Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1921 · page 21 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #18 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the satirical magazine *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* describes a visit to Castries (likely Martinique's capital), mocking the city's debauchery and drunkenness. The author sarcastically claims the only "Bible commandment followed" there is getting drunk ("Thou shalt get stewed"), replacing actual morality with hedonism. The text then defines "orgy" through an extended, flowery quote attributed to the French Romantic writer Théophile Gautier, depicting orgiastic excess in sensual, poetic language. This juxtaposition—treating drunken Caribbean revelry as worthy of high literary treatment—is the satire's point: mocking both the location's perceived moral decay and Romantic literature's glorification of excess as "poetry." The magazine targets post-WWI American attitudes about foreign debauchery and bohemian pretension.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang 19 or head or spreading them out like clothes to dry on doorsteps or windowsills. The squalor was stentorious and stercoraceous. Castries was a medley of noise, music and mud. The only bible commandment followed was the eleventh. “Thou shalt get stewed.” The patron saint of the city must be Saint Amant, the French seventeenth century bacchanalian bard who received inspiration for his drinking songs by imbibing enormous quantities of spirits which resulted in ebullitions like “La Debauche.” Alcaeus said, “Wine and truth”—and it was a very naked truth we saw in the Casino on the hill. Yes, it was quite “orgiferous.” What is an orgy? Listen to Gautier: “Oh, the orgy giving to the winds its heaving breasts, red with kisses; the orgy shaking out its perfumed hair upon its bare shoulders, dancing, singing, shouting, holding one hand out to this man and the other to that one; the orgy, hot courtezan, that yields readily to every fancy, that drinks punch and laughs, that stains the cloth and its gown, that dips its garland of flowers in a bath of Malmsey wine; the ribald orgy, showing its foot and its leg, letting its heavy head fall to right or left; the quarrelsome, blaspheming orgy, quick to snatch its stilleto from its garter; the quivering orgy, that has only to stretch out its wand and turn an idiot into a poet and a poet into an idiot; the orgy that duplicates our being, and sends fire running through our veins, sets diamonds in our eyes and rubies on our lips; the orgy, the only poetry that is possible in these prosaic days.” The Casino orchestra was squeaking, the couples