Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  FARQUHAR, Sir Walter (1738–1819), British physician.

  1 One of Sir Walter’s patients, an elderly lady with an ill-defined complaint, took it into her head that it would do her the world of good to take the waters at Bath for a few weeks. Sir Walter encouraged her in this scheme, and to allay her worries at the prospect of being separated from her usual physician, he promised to recommend her to a very clever doctor in Bath, a friend of his, and to write a letter for her to take with her, detailing her case. The old lady set out happily for Bath, but on the way fell to thinking that although Sir Walter had been her physician for years, he had never told her precisely what was wrong with her. Her curiosity about the contents of the letter grew. At the first overnight stop she announced to her traveling companion that she was going to open it. Her companion protested about the breach of trust, but to no avail. The letter was opened. It read: “Dear Davis, Keep the old lady three weeks and send her back again.”

  FARR, Heather (1965–93), US golfer.

  1 Farr died of cancer at the age of twenty-eight, a fight she had waged for several years. Asked how she had dealt with her health problems, she said, “You play through it. That’s what you do. You just play through it.”

  FARRAGUT, David Glasgow (1801–70), US Union admiral during the Civil War.

  1 In August 1864 Admiral Farragut led the attack on Mobile Bay, to give the Union forces control over a large slice of Confederate territory. The bay was well defended by mines, forcing any approaching ships to sail close to Fort Morgan, the Confederate fortress that dominated the channel. The Confederate ironclad, the Tennessee, also covered the approaches. Farragut’s first ship, the Tecumseh, eager to attack the Tennessee, incautiously crossed the minefield and was blown up. Then the Brooklyn faltered, and in an instant the lines of ships were in disarray, with the tide sweeping them closer to the guns of Fort Morgan. “Damn the torpedoes, go ahead!” shouted Farragut, swinging his own ship, the Hartford, clear of the Brooklyn and heading straight across the minefield. They heard the mine cases clatter against the hull of the Hartford, but none exploded, and the rest of the attacking force sailed into Mobile Bay after Farragut. In a very short time the Tennessee and the shore forts had surrendered.

  FAULKNER, William (1897–1962), US novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

  1 One of the many jobs Faulkner took before he established himself as a writer was as postmaster at the University of Mississippi post office. When he found that his official duties interfered with his writing, he wrote the following letter to the postmaster general: “As long as I live under the capitalist system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.”

  2 “I [Leland Hayward, literary and dramatic agent] got a call one day from Metro. They were completely confused over there and they wanted to know where in hell was my client, [William] Faulkner! They were pretty sore — nobody was supposed to walk out of Metro without letting the front office know where he’d gone. I didn’t know where Bill was. He hadn’t told me he was going anywhere. I got the office to start making calls all over the damned place, and finally we thought of trying him at his home in Mississippi, and sure enough, there he was. ‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ I yelled on the phone, and he said, ‘Well, ah asked my producer if ah could work at home, and he said fine, so heah ah am.’ ”

  3 Frank Case, the manager of the Algonquin Hotel in New York, met Faulkner one morning in the hotel lobby looking decidedly sorry for himself. Case asked him what was the matter. “I feel like the devil. My stomach’s upset,” Faulkner grumbled. “Too bad,” sympathized Case. “Something you wrote, no doubt.”

  4 Faulkner was on a shooting expedition with director Howard Hawks and actor Clark Gable. In the course of conversation, Gable asked Faulkner to name the five best authors of the day. Replied Faulkner: “Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Thomas Mann, John Dos Passos, and myself.”

  “Oh,” said Gable maliciously, “do you write for a living?”

  “Yes,” retorted Faulkner, “and what do you do?”

  5 When Faulkner’s office at the Hollywood Warner Brothers studio was cleaned out after his departure, the only items found were an empty bottle and a sheet of yellow paper on which he had written, five hundred times, “Boy meets girl.”

  6 On a vacation trip to New York, Faulkner had agreed to meet a reporter for an interview. He did not appear at the appointed time, nor could he be found for several days. Finally, Bennett Cerf, his publisher, learned that he had slipped in the bathroom and had badly burned himself on the radiator, spending several days in the hospital. When Cerf remonstrated with him about having spent his first vacation in years in the hospital, Faulkner replied quietly, “Bennett, it was my vacation.”

  7 Faulkner was once asked why he had agreed to serve as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia. “Because I like your country, Virginia, and Virginians,” said Faulkner. “Virginians are snobs. I like snobs. A snob spends so much time being a snob, he has none left to bother other people.”

  FAURÉ, Gabriel Urbain (1845–1924), French composer known especially for his songs.

  1 Fauré was once asked what the ideal tempo for a song should be. He replied, “If the singer is bad — very fast.”

  FAVRAS, Thomas de Mahay, Marquis de (1744–90), French aristocrat.

  1 Favras’s trial lasted nearly two months; the evidence against him was inconclusive and the witnesses disagreed, but in the end he was found guilty. Before being led to the scaffold he was handed his death sentence, written down by the clerk of the court. He read it through, then said, “I see, monsieur, that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

  FAWKES, Guy (1570–1606), British Roman Catholic conspirator.

  1 Guy Fawkes was disenchanted with the lot of the Roman Catholics in England under James I. Serving with the Spanish army in the Netherlands, he was invited by one Robert Catesby to join a conspiracy to blow up the king and Parliament. Fawkes agreed. Having rented a cellar under the House of Parliament, the conspirators managed to secrete thirty-six barrels of gunpowder there behind a stack of wood and coal. The day that King James was due to open Parliament (November 5, 1605) was the date set for the explosion. However, one of the conspirators wrote an anonymous note to a friend who was a member of Parliament, warning him not to attend the opening. The MP alerted the authorities, the cellar was searched, and the conspirators arrested. Catesby was killed resisting arrest and Fawkes was captured and tortured. He betrayed the names of the other conspirators and all were tried and executed. This is the origin of the celebrations in Britain on November 5 with fireworks and bonfires, during which an effigy, called a guy, is burned.

  FELLER, Bob (1918–), US baseball player.

  1 In the mid-1930s Feller’s parents traveled to Chicago to see their son pitch in a game played on Mother’s Day. The first three innings went well; then, in the fourth, Feller pitched to Marv Owen, who fouled the ball into the stands. The ball hit Feller’s mother, breaking her glasses and requiring numerous stitches around her eyes. After he determined that she was taken care of medically, Feller returned to the mound and immediately struck Owen out.

  FERDINAND I (1793–1875), emperor of Austria (1835–48).

  1 Ferdinand’s one recorded notable saying was: “I am the emperor, and I want dumplings.”

  FERDINAND I (1861–1948), king of Bulgaria (1908–18).

  1 Led by Russia, the European powers withheld recognition of Ferdinand’s status in Bulgaria. When Ferdinand entered a room at Chantilly on a visit to his elderly uncle, the Duc d’Aumale, who did not like him, the old man seemed not to recognize him. An aide whispered in the duke’s ear. “Ah, Ferdinand,” said Aumale, “I am behaving like the rest of Europe; I did not recognize you.”

  FERDINAND IV (?1286–1312), king of Castile
(1295–1312).

  1 Ferdinand had rejected an appeal by two prisoners, Peter and John de Carvajal, condemned to death on circumstantial evidence. The two men, still proclaiming their innocence, summoned Ferdinand to appear before God within thirty days. On the thirtieth day the king, still fit and well, appeared to have defied the “summons.” The following morning, he was found dead in his bed.

  FERGUSON, Sarah (1959–), Duchess of York, formerly married to Queen Elizabeth II’s third child, Prince Andrew.

  1 Sarah Ferguson loved the active social life she led before her marriage into the House of Windsor, which thrust her into a role she found difficult and constraining. Commenting on her years behind the walls of the English royal family, she said, “It was dreadful. They tried to put the little redhead in a cage.”

  FERGUSSON, George, Lord Hermand (d. 1827), Scottish judge.

  1 Lord Hermand was convivial to the point of believing that drinking could improve one’s behavior. He was a member of a panel of judges trying a young man who had accidentally killed a drinking companion. A verdict of culpable homicide was brought in and the majority of the panel thought a lenient sentence would be appropriate; a short term of imprisonment was imposed. Lord Hermand dissented: “We are told that there was no malice, and that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor! Why, he was drunk! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him! They had been carousing the whole night; and yet he stabbed him! After drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my laards, if he will do this when he’s drunk, what will he not do when he’s sober?”

  FERMAT, Pierre de (1601–65), French mathematician renowned for his contribution to the theory of numbers.

  1 As Fermat engaged in mathematics for his own amusement, many of his most important contributions were recorded in margins of books or in notes to his friends. In about 1637 he scribbled on his copy of Diophantus’s Arithmetic, “The equation xn + yn = zn, where x, y, and z are positive integers, has no solution if n is greater than 2,” and added, “I have discovered a most remarkable proof, but this margin is too narrow to contain it.” The problem went down in mathematical lore as “Fermat’s Last Theorem,” and generations of mathematical adepts taxed their ingenuity to reconstitute the proof. In 1994 Andrew Wiles was the first person to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.

  FERMI, Enrico (1901–54), Italian-born physicist, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Physics.

  1 In 1942 in his laboratory at the University of Chicago stadium, Fermi built the first atomic pile, using specially produced graphite blocks into which several tons of uranium were inserted. The first controlled nuclear chain reaction began on December 2 at 2:20 PM and lasted twenty-eight minutes. Afterward Arthur Compton, the American physicist who collaborated with Fermi, put through a call to James Bryant Conant at Harvard’s Office of Scientific Research and Development. “The Italian navigator has reached the New World,” he announced. “And how did he find the natives?” asked Conant. “Very friendly,” came the reply. Thus was the atomic age announced.

  FEYDEAU, Georges (1862–1921), French playwright.

  1 There was some question hanging over Fey-deau’s parentage, as his mother had a reputation as a flirt and Emperor Napoleon III had been seen to pay her marked attention. Mme Feydeau was indignant at the suggestion: “How could anybody imagine that a child as intelligent as Georges could be the son of such an idiotic monarch?”

  2 At a restaurant Feydeau was served a lobster with only one claw. When he protested, the waiter explained that sometimes the lobsters fought in their tank, and such mutilations resulted. “Take this one away,” ordered Feydeau, “and bring me the victor.”

  3 A tiresome acquaintance, whose wife was notorious for her infidelities, was boring Feydeau with a recital of the virtues of his small son. “He’s so devoted to his mother and so loving,” said the proud father. “He’s always under her skirts.”

  “Where he must meet a lot of others,” murmured Feydeau.

  4 In Feydeau’s early days as a playwright, his comedies were not always well received. At one such disastrous opening night he stationed himself in the aisle and joined in the hissing and booing. “Have you taken leave of your senses!” exclaimed a friend who had run down the aisle after him. Feydeau shook his head. “That way I can’t hear them,” he explained, “so it doesn’t hurt so much.”

  FEYNMAN, Richard (1918–88), US physicist and co-winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research into quantum electrodynamics.

  1 After his many books and eccentric public persona won him the acclaim of a popular audience, Omni magazine called him the world’s smartest man. To this his mother, Lucille, retorted, “If that’s the world’s smartest man, God help us.”

  2 Feynman was once asked by a physicist to explain in simple terms a standard item, why certain particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. He was unable to do so. “I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level,” Feynman said. “That means we really don’t understand it.”

  FIELD, John (1782–1837), British pianist and composer.

  1 Field’s friends, attending him during his last hours, felt the need of a clergyman to administer the last rites. But they were not sure of Field’s religious affiliation. “Are you a Papist or a Calvinist?” they asked him. “I am … a pianist,” replied the dying artist.

  FIELD, Marshall, III (1893–1956), US founder of the Chicago Sun (afterward the Chicago Sun-Times).

  1 “When Marshall Field III was a small child, he displayed some of the cautious shrewdness which made his grandfather the greatest merchant prince in America.

  “Being left alone in a hotel lobby for half an hour, young Marshall approached an old lady and asked if she could crack nuts.

  “ ‘No, dear,’ replied the old lady. ‘I lost all my teeth years ago.’

  “ ‘Then,’ said master Field, extending both hands full of pecans, ‘please hold these while I go and get some more pecans.’ ”

  “I had a very elderly and esteemed relative who once told me that while walking along the Strand he met a lion that had escaped from Exeter Change menagerie. I said, ‘What did you do?’, and he looked at me with contempt as if the question were imbecile. ‘Do?’ he said. ‘Why, I took a cab.’ ”

  — FORD MADOX FORD,

  Ancient Lights

  FIELDING, Henry (1707–54), British novelist, playwright, and lawyer.

  1 Andrew Millar, the publisher, bought Fielding’s novel Amelia in 1751 for the then enormous sum of £800, relying upon the previous success of Tom Jones and the great reputation Fielding currently enjoyed. He ordered a large number of copies printed, but then became nervous and showed the manuscript to a friend whose judgment he trusted. The friend said that Amelia was by no means up to the standard of Tom Jones. Millar decided to dispose as quickly as possible of the whole edition. When next he was auctioning some of his stock to other members of the trade, he began by saying, “Gentlemen, I have several works to put up for which I shall be glad if you will bid. But as to Amelia, every copy is bespoke.” The ploy worked, as rival booksellers rushed to get their names put down for the next edition. In this way Millar disposed of the whole stock of Amelia.

  2 When he was once in the company of the Earl of Denbigh, whose family name was Feilding, the conversation turned to Fielding’s membership in the same family. The earl inquired why the names were spelled differently. Fielding replied that he could give no reason, “except maybe that my branch of the family was the first to know how to spell.”

  FIELDS, W. C. [William Claude Dukenfield] (1879–1946), US film actor and comedian.

  1 A reporter interviewing Fields asked him, off the record, for his views on sex. “On or off the record,” replied Fields, “there may be some things better than sex, and there may be some things worse. But there’s nothing exactly like it.”

  2 During Prohibition, Fields and a friend heard that an acquaintance on Long Island had just received two cases of contraband Irish whiskey. They drov
e over to his place and helped him put part of the liquor beyond reach of the law. About dawn they left for home, taking along several bottles from which they refreshed themselves from time to time. After several hours they remarked upon the surprising length of Long Island — but kept going. When they asked filling-station attendants how far it was to the Queensboro Bridge, they got only blank stares of laughter in response. Eventually they found themselves in a hotel room. Fields fell asleep. His friend noticed a palm tree outside the window, went out to buy a paper, and learned that they were in Ocala, Florida. “We’re in Ocala, Florida!” he said, shaking Fields awake. “I always said those Long Island roads were poorly marked,” observed Fields.

  3 Fields always kept a thermos of martinis at hand when he was filming, maintaining that it contained nothing but pineapple juice. One day someone tampered with the flask and Fields’s anguished cry rang out across the set: “Somebody put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!”

  4 “Can I fix you a Bromo-Seltzer, sir?” asked a waiter of Fields, who was groaning in the grip of a fearful hangover. “No,” moaned Fields, “I can’t stand the noise.”

  5 A lifelong agnostic, Fields was discovered reading a Bible on his deathbed. “I’m looking for a loophole,” he explained.

  FIENNES, Ralph (1962–), British film actor.

  1 The movie Quiz Show told the story of the notorious television game-show scandals of the late 1950s, during which the handsome and gifted Charles Van Doren was revealed to have cheated in order to get higher ratings for the sponsoring television station. Fiennes played the young Charles, and director Robert Redford hoped to cast his old friend Paul Newman as Charles’s patrician father, the poet Mark Van Doren. Newman wasn’t interested, but Redford kept delaying the actual scenes in which the father was present, shooting every other scene possible. Fiennes was driven to distraction, and eventually was seen to wander the set, saying softly, “Who’s my father?”