Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  HRUSKA, Roman Lee (1904–), US politician.

  1 On January 19, 1970, President Richard Nixon submitted to the senate the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. That Mr. Carswell was hardly qualified was apparent to most, though not to Mr. Nixon. He was rejected, of course, but has attained a certain immortality through his defense by Senator Hruska: “Even if he was mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.”

  HUDSON, Rock (1925–85), US movie actor.

  1 At a lunch for reporters during a publicity swing through Texas, Hudson took questions. One of the first was from a young, unseasoned reporter who launched into her prepared question with great embarrassment. “I’ve heard this rumored for years but there’s no way to know for sure unless I ask you.” The room was silent as Hudson awaited her point. “Is it true,” she continued, “that your teeth are capped?”

  HUGHES, Langston (1902–67), US writer and poet.

  1 Hughes worked as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel where Vachel Lindsay once stayed on a reading tour. Hughes approached the poet at breakfast, laying his own poems next to Lindsay’s plate and walking away without saying a word. The next morning Hughes read in the newspaper that Lindsay had discovered a significant new voice in poetry and had read aloud some of Hughes’s poems at his reading the night before. When he reached the hotel to go to work, Hughes was mobbed by reporters and photographers, and so began his career as an author.

  HUGO, Victor (1802–85), French poet, novelist, and dramatist.

  1 When Victor Hugo wanted to know what his publishers thought of the manuscript of Les Misérables, he sent them a note reading simply: “?” They replied: “!”

  2 (Richard Monckton Milnes, the British writer and politician, went to call on Victor Hugo in Paris.)

  “I was shown into a large room…with women and men seated in chairs against the walls, and Hugo at one end throned. No one spoke. At last Hugo raised his voice solemnly, and uttered the words: ‘Quant à moi, je crois en Dieu!’ (As for me, I believe in God!) Silence followed. Then a woman responded as if in deep meditation: ‘Chose sublime! un Dieu qui croit en Dieu!’ (How sublime! A God who believes in God!)”

  3 Hans Christian Andersen on his travels around Europe met Victor Hugo and asked the great French writer for his autograph. Hugo, suspicious of the strange young Dane, worried that he might later write an acknowledgment of debt above the signature or make some other improper use of the autograph. To prevent this he squeezed the name “Victor Hugo” into one corner at the top of a sheet of paper.

  4 Goethe was not among Hugo’s favorite writers. “Goethe never wrote anything worth reading except The Robbers,” he once declared. One of his listeners immediately pointed out that The Robbers was written by Schiller, not Goethe. Undaunted, Hugo continued, “And even that is Schiller’s.”

  HULL, Cordell (1871–1955), US statesman.

  1 A biographer of Cordell Hull submitted his manuscript to his subject for approval. It was returned with just one correction; in a passage describing an incident during the Spanish-American War in which Cordell Hull had won all his company’s money at poker, the word “company” was struck out and in Cordell Hull’s own handwriting the word “regiment” had been written in.

  HULL, Isaac (1773–1843), US naval commander and commodore.

  1 When Hull was informed that he would not survive the night, he called for his lawyer, his biographer, and an undertaker to be assembled by his side. After putting his worldly affairs in order, he then said, “I strike my flag,” and died.

  HUME, David (1711–76), Scottish philosopher and historian.

  1 Hume, who enjoyed an annual income of £1,000 from his pensions and literary productions, was on all sides urged to continue his History and bring it up to date. “Gentlemen, you do me too much honor,” said Hume, “but I have four reasons for not writing: I am too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich.”

  2 Hume regularly attended church services conducted by a sternly orthodox minister. A friend once suggested to the skeptical philosopher that he was being inconsistent in going to listen to such a preacher. Hume answered, “I don’t believe all he says, but he does, and once a week I like to hear a man who believes what he says.”

  3 Hume was visited by the poet Thomas Black-lock, who complained at great length about his misfortunes: blind and penniless, he no longer had the means to support his large family and did not know where to turn for help. Hume, in financial difficulties himself at that time, had just managed to secure, through the influence of a friend, a university appointment worth about forty pounds a year. Nevertheless, he was so moved by the poet’s tale of woe that he offered him the only means of assistance within his power to give. Taking from his desk the grant for the university post, he handed it to his unfortunate friend and promised to have the name changed from Hume to Blacklock. This generous sacrifice almost certainly saved Black-lock and his family from destitution.

  4 While Hume was living in Paris, some of the philosophes grew jealous of him and made fun of his stoutness. Once when he entered a room d’Alembert quoted from the beginning of St. John’s Gospel: “Et verbum caro factum est” (And the word was made flesh). “Et verbum carum factum est [And the word was made lovable],” reposted a lady admirer of Hume’s.

  5 At a supper party at Hume’s shortly before his death, a guest complained of the spitefulness of the world. Hume contradicted him: “No, no, here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies, except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

  HUMPHREY, Hubert Horatio (1911–78), US politician, vice president (1965–69).

  1 Humphrey was noted for his long-winded-ness on the stump. Once asked to limit a speech to no more than twelve minutes, Humphrey said, “The last time I spoke for only twelve minutes was when I said hello to my mother.”

  2 Of Humphrey’s speaking style, Barry Gold-water once commented, “Hubert has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts up to 340.”

  3 Humphrey’s job was not enviable. The President under whom he served was a larger-than-life egotist who had little respect for underlings — and who had suffered in the same job himself. “All Hubert needs over there,” Johnson once said, “is a gal to answer the phone and a pencil with an eraser on it.”

  4 Humphrey visited Lyndon Johnson at the LBJ ranch in Texas during the 1964 campaign. As he walked into a field to take the tour, he stepped in a pile of manure. “Mr. President,” quipped Humphrey for the benefit of reporters, “I just stepped on the Republican platform.”

  HUNTER, John (1728–93), British physician.

  1 A sufferer from angina, Hunter found that his attacks were often brought on by anger. He declared, “My life is at the mercy of any scoundrel who chooses to put me in a passion.” This proved prophetic: at a meeting of the board of St. George’s Hospital, London, of which he was a member, he became involved in a heated argument with other board members, walked out of the meeting, and dropped dead in the next room.

  HUSTON, John (1906–87), US film director.

  1 (David Niven recalled the moment of Huston’s call-up for military service during World War II.)

  “The word came by phone when he was in the middle of directing Bogie in a scene in which the Japanese enemy had surrounded hero Bogart in a small building. His escape had been carefully rehearsed — who he shot, who he knifed and through which window he would jump, etc.

  “Huston never said a word about the receipt of his ‘call-up,’ he just tripled the number of Japanese around the building, boarded it up with the hero inside and left for Europe. A hastily summoned take-over director found a note on the door. ‘I’m in the Army — Bogie will know how to get out.’ ”

  2 Huston had gott
en through many tough films, but never one as challenging as The Bible. When asked how the work was going, Huston barked, “I don’t know how God managed. I’m having a terrible time.”

  HUTTON, E. F., US stockbroker.

  1 Hutton wanted land in the south to hunt on, and he found a plantation, Hickory Hill, for sale. After the deal was concluded, Hutton said to the former owner, “Mr. Ravenel, it’s been nice knowing you, but you’re about the poorest businessman I know. I would have paid you twice the price for it.” Said Ravenel, smiling, “I would have sold it for half as much.”

  HUTTON, Lauren (1944–), US model and actress.

  1 At the age of forty-nine, Hutton still had an active career as a model, with a style that had always been casual and natural — the less makeup, the better. Her ambition, she said as she contemplated turning fifty, was to be “the first model who becomes a woman.”

  HUXLEY, Aldous Leonard (1894–1963), British writer, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley.

  1 As a child Aldous Huxley was precocious and thoughtful. A member of the family once asked him (he was about four) what he was thinking about. “Skin,” replied Aldous.

  2 (Aldous Huxley seems to have developed an individual approach to visiting the sick, which, from the description Osbert Sitwell gave of Huxley’s visit to him in the hospital, can hardly have failed to distract the sufferer from his ailments.)

  “Versed in every modern theory of science, politics, painting, literature, and psychology, he was qualified by his disposition to deal in ideas and play with them. Nor would gossip or any matter of the day be beneath his notice: though even these lesser things would be treated as by a philosopher, with detachment and an utter want of prejudice. But he preferred to discourse on more erudite and impersonal scandals, such as the incestuous mating of melons, the elaborate love-making of lepidoptera, or the curious amorous habits of cuttle-fish. He would speak with obvious enjoyment, in a voice of great charm, unhurried, clear, without being loud, and utterly indifferent to any sensation he was making. Thus the most surprising statements would hover languidly in air heavy with hospital disinfectants. ‘From his usual conduct,’ I remember his announcing on one occasion, ‘one must presume that every octopus has read Ovid on Love.’ ”

  3 Aldous Huxley’s fame rested largely upon his novels, such as Brave New World, in which he examined humanity’s choice between a fully human life and the mechanized servitude of the anthill. In his sixties he admitted, “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’”

  HUXLEY, Thomas Henry (1825–95), British biologist, philosopher, and paleontologist.

  1 The controversy between the supporters of Darwin and the Church came into the open at a famous meeting in Oxford in June 1860. No one took down what was said, so accounts are based on recollections of the participants as pieced together afterward. Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford and professor of mathematics, was on the platform to support the religious viewpoint; Huxley was the spokesman for the Darwinian side. As Wilberforce was expected to smash the scientific forces, the room was packed to capacity. His speech was a savage invective against Darwin and Huxley; at the end he asked Huxley, “If anyone were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?” The audience greeted this with rapturous applause.

  Although Huxley had come to the meeting with the idea of averting a head-on clash between religion and science, Wilberforce’s arrogance and the inadequacy of his answer to the Darwinian position stung Huxley into fighting back. “A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather,” he said. “If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance.”

  At this slur on the clergy bedlam broke out in the lecture room and ladies fainted from shock. From that moment the relationship of science to religion would never again be the same.

  2 Huxley was late setting off to give a lecture. He jumped into a cab, crying, “Top Speed!” The cabman whipped up his horse and they set off as fast as the horse could go. A thought then dawned on Huxley; sticking his head out of the window, he called to the cabman, “Hey, do you know where I want to go?”

  “No, your honor,” shouted back the cabman, “but I’m driving as fast as I can!”

  HYDE, Lady Catherine (1700–77), British noblewoman who became Duchess of Queensberry by her marriage (1720) to Charles Douglas, the third duke.

  1 She kept her beauty into her seventies, and her friend Horace Walpole drank her health, wishing that she might live long enough even to grow ugly. “I hope then that you will keep your taste for antiquities,” the duchess replied.

  HYDE, William (dates unknown), English painter.

  1 William Hyde often told the tale of an odd literary coincidence that happened to him when he came to live in Westminster. On the evening of his very first day in London, returning to his new lodgings, he found the slumped form of a stranger on his step. Noting that the man was evidently ill, and assuming him to be a fellow lodger, Hyde summoned the maid to help him. “Why,” exclaimed the woman with some concern on seeing the sick man, “it’s Dr. Jekyll. He lives here, poor gentleman.”

  HYLAN, John F. (1868–1936), US lawyer and politician.

  1 “Honest John” Hylan was, if not the worst, surely one of the least bright mayors New York City has ever had. In 1922, during his administration, he solemnly swore to the citizenry that the much-publicized crime wave did not exist. He went on to assert, “The police are full able to meet and compete with the criminals.”

  HYRTL, Joseph (1810–94), Austrian anatomist.

  1 Hyrtl was examining a candidate for the medical degree who seemed more than ordinarily nervous. “What can you tell me about the function of the spleen?” was the first question. The candidate wiped his forehead. “Herr Professor, I did know exactly what it was, I knew it just a minute ago, but now I’ve forgotten,” he stammered.

  “Miserable creature,” cried Hyrtl. “You’re the only man in the whole world who knows anything about the function of the spleen — and now you’ve forgotten it!”

  I

  IBN SAUD (?1880–1953), first king of Saudi Arabia (1932–53).

  1 A woman came to Ibn Saud, asking a death sentence for the man who had killed her husband. The man had been in a palm tree gathering dates when he had slipped and fallen upon her husband, fatally injuring him. Ibn Saud inquired: Was the fall intentional? Were the two men enemies? The widow knew neither the man nor why he fell, but, according to the law, she demanded the blood price due her. “In what form will you have the compensation?” Ibn Saud asked. The widow demanded the head of the guilty party. Ibn Saud tried to dissuade her, pointing out that she needed money and that exaction of a life for a life would profit neither her nor her children. But the widow, set on vengeance, would not listen.

  Ibn Saud said, “It is your right to exact compensation, and it is also your right to ask for this man’s life. But it is my right to decree how he shall die. You shall take this man with you immediately and he shall be tied to the foot of a palm tree and then you yourself shall climb to the top of the tree and cast yourself down upon him from that height. In that way you will take his life as he took your husband’s.” There was a pause. “Or perhaps,” Ibn Saud added, “you would prefer after all to take the blood money?” The widow took the money.

  2 Ibn Saud, advanced in years, visited the town of Hofuf to bathe in its hot springs. During the cure one of the men of Hofuf presented the king with a handsome gray horse. Ibn Saud, delighted with the gift, called for the ledger in which he personally recorded the details of the presents that he bestowed upon visitors and well-wishers. Against the name of the donor of the h
orse he wrote “300 riyals,” a sum greatly in excess of the real worth of the beast. As he was writing, the nib of his pen sputtered and a shower of little ink blobs scattered across the page, turning “300 riyals” into “300,000 riyals” (the Arabic sign for zero is a dot, like a period, rather than an open 0). The vizer respectfully drew his lord’s attention to the spattered page. “I see my pen has clearly stated 300,000,” said Ibn Saud, “so that is what you must pay. My hand wrote it, and I cannot have anyone say that my hand is more generous than my heart.”

  IBRAHIM PASHA (1789–1848), Egyptian general.

  1 The sultan at Constantinople commanded his viceroy in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to punish the Wahhabis, who had defied his authority. Although he had some success, Muhammad Ali found that he could make no impression upon the heartland of Wah-habi power, the area called Nejd, where the strength of these desert fighters was greatest.

  One day Muhammad Ali was sitting in his apartments with his generals, each one contending that if he were given command of the armies in Arabia, he would conquer Nejd with no difficulty. Muhammad Ali placed an apple in the center of a large carpet and said, “The task of conquering Nejd is a difficult one. It is like seizing this apple without setting foot on the carpet. The man who is able to perform such a thing is the man capable of capturing Nejd.” The generals were puzzled, but Muhammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha, asked permission to attempt it. This was granted. The young man went to one side of the carpet and began to roll it up. When the carpet was half rolled up, he reached out and grasped the apple with ease. His father appointed him commander of the Egyptian forces in Arabia, and after a bloody two-year campaign Ibrahim Pasha captured Nejd and completely crushed Wahhabi power.