Part 13

Mutt is a _picaro_, one of the few rogues created in America. There is nothing too dishonest for him, nor is there any chance so slim that he won’t take it. He has an object in life: he does not do mean or vicious things simply for the pleasure of doing them, and so is vastly superior to the Peck’s Bad Boy type of strip which has an apparently endless vogue--the type best known in _The Katzenjammer Kids_. This is the least ingenious, the least interesting as drawing, the sloppiest in colour, the weakest in conception and in execution, of all the strips, and it is the one which has determined the intellectual idea of what all strips are like. It is now divided into two--and they are equally bad. How happy one could be with neither! The other outstanding picaresque strip is _Happy Hooligan_--the type tramp--who with his brother, Gloomy Gus, had added to the gallery of our national mythology. _Non est qualis erat_--the spark has gone out of him in recent years.[17] Elsewhere you still find that exceptionally immoral and dishonest attitude toward the business standards of America. For the comic strip, especially after you leave the domestic-relations type which is itself realistic and unsentimental, is specifically more violent, more dishonest, more tricky and roguish, than America usually permits its serious arts to be. The strips of cleverness: _Foxy Grandpa_, the boy inventor, _Hawkshaw the Detective_, haven’t great vogue. _Boob McNutt_, without a brain in his head, beloved by the beautiful heiress, has a far greater following, although it is the least worthy of Rube Goldberg’s astonishing creations. But Mutt and Jiggs and _Abie the Agent_, and _Barney Google_ and _Eddie’s Friends_ have so little respect for law, order, the rights of property, the sanctity of money, the romance of marriage, and all the other foundations of American life, that if they were put into fiction the Society for the Suppression of Everything would hale them incontinently to court and our morals would be saved again.

_The Hall-room Boys_ (now known as _Percy and Ferdy_, I think) are also picaresque; the indigent pretenders to social eminence who do anything to get on. They are great bores, not because one foresees the denunciation at the end, but because they somehow fail to come to life, and one doesn’t care whether they get away with it or not.

_Abie_ and _Jerry on the Job_ are good strips because they are self-contained, seldom crack jokes, and have each a significant touch of satire. Abie is the Jew of commerce and the man of common sense; you have seen him quarrel with a waiter because of an overcharge of ten cents, and, encouraged by his companion, replying, “Yes, and it ain’t the principle, either; it’s the ten cents.” You have seen a thousand tricks by which he once sold Complex motor cars and now promotes cinema shows or prize fights. He is the epitome of one side of his race, and his attractiveness is as remarkable as his jargon. Jerry’s chief fault is taking a stock situation and prolonging it; his chief virtue, at the moment, is his funny, hard-boiled attitude towards business. Mr Givney, the sloppy sentimentalist who is pleased because some one took him for Mr Taft (“Nice, clean fun,” says Jerry of that), is faced with the absurd Jerry, who demolishes efficiency systems and the romance of big business and similar nonsense with his devastating logic or his complete stupidity. The railway station at Ammonia hasn’t the immortal character of _The Toonerville Trolley_ (that meets all the trains) because Fontaine Fox has a far more entertaining manner than Hoban, and because Fox is actually a caricaturist--all of his figures are grotesque, the powerful _Katinka_ or _Aunt Eppie_ not more so than the Skipper. Hoban and Hershfield both understate; Fox exaggerates grossly; but with his exaggeration he is so ingenious, so inventive that each strip is funny and the total effect is the creation of character in the Dickens sense. It is not the method of _Mutt and Jeff_ nor of _Barney Google_ in which Billy de Beck has done much with a luckless wight, a sentimentalist, and an endearing fool all rolled into one.

These are the strips which come to life each day, without forcing, and which stay long in memory. I am stating the case for the strip in general and have gone so far as to speak well of some I do not admire, nor read with animation. The continued existence of others remains a mystery to me; why they live beyond change, and presumably beyond accidental death, is one of the things no one can profitably speculate upon. I do not see why I should concede anything more to the enemies of the strip. In one of _Life’s_ burlesque numbers there was a page of comics expertly done by j held in the manner of our most popular artists. Each of the half dozen strips illustrated the joke: “Who was that lady I seen you with on the street last night?” “That wasn’t a lady; that was my wife.” Like so many parodies, this arrived too late, for the current answer is, “That wasn’t a street; that was an alley.” Each picture ended in a slam and a cry--also belated. The actual demolition of the slam ending was accomplished by T. E. Powers, who touches the field of the comic strip rarely, and then with his usual ferocity. In a footnote to a cartoon he drew _Mike and Mike_. In six pictures four represented one man hitting the other; once to emphasize a pointless joke, twice thereafter for no reason at all, and finally to end the picture. It was destruction by exaggeration; and no comic strip artist missed the point.

At the extremes of the comic strip are the realistic school and the fantastic--and of fantasy there are but few practitioners. Tad has some of the quality in _Judge Rummy_, but for the most part the Judge and Fedink and the rest are human beings dressed up as dogs--they are out of Æsop, not out of LaFontaine. But the Judge is actually funny, and I recall an inhuman and undoglike episode in which he and Fedink each claimed to have the loudest voice, and so in midwinter, in a restaurant, each lifted up his voice and uttered and shouted and bellowed the word “Strawberries” until they were properly thrown into the street. This is the kind of madness which is required in fantasy, and Goldberg occasionally has it. He is the most versatile of the lot; he has created characters, and scenes, and continuous episodes--foolish questions and meetings of ladies’ clubs and inventions (not so good as Heath Robinson’s) and through them there has run a wild grotesquerie. The tortured statues of his _décors_ are marvelous, the way he pushes stupidity and ugliness to their last possible point, and humour into everything, is amazing. Yet I feel he is _manqué_, because he has never found a perfect medium for his work.

Frueh is a fine artist in caricature and could have no such difficulty. When he took it into his head to do a daily strip he was bound to do something exceptional, and he succeeded. It is a highly sophisticated thing in its humour, in its subjects, and pre-eminently in its execution. His series on prohibition enforcement had infinite ingenuity, so also his commentaries on political events in New York city. He remains a caricaturist in these strips, indicating, by his use of the medium, that its possibilities are not exhausted. Yet for all his dealing with “ideas” his method remains fantastic, and although he isn’t technically a comic-strip artist he is the best approach to the one artist whom I have only mentioned, George Herriman, and to his immortal creation. For there is, in and outside the comic strip, a solitary and incomprehensible figure which must be treated apart. The Krazy Kat that Walks by Himself.

_The Krazy Kat That Walks by Himself_

THE KRAZY KAT THAT WALKS BY HIMSELF

Krazy Kat, the daily comic strip of George Herriman is, to me, the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America to-day. With those who hold that a comic strip cannot be a work of art I shall not traffic. The qualities of Krazy Kat are irony and fantasy--exactly the same, it would appear, as distinguish _The Revolt of the Angels_; it is wholly beside the point to indicate a preference for the work of Anatole France, which is in the great line, in the major arts. It happens that in America irony and fantasy are practised in the major arts by only one or two men, producing high-class trash; and Mr Herriman, working in a despised medium, without an atom of pretentiousness, is day after day producing something essentially fine. It is the result of a naïve sensibility rather like that of the _douanier_ Rousseau; it does not lack intelligence, because it is a thought-out, a constructed piece of work. In the second order of the world’s art it is superbly first rate--and a delight! For ten years, daily and frequently on Sunday, Krazy Kat has appeared in America; in that time we have accepted and praised a hundred fakes from Europe and Asia--silly and trashy plays, bad painting, woful operas, iniquitous religions, everything paste and brummagem, has had its vogue with us; and a genuine, honest native product has gone unnoticed until in the year of grace 1922 a ballet brought it a tardy and grudging acclaim.

Herriman is our great master of the fantastic and his early career throws a faint light on the invincible creation which is his present masterpiece. For all of his other things were comparative failures. He could not find, in the realistic framework he chose, an appropriate medium for his imaginings, or even for the strange draughtsmanship which is his natural mode of expression. _The Family Upstairs_ seemed to the realist reader simply incredible; it failed to give him the pleasure of recognizing his neighbours in their more ludicrous moments. _The Dingbats_, hapless wretches, had the same defect. Another strip came nearer to providing the right tone: _Don Koyote and Sancho Pansy_; Herriman’s mind has always been preoccupied with the mad knight of La Mancha, who reappears transfigured in _Krazy Kat_. And--although the inspirations are _never_ literary--when it isn’t Cervantes it is Dickens to whom he has the greatest affinity. The Dickens mode operated in _Baron Bean_--a figure half Micawber, half Charlie Chaplin as man of the world. I have noted, in writing of Chaplin, Mr Herriman’s acute and sympathetic appreciation of the first few moments of _The Kid_. It is only fair to say here that he had himself done the same thing in his medium. Baron Bean was always in rags, penniless, hungry; but he kept his man Grimes, and Grimes did his dirty work, Grimes was the Baron’s outlet, and Grimes, faithful retainer, held by bonds of admiration and respect, helped the Baron in his one great love affair. Like all of Herriman’s people, they lived on the enchanted mesa (pronounced: ma-cey) by Coconino, near the town of Yorba Linda. The Baron was inventive; lacking the money to finance the purchase of a postage stamp, he entrusted a love letter to a carrier pigeon; and his “Go, my paloma,” on that occasion, is immortal.

Some of these characters are reappearing in Herriman’s latest work: _Stumble Inn_. Of this I have not seen enough to be sure. It is a mixture of fancy and realism; Mr Stumble himself is the Dickens character again--the sentimental, endearing innkeeper who would rather lose his only patron than kill a favourite turkey cock for Thanksgiving. I have heard that recently a litter of pups has been found in the cellar of the inn; so I should judge that fantasy has won the day. For it is Herriman’s bent to disguise what he has to say in creations of the animal world which are neither human nor animal, but each _sui generis_.

That is how the Kat started. The thought of a friendship between a cat and a mouse amused Herriman and one day he wrote them in as a footnote to _The Family Upstairs_. On their first appearance they played marbles while the family quarreled; and in the last picture the marble dropped through a hole in the bottom line. An office boy named Willie was the first to recognize the strange virtues of _Krazy Kat_. As surely as he was the greatest of office boys, so the greatest of editors, Arthur Brisbane, was the next to praise. He urged Herriman to keep the two characters in action; within a week they began a semi-independent existence in a strip an inch wide under the older strip. Slowly they were detached, were placed at one side, and naturally stepped into the full character of a strip when the _Family_ departed. In time the Sundays appeared--three quarters of a page, involving the whole Krazy Kat and Ignatz families[18] and the flourishing town of Coconino--the flora and fauna of that enchanted region which Herriman created out of his memories of the Arizona desert he so dearly loves.

In one of his most metaphysical pictures Herriman presents Krazy as saying to Ignatz: “I ain’t a Kat ... and I ain’t Krazy” (I put dots to indicate the lunatic shifting of background which goes on while these remarks are made; although the action is continuous and the characters motionless, it is in keeping with Herriman’s method to have the backdrop in a continual state of agitation; you never know when a shrub will become a redwood, or a hut a church) ... “it’s wot’s behind me that I am ... it’s the idea behind me, ‘Ignatz’ and that’s wot I am.” In an attitude of a contortionist Krazy points to the blank space behind him, and it is there that we must look for the “Idea.” It is not far to seek. There is a plot and there is a theme--and considering that since 1913 or so there have been some three thousand strips, one may guess that the variations are infinite. The plot is that Krazy (androgynous, but according to his creator willing to be either) is in love with Ignatz Mouse; Ignatz, who is married, but vagrant, despises the Kat, and his one joy in life is to “Krease that Kat’s bean with a brick” from the brickyard of Kolin Kelly. The fatuous Kat (Stark Young has found the perfect word for him: he is crack-brained) takes the brick, by a logic and a cosmic memory presently to be explained, as a symbol of love; he cannot, therefore, appreciate the efforts of Offisa B. Pupp to guard him and to entrammel the activities of Ignatz Mouse (or better, Mice). A deadly war is waged between Ignatz and Offisa Pupp--the latter is himself romantically in love with Krazy; and one often sees pictures in which Krazy and Ignatz conspire together to outwit the officer, both wanting the same thing, but with motives all at cross-purposes. This is the major plot; it is clear that the brick has little to do with the violent endings of other strips, for it is surcharged with emotions. It frequently comes not at the end, but at the beginning of an action; sometimes it does not arrive. It is a symbol.

The theme is greater than the plot. John Alden Carpenter has pointed out in the brilliant little foreword[19] to his ballet, that Krazy Kat is a combination of Parsifal and Don Quixote, the perfect fool and the perfect knight. Ignatz is Sancho Panza and, I should say, Lucifer. He loathes the sentimental excursions, the philosophic ramblings of Krazy; he interrupts with a well-directed brick the romantic excesses of his companion. For example: Krazy blindfolded and with the scales of Justice in his hand declares: “Things is all out of perpotion, ‘Ignatz.’” “In what way, fool?” enquires the Mice as the scene shifts to the edge of a pool in the middle of the desert. “In the way of ‘ocean’ for a instinct.” “Well?” asks Ignatz. They are plunging head down into mid-sea, and only their hind legs, tails, and words are visible: “The ocean is so innikwilly distribitted.” They appear, each prone on a mountain peak, above the clouds, and the Kat says casually across the chasm to Ignatz: “Take ‘Denva, Kollorado’ and ‘Tulsa, Okrahoma’ they ain’t got no ocean a tall--” (they are tossed by a vast sea, together in a packing-case) “while Sem Frencisco, Kellafornia, and Bostin, Messachoosit, has got more ocean than they can possibly use”--whereon Ignatz properly distributes a brick evenly on Krazy’s noodle. Ignatz “has no time” for foolishness; he is a realist and Sees Things as They ARE. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” says he; “I’m too broad-minded and advanced for such nonsense.”

But Mr Herriman, who is a great ironist, understands pity. It is the destiny of Ignatz never to know what his brick means to Krazy. He does not enter into the racial memories of the Kat which go back to the days of Cleopatra, of the Bubastes, when Kats were held sacred. Then, on a beautiful day, a mouse fell in love with Krazy, the beautiful daughter of Kleopatra Kat; bashful, advised by a soothsayer to write his love, he carved a declaration on a brick and, tossing the “missive,” was accepted, although he had nearly killed the Kat. “When the Egyptian day is done it has become the Romeonian custom to crease his lady’s bean with a brick laden with tender sentiments ... through the tide of dusty years” ... the tradition continues. But only Krazy knows this. So at the end it is the incurable romanticist, the victim of acute Bovaryisme, who triumphs; for Krazy faints daily in full possession of his illusion, and Ignatz, stupidly hurling his brick, thinking to injure, fosters the illusion and keeps Krazy “heppy.”

Not always, to be sure. Recently we beheld Krazy smoking an “eligint Hawanna cigar” and sighing for Ignatz; the smoke screen he produced hid him from view when Ignatz passed, and before the Mice could turn back, Krazy had handed over the cigar to Offisa Pupp and departed, saying “Looking at ‘Offisa Pupp’ smoke himself up like a chimly is werra werra intrisking, but it is more wital that I find ‘Ignatz’”--wherefore Ignatz, thinking the smoke screen a ruse, hurls his brick, blacks the officer’s eye, and is promptly chased by the limb of the law. Up to this point you have the usual technique of the comic strip, as old as Shakespeare. But note the final picture of Krazy beholding the pursuit, himself disconsolate, unbricked, alone, muttering: “Ah, there him is--playing tag with ‘Offisa Pupp’--just like the boom compenions wot they is.” It is this touch of irony and pity which transforms all of Herriman’s work, which relates it, for all that the material is preposterous, to something profoundly true and moving. It isn’t possible to retell these pictures; but that is the only way, until they are collected and published, that I can give the impression of Herriman’s gentle irony, of his understanding of tragedy, of the _sancta simplicitas_, the innocent loveliness in the heart of a creature more like Pan than any other creation of our time.

Given the general theme, the variations are innumerable, the ingenuity never flags. I use haphazard examples from 1918 to 1923, for though the Kat has changed somewhat since the days when he was even occasionally feline, the essence is the same. Like Charlot, he was always living in a world of his own, and subjecting the commonplaces of actual life to the test of his higher logic. Does Ignatz say that “the bird is on the wing,” Krazy suspects an error and after a careful scrutiny of bird life says that “from rissint obserwation I should say that the wing is on the bird.” Or Ignatz observes that Don Kiyote is still running. Wrong, says the magnificent Kat: “he is either still or either running, but not both still and both running.” Ignatz passes with a bag containing, he says, bird-seed. “Not that I doubt your word, Ignatz,” says Krazy, “but could I give a look?” And he is astonished to find that it is bird-seed, after all, for he had all the time been thinking that birds grew from eggs. It is Ignatz who is impressed by a falling star; for Krazy “them that don’t fall” are the miracle. I recommend Krazy to Mr Chesterton, who, in his best moments, will understand. His mind is occupied with eternal oddities, with simple things to which his nature leaves him unreconciled. See him entering a bank and loftily writing a check for thirty million dollars. “You haven’t that much money in the bank,” says the cashier. “I know it,” replies Krazy; “have you?” There is a drastic simplicity about Krazy’s movements; he is childlike, regarding with grave eyes the efforts of older people to be solemn, to pretend that things are what they seem; and like children he frightens us because none of our pretensions escapes him. A king to him is a “royal cootie.” “Golla,” says he, “I always had a ida they was grend, and megnifishint, and wondafil, and mejestic ... but my goodniss! It ain’t so.” He should be given to the _enfant terrible_ of Hans Andersen who knew the truth about kings.

He is, of course, blinded by love. Wandering alone in springtime, he suffers the sight of all things pairing off; the solitude of a lonesome pine worries him and when he finds a second lonesome pine he comes in the dead of night and transplants one to the side of the other, “so that in due course, Nature has her way.” But there are moments when the fierce pang of an unrequited passion dies down. “In these blissfil hours my soul will know no strife,” he confides to Mr Bum Bill Bee, who, while the conversation goes on, catches sight of Ignatz with a brick, flies off, stings Ignatz from the field, and returns to hear: “In my Kosmis there will be no feeva of discord ... all my immotions will function in hominy and kind feelings.” Or we see him at peace with Ignatz himself. He has bought a pair of spectacles, and seeing that Ignatz has none, cuts them in two, so that each may have a monocle. He is gentle, and gentlemanly, and dear; and these divagations of his are among his loveliest moments; for when irony plays about him he is as helpless--as we are.