Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  BRANCUSI, Constantin (1876–1957), Rumanian sculptor.

  1 Brancusi moved to Paris in 1904. In 1906 Auguste Rodin invited him to work in his studio. Brancusi refused, remarking: “Nothing grows well in the shade of a big tree.”

  BRANDEIS, Louis Dembitz (1856–1941), US Supreme Court justice.

  1 Brandeis was once criticized for taking a short vacation just before the start of an important trial. “I need the rest,” explained Brandeis. “I find that I can do a year’s work in eleven months, but I can’t do it in twelve.”

  “Victor Biaka-Boda, who represented the Ivory Coast in the French Senate, set off on a tour of the hinterlands in January 1950 to let the people know where he stood on the issues, and to understand their concerns — one of which was apparently the food supply. His constituents ate him.”

  — JOHN TRAIN, True Remarkable Occurrences

  BRANDT, Willy (1913–92), German socialist chancellor (1969–74) who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.

  1 On a visit to Israel as mayor of West Berlin, Brandt was invited to view the great new Mann auditorium in Tel Aviv. Having expressed his appreciation of Israel’s naming the concert hall for Thomas Mann, the German writer, Brandt was politely corrected by his host. The hall was actually named for a certain Frederic Mann of Philadelphia. “What did he ever write?” exclaimed Brandt. “A check,” came the reply.

  BRAQUE, Georges (1882–1963), French painter.

  1 The painter Roland Penrose, calling on Picasso, found that Braque and his wife were also visiting. “You know Penrose?” Picasso said to Braque as greetings were being exchanged. “Oh, yes,” said Braque, “but I haven’t seen him for about twenty years and at first sight I didn’t recognize him; he’s changed so little.”

  BRENDEL, Alfred (1931–), Austrian pianist.

  1 Brendel gave a concert in Copenhagen in November 1981, a cold, damp time of year in that city. The audience coughed and sneezed a good deal, enough to make the pianist stop in the middle of a piece. Glaring from the stage, he said very quietly, “Ladies and gentlemen, I can hear you, but I doubt if you can hear me.”

  BRIAND, Aristide (1862–1932), French socialist politician and prime minister.

  1 In September 1926 Briand arranged to meet the German statesman Gustav Stresemann, with whom he shared that year’s Nobel Peace Prize. They met at a small village in the Jura where they could discuss postwar problems in privacy. After lunch the two statesmen wrangled amicably about the bill. “No, I’ll pay for the lunch,” said Briand. “You take care of the reparations.”

  2 Briand tended to be somewhat lazy. He once rebuked a Latin American diplomat who brought him a massive armful of documents to study, “You don’t suppose I’ve lost my incapacity to work, do you?”

  BRIDGER, Jim (1804–81), US frontiersman and fur trapper.

  1 A man dressing a serious wound that Bridger had received in the course of one of his numerous skirmishes with hostile Indians or wild animals expressed the fear that the wound would suppurate. Bridger told him not to worry: “In the mountains meat never spoils.”

  2 Bridger sold a yoke of cattle worth $125 to obtain a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare and then engaged a wagon boy at $40 a month to read the plays to him. In the middle of Richard III, Bridger gave up the business in disgust. “I won’t listen anymore to the talk of a man who was mean enough to kill his mother.”

  BRILLAT-SAVARIN, Anthelme (1755–1826), French writer and gastronome.

  1 A lady inquired whether he preferred Burgundy or claret. Brillat-Savarin replied, “That, madame, is a question that I take so much pleasure in investigating that I postpone from week to week the pronouncement of a verdict.”

  BRITTEN, Benjamin (1913–76), British composer.

  1 In his early thirties Britten was once found walking unsteadily along a hotel corridor in Edinburgh. Asked what he was doing, Britten replied that he was trying to avoid the red in the hall carpet. “If I can get up and down the corridor without touching the lines, it will mean that I am a composer.”

  2 On a visit to Russia, Britten began discussing music with the great composer Dmitri Shostakovitch. When Shostakovitch asked Britten’s opinion of Puccini, Britten said, “His operas are dreadful.” “No,” replied Shostakovitch, “he wrote marvelous operas but dreadful music.”

  BRODIE, Sir Benjamin Collins (1783–1862), British surgeon.

  1 Brodie, deeply immersed in the preparation of a paper, was dragged away from his work to attend a fashionable evening party. After drinking with the gentlemen there for a while, he went to the men’s room. Intending then to make his escape, he tucked his hat under his arm, emerged, and walked past a number of arriving guests. The men all sniggered and the women tittered and turned their heads away. In the hall he was accosted by his host: “Good Lord, Brodie, is that a usual part of your attire?” Brodie looked, too. Instead of his hat, he had absentmindedly picked up the toilet-seat cover.

  BRODIE, Steve (fl. 1880s), US saloonkeeper.

  1 In 1886 Steve Brodie jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River, a fall of some 135 feet, to win a $200 wager. The police arrested him for this suicidal leap, though at the time many people doubted whether Brodie had actually jumped; some people believed that he had just thrown a dummy off the bridge. Sometime later the father of the heavyweight boxer Jim Corbett met Brodie. “So you’re the fellow who jumped over Brooklyn Bridge,” he said. “I jumped off it,” corrected Brodie. Old Mr. Corbett was disgusted: “I thought you jumped over it. Any damn fool could jump off it.”

  BRODIE, William (d. 1788), Scottish head of the Incorporation of Edinburgh Wrights and Masons.

  1 A respected figure in Edinburgh, Brodie was also a highly successful burglar. No suspicion fell upon him until an accomplice turned king’s evidence. Brodie fled to Amsterdam but was apprehended, brought back to Edinburgh for trial, and condemned to death. He is credited with an invention that was first tested at his own execution — the drop. Before that time, the person to be hanged was simply pushed off a height; Brodie thought up the system of a trapdoor and lever that became standard wherever hanging was the means of legal execution. On the gallows the hapless inventor inspected the arrangements, pronounced them satisfactory, and was efficiently launched into eternity.

  BRONTË, Charlotte (1816–55), British novelist and poet, author of Jane Eyre.

  1 During one of Charlotte Brontë’s spells as a governess, a child whom she had scolded burst into penitent tears and ran to her crying, “I love you, I love you, Miss Brontë.”

  “Love the governess, my dear?” icily queried the mother, who was in the room.

  2 In her first desperate rebellion against her role as a teacher Charlotte wrote in 1836 to the poet laureate Robert Southey, asking whether he thought she could earn her living as a writer. Southey wrote back: “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.”

  BROOKFIELD, Charles Hallam Elton (1857–1913), British actor.

  1 Chatting to Brookfield one day, a theatrical colleague sensed that the actor was looking at him rather oddly. “What’s up?” he asked. “Is my tie wrong?”

  “No,” replied Brookfield, “but you have a little dried soap in your right ear.”

  “How filthy!” exclaimed his colleague.

  “Oh, no,” said Brookfield, “not filthy at all; a little ostentatious perhaps.”

  BROOKS, Phillips (1835–93), US Episcopal bishop, author of the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  1 Recovering from a serious illness, Brooks refused to receive any visitors, even his closest friends. When the agnostic Robert Ingersoll called, however, the bishop did not turn him away. Ingersoll, conscious of the privilege, was curious to know the reason behind it. Said the bishop, “I feel confiden
t of seeing my friends in the next world, but this may be my last chance of seeing you.”

  BROUGHAM, Henry Peter, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868), British lawyer and statesman; Lord Chancellor (1830–34).

  1 When Lord Brougham arrived at the theater for a performance of Handel’s Messiah, Sydney Smith remarked, “Here comes counsel for the other side.”

  2 When Sydney Smith was living in London he saw Lord Brougham’s one-horse carriage pass him in the street and noticed the splendid B surrounded by a coronet on the panel of the coach. “There goes a carriage with a B outside and a wasp within,” he commented to a friend.

  3 It distressed Lord Brougham to learn that his eldest son was having an affair with a young French actress. To bring the erring youth to his senses, his father wrote to him tersely: “If you do not quit her, I will stop your allowance.” His son wrote back: “If you do not double it, I will marry her.”

  BROUN, [Matthew] Heywood Campbell (1888–1939), US journalist.

  1 Reviewing a play in 1917, Broun described the performance of actor Geoffrey Steyne as “the worst to be seen in the contemporary theater.” Steyne immediately sued. While the case was pending Broun had occasion to review the actor’s performance in another play. This time he wrote: “Mr. Steyne’s performance was not up to his usual standard.”

  2 A large, shambling, awkward man, Broun was noted for the disarray of his dress. During World War I, serving as a correspondent, he resisted wearing an officer’s cap with his uniform, preferring a fedora. His son recalls: “The dishevelment of that uniform, bought at the Galeries Lafayette department store, led one exasperated major at an inspection of correspondents to ask fretfully, ‘Mr. Broun, have you fallen down?’”

  BROWN, Charles Brockden (1771–1810), US author of Gothic novels.

  1 An English visitor found America’s first professional author huddled in his dark and dingy room, writing at a cramped desk, and asked if he could not write better if he looked out over a view of Lake Geneva or some other bucolic setting. “Good pens, thick paper, and ink well diluted,” replied Brown, “would facilitate my composition more than the broadest expanse of water, or mountains rising above the clouds.”

  BROWN, Gates (1939–), US baseball player.

  1 Brown’s talents as a ballplayer were discovered while he was at the Mansfield State Reformatory, in Ohio, where he had been sent for breaking and entering. The team coach wrote to various baseball teams alerting them to Brown’s skills, and he soon found himself playing for the Detroit Tigers, helping them get to the 1968 World Series. Much later he returned to his high school to talk to the students. When the principal, in introducing him, said, “I’m sure some of our students would be interested to know — what did you take when you were in school?” Brown replied, “Overcoats, mostly.”

  2 Not long after Brown joined the team, the Tigers were considering another prospect, Ron LeFlore, who had been incarcerated for robbery. While trying out for them, LeFlore did well, but one player was quite upset at the idea of a convict joining the group. Asked the manager, “Where do you think you got Gates Brown from — kindergarten?”

  BROWN, John Mason (1900–69), US critic and lecturer.

  1 One of Brown’s first important appearances as a lecturer was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was pleased, but also rather nervous, and his nerves were not helped when he noticed by the light of the slide projector that someone in the room was mimicking his every gesture. At length he broke off, announcing with dignity that if anyone was not enjoying the lecture he was free to leave. Nobody did, and the mimicking continued. It was only after another ten minutes that Brown realized that the mimic was his own shadow.

  2 At a party given by a collector of modern art, Brown paused to study a large sculpture by Jean Arp that was supposed to depict the female form. Peering through a large hole in the middle of the sculpture, he exclaimed, “Ah, a womb with a view!”

  BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–61), British poet, wife of Robert Browning.

  1 During the early months of 1846, encouraged by Browning and in preparation for their elopement, Elizabeth Barrett began to rid herself of the habits acquired as an invalid, practicing standing without assistance and then walking where she had previously been carried. In January she reported to Browning a notable advance: “I put on a cloak and walked downstairs into the drawing room — walked, mind!” Her brother, who was in the room, was so startled by the unexpected sight that he exclaimed, “So glad to see you!” as if she were a stranger.

  2 The love poems in Sonnets from the Portuguese were written for her husband, poet Robert Browning. Never intended to be more than a private declaration of love, they were published because, as he said, “I dared not keep to myself the finest Sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare’s.” They have nothing to do with Portugal; Browning’s pet name for his dark-complectioned wife was “my little Portuguese.”

  BROWNING, Robert (1812–89), British poet.

  1 Browning’s Sordello was published in 1840. On the face of it the story is simple enough, the tale of an unknown heir to a dukedom in thirteenth-century Italy. But it is considerably complicated by Browning’s interest in the development of the human soul and the motives that sway it toward a practical or disinterested course of action. Tennyson is reported to have said that there were only two lines in it that he could understand, and both of them were lies: “Who will may hear Sordello’s story told” and “Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.” Baffled readers resorted to the poet for an explanation. Members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning for an interpretation of a particularly obscure passage. Browning read it through twice, frowned, and then shrugged his shoulders. “When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows.”

  2 Cornered by a bore at a party, Browning had to listen to a volley of questions concerning his work. Eventually the poet managed to escape. “But my dear fellow, this is too bad. I am monopolizing you,” he exclaimed, and fled.

  3 (During the months of suspense before his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett, Browning was one day seized with a whimsical notion of attempting divination while he was at work in his library.)

  “‘What will be the event of my love for Her?’ he questioned the book that fell under his hand, opening it at a random passage. The volume, of all inauspicious ones, turned out to be Cerutti’s Italian grammar. He hoped he might come upon a word like conjunction or at least a possessive pronoun. To his amazement his eyes lighted upon the sentence in an exercise for translation: ‘If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity.’”

  BRUCE, James (1730–94), British explorer.

  1 Someone once asked Bruce what musical instruments were used in Abyssinia. Bruce, unprepared for the question, hesitated before saying, “I think I only saw one lyre there.” George Selwyn whispered to his neighbor, “Yes, and there is one less since he left the country.”

  BRUMMELL, George Bryan (1778–1840), British society figure known as Beau Brummell, arbiter of fashion during the Regency period.

  1 A friend, seeing Beau Brummell limping, inquired the reason. He recounted the story of the injury, concluding, “And the worst of it is that it is my favorite leg.”

  2 Beau Brummell found the fashionable romantic raptures about scenery rather boring. An acquaintance, knowing he had recently visited the English Lake District, asked which of the lakes he had most admired. Beau Brummell summoned his valet. “Which of the lakes did I most admire?” he asked. “Windermere, sir,” replied the valet. “Ah, yes, Windermere,” said Beau Brummell to the inquirer.

  3 Beau Brummell’s quarrel with his former friend the prince regent shook fashionable society. Various versions of the row were current. Brummell himself said that the prince delivered the first cut; he was riding with a friend in the park in London when they met the regent, who spoke to the friend but ignored Brummell. When the regent moved on but was not yet quite out of earshot, Brummell asked
loudly, “Who’s your fat friend?”

  4 After his quarrel with the prince regent, Beau Brummell found that many London hostesses who had previously been eager for his presence now excluded him from their guest lists. Among these was a certain Mrs. Thompson. Beau Brummell managed to discover that she had invited the regent to a party. Near the time that he might be expected to arrive, Beau Brummell sauntered into her house. In terror lest the regent encounter his enemy, the hostess bustled up to eject the unwanted guest, telling him to leave at once as he had not been invited. “Not invited, ma’am? But surely there must be some mistake. I have a card.” Brummell began to feel in all his pockets, very leisurely, while Mrs. Thompson was on tenterhooks in case the regent arrived. At length Beau Brummell found a card and handed it to her. “But this is from Mrs. Johnson,” she exclaimed. Beau Brummell appeared deeply surprised and contrite. “From Mrs. Johnson? How very unfortunate, Mrs. John — er, Thompson, I mean. Johnson and Thompson, Thompson and Johnson, so very much the same kind of thing.” He bowed low and made a dignified exit.

  5 Someone commiserated with Beau Brummell for having a cold. He explained that he had caught it at an inn on the Brighton road: “My infidel valet put me in a room with a damp stranger.”

  6 Beau Brummell at one period had a whim to eat no vegetables. A lady asked him if he had ever in his life eaten any. “Yes, madam,” replied the dandy, “I once ate a pea.”

  7 At Ascot a fashionable man-about-town complimented Brummell on his exquisite turnout. Brummell replied, “I cannot be elegant, since you have noticed me.”