Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  SHATNER, William (1931–), US actor.

  1 Shatner’s most embarrassing moment occurred when he was still a novice in his profession. He was asked to attend a party at Joshua Logan’s house and did, bringing his baby daughter and his eighty-pound dog along. He immediately saw that he had dressed wrong; he was in T-shirt and jeans, while every other guest was in a tuxedo or a long formal gown. And almost as quickly, his dog jumped into the pool, got out, ran over to a beautifully dressed Gloria Vanderbilt, and jumped up on her with its muddy paws, soiling and soaking her dress. Shatner left as quickly as possible. Years later he ran into Henry Fonda on an airplane. “Mr. Fonda,” said Shatner, “I don’t suppose you remember me …” Fonda interrupted him, saying, “Aren’t you the young actor who was at Logan’s party and whose dog dirtied Gloria Vanderbilt’s dress?”

  SHAW, George Bernard (1856–1950), Irish playwright.

  1 Before Shaw became famous, one of his plays was consistently turned down by a certain producer. After Shaw achieved success, the producer suddenly cabled an offer to stage the rejected work. Shaw cabled in reply: “Better never than late.”

  2 While Shaw was still a music critic, he was dining with a friend in a restaurant that provided for entertainment an orchestra that was at best mediocre. The leader, recognizing Shaw, wrote him a note asking him what he would like the orchestra to play next. “Dominoes,” replied Shaw.

  3 The first performance of Arms and the Man (April 21, 1894) was boisterous. The author took a curtain call and was received with cheers. While they were subsiding, before Shaw could utter a syllable, a solitary hiss was heard from the gallery. It was made by R. Goulding Bright, who later became a very successful literary agent. Bright hissed, it later appeared, under the misapprehension that Shaw’s satire on florid Balkan soldiers was, in fact, a reflection on the British army. Shaw did not know this at the time, however, and as he stood on the stage he raised his hand to silence the cheers. Bowing in Bright’s direction, he said, “I quite agree with you, sir, but what can two do against so many?”

  4 The Theatre Guild had started rehearsals for the American premiere of Shaw’s Saint Joan. Everything was progressing smoothly, except that the play was found to run for three and a half hours, long past the normal curtain time. Suburban playgoers would miss the last trains home. This information was cabled to Shaw, together with a request that he cut the play. Back came the reply: “Begin at eight or run later trains.”

  5 The success of Shaw’s dramatic writings was an embarrassment to his socialistic ideals. To the play representative who had sent him a draft of money with promise of more to come, he wrote: “Rapacious Elisabeth Mar-bury: What do you want me to make a fortune for? Don’t you know that the draft you sent me will permit me to live and preach Socialism for six months? The next time you have so large an amount to remit, please send it to me by installments, or you will put me to the inconvenience of having a bank account.”

  6 “George Bernard Shaw, a staunch vegetarian, refused to attend a gala testimonial because the bill of fare was a vegetarian menu. He said: ‘The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.’ ”

  7 At a dinner party Shaw sat next to a young man who proved to be a bore of historic proportions. After suffering through a seemingly interminable monologue, Shaw cut in to observe that between the two of them, they knew everything there was to know in the world. “How is that?” asked the young man. “Well,” said Shaw, “you seem to know everything except that you’re a bore. And I know that!”

  8 It is said that the dancer Isadora Duncan wrote to Shaw that good eugenics indicated they should have a child together. “Think of it! With my body and your brains, what a wonder it would be,” she said. Shaw replied, “Yes, but what if it had my body and your brains?”

  9 “At a performance given by an Italian string quartet, Shaw’s companion remarked approvingly, ‘These men have been playing together for twelve years.’ ‘Surely,’ said Shaw, ‘we have been here longer than that.’ ”

  10 The military theorist and historian B. H. Lid- dell Hart once observed to Shaw, “Do you know that ‘sumac’ and ‘sugar’ are the only two words in the English language that begin with su and are pronounced shu?”

  “Sure,” answered Shaw.

  11 Shaw was once approached by the advertising executive of a company manufacturing electric razors, in the hope that the great writer would endorse their new product by shaving off his beard. By way of reply, Shaw explained the reason why he, and his father before him, had chosen to grow a beard. “I was about five at the time,” said Shaw, “and I was standing at my father’s knee whilst he was shaving. I said to him, ‘Daddy, why do you shave?’ He looked at me in silence for a full minute, before throwing the razor out the window, saying, ‘Why the hell do I?’ He never did again.”

  12 An anthologist wrote to Shaw requesting permission to include one of his pieces in an anthology. He explained that he was a very young man and therefore would not be able to pay Shaw’s usual fee. GBS responded, “I’ll wait for you to grow up.”

  13 Arnold Bennett visited Shaw in his apartment and, knowing his host’s love of flowers, was surprised that there was not a single vase of flowers to be seen. He remarked on their absence to Shaw: “But I thought you were so fond of flowers.” “I am,” said Shaw, “but I don’t chop their heads off and stand them in pots around the house.”

  14 A lady notorious for courting celebrities sent Shaw an invitation reading: “Lady — will be at home on Tuesday between four and six o’clock.” Shaw returned the card annotated, “Mr. Bernard Shaw likewise.”

  15 “Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Shaw?” anxiously inquired the hostess, who had noticed that her distinguished guest was standing alone in a corner. “Certainly,” he replied. “There is nothing else here to enjoy.”

  16 Sam Goldwyn, the American movie magnate, attempted to buy from Shaw the film rights to one of his plays. There was a protracted haggle over what the rights should cost, which ended in Shaw’s declining to sell. “The trouble is, Mr. Goldwyn,” said Shaw, “you are interested only in art and I am interested only in money.”

  17 A country clergyman, hearing that Shaw was an expert in the brewing of coffee, wrote to him for the recipe. Shaw obliged, adding as an afterthought that he hoped the request was not an underhanded way of obtaining his autograph. The clergyman cut Shaw’s signature from the letter, returned it with a note thanking him for the coffee recipe, and concluded, “I wrote in good faith, so allow me to return what is obvious you infinitely prize, but which is of no value to me, your autograph.”

  18 Shaw once came across a copy of one of his works in a secondhand bookshop. Opening the volume, he found the name of a friend inscribed in his own hand on the flyleaf: “To — with esteem, George Bernard Shaw.” He promptly bought the book and returned it to his friend, adding the inscription, “With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.”

  19 In conversation with Shaw and his wife, writer Patrick Mahony asked Mrs. Shaw how she had coped with her husband’s many female admirers. By way of reply, Mrs. Shaw began to recount an anecdote: “After we were married there was an actress who pursued my husband. She threatened suicide if she were not allowed to see him …” “And did she die of a broken heart?” “Yes, she did,” interrupted Shaw. “Fifty years later.”

  20 Showing a friend the portrait bust sculpted for him by Renoir, Shaw remarked: “It’s a funny thing about that bust. As time goes on, it seems to get younger and younger.”

  21 Once when sitting for the photographer Yousuf Karsh, Shaw said that Karsh “might make a good picture of him — but none as good as the picture he had seen at a recent dinner party, where he glimpsed, over the shoulder of his hostess, a perfect portrait of himself: “Cruel, you understand, a diabolical caricature, but absolutely true.” He had pushed by the lady, approaching the living image, and found he was looking into a mirror!

  22 Among his guests George Bernard Shaw received on h
is ninetieth birthday was Fabian, Scotland Yard’s celebrated detective. At Fabian’s suggestion Shaw agreed to have his fingerprints recorded for posterity. To the amazement of both, Shaw’s fingerprints were so faint no impression could be obtained. “Well,” announced Shaw, “had I known this sooner I should certainly have chosen another profession.”

  23 On a visit to GBS shortly after Shaw’s ninetieth birthday, comedian Danny Kaye sought to compliment the playwright by saying, “You’re a young-looking ninety.” “Nonsense,” came the crusty reply, “I look exactly like a man of ninety should look. Everyone else looks older because of the dissolute lives they lead.”

  24 At the age of ninety-four Shaw refused a crucial kidney operation, telling his doctor, “You won’t be famous if I recover. Surgeons only become famous when their patients die.”

  SHEARING, George [Albert] (1919–), British-born US jazz pianist.

  1 One afternoon, at rush hour, he was waiting at a busy intersection for someone to take him across the street when another blind man tapped him on the shoulder and asked if Shearing would mind helping him to get across.

  “What could I do?” said Shearing afterward. “I took him across and it was the biggest thrill of my life.”

  Asked why he robbed banks, the notorious American bank robber Willie Sutton is reputed to have remarked, “Because that’s where the money is.”

  — THEODORE WHITE,

  America in Search of Itself

  SHELBURNE, William Petty, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne (1737–1805), British politician.

  1 In March 1780 Lord Shelburne fought a duel with a Lieutenant Colonel William Fullerton over some remarks that the former had made in the House of Lords. Shelburne was slightly wounded in the groin. As his anxious seconds bent over him, he reassured them, saying, “I don’t think Lady Shelburne will be the worse for it.”

  SHELLEY, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797–1851), British author.

  1 During the summer of 1816 Byron and Shelley were neighbors on the shores of the lake of Geneva. The two poets, together with Byron’s friend Dr. John Polidori and Shelley’s companions, Mary Godwin and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, spent many an evening conversing. One night Byron initiated a discussion of ghosts and the supernatural. Polidori recalled that Shelley was so distressed at the conversation that he ran from the room, maintaining that he had seen the women’s breasts as eyes. Meanwhile Byron suggested that all of them write their own ghost stories. From this evening emerged an effort begun by Byron about the ruins of Ephesus, never completed; a tale by Polidori eventually published as The Vampyre; and, by the seventeen-year-old Mary, the tale of Frankenstein — a story that probably has frightened more people and led to more spin-offs than any other ghost story in the world.

  2 Shelley’s utter disregard for convention may have been a trial to his wife. After his death she was urged to send her surviving son, Percy Florence, to an advanced school at which the boy would be taught to think for himself. “To think for himself!” exclaimed his mother. “Oh, my God, teach him to think like other people!”

  SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822), British Romantic poet.

  1 As a young man he went on a short journey in rural Sussex. There was a full complement of passengers on the outside of the coach, but Shelley took an inside seat and for a time had the interior to himself. Then the coach stopped and picked up a large elderly woman carrying two vast panniers, one filled with apples, the other with onions. In the stuffy coach the smell of apples, onions, and sweaty old woman soon became overwhelming. Seating himself on the floor, Shelley fixed his unwanted companion with a wild glare and began to recite Richard II’s lament from Shakespeare’s play — “For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground …” When he got to the words, “All murder’d,” the old woman’s nerve could stand it no longer and she yelled at the coach driver to stop and let her out. She duly exited, and Shelley was able to complete his journey in comfort.

  2 Early in 1822 Shelley’s household was joined by the young English adventurer Edward J. Trelawny, a sportsman and extrovert who greatly admired the impractical and wayward poet. Trelawny found a deep pool in the river where he liked to bathe. One day, after watching Trelawny performing various aquatic feats, Shelley said wistfully, “Why can’t I swim?” Trelawny immediately offered to teach him. Shelley stripped off his clothes and leaped in — plunging straight to the bottom of the pool, where he lay motionless. Trelawny jumped into the water and managed to haul the poet out. Shelley was not at all flustered by the narrowness of his escape. “I always find the bottom of the well and they say truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. It is an easy way to get rid of the body.” Only a few months later Shelley was drowned while sailing near Leghorn in squally weather.

  SHERIDAN, Philip Henry (1831–88), US army officer.

  1 In January 1869 Sheridan held a conference with Indian chiefs at Fort Cobb in the then Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). When the Comanche chief Toch-a-way was introduced, he said to Sheridan, “Me Toch-a-way, me good Indian.” “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead,” retorted Sheridan.

  2 While commanding the Military Division of the Gulf, Sheridan spent time at San Antonio, Texas. Asked by a local reporter his opinion of Texas as a country to live in, he answered, “If I owned two plantations and one was located in Texas and the other one was in hell, I’d rent out the one in Texas and live on the other one.” This comment was printed with a note from the editor that read: “Well, damn a man that won’t stand up for his own country.”

  SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley (1751–1816), Anglo-Irish playwright.

  1 Lord Thurlow produced a bottle of particularly good Constantia wine, specially sent from the Cape of Good Hope, at a dinner at which Sheridan was a guest. Sheridan greatly appreciated the wine and tried, by praising and hinting, to persuade Lord Thurlow to bring out another bottle. The host, however, was determined not to be overgenerous with this rare treat, and Sheridan eventually saw that his efforts were in vain. Turning to his next neighbor, he gestured toward the decanter of Madeira and said, “Pass the decanter. I must return to Madeira since I cannot double the Cape.”

  2 A lady anxious to take a walk with Sheridan observed that the weather had cleared up sufficiently for them to set out. Sheridan, equally anxious to avoid the tête-à-tête, replied, “It may have cleared up enough for one, but not enough for two.”

  3 Two royal dukes, meeting Sheridan in London’s Piccadilly, greeted him familiarly. Said one, “I say, Sherry, we were just discussing whether you are more rogue or fool.”

  “Why,” replied Sheridan, taking each duke by the arm, “I believe I am between both.”

  4 Once a servant dropped a heap of plates with a tremendous crash. Sheridan rebuked the man, saying, “I suppose you’ve broken all of them.”

  “No, sir, not one,” said the man.

  “Then, you mean to say you have made all that noise for nothing!”

  5 Sheridan’s financial affairs were constantly in disorder, and debt was a chronic state with him. “Thank God, that’s settled,” he is reported to have said, handing over an IOU to a creditor.

  6 A long-suffering creditor importuned Sheridan to name a date for payment. “The day of judgment,” cried the harassed author. “But, no — stay — that will be a busy day. Make it the day after.”

  7 Sheridan had borrowed £500 from a friend, who took every opportunity to remind him of the debt. On one such occasion Sheridan added insult to injury by asking for a further £25 to pay for a journey he had to make. On receiving the inevitable refusal Sheridan complained, “My dear fellow, be reasonable; the sum you ask me for is a very considerable one, whereas I only ask you for twenty-five pounds.”

  8 Sheridan’s tailor grew tired of asking the writer to pay off his bill. “At least you could pay me the interest on it,” he reasoned. “It is not my interest to pay the principal,” replied Sheridan, “nor my principle to pay the interest
.”

  9 Edmund Burke was delivering one of his stupendous orations in the House of Commons. At the climax he underlined his point by brandishing the dagger he had brought into the chamber with him and plunging it into the desk in front of him. In the stunned hush that followed this piece of histrionics the voice of Sheridan was heard saying, “The honorable gentleman has brought his knife with him, but where’s his fork?”

  10 Sheridan had been asked to apologize for insulting a fellow member of Parliament. “Mr. Speaker,” replied Sheridan, “I said the honorable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honorable member may place the punctuation where he pleases.”

  11 Richard Cumberland was a dramatist specializing in a brand of sentimental comedy that was rendered unfashionable by the comedy of Goldsmith and Sheridan. Nonetheless, he agreed to take his children to see Sheridan’s School for Scandal. The children would have enjoyed themselves hugely, but every time they laughed, Cumberland hissed, “What are you laughing at, my dear little folks? You should not laugh, my angels. There is nothing to laugh at.” Finally, in exasperation, he snapped: “Keep still, you little dunces.” When this story was retailed to Sheridan sometime later, he observed, “It was very ungrateful in Cumberland to have been displeased with his poor children for laughing at my comedy; for I went the other night to see his tragedy, and laughed at it from beginning to end.”

  12 Like his father, Sheridan’s son Tom was perpetually short of money. Father and son once had a disagreement. A few days later, Sheridan told Tom that he had made his will and cut him off with a shilling. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said Tom. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “You don’t happen to have the shilling about you now, do you?”