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Who really said it

You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat

Written by Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 · American poet, critic and short-story writer
Verified In copyright

These lines are genuinely Parker’s, and the witness is about as good as quotation research gets: W. Somerset Maugham ↗ printed them in his introduction to The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker (1944), describing a Hollywood dinner party at which he asked Parker to write him a poem and watched her do it. Quote Investigator ↗ verified that source on paper and concludes: “Dorothy Parker crafted this clever poem.” What is wrong is not the attribution but the anecdote that travels with it.

Last verified 4 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat” Dorothy Parker, written for W. Somerset Maugham and printed in his introduction to The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker (1944). Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The NAACP, as residuary legatee of Dorothy Parker’s estate, and The Viking Press). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Dorothy Parker — American poet, critic and short-story writer. Theme: "You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

First published
1944
In
W. Somerset Maugham, introduction to The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker, pp. 12–14
Publisher
The Viking Press, New York
Occasion
A Hollywood dinner party at Fanny Brice’s; Maugham asked Parker for a poem

Higgledy Piggledy, my white hen;
She lays eggs for gentlemen.

“Yes, I’ve always liked those lines,” I said.
She gave a thin, cool smile and without an instant’s hesitation, added:

You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat
To come across for the proletariat.

That is Quote Investigator’s transcription ↗ of Maugham’s 1944 introduction, which frames the verse with his own narration. The first two lines are a traditional nursery rhyme that Parker wrote out; the second two are hers. This page’s headline uses the title-case, single-line form the couplet usually circulates in — the source sets it as two lines of verse.

The 1944 volume
The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker (1944) at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: "You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat"

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s article ↗ is the anchor. It traces the story to Maugham’s introduction to the 1944 Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker, quotes his account at length, and concludes that Parker did write the poem.
  • Maugham’s account is first-hand and specific. He describes the party (at Fanny Brice’s, with Aldous Huxley among the guests), his request for a poem, the waiter sent for a pencil and “gone a long time,” and Parker writing out the nursery-rhyme couplet before adding her own. That level of circumstantial detail from a named eyewitness is unusually strong for a Round Table-era quip.
  • The couplet is stable across the record. QI notes that John Keats’s 1970 Parker biography You Might as Well Live “hewed closely to the version given by Maugham in 1944,” and Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes reproduces the same two lines in 2000.
  • The 1944 volume itself is held by the Internet Archive ↗ — The Viking Press, 1944, with Parker as the credited author. The item is lending-restricted, so we could not open the introduction and read Maugham’s pages ourselves; we confirmed that the edition exists and is the one QI cites, and we rely on QI’s reading of the text.
In copyright

The verse was first published in 1944, well after the 1930 cut-off below which US works are reliably in the public domain, so it is treated here as in copyright. Parker left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. and, on his death, to the NAACP ↗, which is therefore the party to approach about her literary rights; the 1944 volume was published by The Viking Press. The two lines are quoted here for commentary on their attribution. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The story around it is the wrong part

The verse is Parker’s and well sourced. The anecdote it usually arrives in has been reshaped into a better story than the one Maugham actually told.

A party game of completing nursery rhymes Not what happened

The familiar telling — guests challenging each other to finish rhymes, Maugham handing Parker a couplet to cap — appears in Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes (2000). In Maugham’s own 1944 account ↗ there was no game and no challenge: he asked her to write him a poem, and she wrote all four lines herself.

Instant composition Overstated

QI notes that Parker had a long wait while the waiter fetched a pencil, and “may have thought about or constructed the poem before she even attended the party.” Maugham says only that she added the couplet “without an instant’s hesitation” once he spoke.

“my fine hen … But she won’t, by gun or lariat” 1971 variant

QI records an altered version in a Michigan newspaper editorial in 1971, still credited to Parker. The 1944 text reads “my white hen” and “You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat.”

Parker wrote it, Maugham printed it in 1944, and the only thing that needed correcting was the story — see Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The joke is a collision of registers. “Higgledy Piggledy, my white hen” is a nursery rhyme; “come across for the proletariat” is 1930s left-wing political vocabulary, with “come across” carrying its period slang sense of giving something up under pressure. Parker sets a hen against the class struggle and lets the rhyme do the rest.

The politics were not decorative. Parker was seriously engaged with left-wing causes in the 1930s and 1940s, which is what makes the couplet a joke at her own expense as much as anyone else’s — the hen is the one holdout no amount of organising can recruit.

Parker sets a hen against the class struggle and lets the rhyme do the rest.

Read the full story

This page is filed as verified, which on this site means a specific published work has been shown to contain the wording. That work is Maugham’s 1944 introduction, and the reader should know exactly how far our own checking went: we confirmed the 1944 Viking Press edition exists and is the one cited, but the Internet Archive copy is lending-restricted and we could not read the introduction inside it. Quote Investigator reports verifying it on paper, and we cite QI as the reader.

It is a useful case for what “misattributed” can mean. Nothing about the credit is wrong here. What had drifted was the narrative — and a good anecdote will reshape itself toward a better story just as reliably as an orphaned quip will drift toward a more famous name.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator — this versequoteinvestigator.com

The investigation this page defers to: Maugham’s 1944 first-hand account, and why the party-challenge version of the story is wrong.
The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker (1944)archive.org

The Viking Press first edition containing Maugham’s introduction. Lending-restricted, so its text cannot be searched from here.
Wikipedia — Dorothy Parkeren.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author (1893–1967), including the bequest of her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. and then the NAACP.
Wikipedia — W. Somerset Maughamen.wikipedia.org

The novelist who asked Parker for the poem and published the lines in 1944.
Wikiquote — Dorothy Parkeren.wikiquote.org

Parker’s sourced quotation page. It does not carry this verse — the 1944 Maugham introduction remains the citation of record.
Wikipedia — Algonquin Round Tableen.wikipedia.org

The circle Parker is identified with, and the setting the anecdote is usually — wrongly — relocated to.

The author

About Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967 · American poet, critic and short-story writer

Dorothy Parker (born Dorothy Rothschild, 22 August 1893 – 7 June 1967) was an American poet, critic and short-story writer, a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, and by the 1930s a working Hollywood screenwriter — which is how she came to be at a Los Angeles dinner party with Maugham and Aldous Huxley. Light verse was her first trade and her most disciplined one, and this couplet shows the technique: a comic rhyme carrying a political joke, delivered without visible effort.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Maugham, W. Somerset. Introduction to The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker, 12–14. New York: The Viking Press, 1944. Verified on paper by Quote Investigator; the Internet Archive holds the 1944 Viking Press edition under lending restriction.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘You Cannot Persuade Her with Gun or Lariat, To Come Across for the Proletariat’?” Last verified 4 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/you-cannot-persuade-her-with-gun-or-lariat-to-come-across/

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