Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  GRAFTON, Sue (1940–), US mystery writer.

  1 Grafton has often been questioned about the life and habits of her fictional detective Kin-sey Millhone, protagonist of her many highly popular mystery novels. One reader wondered why Millhone seemed not to be a cat lover. “Because she’ll end up talking baby talk to the cat,” said Grafton. “That’s the way it is, and how can a P.I. do that?”

  GRANT, Cary (1904–86), US actor born in England as Archie Leach.

  1 A journalist was writing a story about Grant and needed some background information. Wiring to Grant’s publicist, he asked, “How old Cary Grant?” Grant wired back, “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”

  GRANT, Ulysses Simpson (1822–85), US military commander, 18th President of the United States (1869–77).

  1 Out driving in a buggy with Julia Dent, whom he was courting, Grant found that their route took them across a flooded creek spanned by a flimsy bridge. Grant assured the apprehensive Julia that it was safe. “Don’t be frightened, I’ll look after you,” he said. “Well,” said the girl, “I shall cling to you whatever happens,” and she held tightly onto his arm with both hands as they drove across. Safely on the other side Grant drove on in thoughtful silence for some minutes, then cleared his throat, and spoke: “Julia, you said back there that you would cling to me whatever happened. Would you like to cling to me for the rest of our lives?” They were married in August 1848.

  2 At Cairo, Illinois, in 1861 Grant had cause to reprimand a young recruit for deserting his post while on guard duty. Rather than punish the lad, he gave him a lesson in handling a gun and warned him, “Orders must be strictly and promptly obeyed always.” Some days later the same recruit was put on guard of a steamboat laden with ammunition. His orders were to prevent anyone with a lighted pipe or cigar from approaching the boat. In due course General Grant appeared and made to board the vessel, one of his beloved cigars between the teeth. “Halt!” cried the recruit, and raised his gun. The general, surprised and annoyed at this apparent impertinence, demanded an explanation. “I have been taught to obey orders strictly and promptly,” replied the solider, “and my orders are to allow no one to approach this boat with a lighted cigar. You will please throw yours away.” Grant was forced to smile on hearing his own words quoted back at him, and obediently tossed his cigar into the river.

  3 In February 1862 the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, sent a message to Grant, commander of the besieging Northern forces, suggesting an armistice. Grant replied, “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.” This message became famous and won Grant the nickname of “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

  4 Shortly before the attack on Fort Donelson in 1862, a deserter from the fort turned up in Grant’s camp. At this point Grant had not decided whether to attack the fort immediately or give his tired men a day’s rest. However, on learning that the deserter, along with the other troops in the fort, had been given six days’ rations, Grant made up his mind. He addressed his men: “Gentlemen, troops do not have six days’ rations served out to them in a fort if they mean to stay there. These men mean to retreat, not to fight. We will attack at once.”

  5 Grant had major successes in 1862 with his capture of the Confederate stronghold of Fort Donelson and at the battle of Shiloh, where he averted a disaster for the Union side, turning likely defeat into a narrow victory. Nevertheless, his heavy drinking caused many of President Lincoln’s advisers to urge the general’s dismissal. This step Lincoln could scarcely afford to take, in view of the incompetence of the other Union generals. “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”

  The complaints continued, but so did Grant’s successes. Lincoln is said to have exclaimed, “If I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks, I would send a barrel or so to my other generals!”

  6 Undistinguished and often shabby in appearance, Ulysses S. Grant did not recommend himself to strangers by his looks. He once entered an inn at Galena, Illinois, on a stormy winter’s night. A number of lawyers, in town for a court session, were clustered around the fire. One looked up as Grant appeared and said, “Here’s a stranger, gentlemen, and by the looks of him he’s traveled through hell itself to get here.”

  “That’s right,” said Grant cheerfully.

  “And how did you find things down there?”

  “Just like here,” replied Grant, “lawyers all closest to the fire.”

  7 On his way to a reception held in his honor, Grant, caught in a rain shower, offered the shelter of his umbrella to a stranger walking in the same direction as himself. The stranger was also bound for the reception, but confided that he was going only to satisfy a personal curiosity, having never seen Grant. “Between us, I have always thought that Grant was a very much overrated man,” he explained. “That’s my view also,” Grant said.

  8 For a great general, Grant took surprisingly little interest in military affairs, an attitude that he seemed to reveal especially when meeting other military notables. Introduced to the second Duke of Wellington, he said with bland innocence, “They tell me that your father was also a military man.”

  9 Someone remarked in Grant’s hearing that Charles Sumner did not believe in the Bible. “Why should he?” inquired Grant. “He didn’t write it.”

  10 Grant, having no appreciation of music, found it hard when he was obliged, as President, to attend concerts. After one such occasion someone asked him if he had enjoyed the evening. “How could I?” was the response. “I know only two tunes; one of them is ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other one isn’t.”

  11 A friend of Grant’s once took the President to a golf course in the hope of encouraging him to take up the game. After watching a beginner hack the grass around the tee for several minutes without touching the ball, Grant remarked: “That does look like very good exercise. But what is the little white ball for?”

  12 After the close of Grant’s presidency, in the spring of 1877, the Grants embarked on a world tour, in the course of which they were entertained at dinner by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. The queen retired early, pleading “fatiguing duties.” Mrs. Grant is said to have assured the queen that she quite understood: “I too have been the wife of a great ruler.”

  13 When Grant lay dying of cancer of the throat, he was attended by a popular Methodist minister who sprinkled water over the unconscious patient and then announced to the press that he had been converted and baptized. A little while later the doctor who was also in attendance succeeded in temporarily reviving him. When the minister was informed of this rally, he cried, “It is Providence. It is Providence.”

  “Not at all,” said the doctor, “it was the brandy.”

  GRASSINI, Giuseppina (1773–1850), Italian contralto.

  1 Following his second victorious Italian campaign, Napoleon brought back with him to Paris an Italian opera company. The Parisians, starved for pleasure and entertainment after the terrible years of the Revolution, enthusiastically stormed the opera house.

  Napoleon, proud of his grasp of mass psychology, bestowed upon Girolamo Crescendi, the company’s great bel canto star, the Cross of the Legion of Honor. While this pleased the opera lovers, the same was not true of the army. One staunch old warrior complained to the beautiful singer Giuseppina Grassini (with whom Napoleon was wont to console himself for Josephine’s infidelities): “It’s unheard of! To think that this decoration, intended for the bravest of the brave who have suffered wounds on the battlefield, should be given to a castrato!”

  Replied Grassini: “And how about the wound Crescendi endured for art’s sake? Doesn’t that count?”

  GRAVES, Robert Ranke (1895–1985), British poet and novelist.

  1 Graves’s mother tried not to appear shocked when four-year-old Robert, after saying his evening prayers, casually asked her if she would leave him any money when she died. “If you left me as much as five pounds, I could buy a bicycle,” he said. “Surely you’d rather h
ave me, Robby,” protested Mrs. Graves. “But I could ride to your grave on it,” reasoned the child.

  GRAY, Thomas (1716–71), English lyric poet. His fame rests on a single poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751).

  1 Gray once attended a sale of books with a friend. One lot particularly appealed to him: an elegant bookcase containing a collection of finely bound volumes of French classics. The hundred guineas demanded, however, was far beyond Gray’s means, and his disappointment on learning the price was obvious. The Duchess of Northumberland, who had witnessed the incident and was acquainted with Gray’s companion, asked the identity of the disconsolate bibliophile. Later the same day, Gray was overwhelmed with delight to find that the coveted bookcase had been delivered to his lodgings. The gift was accompanied by a note from the duchess, in which she apologized for making so small an acknowledgment of the intense pleasure she had derived from reading Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

  GRAZIANO, Rocky [Thomas Rocco Barbella] (1922–90), US boxer, world middleweight champion.

  1 (R. L. Crouser tells this anecdote:)

  “Rocky Graziano was making the perilous leap from the sweet science of boxing to the precarious world of showbiz. So someone asked him if he planned to polish up his syntax with some training at a place like the famous Actors Studio. ‘Why should I go to a place like that?’ said the Rock. ‘All they do is learn guys like Brando and Newman to talk like me.’”

  GREELEY, Horace (1811–72), US journalist and politician, founder and editor of the New York Tribune (1841).

  1 Traveling on a train in New York, Greeley observed a fellow passenger reading the Sun. Always interested to discover what made people buy the rival newspaper, Greeley opened a conversation, at first on general topics and then leading up to the question, “Why don’t you read the Tribune? It’s a much more informative paper than the Sun. ”

  “I take the Tribune too,” replied the other man. “I use it to wipe my arse with.”

  “Keep it up,” said Greeley, “and eventually you’ll have more brains in your arse than you have in your head.”

  2 Greeley served in Congress for three months. In the course of conversation one day, another congressman boasted that he was a self-made man. “That, sir,” replied Greeley, “relieves the Almighty of a great responsibility.”

  3 Under the will of Stephen Girard endowing Girard College in Philadelphia, no clergymen were to be admitted to the campus. Greeley, who affected a rather clerical style of dress, one day approached the portals and was challenged by the guard. “You can’t come in here,” he said. “The hell I can’t,” retorted Greeley angrily. “I beg your pardon, sir,” said the guard. “Go right in.”

  4 Greeley had one linguistic quirk: he insisted that the word “news” was plural. Accordingly, he once sent a cable to a member of the Tribune staff that read: “ARE THERE ANY NEWS?” Back came the reply: “NOT A NEW.”

  5 Greeley, renowned for his illegible handwriting, once wrote a note to a member of his staff on the New York Tribune, dismissing him for gross neglect of duty. Meeting Greeley several years later, the journalist told his former chief how useful his note of dismissal had proved. “I took it with me,” he said. “Nobody could read it, so I declared it a letter of recommendation, gave it my own interpretation, and obtained several first-class situations by it. I am really very much obliged to you.”

  6 Greeley’s notorious handwriting was, in fact, unreadable by all but one of the Trinbune’s compositors. One day, while this expert was at lunch, two of his colleagues caught a couple of pigeons, inked their claws, and allowed them to scamper back and forth across a sheet of paper. This page was then substituted for Greeley’s copy.

  That afternoon, the compositor struggled through most of the inky scrawl, but there was one “paragraph” that he was totally unable to decipher. In desperation, he consulted Greeley. Casting his eye over the inky claw-marks, Greeley snapped impatiently: “What’s the matter with you? Do you expect me to print it myself? Here, I’ll rewrite the whole page.”

  7 A collector for a certain charitable organization once asked Greeley for a donation. “Your money will save millions of your fellow men from going to hell,” was the encouraging promise. “Then I’ll not give a damned cent,” retorted Greeley. “Not half enough of them go there now.”

  8 On his deathbed Greeley beckoned the acting editor of Greeley’s Herald Tribune to his side and whispered, “You stole my paper, you son of a bitch!” Others in the room wondered what Greeley had said. “Know that my Redeemer liveth,’ ” said Reid calmly.

  GREEN, Hetty [Henrietta Howland] (1834–1916), US multimillionairess, known as “the Witch of Wall Street.”

  1 Like J. P. Morgan, Jr., and many other exceedingly wealthy people, Hetty Green was wary of giving financial tips. Asked to suggest a good investment, she replied, “The other world.”

  2 Mrs. Green’s most faithful friend was a mongrel dog, which had the unfortunate habit of biting her visitors. Most of the dog’s victims, anxious not to offend the millionairess, tolerated the animal, but one friend had had enough. “Hetty,” she said reproachfully, “that dog just bit me again. You’ve got to get rid of him.”

  Hetty refused. “He loves me,” she explained, “and he doesn’t know how rich I am.”

  GREEN, Joseph Henry (1791–1863), British surgeon.

  1 On his deathbed Green behaved very coolly. “Congestion,” he observed, and then took his own pulse. “Stopped,” he said, and died.

  GREENE, [Henry] Graham (1904–91), British novelist and short-story writer.

  1 An English magazine had run a competition for the best parody of Graham Greene’s work. A week after the prizewinning entry was published, a letter appeared from Greene himself. He was delighted that Mr. John Smith had won the contest, although he felt that two of the other competitors, Mr. Joe Doakes and Mr. William Jones, also deserved prizes. Greene had sent in all three entries himself — they were not parodies, but passages from some of his earlier novels, which he had not considered fit for publication.

  2 Greene had sent the manuscript of Travels with My Aunt to his publisher, but the response was less than happy. The publisher hoped he would consider changing the title, which was not perceived as exciting enough. Greene replied with a simple telegram: EASIER TO CHANGE PUBLISHER THAN TITLE. GRAHAM GREENE.

  3 Graham Greene was never awarded the Nobel Prize, despite widespread opinion that he ought to have been. Asked if he was disappointed, Greene replied that he was awaiting a much better prize than the Nobel. “What prize?” he was asked. “Death.”

  GREENWOOD, Frederick (1830–1909), British journalist.

  1 In the early 1900s Lord Riddell acquired the sensational London newspaper The News of the World. Meeting Greenwood at his club one day, Riddell mentioned that he owned a newspaper, told Greenwood its name, and offered to send him a copy. The next time they met Riddell asked Greenwood what he had thought of The News of the World. “I looked at it and then I put it in the wastepa-per basket,” said Greenwood, “and then I thought, ‘If I leave it there the cook may read it,’ so I burned it.”

  GREGORY I, Saint (?540–604), pope (590–604).

  1 In 586 Gregory was appointed abbott of the monastery of St. Andrew’s in Rome. The traditional story is that he happened to see some beautiful Angle children put up for sale as slaves in Rome’s market. Struck by their appearance, he asked what nation they came from, and was told that they were Angles. “Non Angli, sed angeli [not Angles, but angels],” said Gregory, and he decided then and there to convert this pagan nation to Christianity.

  2 Inspired by his sight of the Angle children, Gregory received permission to lead a mission to England. The party had not gone far when Gregory was halted by a sign: a locust dropped onto the Bible that he was reading. “Locusta!” he exclaimed, “That means loca sta [remain in your place].” He returned to Rome and was soon elected pope.

  GREY, Edward, 1st Viscount Grey of F
allodon (1862–1933), British statesman.

  1 (On August 3, 1914, Grey made his appeal to the British Parliament to support France and Belgium against Germany; a few hours later Germany declared war on France, making the violation of Belgium’s territory certain.)

  “In Whitehall that evening, Sir Edward Grey, standing with a friend at the window as the street lamps below were being lit, made the remark that has since epitomized the hour: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’ ”

  2 Grey was deeply attached to his country estate at Fallodon in Northumberland. Once when Lloyd George was inveighing against Grey’s policies during World War I, Churchill came to the foreign secretary’s defense. If the Germans held a gun to Grey’s head, stated Churchill, and threatened to shoot him if he did not sign a treaty, Grey would absolutely refuse to be intimidated and would simply tell them that a British minister would not bow to such pressure. “Ah, but the Germans wouldn’t threaten to shoot him if he didn’t sign,” said Lloyd George. “They’d threaten to scrag all the squirrels at Fallodon. That would break him.”

  GRIMM, Charlie (1898–1983), US baseball executive.

  1 Win or lose (and when he was manager it was mostly lose), Charlie Grimm always kept his sense of humor. One time, when the Cubs were digging deep in the barrel for new talent, one of Grimm’s scouts excitedly phoned him from somewhere in the sticks.