Toujour Gai!

Hello. It is I, Archibald Cat McLaughlin. My Uncle Ron sent Mother a note asking how our names came about. I felt it was time that I took to the typing helm, with less exertion than my namesake of course (yes, Mother takes dictation), and shared my naming with those of you who actually read my brother's blog.

My mother named me after Archibald, a poet with a tormented soul who died and was reincarnated into the body of a cockroach. In the 1910s and 1920s, Mr. Don Marquis left a piece of blank paper in his Royal typewriter and Archibald the roach head-butted out his soul, sharing his view from the underbelly of the world. Mr. Marquis was kind enough to reprint Archy's words daily in the New York Sun and, later, the New York Tribune. While Archy mostly spoke about being a Manhattan cockroach (who occassionally went to the other boroughs and, later, to international places such as Egypt), he also discussed a cat who followed him everywhere. Her name was Mehitabel and she had no mind. She kept giving birth to kittens and forgetting where she left them. Her motto - Tourjour gai! And she often swore, always dictated by Archy as "wotthehell."

When Mother took a look at me, she saw the torment in my eyes. While being a damn cute kitten (and now an adult cat), she saw that I had so much to say and yet couldn't because my poetic soul was trapped in the body of a furry kitten with only kitten lips to try to whisper out my words. My paws are too big to type; and sitting on the computer keyboard only affords me a series of letters that are dkdjidjfoaihhrelwnlkldndlkdkhfdoiiy that no one can translate but I. My lack of ability to share my poetry with the world often makes me tense, jumpy and, of course, tormented, like my namesake. But, thankfully, I have parents who understand and they love me nonetheless.

Here's the first poem about Archy that appeared in the New York Sun. Remember, everything Archy types is in lower case because, on a Royal typewriter, you need to hold down TWO keys in order to get CAPITAL letters and a lowly cockroach certainly doesn't have the capacity for that.

the coming of archy
By Don Marquis

the circumstances of Archy's first appearance are narrated in the following extract from the Sun Dial column of the New York Sun.

Dobbs Ferry possesses a rat which slips out of his lair at night and runs a typewriting machine in the garage. Unfortunately, he has always been interrupted by the watchman before he could produce a complete story.

It was at first thought that the power which made the typewriter run was a ghost, instead of a rat. It seems likely to us that it was both a ghost and a rat. Mme. Blavatsky's ego went into a white horse after she passed over, and someone's personality has undoubtedly gone into this rat. It is an era of belief in communications from the spirit land.

And since this matter had been reported in the public prints and seriously received we are no longer afraid of being ridiculed, and we do not mind making a statement of something that happened to our own typewriter only a couple of weeks ago.

We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning and discovered a giant cockroach jumping about on the keys.

He did not see us, and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the mahcine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.

Congratulating ourself that we had left a sheet of paper in the machine the night before so all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination, and this is what we found:

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook upon life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i can't eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay

most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it

i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems show how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddie dies i hope he wont be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then

dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i havent a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy

Mr. Marquis used Archy mostly for entertainment but also used him to make major social commentary on the stock market crash, the Great Depression and Communism. It seems folks were willing to read about these topics when hearing about them from a cockroach. Mr. Marquis poems are still in print, and there's even a whole website dedicated to him.

I hope Jonathan's faithful reading audience enjoyed learning about my name. I suppose Jonathan will write some over-the-top explanation about his naming. His name, however, will always be less dignified than mine, since I am truly named after a major literary figure of the 20th century.

With cordial purrs,
Yours truly,

Archibald C. McLaughlin