A Closeup of Domba Splew
Not since the tardy, posthumous death of Agera Cholera has the American literati been so baffled toward a rising genius of letters than has been demonstrated in regards to the Italian poet, Domba Splew, who, just a year ago, sprang into worldwide indifference by the publication, in The Bookman, of his verse, “La battia fella inna base tuba” (The weasel fell into the bathtub).
It is a matter of history that in the month in which this poem appeared, the circulation of the magazine in which it was printed increased two copies. And the fame of the author on this side of the old pond, as I call it, spread as far west as North Attleboro, Mass. You could not wake up in the morning or any other time without either wife or kiddies yelping, “Sweet papa, did you see this poem of Domba Splew’s, ‘La battia fella inna base tuba’ (The weasel fell into the bathtub)?”
It got so finely a person could not sleep at home at all and I for one rented one of the big New York hotels and slept outdoors, not being able to get a room. Everybody wondered what was the matter, but I laughed at them. Finely the editor of Rickets Weekly caught me in an upright position in the gutter and made me the unheard-of offer of $5.00 and no hundreds dollars to go and interview this America-Italio sensation and find out something about his home life.
To locate a man as famous as him is what Ex-Attorney-General Daugherty would call “les arbeit tough” (a hard job). But the writer, an experienced interviewer, looked upon it as child’s play and went to the nearest city ticket office where luckily I found a clerk who had not returned from lunch.
“Listen,” I said, “where would a man be apt to run acrost a foreign literary genius, discovered only a year ago?”
“Listen,” replied the clerk, “have you tried the artistic and bohemian mecca of American letters?”
“Where is that?” I coughed.
“Scranton, PA,” was the clerk’s reply.
So the writer bought a ticket to Scranton and arrived there only a half hour late.
To make a short story out of a risqué story, I found our hero living on the top floor of a six-story bungalow.
“If,” he said, “I am away from the smoke and chimbley, I am at a lost. In other words, I am a gone gosling.
“Listen,” he said: “I don’t think you know much about Italy, but I will tell you. In the first place there is a military rule which provides that when a native born reaches the age of seven, they must spend the next three years in jail, or, as Oscar Wilde aptly named it, Reading Gaol. The reason I came over to America was on acct. of the fact that there is more words here. I need words.”
In a little while he was supine.
“Now listen,” I said: “I have been sent over here to Scranton to find out about your home life. Tell me what you do all day.”
He went scarlet.
“I have got a set of rules,” he said, pulling a fresh cucumber off the hatrack. “In the morning I get up and talk to my dromedaries. Oh, those dromedaries! I would walk a mile for one of them! I have got a collection of eighty of them and each one more laughable than the first one. Every morning somebody sends me a dromedary. After talking to my dromedaries. I sit down and read the telephone book from cover to cover charge. But now leave me go out and show you my garden.”
The two of us strolled haltingly through his garden, which was an Italian garden with all the Italian dishes in bloom—ravioli, spaghetti, garlic, Aida, and citrous fruits.
“Is this your diversion?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, toppling over a govvel sprig and breaking his ankle in two places.
“Tell me about your home life,” I said with a sneer.
“I presume,” he said, taking a pair of suspenders out of the nearest waste basket, “I presume you want to know my daily calendar. Well, I always make it a point to get up at six in the morning and eat my breakfast food.”
I found out later
