Quote: lead a whore to culture (antedating Dorothy Parker 1962 July) (Folklore 1963 March)

[Garson O'Toole]

Challenge antedate 1968:
Dorothy Parker: You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

I located an attribution to Dorothy Parker in 1962. I also found an
article in the Journal of American Folklore in 1963 indicating that
the pun whore-to-culture / horticulture is the punch line of a more
elaborate joke. (Note the word "horticulture" does not appear in the
text of the joke given further below). This article points to the
"Indiana University Folklore Archive" as the location of the corpus
containing the joke. Maybe some list member knows about this archive
and its dating scheme(s).

The third citation presents an alternative story about Dorothy Parker
and the word horticulture. She uses the word in a verbal game of wits
with different rules.

Cite: 1962 July, Horizon: A Magazine of the Arts, "High Spirits in the
Twenties" by John Mason Brown, Page 38, Column 1, Volume IV, Number 6.
(Google Books snippet view; Verified on paper)

Frank Adams's solving the problem of building a sentence around
"meretricious" with "Meretricious 'n' a Happy New Year," and Mrs.
Parker's solving the same problem with "horticulture" by coming up
with "You may lead a whore to culture but you can't make her
think"—these and a hundred others of their kind may by now have become
enfeebled by familiarity.

http://books.google.com/books?id=dd8GAQAAIAAJ&q=horticulture#search_anchor


Below is a 1963 article in which Jan Harold Brunvand proposes a
classification scheme for "Shaggy Dog Stories". The joke being traced
falls into class C: Stories with Punning Punch Lines.

The story has the annotation "IU 3" and page 46 of the article
indicates that "IU" refers to the Indiana University Folklore
Archives.

Cite: 1963 January-March, Journal of American Folklore, "A
Classification for Shaggy Dog Stories" by Jan Harold Brunvand, Page
60, Volume 76, Number 299, Published for the American Folklore Society
by Houghton, Mifflin and Co. (Google Books snippet view; Verified in
microfilm)

C35. You Can't Lead a Whore. A man offers to show a beautiful girl he
has met his rare flower which he keeps in his bed. She thinks she is
being seduced and leaves when she sees that there really is a flower
in the bed. The moral: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't
lead a whore-to-culture." (Or "You can lead a whore-to-culture, but
you can't make her think.") -IU 3.

(Errors likely in retyping)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ytsMAAAAIAAJ&q=whore#search_anchor


A different story about Dorothy Parker and the word horticulture
appears in the Los Angeles Times in 1976. The date 1976 is rather
late, but this story is told by the playwright Marc Connelly who did
attend the Algonquin Round Table. The more common story about
horticulture is also repeated in the article.

Cite: 1976 May 4, Los Angeles Times "Reminiscences of the Algonquin"
by Dave Smith, Page F1, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest Historical
Newspapers)

Connelly recalled the endless word games in which a difficult word was
thrown at a player, who had to respond quickly by using it in a
sentence, or in which a situation was outlined to a player, who had to
sum up the situation in one word.

Two of Mrs. Parker's: Given the word "paroxysm," she thought a moment
and then said, "Paroxysm agnificent city." Given the description of a
prostitute who refused to go out with two men one night because she
was leaving for Vassar the next day, Mrs. Parker responded with
"horticulture."

(Another legend, not recounted Sunday night, has Mrs. Parker being
given "horticulture" to put into a sentence. She retorted instantly.
"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.")

Garson

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