Wombat Manor had always had an air of distinction that set it apart from any other house, but now in the dying afternoon sunshine, even after a surprise Southern California September thunderstorm, its windows blankly reflected the light of the declining daystar and seemed to have lost their whilom sparkle

Partridge, Harry B.

Digital Commons @ Butler University

5' Dina and spital. WIpe hand­13 GOOD-BYE, DR. 'WOMBAT! HARRY B. PARTRIDGE Cambria, California Wombat Manor had always had an air ?f distinction that set it apart from any other house, but now in the dying afternoon sunshine I even after a surprise Southern California September thun­derstorm, its windows blankly reflected the light of the declining daystar and seemed to have lost their whilom sparkle. "Dwelt-in houses are all different, undwelt-in houses are all alike. Can it be that the Wombat is leaving his lair, unique among messuages in the Golden State? Why has that elegant marsupial summoned me hither?" Such were the thoughts that roved bleakly through my mind as I drove up to the porte-cochere. The manor's chatelaine met me at the door as usual, but the chic grey traveling suit enveloping her svelte form struck a fore­boding note. A fringe of voile, dependi.ng from her smart toque, veiled her magnificent eyes. Wordless she led me through the empty echoing halls to The Marsupium. Ba re were all the wa lls; denuded all the floors. The savant sat on a built-in seat in the oriel win­dow and was himself dressed as though about to depart: a brown fedora drawn low over his forehead, a tan trench-coat disguising his rotund Shape. Shades of the thirties! My friend's Bogartesque garb drew a smile to my lips despite the pang which invaded my heart . "So kind of you to come on such short notice, dea r boy," began the Wombat. "I wanted to bid you a personal farewell, not discourt­eously disappear from your ken." "Then you are leaving I" I murmured. "I am. There is a time for all passages in mortal life. I have for some time been sessile; now for some time I will be mobile. The steroid set and sweat-·freaks from the whole world will soon be dropping from the skies. An incredible influx of entrepreneuses dedicated to what the Spanish delicately refet- to as La Vida ('The Life') - a term as incongruous when appl ied to their trade as that of 'gay' when applied to the sterile nastinesses of perversion ­will soon come flooding into the Loose Angles basin; one prostitute will purr,p out pelf for herself, another, profit for her pimp; nei­ther will benefit this Basin of Loss Angleless. One hundred thou­sand cars a day will pour down the two lanes on each side of minor traffic arteries. It may be the Last Traffic ] am. I n short, th is Basin of Lost Angels will become hostage to the Olympics I" He sighed. "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in i11is. II c 1984 by Harry B. Partridge, Cambria, California 14 "Nice line," I sighed back. "Yes," repeated the scholar, "'Times change and we change in then).' Do you know who said it?" "Some class ic, I guess . Maybe Lucreti us. " "Not Lucretius, but a British Martial." "A British marshal capable of such Latinity? I No wonder the Brit­ish Empire Cl vilized the world I Gentleman johnny Burgoyne of Rev­olutionary War fame was a popular playwright; Sir Charles Napiel' combined message and pun in his famous Peccavi (' I have sinned') when he defied express orders and captured Sind; and a certain Boer War subaltern (albeit half American) went on to win the No­bel Prize for Literature." "You enthuse with too few thews, ,. corrected the Wombat. "A Brit­ish Martial l M-A-R-T-I-A-L. One John Owen. A Welshman." "Isn't 'Owen' Welsh for 'john'? John john, then. Reminds me of some of the k ids with double-barreled names 1 knew in school like Thomas Thomas and George George." 1 wasn't sure the Wombat wasn't pulling my leg. The Wombat grimaced. "Di ttolog les like those you mention, whi Ie striking, are less pleasing that subtler names like Melanie Cherney ('black' in Greek and Russian) or Natalie and Noel Yule ('Christ­mas' In French, French, and English) or Bella Jaffe Schoen ('beau­tiful' in Italian/Span"ish, Hebrew, and German). Anyway, our Welsh­man Latinized his name as loannes Audoenus, not loannes loannes. 'Owen' is supposed to mean 'young warrior,' but why don't you research it?" -­"Never heard of him." "Probably because he published exclusively in Latin, in which he produced the best and largest body of epigrams in Neo-Latin li terature, outshone only by Martial fifteen hundred years before. john Owen was one of those logologists, wordsters, paronomasiacs, and lords of linguistic legerdemain who throve in the British Isles during 'the spacious days of great Elizabeth.' Born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare, he survived the 1mmorta 1 Bard by some eleven or twelve years, probably dymg between january 1627 and January 1628. It is easy to remember the number of his epigrams (1492) which he published in ten books. Forty-one of his poems are devoted entirely to word play, according to John R. C. Martyn, a recent (976) editor of Owen, who brought out the first edHion of the epigrams in 150 years; but this is surely a very low esti­mate, for a typically Welsh delight in words and their permutations and combinations is found on every page. "The line from Owen that I quoted is the first one of a distich (suggested by an inferior couplet, a motto of Charlemagne's son, Lothaire 1, by Matthew Borbonius) which in its entirety goes: Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis; Quomodo? Fit semper tempore peior homo. Times Ho' The Womb nessed so sun with t. to sustain supium I e was he a Ie "By his ogies, anag in fine, th and hoist r more, of '1 with its er son's rath€ muring of i Mille In a Or this en standing si because of and short to Hanniba him, 'How thou knowe~ Serval Rome On a we drummed ou "And wh c fini the " I a 1so I ry, Prince dedica ted a art, who s' himself. Al death of H the demise have spare, My furry affa irs. Or has never son though IX. The We change in er the Brit­yne of Rev­irles Napier lve sinned') j a certain win the No-at. "A Brit-Reminds me w in school the Wombat I1tion, while .nie Cherney Ie (' Christ­toen ('beau­our Welsh­les loannes. , don't you 1, in which n Neo-Latin =ars before. ~onomasiacs, 3ritish Isles n 1564, the lrd by some ry 1627 and .is epigi.'ams f his poems C. Martyn, first edition ~y low esti­permutations )f a distich agne's son, goes: 15 Times change and we change in them. How? Man always gets worse with time." The Wombat was speaking feelingly. The cold room that had wit­nessed so many of the conversations in which we had "tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky" warmed up. Seeking to sustain the congeniality that I had so often enjoyed in The Mar­supium I encouraged the dear beast to continue as I asked "How was he a logologist?" "By his artful word play and wizardly way with words: etymol­og ies, anagrams, puns, reversa Is, beheadments, tropes, d lsseCtlons: in fine, the wordster's whole arsenal~ He could plumb profundities and hoist himself to heights - all in two lines, four lines, rarely more, of 'Latin, marble's language, pure, serene.' Take this line with its enchanting alliteration, in sense far deeper than Tenny­son's rather forced 'moan of doves in immemorial elms And mur­muring of innumerable bees':" Mille modis morimur mortales, nascimur uno In a tho)Jsand ways we mortals die, [but] are born in one. Or this encapsulated anagram with its two opposed superlatives standing side by side, but each indissolubly bound to its noun because of the matching long A's at the ends of minima and mora and short A's at the ends of maxima and Roma ( the referencel:5 to Hannibal's fatal delay him, 'How to conquer thou thou knowest not'): after Cannae, when knowest, Hannibal; hMaharbal ow to use said victory to Servata est minima maxima Roma mora Rome the greatest was saved by the smallest delay." On a well-worn briefcase resting on his knees the Wombat then drummed out the meter of the cited lines: - ..,..... 1- -.;..,. 1-- r-- I 1-_.... 1-­--1---1-11---1---1­"And what could be truer or more melodious than this hemistich: finis amoris amarus the end of love is bitter. "1 also hnd most touching the polished praises he wrote to Hen­ry, Prince of Wales, son of James 1. But at the same time he also dedicated a book of epigrams to the unfortunate Lady Arabella Stu­art, who some thought had a better right to the throne than James himself. Alas, Owen stopped writing about 1613, shortly after the death of Henry; and his three last poems are heartfelt plaints at the demise of one who, had he survived to become Henry IX, would ha ve spared England its Civil Wars ... " My furry friend has an extensive knowledge of royal and noble affairs. One of his deep-seated resentments seems to be that there has never been a Henry IX in England; for, Jacobite like Dr. John­son though he is, he balks at recognizing Cardinal York as Henry IX. The Wombat also deplores the name William given to the present 16 Prince of Wales's son; for he fears that, as in so many dynasties, tne name of the last king will duplicate that of the first. 1 will not mention how he bristles when he discusses the fates of the royal Arthurs l Mr. Dick had his King Charles's Head; the Wombat has several. So, to keep him from a long discursus, 1 hurriedly demanded, "Give me some examples of Owen's work that today' s America wordster can appreciate." "Well, how about this true etymology, or, rather, statement of cogna tes: English bed and We Ish bedd (spelled 'bed I in Owen's time) : Angli bed lee tum vocitant, Cambrique sepulcrum; Lectus enim tumuli, mortis imago sopor. The English calla bed a bed, and the Welsh call a tomb a bed; A bed is indeed the image of a grave, and sleep the im­age of death. Or this ancient etymology (found in Varro): Dicta fuit mulier quasi mollior; est tamen Eva Non de carne sui sumpta sed osse vin. Woman [mulier] is named as though she weL'e softer [mo11ior], but Eve Was not taken from her husband's flesh, but his bone. "Owen has several epigrams on Eve, including an anagram set (Eva: Eve, vae: woe, ave: hail) in a couplet addressed to Adam: Eva, parens mortis, malo te falsa fefellit; Cum que tuum strueret I vae , I tibi dixit lave. / False Eve, the mother of death, with an apple deceived you, And, as she was causing your woe, to you said 'Hail.' "Owen was of his tir.te in unmercifully using the second story of crea tion, found in Genesis 2, with its Adam-Eve-serpent allegory to belabor women; and like Shakespeare he was obsessed with the horn s of cuckoldry. He even managed to work a Greek pun on keras 'horn' and kreas 'flesh' into one quatrain. Let's skip this stuff tha t dates Owen. "Here's a rather neat epigram showing Owen's skill at dissec­tion, in this instance giving the word (trica) from which English 'trick' ultimately comes. Meretrix (plural meretrices), however, is in reality a derivative of mereo 'to deserve, merit, earn, gain, acquire' and means 'she who earns money.' Scortum 'whore' has the primary meaning of 'skin, hide. I Festus says that scortum has that secondary meaning because 'they [scorta] are worked like skins.' Interesting that skins, when tanned, lose their fur or hair. Esse meras tricas meretrices, haud male dixti; Scorta tamen raros in cute trichas habent. You said, by no means improperly, that meretrices (prosti­tutes) are mere tricks; But whores have few trichas (Greek, 'hairs') on their skin. Note the still true woman is, And, anoth while a 't sa id entert "By the "Strange is talking Meanwh ile to analyze Also me. briefcase, his journe stuffed wil filled with and-cocoa­milk chees These he rosity. "Well, " to be a Ii doubtedly GER, ELGA letters. EJ GREAL. " "Right l " able larde of Recte S The L "Anyone a commonp RECTA Crete, CAR The doc and point wrist. "At by the el friendship of deeds. y dynasties, 'irst. I will fates of the the Wombat 1 hurriedly hat today's statement of in Owen's call a tomb .eep the im­:r [mollior], :me. magram set Adam: :ived you, ,Hail. ' econd story ~nt allegory ed with the un on keras J this stuff at dis sec­ich English however, earn, gain, whore' has scortum has Norked like ur or hair. :es (prosti­on their 17 Note the neat Latin-Greek pun tricas-trlcas. The observation is still true today: the more sexually active or would-be active a woman is, the more concerned is she that her sk in be hai rfree. And, another nicety, 'to turn a trick I means to entertain a client; while a 'trick suit' is a garment easily slipped off to facilitate sa id enterta inment. "By the way, what is unusual about these verses: Large and regal Alger Elgar Kept five small letters in a bell jar, Using them to spell his name Plus adjectiva to the same And tout Glare Lager via Telstar." "Strange," thought I, "or maybe not so strange, here the Wombat is talk ing about John Owen and suddenly derails to that doggerel." Meanwhile 1 mentally pictured the poetaster's product in an attempt to analyze it. Also meanwhi Ie, the trench-coated trencherman had opened his briefcase, which 1 had assumed was packed with necessities for his journey. perhaps even including a gat; but it proved to be stuffed with what turned out to be calissons (sugar-glazed wafers filled with canteloupe, almonds, and orange), amandas (chocola te­and-cocoa-dusted almond nougat). the sma 11, flat, coin-like goa t­milk cheeses known as rocamadour, and heaven knows what else. These he not only partook of, but proffered with his usual gene­rosity. "Well," said I between bites, "I guess the verses are supposed to be a limerick, although there are not any anapaests in it. Un­doubted ly it is designed to display the words LARGE, REGAL, AL­GER, ELGAR, GLARE, and LAGER, all spelled with the same five letters. Elgar probably serves his Glare Lager in a GRAEL or a GREAL. " "Right!" commended the Wombat. likewise munching from his port­able larder. "Now contrast those forced anagrams with the artistry of Recta fides certa est, arcet mala schismata, non est Sicut Creta fides, fictilis; arte caret. The right faith is true, prevents evil schisms; it is not, Like a Cretan's word, made of clay; it lacks artifice. "Anyone can apply this to his own faith. The Cretan slur is a commonplace, and there are English reflexes of all the anagrams: RECTA - right, CERTA - certain, ARCET - ark, arcane, CRETA ­Crete, CARET - caret." The doors of The Marsupium opened; the Chatelaine stood there and pointed with her right index finger at the back of her left wrist. "Ah, dear friend," said the Wombat rising and guiding me by the elbow toward the door. "1 must go. 1 have enjoyed your friendsh ip in our world of words, but now 1 am entering the world of deeds. Nevertheless, I would still enjoy your company if you 18 were able to follow me. Here is a little gift to remember me by, and a little something therein, which, if you can decipher it, tells you when and where to meet me." We had reached the porte-cochere where stood a magnificent steel­blue 1930 Packard 745 Victoria coupe, its hood ornament of Daphne at the Well contemplating the driveway before her. The chatelaine, who had followed us out, retrieved a small package from her purse and handed it to the Wombat, who extended it to me, then opened the driver's door for his companion, walked around to the passen­ger's side, and climbed in as 1 performed for him the same office that he had for the chatelaine. The motor sprang to life, the win­dow lowered, the Wombat stuck out his head and said, "Just re­member, 1 am not going to Athens." The usual gate. Victoria rolled feline fluidity They were gone' smoothly off, its and panache, adriver guiding nd disappeared it with around her the 1 raised called. the package and waved. "Good-bye, Dr. Wombat!" 1 EPILOGUE The gift turned out to be a small edition of Propertius beautiful­ly bound in fine linen. In the quiet of my study 1 turned the pa­ges over and admired the paper which had already lasted longer than the United States had existed. As 1 leafed it through, savor­ing not only the familiar lines, but the intense black ink that embodied them, 1 came to Elegy XX 1 of Book Ill, which begins Magnum iter ad doctas proficisci cogar Athenas 1 am forced to set out on a great journey to learned Athens. A bit of thin paper fell out. Unfolding it to the size of a post­card I found myself looking at a small drawing: the gate of a courtyard stood open and gave a view of a river winding through apple orchards; a radiant sun stood high in the sky and streamed through the portal. Agatnst a wall leaned a large X made of wood. What seemed to be thongs were bound near the end of each leg, and three of the legs shared four pronounced notches between them. 1n the foreground, composi tiona lly balancing the wooden X, crouched a rabbit winking one eye, as though to say "Signum sapienti sat" (A sign to the sapient suffices). Quite in the lower right corner stood the letters UU PINX. Yes, dear reader, by dint of deep thought, letting my inward eye stare past the symbols so that their meaning would impinge upon my peripheral mental retina, 1 solved the puzzle and divined the date and place. Wha t followed is another story . Farewell. Editor's Note: Readers are invited to write to the Editor with their interpretations of the Wombat's rebus; these will be published in the next issue of Word Ways. A PAN( JEFF GRANl Hastings, ~ Editor's issue, P mond, p: challengE ed below Defin i tions: BUROWED, row I (C JAGAL, a JUICK, a KAXES, p umbelli LEOVS, fo MIR, a d PARNHAM, in Dors PYT, an E QUINTFOII having SCHAIVE, tionary TAWFl ER " tionary ZYGOTAX l~ two sus 

Good-Bye, Dr. Wombat!

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Good-Bye, Dr. Wombat!

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