Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  MILNES, Richard Monckton, 1st Baron Houghton (1809–85), British writer and politician.

  1 As he lay on his deathbed the bon vivant Monckton Milnes observed, “My exit is the result of too many entrées.”

  MILO (late 6th century BC), Greek wrestler famed for his feats in the Olympic games.

  1 Milo’s strongman antics were his eventual downfall. He came upon a tree trunk in which woodmen, who had been trying to split it, had left a wedge. Milo attempted to split the tree apart with his bare hands, the wedge sprang out, and the trunk closed upon his hands. Trapped, he was found by a pack of wolves who tore him limb from limb.

  MILTON, John (1608–74), British poet.

  1 In April 1667 Milton signed an agreement with Samuel Simmons, a London bookseller (i.e., publisher), by which he sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £5, plus £5 for the sale of each of three subsequent editions, an edition comprising fifteen-hundred copies. Milton received a second £5 in April 1669, making a grand total of £10 to the author of England’s greatest epic. After his death, Milton’s widow, his third wife, Elizabeth, sold all remaining rights for £8 to Simmons, who became perpetual owner of the copyright.

  2 In the course of a visit to Milton, James II, then Duke of York, suggested that the poet’s blindness was a divine punishment for his having written a defense of the execution of Charles I. Milton retorted, “If Your Highness thinks that misfortunes are indexes of the wrath of heaven, what must you think of your father’s tragical end? I have only lost my eyes — he lost his head.”

  3 Even after he went blind Milton was able to produce magnificent poetry. He simply organized his life into a secure routine. Rising early, he would have a man read to him from the Bible, after which he would contemplate the ways of God. Then the man would return to take Milton’s dictation. Once the man returned very late. Milton complained, “I want to be milked.”

  MINGUS, Charlie (1922–79), US jazz musician.

  1 Mingus played at a nightclub on one occasion where patrons at several tables paid no attention to his music but talked throughout his performance. After a considerable time had passed and the chatterers still talked on, Mingus announced that he would play a few bars, then turn the “music” over to the talkers for a few bars, back and forth — and did so for an extended piece. The talkers never noticed, and even joined in the applause at the end.

  MIRABEAU, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de (1749–91), French revolutionary statesman.

  1 Mirabeau received numerous challenges, to which he always returned the same answer: “Sir, your favor is received and your name is on my list, but I must warn you that the list is long, and I grant no preferences.”

  2 Mirabeau, who was badly pockmarked, addressed one of the first sessions of the constitutional convention, describing in his best oratorical style the proper qualifications of the to-be-elected president. Talleyrand remarked, “He has forgotten only one thing: he must also be pockmarked.”

  3 Although not noted for his own sincerity, Mirabeau was quick to recognize the quality in others. On hearing Robespierre speak for the first time, he leaned toward his neighbor and observed, “That man will go far; he believes all he says.”

  4 A group of students, observing the proceedings of the French Assembly, listened to the pompous and long-winded debates with expressions of disgust. Mirabeau mocked them gently for their naiveté. “Laws are like sausages,” he said. “You should never watch them being made.”

  MISES, Ludwig von (1881–1973), Austrian economist.

  1 At the age of eighty-eight Mises was asked how he felt upon getting up in the morning. “Amazed,” he replied.

  MITCHELL, MARGARET (1900–49), US author of one novel, Gone with the Wind.

  1 When New York editor Harold Latham visited Atlanta looking for new writers, he heard a great deal about a woman, Margaret Mitchell, who was writing a vast epic about the Civil War. Latham contacted her, but a very modest Mitchell declined to share her novel, saying she had nothing to show. Latham was preparing to leave Atlanta when he received a phone call from the lobby; when he got there, he was stunned to see Mitchell, a tiny woman, sitting surrounded by two huge towers of her manuscript. What had happened? A young woman whom Mitchell introduced to Latham during the course of his visit had boasted of her own writing genius and her intention to win the Pulitzer Prize, although, as she said, she had already been rejected by “the best” publishers. “You know, you don’t take life seriously enough to be a novelist,” the catty young lady had said to Mitchell. “I think you are wasting your time trying. You really aren’t the type.” Mitchell was energized. And her book, Gone with the Wind, won the Pulitzer Prize.

  2 While crossing Atlanta’s Peachtree Street with her husband to see a movie, Mitchell was struck by a speeding car and died a few days later. The car was driven by Hugh Gravitt, an off-duty cab driver who had been cited twenty-eight times the previous decade for speeding. As he was sentenced to jail for involuntary manslaughter, he was asked why he had ignored the twenty-five-mile-per-hour limit. “Everybody does it,” he said nonchalantly. The next day, just before he was to report to jail, he and his wife were injured when the car he was driving crashed into a truck.

  MITCHUM, Robert (1917–97), US film actor.

  1 Mitchum, happily married for thirty years, was asked what he thought had made his marriage last, when those of so many of his show-business colleagues had failed. “Mutual forbearance,” he replied. “We have each continued to believe that the other will do better tomorrow.”

  MITFORD, Nancy (1904–73), British author.

  1 The British police were having one of their periodic drives to stamp out prostitution in London. “But,” protested Nancy Mitford, “where will the young men learn?”

  MIZNER, Addison (?-1933), US architect and entrepreneur.

  1 Despite an almost complete lack of formal qualifications, Addison Mizner sprang to wealth and fame as the chief architect employed by those who bought land in Florida during the great property boom. The rich and celebrated scrambled for the cachet of a Mizner-designed residence, despite certain structural drawbacks (engrossed in aesthetic considerations, Mizner once forgot to install a stairway between the first and second stories). When client William Gray Warden asked for a copy of the blueprints of his Palm Beach house in order to show his friends, Mizner remonstrated, “Why, the house isn’t built yet! Construction first, blueprints afterward.”

  MIZNER, Wilson (1876–1933), US writer and wit who tried his hand at a score of respectable and disreputable means of earning a living.

  1 In the hospital for an appendectomy, Mizner was not reassured when a nurse came to write his name, illness, and other information on his chest for purposes of identification. He kept quiet about his misgivings and when her back was turned added a postscript to her notes: “Store in a cool place until opened.”

  2 Mizner’s opponent at a game of draw poker took out his wallet and tossed it onto the table, saying, “I call you.” Mizner calmly took off his right shoe and put it on the table and announced, “If we’re playing for leather, I raise.”

  3 In 1907 Mizner managed the Hotel Rand on West Forty-ninth Street in New York. He put up two signs for guests: “No opium-smoking in the elevators” and “Carry out your own dead.”

  4 The friend and associate of boxers, Mizner was himself a talented pugilist. One night in a San Francisco bar to which he had been accompanied by a group that included the middleweight known as “Mysterious” Billy Smith, Mizner started a fight with some longshoremen. At the end only one longshoreman was left standing; although Mizner was raining punches upon him, he remained obstinately upright, causing Mizner to worry that his punch had lost its power. Suddenly Mysterious Billy Smith noticed what was happening. “Leave him alone, Wilson!” he shouted. “I knocked him out five minutes ago.” On investigation it turned out that a punch from Smith had indeed knocked the longshoreman out cold, but had also wedged him vertically between two pieces of furniture.

>   5 When in June 1906 Harry Thaw shot the well-known architect Stanford White in a quarrel over Evelyn Nesbit, the scandal gripped the entire country. Some years later Wilson Mizner, observing with distaste a Palm Beach hotel designed by Joseph Urban, remarked, “Harry Thaw shot the wrong architect.”

  6 During the 1920s property boom in Florida the Mizner brothers ran an “antiquing” factory at which pieces of furniture, timber, statuary and other items were treated to give the impression of venerable age. Showing friends around the factory, Wilson Mizner handed them air rifles and offered to let them take part in inflicting the ravages of time upon a too-new dining-room suite. “Don’t shoot straight at it,” he instructed. “Remember a worm always charges at a piece of furniture from an angle.”

  7 On his deathbed Mizner awoke briefly from a coma to find a priest bending over him offering words of comfort. Mizner waved the man away. “Why should I talk to you? I’ve just been talking to your boss.”

  MODIGLIANI, Amedeo (1884–1920), Italian painter and sculptor.

  1 Modigliani’s admiration of Utrillo was reciprocated. On the occasion of their first meeting, they began by paying each other extravagant compliments. “You are the world’s greatest painter,” said one.

  “No, you are the world’s greatest painter,” said the other.

  “I forbid you to contradict me.”

  “I forbid you to forbid me.”

  The argument became heated. “If you say that again, I’ll hit you.”

  “You are the greatest —” and they fell to blows.

  Later, they made up over several bottles of wine at a nearby bistro. As they went out into the street, one said, “You are the world’s greatest painter.”

  “No, you are.”

  And so the fight broke out again, until both combatants were down in the gutter, where they went to sleep. In the early dawn they woke up to discover that they had been robbed.

  MOLIÈRE [Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–73), French actor and dramatist.

  1 On February 17, 1673, the desperately ill Molière insisted on going on stage so as not to let the rest of the company down. When the play was over he had to be carried home, where he died shortly afterward.

  Religious prejudices against the theater were so powerful that it was customary for a dying actor solemnly to abjure his profession so as to obtain burial in consecrated ground. Molière’s sudden death prevented this formality and appeals to the archbishop of Paris were fruitless. Molière’s widow sought the aid of the king. Louis sent to the ecclesiastical authorities to ask how deep consecrated ground may run. Back came the answer: “Fourteen feet.”

  “Very good,” said Louis. “Let Molière’s grave be dug in the churchyard sixteen feet deep and then it cannot be said that he is buried in consecrated ground, nor need it scandalize the clergy.”

  MOLNÁR, Ferenc (1878–1952), Hungarian dramatist and novelist.

  1 Molnár was a late riser, never emerging until 1:00 PM. On one occasion in Budapest, called as a witness in a lawsuit, he had to present himself at court by 9:00 AM. The combined efforts of his servants got him out of bed and dressed, and they propelled him out of the house at 8:30 into the rush-hour crowd. Molnár looked in amazement at the hurrying workers and exclaimed, “Good heavens, are all these people witnesses in this fool case?”

  2 During the Béla Kun revolution the streets of Budapest became unsafe, the haunt of thugs who attacked passersby with impunity. People went about in groups or stayed off the streets at night. Molnár remained home during much of this period, but he encouraged friends to visit him. One evening they brought a giant of a man along with them. Molnár eyed him in a worried way all evening. When he came to bid the giant farewell, he shook his hand and said in a concerned voice, “Aren’t you afraid to go home by yourself? Aren’t you horribly worried that you’ll attack somebody?”

  3 While Molnár was living in a hotel in Vienna during the 1920s, a large contingent of his relatives came to see him in the hope of sharing some of the fruits of the playwright’s fabulous success. They were prepared for a hostile reception, but to their surprise Molnár greeted them kindly, even insisting that they all sit for a group portrait to mark the occasion. The print ready, Molnár presented it to the hotel doorman. “And whenever you see any of the persons in the picture trying to get into the hotel, don’t let them in.”

  4 Expatriate Hungarians, all of them coffeehouse habitués, gathered around Molnár in New York and soon established a semblance of the former café society of Budapest — gossiping, playing games, writing, and arguing for up to twelve hours a day. Once the talk turned to the topic of learning English. Molnár asked his friends which words of sentences had been the first they had learned. One man replied, “I love you.” Others cited the conventional greetings — “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Good morning,” and so on. “The first sentence I learned,” said Molnár, “was ‘Separate checks, please!’”

  MONET, Claude (1840–1926), French painter, founder of the Impressionist school.

  1 Unlike a portraitist, Monet worked under tight time limits. His painting, which was done outdoors, had to be completed in short segments and done very quickly, to take advantage of conditions of light, weather, atmosphere, and time of day. Once an art dealer saw him arrive at Varengeville in haste, look at the sun, then look at his watch. Monet said to him, “I’m half an hour late. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  2 When he first put on a pair of glasses, he exclaimed, “Good lord, I see things like Bouguereau!” [a popular academic painter of the period]

  MONROE, Marilyn (1926–62), US film actress.

  1 Marilyn Monroe was difficult to direct, often unsure of her lines, frequently late — yet what finally emerged on the screen was usually triumphant. Director Billy Wilder once recalled an episode that occurred during the shooting of Some Like It Hot. It was simple enough. The script required Miss Monroe to knock on a door, enter the room, and ask for a slug of bourbon from a bottle in a bureau drawer. But, try as she would, the line of dialogue eluded her, and it never quite came out as fitting the action. Wilder recalled: “On the fifty-third take I told her we had put the line on pieces of paper and they were in every drawer she would open….She went to the wrong piece of furniture.”

  2 She once admitted that as a woman she felt like a failure; she had been turned into something she wasn’t. “Men expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle,” she said sadly, “but my anatomy is the same as any other woman’s and I can’t live up to it.”

  3 Considered one of the goddesses of the screen, Monroe never felt satisfied with her acting abilities. Despite the enormous sums she was paid to star in movies such as Some Like It Hot and Bus Stop, Monroe continued to take private acting classes, working hard on her craft. She noted, “I don’t want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.”

  4 When asked why she had posed for some nude photographs early in her career, Monroe said, “Why? It paid the rent!”

  5 At a press conference shortly after her marriage to baseball great Joe DiMaggio, a reporter boldly asked her what she wore to bed. Looking over at her new husband, she said, very softly, “Chanel No. 5.”

  6 In 1954 Monroe was paired with Robert Mitchum in the western saga River of No Return. Friends warned her about Mitchum, reminding her that he was known to be a scene stealer. “Oh, I’m not scared of Bob stealing scenes,” she told them. “It’s those darned hammy horses that worry me.”

  7 Monroe’s inability to be on time for a shoot was legendary in the business, but things seemed worse than ever during the filming of Some Like It Hot. She would appear terribly late, looking tired and hesitant about her script. Director Billy Wilder was exasperated but showed her great patience. “My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production,” he explained to a harried cast member, “but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?”

  8 On the set of Something’s Got to Give, her last movie, and one she never completed, Monroe was later than ever to reh
earsals and shoots. Director Billy Wilder needed her one morning and was unable to find her. “It used to be you’d call her at nine AM, she’d show up at noon,” he groaned. “Now you call her in May, she shows up in October.”

  MONTAGU, Lady Mary Wortley (1689–1762), British letter writer and traveler.

  1 In Constantinople Lady Mary lost no opportunity to tell the Turkish ladies of the superior status of women in England. Her propaganda suffered a serious setback, however, when her friends invited her to go with them to a public bath. The Turkish lady who helped her undress was amazed at the sight of Lady Mary’s stays, and called all her friends to come and have a look. “See how cruelly the poor English ladies are used by their husbands!” she cried. “How can you boast of your greater liberty when your husbands lock you up in a box like this?”

  2 The breadth of Lady Mary’s experience is perhaps best summed up in her alleged dying words: “It has all been most interesting.”

  MONTAGUE, Charles Edward (1867–1928), British journalist and writer.

  1 At the outbreak of World War I, Montague dyed his gray hair black in order to conceal his age and join the army. H. W. Nevinson remarked that Montague was “the only man on record whose hair turned black in a single night from fearlessness.”

  MONTCALM [DE SAINT-VÉRAN], Louis Joseph Marquis de (1712–59), French military commander in Canada.

  1 Montcalm’s last breaths were taken within the walls of Quebec, where he was taken after being mortally wounded in battle with the British. When told he would not live to see out the day, he said, “So much the better. I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”