The author of this very sensible ditty was the American poet, Ogden Nash, who was born 100 years ago today. A sweet-tempered satirist, Nash poked fun at human foibles but in a gentle, light-hearted way. Savage indignation did not lacerate his breast nor was he given to finger wagging. He wrote an enormous number of poems on a wide variety of subjects, poems that demonstrated his dry wit and linguistic playfulness, writes Brian Maye
"God in his wisdom made the fly/ And then forgot to tell us why."
Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was born in Rye, New York, the second youngest of five children. He was born into a family that prized a complete education, which was to form the basis of his life-long love of languages, writing and classics. By the age of 10 he was showing the flair for humorous verse that would mark the rest of his life. But his preference was for serious poetry and as a teenager he regularly wrote poems for family, friends, school publications and local newspapers.
He had to leave Harvard after just a year because of a downturn in the family's finances and he never returned to university, working instead to support himself and help his family.
At 19, he became a full-time teacher at his former high school. Then he moved on to work in the stock market but wasn't cut out for this sort of career (he sold only one bond - to his godmother - in 18 months). In his next job, as a copywriter for streetcar advertisements, he at last had the opportunity to use some of his creativity. His first commercially published book, The Cricket of Carador, was a work of children's fiction similar to Alice in Wonderland.
The turning point in his career was when he went to work as an editor at Doubleday publishers. Here he met and worked with some of the most respected authors of the time, like Dorothy Parker, P.G. Wodehouse and Thorne Smith. His boss, Dan Longwell, encouraged him to submit to the New Yorker some of the light verse he wrote when bored at the office. When the magazine accepted, paid for and published his work he was pleasantly surprised.
In 1931, he married Frances Leonard and they had two baby girls in quick succession. Nash had never abandoned his dream since adolescence of being a serious poet but publishers would not even look at his serious work and, in order to put bread on the table, he stuck with the light verse for which he was becoming popular. Fortunately for himself, he had an eye for the humorous side of things which he illustrated so well in his verse.
Prolific ourput
His was a prolific output. There are at least 1,500 works bearing his copyright and there could well be a good deal more - he was not very good at keeping records. It is not so well known that he was the lyricist for several musicals, among them One Touch of Venus (with Kurt Weill), He and She, Sweet Bye and Bye and Two's Company. He also did the verses for Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals and for Ravel's Mother Goose Suite and Peter and the Wolf.
His granddaughter has written that, contrary to what most people think, writing humorous verse did not come easily to Nash. He worked hard at it daily and his habit was to write on lined, yellow legal pads, constantly making notes to himself about words and their relations to other words. He had notepads scattered all around his home. Words that he thought of rhyming together were often written in different pads but somehow showed up together in a poem two or three yeas later.
He found his inspiration from observing day-to-day life around him. Few would disagree with the sentiment of his Advice to Husbands, no doubt based on hard experience. To keep your marriage brimming/ With love in the loving cup,/ Whenever you're wrong, admit it;/ Whenever you're right, shut up!
His poem, Reflections on Ice-Breaking, also contains sound advice: Candy is dandy/ But liquor is quicker.
Nash had a great fondness for children, animals and indeed all creatures great and small. The Termite shows his whimsical sense of fun: Some primal termite knocked on wood/ And tasted it, and found it good,/ And that is why your Cousin May/ Fell through the parlour floor today.
Although plenty of real creatures existed to satisfy his imagination, he was reminiscent of Edward Lear in the way he invented some for good measure. The Guppy is an example: Whales have calves,/ Cats have kittens,/ Bears have cubs,/ Bats have bittens,/ Swans have cygnets,/ Seals have puppies,/ But guppies just have little guppies.
One aspect of the life of the turtle aroused (no pun intended) Nash's admiration: The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks/ Which practically conceal its sex./ I think it clever of the turtle/ In such a fix to be so fertile.
Believing that it was pretty unusual to earn a living writing poetry, Ogden Nash always feared that the poem he had just sold would be his last, so to secure a steadier source of income he did something he hated - he went on the lecture circuit regularly. This meant being away from home for two or three months at a time and having to stand before a group of strangers to talk about his verse, which had a bad effect on his health.
Despite this, he remained one of the most popular and prolific writers of humorous verse. Part of his success was that he was a perfect exponent of "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed". Witness: I don't mind eels/ Except as meals./ And the way they feels.