Now I am watching the cricket from a place known as Australia and the play is most unpleasant to see, so I turn to a book, this book being the short stories of a guy who is none other than Damon Runyon.
Anyway, the story I am reading is nothing but Dancing Dan’s Christmas and a fine tale it is, at that. I am proceeding with this story when up comes a sentence, as follows:
Anybody in town will tell you that Dancing Dan is a guy with no Barnaby whatever in him, and in fact he has about as much gizzard as anybody around, although I wish to say I always question his judgement in dancing so much with Miss Muriel O’Neill, who works in the Half-Moon night club.
Well, the language in such stories never troubles me greatly but Barnaby greatly mystifies me and is a proposition I am unable to figure, even using Google, which is a search engine, and a most popular search engine, at that.
If you ride the tub across the Atlantic to a country known as England it seems that Barnaby is a rhyming slang for judge, but judge by no means goes with this sentence, unless I am wrong, which happens from time to time.
So I wish to request various parties to explain to me what is the meaning of Barnaby in the story I am reading, and I am most grateful if anybody shows up with a reply.
Mr. Runyon was not a cockney, so I suspect “Barnaby” means something other than judge. “Gizzard,” though, is a part of a chicken or turkey (implying cowardice.) So, dancing with Miss Muriel O’Niell could be a rather brash move for a cowardly man (maybe she’s some other guy’s girlfriend.)
That’s a stab in the dark on my part. I could be completely wrong.
WAG based on minimal research: he’s saying either that Dan’s got poor judgement (which doesn’t feel right, given the rest of the quote), or that Dan’s got nothing in common with those sobersides judge types. “Gizzard” has apparently been used as slang for the heart, which contrasts nicely with the stern image of a judge.
According to my Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, the word means courage or guts. The entry gives a date range of mid 19th C to the 1930s, which fits in with Runyon’s stories.
In the context of Dancing Dan’s Christmas it is clear Dan is no coward. Muriel O’Neill was some other guy’s doll though.
The creators of Ellery Queen invented a fictional “real” author of the (already fictitious) Ellery Queen in the early 1930s. Given the diffident and haughty Ellery Queen persona, a reference to “Barnaby Ross” might have been intended. Ellery Queen history noting two “Barnaby Ross” publications prior to the release of “Dancing Dan.”
Far less likely (except for the timing) would be John “Jack” Barnaby who was a star squash player for Harvard, graduating in 1932, who them went on to a successful career coaching the same sport at Harvard for decades. The idea of Runyon alluding to a Harvard squash player, no matter how good, would seem to be stretching credulity.
Another Barnaby from the period, Ralph S. Barnaby, a naval officer and glider pilot would have been right out as one presumes he would, indeed, have guts.
Where Runyon scores with me is in his use of the rich metaphor. He would spend all night in restaurants and bars just listening to mobsters, gamblers, show people, sportsmen and petty crooks, salting away the language in his memory. I missed a beat by omitting to steal one of his best examples. He might well have said about this forum:
‘Now the parties involved in the question dodge are wiser than a treeful of owls’.*
What a brilliant image this conjures up. My favourite writer by a distance.
You probably didn’t need this post but again, as Runyon would say, ‘here it is, anyway’.
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*Yours truly excepted, of course.
