Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  2 Marlene Dietrich, who had been on the furthest line of the front entertaining GI’s, was once asked if the rumor about her affair with General Eisenhower was true. “How could I?” she replied. “He was never that close to the front line!”

  3 During the Allied advance into Europe in 1943, Eisenhower’s mother, Ida, was asked if she was proud of her son. “Which one?” she asked. She had six.

  4 Shortly after the Second World War had ended, Eisenhower and General MacArthur had dinner together, during the course of which MacArthur speculated that one of the two of them would become President. Eisenhower demurred, claiming that he believed strongly in the separation of politics from the military and asserting that he had no interest in high office. MacArthur leaned over as Eisenhower concluded his comments, and said, “That’s all right, Ike. You go on like that and you’ll get it for sure.”

  5 Eisenhower loved to play golf, and did so as often as his schedule permitted. On the course he was known for one eccentricity: in trying to identify his ball, he would use his club to roll the ball over until the trademark was visible, instead of bending over to look more closely at the ball. Once, at the Burning Tree Golf Club, when he rolled a settled ball over, it lodged against a rock. Eisenhower’s caddie, seeing the President upset, said, “Mr. President, I’m afraid you’ve overidentified your ball.”

  6 Some months after the end of his term as President, Eisenhower was asked if leaving the White House had affected his golf game. “Yes,” he replied, “a lot more people beat me now.”

  ELEANOR of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204), French queen consort. She was first the wife of Louis VII of France, then divorced him in 1152 and married Henry II of England in 1154.

  1 Eleanor’s petition for divorce from Louis VII was based on the pretext that they were too closely related for their marriage to be legal in the eyes of the church. The divorce was granted. Two years later, when Eleanor married Henry II, she remarked with satisfaction, “I am queen of England by the wrath of God.”

  ELIOT, Charles William (1834–1926), US educator, president of Harvard for forty years (1869–1909).

  1 During his many years as president of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot expressed frequent misgivings about sports. At one point Eliot announced at the end of a successful baseball season that he was thinking of dropping the sport. Pressed for an explanation, he said, “Well, this year I’m told the team did well because one pitcher had a fine curve ball. I understand that a curve ball is thrown with a deliberate attempt to deceive. Surely that is not an ability we should want to foster at Harvard.”

  ELIOT, John (1604–90), British missionary who devoted his life to proselytizing the American Indians.

  1 While translating the Bible into a language of the American Indians, Eliot found himself unable to translate the word “lattice” in the sentence: “The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice.” He described the object in question to a number of Indian friends, one of whom offered what he thought to be an appropriate translation. Years later Eliot discovered, to his great amusement, that his rendering of the passage in the Indian Bible read: “The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the eel-pot.”

  ELIOT, T[homas] S[tearns] (1888–1965), American-born poet who won the 1948 Nobel Prize for literature.

  1 I. A. Richards, the eminent literary critic and scholar, knew T. S. Eliot when he was a junior member of the staff of Lloyd’s Bank in Queen Henrietta Street, London, at the end of World War I. By chance he met one of Eliot’s superiors on holiday in Switzerland and the two men discovered that the poet was a mutual acquaintance. The senior banker was a pleasant man who seemed unable to frame a question that he obviously wanted to put to Richards. Eventually it came out: did Richards think that Eliot was a good poet? Richards replied that in his opinion, which would not be shared by everyone, Eliot was a good poet. The other man was pleased to hear it. Some of his colleagues considered that banking and poetry did not go together, but in his view if a man had a hobby and did it well it helped him in his work. He ended by telling Richards that he could tell Eliot that if he continued to do as well as he was doing at the bank, “I don’t see why — in time, of course, in time — he mightn’t even become a branch manager.” Richards found great delight in relating this conversation to Eliot.

  2 On his way to Stockholm for the Nobel prize ceremony, Eliot was interviewed by a reporter who asked him for which of his works the prize had been awarded. Eliot replied that he believed it was for the entire corpus. “And when did you publish that?” asked the reporter. Eliot observed afterward that The Entire Corpus might make rather a good title for a mystery story.

  3 At a meeting of the Oxford Poetry Club Eliot was the guest of honor and agreed to answer questions about his work. An undergraduate asked him what he meant by the line from Ash-Wednesday: “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree.’ Eliot answered, “I mean, ‘Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree.’”

  4 An American arriving in England in 1961 for postgraduate study went to visit Eliot. As he was leaving, he noticed that the poet was apparently searching for the right remark with which to bid him farewell. “Forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford,” Eliot began. “Now, what advice can I give you?” There was a prolonged pause while the younger man waited breathlessly for the poet’s words of wisdom. Finally Eliot said, “Have you any long underwear?”

  5 W. H. Auden, finding Eliot engrossed in a game of patience, expressed surprise at his apparent enjoyment of this trivial occupation. “Well,” said Eliot thoughtfully, “I suppose it’s the nearest thing to being dead.”

  6 Publisher Robert Giroux once asked Eliot whether he agreed with the widely held belief that most editors are failed writers. Eliot pondered for a moment, then said, “Yes, I suppose some editors are failed writers — but so are most writers.”

  7 A charming American woman was seated next to Eliot at a dinner. The company drank good wine, the conversation was excellent, and after a while Eliot asked his companion to call him “Tom.” “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “You were required reading!”

  ELIZABETH I (1533–1603), queen of England and Ireland (1558–1603).

  1 Many doubted the abilities of Elizabeth, who assumed her throne at a young age. In particular, the memory of her father, Henry VIII, and his outsized personality and force of opinions was strong. To one who compared father and daughter unfavorably, she replied, “Although I may not be a lioness, I am a lion’s cub, and inherit many of his qualities.”

  2 Shortly after Elizabeth came to the throne, a knight who had behaved insolently toward her when she was living in disgrace and obscurity during the reign of her half-sister Mary threw himself at her feet to beseech her pardon. Elizabeth gestured to him to rise, dismissing him with the words, “Do you not know that we are descended of the lion, whose nature is not to prey upon the mouse or any other such small vermin?”

  3 On one occasion, as he was bowing low to Queen Elizabeth, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, audibly broke wind. Deeply embarrassed, the earl withdrew from court and traveled abroad for several years. Upon his return he went to court to pay his respects, and was greeted by the queen. Her first words were: “My lord, I had forgot the fart.”

  4 The diplomat Valentine Dale, on a mission to Flanders, found himself running short of money. The queen’s notorious parsimony was such that he feared he would be unlikely to receive a draft before he became seriously embarrassed for cash. Nonetheless, he wrote to the queen about the affairs of state and his financial position; by the same packet he also sent an affectionate letter to his wife, giving an intimate account of his stage of health and mentioning his monetary difficulty. However, the letter intended for the queen was addressed to his wife and vice versa, so that Elizabeth was startled and amused to find herself reading a familiar letter interspersed with such endearments as “sweetheart” and “dear love.” The mix-up appealed to her sense of humor, and Dale’s finan
cial problem to her sense of diplomatic honor. She promptly sent off a further supply of money, never suspecting that the “mistake” of course had been deliberately contrived by the artful diplomat.

  5 Elizabeth was on her barge on the Thames River when an assassin shot at her; the bullet hit her boatman instead. The queen immediately removed her scarf to bind up his wounds, saying, “Be of good cheer, for you will never want, for the bullet was meant for me, not for you.”

  6 Upon hearing rumors of her death, the queen smiled and said, “Dead — but not buried.” She reigned for another four years.

  7 The Archbishop of Canterbury knelt at her deathbed and prayed with her, then began extolling the virtues and glories of her long reign. But Elizabeth interrupted him, saying, “My lord, the crown which I have borne so long had given enough of vanity in my time. I beseech you not to augment it in this hour when I am so near my death.” Those were her last words.

  “The nineteenth century produced great preachers in Wales, some of whom are remembered to this day. John Elias was one such. It is said that the power of his oratory was so great that people would come from miles around to hear him preach. But then, ‘preach’ is hardly the right word. It was not a sermon, it was a performance with a sense of theatre and enough dread to give it spice. The story is told of his preaching in a small village in mid-Wales on the way the finger of God touched every man. At the height of his peroration he flung out his arm, having carefully arranged the candles before hand so that the huge shadow of his finger fell upon the wall. Seeing this monstrous arm, the congregation fled.”

  — IVOR RICHARD, We, the British

  ELIZABETH II (1926–), queen of the United Kingdom. (1952–).

  1 Princess Elizabeth rushed to announce the birth of her younger sister, and came first upon Lady Cynthia Asquith. “I’ve got a baby sister, Margaret Rose,” she crowed, “and I’m going to call her Bud.” “Why Bud?” asked Lady Asquith. “Well,” came the reply, “she’s not a real Rose yet, is she? She’s only a bud.”

  2 On the morning of Edward VII’s abdication in 1937, Princess Elizabeth wondered why there was such a commotion outside her family’s front door. A footman told her the news — that her Uncle David had stepped down from the throne, and her father was to be king. When her sister, Margaret, learned that Elizabeth would then be in line to become queen, she tried to consoler her older sister, saying, “Poor you!”

  3 At their wedding Elizabeth and her husband Philip displayed their gifts on a series of large tables. One gift came from Gandhi: he had woven them a tray cloth. As Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, surveyed the gifts, she spotted the cloth and shuddered. “What a horrible thing!” she exclaimed, mistaking it for a loincloth. Gandhi’s gift was discreetly hidden before her next visit to the tables.

  4 The regulations of some of the older London clubs are sacrosanct. One has the rule that no visitors are allowed in the lounge. The queen, arriving at the club for a private dinner party, quickly looked into the room to admire the pictures. “Not in there, Bet,” said Prince Philip, and the queen retreated. An elderly member of the club, dozing by the fire, caught sight of her as she left. “Who was that woman? What’s she doing here?” he rumbled. “That was the queen, my lord,” said a waiter. “Well, dammit, she shouldn’t be here,” snapped the old man. “Members only, you know.”

  5 During a visit to the Bahamas the queen’s host was seen to take a silver pencil from his pocket and use it to swizzle the bubbles out of a drink. “That’s all right in our company,” said Queen Elizabeth, “but what happens in high society?”

  6 The queen and Prince Philip paid a visit to the White House during Gerald Ford’s presidency. Dressing for dinner that evening, the Fords’ son Jack mislaid the studs for his dress shirt and rushed to his father’s room to see if he could borrow some. He stepped into the elevator, his shirt unfastened and his hair in disarray, only to find it already occupied by his parents and their royal guests. Mrs. Ford, visibly embarrassed, introduced her son. Taking in at a glance the young man’s unkempt appearance, the queen remarked sympathetically: “I have one just like that!”

  7 “During an interview with the queen, a British ambassador returning from the Middle East was struggling to explain the character of the head of government with whom he had to deal. He approached it from this angle, and that angle, and roundabout, using increasingly long words with a psychological tinge, until his sovereign extricated him from his misery. ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ Her Majesty inquired, ‘that the man is just bonkers?’”

  8 Two women in tweedy suits were leaving a Norfolk tea shop with a basket of cakes when a customer stopped one of them and remarked on her resemblance to the queen. “How very reassuring,” said Queen Elizabeth, as she got into her car to take her back to Windsor Castle.

  9 During a drive near the royal residence at Sandringham a woman walking along the road was splashed with mud by the Queen’s car. “I quite agree with you, madam,” said Elizabeth. Philip asked what the woman had said, “Bastards!” replied the queen.

  10 A new Master of the Household found that he had much trouble keeping food warm on plates, given the constant crush of guests and the long distances food had to travel. One day the food he served the queen was stone cold. “Don’t worry,” she said. “People come here not for the food but to eat off the gold plate.”

  11 The painter Norman Hepple was painting a full-length portrait of Elizabeth in full ceremonial robes. After an hour or so he asked if she would like to sit and rest. “No,” came her reply. “I am used to standing. I have been standing all my life.”

  12 On one state occasion Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was embarrassed to find that her gown matched that of the queen. Calling Buckingham Palace to ask if there was a way to avoid such sartorial conflict, she was informed, “Do not worry. The queen does not notice what other people are wearing.”

  ELIZABETH the Queen Mother (1900–), wife of George VI of the United Kingdom, whom, she married in 1923.

  1 During the Blitz of London in 1940 the king and queen set an example of steadfastness and devotion to duty. Queen Elizabeth was particularly affected by the sufferings and gallantry of the poor people of London’s East End, many of whom lost their homes and all they possessed. One day Buckingham Palace received a direct hit from a bomb. The queen, surveying the damage, remarked that she was not entirely sorry: “Now we can look the East End in the face.”

  2 When asked whether the little princesses (Elizabeth and Margaret Rose) would leave England after the Blitz, the queen replied: “The children will not leave unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does, and the king will not leave the country in any circumstances whatever.”

  3 On a royal tour of South Africa in 1947, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth did much of their traveling by train. A warm welcome was not always assured at some of the stops where the Nationalist sentiments of Afrikaners ran high.

  One of the first stops was at Swellendam, well known for Nationalist leanings. At the station, where the queen greeted the crowd, an old Afrikaner farmer said bluntly that, much as he was delighted to meet the Royal Family, he did not like the overseeing from Westminster. The queen, daughter of a Scottish earl, sweetly replied, “I understand perfectly. We feel the same in Scotland.”

  4 King George and Queen Elizabeth went to see a Noël Coward-Gertrude Lawrence production at a London theater. As they entered the royal box, the whole audience rose to its feet to honor them. Gertrude Lawrence, standing in the wings, said, “What an entrance!”

  “What a part!” said Coward.

  5 During a state visit to Australia, the Queen Mother found herself surrounded by a group of inquisitive Australians at a garden party. Still nodding and smiling graciously as the circle pressed closer, she remarked in an undertone: “Please don’t touch the exhibits.”

  6 Cecil Beaton was showing the Queen Mother a selection of photographs of herself from a sitting she had recently given him. After she had chos
en one, Beaton suggested that he could have the picture discreetly retouched to conceal a few wrinkles. The Queen Mother rejected the proposal. “I would not want it to be thought that I had lived for all these years without having anything to show for it,” she explained.

  ELLENBOROUGH, Edward Law, 1st Baron (1750–1818), British lawyer, lord chief justice (1802–18).

  1 Ellenborough had a redoubtable reputation for sarcasm and severity. A young lawyer, making his first appearance in court, was petrified and, rising to speak, could only stammer, “My lord, my unfortunate client — my lord — my unfortunate client — my lord —”

  “Go on, sir, go on,” said Ellenborough. “As far as you have proceeded hitherto, the court is entirely with you.”

  2 Asked to identify himself, a witness in a case began pompously, “I employ myself as a surgeon.”

  “But does anyone else employ you as a surgeon?” interrupted Ellenborough.

  ELLIOT, Hugh (1752–1830), British diplomat.

  1 In 1777 Elliot was sent as envoy to the court of Frederick the Great at Berlin. His opposite number in London was a notoriously disreputable individual whom Frederick had sent thither to annoy and indicate his contempt for the British government. Frederick mockingly asked Elliot what he thought of the Prussian envoy. “Worthy to represent Your Majesty,” replied Elliot suavely.

  ELLISTON, Robert William (1774–1831), British actor.

  1 Elliston sat down to play at cards with Charles Lamb. His hands were excessively grimy. Lamb looked at them with distaste for some time and then observed, “If dirt were trumps, what a hand you’d have!”