The Worst Joke in the World — Background and Themes

(2 User reviews) 374

In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Holding, Elisabeth Sanxay, 1889-1955 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2022 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Mothers-in-law -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 12,003

Reading time 53 min

Text sections 2

For The Worst Joke in the World — Background and Themes, the stored edition analysis reports 12,003 words, 53 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 15.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #67373

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's 1925 story follows Mrs. Champney, a fifty-year-old widow, as she packs a velvet kitten, recalls her past, and navigates a strained relationship with her son Robert, revealing the quiet weight of family expectations.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg67373

Read the Text

They were old ladies, and to them Jessica Champney at fifty was not old at all. With her gayety, her lively interest in life, and her dainty clothes, she seemed to them altogether young—girlish, even, in her enthusiastic moments, and always interesting. They loved and admired her, and were heavy-hearted at her going.

“You’ve forgotten the pussy cat, Jessica,” Mrs. Maxwell gravely remarked.

“Oh, so I have!” said Mrs. Champney.

Hanging beside the bureau was a black velvet kitten with a strip of sandpaper fastened across its back, and underneath it the inscription:

It was intended, of course, for striking matches. As Mrs. Champney never had occasion to strike a match, this little object was not remarkably useful. Nor, being a woman of taste, would she have admitted that it was in the least ornamental; but it was precious to her—so precious that a sob rose in her throat as she took it down from the wall.

She showed a bright enough face to the old ladies, however, as she carried the kitten across the room and laid it in the bag. She had often talked to these old friends about her past—about her two heavenly winters in Italy, about her girlhood “down East,” about all sorts of lively and amusing things that she had seen and done; but she had said very, very little about the period to which the velvet kitten belonged.

It had been given to her in the early days of her married life by a grateful and adoring cook. It had hung on the wall of her bedroom in that shabby, sunny old house in Connecticut where her three children had been born. She could not think of that room unmoved, and she did not care to talk of it to any one.

Not that it was sad to remember those bygone days. There was no trace of bitterness in the memory. It was all tender and beautiful, and sometimes she recalled things that made her laugh through the tears; but even those things she couldn’t talk about.

There was, for instance, that ridiculous morning when grandpa had come to see the baby, the unique and miraculous first baby. He had sat down in a chair and very gingerly taken the small bundle in his arms, and the chair had suddenly broken beneath his portly form. Down he crashed, his blue eyes staring wildly, his great white mustache fairly bristling with horror, the invaluable infant held aloft in both hands. If she had begun to tell about that, in the very middle of it another memory might have come—a recollection of the day when she had sat in that same room, the door locked, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes staring ahead of her at the years that must be lived without her husband, her friend and lover.

She had thought she could not bear that, but she had borne it; and the time had come when the memory of her husband was no longer an anguish and a futile regret, but a benediction. She had lived a happy life with her children. They were all married now, and in homes of their own, and she was glad that it should be so.

These four years alone had been happy, too. Her children wrote to her and visited her, and their family affairs were a source of endless interest. She had all sorts of other interests, too. She made friends readily; she was an energetic parish worker; she loved to read; she enjoyed a matinée now and then, or a concert, and the conversation of Mrs. Maxwell and Mrs. Deane.

With all her heart she had relished her freedom and her dignity. Her children were always asking her to come and live with one or the other of them, but she had always affectionately refused. She believed it wasn’t wise and wasn’t right.

She had stayed on in this comfortable, old-fashioned boarding house in Stamford, cheerful and busy. It had been a delight beyond measure to her to send a little check now and then to one of her children, a present to a grandchild, some pretty thing that she had embroidered or crocheted to her daughters-in-law. Her elder son’s wife had written once that she was a “real fairy godmother,” and Mrs. Champney never forgot that. It was exactly what she wanted to be to them all—a gay, sympathetic, gracious fairy godmother.

Continue Reading →

The story opens with Mrs. Champney packing a velvet kitten—a match-striker given by a grateful cook early in her marriage. The kitten is neither useful nor ornamental, yet it brings a sob to her throat. This small object anchors the narrative: it is a token of a past she cannot discuss, a period of her life she guards from her two elderly friends, Mrs. Maxwell and Mrs. Deane. The scene establishes a pattern of withheld emotion and selective memory that runs through the excerpts.

Holding’s prose is precise and understated. Mrs. Champney at fifty is seen as “girlish” by her friends, but the reader quickly senses a gap between her bright exterior and the weight of what she leaves unsaid. The opening room, stripped of its belongings, becomes a metaphor for a life being dismantled—or perhaps rearranged.

The Velvet Kitten as a Relic of Unspoken History

The velvet kitten is the story’s most concrete symbol. It is described as “precious” to Mrs. Champney, yet she cannot explain why to her friends. The narrator notes that she has talked freely about her “heavenly winters in Italy” and her girlhood, but “very, very little about the period to which the velvet kitten belonged.” This asymmetry is deliberate: the reader is given access to her inner life while the other characters are not. The kitten hung in the bedroom of a “shabby, sunny old house in Connecticut” where her children were born. That house is recalled without bitterness, but with a tenderness that makes her “laugh through the tears.” Holding uses the kitten to signal that the story’s emotional center lies not in the present action but in the layered past that Mrs. Champney carries with her.

A Son’s New Severity and a Mother’s Calculation

Later in the excerpts, Mrs. Champney has moved to a suburban town near her son Robert and his wife Molly. She is about to start work at the Needlecraft Shop for eighteen dollars a week. The narrative shifts to her internal calculations: she can live independently, see the baby often, and be a “fairy godmother—with sadly clipped wings.” But the real tension is with Robert. She dreads telling him about her job. She considers taking “a mighty high hand with him from the start,” yet feels “depressed, and tired and—yes, crushed.” When she returns home, Robert meets her at the stairs with a look she has never seen before: “the profound compassion and tenderness of a man.” This moment undercuts her earlier view of him as a “dear and rather clumsy boy.” Holding shows a relationship in flux, where roles are being renegotiated without open conflict.

Bobbetty’s Personality and the Weight of Small Gestures

Mrs. Champney’s grandson Bobbetty, not yet three, is a vivid presence. He sits in his high chair, eating Graham crackers and milk, with a “sidelong glance” that suggests a “thoughtful and alarming gleam.” Mrs. Champney buys him a gray plush animal (she thinks it is a dog, the saleswoman a cat) and removes its pin eyes to prevent injury. Bobbetty receives it with “warm affection” and later, in his crib, chatters about “a wild horsy who stampled on six policemens.” The child’s personality is rendered with affectionate humor, but his presence also sharpens the story’s central dilemma: Mrs. Champney wants to be near him, yet must navigate her son’s authority. The scene of putting Bobbetty to bed—where she feels “quite ashamed” for interrupting his polite conversation—shows her tenderness and her awareness that she is no longer the primary caregiver.

Withheld Confidences and the Reader’s Position

Throughout the excerpts, Holding positions the reader as a confidant who knows more than the other characters. Mrs. Champney’s friends see only her “gayety” and “dainty clothes”; Robert sees a mother he must protect; Molly is a background figure. But the narrator reveals Mrs. Champney’s tears, her suppressed sobs, and her memories. This asymmetry creates a quiet tension: the reader waits for the moment when her inner life will break through the surface. The story’s title, “The Worst Joke in the World,” is never explained in the excerpts, but it hints at a painful irony—perhaps the joke is the gap between how Mrs. Champney is perceived and what she feels. The excerpts end before any resolution, leaving the reader to wonder whether she will tell Robert about her job, and whether the velvet kitten’s story will ever be shared.

Readers should attend to the small objects and gestures that carry emotional weight: the kitten, the plush animal, the broken chair from a memory. Holding’s style rewards patience; the story’s power lies in what is not said. Notice how Mrs. Champney’s voice shifts between the bright tone she uses with others and the private reflections the narrator shares. The excerpts offer a portrait of a woman at a threshold, and the title remains a riddle worth holding in mind.

Mrs. Champney’s velvet kitten, that small keepsake of unspoken duty, reminds me of how The Worst Joke in the World holds its grief in quiet corners. I sometimes shelve it beside The sporting chance — Themes and Context, for both know that chance often wears a tired, familiar face, and family love is rarely loud.