In the early afternoon of 20 November 2005, I visited the home of Howard Lambert Chace's daughter in Connecticut. To secure my invitation, I had contacted her out of the blue by email after tracking her down through online research. I had introduced myself electronically and expressed a keen interest in learning more about her father, and particularly his masterpiece Anguish Languish.  She was willing to meet with me to talk about Howard Chace, but was understandably a bit wary of a stranger, even if we did share a peculiarly spelt last name. Nevertheless, she and her husband kindly invited me to visit their home.

Driving down from Hartford, and then into the old growth forests outside of Bridgeport, I arrived at their home, a stately white colonial farmhouse. Parking my car along the road and then entering the gate of the white picket fence that fronted the house and joined up with with the drystock walls that lined the property, I had been told to "come around back." I walked to the back of the house and knocked at the door. On that cold late-autumn day, I was warmly welcomed inside, and, to the quizzical interest of my new acquaintances, I quickly pulled out my passport to reveal that I was indeed a Chace. So began what resulted in a wonderful evening spent with two fascinating individuals.

We had agreed to meet for an hour or two and began our conversation, but the topic of Howard Lambert Chace ended up demanding much more. Having become fascinated with the troupe of colorful Chaces I had discovered in the previous three years after I had avidly taken up genealogy, I had much to ask about Howard Chace. His daughter fielded my questions, and an image of her father began to materialize as she shared stories with me about his life. As our conversation unfolded and went well past the couple of hours we had planned, after some furtive glances at one another and then a brief adjournment to the kitchen, my hosts graciously invited me to stay for supper. Our discussion continued late into the evening over a delightful meal, aided by conducive libations, and stories of Howard Chace were lovingly shared with me by his daughter.

Howard Lambert Chace was born on 4 June 1897 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Ernest Mason Chace and Lenora Pearl Huddleston. The Chace family was well-off. Howard's grandfather Charles Baylies Chace was a birthright Quaker from Fall River, Massachusetts, who ended up in Ohio after graduating from Brown University, and then settling in Cincinnati as a school teacher. However, his son Ernest Mason Chace was not interested in an Ivy League education, and in fact eschewed formal education entirely, preferring to become a self-made man.

Ernest worked hard to build his career, and was the driving force behind Cincinnati Milling Machine, which is now called Milacron. He served as superintendent, then vice-president, and finally took a position on the board of trustees, all by sheer power of will and wherewithal.  That's not to say that Ernest had the same aversion to higher education for his children, and he was supportive of his son Howard pursuing a university degree, but at Howard's own expense. 

After twists and turns through a learning path that began in 1915, and then wound its way through World War I, the Roaring Twenties, and into the Great Depression, with studies at Cincinnati, McGill and Miami universities, Howard Chace graduated Cum Laude from Miami University of Ohio in 1931 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Romance Languages, specializing in French. His father promptly handed him a check for $5000 as congratulations -- a princely sum in those days, particularly in the midst of an economic depression.

Certainly Howard's duties in the Merchant Marine during WWI had slowed his progress in his studies, and his father's reward at graduation notwithstanding, Howard had to support himself during university. Fortunately, he was a talented pianist who could play anything by ear and he performed in a ragtime band in the summers during this time, and also provided accompaniment on the piano for silent movies to make a living and support himself through school. However, while ragtime may have paid the bills, his preference was Chopin and Schubert. 

The same year he graduated, Howard took a position at his alma mater as a graduate assistant in French. Furthering his education and mastering of the French language, Howard studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and received his Master of Arts Degree in French at Miami University in 1935.

Now a Professor of Romance Languages, Howard began contemplating an approach to teaching intonation to his students to help them understand that the meaning in language is inherent in its sound, rather than in its denotation. A first-hand witness to the shortages of all manner of goods during World War II, Professor Chace toyed with what the results would be should such constrictions be applied to language, and employed homophonic transformation to create a story he entitled "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut." According to Howard:

"I wrote [Ladle Rat Rotten Hut] about 1940. It was going to be part of a little article I was writing. It was in the days of rationing during the war and I thought about what would happen if we had to ration language. If our vocabulary were cut in half, we'd have to get along with other words. Consequently, I thought I'd see how you'd get along with the other half. I've never written that article, but I've always thought of doing it.

"I taught French, and I used the story in my class to show the importance of intonation in learning a foreign language. You see, if you take these English words and put them in columns like a spelling book and just read them, they have no meaning. However, if you read them with the proper intonation, the meaning appears for certain people. For other people the meaning never does appear."  (The Next Whole Earth Catalog, 1980)

"Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" (the text of which is located on this webpage) was a play on "Little Red Riding Hood," and was the germination of what would eventually become a veritable cultural phenomenon in the 1950s, a book entitled Anguish Languish (how one would pronounce "English Language" in the Anguish Languish). However, the success of Anguish Languish happened the same way that Howard had graduated from university, through twists and turns. As Howard later described it:

"I never submitted it to anybody, but it got spread some way or other. It's one of those things that got completely out of control. I showed it to a few friends and to a book salesman who came to see me. He liked the thing because it had to do with words. I think I may have given him a copy, and he must have given it to someone else. It first appeared in print in the Merriam Company's magazine Word Study. I think it got in Stars and Stripes [U.S. Army newspaper] because I heard from people in Baghdad, Sweden, all over the world. Sports Illustrated found it in another publication and gave me $1000 for it. Arthur Godfrey found it in Sports Illustrated, and he broadcast it and very generously told any readers that wanted a copy they could have one by sending me postage. To my surprise, I mailed about five thousand of them. After that episode, Prentice Hall asked me to write a series of stories for a book, which I did. (The Next Whole Earth Catalog, 1980)

Slowly winding its way into the popular imagination, the path taken by "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" was nonetheless paved with illustrious stops along the way. Stars & Stripes, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, then the very first issue of Sports Illustrated, and Arthur Godfrey, one of the most popular radio and television stars of the age, all leant a hand in making Howard Lambert Chace a household name in the 1950s.

Our dinner having concluded, and the basis of Howard Chace's story having been shared, we moved back to the living room and our conversation turned to the effects this sudden fame had on Howard Chace's life. The year that changed everything was 1954. The Sports Illustrated feature called "Parlor Sport," which first brought wide-spread attention to Chace in August 1954, was followed in quick succession by Arthur Godfrey reading "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" on his radio show in September. Swamped with requests from his listener's for copies of the story, Godfrey provided Chace's address during a subsequent show on 14 October, and stated that anyone who wished could write to him to receive a copy. By the next Monday, when the deluge of post began to descend in Oxford, Ohio, up to 300 to 400 letters per day arrived.  Recounting this development, his daughter told me, as I sat in wonder hearing of the unexpected fame that had suddenly found him, that her father frantically requested her to return home to help sort out the piles of mail.  She had just gotten married earlier that year. At one point in the second half of the month, 1000 letters arrived in one day. 

From the response received, it was clear to Chace and his eventual publisher Prentice-Hall that there was a real desire for more renditions of works in the Anguish Languish, and a book was quickly in the works.  On 20 August 1956, Anguish Languish was published and, while it was a not a blockbuster, it sold quite well. According to Howard Chace:

"The book sold fairly well for that sort of thing. It went through four printings I think, maybe 14,000 copies total.

"It's used now a good deal in textbooks to demonstrate the phonetic structures of English. The book has been used by some psychologist to determine the ability of people to understand sound, to study the limit of distortion that can be comprehended. That varies from person to person."  (The Next Whole Earth Catalog, 1980)

Well before Andy Warhol prophesied that in the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes, Howard Lambert Chace had his moment in the sun. However, his 15 minutes have had quite a bit more longevity. And while his book Anguish Languish has been out of print for many decades, it is still sought after and today sells for upwards of $300-$400 on Amazon. 

Howard Lambert Chace counted among his friends a litany of literary luminaries. Ogden Nash, another wordsmith of considerable renown, was a good friend. In the early 1950s, Nash visited Chace in Miami, Ohio, and the two belletrists went to a dinner party together. During the evening, Chace shared his discovery of the Anguish Languish with Nash, who "went gaga over it," and then encouraged Chace to write his book. After Chace's eventual success, Nash facetiously referred to himself variously as Chace's publicist or as his agent.  One of the better-known poems created by Nash was The Llama:

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.

After its publication, Nash later added a note:  "The author's attention has been drawn to the kind of conflagration known as a 'three-alarmer.'" This type of wordplay is precisely the concept behind Anguish Languish, and one wonders if it were Chace who brought this to Nash's attention.

Another brother in letters, and Chace's best friend, was Bergen Evans, a fellow Miami University alum, who received his doctorate from Harvard University and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England. Evans was Professor of English at Northwestern University and was the host of the popular television show, The Last Word, for which he won a Peabody Award.  He had another, lesser-known show called Down You Go. Also from the Buckeye State, on his regular returns to his family's home in Franklin, Ohio, Bergen would roar into Miami on his motorcycle just to visit his dear friend Howard Chace.

Al Wade, who was a member of the Admiral Byrd expedition to the Antarctic was also a close friend and fellow professor at Miami University.

However, probably the closest friend Howard Chace had in the world was his daughter, who was sitting across from me sharing all of these wonderful stories about her father. Just listening to her talk fondly of him, it was obvious that she held him in the highest esteem:

"He was a man of great integrity and was the most honest person I ever knew (although my mother was also very honest).  He used to tell me stories in French, and when I was three years old, he took me to Paris, where I turned four. It was my father's fourth trip there.  He spoke flawless French and wherever he went, whether France or Quebec, he was taken as a native speaker, just not from the location where he was.

My father always knew everything and you could go to him with any question, however he was also very unassuming.  In our house, we always had lots of interesting visitors. And he was fond of hosting parties. One I remember well involved a scavenger hunt inside the house with the hunted items hidden in plain sight, such as an ebony-handled knife hidden among the black keys on the piano. My father was loved by everyone, adults and children alike.

He fell off of his bike once when he was 78, and he was very embarrassed about it.  But, I told him that that is something he should be proud of." 

With such fond memories of her father and her loving recounting of his life, it was no surprise when I found out many years later that Howard Lambert Chace was chosen as "Dad of the Year" before a cheering crowd of 10,000 at Miami Field Stadium at the half-time of a football game in 1952, well-before he rose to humble fame in the wider world.

As my wonderful evening with Howard Chace's daughter and her husband came to an end, I said my goodbyes and walked out into the dark night of a Connecticut old-growth forest and got back into my car and drove away. I kept touch with my two hosts for a time thereafter, but have since heard nothing from them for many, many years. Thinking back on that visit in 2005, and remaining fascinated by the life and work of Howard Chace, I have finally taken the time to recount his story.

Howard Lambert Chace lived a long life and interesting life, and his legacy is still being discussed in the 21st Century. Howard Lambert Chace died on 9 January  1982, in Miami, Ohio, at the age of 84.