George Horatio Derby
(1823-1861)
Examples of Lt. Derby's humor and a Bibliography
of his publications
George Horatio Derby (1823-1861) was born in Massachusetts. His
deviltry surfaced in an austere, pious but loving home atmosphere. During
three years in a boy's academy, a harsh superintendent tried unsuccessfully
to beat the propensity for jokes out of him. Nevertheless, he graduated
from West Point in 1846 and served in the U. S. Corps of Topographical
Engineers (or as he styled it, "Hypothetical Engineers") during the Mexican War at Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo before being
sent to California in 1856.
He remained there for seven years, leading three exploring expeditions
and winning a place as one of the state’s first humorists with pieces published
in the San Diego Herald and republished around the nation. Phoenixiana
was published in 1855. It contains Derby’s pieces as “Professor John
Phoenixiana” and “Squibob,” poking fun at such topics as military
surveyors and explorers; contemporary travel accounts of the Mission
Dolores, Benecia, Sonoma, San Francisco, and San Diego; literary societies
and women’s clubs; astronomy; and Army life.
Had Lieutenant George H. Derby been a professional fun-maker, the production
of such a work as Phoenixiana might possibly have proved a solemn
task and a wearisome effort; but this, Squibob was not. His real work in
life was that of a soldier and an engineer. He was graduated at the United
States Military Academy at West Point in 1846. His career was an arduous
one. He suffered hardships of the more strenuous order. He was a fighter
in the Mexican War. He sustained severe wounds in the battle of Cerro Gordo
and for gallant and meritorious conduct upon that occasion was brevetted
First Lieutenant. On behalf of the government he conducted surveys and
explorations in what at that time were waste places within our borders.
Heavy responsibilities devolved upon him—the responsibilities of leadership
in pioneer days—and it is the testimony of his record on file at the War
Department at Washington that his shoulders bore well the burdens they
carried—burdens which in the end cost him his life. His last commission
was a surveyor and lighthouse engineer on the Florida coast, in the discharge
of the duties of which he suffered a sunstroke, which affected his eye-sight
and caused softening of the brain, from which he died in 1861.
There are in various parts of the country today silent witnesses to
his skill as an engineer and fidelity as a servant of his country, but
the greater fame which will attach to his name comes from the things of
his spirit which throughout all his trials remained unaffectedly simple,
sunny, and helpful, both to self and to others. The fact, and it seems
to be the fact, that he turned to his pen for the need of pleasure which
comes from forgetfulness of the trials incident to the day’s work, appears
to me the chief reason for his unquestioned success as a fun-maker. There
was that in his nature which struggled always for expression, even under
the most unpromising conditions, and which, held in restraint by more pressing
things, once given an outlet, bubbled forth with all the vigor and spontaneity
of a geyser. One finds no trace of a taskmaster driving his muse in Phoenix’s
fun, and for that reason it is of the best.
Hardship, avarice and isolation. These were among the companions of
many early American settlers after they reached California. These grim
sidekicks help explain why newcomers placed a premium on humor. And the
appreciation of it explains why so many of them began to enjoy the wit
and, when they were played on others, the practical jokes of Lieutenant
George Horatio Derby.
He was one of California's first humorists. And as with nearly all luminaries,
fictitious stories sprouted about him. One dealt with the reason for his
transfer West. Headquarters assigned him, so the tale goes, to survey the
Tombigbee River "to see how far up it runs." Lt. Derby supposedly
responded in great detail how he had studied the river and its adjoining
topography. He even interviewed settlers along the river's banks in Alabama
and Mississippi.
"My conclusion," he wrote, "is that the Tombigbee
River does not run up, but down!"
Secretary of War Jefferson Davis reportedly was not amused. Soon
the lieutenant was sweating with General Bennett Riley and his men
exploring the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Then on to even hotter
terrain -- Fort Yuma in California's Imperial County, just across
the border from Yuma, Arizona. His "exile" there didn't diminish his penchant
for practical jokes and witticisms.
"One of our Fort Yuma men died," Derby would
tell newcomers, "and unfortunately went to hell. He wasn't there one day
before he telegraphed for his blankets."
Cooler climes didn't change him. At a rousing ball in Sonoma,
Derby's brainstorm was to switch two babies and their toys and blankets
into each others basket, so their parents took home the wrong infants after
the party ended. Owen Wister borrowed the incident for use in his novel
The
Virginian, according to the entertaining John Phoenix, Esq., which
George R. Stewart chose as the title of Derby's biography.
Derby transferred to San Diego shortly before he turned thirty.
Word soon circulated that he was building a dike alongside the San
Diego River instead of across it, perhaps as revenge for his transfer.
This project wasn't a joke, though. A crackerjack engineer in the
United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Derby was following
orders to shift the river back to its original bed and thus solve the silt
build-up in the harbor.
He supplemented his Army pay with surveying jobs so that he and
Mary Coons could marry in 1854. The record fails to show what pranks
were played on the newlyweds, but like so many practical jokers, Derby
failed to see the humor in it when the joke was on him.
0ne idea occurred to him before riding in a carriage with two
other passengers. He confided to each of them in turn, "Oh, by the way,
our other passenger is almost stone deaf." Then he sat back poker-faced
during the shouting match that followed.
With a young man named James Sherman as
his accomplice, Derby set up Don Julio Carillo of Sonora, a man who heard
the pair extolling the Masons.
"I would like to join," said Carillo.
"Fine," Derby said, "but you realize all new
members must be branded with a new steel branding iron?"
Carillo considered this a moment, then agreed,
saying, "Esta bueno."
Sherman rounded up the branding iron plus a piece
of cowhide with hair on it. He blindfolded the don, but not until the initiate
had seen the iron turn red in the forge. Derby threw the cowhide
into the flames for a suitable aroma and pressed the branding iron onto
Carillo. He had, however, first inserted a piece of wet paper between
the skin and the iron, so the victim felt the heat but escaped a burn.
"Es bastante," Carillo bravely cried. When
he saw his unblemished skin he was prepared to announce a miracle.
The lieutenant defused one near-calamity. Two associates decided
a duel would settle their argument, so Derby molded their bullets out of
tallow and added charcoal for color. Instead of killing or maiming each
other, the opponents simply splattered themselves.
Writing proved another source of income for the lowly paid lieutenant.
His newspaper columns ended up in book form and both Phoenixiana
and The Squibob Papers enjoyed good sales until their characters and topical
references became outdated. His writing skill served Derby well in
August 1853 when John Judson Ames, editor of the weekly four-page San Diego
Herald, asked him to keep an eye on things at the paper while he
went to a Democratic Party meeting in San Francisco.
Soon editorial page readers who had been urged to elect the Democratic
candidate for governor found themselves being asked to switch their
support to the Whig candidate, one William Waldo, who later ended up carrying
San Diego, much to Ames' discomfiture.
Derby predicted in print what the future held for him when the
six-foot, six-inch Ames returned: 'We held (Ames) down over the press
by our nose (which we had inserted between his teeth for that purpose)
and while our hair was employed in holding one of his hands, we held
the other in our left and ... shouted to him, 'Say Waldo!'"
Derby surveyed military roads in Oregon and Washington Territory.
He wrote, "It rains incessantly twenty-six hours a day for seventeen
months of the year." Next he headed for New York in 1856
where, despite illness and partial blindness, he managed to play a few
more pranks. After his death in 1861 at the age of thirty-eight,
a friend had this to say: 'What other men would sacrifice for ambition,
for love, for the attainment of fortune or personal aggrandizement,
he would sacrifice for fun -- his best friend would have no more chance of
escape than his worst enemy."
[biographical sketch adapted from San Diego Originals by Theodore
W. Fuller, published by California Profiles Publications, 1987; Also, Soldier-Artist
of the Great Reconnaissance, John C. Tidball and the 35th Parallel Pacific
Railroad Survey, by Eugene C. Tidball, Univ of Arizona Press, Tucson.]
|
