Child’s Play

In 1890, Daisy Ashford wrote The Young Visiters, a novella parodying upper-class English society. That might seem unremarkable—but the author was 9 years old:

They all went out by a private door and found themselves in a smaller but gorgous room. The Prince tapped on the table and instantly two menials in red tunics appeared. Bring three glasses of champaigne commanded the prince and some ices he added majestikally. The goods appeared as if by majic and the prince drew out a cigar case and passed it round.

One grows weary of Court Life he remarked.

The whole immortal thing is here.

| Literature

And Many More

In 1891, Robert Louis Stevenson received a letter from a Vermont girl named Annie Ide. Her birthday fell on Christmas, she said, and she seldom received birthday presents.

He replied with a document decreeing that “I, Robert Louis Stevenson, … in consideration that Miss Annie H. Ide, … was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas Day, and is therefore out of all justice denied the consolation and profit of a proper birthday; and considering that I, the said Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained an age when we never mention it, and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any description; … HAVE TRANSFERRED, and DO HEREBY TRANSFER, to the said Annie H. Ide, ALL AND WHOLE my rights and privileges in the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, and copies of verse, according to the manner of our ancestors.”

He charged her to add “Louisa” to her name, “at least in private,” and to use the birthday “with moderation and humanity”—and he directed that if she neglected these conditions the birthday would revert to the president of the United States. She didn’t.

| Literature

The Wreck of the Titan

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Art doesn’t just imitate life — sometimes it anticipates it. Fourteen years before the Titanic was built, the American Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called The Wreck of the Titan that prefigured the real ship’s destiny with remarkable precision.

The Titanic and the Titan were both triple-screwed British passenger liners with a capacity of 3,000 and a top speed of 24 knots. Both were deemed unsinkable; both carried too few lifeboats. And both sank in April in the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg on the forward starboard side.

In another novel, Beyond the Spectrum (1914), Robertson forecast a war between the United States and Japan, including a Japanese sneak attack (on San Francisco). There’s no way to know what more he had in store — he died the following year.

| Literature · Oddities

A Little Culture

In 1959, Ed Zern reviewed Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Field & Stream:

This fictional account of the day-by-day life of the English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midlands shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion this book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping.

He wasn’t serious. On another occasion, a reader complained that his wife wanted him to give up outdoor sports: “If this keeps on I’m going to blow my brains out. Please give me whatever advice you can.” Zern responded: “Since trajectory isn’t important here, our recommendation would be a .35 Remington with 200-grain soft-nose bullet.”

| Literature

A Devil’s Distinction

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Terror and horror, from Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Ann Radcliffe wrote: “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.”

Or, in Devendra Varma’s words, “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference … between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.”

| Language · Literature

Forewarned

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In 1858 Mark Twain had a vivid dream in which he saw his brother Henry lying in a metal burial case. On Henry’s chest lay a bouquet of white flowers with a red rose at its center.

A month later, Henry lost his life when his steamboat’s boiler exploded. A grieving Twain arrived to discover his brother’s body in a metal case—the other victims had been given wooden coffins, but the ladies of Memphis had taken up a fund for Henry, touched by his youth and good looks.

As Twain stood there, an elderly woman approached and placed a bouquet of white flowers on Henry’s chest. At its center was a single red rose.

See also A Premonition.

| Death · Literature · Oddities

Book Lover

Florentine scholar Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) has been described as a literary glutton. His house was choked with 40,000 books and 10,000 manuscripts, and he spent hours each day in the Medici library.

The negligent Magliabechi reportedly once forgot to draw his salary for a full year, but his head was “an universal index, both of titles and matter.” When the Duke of Florence asked him for a particular volume he replied, “Signore, there is but one copy of that book in the world; it is in the Grand Signore’s library at Constantinople, and is the eleventh book in the second shelf on the right hand as you go in.”

That memory made him a human search engine for writers of the time. In Curiosities of Human Nature, Samuel Goodrich records that a priest might consult Magliabechi about a panegyric on a particular saint. “He would immediately tell him who had said anything of that saint, and in what part of their works, and that, sometimes, to the number of above a hundred authors. … All this he did with the greatest exactness, naming the author, the book, the words, and often the very number of the page in which the passage referred to was inserted.”

Surrounded by books, he lived to be 81, and in his will he left his library to the public.

| Literature · Oddities

Our Mutual Friend

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Anagrams on Dickens titles:

  • THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY = DICKENS: NAIVE ENTER FANCIFUL DOTHEBOYS HALL
  • OLD CURIOSITY SHOP = STORY O’ PIOUS CHILD
  • OLIVER TWIST, BY CHARLES DICKENS = BOLD CREW SINS AT SLICK THIEVERY
  • THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD = FOOD ENDETH MY WEIRD STORY

“We talk about the tyranny of words,” writes David Copperfield, “but we like to tyrannize over them too.”

| Language · Literature

King, Queen, Knave

nabokov chess problem

Vladimir Nabokov composed chess problems. Here’s a clever one from 1932: “White retracts its last move and mates in one.”

This is an instance of retrograde analysis: Of the many legal moves that White might just have made, only one can be revised to yield an immediate mate. Can you find it?

Click for Answer
| Literature · Puzzles