James Thurber's best-known cartoon has an impassive little man introducing his spouse to a dazed friend with 'That's My First Wife Up There, and This Is the Present Mrs Harris.' The first Mrs Harris seems to be crouched on all fours on the top of a very high (glazed) bookcase, just behind the second Mrs Harris. This image has found an appreciative audience even among those not particularly interested in American humour of the 1930s. In part, this large appeal probably derives from a real social sophistication concealed in the innocence of the drawing. The linguistically prim social formula of the caption underwrites the wild surprise both of the occasion in itself and of its medium, Thurber's own very peculiar and vestigial draughtsmanship; together they cover the way in which our formulaic social manners have to contend with the extreme ad hoc-ness of experience - a first wife on the bookcase, crouched to spring, or embalmed, or perhaps just teasing.

LRB 4 August 1983 | PDF Download