Cellar Door - History

History

In 2010, Grant Barrett discussed the "cellar door" combination of words in the "On Language" column of the New York Times. The earliest example he cites is from Gee-Boy, a 1903 novel by Cyrus Lauron Hooper, where it is attributed to "an Italian savant". Barrett surmises the idea was already current when Hooper was writing. William Dean Howells in the March 1905 issue of Harper's Magazine attributes to a "courtly Spaniard" the quote, "Your language too has soft and beautiful words, but they are not always appreciated. What could be more musical than your word cellar-door?"

A story told by syndicated columnists Frank Colby in 1949 and L. M. Boyd in 1979 holds that "cellar door" was Edgar Allan Poe's favorite phrase, and that the refrain Nevermore in "The Raven" was chosen as "the closest word to 'cellar door' he could think of." This may derive from a 1914 essay by Alma Blount:

Poe, who studied sound effects carefully, says that he chose "Nevermore" as the refrain for The Raven largely because the word contains the most sonorous vowel, o, and the most "producible" consonant, r. An amusing story is told of an Italian lady who knew not a word of English, but who, when she heard the word cellar-door, was convinced that English must be a most musical language. If the word were not in our minds hopelessly attached to a humble significance, we, too, might be charmed by its combination of spirant, liquids, and vowels.

In 1919, with Prohibition in the United States about to come into force, Cartoons magazine jocularly invoked the idea when predicting the rise of speakeasies hidden in basements:

That eastern professor who said, one time that cellar-door was the most beautiful word in English was speaking oracularly. ... if cellar-door is not the most beautiful word it is probably, now that THE GREAT DROUTH is upon us, the most popular.

The rhythmic or musical quality of the phrase was referenced by H. L. Mencken in 1920, by professor David Allen Robertson in 1921, and by critic George Jean Nathan in 1935. In 1932, poet Wilfred J. Funk publicized Funk & Wagnalls dictionary with a top ten list of beautiful words, which did not include "cellar door". Writers were polled afterwards for their own candidates, and three included "cellar door": Hendrik Willem van Loon, Dorothy Parker, and Albert Payson Terhune. The Baltimore Sun responded:

Three poets who were questioned as to their preferences agreed that the measure of a word and its associations are far more important in judging its beauty than the mere sound ...Although Baltimore writers showed wide disagreement in their preferences, none could make out why in New York think "cellar-door" should be ranked at the top.

A passage from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1955 essay "English and Welsh" has been cited as the origin of the idea:

"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant." Although Tolkien most likely was not the originator because he was merely 11 years old in 1903 when a strange novel called “Gee-Boy” — which also alludes to the aesthetic properties of cellar door — was published by the Shakespeare scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper. Hooper’s narrator writes that the protagonist says: “He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American.” Of course cellar doors have been around in other parts of the world long before in America, but this hints that the idea and recognition of the beauty of the phrase was American to begin with.

In 1966, Tolkien referred to "cellar door" in an interview, using it as an example of the way in which words will shape his stories: "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me, 'cellar door', say," he said. "From that, I might think of a name 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow."

The teenage protagonist of Norman Mailer's 1967 novel Why Are We in Vietnam? attributes the observation to "a committee of Language Hump-type professors ... back in 1936 ". Richard Lederer in Crazy English claims that H. L. Mencken had claimed in a 1940s poll that "cellar door" had been favored by a student from China.

In 1991, Jacques Barzun wrote:

I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was “cellardoor.” It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside — the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. He also enjoyed going to restaurants and hearing the waiter ask if he would like salad or roast vegetables, because again the phrase 'salad or' could be heard. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with “celandine,” where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely.

The remark is attributed to "a famous linguist" in the dialogue script of Donnie Darko (2001). When asked about the origin of the phrase, writer-director Richard Kelly inaccurately suggested Edgar Allan Poe as the possible source.

Denis Norden, asked for his favorite word in 2008, said:

When I was at school a teacher told me the most beautiful word in the English language was 'cellar door'—and I believed him, even though it's strictly two words, and I made it mine. Many years later, I discovered the word he meant was 'celador'. It's still my favorite.

Paul Smith, who produced Norden's show It'll be Alright on the Night, later co-founded Celador Productions.

The antiquarian book seller Cellar Door Books was founded in Indianola, Iowa in 1971. The company traces its name to the Poe attribution through English teacher Miles Sheffler in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1961. Having relocated to New Hampshire in 1975, the company has specialized for many years in the art and books of the 20th-century watercolorist Tasha Tudor (1915–2008). A significant collection of Tasha Tudor's books and other documentation formed by Cellar Door Books was placed with the De Grummond Collecton, the University of Southern Mississippi in 2011.