Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
by Jean Kerr
Reviewed by Ed Lengel
Review of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, by Jean Kerr. Originally published in 1957.
One of the enduring stereotypes of the 1950s is that they were humorless, albeit not without trying. Young people today would probably consider television programs like Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, My Little Margie, or I Love Lucy as easier to laugh at, than to laugh with. The same could apply to comic strips, movies, or stand-up comics. In an era dominated (on the surface) by traditional mores: social roles, language, religion, and so on, could anything possibly be funny? Could there be anything but creaky, hollow jokes, and canned laugh tracks?
Red Skelton, a traditional stand-up comedian who watched, and mourned, the evolution of humor in his lifetime from something restrained and true-to-life, into a monster, unrestrained and outlandish, interjected a sense of humility and self-deprecation that had long been typical of the finest humorists. “I personally believe that each of us was put here for a purpose—to build, not to destroy,” he said. “If I can make people smile, then I have served my purpose for God.” He was merely a simple circus clown in another guise, but still with a noble calling. “If by chance some day you’re not feeling well and you should remember some silly thing I’ve said or done and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart,” he said, “then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled.”
Jean Kerr wrote Please Don’t Eat the Daisies in 1957, when humor remained in a form that Skelton appreciated and understood. Only thirty-five-years-old when it was published, she was happily married and on her way to becoming the mother of six children, Kerr (born Bridget Jean Collins) had also–with her husband, the critic, Walter Kerr, begun a career as a successful essayist and playwright. Nor was she a professional journalist. None of this seemed conducive to wit, at least as we understand it today. Writing in the introduction to Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Kerr confessed that as a young adult, “All I wanted out of life was to be able to sleep until noon.” Whether from her Irish origins and upbringing, or from some other source, however, the spark was evident from early on, in her ability to compose funny rhymes out of everyday experiences and desires, thus: “Dearer to me than the evening star; A Packard car; a Hershey bar; Or a bride in her rich adorning; Dearer than any of these by far; Is to lie in bed in the morning.”
From such origins, most humorists in the modern vein might have proceeded to rejecting social conventions—maybe experimenting with chemical inducements to hilarity—practicing mockery (the crueler the better) and seeking to provoke shock and outrage by “pushing the envelope” ever farther along. Not so Kerr. For her, there was no inherent contradiction between humor and the role of mother in a large family. Rather, motherhood and the perennial lunacy inherent in a houseful of children became fuel for a humor that was simultaneously zany and (like all good humor) powerful because it was so true to life. Likewise in her chosen career as a writer. Far from irreverent, Kerr first made her name by collaborating with her husband on a stage adaptation of the traditional Catholic classic, The Song of Bernadette (1946). The process of writing became an inspiration for her humor.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is a series of essays on the joys and exasperations of parenthood, writing, and life in the country. The essays are unconnected but not unrelated. Like any parent, Kerr spent her days engaged in dialogue such as the following, with what she called her “slightly used eight-year-old”: “Don’t kick the table leg with your foot.” “I’m not kicking, I’m tapping.” “Well, don’t tap with your foot.” “It’s not my foot, it’s a fork.” “Well don’t tap with the fork.” “It’s not a good fork . . .” And so on. No wonder that, according to Kerr, she got her best writing done sitting alone in her car, two blocks away from her house.
Like any good artist (or mother for that matter), though, Kerr uses her children’s antics and foibles as inspirations for her writing; and also makes her writing a useful foil to enliven as well as enrich her family life, so that the two flow seamlessly one into the other. There is no need to reject her children, or her duties in caring for them, in order to express her gifts fully. Thus she writes of her son Christopher, without a hint of contempt: “I watch him from the kitchen window. With a garden rake in one hand he scampers up a tree, out across a long branch, and down over the stone wall—as graceful and deft as a squirrel. On the other hand, he is unable to get from the living room into the front hall without bumping into at least two pieces of furniture. (I’ve seen him hit as many as five, but that’s championship stuff and he can’t do it every time). He has another trick which defied analysis, and also the laws of gravity. He can walk out into the middle of a perfectly empty kitchen and trip on the linoleum. I guess it’s the linoleum. There isn’t anything else there.”
This is humor designed solely to raise a smile, and maybe also a nod of acknowledgment that it’s true to life. There’s nothing madcap; nothing meant to disgust or irritate. There’s also nothing preachy, meant to force you into questioning your beliefs. Contrary to the 1950’s-era stereotype, however, there is also nothing pandering or artificial about Kerr’s humor. It is what it is because life is as it is. So it seems telling that it probably requires more of an open mind to read and appreciate Please Don’t Eat the Daisies—still funny and relevant despite being written almost seventy years ago—than what passes for humor in the drearily self-important 2020s.
Ed Lengel is an author, a speaker, and a storyteller.
