to inspire good work along these lines. These works of art may be descendants of the Vinegar Valentine tradition of the nineteenth century, when unpleasant pictures and mocking verse made for some of the best-selling greeting cards.
There was space, apparently, to attack the latest fads to threaten the sedate procession of days.
Or toss some pin-up art into the bargain.
This artist not only got the complaint and the illustration on a mere postcard, but some fancy lettering as well.
Sometimes an artist would spot a modern trend which would provide a theme for a series of postcards. As the automobile became more widespread, so too did the motorized play on words.
Which could be used as often as you could come up with new rhymey words for camouflage. (Remember the Jim Henson rule of comedy: A joke not worth telling once may be worth telling seventeen times.) This artist seemed to like drawing cars and houses best anyhow.
Of course, there’s always someone who overdoes it. This artist got so busy throwing Halloween decorations into the verse that we need to look at it two or three times to find out that it rhymes. Still and all, the picture was more likely to sell the postcard than the poetry. (This card sold within a few hours of my listing. Yeah, it was the pumpkins.)
Flipping through my unsold inventory this weekend, I was made aware of something we have not yet covered in this column’s occasional pursuit of the butt in joke history. We have observed that our ancestors in the supposedly prudish era when postcards were born had no particular fear of using this particular four-letter word, IF it could be excused with a pun, as in the postcard seen above.
But (and I use that word with some trepidation) I noticed a goodly number of postcards warning us not to “butt in”, and references to some people being “buttinskys”. Several of these were cards featuring the heroes of our Dutch Kids craze, which puts the phrases back to around 1912, but others were cards with undivided backs, which, as you will certainly recall from our sketchy history of postcards in the United States, puts them before 1907.
Okay, this may not alarm YOU. But do you realize this means I have been using slang expressions which are at least a century old? Okay, you’ve seen my picture somewhere and that does NOT surprise you. Fine for you, pal.
So I headed out on a noble quest to track down the buttinsky to his native land, and figure out when he (or she) first started to butt in.
Despite the presence of a number of urban legends out there in the Interwebs, which would have us peruse the savory tale of Polish peasant Stanislaus Buttinski, who was eventually executed (beheaded or burned at the stake, depending on which part of the legend you like) for always butting in with advice at the Polish royal court in the 1680s, thus making his last name a watchword for…never mind. Despite that story, the phrase “buttinsky” was invented in the United States by a newspaperman who combined the OLDER phrase “butt in” with the name form of numerous Russian immigrants. He had someone accused of being a member of “the Buttinski family”.
Yeah, yeah, this does not prove that Stanislaus never existed. Just that nobody used his “famous name” for the first couple of centuries after he had his last meal of a hot steak or a cold chop. (Thank you, Home for Elderly Jokes.)
As to the phrase “butt in”, the slang experts online cannot find this being used before 1899. And the phrase owes nothing to the sitting end of the body. It refers to cattle trying to get to the head of a herd by putting their heads down and butting their way forward. It is a slightly younger brother of the phrase “horn in”, which is ALSO still used today, and lends a little more credence to this story. (All apologies to Stanislaus.)
You see where postcards fall into this history. We have a couple of slang expressions presumed new between 1899 and 1901, and a craze for postcards, which really began to build in 1903 or thereabouts. We owe to the cartoonists, I guess, the association of butting in with goats, which people in the city had a better chance of being butted by.
And Stanislaus Buttinski, along with all the experts who tried to tell me about people getting in line by pushing their backsides into a queue, will just have to butt out. (A phrase which has been traced to 1906, by the way, as an inversion of “butt in”. Pity. I was looking forward to the tale of Ladislaus Buttoutski.)
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about, when they sang a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing; you might have learned to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to eh child who had fetched Scrooge from the boarding school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind,; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness; with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes; and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game of blind-man’s buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind man than I believe he had eyes in his boots. Ny opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen against him, as some of them did, and stood there; he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding; and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the pump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct was most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind-man being in his office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.
Scrooge’s niece was bot one of the blind-man’s buff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew beat her sisters hollow; though they were sharp girls, too, as Topper could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge: blunt as he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him int his mood, and looked upon him with such favour that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the Ghost said could not be done.
“Here’s a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!”
It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which eh was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, the nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!”
“What is it?” cried Fred.
“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes”; inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.
“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say Uncle Scrooge!”
“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t have it from me, but he may have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were once again upon their travels.
This is likely to get skipped by filmmakers, too, except in films which want to have another jab at Ebenezer Scrooge. Some find in it an excuse to have another sort of party than that at Fezziwig’s, a private gathering from some lost novel of Jane Austen. (The characters in Stewart do seem to have wandered in from Pride and Prejudice, or, less anachronistically, perhaps the Barretts of Wimpole Street.) Several versions do throw in some of the games, but other matters are ignored. Fred seems to be living fairly well for someone his uncle described as “poor enough”. (In Owen, at least, the party is held in the home of his fiancee’s parents.) And no one notices what Dickens was hinting about Fred’s immediate family from the fact that Mrs. Fred is not allowed to join in a rough game of blind-man’s buff. (Perhaps Dickens was too subtle here: something he is seldom accused of being.)
The scene is skipped entirely in March, Magoo, Haddrick, Matthau, and McDuck, while sim II gives us only the Toast.
Two versions substitute music for the games. Sim I’s group dances a polka behore the scene fades away in smoke. In Curry, Fred explains<”This is a song my mother and her brother Ebenezer used to perform at home…when their father was not there.” They produce a sort of Music Hall tongue twister song called “Santa’s Sooty Suit.” It is hearty and nonsensical, and the guests roar away at it, having no trouble with the intricate lyrics. Scrooge capers wildly, and when told it is time to leave, protests that he was just starting to enjoy himself.
Two games in the text interest filmmakers: the Blind-Man’s Buff, and Yes and No. Few versions contain both, and some introduce a new variation of one or the other.
Hicks turns Yes and No into a rather silly riddle game. When the answer is revealed, one old fellow falls on the floor laughing. The camera draws back to show us the whole group through the flames in the fireplace; a huge face (the Ghost’s?) is superimposed, laughing.
In Owen, Blind-Man’s Buff is suggested, but first there is a toast to Ebenezer Scrooge, who makes people feel so happy by contrast. Fred and “Tom” have fixed the ensuing game between them. As Tom begins to play, Fred and his fiancée pull back behind the curtains into the window seat intended in the text for another engaged couple. Scrooge would like to watch what they get up to there, but the Ghost pulls him away, reminding him, “But you don’t like Christmas: it’s a time for fools!” “I won’t go with you. I’m going to stay. I’m going to stay, I tell you!” “Don’t be a fool, man! You don’t like Christmas!” “But I do! I do like Christmas! I love Christmas!” He laughs, and is laughing in bed as the scene ends.
Rathbone watches Fred recap the riddle game as it has proceeded to this point; it is not badly done. A lady guesses the correct answer, and everyone laughs. Fred proposes a toast, “A Merry Christmas to the old man, whatever he is!”
The Spirit calls Finney over for another sip of the Milk of Human Kindness; the Spirit himself chomps a chicken leg. Mrs. Fred plays, and the guests dance Scrooge marking time. He knows the tune–”December the Twenty-Fifth”—saying he used to sing it as a lad. The guests then play a game of “The Minister’s Cat” (a game similar to the one Dickens mentions, of admiring one’s love with letters of the alphabet.) Scrooge jumps around the circle of players, prompting them, approving their answers, and calling to the Spirit to witness the progress of the game. The Ghost, yawning, dozes off. Scrooge even joins the reception line at the end of the party, thanking the guests as they leave, for having given him a wonderful tome. He recalls Fezziwig’s parties, and Fred’s mother, and Isabel. He reprises Isabel’s song, and grows morose at the thought of all he has cut himself off from.
Scott has a brief argument with the Ghost over whether the gests are happy because of each other’s company, or the free food and drink. The guests play “Similes”, in which Fred calls out the first part of a phrase—Proud as a—and the player has five seconds to come up with the proper finish (Peacock.) Scrooge is a bit superior to games, ut shows by his expression that he is paying attention; he snaps at the Ghost for speaking so loudly he can’t hear the game. There is a bit of business over “Tight as”, when Fred refuses to allow his wife’s answer of “Uncle Scrooge’s purse-strings”. In the end, Scrooge admits Fred’s conduct of the game shows some intelligence, and “as for the laughter at my expense, I’m inclined to overlook it in view of the general gaiety.” The Ghost tells him they have another stop to make. As they move on, another round of Similes begins. “As silent as….” “I know! The grave!”
Caine watches Fred call “We’ve had the plum pudding and sung the carols: what now, my lovelies?” His guests call for a game. Scrooge asks “Do people play games at Christmas?” “I love games!” the Ghost cries. The game of Yes and No begins as described, but moves toward “an unwanted animal.” Fred heartily enjoys the suggestions of a leech or a rat. Scrooge pays along with enthusiasm, but is devastated when the answer is revealed, and asks to see no more.
Stewart and the Ghost leave the room through the piano, causing the strings to reverberate. They are outside, but Scrooge can hear the guests back inside starting a game. “It’s been a long time since…. Let’s stay a little.” The Ghost’s expression is blank; he seems genuinely anxious to move on. But they move back inside, and both laugh at the spectacle of Blind-Man’s Buff, Scrooge pointing out to the Ghost that Topper is cheating. Topper finishes by catching his intended beneath the mistletoe; everyone calls for a kiss, and the Ghost calls to Scrooge to depart. They are on the way out when Mrs. Fred strikes up a tune. Scrooge stops in the snow. “Wait, Spirit. I need to hear….that was my sister’s favorite tune.” “Fran.” “Yes>” The Ghost nods approval, but still seems impatient. He starts away, saying “You should have accepted Fred’s invitation to dine.” Scrooge looks at him; he goes on, “For Fran’s sake, if not for yours.” Scrooge’s “I should” is more question than answer. The Ghost tells him, “We still have much to do.”
I have been fighting my way through a book I have tried to read several times before. It was a bestseller in its day, and was still touted as a classic of its genre when I was in school and trying to read every book in the humor sections of my school libraries and the public library. (AND the ones we had at home: we valued a good laugh.)
Maybe this book will be reviewed in this space at some future time (people misunderstand me when I say something like “Well, it has its points if you have the strength to put up with it”. They think that’s a negative review when, really…well, some nother blog.) But I did rear my head at one point and say “Whuh?”
The book deals heavily with the reminiscences of the author about being a kid somewhere around 1913. Some time is spent comparing HIS childhood and “Kids Today”. And in a section where he discusses how much time he was allowed for doing nothing, he describes the things he did when he was doing nothing. One of these things was watching other people, and among the people he watched were his older sisters, who, being that kind of teen, spent THEIR time on craft projects, including, he notes, bead-making and something called “tie-dyeing”, which he recalls produced handkerchiefs of amazing ugliness.
This is where my eyes lifted from the page. “Tie-dyeing”? Isn’t he about fifty-five years too early? I had recently been shocked by someone’s revelation that they had done a lot of tie-dyeing during the pandemic. You mean tie-dyeing wasn’t limited to Sixties communes and Seventies grade schools?
The Interwebs, as usual, was a fund of way too much information, all about the origins of tie-dyeing and the masterworks which have been produced in countries where the art was developed until masterpieces now found only in museums of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern art are preserved. But when did it hit the American craft worker?
Two authors in America wrote articles about tie-dyeing in 1909, and though the article by Charles Pellew (Columbia chemistry professor who became the Seventh Viscount of Exmouth: long story) was the more informed and respectful, the article by Amelia Beard in Harper’s Bazar, claiming this was an unskilled trade requiring only dye and cloth and string, was probably responsible for our author’s sisters getting involved in the tradition. Tie-dyeing apparently starts over every couple of decades, the artcles say, due to boredom (the pandemic), a dye shortage (in wartime; how does that help, by the way?), or a reaction to severe discipline (the Sixties; the “severe discipline” of the Fifties touted in this article, by the way, is related to the lax discipline of the Fifties our author was complaining about. But he was looking at it from another direction.)
In the hopes of further clarification in modern history, I have been working on two other historical projects. I find that toothpaste was first put into tubes in 1880, when a Dr. Sheffield noticed painters squeezing paint from tubes. The original toothpaste tubes were made of a metal easy to squeeze (lead) and so on and so forth. I have not yet learned what I want to know: who was the first person to squeeze the tube from the wrong end? I suspect the answer may lie among those distant French painters who inspired Washington Sheffield.
Similarly, I can learn everywhere that toilet paper started being sold on rolls around cardboard tubes in 1890 by the Scott brothers, and that by 1930, toilet paper was advertised as “splinter free”. But I can NOT learn who was the first person to put a roll on the spindle the wrong way round. Several authorities have gone to the original patent, which shows the paper hanging with the loose end out, toward the user, but no one goes into the identity and motivations of the pioneer who spindled it the other way round.
But I will persevere: in my research and in trying to finish that book I mentioned earlier (it’s only 96 pages, for crying out loud.) And, in the vein of the author of that book, I will state here and now that I squeeze the toothpaste from the middle, hang the toilet paper whichever way I happen to pick it up out of the package, and have never knowingly tie-dyed ANYTHING.
A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the Snowbird, an American species of migrant human which likes its weather warm, and at the first frost heads south, to maintain that tan, avoid the flu, and send snarky postcards back north to people who are suffering from snow and sleet. There is, as always, another side to the story.
Some people actually prefer temperatures below seventy, and there are even those who enjoy the conditions of winter. True, as my warm weather friends keep informing me, there are not a LOT of stories written about the joys of being stuck in the snow on your way to work or skidding on black ice on your way home. But winter does have its rewards. There is, for example, the occasional elegance seen in the postcard at the top of this column, and the joys of cuddling for warmth, as seen here. (If you cannot read the Fine Old Joke in the caption, the gentleman is asking his girlfriend the difference between the Freezing Point and the Squeezing Point. The answer, according to him, is that the Freezing Point is thirty above zero, while the Squeezing Point is two in the shade. (I said it was a Fine Old Joke, not a good one.)
But those are artists’ renderings of winter. What about REAL winter? For that we must go to the rppc (real photo postcard, where ordinary citizens could get their own snapshots printed on postcards.) These do exist, and a goodly number of them deal with winter wardrobes. This card is part of a small collection which was created in St. Paul, Minnesota, where these couples stepped into the studio to show off their winter preparedness. No one here looks as if they wish they were on the beach.
Mind you, they are indoors, under the hot lights of a photographer. (This is another from the Minnesota collection.)
These two adventurers, however, are from somewhere else entirely, and, from the looks of them, belong to that class of people which are quite the opposite of the snowbird. These folks actually seek out the cold regions of the world for their explorations and/or hijinks. One important feature of this sort of person is the ability to look, at least in the studio, as if they are ready for a brisk walk up Mount Everest this afternoon and, if time permits, a second and third. (They MAY, in reality, just be dressed for a jaunt to the bar on a windy day.)
Alas that there is no label here. These ladies are obviously on some sort of jaunt themselves in chilly regions, and have paused at a stone fence which had some significance at the time. Now, about a century later, we have no idea if this is the lookout point on Pumpkin Peak or the parking lot outside the rest stop on Flaptrap Road. OR they may have simply said “Let’s stop at the first good place and get a picture of our new winter coats.”
See, showing off that new winter wardrobe is a frequent motivation behind winter rppcs, and children are frequently the sufferers from this. A child generally needs a new winter coat every year, especially in the early years, when growth is constant and loving aunts and grandmothers with knitting needles can turn out a wonderful ensemble. This infant looks willing, but confused: why did he have to put on all this stuff to go sit indoors in front of a man who keeps talking about watching birdies?
MUCH better to get that picture of little Mildred’s new winter coat and hat outdoors, where it makes some sense.
This tot feels the same way about it. “Come on, I’m all dressed up for snow! Let’s go go go!”
Richard Adams, in Watership Down, had sharp words for winter lovers, which can hardly be denied. One of the chief joys in winter, he said, is getting in out of it. I feel like going inside for some hot chocolate about now myself.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death; it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephew’s, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!
“Ha, ha!” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. “Ha, ha, ha!”
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him, too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily.
“Ga, ha! Gam ham ha, ha!”
“He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “He believed it, too!”
“More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s niece, indignantly. Bless these women, they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed—as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s face. Altogether, she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!
“He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.”
“I am sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted scrooge’s niece. “At least you always tell ME so.”
“What of that, my dear?” said Scrooge’s nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t th satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit us with it.”
“I have no patience with him,” observed Scrooge’s niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
“Oh, I have!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He don’t lose much of a dinner.”
“Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner, and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered around the fire, by lamplight.
“Well, I’m very glad to hear it,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “because I haven’t great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Topper?” Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister—the pump one with the lace tucker; not the one with the roses—blushed.
“Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her hands. “He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!”
Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.
“I was going to say,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that the consequence of his tsking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying, Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, THAT’S something; and I think I shook him, yesterday.”
It was their turn to laugh now, at the notion of his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle, joyously.
There’s a lot going on here, even leaving out the subplot of Topper and Scrooge’s niece’s sister, but by and large screenwriters find Fred less interesting than Bob Cratchit’s family. Fred’s whole Christmas gathering is often dropped, or abridged and tucked in ahead of the Cratchit episodes, since those are far more dramatic. Still, when twisting the knife a bit in Ebenezer Scrooge, they sometimes like to show him what Fred says about his uncle when he thinks his uncle can’t hear. Some screenwriters make him far less pleasant about the old man. I can’t believe these writers were really paying attention to the text.
March, Magoo, Haddrick, Sim II, and McDuck all omit this sequence. Caines cuts it down to Scrooge appearing with the Ghost in a nice room. Scrooge exclaims “It’s Fred! My dear nephew Fred and his wife, Clara, having Christmas with friends!” before moving on to the next section.
In Hicks, we see Fred and Mrs. Fred from below, at about the level of the tabletop. They are well dressed, laughing a good deal, and Mrs. Fred is tossing oranges or big marshmallows or fake snowballs among the guests. They are having a jolly old time. “And he said Christmas was a humbug!” Much of the dialogue follows as written, sometimes splitting the lines between Fred and one of his guests. They omit the business about not missing much of a dinner.
Owen arrives on “He said that Christmas was humbug! As id anything that gives us an excuse for this could be humbug!” Fredd’s fiancée replies as in the text. Fred answers, “Well, he has money, hasn’t he? Abd he makes no use of it: mind you, no use of it whatsoever. Therefore he is a far more pathetic and unhappy xcase than the man who has no money at all.” Thr business about not missing much of a dinner (a little rude here, as Fred is not the husband but a mere guest and prospective in-law in this version) is saved for another section.
Sim I arrives to laughter. “He said Christmas was a humbug. And he believed it, too.” Mrs. Fred replies, “I told you so.” Fred delivers the toast from the next sequence, at which his wife expresses the doubt that toasting Uncle Scrooge will do him any good; her sister adds, “I hate him.” “Oh, I forbid it,” says Fred, “I am sorry for him. I couldn’t feel angry with him if I tried. Who suffers worst by his ill whims? Himself, always. Look at the way he’s taken it into his head to disown us without a shilling and won’t even come to dinner with us. And what’s the consequence? He’s only cheated himself out of a highly indigestible dinner.” Topper, in the corner, calls it a wonderful dinner, and the sister, Miss Flora, agrees. Fred announces himself relieved to hear it, as in the text, and Topper Makes the remark about outcasts, obviously with his eye on Miss Flora. Music follows.
Rathbone and the Spirit come to a somewhat more high class window than that at the Cratchits’—it has a wrought iron railing at the base—similarly suspended in the fog. The Spirit orders Scrooge to look; when Scrooge does, we are into the next scene,
Finney is told “We have one more call to make.” They find Harry (Fred) calling for silence. “The time has come that I know you all look forward to in this house on Christmas Eve.” He then toasts his celebrated Uncle Scrooge. A guest notes “Harry, I’ve visited you every Christmas for the past five years and to this day I cannot understand this extraordinary ritual of toasting the health of your old Uncle Ebenezer.” Another guest agrees, “Everybody knows he’s the most miserable old skinflint that ever walked God’s earth.” Harry does not deny this. “He is indeed the most despicable old miser.” The Ghost laughs. “If I can wish a merry Christmas to him, who is beyond dispute the most obnoxious and parsimonious of all living creatures, then I know in my heart I am a man of good will.” Scrooge keeps rising to argue, but the Ghost calls him back, saying that, oddly enough, the boy likes him. “Besides,” Harry goes on, “I like old Scrooge. Hidden somewhere deep inside that loathsome old carcass of his there’s a different man fighting to get out.” “He may be worse than the one you know,” he is warned. Harry declares he will continue to wish his uncle a merry Christmas in the forlorn hope that Scrooge might at least raise his clerk’s salary by five shillings. Mrs. Harry now declares she’s had enough of Uncle Scrooge haunting Christmas.
Matthau is pleading “Oh, Spirit! Please take me back to my miserable room!” When the Ghost tells him, “There is another Christmas to visit, even though you refused the invitation yesterday,” he protests “Oh no!” They arrive at Fred’s home (where a portrait of Scrooge hangs in a place of honor on the wall) as Fred calls, “I give you a toast to my Uncle Scrooge!” Mrs. Fred declines to drink the toast. “Have pity on him my dear.” “Pity? On someone so rich?” Fred explains how the money does Scrooge no good, and then cries, “To Uncle Scrooge! May he some day know I love him!” The guests are utterly unenthusiastic; Scrooge snuffles a bit. “Why this remorse?” the Ghost remands. “He gave me a gift. I threw it away!”
Scott demands “Where are we now?” “Just a street. Any street. This house. We’ll go in here. I think it might amuse you.” “I’m in no mood to be amused.” The Ghost is laughed, and is reinforced y laughter inside. Mrs. Fred, at a keyboard, stops playing and asks whether her music is so funny. Fred explains about his uncle calling Christmas a humbug. “I’d very much like to meet your uncle, sir,” says a guest. Fred and Mrs. Fred share the lines about his being a comical old fellow; her sister says “I am sure he is very rich.” Fred responds with the lines about that wealth doing Scrooge no good. Scrooge snaps, “I don’t squander it, if that’s what you mean by comical.” “You mustn’t argue with those we visit,” the Ghost tells him, “It’s useless. And even tactless.” “Tact,” Scrooge replies, “Is a quality I despise.” “That I can see.” The dialogue continues as written; Scrooge grows more and more offended. Fred goes on, “The reason I talk about my uncle, sir, is that my mother, God rest her saintly soul, was very fond of him. She loved him.” Scrooge muses, “Fan loved me, and I her. Dear Fan. If only she were alive today.” “Fred looks very much like her.” “Yes, I’ve been reminded of that just recently.” “And I mean to give him,” Fred continues, “The same chance every year whether he likes it or not.” “And every year,” his wife retorts, “He’ll say: Christmas? Bah humbug!” Everyone laughs but Scrooge, who does give a rueful nod.
Curry appears amid much laughter. Fred, by his Christmas tree, quotes Scrooge’s remark about “A year older and not an hour richer.” The Ghost laughs as much as anyone at this, to which Scrooge replies, “But it is true.” “Oh, Scrooge, just listen to you!” exclaims the Ghost, “You’re so funny now, aren’t you? I just love you!” “And that Christmas was a humbug!” Fred goes on “He’s the humbug, Fred!” Scrooge tells the Ghost, “I want to go now.” Fred delivers the line about his offenses carrying their own punishment, and then proposes the toast “for my sweet mother’s sake I know it’s hard to believe, but she loved him dearly.” Scrooge murmurs, “I never realized how….” “What?” the Ghost inquires. “How much he looks like Fan.” “And with such a big heart.”
Stewart enters the house to laughter. “He said that Christmas was a humbug: he really did! The less Uncle Scrooge knows, the more stubbornly he knows it!” Mr. Bennett agrees. “Do you think he believes it? About Christmas and humbug?” “Oh, yes, he believes it.” “More shame to him!” Mr. Topper Haines and Miss Betsy agree. Scrooge is offended to hear Fred call him a comical old fellow. Topper is then sent to heat the poker for the punch; Mrs. Fred follows Fred to the punchbowl. “Why won’t you say anything against uncle Scrooge after the way he’s treated you?” Fred replies that his offenses carry their own punishment; Scrooge is confused by this. “I have no patience with the man.” Mr. Bennett also comments; the lady who spoke earlier asserts that Scrooge “leaves a bad taste in people’s eyes.” Fred says that nonetheless he will keep the door of happiness open for him. Everyone rushes to watch the poke plunged into the punch, thrilled at the bubble and hiss. When the punch is handed out, Scrooge reaches for a glass himself, but someone else takes it. The astringent woman asks Mrs. Fred why Fred defends his uncle and is told “His mother loved Scrooge when they were children.” Fred steps over to add, “And when my mother loved someone, they must have had a good heart in them, just as she did.” “And she gave that heart to you, my dear,” Mrs. Fred tells him. This affects the listeners very much. The Ghost notes, “They’re talking about your little sister, Fran, aren’t they?” “Yes, they are. I sometimes forget that Fred is her son.” “You shouldn’t.” The Ghost puts a hand on Scrooge’s shoulder. “We have to go now.”
INTERLUDE
Matthau, in tears, is admitting what he did with Fred’s gifts. The Ghost explains that gifts have been a part of Christmas since the beginning. B.A.H. Humbug sings a song at a small Nativity scene beneath Fred’s Christmas tree, “The Birthday Party of a King”. That makes this version the only one to include the manger, Santa Claus, AND Ebenezer Scrooge.
Among twentieth century artifacts which occasionally confuse those who inhabit the century of the Interwebs is the slate. These can still sometimes be turned up at garage sales, but besides being breakable (especially when real slate was used and not just heavy cardboard painted black) they were also often given to children to play with when their other uses faded away. (Some dairies gave them to customers to write their orders on for the milkman; coal companies would apparently do this as well: the reappearance of deliveries in the Covid age could bring them back, if texting weren’t so much easier.)
And, after all, they were the tool of children for many years. When Bill or Belle started school, they had to have their school slate: a piece of slate of 5 by seven inches or thereabouts, with a frame, on which they could practice penmanship and math. More renewable than a notebook (since what was on the slate could be erased and replaced), it was also a lot heavier. The question of convenience, as well as the fact that paper is a more easily renewed resource than sheets of slate, went into changing us over to other ways as time passed.
Which makes the postcards based on the technology a little obscure to people in these latter days. But between 1907 and 1911, or thereabouts, dozens of different wisecracks and witticisms appeared in this standard form: something written, generally with at least one misspelling, in a childlike hand, as if with chalk on a school slate with a (printed) “wooden” border within a small (printed) “fabric” outer lining.
It was all part of a phenomenon we’ve discussed before: a straight statement is funnier if delivered with an accent. Extending this idea to misspelling, we have tapped into a vein of American humor which was already old by the time of the Civil War and had not yet passed off by World War I, when Dere Mabel was a nationwide bestseller. (This is also why books like Dere Mabel or the works of, say, Josh Billings or Kin Hubbard are seldom seen now: our impatient age finds them too hard to read, even in the era of bad online spelling.)
Several companies appear to have made use of the basic plan: if you look closely, you’ll notice the wooden border is not uniform from card to card, nor the handwriting and spelling. Flipping the cards over shows the same inconsistency: it was simply a way for a cartoonist to take it easy: no need for an elaborate drawing: one halfway decent wisecrack (picture optional)_ was all you needed once the basic template was established.
The jokes MIGHT be schoolchild related, but they didn’t need to be.
But most gags were, no matter how they seemed to be a child’s work, written by and for grownups.
One other great humorous tradition was part of the mix as well. Some things just appear funnier if you claim someone else said them. YOU aren’t the wise guy; you’re just passing the story along.
I wanted very badly to find a cartoon family, executed by one artist to create a humorous cast of characters, but, alas, these cards also appear from assorted publishers.
So Jim and Phil and Sis and the hired help are not all part of one big dysfunctional family, but apparently represent various rural (the slate disappeared in the cities first; those little one room schoolhouses beloved of American folklore took longer to convert. Have I told you what my grandfather had to say about HIS one-room schoolhouse? Nother blog.)
By the way, though Ma is mentioned, and even drawn, on some of these cards, I have yet to find her getting credit for an observation. Maybe I haven’t found the right card yet, or maybe she was considered above making wisecracks. (Must pass along some observations on my grandmother, too, now I think of it.)
But there isn’t really time or space to cover ALL the possibilities of the slate postcard. And we haven’t even touched on, say, a number of postcards mailed using real slate, or sayings like “a slate of candidates”, but, after all, we can’t do everything on one column. So we will conclude with a note oft expressed on slate and other postcards, and save the rest for another column, when we can start with a fresh slate.
Once upon a time, I decided to make my next million (the first four or five hadn’t worked out) in the greeting card business. No, I did not warm up my toy printing press and start selling door to door. I planned to be a greeting card writer. Just like postcards, behind those brightly colored folders of wishes are writers and illustrators who try to come up with something new to say about birthdays and anniversaries (or ways to make the idea LOOK new.) I sold ten really nifty ideas to a company whose warehouse burned down, and finished my career about the same time. (Lemme tell you some time about my Belated Get Well cards.)
What has this to do with my usual line of blogs about postcards? Well, as the postcard market started drying up, a few companies experimented with developing the greeting card idea into lines of two-sided postcards.
It was not so very far-fetched: you had two sides to a card, and there was no reason you couldn’t have the straight line on one side
And the punchline on the back. The postcard application of a joke meant that it didn’t have to be for a particular holiday or occasion. People still sent postcards just to say “Howdy”, so gags that would not have worked for a greeting card which, after all, might cost a quarter to buy and three whole cents to mail would do perfectly well with a ten cent postcard you could send to your buddy for a penny.
A lot of the jokes reflect this. Before the end of the twentieth century, when “put-down humor” was called out as one of the causes of unrest in the world, sending insults to your pal was customary.
And as long as the punchline was short, you left a lot of room for the sender to put in other put downs, or just the usual “I am fine. How are you? Weather hot. Caught two fish.” (See, the joke could make the card worth reading, at least.)
And it was nice to get some mail that wasn’t bills or advertisements: a little something to brighten the day. No matter how the card expressed it. (This gag seems to have been very popular; I have a couple of variations of it in inventory.)
Perhaps the two-sided gag was also a blessing for freelance cartoonists, who might find two-panel jokes hard to sell to magazines.
This might have worked in a magazine sixty years earlier, when cartoons were published with headlines AND captions. In the Fifties and Sixties, though, the time delay in having to flip the postcard over served as pretty good timing for the punch.
AND they were a boon to the mid-century fascination with coffee tables. You could buy these (or get them from a friend) and then just leave them on the coffee table for your guests to notice.
If your friends refused to reach down and flip the card over, you simply didn’t invite them to your next shindig.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, ad deep red curtains, ready to be drawn, t shut out cold and darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to dome near neighbour’s house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter—artful witches; well they knew it—in a glow!
But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and wo was dressed the spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed: though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed—or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of the darkest night.
“What place is this?” asked Scrooge.
“A place where Miner dwell, who labour in the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. See!”
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon a barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in on the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; amd so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he sw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the older, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, a the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.
Again the Spirit sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christas tune, or had a Christas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
The inclination of most filmmakers is to rush straight to nephew Fred’s party from the Cratchit household, if Fred’s scenes have been included at all, and not pushed in ahead of the Cratchit section. A few more aesthetically-inclined versions do bring this in for atmosphere. More often, bits and pieces of it are dropped into other parts of the Ghost’s visit.
Hicks is told to come and see how others keep Christmas. We watch silhouettes on windowshades, and lights going on all over London. In the background, we get “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. We get a distant storm-battered lighthouse and a toast by the two keepers. On a wind-tossed ship, the lookout calls out a Merry Christmas and laughs; his laugh melts into Fred’s laugh and the next episode.
In Sim II, a swirl takes us out to a place where miners live. A very old man, surrounded by a large family, sings “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.” Scrooge looks grim as he is hauled into a very Edward Gorey skyscape; the two men in the lighthouse are singing the same song as the old miner. A swoop takes us to a ship, where the pilot is singing “God Rest Ye”. We then swoop back toward the city and a window hung with wreaths.
To Stewart’s alarm, a white tornado picks up Scrooge and Spirit from a white field. They arrive at the lighthouse, where the men sing “Silent Night”. The tornado then carries them to the ship, where the crew sing “Silent Night” in German. Scrooge is much annoyed by the constant spray of waves hitting the deck. They move next to a place where miners dwell. Here a noble Welsh choir is singing “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.”
The Second World War was a period of frenetic scientific research in fields from medicine to meteorology. Among other things, it produced a study examining a way a man’s maturity could be estimated by what part of a woman their minds and eyes fixated on. Leg men, the study suggested, were the most mature, followed by the butt men, with breast men, paradoxically, at the bottom.
Some juvenile soul has objected to these columns of mine. (I know it will shock you to think there are people who read mighty works of literature simply to complain about them.) This reader noted my columns about postcard jokes about stockings, and claims to have lost count of the blogs on the human situpon. If I continue to ignore the upper torso, I am told, my column is a complete bust. (Tain’t new, friend.)
To make a clean breast of it (Serves you right: ti…never mind) there are not as many bosomy jokes in my inventory. Postcards before mid-century seem to pay less attention to the bosom. There are, to be sure, plenty of gags like the above, concerning padded figures, but an examination of the humor of the era suggests this was not very specific: whole bodies were padded or pinched, NOT just the chestal region.
Part of the problem is vocabulary. Donkeys and conjunctions provided excuses for using or suggesting the words “but” and “ass”. There were a few possibilities.
But in a world where even chicken breasts were referred to by the timid as “white meat”, what was a cartoonist to do. (As evidence that the jokes did exist, please refer to Abraham Lincoln’s joke about white meat. Whether he said it or not, it does prove that bosom jokes were not an invention of the 1930s.)
Of course, the euphemism can be made funnier than a simple straightforward observation.
We don’t have time for the full story here (which I admit has never made anyone laugh yet, at least the way I tell it) but there is a guide to naughty phrases in French which points out that where an American would say a phrase which, literally translated into French, indicates “Well, she has an excellent deer hunting trophy” where a Frenchman says what literally translated means “Lots of people on that balcony.”
So a lot of the postcards which start to appear in the Thirties deal primarily with a principle defined in humor as “This means that, they say.”
The use of some other phrase is often the whole joke. Sunshine and warmth do not actually work this way; you’re supposed to enjoy the combination of words and images and let the sense go by.
I’ve seen four or five postcards using this as a theme, none of which actually work very well if you pause to look them over. This is exactly what you’re not supposed to do. These gags are designed to go by quickly while you’re on your way to read what Nick (the bum) has written you from his vacation down south.
As the century went on, the cartoonists could become a little franker in their teasing. But by that time the era of rampant postcard mailing was becoming defunct.
Although several of the jokes, apparently, were still going strong even after the passage of decades.
Blogsy Babbles 