Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  3 Rossini congratulated the diva Adelina Patti on her singing. “Madame, I have cried only twice in my life,” he informed her, “once when I dropped a wing of truffled chicken into Lake Como, and once when for the first time I heard you sing.”

  4 A singer gave a rendering of Rossini’s famous aria “Una voce,” embellished with many showy fioriture. When she had finished, Rossini courteously congratulated her upon her technique. “And whose is the music?” he asked.

  5 Rossini, who usually marked errors in his pupils’ compositions with crosses, returned a manuscript to a mediocre student with very few crosses on it. The young man was delighted. “I’m so pleased that there are so few mistakes,” he said happily. “If I had marked all the blunders in the music with crosses, your score would have looked like a cemetery,” said Rossini.

  6 One day a composer unknown to Rossini brought him the score of two oratorios, seeking his opinion. Rossini tried to excuse himself, citing poor health. But the composer insisted, stating that he would return in a week for Rossini’s judgment. He did so, finding Rossini in his armchair, serene and smiling, but quick to say that he had been so ill and had slept so little that he had been able to examine only one of the scores. “And what did you think of it?” was the eager question. “There are good things in it… but I prefer the other one.”

  7 When Rossini was old and eminent but still not rich, a group of his admirers raised a subscription of twenty thousand francs for a statue of their hero.

  “Give me the twenty thousand,” said Rossini, “and I’ll stand on the pedestal myself.”

  8 Baron Rothschild sent Rossini some beautiful grapes from his conservatory. Rossini wrote back, thanking him but adding, “Although your grapes are superb, I don’t like my wine in capsules.”

  {Rothschild then sent him some of his celebrated Chateau-Lafitte, enjoying the hint.}

  ROTHSCHILD, Sir Nathan Meyer, 1st Baron (1840–1915), member of the London branch of the famous family of financiers.

  1 Alighting from a hansom cab one evening, Lord Rothschild gave the driver what he felt to be an adequate tip. “Your lordship’s son always gives me a good deal more than this,” said the driver, eyeing the money disdainfully. “I daresay he does,” retorted Lord Rothschild. “But then, you see, he has got a rich father: I haven’t.”

  ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), French philosopher and writer.

  1 Rousseau owed a great deal to his patroness, Mme De Vercelles. As she was readying to die, Rousseau waited by her bedside. She could no longer speak, and it was clear death was near. Suddenly, she broke wind loudly. “Good,” she said, “a woman who can fart is not dead.” Upon which she died.

  ROUTH, Martin (1755–1854), British academic.

  1 The ups and downs of college life had little effect on the Venerable Dr. Routh, as he was generally called. A breathless don once stumbled into the president’s room, gasping, “A Fellow of this college has killed himself!” Dr. Routh held up a calming hand. “Pray don’t tell me who,” he is reported to have said. “Allow me to guess.”

  2 Routh suffered an injury that troubled him for a long time; it was caused when he reached up for a weighty volume on a high shelf and the book fell, striking his left leg. The elderly scholar was incensed. “To be lamed by a book written by a dunce!” he cried. “A worthless volume! A worthless volume!”

  ROWLAND, Henry Augustus (1848–1901), US physicist.

  1 Professor Rowland was summoned as an expert witness at a trial. During cross-examination a lawyer demanded, “What are your qualifications as an expert witness in this case?”

  “I am the greatest living expert on the subject under discussion,” replied the professor quietly.

  Later a friend, well acquainted with the professor’s modest and retiring disposition, observed that he had been amazed to hear him praise himself in this way; it was completely out of character. Rowland asked, “Well, what did you expect me to do? I was under oath.”

  RUBINSTEIN, Anton (1829–94), Russian pianist and composer.

  1 The telephone rang at a bad time while the maestro was practicing. His servant, François, answered the phone. It was a feminine voice tenderly asking to speak with Rubinstein. Although the sounds of the piano were clearly audible, François assured the lady that Rubinstein was not in. “But I hear him playing,” she said. “You are mistaken, madame,” replied François. “I’m dusting the piano keys.”

  2 Anton Rubinstein liked to sleep late in the mornings, often missing early appointments as a result. Mme Rubinstein worked out a ruse to get him out of bed. She would play an unresolved chord on the piano upstairs, and her husband, who could not bear unresolved dissonances, would run up in his nightshirt to resolve it into a perfect triad. While he did this, Mme Rubinstein would sneak downstairs and remove the bedclothes to prevent him from returning to bed.

  RUBINSTEIN, Artur (1886–1982), Polish-born pianist.

  1 (Clifton Fadiman recalls a lunch with Rubinstein.) “We… awaited him in the restaurant. He entered, his stride thirty-five years his junior, sat down at the table, ordered drinks in Italian (from the eight languages he speaks he selects one as an ordinary man would a tie), and started to apologize: ‘So sorry to be late. For two hours I have been at my lawyer’s, making my will. What a nuisance, this business of a will. One figures, one schemes, one arranges, and in the end — what? It is practically impossible to leave anything for yourself!’ ”

  2 Rubinstein was standing in the lobby of a concert hall watching the capacity crowd streaming in to hear one of his recitals. The attendant at the box office, thinking that he had not seen the “SOLD OUT” sign, called out to him, “I’m sorry, mister, but we can’t seat you.”

  “May I be seated at the piano?” inquired Rubinstein meekly.

  RUGGLES, Carl (1876–1971), US composer.

  1 Henry Cowell, visiting Ruggles at his studio, found the composer at his piano playing the same chordal agglomerate over and over again. Eventually Cowell shouted, “What on earth are you doing to that chord? You’ve been playing it for at least an hour.” Ruggles shouted back, “I’m giving it the test of time.”

  RUSKIN, John (1819–1900), British critic, writer, and social reformer.

  1 In accordance with his ideas on the dignity of labor Ruskin encouraged his Oxford students to try their hand at manual work. He hit on the scheme of building a road from the nearby village of North Hinksey to Oxford to enable the villagers to reach the town by a direct route across low-lying and often muddy fields. Among the undergraduates he recruited was — of all people — Oscar Wilde. They set to work with a will under the direction of Ruskin’s gardener, but somehow the charm of manual labor diminished after a while and the road was never completed. Final comment on the episode came from an anonymous resident of North Hinksey: “I don’t think the young gentlemen did much harm.”

  2 In the heyday of his career as art critic, Ruskin used always to maintain that it should in no way affect his friendship with an artist if he panned his work. The artists, of course, saw matters in a rather different light. “Next time I meet you I shall knock you down,” one of his victims retorted, “but I trust it will make no difference to our friendship.”

  3 Ruskin, no lover of technological progress, was asked to comment on the completion of the British-Indian cable. “What have we to say to India?” he asked.

  RUSSELL, Bertrand Arthur William, 3d Earl (1872–1970), British philosopher who won the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature.

  1 The American publisher William Jovanovich in his student days at Harvard often ate at a cafeteria that served cheap, rather bad food. Bertrand Russell also used to eat at the same place. One day Jovanovich, unable to restrain his curiosity, said to Russell, “Mr. Russell, I know why I eat here. It is because I am poor; but why do you eat here?” Russell replied, “Because I am never interrupted.”

  2 Russell’s friend G. H. Hardy, who became professor of pure mathematics at Cambridge in 1931, once told him that if he co
uld find a proof that Russell would die in five minutes’ time, he would naturally be sorry to lose him, but the sorrow would be quite outweighed by pleasure in the proof. Russell, wise in the ways of mathematics, observed, “I entirely sympathized with him and was not at all offended.”

  3 (G. H. Hardy reports a nightmare once experienced by Bertrand Russell. In his dream he found himself on the top floor of a great library in about AD 2100.)

  “A library assistant was going around the shelves carrying an enormous bucket, taking down book after book, glancing at them, restoring them to the shelves or dumping them into the bucket. At last he came to three large volumes which Russell could recognize as the last surviving copy of Principia Math-ematica. He took down one of the volumes, turned over a few pages, seemed puzzled for a moment by the curious symbolism, closed the volume, balanced it in his hands and hesitated …”

  4 When Bertrand Russell refused to grant interviews after a serious illness in China, in 1920, a resentful Japanese press carried the news he had died. Even when Russell appealed to them, they refused to retract the story. On his way home he stopped in Japan, and the press again sought to interview him. By way of reprisal he had his secretary hand out printed slips to each reporter. The slips read: “Since Mr. Russell is dead he cannot be interviewed.”

  5 A young friend of Russell’s once found the philosopher in a state of profound contemplation. “Why so meditative?” asked the young man. “Because I’ve made an odd discovery,” replied Russell. “Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.”

  RUSSELL, John, 1st Earl (1792–1878), British statesman; prime minister (1846–52, 1865–66).

  1 During a fiery debate, the Tory Sir Francis Burdett objected to some sentiments from the other side that he called “the cant of patriotism.” Russell immediately retorted, “There is something worse than the cant of patriotism; that is the recant of patriotism.”

  2 Asked his opinion as to what would be the proper punishment for bigamy, Russell promptly answered, “Two mothers-in-law.”

  RUTH, George Herman [“Babe”] (1895–1948), US baseball player.

  1 During the Depression Babe Ruth, asked to take a cut in salary, held out for his $80,000 contract. A club official protested, “But that’s more money than Hoover got for being President last year.”

  “I know,” said the Babe, “but I had a better year.”

  2 Babe Ruth was enormously popular, a larger-than-life figure in many respects, given to overeating and overdrinking. The most notorious occasion was in the course of preseason training when, on a railroad ride to New York, the Babe got off at a train stop and consumed an estimated twelve hot dogs and eight bottles of lemon-lime soda pop in a few minutes. Soon afterward he was stricken with “the stomachache heard ’round the world.” (Less publicized were rumors that he had contributed to his misery with the consumption of large amounts of beer and booze.) For days ominous headlines had his fans across the country fearing for his life. Recovering, Ruth is reported to have said, “That soda pop will get you every time.”

  3 Babe Ruth loved kids. On one occasion when the family of a fan of the Babe’s, a youngster who was seriously ill in the hospital, requested an autographed baseball for the boy, the Babe went along to the hospital himself, gave him the baseball, and promised to hit a home run for him in the game that afternoon. Sure enough, the Babe came through with the home run. The lad recovered and Babe Ruth observed, “Best medicine in the world, a home run.”

  4 Another version of the sick-boy-and-home-run story relates as follows: The boy, Johnny Sylvester, was injured in a fall from his horse. His uncle brought him baseballs autographed by Yankee team members and prevailed on Ruth to visit him in the hospital. When Ruth promised to hit a home run for him, and did — hit four, in fact, in the next game — the press picked up on it and the legend grew. The next year Ruth was chatting with reporters when the uncle approached him and thanked him for his kindness to Johnny Sylvester. “Glad to do it,” said Ruth, who asked after Johnny. “Send him my regards.” When the grateful uncle left Ruth turned to his cronies and asked, “Now who the hell is Johnny Sylvester?”

  5 “Grantland Rice, the prince of sportswriters, used to do a weekly radio interview with some sporting figure. Frequently, in the interest of spontaneity, he would type out questions and answers in advance. One night his guest was Babe Ruth.

  “ ‘Well, you know, Granny,’ the Babe read in response to a question, ‘Duke Ellington said the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Elkton.’

  “ ‘Babe,’ Granny said after the show, ‘Duke Ellington for the Duke of Wellington I can understand. But how did you ever read Eton as Elkton? That’s in Maryland, isn’t it?’

  “ ‘I married my first wife there,’ Babe said, ‘and I always hated the goddamn place.’”

  6 Ruth once suffered the humiliation of having the great Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators throw three straight fastballs past him. He asked the umpire if he had seen any of the pitches. “No,” replied the umpire. “Neither did I,” said Ruth, “but that last one sounded kinda high to me.”

  7 At an exhibition game in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a teenaged girl was allowed as a joke to pitch to the Yankees. In short order she struck out Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Only after she walked Tony Lazzeri was she taken out of the game by the manager.

  8 The Babe was once asked if he had any superstitions. “Just one,” he said. “Whenever I hit a home run, I make sure I touch all four bases.”

  9 Near the end of his career with the Red Sox, Ruth was in a bitter negotiation with owner Harry Frazee over his salary. Frazee professed amazement that Ruth would ask for so much money, claiming that not even the great actor John Barrymore made that amount. “I don’t give a damn about any actors,” Ruth retorted. “What good will John Barrymore do you with the bases loaded and two down in a tight ball game? Either I get the money or I don’t play!”

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  SAGE, Russell (1816–1906), US financier.

  1 Sage’s lawyer was delighted by the case his client had just laid before him. “It’s an ironclad case,” he exclaimed with confidence. “We can’t possibly lose!”

  “Then we won’t sue,” said Sage. “That was my opponent’s side of the case I gave you.”

  SAINTE-BEUVE, Charles Augustin (1804–69), French critic and literary historian.

  1 Although himself unpugnacious, Sainte-Beuve was once compelled to fight a duel with pistols. At the critical moment, just as the order to fire was about to be given, it started to rain. Sainte-Beuve called for a pause in the proceedings while he went to his carriage and fetched and opened a large umbrella. He then faced his opponent with the umbrella held in his left hand and the pistol in his right. The opponent protested at the derogation of the dignity of the occasion. “I don’t mind being killed,” Sainte-Beuve responded, “but I do mind getting wet.”

  SAINT-SAËNS, [Charles] Camille (1835–1921), French composer.

  1 Sir Thomas Beecham conducted a concert in London given in honor of Saint-Saëns, for which the principal piece was Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony. Beecham found the tempi in the symphony depressingly slow; so did the players, as they made clear by the way they played in rehearsal. Nor was the situation helped by Saint-Saëns’s presence.

  Beecham finally exaggerated the accentuation on purpose to give a semblance of life to the music without actually speeding it up. Later he asked Saint-Saëns what he thought of the interpretation. The aged composer replied, “My dear young friend, I have lived a long while, and I have known all the chefs d’orchestre. There are two kinds; one takes the music too fast, and the other too slow. There is no third.”

  SALINGER, J. D. (1919–), US writer.

  1 When The Catcher in the Rye was chosen as the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1951, the president of the club, who had invited Salinger to lunch, expressed anx
iety over the book’s somewhat ambiguous title. Asked if he would consider a change, Salinger thought for a moment, then replied simply, “Holden Caulfield wouldn’t like that.” The suggestion was not revived.

  SALISBURY, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3d Marquess of (1830–1903), British statesman.

  1 In 1896, Salisbury made the undistinguished poet Alfred Austin Poet Laureate. It was widely believed that the decision was based on Austin’s political leanings rather than on his talent. Asked why he had chosen a poet of such inferior ability, Salisbury simply replied, “I don’t think anyone else applied for the post.”

  SALK, Jonas E. (1914–95), US virologist.

  1 Salk worked hard to publicize his discovery, although he received no money from the sale of it. Someone once asked him who owned the patent. He replied, “The people — could you patent the sun?”

  SAMUELSON, Paul (1915–), US economist.

  1 When Samuelson completed his oral examination for a Ph.D. degree, an examiner turned to his colleagues in the room and asked, “Did we pass?”

  SANDBURG, Carl (1878–1967), US poet, novelist, and biographer.

  1 A young dramatist, anxious for Sandburg’s opinion of his new serious play, asked the poet to attend the dress rehearsal. Sandburg slept throughout the performance. When the dramatist complained, saying that Sandburg had known how much he wanted his opinion, Sandburg replied, “Sleep is an opinion.”