Three Cheers

In 1900 Edward Elgar invited three ladies, teachers of English, French, and German, to a rehearsal of The Dream of Gerontius at a Birmingham school. They sent him this letter of thanks:

My cher Herr!

We sommes so full de Dankbarkeit and débordante Entzücken and sentons so weak et demütig that la Kraft of une Sprache seems insuffisante auszüdrücken our sentiments. Deshalb we unissons unsere powers et versuchen to express en Englisch, French, and Allemand das for que wir feel n’importe quelle Sprache to be insuffisante. Wie can nous beschreiben our accablante Freude and surprise! Wir do pas wissen which nous schützen most: notre Vergnügen to-morrow, ou die fact, que von all gens Sie thought à uns.

We sommes alle three fières und happy, et danken you de ganz our cœur.

Elgar passed it on to the Musical Times, which published it, calling its form of expression “somewhat Tower of Babelish.”

| Language

Word and Numbers

Think of a number, write down its name, and add up the values of the letters (A=1, B=2, etc.). For example:

4 -> FOUR -> F(6) + O(15) + U(21) + R(18) -> 60

80 is the smallest number that is diminished by this procedure:

80 -> EIGHTY -> E(5) + I(9) + G(7) + H(8) + T(20) + Y(25) -> 74

Curiously, it’s also the smallest such number in Spanish:

80 -> OCHENTA -> O(16) + C(3) + H(8) + E(5) + N(14) + T(21) + A(1) = 68

(Remember that Spanish uses 27 letters, with ñ in the 15th position.)

(Thanks, Claudio.)

| Language

Nothing Doing

http://faculty.upj.pitt.edu/jalexander/Research%20archive/Dodgson_gallery_of_images.htm

In 1873, Lewis Carroll borrowed the travel diary of his child-friend Ella Monier-Williams, with the understanding that he would show it to no one. He returned it with this letter:

My dear Ella,

I return your book with many thanks; you will be wondering why I kept it so long. I understand, from what you said about it, that you have no idea of publishing any of it yourself, and hope you will not be annoyed at my sending three short chapters of extracts from it, to be published in The Monthly Packet. I have not given any names in full, nor put any more definite title to it than simply ‘Ella’s Diary, or The Experiences of an Oxford Professor’s Daughter, during a Month of Foreign Travel.’

I will faithfully hand over to you any money I may receive on account of it, from Miss Yonge, the editor of The Monthly Packet.

Your affect. friend,

C.L. Dodgson

Ella thought he was joking, and wrote to tell him so, but he replied:

I grieve to tell you that every word of my letter was strictly true. I will now tell you more — that Miss Yonge has not declined the MS., but she will not give more than a guinea a chapter. Will that be enough?

“This second letter succeeded in taking me in, and with childish pleasure I wrote and said I did not quite understand how it was my journal could be worth printing, but expressed my pleasure. I then received this letter:–”

My dear Ella,

I’m afraid I have hoaxed you too much. But it really was true. I ‘hoped you wouldn’t be annoyed at my etc.’ for the very good reason that I hadn’t done it. And I gave no other title than ‘Ella’s Diary,’ nor did I give that title. Miss Yonge hasn’t declined it — because she hasn’t seen it. And I need hardly explain that she hasn’t given more than three guineas!

Not for three hundred guineas would I have shown it to any one — after I had promised you I wouldn’t.

In haste,

Yours affectionately,

C.L.D.

| Hoaxes · Language · Literature

“Inscription at Persepolis”

From Robert Conger Pell’s Milledulcia (1857) — “It is said that the following puzzling inscription was found by Captain Barth, graven on marble, among the ruins of Persepolis, and by him translated from the Arabic into Latin and English”:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yFACAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Read the words of the top row alternately with those of any of the lower rows. Thus the first sentence is “Never tell all you may know, for he who tells everything he knows often tells more than he knows.” (In the last line, sees means sees into or comprehends.)

| Language

QWERTYUIOP

PEPPERROOT, PEPPERWORT, PERPETUITY, PROPRIETOR, REPERTOIRE, and, pleasingly, TYPEWRITER are all typed on the top row of a standard keyboard.

ALFALFAS and FLAGFALLS are typed on the middle row.

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Ill Fame

A lady who was flattered to have a rose named after her changed her mind when she saw the description of the rose in a gardener’s catalogue. Against her name it said: ‘shy in a bed but very vigorous against a wall.’

— Leslie Dunkling, The Guinness Book of Names, 1993

| Humor · Language

The Lip-Reader’s Bane

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silkworm-moth-bombyx-cynthia.jpg

I can’t vouch for this — from I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland (1865), “a Welsh englyn which in its four lines does not contain a single consonant”:

“On the Silkworm”

O’i wiw wy i weu ê â a’i weau
O’i wyau e weua;
E’ weua ei we aia’.
Ai weau yw ieuau iâ.

Translation:

“I perish by my art; dig my own grave;
I spin my thread of life; my death I weave.”

| Language

Table Talk

At a tavern one night,
Messrs. Moore, Strange, and Wright
Met to drink and their good thoughts exchange;
Says Moore, “Of us three,
Everyone will agree,
There’s only one knave, and that’s Strange.”

Says Strange, rather sore,
“I’m sure there’s one Moore,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister and brother–”
“Oh, yes,” replied Moore, “that is Wright.”

— Anonymous

| Language · Poems