Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  6 Henry Ford had Edison’s electrical laboratory moved from Menlo Park to Dearborn. The reassembled building was opened on October 29, 1929. After the ceremony Henry Ford asked Edison what he thought of it. “It’s ninety-nine-and-a-half percent perfect,” replied Edison. “Why, what’s wrong?” asked Ford, who prided himself on the accuracy of the reconstruction. “Well, we never used to keep the place so clean,” said Edison.

  7 Edison found formal dinners extremely tedious. On one occasion, the company was so dull that the inventor made up his mind to escape to his laboratory at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately, his host accosted him as he hovered near the door. “It certainly is a delight to see you, Mr. Edison,” he said. “What are you working on now?”

  “My exit,” replied Edison.

  8 Edison was plagued with deafness all of his adult life. When asked if he knew what had caused his infirmity, he recounted an episode from his youth: as a twelve-year-old boy, he had raced to catch a train. As his arms were full of newspapers, he could not hold on to the train, which was already moving, and the conductor reached down and, grasping his ears, pulled him bodily up. “I felt something snap inside my head,” he said, “and the deafness has progressed ever since.”

  EDMAN, Irwin (1896–1954), US philosopher and educator.

  1 By a private arrangement Professor Edman had access to the swimming pool of his friend, the book publisher Bob Haas. On one occasion Edman bathed alone and, still in his wet bathing suit, wandered into Haas’s living room. There he spotted a volume of Thucy-dides and sat down to read a few pages. Later on, after Edman had left, Mrs. Haas returned to find a pool of water in the middle of her living room. “It’s that dog again!” she cried angrily. The French maid quickly put her right: “No, madame, not the dog. The professor!”

  2 Professor Edman’s absentmindedness, in fact, was his trademark and the source of much humor at Columbia University. One day he stopped a student on Riverside Drive and asked, “Pardon me, but am I walking north or south?” The student answered, “North, Professor.” “Ah,” replied Edman, “then I’ve had my lunch.”

  EDWARD I (1239–1307), king of England (1272–1307).

  1 After the death in 1282 of Prince Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, leader of the Welsh resistance to English encroachment, Edward I promised the Welsh a new Prince of Wales “who would not speak a word of English.” In fulfillment of this promise he presented the assembled Welsh chieftains with his infant son (later Edward II) a few days after his birth in Caernarvon Castle. According to some reports he held the royal baby aloft in his arms and proclaimed in Welsh, “Eich dyn” (literally, “This is your man”).

  EDWARD III (1312–77), king of England (1327–77).

  1 Edward’s military adventures made him eager to attract Europe’s best soldiers into his service. He therefore decided to found an order of knighthood based on King Arthur’s legendary Round Table. On St. George’s Day, 1344, he arranged a grand jousting tournament and banquet at Windsor Castle. By some accounts, it was at this banquet that the order of the Knights of the Garter was founded. The Countess of Salisbury, accidentally or otherwise, dropped her garter while dancing with the king. He instantly retrieved it. Observing the knowing nudges and looks of the bystanders, Edward fastened the garter around his own leg, saying (in Old French), “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (Shame on him who thinks ill of it).

  2 Edward the Black Prince, Edward’s eldest son, sixteen years old at the battle of Crécy, was in the forefront of the fighting. A messenger hurried up to the English king, reporting that the Black Prince was in some danger. Edward refused to send reinforcements or to recall his son. “Let the boy win his spurs,” was all he said.

  EDWARD VII (1841–1910), king of the United Kingdom. (1901–10).

  1 While Edward VII was Prince of Wales, one of his closest associates was Lord Charles Beresford. Once when the prince invited him to dinner, Beresford cabled back: “VERY SORRY CAN’T COME LIE FOLLOWS BY POST.”

  2 In turn-of-the-century Paris one of the most dedicated social climbers was Mrs. Kate Moore, an American millionairess. After energetically pursuing him for some time she captured her prize trophy: the Prince of Wales accepted an invitation to dine at her Biarritz palace. The future Edward VII, far from being irritated by her assiduousness, was amused at her good-natured vulgarity: “Madam, you should have lived in the days of Louis the Fourteenth,” he remarked. “In those days there were kings everywhere.”

  3 Edward’s self-permissive conduct, as Prince of Wales and king, was partly a reaction to his mother’s impossibly virtuous standards of conduct. When Lady Beaconsfield once suggested that her son must be a great comfort to her, Queen Victoria replied, “Comfort! Why, I caught him smoking a fortnight after his dear father died!”

  4 During the 1897 Diamond Jubilee, Edward often had to represent his mother at public events. One of the hymns frequently sung and played on these occasions was “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” He once murmured, “It’s all very well about the Eternal Father. But what about my eternal mother?”

  5 As Queen Victoria lay dying, a member of the royal household discussed the imminent event with Edward, the Prince of Wales. “I wonder if she will be happy in heaven?” he mused.

  “I don’t know,” said the prince. “She will have to walk behind the angels — and she won’t like that!”

  6 As king, Edward would alternate social charm with an irritable demandingness that often made things hard for his friends and courtiers. One of his hostesses, Lady Brougham, noticing his black mood, sought to cheer him up. “Did you notice, sir, the soap in Your Majesty’s bathroom?”

  “No!”

  “I thought you might, sir…. It has such an amorous lather!”

  It is reported that the king’s cheerfulness was restored.

  7 When the opera The Wreckers was first staged in 1909, influential friends of the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth, persuaded Edward VII to grace the opening night. Later, conductor Sir Thomas Beecham asked the king’s private secretary, who had accompanied him to the opera, what the king had thought of it. “I don’t know,” said the private secretary. “Didn’t he say anything?” persisted Beecham. “Well, yes,” admitted the private secretary. “He did say something. He suddenly woke up three-quarters of the way through and said, ‘Fritz, that’s the fourth time that infernal noise has roused me.’ ”

  8 A pompous young minister once used the royal pronoun “We,” referring only to himself, in the presence of Edward VII. The king picked him up at once: “Only two people are permitted to refer to themselves as ‘We’ — a king, and a man with a tapeworm inside him.”

  9 Edward was not remarkable for his wit, but there is something endearing in his mild rebuke to a footman who accidentally emptied a jug of cream over him: “My good man, I’m not a strawberry.”

  EDWARD VIII (1894–1972), king of the United Kingdom. (1936).

  1 On a visit to the United States in the twenties, while Prince of Wales, Edward was nearly caught in a raid on a nightclub run by the celebrated hostess Texas Guinan. The police, however, never realized his identity, thanks to the quick thinking of Texas, who hurried him out to the kitchen, put a chef’s hat on his head and a skillet in his hand, and told him to keep cooking eggs until the raid was over.

  2 Addressing a group of friends on the subject of remaining on friendly terms with one’s wife, the Duke of Windsor remarked, “Of course, I do have a slight advantage over the rest of you. It helps in a pinch to be able to remind your bride that you gave up a throne for her.”

  3 The Homestead is a luxurious resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, the haunt of many distinguished visitors, among whom have been counted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In 1943 they spent an entire happy month there. As they prepared to leave, the bill was presented. The duke looked at it blankly and muttered, “Now what do I do with this?”

  The bill has not yet been paid.

  EINSTEIN, Albert (1879–1955), German-born physicist of Jewis
h descent who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

  1 (Otto Neugebauer, the historian of ancient mathematics, told a story about the boy Einstein that he characterizes as a “legend” but that seems fairly authentic.) As he was a late talker, his parents were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his silence to say, “The soup is too hot.” Greatly relieved, his parents asked why he had never said a word before. Albert replied, “Because up to now everything was in order.”

  2 An expedition to observe the 1919 solar eclipse verified Einstein’s prediction, based on his general theory of relativity, concerning the curvature of space. A pupil asked him, “What would you have said if there had been no confirmation of this kind?”

  “I would have been obliged to pity our dear God,” replied Einstein. “The theory is correct.”

  3 Einstein praised the father of quantum physics, Max Planck, but noted that he didn’t really understand physics. When asked what he meant, Einstein said, “During the eclipse of 1919, Planck stayed up all night to see if it would confirm the bending of light by the gravitational field of the sun. If he had really understood the way the general theory of relativity explains the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass, he would have gone to bed the way I did.”

  4 When Einstein and his friend and colleague Philipp Frank were to visit the Berlin Astro-physical Observatory, they agreed to rendezvous on a certain bridge at Potsdam. Frank, who did not know the town well, was worried that he might be late, but Einstein told him not to worry, that he would wait on the bridge. Frank said he was concerned that that might waste Einstein’s time. Einstein dismissed the objection. “The kind of work I do can be done anywhere. Why should I be less capable of reflecting about my problems on the Potsdam bridge than at home?”

  5 “On a visit to Palestine in 1921 Einstein went to look at a kibbutz…. He asked a great many questions of the twenty-two-year-old girl who was head of the young community. One of his questions was, ‘What is the relationship here of men to women?’ Thinking that he was one of the many visitors who were of the opinion that women were common property in the kibbutz, she stammered with embarrassment, ‘But, Herr Professor, each man here has one woman.’ Einstein’s eyes twinkled. He took the girl’s hand and said, ‘Don’t be ashamed at my question. We physicists understand by the word “relationship” something rather simple, namely, how many men are there and how many women.’ ”

  6 In 1927 the physicist Werner Heisenberg enunciated his principle of uncertainty, or indeterminacy. This states (roughly) that the position and velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly at the same time.

  Einstein never accepted the principle, for it would play havoc with the strict determinism in which he believed. As he often said and wrote, “God does not play dice with the universe.” He and Niels Bohr carried on a controversy for many years. In 1930 at the Solvay conference in Brussels they had a celebrated discussion of the matter. Einstein had invented an imaginary device involving clocks and scales, which, he affirmed, appeared to violate the uncertainty principle. But, following a sleepless night, Bohr found that Einstein in the course of his argument had forgotten to take into account the consequences of one of his own discoveries — in a gravitational field clocks run slower. The uncertainty principle still stood firm.

  7 (When L. L. Whyte was a young theoretical physicist studying in Berlin in the late 1920s, an acquaintance arranged for him to meet Einstein. Whyte, diffident about intruding upon the great man, was delighted to receive a friendly letter from Einstein, inviting him to call. The letter concluded, “Don’t be put off by Frau Einstein. She’s there to protect me.” Whyte recounts what happened during his visit to Einstein’s home.)

  “After we had been talking for about twenty minutes the maid came in with a huge bowl of soup. I wondered what was happening and I thought that this was probably a signal for me to leave. But when the girl left the room Einstein said to me in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘That’s a trick. If I am bored talking to somebody, when the maid comes in I don’t push the bowl of soup away and the girl takes whomever I am with away and I am free.’ Einstein pushed the bowl away, and so I was quite happy and much flattered and more at my ease for the rest of the talk.”

  8 Speaking at the Sorbonne during the 1930s, Einstein said, “If my relativity theory is verified, Germany will proclaim me a German and France will call me a citizen of the world. But if my theory is proved false, France will emphasize that I am a German and Germany will say that I am a Jew.”

  9 After Einstein had gone into exile, a hundred Nazi professors published a book condemning his theory of relativity. Einstein was unconcerned. “If I were wrong,” he said, “one professor would have been enough.”

  10 The classical scholar Gilbert Murray one day encountered Einstein sitting in the quadrangle of Christ Church, Oxford. The exiled scientist was deep in thought, with a serene and cheerful expression on his face. Murray asked him what he was thinking about. “I am thinking that, after all, this is a very small star,” Einstein answered.

  11 Einstein’s wife was once asked if she understood her husband’s theory of relativity. “No,” she replied loyally, “but I know my husband and I know he can be trusted.”

  12 It is alleged that when Einstein and his wife visited the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, Mrs. Einstein pointed to a particularly complex piece of equipment and asked its purpose. Their guide said that it was used to determine the shape of the universe. “Oh,” she said, not at all impressed, “my husband uses the back of an old envelope to work that out.”

  13 Einstein and an assistant, having finished a paper, searched the office for a paper clip. They finally found one, too badly bent for use. They looked for an implement to straighten it, and after opening many more drawers came upon a whole box of clips. Einstein at once shaped one into a tool to straighten the bent clip. His assistant, puzzled, asked why he was doing this when there was a whole boxful of usable clips. “Once I am set on a goal it becomes difficult to deflect me,” said Einstein.

  14 A certain distinguished astronomer once declared at a scientific meeting: “To an astronomer, man is nothing more than an insignificant dot in an infinite universe.”

  “I have often felt that,” said Einstein. “But then I realize that the insignificant dot who is man is also the astronomer.”

  15 “The laws of physics should be simple,” said Einstein, lecturing at Princeton. “But what if they are not simple?” came a voice from the audience. Replied Einstein: “Then I would not be interested in them.”

  16 During his stay in Princeton, New Jersey, Einstein used to play his violin in a string quartet. He enjoyed these sessions, but the other musicians were less enthusiastic about his skills. Complained one of the other players after a private performance, “He can’t count.”

  17 Einstein’s scientific theories and investigations were an impenetrable mystery to his second wife, Elsa. “Couldn’t you tell me a little about your work?” she complained one day. “People talk a lot about it, and I appear so stupid when I say I know nothing.” Einstein thought for a minute or two, frowning deeply as he searched for a way to begin his explanation. Suddenly, his face cleared. “If people ask,” he said, “tell them you know all about it, but can’t tell them, as it is a great secret!”

  18 In the course of conversation at an American dinner party Einstein’s neighbor, a young girl, asked the white-haired professor: “What are you actually by profession?” Einstein replied: “I devote myself to the study of physics.” The girl looked at him in astonishment. “You mean to say you study physics at your age?” she exclaimed. “I finished mine a year ago.”

  19 A young friend of Einstein’s proudly presented his eighteen-month-old son to the great scientist. The child looked up into the old man’s smiling face and promptly began to howl. Einstein patted him on the head and said fondly, “You’re the first person for years who has told me what you really think of me.”

  20 As th
e hydrogen bomb was being developed, Einstein was asked how the Third World War would be fought. Einstein answered that he had no idea what kind of weapons would be developed for the next war, but he could assure his questioner that the war after that would be fought with stones.

  21 Einstein was asked why he always sought a single principle to explain a given natural phenomenon. Why not have five or six? “It is all a matter of good taste,” said Einstein.

  22 Einstein was alone in his house when the local fuel dealer called to get the quantity of heating oil Einstein needed for the coming winter. Einstein calculated the cubic capacity of the house, estimated the heat loss from the walls and roof, determined the temperature range he liked, and, having arrived at a figure, called back to place his order. When his wife returned home he told her about the call. “For goodness sake,” she told the dealer. “What made you ask the professor? He knows nothing about things like that. I think this winter will be colder than last, so add a hundred gallons to last year’s order — and pay no attention to him!”

  23 A friend of Einstein’s was asked if it was true that only ten people in the world understood the man. After thinking for a moment, the friend said, “Oh, no. There are at least twenty, but Einstein is not one of them.”

  EISENHOWER, Dwight David (1890–1969), US general and statesman, 34th President of the United States (1953–61).

  1 After the successful landings in France, Eisenhower was inspecting a British section of the Allied lines when German planes came over and strafed them. The party dived for cover. As soon as it was safe to emerge a senior British officer hurried across to see if Eisenhower was all right. Finding him unharmed, he expressed his relief in fervent terms. Ike thanked him for his solicitude. “Oh,” said the officer, “my concern was just that nothing should happen to you in my sector.”