“There is not one command in all the Gospel for public worship. … The frequent attendance at it is never so much as mentioned in all the New Testament.” — William Law
Waste Paper
John Warburton (1682–1759) collected drama manuscripts during a fruitful period in English literature. Unfortunately, he’s remembered chiefly for his carelessness — he left a pile of 50 manuscripts in his kitchen and returned months later to find that his cook had destroyed nearly all of them in lighting fires and lining pie pans.
Among the losses were plays by Massinger, Ford, Dekker, Greene, Davenant, Tourneur, Rowley, Chapman, Glapthorne, and Middleton — and three by William Shakespeare.
See A Poor Review and A Loss for Words.
Cute or Bust
Martin Goetze’s 1896 “device for producing dimples,” left, was uncomfortably similar to a hand drill — an ivory knob was placed on the site and a rotating cylinder made the surrounding skin “malleable.”
Evangeline Gilbert’s improvement, right, patented in 1926, was essentially a headpiece that drove depressions into the cheeks. “The length of time on this pressure will vary with different persons, but it has been found that, if the appliance be used during the night, dimples will be present during the next day.”
Baltasar Gracian wrote, “Beauty and folly are generally companions.”
Literary Stature
Comparative popularity of British novelists at the end of the 19th century, from Strand, August 1906. The giant is Dickens, followed by Thackeray and the now largely forgotten Hall Caine. Lesser mortals, left to right, are Thomas Hardy, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Marie Corelli, Rudyard Kipling, Mary Augusta Ward, J.M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stanley Weyman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, George Meredith, Anthony Trollope, Charles Kingsley, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Israel Zangwill, Charles Reade, and E.F. Benson.
“It should be pointed out that this diagram does not pretend to apportion the degree of contemporary literary reputations. It only shows what kind of fiction has been most read by the masses during the past twenty years.”
In a Word
pregustation
n. the act of tasting before another
On June 21, 1931, a brace of partridges was ordered from a poulterer at Aldershot, Hampshire, for delivery to the nearby bungalow of Lt. Hubert Chevis. A cook stored them in an open meat safe outside the building, then roasted them and served them to Chevis and his wife.
Chevis took one mouthful and said, “It tastes horrible!” His wife touched it with her tongue and pronounced it “fusty.” Both were taken ill within minutes, and Chevis died of strychnine poisoning early the following morning.
On the day of Chevis’ funeral, and before any story had appeared in the press, his father received a telegram that read “HOORAY. HOORAY. HOORAY.” The form had been signed with the name Hartigan and the address of a Dublin hotel, but no one by that name was found there.
When the Daily Sketch published a photograph of this telegram on Aug. 1, the editor received a postcard:
Dear Sir,
Why do you publish the picture of the Hooray telegram.
J. HARTIGAN
And Chevis’ father received a further postcard on Aug. 4:
It is a mystery they will never solve. Hooray.
J. HARTIGAN
He was right. Someone had found an opportunity to poison the birds between their arrival in a locked van and their being served, but Chevis had no known enemies and no one recognized the name Hartigan. The case has never been solved.
Off the Menu
On a Canadian speaking tour, Winston Churchill found himself sitting next to a Methodist bishop.
A young waitress offered each of them a glass of sherry.
Churchill accepted his, but the bishop said, “Young lady, I’d rather commit adultery than take an intoxicating beverage.”
Churchill said, “Come back, lassie, I didn’t know we had a choice!”
Math Notes
Church Pants
The following story has been told, but I have not met with it in its absolute correctness. The Duke of Wellington received a letter, while sitting in the House of Lords, from an eminent landscape designer and great authority on botanical matters, J.C. Loudon. The duke had lost sight of him for some years. It was a note to this effect: ‘My Lord Duke–It would gratify me extremely if you would permit me to visit Strathfieldsaye at any time convenient to your grace, and to inspect the Waterloo beeches. Your grace’s faithful servant, J.C. Loudon.’ The Waterloo beeches were trees that had been planted immediately after the battle of Waterloo, as a memorial of the great fight. The duke read the letter twice, the writing of which was not very clear, and, with his usual promptness and politeness, replied as follows, having read the signature as ‘J.C. London,’ instead of ‘J.C. Loudon.’ ‘My dear Bishop of London–It will always give me great pleasure to see you at Strathfieldsaye. Pray come there whenever it suits your convenience, whether I am at home or not. My servant will receive orders to show you as many pairs of my breeches as you may wish, but why you should wish to inspect those I wore at the battle of Waterloo is quite beyond the comprehension of Yours most truly, Wellington.’ The letter was received, as may be supposed, with great surprise by the Bishop of London. He showed it to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to other discreet persons; they came to the melancholy conclusion that the great Duke of Wellington had evidently lost his senses. The Bishop of London (Blomfield) declared that he had not written to the duke for two years and to receive this extraordinary intimation puzzled the whole bench of bishops. Explanations, however, of a satisfactory kind, followed and the friendship of these worthy men was not changed.
— William Augustus Fraser, quoted in Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great, 1918
Street Marketing
Physicists Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee used to discuss their work over lunch at a Chinese restaurant on 125th Street in Manhattan. One day they made an important insight into parity violation, and the two received the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics.
After the award was announced, one of them noticed a sign in the restaurant window: “Eat here, get Nobel Prize.”
Bullet Train
On Oct. 15, 1856, the London Times published an alarming account of a rail journey in Georgia — the author, “John Arrowsmith of Liverpool,” claimed that half a dozen duels had broken out during a single day’s ride:
Of the two dozen passengers fifteen are mentioned as entering more or less into the action of the drama; twelve took a direct part in duels; six were killed, and three were left on the way fighting. Four of the duels were fought at convenient spots, the train stopping for the purpose; one was fought in the luggage car while the train was in motion; and the one with uncertain results was fought at a regular stopping place. Three of the dead bodies were left behind; one was carried from the scene of the duel and deposited on the luggage; another lay where it fell in the luggage car; another was throw out on the roadside.
After a torrent of ridicule from the American press, the retraction-shy Times tried to claim that the affair had taken place in 1828 — but that was “some dozen years,” one critic noted, “before the erection of a railroad in Georgia, or the invention of revolvers, the terrible weapons used upon the sanguinary occasion.” The hoaxer was never identified.