Source of book: I own this.
Custard and Company is a collection of Ogden Nash poems selected and illustrated by Quentin Blake, best known for his illustrations of Roald Dahl’s books. The poems themselves are taken from other Nash collections, and are aimed at children. Which is why my youngest and I read this together.
I have long been an Ogden Nash fan, and have quoted his lines here and there throughout this blog. I also wrote up The Private Dining Room a few years ago.
Poetry was meant to be read out loud, and I think I do a decent job of it. Ogden Nash is a bit challenging, in no small part because of his invented words, which are intended to rhyme with other words, which often means one needs to know what the next line says when you read the one before it. Also, the poems can be tongue twisters…
The “Custard” of the title, is Custard the Cowardly Dragon, who lives with young Belinda, a kitten, a mouse, a dog, and a little red wagon. The other animals talk a tough game, but disappear when a real threat appears, leaving poor Custard to save the day. Which he does, of course. There are two poems devoted to Custard and company, one of which involves a pirate attack, and the other a kidnapping by an evil knight. I’ll quote the second one here, because I think the jokes at the expense of the age of chivalry are particularly amusing.
Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight
Guess what happened in the little white house
Where Belinda lived with a little grey mouse,
And a kitten, and a puppy, and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
This dragon was a shy one, for ever getting flustered,
So they said was a coward and they called him Custard.
He had eaten up a pirate once, but then
He went back to being to being a coward again.
Custard the dragon felt comfortable and cozy,
His breath wasn’t fiery, just flickery and rosy,
And he lay with his head on his iron dragon toes,
Dreaming dragon dreams in a happy dragon doze.
Belinda sang as she went about her housework,
Blink the mouse was busy with her mousework,
Ink the kitten was laundering her fur,
And teaching the little dog Mustard to purr.
Belinda’s song, as she wiped the dishes bright,
Was all about Sir Garagoyle, the wicked, wicked Knight.
His castle’s on a mountain, above the edelweiss;
Its gates are solid iron, its walls are solid ice;
And underneath the cellar is the dismalest of caves,
Where he keeps the captive maidens he has carried off as slaves.
Ink, Blink and Mustard joined their voices three:
‘We’re not cowardly like Custard, we’re courageous as can be.
So hush you, Belinda, hush you, do not fret you.
We promise that Sir Garagoyle shall never, never get you.’
Then – just as Ink was complimenting Blink –
‘That’, said a voice, ‘is what you think!’
Belinda dropped the dishes on the floor,
For there was Sir Garagoyle, coming in the door.
You could tell he was wicked, for he reeked of roguery,
He was like an ogre, only twice as ogre-y,
He was twice as big as a big gorilla,
And covered with armour like an armadilla –
Armour on the front of him, armour on the back,
And every inch of it thunderstorm-black.
Ink got gooseflesh, Blink was terror-laden,
And Mustard yelped that he was not a maiden.
Blink fled downstairs, Ink fled up,
And underneath the sofa went the pup.
Sir Garagoyle pounced with panther speed
And carried off Belinda on his snorting steed.
He plied his spurs with a cruel heel;
He was in a hurry for his evening meal,
His favourite meal, of screws and nails
And rattlesnake tongues and crocodile tails.
Custard was roused from his quiet dreams
By the pitiful sound of Belinda’s screams.
‘To horse!’ he cried. ‘Brave friends, to horse!
We must organise a Rescue Force!’
Said Mustard, ‘I’d show that wicked knight –
But I’ve got a toothache and I couldn’t bite.’
Said Ink, ‘I can hardly stir my stumps;
I’m afraid that I’m coming with mumps.’
Said Blink, ‘If only I were feeling brisker…!
But I’m weakened by an ingrowing whisker.’
‘Alas,’ said Custard, ‘alas, poor Belinda!’
He sighed a sigh, and the sigh was a cinder.
‘her three brave bodyguards are powerless as she,
And no one to rescue her but chickenhearted me.
Well,’ said Custard, ‘at least I’m in the mood
To be the toughest chicken that was ever chewed.’
As he thought about Belinda and Sir Garagoyle
Everything inside him began to boil.
He sizzled and simmered and he bubbled and he hissed,
Then he whooshed like a rocket through the evening mist.
With headlight eyes and spikes a-bristle
He pierced the air like a locomotive whistle,
Then swooped from the sky as grim as fate
And knocked on Garagoyle’s fearsome gate.
Sir Garagoyle rose at Custard’s hail:
He was chewing a screw and swallowing a nail.
He called, ‘You can hammer all night and day,
But you might as well take yourself away.
My gates are iron and my walls are ice,
And I’ve woven a spell around them thrice,
And if by chance you should break in,
I’ll lay you open from tail to chin.’
He thought to frighten the dragon to death,
But Custard blew like a blowtorch breath.
He was a small volcano with the whooping cough,
And like molten lava the gates flowed off!
He blew another breath, and the icy walls
Came a-splashing down in waterfalls.
Sir Garagoyle spluttered like a sprinkler-wagon,
‘A knight can alwayd beat a dragon!’
‘Pooh!’ said Custard. ‘How you rant!
A true knight could, but a wicked knight can’t
‘Have at you then!’ Sir Garagoyle roared,
And he rushed at Custard with his deadly sword.
Twice Custard parried those fierce attacks,
Then he swung his tail like a battle axe.
From helm and breastplate down to spur
It flattened that unworthy Sir.
His armour crumpled like thin tinfoil,
And that was the end of Garagoyle.
Custard rushed like a tidal wave
Down, down, down to the dismal cave
Where Belinda lay in chains, a slave –
Chains too strong to chop or hack,
But he sawed them through with his spiky back.
Belinda was too weak to speak her thanks,
But she managed to pat his scaly flanks.
Now, Custard was a flyer of great renown,
He was able to fly while sitting down,
So home he soared with wings a-flap,
And Belinda sitting in his lap.
Ink, Blink and Mustard were in a happy tizzy,
They danced around Belinda till they made her dizzy,
Then they looked at Custard and they gave a shout:
‘There’s a rabbit in the kitchen and he won’t get out.
He’s eaten all the carrots and he’s starting on the peas,
And you’re just in time to eject him, please!’
Custard said, ‘You know my habits;
You know I’ve always been afraid of rabbits;
So if this fierce fellow won’t depart in peace,
Eject him yourself or call the police.’
‘Oh’, jeered Ink and Blink and Mustard,
‘What a cowardly, cowardly, cowardly Custard!’
‘I agree’, said Custard; ‘and I add to that
Craven, poltroon, and fraidy-cat.
I’ve learned what a nuisance bravery can be,
So a coward’s life is the life for me.’
Belinda kissed him and said, ‘Don’t fret,
A cowardly dragon makes the nicest pet.’
And, of course, the poem comes with illustrations.
Many of the poems are short ones, humorous yet often pointed. Here are some that I particularly liked:
The Parent
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore,
And that’s what parents were created for.
The Germ
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
The Hippopotamus
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
These ones are written in fairly standard rhyme and meter, if a bit imprecise for humorous reasons. Nash also wrote ones that played havoc with line length. I actually like reading these ones out loud, because running the words together for those long lines creates the effect Nash was aiming at. Try it with this one:
Everybody Tells Me Everything
I find it difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
And, I can’t forget this one, which I memorized as a kid, and still quote to people:
The Termite
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
One that my kids particularly liked is one I quoted in one of my Christmas Poems post, “The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus,” which you can read here.
We also had fun with the story of Isabel, who confronts her fears. That nasty bear who might eat you? Eat him instead! And so on. “Next!” is a humorous one about the bones in a Natural History Museum coming to life. A few more merit quoting.
A Caution to Everybody
Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.
And this one, which is certainly true of my kids:
Don’t Cry, Darling, It’s Blood All Right
Whenever poets want to give you the idea that something is particularly meek and mild,
They compare it to a child,
Thereby proving that though poets with poetry may be rife
They don’t know the facts of life.
If of compassion you desire either a tittle or a jot,
Don’t try to get it from a tot.
Hard-boiled, sophisticated adults like me and you
May enjoy ourselves thoroughly with Little Women and Winnie-the-Pooh,
But innocent infants these titles from their reading course eliminate
As soon as they discover that it was honey and nuts and mashed potatoes instead of human flesh that Winnie-the-Pooh and Little Women ate.
Innocent infants have no use for fables about rabbits or donkeys or tortoises or porpoises,
What they want is something with plenty of well-mutilated corpoises.
Not on legends of how the rose came to be a rose instead of a petunia is their fancy fed,
But on the inside story of how somebody’s bones got ground up to make somebody else’s bread.
They go to sleep listening to the story of the little beggarmaid who got to be queen by being kind to the bees and the birds,
But they’re all eyes and ears the minute they suspect a wolf or a giant is going to tear some poor woodcutter into quarters and thirds.
It really doesn’t take much to fill their cup;
All they want is for somebody to be eaten up.
Therefore I say unto you, all you poets who are so crazy about meek and mild little children and their angelic air,
If you are sincere and really want to please them, why just go out and get yourselves devoured by a bear.
Don’t forget, this was written back in the 1930s, before the pearl clutching about video games. There is really very little new under the sun; today’s moral panics are just recycled from the past. And, come to think of it, the old stories are rather violent…
Anyway, I am not sure how easy it is to find this book these days, but if you find it, it’s a great book to have in the library. Poetry seems sadly neglected these days, and I think a good part of that is that few teachers or parents have that love to start with, and even if they do, they teach the “safe” poems rather than the fun, dark, or dangerous ones. I suspect if kids were exposed to poetry with a bit more of an edge, they might take to it. Which is why everyone should read their kids Ogden Nash.
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