Barbara, broccoli lover that she is, joins me in sending our warm best wishes.
Sincerely,
George Bush
Like all celebrities, presidents attract more than their share of unusual people. One group who begged for Bush’s attention was an organization of Hawaiian cockroach racers. Bush really went the distance in replying to their letter requesting permission to use his famous phrase—”kinder, gentler”—in a name for one of the racing roaches:
March 27, 1990
Mr. Kimo Wilder McVay
Chairman, Roach Bowl III
Honolulu, Hawaii
Dear Kimo:
I was very pleased to get your letter and to learn that Kinder Gentleroach has indeed been officially received as an entry for this year’s big race.
I know a lot of thoroughbred roach lovers were disappointed that Oval Office Roach did so badly back in 1988, but lots has happened since then.
… I am a great believer in the Thousand Points of Light concept, and I salute you and all the others for what you are doing to help battle Multiple Sclerosis.
Please consider this your official permission to permit Kinder Gentleroach to enter not only the Roach Bowl classic, but also to run in the Iolani Derby. Kinder Gentleroach is willing to submit to an anti-steroid test, saliva test, etc., and I challenge all other roach owners to compel their entries to do the same.
Sincerely,
George Bush
William Proxmire
LIKE EVERY public official, former Wisconsin Democratic Senator William Proxmire got his share of annoying, even insulting letters. Some of his replies—never mailed, of course, but archived—are hilarious.
One constituent wanted to know why Proxmire voted for the education bill. The constituent wrote:
Although I am in my early thirties, I am of the old school in believing that the American public can do with less federal aid. We should be made to help ourselves instead of becoming parasites dependent on government “handouts.”
In closing, I appreciate receiving a copy of your Congressional Record.
Proxmire replied—or rather, wanted to reply:
You say you don’t want to become a parasite, so I don’t think I will send you that copy of the Congressional Record you asked for. You can go out and buy one.
Another constituent offered his views “to serve as a guide in voting.”
The Senator wanted to write:
Most of your views are contrary to mine, but I got elected and you didn’t. That’s the way the old cookie crumbles, pal.
Still another constituent offered the unsolicited opinion that the mere fact that President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court hardly proved that Warren was patriotic.
The reply:
If you are still curious about why Mr. Eisenhower appointed Warren, I suggest you write directly to the farm at Gettysburg. In fact, send all your future letters there. Mr. Eisenhower needs a lot of fertilizer these days, so they say.
Bob Dole
As ELIZABETH DOLE’S fame and power grew over the years, even to the point of being—with her husband—a front-runner for George Bush’s choice of a vice president, Bob Dole was utterly undisturbed. When she was appointed Secretary of Transportation, Dole remembered, “There were a lot of stories and a lot of pictures taken. I was always in the picture, but I was never identified. They said, ‘The man on the left is the husband.’ People magazine took an interest in Elizabeth, so a photographer followed us around and took about three hundred pictures. They wound up using three, and one showed us making the bed.
“Some guy out in California whose wife had read the story wrote that he was now helping make the bed. He said, ‘Senator, I don’t mind your wife getting the job. She’s well qualified. She’s doing good work. But you’ve got to stop doing the work around the house. You’re causing problems for men all across the country.’ ”
Dole wrote back:
Buster, you don’t know the half of it. The only reason she was helping was because they were taking pictures.
II
AUTHORS
When a writer writes a letter
It is likely to be better
Than one by someone you can tell
Does not put words together well.
Authors do that for a living
And that’s the reason I am giving
For putting tellers of good stories
Among my letter categories.
Authors can be very funny
When they’re not writing for the money,
For the glory or the fame,
Or the critical acclaim.
I like it when the words they use
Are chosen purely to amuse,
When they write a funny letter
To entertain the letter getter.
CHARLES OSGOOD
Joseph Addison
BRITISH POET, essayist, and politician Joseph Addison was elected to Parliament in 1708, but is best remembered as a contributor to the Tatler and its successor, the Spectator. His letters published therein attracted a considerable following in their day, and they have remained popular for their surprising inventiveness and cleverness.
Here’s Addison dabbling in a bit of shape-shifting in his “Letter from an Ape”:
Madam:
Not having the gift of speech, I have a long time waited in vain for an opportunity of making myself known to you; and having at present the convenience of pen, ink, and paper by me, I gladly take the occasion of giving you my history in writing, which I could not do by word of mouth. You must know, Madam, that about a thousand years ago I was an Indian brachman, and versed in all those mysterious secrets which your European philosopher, called Pythagoras, is said to have learned from our fraternity. I had so ingratiated myself by my great skill in the occult sciences with a demon whom I used to converse with, that he promised to grant me whatever I should ask of him. I desired that my soul might pass into the body of a brute creature; but this he told me was not in his power to grant me. I then begged that into whatever creature I should chance to transmigrate, I might still retain my memory, and be conscious that I was the same person who lived in different animals. This he told me was within his power, and accordingly promised on the word of a demon that he would grant me what I desired. From that time forth I lived so unblameably, that I was made president of a college of brachmans, an office which I discharged with greater integrity till the day of my death.
I was then shuffled into another human body, and acted my part so very well in it that I became first minister to a prince who reigned upon the banks of the Ganges. I here lived in great honour for several years, but by degrees lost all the innocence of the brachman, being obliged to rifle and oppress the people to enrich my sovereign; till at length I became so odious, that my master, to recover his credit with his subjects, shot me through the heart with an arrow, as I was one day addressing myself to him at the head of his army.
Upon my next remove I found myself in the woods under the shape of a jackal, and soon lifted myself in the service of a lion. I used to yelp near his den about midnight, which was his time of rousing and seeking after his prey. He always followed me in the rear, and when I had run down a fat buck, a wild goat, or a hare, after he had feasted plentifully upon it himself, would now and then throw me a bone that was but half picked for my encouragement; but upon my being unsuccessful in two or three chases, he gave me such a confounded gripe in his anger that I died of it.
In my next transmigration I was again set upon two legs, and became an Indian tax-gatherer; but having been guilty of great extravagancies, and being married to an expensive jade of a wife, I ran so cursedly in debt that I durst not show my head. I could no sooner step out of my house, but I was arrested by some body or other that lay in wait for me. As I ventured abroad one night in the dusk of the evening, I was taken up and hurried into a dungeon, where I died a few months after.
My soul then entered into a flying-fish, and i
n that state led a most melancholy life for the space of six years. Several fishes of prey pursued me when I was in the water, and if I betook myself to my wings, it was ten to one but I had a flock of birds aiming at me. As I was one day flying amidst a fleet of English ships, I observed a huge seagull whetting his bill and hovering just over my head. Upon my dipping into the water to avoid him I fell into the mouth of a monstrous shark that swallowed me down in an instant.
I was some years afterwards, to my great surprise, an eminent banker in Lombard Street; and remembering how I had formerly suffered for want of money, became so very sordid and avaricious that the whole town cried shame of me. I was a miserable little old fellow to look upon, for I had in a manner starved myself, and was nothing but skin and bone when I died.
I was afterwards very much troubled and amazed to find myself dwindled into an emmet. I was heartily concerned to make so insignificant a figure, and did not know but, some time or other, I might be reduced to a mite if I did not mend my manners. I therefore applied myself with great diligence to the offices that were allotted me, and was generally looked upon as the notablest ant in the whole molehill. I was at last picked up, as I was groaning under a burden, by an unlucky cock-sparrow that lived in the neighborhood, and had before made great depredations upon our commonwealth.
I then bettered my condition a little, and lived a whole summer in the shape of a bee; but being tired with the painful and penurious life I had undergone in my last two transmigrations, I fell into the other extreme, and turned drone. As I one day headed a party to plunder a hive, we were received so warmly by the swarm which defended it, that we were most of us left dead upon the spot.
I might tell you of many other transmigrations which I went through, how I was a town rake, and afterwards did penance in a bay gelding for ten years; as also how I was a tailor, a shrimp, and a tom-tit. In the last of these shapes I was shot in the Christmas holidays by a young jacknapes, who would needs try his new gun upon me.
But I shall pass over these and several other stages of life, to remind you of the young beau who made love to you about six years since. You may remember, Madam, how he masked, and danced, and sung, and played a thousand tricks to gain you; and how he was at last carried off by a cold that he got under your window one night in a serenade. I was that unfortunate young fellow, whom you were then so cruel to. Not long after my shifting that unlucky body, I found myself upon a hill in Ethiopia, where I lived in my present grotesque shape, till I was caught by a servant of the English factory, and sent over to Great Britain: I need not inform you how I came into your hands. You see, Madam, this is not the first time that you have had me in a chain; I am, however, very happy in this my captivity, as you often bestow on me those kisses and caresses which I would have given the world for when I was a man. I hope this discovery of my person will not tend to my disadvantage, but that you will still continue your accustomed favours to Your most devoted humble servant,
PUGG
P.S. I would advise your little shock-dog to keep out of my way; for as I look upon him to be the most formidable of my rivals, I may chance one time or other to give him such a snap as he won’t like.
Charles Lamb
BRITISH ESSAYIST Charles Lamb, who died in 1834, was renowned for his cultivated palate and oenophilia. Having enjoyed an estimable amount of wine at a party, he wrote the following letter of “apology” to his host. It’s a wonder that certain passages of this letter haven’t found contemporary uses among college students who over-imbibe, the way Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” has been so used to seduce reluctant co-eds.
Dear Sir:
It is an observation of a wise man that “moderation is best in all things.” I cannot agree with him “in liquor.” There is a smoothness and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke us? Could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the downgoing? She does nothing in vain. You know better than I. You know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried home upon a man’s shoulders thro’ Silver Street, up Parson’s Lane, by the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood’s, who it seems does not “insure” against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise. Ariel in The Tempest says
“On a Bat’s back do I fly, after sunset merrily.”
Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights. Indeed, he pretends that “where the bee sucks, there lurks he,” as much as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but damnably stinging when he is provok’d) winged creature. But I take it, that Ariel was fond of methaglin, of which the bees are notorious Brewers. But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a Gentleman’s back up Parson’s Lane at midnight! Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance, when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now Heaven makes fools, and don’t expect much from her own creation; and as for conscience, she and I have long since come to a compromise. I have given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true. I like to be liked, but I don’t care about being respected. I don’t respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker’s Coal-shed (or emporium), but by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried. It was a salve under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is reason? And what is the loss of it? And how often in a day do we do without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two and two makes four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter? Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write an apology to Mrs. A and you for disgracing your party; now it does seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The soberer they seemed. By the way, is magnesia good on these occasions? … But still you will say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back. Well, may be it is not. But I never studied grace. I take it to be a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish men and apes affect for dignity), I think is little to the purpose. The end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank our kind host and hostess, and that’s sense enough, I hope.
Charles Lamb
N.B.—What is good for a desperate headache? Why, patience, and a determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have made my mind up to. So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker’s Coal-shed. My sister tends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.
Yours truly,
C. Lamb
Benjamin Franklin
EVER TRYING to resolve awkward or difficult situations, in 1750 Benjamin Franklin wrote this wry “Model of a Letter of Recommendation of a Person You Are Unacquainted With.”
Sir,
The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon
here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities, which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him all the good offices, and show him all the favor, that, on further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honor to be, etc.
Here’s Franklin’s letter to the daughter of his close friend Jonathan Shipley. Young Georgiana’s pet squirrel, Mungo, had died, and Franklin wrote to offer some witty comfort:
September 26, 1772
Dear Miss:
I lament with you most sincerely the unfortunate end of poor Mungo. Few squirrels were better accomplished; for he had had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world. As he had the honour of being, for his virtues, your favorite, he should not go, like common skuggs [a dialect name for a squirrel], without an elegy or an epitaph. Let us give him one in the monumental style and measure, which, being neither prose nor verse, is perhaps the properest for grief; since to use common language would look as if we were not affected, and to make rhymes would seem trifling in sorrow.
Epitaph
Alas! Poor MUNGO!
Happy wert thou, hadst thou known
Thy own felicity,
Remote from the fierce bald eagle,
Tyrant of thy native woods,
Funny Letters From Famous People Page 4