WHO’S HUMPTY?

We’re having guests for dinner this weekend, a couple we’ve not ever had to our home. At some point during the evening, I expect them to ask about my Humpty Dumptys.

I have more than fifty Humpty Dumptys. I bought my first one in 1987 at the now departed Shorey’s Bookstore in Seattle. It’s a Maxfield Parrish print of the cover of the 1921 Easter edition of Life Magazine, framed and hanging on the wall above an end table in my living room.

On the table are three more Humptys—a ceramic one from Ed, a small metal one I found in a shop in London, with tiny soldiers in high hats trying to mend Humpty’s head, and a light blue stuffed one my brother and his wife gave me.

They’re all over my house. When I had fewer of them, they mostly occupied the guest bathroom till one of them, acting in character, fell off a shelf onto the head of a woman sitting on the toilet. Luckily, it was a soft one.

Most likely, when our dinner guests move around the house, they’ll see the wooden Humpty on the shelf over the TV, in its striped waistcoat and star-studded bow tie. They’ll see the metal box where I keep chocolate, with a Mother Goose Humpty painted on the top. They’ll stop and examine the pen and pencil drawings hanging on the family room wall. “The Humpster”, our artist friend, Lisa, titled one of the drawings, of Humpty with a scarred face and a gangster cap. “Together Again” is the title of the other one, a Humpty that looks like a ball of cells with one giant, bulbous eye.

Guests often ask, “Why Humpty Dumptys? What are they all about?”

I answer, “I don’t know.”

Because I don’t know.  I like Humpty Dumptys. I like their bow ties. They make me smile. I love that people think of me when they see Humptys, and lots of my Humptys are gifts. I have so many, and I’ve had them for so long, I often forget who gave me which ones. I wish I remembered them all.

I’ve heard several ideas about Humptys. That the egg represents life or the Cosmos or the container of the universe or “potential”. That Humpty’s fall represents the fragility of life.

It’s been speculated that the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme was politically themed, related to the Fall of Colchester in the 1600s or the demise of Richard III.

But if my Humptys have some deep, prophetic significance, I can’t find it. And most researchers now doubt the war-related or political theories.

Instead, they believe the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme is what many nursery rhymes were created to be—a riddle.

Question:  What’s that Humpty Dumpty thing that fell off a wall, and had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him together again?

Answer: It’s an egg.

I like it.

Author Lee Smith tells about the first time she saw iconic writer Eudora Welty speak. An eager writer in the audience peppered Ms.Welty with questions about the symbolism of a marble cake in one of her stories. “Does the cake represent the fusion between dream and reality? Or between the temporal and the eternal? Or maybe the union of yin and yang?”

Ms. Welty thought for a bit, smiled sweetly at the man. “Well,” she said slowly, “it’s a fine cake. Been in my family for decades.”

My Humptys are fine Humptys. I’m writing them into my will and hope they’ll be in my family for decades. I used to feel silly when people asked me about them, felt I should acknowledge some deep significance.

Now, I don’t care. I’m open and interested as to what others think Humpty is about, and I’d love to hear your take. But I don’t know why I like Humpty Dumptys. I just do. They’re a riddle. They make me smile.

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