Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  2 Asked how she knew so much about men, West said, “Baby, I went to night school.”

  3 When she heard that, in the blaze of her fame, even a life jacket had been named after her, she said, “I’ve been in Who’s Who and I know what’s what, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in the dictionary.”

  4 Gerald Ford once invited her to the White House, but she declined. “It’s an awful long way to go for just one meal.”

  WESTINGHOUSE, George (1846–1914), US inventor and manufacturer.

  1 In 1872 Westinghouse took out his first patent for an automatic air brake that would function far more quickly and safely than the clumsy hand brakes then in use. The railroad companies, however, were deeply suspicious of the invention. When he wrote to Cornelius Vanderbilt, president of the New York Central Railroad, pointing out the advantages of the air brake, Vanderbilt returned the letter with the words “I have no time to waste on fools,” scrawled on the bottom.

  Alexander J. Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad, next approached, saw possibilities in the new brake, and gave Westinghouse money to continue developing his invention. The tests were successful. News of them reached Vanderbilt. He wrote Westinghouse a letter inviting him to come and see him. Back came the letter, endorsed “I have no time to waste on fools. George Westinghouse.”

  WHARTON, Edith Newbold (1862–1937), US writer.

  1 At the age of eleven, Edith Wharton attempted her first novel. It began: “ ‘Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Brown?’ said Mrs. Tompkins. ‘If only I had known you were going to call, I should have tidied up the drawing room.’” Her mother’s sole comment, on perusing this promising effort, was a gelid “Drawing rooms are always tidy.”

  2 Appalled by the rude behavior of a French visitor to her house, she was bidding him good-bye when he remarked that he generally liked her house and its furnishings, except for the ugly bas-relief in the front hall. “I assure you,” she said icily, “that you will never see it again.”

  WHEELER, Joseph (1836–1906), US army officer and politician.

  1 Wheeler had been a Confederate general in the Civil War. In the Spanish-American War he commanded six regiments in the attack on Santiago. On the road to the city his men suffered serious casualties from the superior fire power of the enemy. Nevertheless, at a certain point the Spanish abandoned their entrenchments. General Wheeler, directly behind his men, inspired them with his imperishable and unreconstructed cry, “We’ve got the damn Yankees on the run!”

  WHEWELL, William (1794–1866), British scientist.

  1 During the Victorian era the River Cam in Cambridge was still used as the town sewer. On a visit to Cambridge Queen Victoria paused on one of the bridges, surrounded by college dignitaries. She remarked on the quantity of paper she could see in the stream. “All that paper, ma’am,” said Whewell, “carries notices to inform visitors that the river is unfit for bathing.”

  2 Whewell, well read in many subjects, could speak with authority on any topic of conversation that arose in the Trinity Senior Common Room, to the infuriation of some of his colleagues. Gathering up a number of reference books, including an old encyclopedia, they selected the obscure subject of Chinese musical instruments and studied it assiduously for several days. During the after-dinner conversation the next Sunday, they introduced the topic. Those who knew nothing of the conspiracy were astounded at the unexpected erudition of their colleagues; even Whewell remained silent for a while. Then, turning to one of the conspirators, he remarked, “I gather you have been reading the encyclopedia article on Chinese musical instruments I wrote some years back.”

  WHISTLER, James Abbott McNeill (1834–1903), US painter who lived most of his life in London after 1860.

  1 During a West Point examination Whistler scandalized his examiners by not knowing the date of the battle of Buena Vista. “What!” said one of them, “Suppose you went out to dinner and the company got talking about the Mexican War, and you, a West Point man, did not know the date of this battle. What would you do?” Politely but decisively Whistler replied, “I should refuse to associate with people who talked of such things at dinner.”

  2 Whistler’s failure in his West Point chemistry examination once provoked him to remark later in life, “If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a major general.”

  3 A snobbish Bostonian approached Whistler at a party one evening. “And where were you born, Mr. Whistler?” she asked. “Lowell, Massachusetts,” replied the painter. “Whatever possessed you to be born in a place like that?” exclaimed the lady. “The explanation is quite simple,” said Whistler. “I wished to be near my mother.”

  4 An American self-made millionaire visited Whistler’s Paris studio, intending to buy some pictures for his palatial house. He glanced around the studio with its clutter of canvases and said, “How much for the lot?”

  “Four million,” said Whistler.

  “What!”

  “My posthumous prices.”

  5 Whistler, priding himself on his fluency in French, insisted on doing the ordering in a fashionable Paris restaurant. His companion tried to intervene and was told, “I am quite capable of ordering a meal in France without your assistance.” “Of course you are,” said his friend placatingly, “but I just distinctly heard you order a flight of steps.”

  {Did he use escalier for escalope?}

  6 Whistler had been commissioned to paint a life-size nude portrait of French actress Cléo de Mérode. With her mother sitting nearby as chaperone, Mlle de Mérode draped herself on the couch, wearing nothing but a bandeau around her head. Whistler was not totally satisfied with the effect. He stepped forward to readjust the bandeau, which completely covered the actress’s ears. Her mother instantly rose to her feet. “Oh, no, no, no, monsieur!” she cried. “My daughter’s ears are for her husband.”

  7 Whistler had dined and wined extremely well at a friend’s house. He left the party and a few seconds later a loud crash announced that he had fallen down the stairs. As he was picked up, he indignantly demanded the name of his host’s architect. “Norman Shaw,” was the reply. “I might have known it,” said Whistler. “The damned teetotaler.”

  8 A female admirer asked Whistler whether he thought genius hereditary. “I cannot tell you that, madam,” he replied. “Heaven has granted me no offspring.”

  9 A notorious bore approached Whistler at a gathering and launched into conversation with “You know, Mr. Whistler, I passed your house last night —”

  “Thank you,” said Whistler.

  10 Someone annoyed by Whistler’s constant self-applause said pointedly, “It’s a good thing we can’t see ourselves as others see us.”

  “Isn’t it?” responded Whistler. “I know in my case I would grow intolerably conceited.”

  11 Some blank canvases that Whistler had ordered had been lost in the mail. Asked whether the canvases were of any great value, Whistler replied, “Not yet, not yet.”

  12 “A woman said to Whistler, ‘I just came up from the country this morning along the Thames, and there was an exquisite haze in the atmosphere which reminded me so much of some of your little things. It was really a perfect series of Whistlers.’

  “ ‘Yes, madam,’ responded Whistler gravely, ‘Nature is creeping up.’”

  13 A friend of Whistler’s came up to him in a London street as the artist was talking to a particularly grimy urchin selling newspapers. Whistler asked the lad how long he had been doing the work.

  “Three years, sir.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seven, sir.”

  “Oh, come, you must be older than that.”

  “No, I ain’t, sir.”

  Whistler turned to his friend. “I don’t think he could get that dirty in seven years. Do you?”

  14 A supposed conversation between Whistler and Oscar Wilde having been published in Punch, Wilde sent Whistler the following telegram: “Punch too ridiculous. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except oursel
ves.” Back came the reply from Whistler: “No, no, Oscar, you forget. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”

  15 Whistler was once printing etchings with the painter Walter Sickert. During the course of their work, Sickert clumsily dropped one of the copper plates. “How like you!” said Whistler derisively.

  A few minutes later, however, the same accident befell Whistler himself. “How unlike me!” he exclaimed.

  16 Whistler disliked Joseph Turner’s work and made no secret of his opinion. Someone once asked him if he would give advice as to whether a certain picture was a genuine Turner or an imitation. “That is a fine distinction,” said Whistler.

  17 Whistler’s presidency of the Royal Society of British Artists was short-lived. In 1888 he resigned after his autocratic ways had caused him to quarrel with most of the members. To his followers he said of this debacle, “It is very simple. The artists retired. The British remained.”

  18 When an Englishman remarked to Whistler that he found the courtesy of the French false, being only on the surface, Whistler replied, “That is a very good place for it.”

  WHITMAN, Walt (1819–92), US poet.

  1 The stir caused by Whitman’s poetry was such that some people hailed him as a prophet and others abused him as a monster of depravity. One day, as Whitman was walking past the White House, he was pointed out to President Lincoln. “Well, he looks like a man” was the President’s comment.

  WHITNEY, Stephen (c. 1850-c. 1920), US businessman.

  1 On hearing the news of Stephen Whitney’s death, the diarist George Templeton Strong commented that he had never used any of his money for the benefit of either himself or anyone else. “His last act was characteristic and fitting,” Strong observed. “He locked up his checkbook and died.”

  WIENIAWSKI, Henri (1835–80), Polish violinist and composer.

  1 Wieniawski once played to a half-empty auditorium in Boston. Despite the poor attendance, he was urged to return and perform there again. “Oh, no,” replied the violinist. “I’ll get out of the habit of playing in public.”

  WILD, Jonathan (?1682–1725), British criminal.

  1 Wild remained a criminal literally to his death. As he stepped up to the gallows at Tyburn, the unrepentant rogue deftly picked the pocket of the priest administering the last rites. He died waving his trophy, a corkscrew, triumphantly at the crowd below.

  WILDE, Oscar (1854–1900), British aesthete, writer, and wit.

  1 In the nineteenth-century Oxford examinations there was a compulsory divinity section, and candidates were required to translate aloud from the Greek version of the New Testament. Wilde, assigned a passage dealing with the Passion, began to translate fluently and accurately. The examiners, satisfied, told him he could stop. Ignoring them, he continued to translate. Eventually they succeeded in halting him. “Oh, do let me go on,” Wilde said. “I want to see how it ends.”

  2 In 1882 Wilde went on a lecture tour of the United States. A New York customs official asked if he had anything to declare. “No. I have nothing to declare” — Wilde paused — “except my genius.”

  3 “Wonderful man, Columbus!” exclaimed an American eager to strike up a conversation with Wilde. “Why?” asked Wilde. “He discovered America,” replied the other. Wilde shook his head: “Oh no, it had often been discovered before, but it had always been hushed up.”

  4 The great French actor Coquelin asked Wilde about the progress of his new play, The Duchess of Padua. “The ending is quite tragic,” said Wilde. “My hero, at his moment of triumph, makes an epigram which falls flat.”

  5 Frank Harris, then editor of the Saturday Review, gave a dinner at the Café Royal to which some of London’s most brilliant wits were invited. Harris dominated the conversation, ignoring all hints to quiet down. Oscar Wilde grew more and more restless as Harris told the company about all the great houses at which he had been a guest. Eventually he broke in with “Dear Frank, we believe you; you have dined in every house in London — once.”

  6 Wilde was asked his opinion of a play that had been generally accounted a fiasco. “The play was a great success,” he replied, “but the audience was a disaster.”

  7 Wilde and Whistler frequently exchanged insults in a feud that owed more to both parties’ addiction to the limelight than to any genuine rancor. “I wish I had said that!” exclaimed Wilde after a particular scintillating remark from Whistler. “You will, Oscar, you will,” said Whistler.

  8 In the course of their well-publicized feud, Whistler accused Wilde of plagiarizing his ideas on art. Wilde replied: “As for borrowing Mr. Whistler’s ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have ever heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.”

  9 When the poet laureateship fell vacant on the death of Tennyson, the names of several likely candidates came up frequently. Not included was that of the prolific poetaster Sir Lewis Morris. “It’s a complete conspiracy of silence against me,” Morris complained to Oscar Wilde. “What ought I to do, Oscar?”

  “Join it,” said Wilde.

  10 Talking to an admirer of Dickens, Wilde moved his hearer almost to tears by the eloquence of his enthusiasm for the master’s powers. And then Wilde concluded, “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

  11 After playing for some time the role of Lord Illingworth in Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance, Beerbohm Tree showed signs of unconsciously adopting the character’s mannerisms in real life. Wilde was delighted with this phenomenon. “Ah, every day dear Herbert becomes de plus en plus Oscarisé,” he declared. “It is a wonderful case of nature imitating art.”

  12 When asked to make certain changes in one of his plays, Wilde protested: “Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?”

  13 Wilde was staying with friends at a country house, where his eccentric behavior and manner of dress startled his fellow guests. One morning he came down to breakfast looking very pale and drawn. “I’m afraid you are ill, Mr. Wilde,” remarked another member of the party. “No, not ill,” replied Wilde, “only tired. The fact is, I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so ill I have been sitting up with it all night.”

  14 Wilde’s legal battle with the Marquis of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas, began when Wilde brought a case of criminal libel against the marquis for publicly accusing him of sodomy. Shortly after the trial began, Wilde met an actor friend, Charles Goodhart, in Piccadilly Circus, where every newspaper placard displayed his name and the newsboys were shouting it on every corner. Goodhart, feeling embarrassed, talked about the weather. Wilde, however, put him at his ease: “You’ve heard of my case? Don’t distress yourself. All is well. The working classes are with me … to a boy.”

  15 Sentenced to two years’ hard labor, Wilde stood handcuffed in driving rain waiting for transport to prison. “If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners,” he remarked, “she doesn’t deserve to have any.”

  16 Ada Leverson was a devoted friend of Oscar Wilde, who always called her “Sphinx.” It was she who gave him refuge when he had nowhere to go to escape the public scandal after his first trial in 1895. When Wilde was released from prison two years later, she, her husband, and a very few others went early in the morning to the house of a mutual friend to greet him before he departed for France. It was a difficult ordeal for all concerned, but Wilde immediately put his friends at their ease. “Sphinx,” he said as soon as he entered the room, “how marvelous of you to know exactly the right hat to wear at seven o’clock in the morning to meet a friend who has been away.”

  17 (Yeats recounts a story he was told of Wilde’s visit to a brothel in Dieppe after he had been released from prison. “Dowson” is the poet Ernest Dowson.)

  “Dowson pressed upon him the necessity of acquiring a ‘more wholesome taste.’ They emptied their pockets onto the café table, and though there was not much, there w
as enough, if both heaps were put into one. Meanwhile the news had spread, and they set out accompanied by a cheering crowd. Arrived at their destination, Dowson and the crowd remained outside, and presently Wilde returned. He said in a low voice to Dowson, ‘The first these ten years, and it will be the last. It was like cold mutton’ … and then aloud, so that the crowd might hear him, ‘But tell it in England, for it will entirely restore my character.’ ”

  18 Wilde died of cerebral meningitis in a hotel in Paris. He was offered and accepted a drink of champagne, remarking as he did so, “I am dying beyond my means.”

  19 Still another version of Wilde’s last words has him staring at his shabby Paris bedroom. He is reputed to have said, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

  WILDER, Billy [Samuel] (1906–), US film director and screenwriter, born in Austria.

  1 Wilder wanted Gloria Swanson’s attempted suicide in Sunset Boulevard to look authentic, and instructed his cameraman John Seitz to angle the camera just so. “Johnny, it’s the usual slashed-wrist shot,” he said. Later in the film, filming the funeral of Swanson’s pet monkey, he said, “Johnny, it’s the usual dead-chimpanzee setup.”

  2 While shooting Sunset Boulevard Wilder instructed the cameraman to keep the film a little out of focus. When the cameraman objected, Wilder said, “I want to win the foreign picture award.”

  3 Wilder was asked by a journalist to name his personal favorite among his many films. “Some Like It Hot,” he replied instantly. The journalist was surprised that Wilder had not named one of his classics, such as Sunset Boulevard. “A nice little picture,” agreed Billy, “but in those days I wasn’t getting a percentage of the gross.”

  WILDING, Michael (1912–79), British actor.

  1 Wilding was once asked whether actors had any distinguishing features that set them apart from other human beings. “Without a doubt,” he replied. “You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.”