Reverses

the man who came to dinner

You never laugh at anything nice. A comedy that ends with a laugh is a comedy that ends not with a solution but with a fresh disaster. At the end of Gogol’s The Government Inspector the real government inspector arrives; the trouble is just beginning. At the end of George F. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s Broadway comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner, the eccentric Sheridan Whiteside, who has wrought havoc in the lives of the Middle American family in whose home he is stranded by a broken ankle, walks out the door to universal relief, slips on the front step, and breaks his ankle again. According to Arthur Koestler, laughter does not truly release tension because it does not solve the problem; it fritters away energy in purposeless physical reflexes that make action impossible. Laughter is not a solution, it is a sign of the problem. As a number of writers have observed, there is a built-in contradiction between comedy’s two purposes, laughter and the happy ending. In its normal operation [the reaching of a happy ending] the function of comedy is to make the audience stop laughing.

— Alexander Leggatt, English Stage Comedy 1490-1990, 2002

| Art · Entertainment

Fair Play

An extraordinary scene took place on Saturday last at a small village within three miles of Middleton. A half-witted fellow named James Driscott had cruelly ill-used his donkey. He was told by several of the villagers that he would be brought up before the magistrates and severely punished; but his informants said that if he consented to do penance for his inhuman conduct, no information should be laid against him. Discott gladly agreed to the proposed terms. The donkey was placed in the cart, and its owner, with the collar round his neck, was constrained to drag his four-footed servant through the village. The scene is described by a local reporter as being the most laughter-moving one he had ever witnessed.

— Illustrated Police News, Jan. 22, 1876

| Crime · Oddities · Society

Precocious

https://www.google.com/patents/US3091888

Robert Patch of Chevy Chase, Md., was only 5 years old in 1962 when he designed a toy truck that could be converted into a flatbed or a dump truck by altering the placement of the axles. His father, a patent attorney, saw that the truck’s design was unique enough to be patentable, so Robert signed the application with an X and had the mark witnessed by a notary public. When the application was granted, Robert became the youngest person in history to receive a U.S. patent.

The publicity meant nothing to him, but it did bring one benefit. He had made his working model from bottle caps, Scotch tape, nails, and old shoe boxes. Someone at US Keds, the shoebox brand, saw the story — and sent him a new pair of sneakers.

| Technology

An Anatomy Lesson

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atelier_van_Lieshout_(14385313960).jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Back in 2008 I mentioned that, as a joke, Mark Twain had slipped the word oesophagus into an otherwise innocent short story in 1902. I wrote at the time that he’d said that few people noticed anything amiss, but apparently a few did. In a letter to the Springfield Republican on April 12, Twain wrote, “I will say privately that I expected it to bother some people — in fact, that was the intention, — but the harvest has been larger than I was calculating upon. … It is time for me to speak up and stop the inquiries if I can, for letter-writing is not restful to me, and I am not having so much fun out of this thing as I counted on.”

He quotes two letters. The first is from a public instructor in the Philippines:

My Dear Sir: I have just been reading the first part of your latest story entitled ‘A Double-barrelled Detective Story,’ and am very much delighted with it. In part IV, page 264, Harpers’ magazine for January, occurs this passage: ‘far in the empty sky a solitary “oesophagus” slept, upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity and the peace of God.’ Now, there is one word I do not understand, namely, ‘oesophagus.’ My only work of reference is the ‘Standard Dictionary,’ but that fails to explain the meaning. If you can spare the time, I would be glad to have the meaning cleared up, as I consider the passage a very touching and beautiful one. It may seem foolish to you, but consider my lack of means away out in the northern part of Luzon.

The second is from a professor at a New England university:

Dear Mr. Clemens: ‘Far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing.’ It is not often I get a chance to read much periodical literature, but I have just gone through at this belated period, with much gratification and edification, your ‘Double-Barrelled Detective Story.’ But what in hell is an oesophagus? I keep one myself, but it never sleeps in the air or anywhere else. My profession is to deal with words, and oesophagus interested me the moment I lighted upon it. But as a companion of my youth used to say, ‘I’ll be eternally, co-eternally cussed’ if I can make it out. Is it a joke, or am I an ignoramus?

“Between you and me, I was almost ashamed of having fooled that man,” Twain wrote, “but for pride’s sake I was not going to say so. I wrote and told him it was a joke. … And I told him to carefully read the whole paragraph, and he would find not a vestige of sense in any detail of it.

“I have confessed. I am sorry — partially. I will not do so any more — for the present. Don’t ask me any more questions; let the oesophagus have a rest — on his same old motionless wing.”

(From Gary Scharnhorst, Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics, 2014.)

| Literature

Beginnings

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Victoriatothrone.jpg

First entry in Victoria’s diary, Aug. 1, 1832, when she was 13:

We left K.P. at 6 minutes past 7 and went through the Lower-field gate to the right. We went on, & turned to the left by the new road to Regent’s Park. The road & scenery is beautiful. 20 minutes to 9. We have just changed horses at Barnet a very pretty little town. 5 minutes past 1/2 past 9. We have just changed horses at St. Albans. The situation is very pretty & there is a beautiful old abbey there. 5 minutes past 10. The country is beautiful here: they have began to cut the corn here; it is so golden & fine that I think they will have a very good harvest, at least here. There are also pretty hills & trees.

Five years later, on the day of her accession, she wrote, “Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.”

| History

Collage

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Going_over_the_top_01.jpg

Glimpses from the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916:

“I was ordered to fetch the breakfast from the kitchens about a mile away. On the way back, in the trench, we came across a covey of young partridges and, as we walked along, we were driving them in front of us. A lot fell in a sump which was full of water so they would surely drown. But I could not see them drown, so I pulled the top off and got them out, put them in my steel helmet and lifted it up to the top of the trench. There, their mother was waiting and she chuckled them all together and off they went, never to be seen by us again.” — Pte F.G. Foskett, 7th Bedfords

“I suppose a shell hole is not the best place from which to admire anything but, believe it or not, waving about just over my head were two full-blown red poppies which stood out in pleasant contrast against the azure blue sky.” — Pte G.E. Waller, Glasgow Boys’ Brigade Battalion

“The worst sights were in our own trenches where some of the badly wounded had managed to crawl. We were not allowed to help any of them, but kept our machine-gun mounted on the parapet in case of a counter-attack. The wounded were trying to patch each other up with their field dressings. A chaplain tore his dog collar off in front of me and, with curses, said, ‘It is a mockery to wear it.'” — Pte C.A. Turner, 97th Brigade Machine Gun Company

“I could see, away to my left and right, long lines of men. Then I heard the ‘patter, patter’ of machine-guns in the distance. By the time I’d gone another ten yards there seemed to be only a few men left around me; by the time I had gone twenty yards, I seemed to be on my own. Then I was hit myself.” — Sgt. J. Galloway, 3rd Tyneside Irish

“Now we came on to a German machine-gun post and there were all the twelve of the crew lying dead around the machine-gun; a short distance away we saw the body of one of our sergeants, formerly one of the king’s footmen who joined up with us at Norwich. He had obviously accounted for the machine-gun crew, before he himself received his death blow. A strange feeling possesses one at such a moment. It seems as if one is detached and merely looking at a scene of carnage from a great distance.” — Pte WC. Bennett, 8th Norfolks

“I then went on to the second-line trench and jumped in, to see a German soldier lying on the parapet. With fixed bayonet I approached, then I saw his putty-coloured face which convinced me he was mortally wounded. The German brought up an arm and actually saluted me. I understood no German language but the poor chap kept muttering two words ‘Wasser, Wasser,’ and ‘Mutter, Mutter.’ It took me a minute or so to realize he wanted a drink of water. The second word I could not cotton on to. I am glad to this day that I gave him a drink from my precious water.” — Pte G.R.S. Mayne 11th Royal Fusiliers

“We are filled with a terrible hate. Our actions are born of a terrible fear, the will to survive. Some of the Germans were getting out of their trenches, their hands up in surrender; others were running back to their reserve trenches. To us they had to be killed. Kill or be killed. You are not normal.” — L/Cpl J.J. Cousins, 7th Bedfords

A company commander in the London Division’s Pioneer battalion was left out of the battle: “My recollection, after all these years, is of being in a trench discussing the rumours, helping with the wounded (we had four men killed) and occasionally lying in a bit of shelter, reading Pickwick Papers and watching the activities of a fat and grey rat.” — Capt. P.H. Jolliffe, 1/5th Cheshires

(From Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, 1971.)

| History