Quotes from book
The Cream of the Jest

The Cream of the Jest

James Branch Cabell

The Cream of the Jest : A Comedy of Evasions is a comical and philosophical novel with possible fantasy elements, by James Branch Cabell, published in 1917. Much of it consists of the historical dreams and philosophical reflections of the main character, the famous writer Felix Kennaston. An early reviewer said it was more a series of essays than a novel.

“Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried — well,
Which one would I?”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Epigraph to "Book Four : Which Travels, roundabout, to edifying and safe conclusions"
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“You embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick's third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving woman long worshipped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Horvendile, to Ettarre in Ch. 2 : Introduces the Ageless Woman
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Context: I also begin where he began, and follow wither the dream led him. Meanwhile, I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.

“Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Epigraph to "The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece."
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest….”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 26 : "Epper Si Muove" [this chapter title is derived from a purported comment of Galileo: Eppur Si Muove "And yet it moves."]

“It was not his to choose from what volume or on which page thereof he would read; accident, as it seemed, decided that; but the chance-opened page lay unblurred before him, and he saw it with a clarity denied to other men of his generation.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 23 : Economic Considerations of Piety

“With the passage of time, whatever a man had done, whether for good or evil, with the man's bodily organs, left the man's parish unaffected: only a man's thoughts and dreams could outlive him, in any serious sense, and these might survive with perhaps augmenting influence: so that Kennaston had come to think artistic creation in words — since marble and canvas inevitably perished — was the one, possibly, worth-while employment of human life. But here was a crude corporal deed which bluntly destroyed thoughts, and annihilated dreams by wholesale. To Kennaston this seemed the one real tragedy that could be staged on earth….”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 24 : Deals with Pen Scratches

“There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 14 : Peculiar Conduct of a Personage

“If the Author will it, there may be appended to any comedy an afterpiece. Meanwhile, so far as I may judge, the life of Manuel ends here.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 14 : Peculiar Conduct of a Personage

“You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 13 : Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal

“American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison…. Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend to be an unprejudiced judge. The tale seems to me one of those many books which have profited, very dubiously indeed, by having obtained, in one way of another, the repute of being indecent.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“Religion, of course, assured him that the answer to his query was, in various books, explicitly written, in very dissimilar forms. But Kennaston could find little to attract him in any theory of the universe based upon direct revelations from heaven. Conceding that divinity had actually stated so-and-so, from Sinai or Delphi or Mecca, and had been reported without miscomprehension or error, there was no particular reason for presuming that divinity had spoken veraciously: and, indeed all a available analogues went to show that nothing in nature dealt with its inferiors candidly.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 26 : "Epper Si Muove"

“Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman

“Before 1914 had well begun to make the world safe for hypocrisy, these stories had blended into one continuous and fairly long Comedy of Evasion, called then In the Flesh, but a little later rechristened The Cream of The Jest…”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“"Why is a Kennaston?" he asked himself — thus whimisically voicing a real desire to know if human beings were intended for any especial purpose. Most of us find it more comfortable, upon the whole, to stave off such queries — with a jest, a shrug, or a Scriptural quotation, as best suits personal taste; but Kennaston was "queer" enough to face the situation quite gravely.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 26 : "Epper Si Muove"

“Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Horvendile, in Ch. 2 : Introduces the Ageless Woman
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“This book did not get for me any general recognition. It got for me, instead, something in every way more valuable. For it was The Cream of the Jest which first made for me in the seventeenth year of my writing, a few warm friends who but a little later were to fight in my behalf very nobly, and with wholly heroic tenacity… If few writers have met with more smug, more prurient, or more disingenuous opponents, no writer whatever, I think has found more faithful allies.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Author's Note (1929 edition)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

“You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Context: You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff. For I commence at Storisende, in the world's youth, when the fourth Count Emmerick reigned in Poictesme, having not yet blundered into the disfavor of his papal cousin Adrian VII.... With such roundabout gambits alone can some of us approach — as one fancy begets another, if you will — to proud assurance that life is not blind and aimless business; not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that we ourselves may (by and by) be strong and excellent and wise.

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