Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  AUERBACH, Arnold Jacob [“Red”] (1917–), US basketball executive, manager of the Boston Celtics.

  1 On tour with the Boston Celtics, Auerbach met three of his players, each with an attractive young woman on his arm, in the hotel lobby at five o’clock in the morning. One of the players covered his embarrassment by introducing the young woman as his “cousin.” Auerbach nodded politely. The player, desperately trying to make the unlikely tale sound more convincing, continued, “We were just on our way to church.” Auerbach, relating this story on a later occasion, remarked, “I couldn’t take that. I fined him twenty-five dollars for insulting my intelligence.”

  2 Auerbach often said that basketball was a simple game, a thought that confounded sports fans. When asked why, he said, “The ball is round and the floor is flat.”

  AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Saint (354–430), North African theologian; one of the fathers and doctors of the Church. His City of God and Confessions are among the greatest Christian documents.

  1 In his Confessions Augustine recounts the sins of his youth and how even his prayers for repentance were tainted with insincerity: “Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo” (Give me chastity and continence, but not yet).

  AUGUSTUS [Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus] (63 BC–AD 14), first Roman emperor (31 BC–AD 14), heir of Julius Caesar.

  1 The evening before the crucial battle of Actium, Octavian (the young Augustus) set up his camp on a hill overlooking the bay and the two fleets — his own and Anthony’s — near what is now the town of Preveza in northwestern Greece. In the morning as he emerged from his tent he met a peasant driving a donkey. He asked the man his name. “Eutyches” (Good Fortune) was the answer. And the donkey’s name? “Nikon” (Victor).

  2 An old soldier was involved in a lawsuit that seemed likely to go against him. He therefore accosted his former commander, Augustus, in a public place, asking him to appear in court on his behalf. The emperor at once selected one of his suite to appear for the man and introduce him to the litigant. But the soldier, rolling back his sleeve to reveal his scars, shouted, “When you were in danger at Actium, I didn’t choose a substitute but fought for you in person.” Chagrined, Augustus appeared in court on the veteran’s behalf.

  3 Several people trained birds to make complimentary greetings to the emperor. Augustus would often buy the birds for generous sums of money. A poor cobbler acquired a raven, intending to train it to make such a remark. The bird turned out to be such a slow learner that the exasperated cobbler often used to say to it, “Nothing to show for all the trouble and expense.” One day the raven began to repeat its lesson as Augustus was passing. This time the emperor declined to buy, saying, “I get enough of such compliments at home.” The bird, however, also remembering the words of his trainer’s usual complaint, went on, “Nothing to show for all the trouble and expense.” Amused, Augustus bought the raven.

  4 Augustus had ordered a young man of bad character to be dismissed from his service. The man came to him and begged for pardon, saying, “How am I to go home? What shall I tell my father?”

  “Tell your father that you didn’t find me to your liking,” the emperor replied.

  5 A certain Roman nobleman died, leaving enormous debts that he had successfully concealed during his lifetime. When the estate was put up for auction, Augustus instructed his agent to buy the man’s pillow. To those who expressed surprise at the order he explained, “That pillow must be particularly conducive to sleep, if its late owner, in spite of all his debts, could sleep on it.”

  6 The conduct of Augustus’s daughter Julia was so blatant that a group of influential Romans threatened to denounce her as an adulteress in front of the whole court. Augustus anticipated them by banishing his daughter to a barren island. Her lovers were variously punished. One of Julia’s attendants, the freedwoman Phoebe, hanged herself rather than give evidence against her mistress. “Oh, that I had been Phoebe’s father, not Julia’s,” exclaimed Augustus when he heard of the suicide.

  AUMALE, Henri, Duc d’ (1822–97), French aristocrat, son of King Louis Philippe.

  1 The Duc d’Aumale was one of the most aristocratic of the lovers of Léonide Leblanc, a fashionable courtesan. Léonide eventually hit on a subtle way to discourage unwanted lovers. She had a lifelike wax model of the duke set up at a table in a room of her house. When pestered by a suitor, she would half-open the door to that room, then close it quickly, and say, “Ssh! The duke is here.”

  2 The Duc d’Aumale’s residence at Chantilly was at a distance from Paris convenient for the visits of Léonide Leblanc. One day she traveled out to Chantilly by train, sharing the compartment with a group of society ladies who began vying with each other to prove on what friendly terms they were with the duke. “We dined with His Highness last night,” said one. “We shall be lunching there tomorrow,” said another. “Of course, we went to the ball there last week,” said a third. Léonide Leblanc held her peace until the train drew into Chantilly station. Then she stood up, said, “And I, ladies, am sleeping with His Highness tonight,” and stepped lightly from the train.

  3 During the Franco-Prussian War Marshal Achille Bazaine commanded the French troops in the fortress of Metz. It was his hesitations, misjudgments, and ultimate surrender that deprived France of the last forces capable of withstanding the German advance. In 1873 the marshal was arraigned before a French military court presided over by the Duc d’Aumale; he was charged with neglecting to do everything required by duty and honor before capitulating to the enemy. At one stage in the proceedings the marshal sought to exonerate himself by reminding the court of the state of affairs at the time of his surrender: “There was no government, there was no order, there was nothing.” “There was still France,” said the Duc d’Aumale.

  4 Aumale, a great patriot, yearned for military glory in the cause of his beloved France. Commissioned as a sublieutenant in the infantry at the age of fifteen, he announced, “My only ambition is to be the forty-third Bourbon to be killed on the field of battle.”

  5 The Duc d’Aumale was renowned for his youthful love affairs, but in his old age he felt his powers failing. “As a young man I used to have four supple members and one stiff one,” he observed. “Now I have four stiff and one supple.”

  AUSTIN, Alfred (1835–1913), British poet and dramatist.

  1 Someone once chided the poet laureate for grammatical errors in his verses. Austin excused himself by saying, “I dare not alter these things; they come to me from above.”

  AUSTIN, Warren Robinson (1877–1962), US politician and diplomat.

  1 In a debate on the Middle East question, Austin exhorted the warring Jews and Arabs to sit down and settle their differences “like good Christians.”

  2 Someone once asked Austin whether he did not become tired during the apparently interminable debates at the U.N. “Yes, I do,” he replied, “but it is better for aged diplomats to be bored than for young men to die.”

  AVEMPACE [Abu Bekr Ibn Bajja] (c. 1095–1138), Spanish Muslim scholar.

  1 The Muslim governor of Saragossa was so delighted by the excellence of Avempace’s verses that he swore the young scholar should walk on gold whenever he entered his presence. Avempace feared that the governor would soon regret his exuberant vow and that his own welcome at court would suffer as a result. He therefore sewed a gold piece into the sole of each of his shoes, so that the governor’s oath could be kept at no expense to himself.

  AVERY, Oswald [Theodore] (1877–1955), Canadian-born bacteriologist and the discoverer of DNA as the basic genetic material of the cell.

  1 Professor Avery worked for many years in a small laboratory at the hospital of the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. Many of his experimental predictions turned out to be wrong, but that never discouraged him. He capitalized on error. His colleagues remember him saying, “Whenever you fall, pick up something.”

  AYMÉ, Marcel (1902–67), French novelist, essayist, and playwright.

  1 A jo
urnalist was complaining to Aymé that the modern world hinders the free development of the human being. “I don’t agree,” said Aymé mildly. “I consider myself perfectly free.”

  “But surely you feel some limits to your freedom.”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Aymé, “from time to time I find myself terribly limited by the dictionary.”

  AZEGLIO, Massimo Taparelli, Marchese d’ (1798–1866), Italian statesman and writer of historical novels.

  1 Azeglio’s second marriage, to Luisa Blondel, was not very successful and the couple separated. In 1866, however, hearing that Azeglio was dying, Luisa rushed to his deathbed. “Ah, Luisa,” sighed the marchese, “you always arrive just as I’m leaving.”

  B

  BABBAGE, Charles (1792–1871), British inventor and mathematician.

  1 Babbage objected to Tennyson’s lines from The Vision of Sin, “Every moment dies a man, / Every moment one is born,” saying that if that were true “the population of the world would be at a standstill.” In the interests of accuracy, he wrote to Tennyson, the lines should be emended to read, “Every moment dies a man, / Every moment one and one-sixteenth is born.”

  2 Babbage liked to talk. At a dinner he was completely outtalked by Thomas Carlyle, who spent the whole meal haranguing the company on the merits of silence. After dinner Babbage went up to Carlyle and thanked him grimly for his interesting lecture on silence.

  BACALL, Lauren (1924–), US movie actress who married Humphrey Bogart.

  1 Lauren Bacall attended a New Year’s Eve party at which the Shah of Iran was one of the distinguished guests. He complimented her on her dancing: “You dance beautifully, Miss Bacall.”

  “You bet your ass, Shah,” she replied.

  2 When Humphrey Bogart died, Lauren Bacall placed in the urn with his ashes a small gold whistle inscribed, “If you want anything, just whistle.” She had spoken this line to him in their first film together, To Have and Have Not.

  3 When Bacall took a break from making movies to have children with her husband, Humphrey Bogart, she had mixed feelings. “I’ll miss Hollywood,” she said. “Of the twenty friends I thought I had, I’ll miss the six I really had.”

  BACH, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–88), German composer; third son of Johann Sebastian Bach.

  1 As court musician to Frederick the Great in Berlin, one of C. P. E. Bach’s duties was to accompany the king when the latter played the flute. Since Frederick prided himself on his ability, Bach’s services as accompanist were frequently requested. At the end of one such royal performance a sycophantic courtier burst out with “What rhythm!”

  “What rhythms!” grumbled Bach sotto voce at the piano.

  BACH, Johann Sebastian (1685–1750), German composer and instrumentalist.

  1 While at school at Lüneburg, Bach more than once walked to Hamburg, fifty kilometers away, primarily to hear J. A. Reincken, organist of the Katharinen-Kirche there. One day, returning almost penniless to Lüneburg, he rested outside an inn. Someone threw two herring heads onto the rubbish heap. Picking up this unsavory offering to see if any part was edible, Bach found a coin in each head. Not only did he have his meal, he was able “to undertake another and more comfortable pilgrimage to Herr Reincken.”

  BACON, Francis, 1st Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans (1561–1626), British lawyer and experimental philosopher.

  1 While lord chancellor, Bacon presided over a criminal appeal in which the plaintiff was a man called Hogg. Hogg facetiously pleaded that he should be let off on the grounds of his kinship with the judge. “For,” he claimed, “Hogg must be kin to Bacon.”

  “Not until it has been hung,” was the chancellor’s reply.

  2 Sir John Hayward’s History of Henry IV, published in 1599, immediately landed its author in serious trouble with Queen Elizabeth, who believed that under the pretense of writing history he was criticizing her own policies. Summoning her legal officers, she consulted them as to whether it might not be possible to prosecute Hayward for treason. Bacon demurred: “I cannot answer for there being treason in it, but certainly it contains much felony.”

  “How?” asked the queen. “And wherein?”

  “In many passages,” Bacon replied, “which he has stolen from Tacitus.”

  3 Queen Elizabeth I visited her lord chancellor at his house at Gorhambury in Hertfordshire. “What a little house you have gotten,” she remarked, being used to the lavish establishments of the great lords who vied to entertain her. Bacon replied with consummate tact, “The house is well, but it is you, Your Majesty, who have made me too great for my house.”

  4 In the court of James I there was present a rather unremarkable envoy from France. After giving audience to this lanky, overgrown nobleman, the king asked Bacon his opinion of the marquis. “Your Majesty,” replied Bacon, “people of such dimensions are like four- or five-story houses — the upper rooms are the most poorly furnished.”

  5 Bacon’s experimental method was directly responsible for his death. In March 1626, as he was being driven in a coach past snowy fields near Highgate, north of London, the idea occurred to him that snow might be used as a means of preserving food. He stopped the coach at the foot of Highgate Hill and entered a poor woman’s house where he bought a chicken, killed and drew it, and then packed the interior of the carcass with snow. This endeavor brought on such a chill that he was unable to return home. He went instead to the Earl of Arundel’s house in Highgate, where he was installed in a somewhat damp bed. An attack of pneumonia followed, from which he died within three days.

  BADER, Sir Douglas Robert Stuart (1910–82), British aviator.

  1 Warring countries usually communicate with bombs, bullets, and propaganda. In World War II this rule was briefly broken when an RAF plane flew over a German airfield and dropped a package by parachute. It was addressed “To the German flight commander of the Luftwaffe at St. Omer,” where Bader was held prisoner in the hospital. The package contained an artificial leg, bandages, socks, and straps. The Germans, after capturing Bader, had radioed England that he was well but missing one of his tin limbs. The parachute drop followed shortly.

  Once back on both tin legs, Bader made four attempts to escape before the Germans deprived him of his artificial limbs at night. After three years and eight months in a maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp, he was freed by the American Third Army.

  BAEYER, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von (1835–1917), German chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1905.

  1 Entering his laboratory one morning, Baeyer found his assistants using mechanical stirrers operated by water turbines. Such complex machines would not normally have received the professor’s approval, but he was soon fascinated by them. Anxious to communicate this new discovery to his wife, he summoned her from their neighboring apartment. Frau Baeyer watched the apparatus at work in silent admiration for a while, then exclaimed, “What a lovely idea for making mayonnaise!”

  BAHR, Hermann (1863–1934), Austrian playwright, author, and theater director.

  1 Bahr once received from a young poet a historical tragedy together with a request for his opinion: “If you find any faults, please tell me the truth. Words of criticism from a source so judicious would make me feel ennobled.” Bahr returned the manuscript with a brief comment: “I’d like to make you at least an archduke.”

  BAILLY, Jean Sylvain (1736–93), French astronomer.

  1 Bailly remarked to his nephew the day before his appointment with the guillotine, “It’s time for me to enjoy another pinch of snuff. Tomorrow it will be impossible. My hands will be bound.”

  BAKER, Josephine (1906–75), US dancer and singer who lived a large part of her life in France.

  1 In 1929 Crown Prince Adolf of Sweden visited her in her dressing room. Late that night she boarded his private railway carriage and was installed in an enormous swan-shaped bed to await his return. When the prince arrived, she complained of being cold — a condition he attempted to remedy by attaching a
three-stranded diamond bracelet to her arm. He was greatly amused when she complained that the other arm was still cold. She got the matching bracelet.

  2 In World War II Josephine Baker joined the French Resistance. Her marriage to a Jewish businessman, Jean Léon, brought her to the notice of Goering and the Gestapo, who decided to murder her. Goering invited her to dinner, having arranged to put cyanide in her fish course. Forewarned, Josephine excused herself as the fish was served, planning to drop down the laundry chute in the bathroom to a rendezvous with Resistance workers below. Goering produced his gun and ordered her to eat the fish before allowing her to retire to the bathroom. She managed to reach the chute, slid down, and her colleagues rushed her to a doctor, who pumped out her stomach. After a month of sickness she recovered, but lost all her hair (she always wore a wig thereafter).

  BAKST, Léon (1866–1924), Russian artist and designer, court painter to the Romanovs.

  1 Diaghilev was sitting with Bakst watching a rehearsal when he suddenly turned to the designer and asked, “What are the three most beautiful things in this theater today?”

  “Olga Spessiva [the great ballerina], the little boy with the big brown eyes [dancer Anton Dolin], and me,” replied Bakst without hesitation.

  BALANCHINE, George (1904–83), choreographer, born in Russia.

  1 (Bernard Taper, in his biography of Balanchine, tells the following story.)

  “I was complaining to Balanchine one day about the scarcity of documentary materials pertaining to his life, particularly his inner life. I had been reading some biographies of literary figures — abounding in quotations from the subjects’ diaries, letters, journals, and memoirs — and, as a biographer, I was feeling deprived. Balanchine had never journalized, had written perhaps fewer letters than the number of ballets he had choreographed, and had kept no scrapbooks to preserve what others had said about him. Balanchine listened to my complaint and then replied, ‘You should think of your task as if you were writing the biography of a racehorse. A racehorse doesn’t keep a diary.’ ”