Monday morning

30 January 2017

— From my window a lace pattern of 20,000 black branches visible against a gray sky 

Good Morning All,

Today we get The Purple Cow, by Gelett Brugess, and its sequel, which is just as good.

 

The Purple Cow

Gelett Burgess - '1866'

I never saw a purple cow,

I never hope to see one;

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I’d rather see than be one. 

Confession

Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow—

I’m sorry, now, I wrote it;

But I can tell you Anyhow

I’ll kill you if you Quote it!

Gelett Burgess - 1866

 

Since I figured Burgess was probably just some luck guy whose immortality was ensured by scribbling down one four-line poem, I looked him up.

Turns out I was, at best, half right. He was born in Boston, “raised among staid, conservative New England gentry”, and attended MIT. But Boston--being too starchy for him, he went to San Francisco and got himself a job at Berkeley as an instructor in topographical drawing.

Along came a fellow named Henry Cogswell, a pro-temperance advocate, who gave the city a free water fountain with a statue of him in the middle holding up a temperance pledge. What could Burgess? He felt he had little alternative other than to join a group of his ale drinking friends, throw a rope around the statue, and pull it over. For which he lost his job at Berkeley, (though of course Berkeley now counts him among their favorite sons.)

After that, he started a humor magazine, The Lark, which printed The Purple Cow in its first edition and went on to have 3,000 subscribers. 

Next, he was off to New York where he wrote The Wild Men of Paris, an influential art-crit piece on what would be called cubism.

But in all likelihood, almost no one today would know anything about his humor rag or his prescient art criticism. Whereas it would not be a stretch to estimate the majority of the educated people of the western world have heard The Purple Cow and many of them could recite it.

My guess is Burgess would be amused to know his immortality came down to twenty-four musical words he had probably jotted down in five minutes or less.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron