Benchley Tonight: "One Set of French Dishes"

"I don't suppose that anyone would be sending me a bbl. of beer, because it is pretty well known around France that I don't drink. Certainly not French beer."

-- Benchley, in "One Set of French Dishes"

In our first "Benchley Tonight" piece, "My Five- (or Maybe Six-) Year Plan," I recalled the line from Thurber's "Preface to a Life" (the preface to My Life and Hard Times) in which he includes among possible crippling worries for a writer of his sort "the suspicion that a piece he has been working on for two long days was done much better and probably more quickly by Robert Benchley in 1924."

We've already had Thurber's "Joyeux Noël, Mr. Durning," one of my very favorite Thurber pieces, his record of the increasingly mad correspondence that ensued after he and his wife received notification from U.S. Customs of seizure of "(1) bottle -- 1/5 gal. size -- Alc. Liqueur" sent to them in innocence of the flagrant legal breach by their onetime Russo-French vacation cook and gardener on the French Riviera, Maria and Olympy Sementzoff, fondly remembered from Thurber's chronicle of the famous "Ride With Olympy." I can't help thinking that even as Thurber was contemplating re-creating and assembling the raw materials of "Joyeux Noël, Mr. Durning," somewhere in the back of his head there was a recollection of this Benchley piece, "One Set of French Dishes." -- Ken

One Set of
French Dishes

Last summer when I was in France, doing my bit with the other American visitors to create ill-will among the natives and hasten the outbreak of the Big Franco-American War, I bought a set of dishes. They were just simple earthenware dishes, such as used to have '"For a Good Dog" lettered on them, but as they were made in a little town up back in the mountains near the Mediterranean, they seemed to be rather smart. They cost something like three cents apiece and were a bright blue. I now think that we made a mistake in buying them.

As there were perhaps forty pieces in all, including a large bowl which the old man said was for soup, it seemed impractical to try to jam them all in a trunk with the rest of the knickknacks and even less practical to carry them in our hands with our umbrellas and everything. So we asked the old man if he would think up some way of putting them in a barrel and sending them to America by freight. He said "Oui, oui!" which we figured out to mean that he would. And he evidently did.

That was three months ago. Today I got a notice from the Custom House saying that there was a bbl. on the good ship "Hannoy" for me. The only bbl. that I can think of which would take a ship like the "Hannoy" is a bbl. of dishes. I don't suppose that anyone would be sending me a bbl. of beer, because it is pretty well known around France that I don't drink. Certainly not French beer. The notice said for me to put my things right on and come down to the dock and claim my goods, otherwise they couldn't answer for what would happen to the bbl. But somehow I don't think that I will.

For in the same mail came a big, official-looking sheet, colored orange, with lots of stamps on it and about six hundred and fifty thousand French words closely printed. It says at the top "Compagnie Française de Navigation à Vapeur" and that means, according to a very hasty translation which I have thrown together, "French Company of Navigation to Steam." These French are very quick at picking up new inventions and here is Robert Fulton scarcely cold in his grave before we find them navigating to steam. The rest of the document is not so clear.

The only typewritten words on the sheet are "Hannoy" and "1 caisse poterie rustique." This evidently means my dishes. But the rest of the reading-matter is rather cryptic. There is so much of it, in the first place, and, at the bottom, it says that "le chargeur" (which must be I, unless it is the old man in Biotte) declares to have taken cognizance of the clauses printed above and accepts them. (All this is in French, mind you, but I get that part all right.) I am not so sure, however, that I want to accept the clauses printed above.

In the first place, as I read it over, the whole thing seems to be a threat. I have evidently placed myself under suspicion by shipping a bbl. of "poterie rustique" to America. Spelling out the words in my rough, untutored way, I seem to detect a great many penalties. I don't know whether the French penalize you merely for shipping goods to another country, but I wouldn't put it past them. Mind you, I think that the Germans treated the French very badly in 1914 and I never had any use for the Kaiser, but I would not put it past the French to slip in a dirty penalty now and then if they got a chance. And on this orange bill-of-lading of mine, I seem to detect a slight plot to have my head cut off in the Place de la Concorde.

Under a paragraph marked "Clause penale" I make out several words which lead me to believe that if I go down to the dock to claim my goods I make myself liable to life-imprisonment and the amputation of one leg. This may be wrong, but that's the way I translate it. I am not so sure about its being a leg that I am to have amputated, and I am not so sure that, if it is a leg, I am to have it amputated, but it sounds like that. Now I am not going down to any dock just for a bbl. of dishes and run into anything like that. And I am certain about the other phrase being "life-imprisonment." That is enough in itself.

The word "fret" keeps occurring in practically every sentence, and, while I am not silly enough to think that it really means what the English word "fret" means, it has an ugly sound nevertheless. According to this document, my fret has to be examined and, if it doesn't suit the fret-examiners, the Tribune de Commerce de Marseille will meet in a body and decide what to do with it. As I make it out they can take my fret and either (a) burn it, (b) drown it or (c) eat it themselves. This is going to make it very awkward for me, not even knowing what my fret is. Furthermore, I can't be running over to Marseilles and back every few days just to answer questions for their old Tribune de Commerce. If they want to examine my fret, they can come over here and do it. I am a busy man.

There seem to be other clauses in my bill-of-lading which would indicate that I would just be a fool to go anywhere near the freight dock after those dishes. Under the head of Litiges, which ought to mean something about litigation, I find that a lot of talk is made about an item called "avaries." In case there happens to be an avarie in your fret you are in for all kinds of trouble and may possibly have to live on the second floor of the Custom House all the rest of your life. At least, that is what the French would seem to say.

Now I don't know what avaries are, but it looks to me as if they were either misers or bird-houses. By a process of elimination we may decide that there probably wouldn't be any misers in a shipment of goods from Southern France, not because there aren't any misers in Southern France but because they most likely could not be induced to get into a crate for such a long trip. So we may safely say that avaries are not misers. (It would be just the way things work out now for me to get down to the dock and find a whole bunch of misers hidden in among my dishes.) But it is much more likely that avaries are bird-houses, with birds in them. And if anyone is so unfortunate as to have a bird-house discovered in his bill of goods, he is, according to this paper, as good as in chains right there.

I have no reason to suppose that the old man in Biotte slipped any bird-houses in my pottery when he was packing it, but how am I to know? He was a pretty nasty old man and didn't like me at all. I remember now that when I asked him if the tea-cups were to hang in the window with ferns in them, he gave me a very dirty look and I thought at the time, "If there is anything that Grandpa can do to make things hard for you, he is going to do it." Now what would be simpler than for him to have put a bird-house right in with that big soup-tureen, knowing very well that it would cause me trouble? All French potters who use marine freight at all must know this orange-colored sheet backward and must know that anyone caught with a bird-house (or miser) in his shipment is going to be subjected to all the indignities which the Code de Procédure Civile can think up. He could have fitted the bird-house with a set of love-birds or parrakeets which would be very noisy and call attention to themselves the minute the fret-investigators came anywhere near them. He might even have put in a parrot which would scream out, "Look, look! Here I am!" or "Avarie! avarie!" He could have done anything, and the more I think about the way he looked at me the more I think that he probably did.

So I think that I will just tuck the orange sheet and the notice from the freight office in the back of my drawer and forget about them. The men on the dock can probably find some use for my dishes, although I doubt if they would like them so blue. We really have enough dishes at home already and another set would not be worth all the penalties that I would be liable to by claiming them. I have several more years left before I have to start walking with a cane, and I don't want to spend them on the second floor of the Marseilles Custom House or languishing in a French jail.

Just for curiosity's sake, however, I must look up and see whether avaries are misers or bird-houses.

TOMORROW and SATURDAY NIGHTS: Sunday Classics previews -- Valerie Masterson et al. sing from Gounod's Faust

SUNDAY NIGHT: Well, that would be telling


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT):
Check out the series to date

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