Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  PHILIP II (382–336 BC), king of Macedon (359–336 BC).

  1 Like Alexander the Great, Philip had the reputation of being a heavy drinker. Once when drunk he gave an unjust verdict in the case of a woman who was being tried before him. “I appeal!” cried the unfortunate litigant. “To whom?” asked the monarch, who was the highest tribunal in the land. “From Philip drunk to Philip sober,” was the bold reply. The king, somewhat taken aback, gave the case further consideration.

  2 After Philip had subdued or formed alliances with all the major Greek city-states, Sparta still remained aloof. Finding that diplomacy had no effect on its stubborn independence, Philip sent a threat: “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.” The Spartans replied: “If.” Recalling Sparta’s glorious military past, Philip thought better of it and left them alone.

  3 Philip was always accompanied by two men whose duty it was to say to him each morning, “Philip, remember that you are but a man.” Each evening they said, “Philip, have you remembered that you are but a man?”

  PHILIP III (1578–1621), king of Spain (1598–61).

  1 Politically indecisive and incompetent, Philip is said to have died of a fever. This was the consequence of overheating himself by sitting too long near a hot brazier. It did not occur to him to move away from the heat. How could he? The palace functionary whose job it was to remove the brazier could not be found. Philip’s death was inevitable.

  PHILIP V (1683–1746), king of Spain (1700– 46).

  1 Louis XIV hesitated for nearly a week after receiving news of the death of Charles II and his bequest to Philip. He wondered whether to accept the legacy. On November 16, 1700, he made the formal announcement, after his lever, to the assembled court. “Gentlemen,” he said, leading Philip forward, “here is the king of Spain.” He then made a brief but touching speech, exhorting his grandson to be a good Spaniard and keep the peace in Europe. Overcome with emotion, the Spanish ambassador fell on his knees before Philip and kissed his hand and said, “The Pyrenees have ceased to exist.”

  PHILLIPS, Wendell (1811–84), US reformer and orator.

  1 In the days before he became well known, Phillips spent a night in a hotel at Charleston, South Carolina. His breakfast was brought up by a slave, to whom Phillips began to expound his abolitionist ideals. After a time, realizing that his discourse was making little impression, Phillips gave up and told him he could go. The man stood firm. “You must excuse me,” he said. “I am obliged to stay here, ’cause I’m responsible for the silverware.”

  2 While Wendell Phillips was on a lecture tour in the northern states, he was accosted by a minister from Kentucky who attacked him for his abolitionist views. “You want to free the slaves, don’t you?” demanded the minister.

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Then why are you preaching your doctrines up here? Why don’t you try going to Kentucky?”

  Phillips retorted, “You’re a minister, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you try to save souls from hell?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, why don’t you go there then?” said Phillips.

  PIATIGORSKY, Gregor (1903–76), Russian cellist.

  1 Piatigorsky was having problems with one of his pupils. No matter how many times the master played a piece to show how it should sound, his student failed to make any significant progress; in fact, his playing seemed to deteriorate. It occurred to Piatigorsky that he was perhaps discouraging the young man by performing the pieces too well himself. He therefore began to introduce a few deliberate mistakes; miraculously, the pupil showed marked signs of improvement. This method of teaching continued for some weeks, with Piatigorsky taking a perverse pleasure in being free to play as badly as he pleased.

  The young man went on to perform with brilliant success at his graduation. Fighting through the crowd of well-wishers to congratulate his pupil, Piatigorsky heard someone ask the new graduate what he thought of the great cellist. “As a teacher,” replied the young man, “excellent. But as a cellist, lousy.”

  PICABIA, Francis (1879–1953), French painter of Spanish descent, one of the first exponents of Dadaism.

  1 In Picabia’s château the rooms were designed with different themes; the children’s room was furnished with grotesque masks, instruments of torture, witchcraft trappings, and a mechanical ghost that could be animated at night to rattle chains. The painter chose this theme for the children’s room because he believed in training them in fearlessness from an early age. “When they get a bit older, I shall replace the ghost with a creditor waving an unpaid bill,” he said.

  PICASSO, Pablo (1881–1973), Spanish artist, sculptor, and ceramist.

  1 (Picasso recalls his mother’s ambitions for him.)

  “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as Pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

  2 In 1906 Gertrude Stein sat to Picasso for her portrait. At the end of many sittings he simply obliterated the picture, saying he could no longer “see” her. Later he completed the picture, in the absence of a sitter, and gave the portrait to Miss Stein. She complained that she did not look like that. Picasso said, “But you will,” and this prediction was borne out as Miss Stein aged.

  3 When Picasso painted his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, he was virtually unknown. Some years later the millionaire art collector Dr. Albert Barnes, interested in the picture, asked Miss Stein straight out how much she had paid for it. “Nothing,” Miss Stein replied. “Naturally, he gave it to me.” Dr. Barnes was incredulous. She subsequently recounted the incident to Picasso, who smiled and said, “He doesn’t understand that at that time the difference between a sale and a gift was negligible.”

  4 Not long after the outbreak of World War I Gertrude Stein and Picasso were standing on a street corner in Paris, watching a procession of camouflaged trucks passing, the sides of the vans disguised by blotches of gray and green paint. Picasso, in his amazement, blurted out, “C’est nous qui avons fait ça” (It is we who have created that).

  5 During World War II Picasso suffered some harassment from the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. An inquisitive German officer, coming into his apartment, noticed a photograph of Guernica lying on a table. “Did you do that?” he asked Picasso. “No, you did,” said Picasso.

  6 Picasso fell into conversation with an American GI in Paris, who told him that he did not like modern paintings because they were not realistic. Picasso did not immediately respond, but when the soldier a few minutes later showed him a snapshot of his girlfriend, he exclaimed, “My, is she really as small as that?”

  7 As the market value of Picasso’s works grew, so too did the cottage industry of faking his paintings. A poor artist who owned a supposed Picasso sent it via a friend for the master to authenticate so that he could sell it. Picasso said, “It’s false.” From a different source the friend brought another Picasso and then a third. On each occasion Picasso disowned them. Apropos the third painting the man protested, “But I saw you paint this one with my own eyes.”

  “I can paint false Picassos as well as anyone,” retorted Picasso. Then he bought the first painting from the impoverished artist for a sum four times as high as the owner had originally hoped it would fetch.

  8 Friends lunching at Picasso’s home in the south of France commented on the fact that their host had none of his own pictures on the walls. “Why is that, Pablo?” one of them asked. “Don’t you like them?”

  “On the contrary,” replied the painter, “I like them very much. It’s just that I can’t afford them.”

  9 Picasso visited his local cabinetmaker to commission a mahogany wardrobe for his château. To illustrate the shape and dimensions he required, he drew a hasty sketch on a sheet of paper and handed it to the craftsman. “How much wil
l it cost?” he asked. “Nothing at all,” replied the cabinetmaker. “Just sign the sketch.”

  10 Picasso was relaxing on a beach in the south of France when he was accosted by a small boy clutching a blank sheet of paper. The child had evidently been dispatched by his parents to solicit an autographed drawing. After a moment’s hesitation, Picasso tore up the paper and drew a few designs on the boy’s back instead. He signed his name with a flourish and sent the child back to his parents. Relating the incident at a later date, Picasso remarked thoughtfully, “I wonder if they’ll ever wash him again?”

  11 Picasso was asked whether it didn’t tire him to stand in front of a canvas for three or four hours while he was painting. “No,” he replied. “That is why painters live so long. While I work, I leave my body outside the door, the way Muslims take off their shoes before entering the mosque.”

  12 A visitor to Picasso’s studio found the artist gazing disconsolately at a painting on the easel. “It’s a masterpiece,” said the visitor, hoping to cheer Picasso up.

  “No, the nose is all wrong,” Picasso said. “It throws the whole picture out of perspective.”

  “Then why not alter the nose?”

  “Impossible,” replied Picasso. “I can’t find it.”

  13 A rich Dutch grocer who prided himself on his art collection managed to obtain an introduction to Picasso. He examined the works in the studio and then said, “Master, I understand every one of your productions except one.”

  “And that is?”

  “Your dove. It seems to me so simple, so primitive that I cannot understand it.”

  “Sir,” Picasso asked, “do you understand Chinese?”

  “No.”

  “Six hundred million people do.” And Picasso politely showed him out.

  14 “I had lunched at the Catalan for months,” Picasso said, “and for months I looked at the sideboard without thinking more than ‘it’s a sideboard.’ One day I decide to make a picture of it. I do so. The next day, when I arrived, the sideboard had gone, its place was empty….I must have taken it away without noticing by painting it.”

  15 “Do you remember that head of a bull I had in my last show? I’ll tell you how it was conceived. One day I noticed in a corner the handle-bar and the seat of a bicycle, lying in such a way as to look like a bull’s head. I picked them up and put them together so that nobody could possibly fail to realize that this seat and this handle-bar from a bike were really a bull’s head. My metamorphosis was successful, and now I wish there could be another one, this time in reverse. Suppose that one day my head of a bull were to be thrown on a junk heap. Maybe a little boy would come along and notice it and say to himself, ‘Now there’s something I could use as a handle-bar for my bike.’ If that ever happens, we will have brought off a double metamorphosis.”

  16 (David Douglas Duncan describes a conversation during a meal at Picasso’s house.)

  “During the meal I mentioned that it seemed really eerie to me to watch his gaze leap from article to article on the table and around the room, knowing perfectly well he was not seeing anything as I saw it, and never had. I added that it seemed incredible that one person ever dreamed of such varied images throughout a lifetime and could still be doing it today without apparently even trying. Picasso answered very simply, ‘If I tried, they would all look the same.’ ”

  17 (Ronald Penrose, Picasso’s biographer, recalls a visit to the artist in his Paris apartment.)

  “I happened to notice that a large Renoir hanging over the fireplace was crooked. ‘It’s better like that,’ [Picasso] said, ‘if you want to kill a picture all you have to do is to hang it beautifully on a nail and soon you will see nothing of it but the frame. When it’s out of place you see it better.’ ”

  18 When Picasso married Olga Koklova, their honeymoon was spent at the luxurious villa of a well-known hostess in the south of France. Picasso happily painted portraits of the other guests, and adorned the whitewashed walls of the villa with playful murals. But one guest was not at all pleased with the portrait he did of her holding her son. She told him that, in fact, she would much rather have had the portrait done in the style of a currently fashionable portraitist, Boldini. Without a word Picasso took out a canvas and, within minutes, gave her a portrait done perfectly in Boldini’s style and signed with his name.

  19 One art patron Picasso disliked was Peggy Guggenheim. She came to see him one day with a list in hand, hoping to go over his collection to see what she might purchase. Picasso ignored her and made a show of talking to other guests in the house. Then he approached her and said, “Lingerie is on the next floor.”

  20 In later life Picasso visited an exhibition of children’s drawings. He observed, “When I was their age, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.”

  PICCARD, Auguste (1884–1962), Swiss physicist.

  1 Auguste and his twin brother, Jean Felix, had spent the night in a strange town and were both in need of a shave. Entering the local barber’s shop alone, Auguste settled down in the chair and said, “Make sure you give me a close shave. My beard grows so rapidly that two hours after I’ve had a shave, I need another.” The barber looked at him in disbelief. “If your beard grows in two hours,” he said skeptically, “I’ll give you another shave free.” Auguste left the shop in due course, clean-shaven and apparently satisfied. Two hours later, the barber was horrified to see his customer return with a dark growth of stubble on his chin. “Now do you believe me?” asked Jean Felix as he sat down for his free shave.

  PINTER, Harold (1930–), British dramatist.

  1 Besides writing plays, Pinter occasionally liked to write poetry. Once he wrote a verse, which follows in its entirety: “I knew Len Hutton in his prime. / Another time, another time.” Pinter then sent it off, as was his custom, to numerous friends for their reaction. After two weeks he had heard nothing and so called someone to whom he had sent the poem, claiming to be worried about the mail service. Had he received it? Yes, came the reply, indeed, it arrived ten days ago. And what did he think of it? Said the friend, “Actually, I haven’t quite finished it.”

  PINZA, Ezio (1892–1957), US opera singer, born in Italy.

  1 Soon after opening in the Broadway production of South Pacific, Pinza called at his favorite restaurant for his customary twelve-course dinner. Noticing the look of astonishment on the waiter’s face as he took the order, Pinza snapped, “What’s the matter with you? I may be singing musical comedy these days — but I still eat grand opera!”

  PITT, William (1759–1806), British statesman; prime minister (1783–1801, 1804–06), known as William Pitt the Younger to distinguish him from his father, the Earl of Chatham.

  1 A number of volunteers in London offered Pitt their services as militia. Although they were prepared to organize and equip themselves, the offer was hedged about with a number of provisos that substantially reduced its usefulness. Pitt read through their proposal until he reached a clause stating that they should never be required to leave the kingdom. At this point he picked up a pen and added in the margin, “except in the case of actual invasion.”

  2 Pitt had been urging Parliament to approve the immediate dispatch of the British fleet against the French. In order to secure the necessary appropriation, he had to persuade Lord Newcastle, the chancellor of the exchequer, who opposed his policy. Pitt called on the chancellor to pursue the question and found him in bed, suffering from gout. It was autumn, the room was unheated, and Pitt remarked how cold it was. Newcastle ironically replied that the weather would hinder any fleet movements and indeed hinder any comfortable discussion of the point at issue. Pitt answered that he did not so lightly relinquish his plans. Then, asking pardon, he removed his boots, climbed into the room’s other bed, drew up the cover, and began a unique conference. He won his point.

  3 Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz in December 1805 left him master of Europe and spelled the end of Pitt’s alliance against him with Sweden, Aus
tria, and Russia. When the news of the battle was brought to Pitt, he pointed to a large map of Europe on the wall and said, “Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.”

  4 Pitt died in office, worn out by overwork and crushed by the overthrow of his coalition against Napoleon. Desperately aware of the dangerous ebb of England’s fortunes, he murmured as he died, “My country, oh, how I leave my country!

  {Alternative last words attributed to Pitt are the far more touching “I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.”}

  PLATH, Sylvia (1932–63), US poet and novelist.

  1 One day Alfred Kazin was interviewing prospective students for his writing class at Smith. The last girl he saw showed him some samples of her work, which Kazin spotted instantly as the product of a great talent. “The writing was so coolly professional that I scented plagiarism, and said with some bitterness, ‘These could be published in X and Y.’” “They’ve already taken them,” said Plath. Then why would she take Kazin’s class? “I’m lonesome here, and want to talk to you.”

  PLATO (c. 428-c. 348 BC), Greek philosopher who founded the Academy at Athens.

  1 A student, struggling with the abstract concepts of Platonic mathematics, asked Plato, “What practical end do these theorems serve? What is to be gained from them?” Plato turned to his attendant slave and said, “Give this young man an obol [a small coin] that he may feel that he has gained something from my teachings, and then expel him.”

  2 Plato considered the abstract speculations of pure mathematics to be the highest form of thought of which the human mind was capable. He therefore had written over the entrance to the Academy “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here.”