Old Cap the teacher asks “Uh-Huh” Collum if he can use isthmus in a sentence. After delivering his trademark “Uh-huh,” Collum replies: “Isthmus be my lucky day!” For the unversed, this exchange can be viewed at 11:27 in the 1933 Our Gang short Mush and Milk. Stick around to hear Stymie perform Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance #5” on the harmonica and Jimmy Finlayson (frequent Laurel and Hardy partner) calling with good news from the First National Bank. Much of my early musical and vocabulary education I owe to the Little Rascals comedies (and The Three Stooges), watched ad infinitum. I can trace my first knowledge of the word isthmus to Old Cap and “Uh-Huh.”
“Uh-huh’s”
lesson came to mind while reading Boswell’s Life
of Johnson. On this date, October 10, in 1769, Boswell brought together two
of his heroes – Johnson and General Pasquale
Paoli, leader of the Corsican resistance. He describes the meeting:
“I had
greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem, should meet.
They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their own abilities, and of
the abilities of each other. The General spoke Italian, and Dr. Johnson
English, and understood one another very well, with a little aid of
interpretation from me, in which I compared myself to an isthmus which joins two great continents.”
As usual,
Boswell is proudly humble. It’s good to remember that he was a fine writer, unafraid
of a vivid metaphor. Boswell recounts some of the subsequent conversation:
“Upon
Johnson’s approach, the General said, ‘From what I have read of your works,
Sir, and from what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in
great veneration.’ The General talked of
languages being formed on the particular notions and manners of a people,
without knowing which, we cannot know the language. We may know the direct
signification of single words; but by these no beauty of expression, no sally
of genius, no wit is conveyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to
other ideas. ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) you talk of language, as if you had never
done any thing else but study it, instead of governing a nation.” The General
said, ‘Questo e un troppo gran
complimento’; this is too great a compliment. Johnson answered, ‘I should
have thought so, Sir, if I had not heard you talk.’”
To be a
successful isthmus is a wonderful
gift, and to step back and watch two continents not collide but revel in their
proximity is always gratifying.
2 comments:
What a brilliant use of the word 'isthmus' (which I once used as a rhyme for 'Christmas'– so shoot me).
Johnson could have done with an isthmus when he met the great Lichfield luminary Erasmus Darwin – it was instant mutual dislike, and neither man pursued the acquaintance.
Going from the Little Rascals to Samuel Johnson makes sense to me. My mind is as much steeped in the words and lore of one as the other. I only recently learned that Spanky McFarland spent many summers away from Hollywood at his aunt's house in Lakewood, Ohio. The house still stands, and I may take a drive out there soon.
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