Stops and Starts

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_James_by_John_Singer_Sargent_cleaned.jpg

Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle is written in his famously tortured syntax:

It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly.

James Thurber parodied this with “The Beast in the Dingle”:

He had brought himself so fully in the end, poor Grantham, to accept his old friend’s invitation to accompany her to an ‘afternoon’ at ‘Cornerbright’ that now, on the very porch of the so evident house, he could have, for his companion, in all surrender, a high, fine — there was no other word for it — twinkle.

Thurber originally called this “The Return of the Screw.” See Homage and A Prose Maze.

| Humor · Language · Literature

Asked and Answered

Tennyson was plagued by autograph hunters.

As a pretext, one wrote to him asking which was the better dictionary, Webster’s or Ogilvie’s.

He replied by cutting the word Ogilvie’s from the letter, pasting it to a blank sheet of paper, and mailing it back.

See Pen Fatigue.

| Literature · Society

Misc

  • Dorothy Parker said that James Thurber’s cartoon figures had the “semblance of unbaked cookies.”
  • In typing AUTHENTICITY, the left and right hands alternate.
  • P.G. Wodehouse wrote the last 26 pages of Thank You, Jeeves in one day.
  • INTERROGATIVES is an anagram of both REINVESTIGATOR and TERGIVERSATION.
  • 1232882 + 3287682 = 123288328768

(Thanks, Steve.)

| Art · Language · Literature · Science & Math

Regrets

When Charles Dickens was editing Household Words, a young writer named Laman Blanchard submitted an interminable poem titled “Orient Pearls at Random Strung.”

Dickens mailed it back with a note: “Dear Blanchard, too much string — Yours, C.D.”

| Literature

Rebuke

When Joseph Addison lent a sum of money to his friend Temple Stanyan, Stanyan became meekly agreeable, unwilling to argue with Addison as he used to.

At last Addison told him, “Sir, either contradict me or pay me my money.”

Biographer Peter Smithers calls this “a salvo of which Johnson himself might have been proud.”

| Literature · Society

Good for the Gander

In the early days of Dada I received for review a book which contained the following ‘poem’:

       'A B C D E F
        G H I J K L
        M N O P Q R
        S T U V W X
            Y Z.'

On which I commented:

       '1 2 3 4 5
        6 7 8 9 10.'

I still think that was the most snappy review I ever wrote; but unfortunately The Times refused to print it.

— Richard Aldington, Life for Life’s Sake, 1941

| Literature · Poems

Turns of Phrase

Erasmus’ 1512 rhetoric textbook Copia lists 195 variations on the sentence “Your letter delighted me greatly”:

Your brief note refreshed my spirits in no small measure.
I was in no small measure refreshed in spirit by your grace’s hand.
From your affectionate letter I received unbelievable pleasure.
Your pages engendered in me an unfamiliar delight.
I conceived a wonderful delight from your pages.
Your lines conveyed to me the greatest joy.
The greatest joy was brought to me by your lines.
We derived great delight from your excellency’s letter.
From my dear Faustus’ letter I derived much delight.
In these Faustine letters I found a wonderful kind of delectation.
At your words a delight of no ordinary kind came over me.
I was singularly delighted by your epistle.
To be sure your letter delighted my spirits!
Your brief missive flooded me with inexpressible Joy.
As a result of your letter, I was suffused by an unfamiliar gladness.
Your communication poured vials of joy on my head.
Your epistle afforded me no small delight.
The perusal of your letter charmed my mind with singular delight.

He followed this with 200 variations on the phrase “Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you.”

| Language · Literature

Bequest

Reader Nick Hare just sent me this. The opening line of Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit’s 1984 book Reasons and Persons is “Like my cat, I often simply do what I want to do.” But in fact Parfit didn’t own a cat. David Edmonds describes the solution in his 2023 biography Parfit:

edmonds parfit quote

(Thanks, Nick.)

| Literature · Oddities

The Augsburg Book of Miracles

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Augsburger_Wunderzeichenbuch_%E2%80%94_Folio_85.jpg

What is this? A mysterious illuminated manuscript seems to have appeared in Augsburg, Germany, around 1550, but no one knows who created it or for whom. The name of Augsburg printmaker Hans Burgkmair appears on one page, so he’s thought to be a contributor, but the manuscript contains no introduction, title page, table of contents, or dedication; instead it launches directly into a catalog of divine wonders and marvels of nature, each illustrated in full color.

“The manuscript is something of a prodigy in itself, it must be said,” wrote Marina Warner in the New York Review of Books in 2014. “[I]ts existence was hitherto unknown, and silence wraps its discovery; apart from the attribution to Augsburg, little is certain about the possible workshop, or the patron for whom such a splendid sequence of pictures might have been created.” Here it is.

| Art · Literature · Oddities · Religion

Mnemonic

English history 1066-1154 as depicted by Mark Twain:

https://books.google.com/books?id=BW4yAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3

He had discovered that taking notes using pictures helped to fix details in his memory, and in an 1899 essay he recommended the practice to children. An explanation of the diagram, starting at the bottom:

21 whales heading west: These represent William I, whose reign lasted 21 years (1066-1087). “We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William’s begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw.”

13 whales heading east: William II, 1087-1100. The change in direction marks a change in leaders. “Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that would be confusing and a damage.”

35 hens going west: Henry I, 1100-1135. “That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.”

19 steers going east: Stephen of Blois, 1135-1154. “That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen’s name. I choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for history.”

The essay was published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in December 1914, four years after Twain’s death.

| History · Humor · Literature