Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  Some days later GE received a bill from Steinmetz for $10,000. They protested the amount and asked him to itemize it. He sent back an itemized bill:

  Making one chalk mark $ 1

  Knowing where to place it $9,999

  STENGEL, Casey (1890–1975), US baseball player and manager.

  1 “Stengel was coaching at third one afternoon in a ding-dong contest at the Polo Grounds when a Dodger batter named Cuccinello hammered a hit to the bull pen in right field. [Mel] Ott fielded the ball brilliantly, and threw to third base. ‘Slide! Slide!’ screamed Stengel, but Cuccinello came in standing up, and was tagged out. ‘I told you to slide,’ roared Stengel. ‘You’d have been safe a mile! Why didn’t you do what I told you?’ ‘Slide?’ repeated Cuccinello with some dignity, ‘and bust my cigars?’”

  2 The manager of the Yankees from 1949 to 1960, Stengel led the team to seven World Championships. But he was more famous for his verbosity than for his managerial skills. Asked a question by a reporter one day, Stengel talked for forty minutes straight until the reporter cut in, saying his question had not been answered. “Don’t rush me,” Stengel admonished.

  3 Asked about the art of managing, Stengel replied, “Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits.”

  4 “Casey Stengel’s eye for talent was often as keen as his wit. Early in his managerial career with the New York Mets, he was asked about the future prospects for two of his twenty-year-old players. ‘In ten years, Ed Kranepool has a chance to be a star,’ said Casey. ‘In ten years the other guy has a chance to be thirty.’ ”

  5 At a baseball game one day Stengel was exasperated by demands from the crowd for a player he had on the bench. He finally called for the player in question. “Am I going in?” asked the player eagerly. “No,” replied Stengel, “I don’t want you. Go up in the stands with your fans. They want you.”

  6 Told by a pitcher he wanted to remove from the mound, “I’m not tired,” Stengel said, “Well, I’m tired of you.”

  7 During a famous exchange with Senator Ke-fauver in 1958, when Stengel testified before a committee investigating antitrust issues, Stengel kept talking and talking, while the senator kept repeating his question about Stengel’s opinion of some proposed legislation. Finally Kefauver said, “Mr. Stengel, I am not sure that I made my question clear.” Stengel replied, “Well, that is all right. I am not sure I’m going to answer you perfectly, either.”

  8 As he aged, Stengel slowed considerably. Gone were the days of Joe DiMaggio, Roger Maris, and Yogi Berra, when Stengel was at the top of his form. In 1959, when the Yankees finished third, many blamed his failing health for the loss. But not White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who said, “I know Casey well, and he’s no different now than he was when he was winning pennants. He just hasn’t got the horses.”

  9 Explaining a point of strategy to young baseball star Mickey Mantle, seventy-year-old Stengel described an incident from his own days as a player. “You played?” asked Mantle, astonished. “Sure I played,” said Stengel. “Did you think I was born at the age of seventy sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you?”

  10 Finally, in 1960, Stengel was fired. Of his end, he said, “I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again.”

  11 In his old age, Stengel was asked how he was doing. He sighed and said, “Not bad. Most people my age are dead. You could look it up.”

  STERN, Isaac (1920–), US violinist, born in Russia.

  1 On Election Night in Copenhagen, Stern was playing when he noticed that the audience was quite inattentive. After intermission he returned to the stage, but before playing he announced the results of the election, saying that the audience could now resume sneezing and snoring. The hall was filled with laughter, and for the rest of the concert an attentive quiet was kept.

  STERNE, Laurence (1713–68), British writer and clergyman.

  1 “Soon after Tristram appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune and condition whether she had read his book. ‘I have not, Mr. Sterne,’ was the answer; ‘and to be plain with you, I am informed it is not proper for female perusal.’ ‘My dear good lady,’ replied the author, ‘do not be gulled by such stories; the book is like your young heir there [pointing to a child of three years old, who was rolling on the carpet in his white tunic]: he shows at times a good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect innocence!’”

  STEVENS, Thaddeus (1792–1868), US politician and lawyer.

  1 At the beginning of the 1861 congressional session, a woman admirer broke into Stevens’s office and begged for a lock of his hair. Stevens removed his chestnut wig and invited her, “Pray, madam, select any curl that strikes your fancy.”

  2 In a scandal over the awarding of army contracts in the early 1860s, it was widely rumored that Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, had been less than strictly honest. Thaddeus Stevens was on record as saying that Cameron would steal anything except a red-hot stove. Cameron appealed to Lincoln, who asked Stevens to say that he had been misquoted. “Certainly I’ll say I’ve been misquoted,” said the unrepentant Stevens. “What I actually said was that Cameron would steal anything, even a red-hot stove.”

  3 A visitor who called on Stevens during his last illness remarked on the patient’s appearance. “It’s not my appearance that troubles me right now,” Stevens replied. “It’s my disappearance.”

  STEVENSON, Adlai E[wing] (1900–65), US statesman.

  1 Harry Truman finally persuaded Stevenson to campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1952. Stevenson stayed overnight at the White House and was put in the Lincoln Room. He wandered around the room, gazing with awe at the things in it, unable to bring himself to lie in the bed. So he spent the night on the sofa. He was unaware that in Lincoln’s time the bed was not there, but the sofa was.

  2 It was probably during his first campaign against Eisenhower that Stevenson was approached by an enthusiastic woman supporter who said to him, “Governor, every thinking person will be voting for you.” Stevenson replied, “Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority.”

  3 At a Labor Day rally during the 1952 presidential campaign a photographer took a famous picture of Stevenson, showing him with a hole in the bottom of one shoe. When the photographer won a Pulitzer Prize for the picture, Stevenson sent him a telegram reading: “Congratulations. I’ll bet this is the first time anyone ever won a Pulitzer Prize for a hole in one.”

  4 Alistair Cooke, talking to Stevenson shortly after his defeat in the 1952 election, was heartened to find him able to view the situation with objective humor. “After all,” he said, “who did I think I was, running against George Washington?”

  Four years later Eisenhower again defeated Stevenson in the presidential election, and Cooke sent Stevenson a cable reading simply: “How now?” Back came the reply: “Who did I think I was, running against George Washington twice?”

  5 Stevenson was much praised in the European press for his condemnation of the American U-2 reconnaissance flights over Europe. Stevenson read the favorable comments and said wryly, “The trouble is, I always run in the wrong continent.”

  6 Stevenson arrived late to address the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Apologizing, he said he had been delayed at the airport by the arrival of President de Gaulle from France. “It seems to be my fate always to be getting in the way of national heroes,” he added.

  7 During his 1956 election campaign Stevenson asked some children, “How many children in this audience would like to be a candidate for President of the United States?” A number of hands went up. Stevenson continued: “How many candidates for President of the United States would like to be children again?” He raised his own hand.

  8 The New York Times reported that when Stevenson was the US delegate to the United Nations, the question was put to him: “Here’s Soviet Russia pushing for votes for her satellites, even one as improbable as Outer Mongolia; how can that be counterbalanced?” Stevenson replied: “It’s easy. We give Texas her
independence and change her name to Outer Arkansas.”

  9 Stevenson once reflected, “In America, any boy may become President, and I suppose that’s just the risk he takes.”

  STEVENSON, Robert Louis (1850–94), Scottish writer.

  1 A young friend of Stevenson’s had complained to him about being born on Christmas Day. She received presents only once a year and felt cheated. When Stevenson drew up his will as death approached, he remembered the girl and bequeathed his own birthday to her. He subsequently added the following clause: “If, however, she fails to use this bequest properly, all rights shall pass to the President of the United States.”

  STILLMAN, James A. (1850–1918), US banker.

  1 After visiting the famous 1913 Armory Show, the first exhibition of the work of avant-garde European painters for the American public, Stillman remarked, “Something is wrong with the world. These men know.”

  STIMSON, Henry Lewis (1867–1950), US attorney and statesman.

  1 Secretary of State Stimson once tried to close down the American counterintelligence and decipherment sources (known as “the Black Chamber”). Said Stimson: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”

  STOKOWSKI, Leopold (1882–1977), British conductor.

  1 During a performance of Beethoven’s Leonora Overture No. 3, the offstage trumpet call twice failed to sound on cue. The overture finished, Stokowski dashed from the rostrum in a fury to seek out the errant trumpeter. He found the player in the wings wrestling with a burly janitor. “You can’t blow that damn thing here, I tell you,” the janitor was insisting. “There’s a concert going on.”

  2 Stokowski was intensely irritated by members of the audience who coughed during a performance. At the end of a series of concerts with the Philadelphia orchestra, shortly before his departure on a six-month tour of the Far East, he turned to the audience and said, “Good-bye for a long time. I hope when I come back your colds will all be better.”

  STOPPARD, Tom (1937–), British playwright, born in Czechoslovakia.

  1 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead became a sensational success in England, the United States, and even Tokyo and Buenos Aires. On its first production a friend, puzzled by its enigmatic character, asked, “Tom, what’s it about?” Replied Stoppard, “It’s about to make me a rich man.”

  STOUT, Rex (1886–1973), US novelist, creator of the fictional detective Nero Wolfe.

  1 Stout was surrounded by books from an early age. His father had a personal library of over a thousand volumes, and his mother, Lucetta, was constantly engrossed in one book or another. Although she had nine children, her reading was rarely interrupted — thanks to a simple expedient. She kept a bowl of cold water and a washcloth beside her chair: any child who dared to disturb her would have his or her face thoroughly washed.

  2 As a young man Rex Stout decided to join the navy. Examined by a medical board, he was told that he would have to have his tonsils out before he could be accepted. This was a blow; $2 was all the money he possessed. He managed, however, to find a young doctor who agreed to perform the operation at a bargain rate. No operating theater was available, of course, but a local barber offered surgeon and patient the use of one of his chairs during a slack period. The doctor duly removed the tonsils. Stout bled profusely, and the barber, alarmed at the sight of the gore and thinking that it might deter other clients, begged Stout to leave. Stout, feeling rather groggy, remained in the chair. “I’ll give you two bits to go away,” said the barber in desperation. The mention of cash roused Stout; he accepted the money, crawled out of the shop, and, after lying down for a time in a vacant lot, went back to the recruiting board, which forthwith accepted him.

  STOWE, Harriet Beecher (1811–96), US novelist.

  1 Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly achieved fame. A woman came up to Mrs. Stowe and asked if she could clasp the hand of the woman who had written the great work. “I did not write it,” said Mrs. Stowe. “God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.”

  {William D. Howells saw it differently: “As for the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, her syntax was such a snare to her that it sometimes needed the combined skill of the proofreaders and the assistant editor to extricate her. Of course nothing was ever written into her work, but in changes of diction, in correction of solecisms, in transposition of phrases, the text was largely rewritten in the margin of her proofs. The soul of her art was present, but the form was so often absent, that when it was clothed on anew, it would have been hard to say whose cut the garment was of in many places.” The practical inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin came from a reading of a pamphlet written by a runaway Maryland slave, Josiah Henson, describing the degradation of a slave’s life.}

  2 The feelings engendered by Uncle Tom’s Cabin did much to polarize opinion between North and South, contributing to the out-break of the Civil War. In 1862, when Mrs. Stowe visited President Lincoln at the White House, he greeted her (as recollected by Harriet’s son, who was present) with: “So this is the little lady who wrote the book that made the big war.”

  STRACHEY, [Giles] Lytton (1880–1932), British writer and a leading member of the Bloomsbury group.

  1 (Osbert Sitwell tells the following story:)

  “We might recall what [Lytton Strachey] said to a clever, charming, rather noisy young man who had once been taken to stay with him. I do not know whether the visit could be considered a success, but when the guest next saw his former host, a whole lustrum had passed. ‘Mr. Strachey, do you realize it’s five years since we met?’ the young man asked. He received the reply: ‘Rather a nice interval, don’t you think?’”

  2 When military conscription became compulsory during World War I, Strachey applied for exemption as a conscientious objector. This meant that he had to appear before a tribunal that would assess the genuineness of his objections and rule accordingly. The military representative on the board boomed out questions that he usually found disconcerted the applicants. “I understand, Mr. Strachey, that you have a conscientious objection to all wars?” he began. “Oh, no, not at all,” replied Strachey. “Only to this one.” The military man tried again: “Tell me, Mr. Strachey, what would you do if you saw a German soldier attempting to rape your sister?” Strachey looked around at his sisters, who were sitting in the public gallery of the courtroom, and said in his piping voice, “I should try and come between them.”

  3 The basis of Dora Carrington’s devotion to the homosexual, egocentric Strachey puzzled all their friends. When Arthur Waley asked her what it was about Strachey that could possibly appeal to her, she replied ecstatically, “Oh, it’s his knees!”

  4 Asked what he considered the greatest thing in life, Strachey inclined his reedlike body, complete with owl eyes and spectral beard, and, in his elegant, high-pitched voice, languidly piped: “Why, passion, of course.”

  5 As he lay dying at his house, Ham Spray, in Berkshire, Strachey looked about and said, “If this is death, then I don’t think much of it.”

  STRAUSS, Richard (1864–1949), German composer and conductor.

  1 When Salome was produced, Kaiser Wilhelm II, no lover of modern music, remarked, “It will do Strauss a great deal of harm.” The royal remark came to Strauss’s ears; he commented, “I was able to build my villa in Garmisch, thanks to the harm.”

  STRAVINSKY, Igor (1882–1971), Russian-born composer.

  1 Although the more discriminating members of the audience at the historic Paris premiere of Le Sacre du printemps recognized the work as a masterpiece, the fashionable and ignorant were outraged at its novelty. Sporadic interruptions swelled to a full-scale tumult. Over the noise could be heard the voice of the impresario Gabriel Astruc yelling at the hecklers, “First listen! Then boo.”

  2 (The young music critic Carl Van Vechten attended the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps. )

  “I was sitting in a box in which I had rented one seat….Three ladies sat in front of me and a young man occupied the place behind me. The intense excitement under which he
was laboring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronized with the beat of the music. When I did, I turned around. His apology was sincere. We had both been carried beyond ourselves.”

  3 When Stravinsky was fifty-seven, he settled in the United States and a year later decided to apply for American citizenship. He made an appointment to see the appropriate official. At his first interview the official asked the famous composer his name. “Stra-vin-sky,” he replied, speaking each syllable distinctly. “You could change it, you know,” suggested the official.

  4 Stravinsky wrote a ballet for Billy Rose’s Broadway shoe The Seven Lively Arts. After the opening one of the dancers sent a wire to the composer: “Ballet great success but if you would allow violin to play pas de deux instead of trumpet it would be a triumph.” Stravinsky cabled back: “Satisfied with great success.”

  5 Stravinsky once had an argument with an airport official who insisted that he pay a charge for excess weight. The official, quite used to dealing with such situations, began to explain the reason for the extra charge. “I quite understand the logic of it,” Stravinsky said impatiently. “What I am objecting to is the money.”

  6 In the 1950s the Venice Festival commissioned Stravinsky to write an original composition. When the piece was submitted, its length — only fifteen minutes — was found unsatisfactory. Stravinsky was unruffled. “Well, then,” he said, “play it again.”

  7 In 1952, thirty-nine years after its tumultuous premiere, Le Sacre du printemps was again performed in Paris and received ecstatic applause. Pierre Monteux, the conductor on both occasions, commented, “There was just as much noise the last time, but the tonality was different.”