Let's go with the second installment of People Want to Marvel.
First, here is a photo of Helen and Ted from the happy time in their marriage. They were married for almost 30 years, the last 13 of which he failed to keep up his marriage vows to honour and love in sickness and in health.
NARRATOR
But
Ted, not one to lay-abed, said,
TED
My
God-given skills hang in the balance
The
Jack o Lantern, Dart's fun student rag
It
wants and it needs my scholarly tag.
And
while it's a drag to be in the bag,
Drinking,
drawing and rhyming, I must
Or,
gulp, I'll just bust!
NARRATOR
Student
im-pu-dent,
ballyhoodonit,
Ted,
Theo,Teddy, he was ready to
Spill
ink, make not a stink, the admin
Could
not think, did not see, that
No
Ted Geisel he be,
It
was Seuss he used as a voice
Seuss,
rhyming with voice,
Seuss
and voice so Seuss became the voice
of
Seuss, the Dr. who's name, ostensibly,
Rhymes
with juice.
His
parents were tickled when Oxford predickled
That
young Ted might fit the professorial role
The
only thing is, twas not his goal.
HELEN
We
met in Literature
and
he seemed quite rapturature.
Sane
and decent
Nice
but disinterested in studies not recent.
Anglo
Saxon topic not quite likely
But
a nice Jewish girl from Amherst, Mass.
Helen
Palmer, me oh my oh me
Appeared
to be his cup of tea.
NARRATOR
An
explanation forthcoming, gushing like a tap
Quite
clever was this young comic sap
Who
eschewed academics to his parents' rue.
HELEN
To
calm and balm his father's ire, he took the
title,
Dr, added Seuss and cut loose
Free
of academia, listening to me,
an
English major, like he, encouraging him
to
draw and write for small kiddies.
I,
Helen, was smitten when I saw
him
draw, was it a kitten?
A
devilish cat in a hat or was it
an
irascible cuss at a stop waiting for a bus
on
Mulberry Street? Must!
To
think, I saw it originally, sin or not,
On
a street Ted called Mulberry, and I was sweet
On
him, saw talent most gallant and suggested
That
illustration and words were his forte,
Drawing
and rhyming, scribbling and nibbling
On
a pencil tip, surely the way for him to have his say.
Marriage
1927! Oh heaven!
No
baby carriage followed.
Him
or me? Who cares?
For
everyone could see that we
Were
perfect as a pair and did not need
To
share our hearts with youngsters
Insensate
and callow,
Oh,
go ahead and call us shallow!
We
loved, we laughed,
We
wrote, we played,
We
rhymed, we stayed
Together.
And God
saw that it was good.
NARRATOR
Books
galore, 43 tomes
Of
children's poems and scribbles
To
bibble the dribble from many a kid lipple.
The
first was a burst. Publishers cried WORST.
Ted
filled with dread as no, no, no,
Twenty-seven
times No
Came
and went, not making a dent,
No,
no, no, with nothing to show.
He
persisted, Vanguard Press resisted
But
in the end, they dined on mulberry jam
on
the street, where a melding of minds did meet
And
Theodor Seuss Geisel aka Theo LeSieg
Aka
Dr. Seuss, rhymes with juice, so it seems.
Came
up like a rose, smelling as sweet,
Encouraging
means, achieving the dreams.
And God
said, this is good.
