Above is the only known film footage of Mark Twain, shot at Twain’s Connecticut home in 1909. The women are thought to be his daughters Clara and Jean.
rarissima
n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints
In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton identifies five types of “persons who meddle with books”:
These groups seem to have been proposed by French librarian Jean Joseph Rive. Bibliographer Gabriel Peignot added four more:
After his Connecticut home was burgled in September 1908, Mark Twain posted a sign on the front door:
NOTICE
To the Next Burglar
There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth.
You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens.
If you want the basket put the kittens in the brass thing.
Do not make a noise — it disturbs the family.
You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that.
Please close the door when you go away!
Very truly yours,
S.L. Clemens
After performing in a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida, Cornelia Otis Skinner received a telegram from the author: EXCELLENT. GREATEST.
She wired back: UNDESERVING SUCH PRAISE.
He responded: I MEANT THE PLAY.
She replied: SO DID I.
Teaching at Cornell in the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov offered a European fiction course whose exam questions could be distressingly broad or pitilessly specific — some examples are given in an appendix to Lectures on Literature:
Bleak House
Madame Bovary
In his annotated copy of The Metamorphosis, Nabokov, a trained entomologist, observed that “A regular beetle has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes” — and thus Gregor Samsa is “a beetle with human eyes.”
Subtitled “A Novel in Woodcuts,” Lynd Ward’s 1929 parable Gods’ Man unfolds in images, making it an important forebear of the modern graphic novel. A young artist makes his way to the big city, where a masked stranger gives him a magic paintbrush. The adventures that follow remark on the roles of love and commerce in an artist’s life; in the end the stranger returns to claim a reward.
Despite its unusual format, Ward’s book sold more than 20,000 copies during the Depression, and he followed it up with five more wordless novels. When he died in 1985, he was at work on an ambitious seventh, which Rutgers published in 2001.
In the 1897 edition of Who’s Who, George Bernard Shaw listed his recreations as “cycling and showing off.”
To H.G. Wells he once wrote, “The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.”
Above: Antonio Cicognara, Saint George and the Princess, tempera on panel, 1475.
Below: Lewis Carroll, Saint George and the Dragon, photograph, 1874.
Of photography Carroll wrote, “It is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.”
Recently I was on the northern Queensland coast of Australia, in an Aboriginal reserve. In the most unlikely spot I encountered a beachcomber, who had been living there for several years. He was looking for floats and bottles, building a raft that would take him around the top of Cape York in one of the most dangerous channels in the world for current and wind — the Torres Straits. I asked him if he knew the risks.
‘I’m not bothered,’ he said. ‘You can go anywhere, you can do just about anything, if you’re not in a hurry.’
That is one of the sanest statements I have ever heard in my life.
— Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings, 2001
A letter from Lewis Carroll to Nature, March 31, 1887:
Having hit upon the following method of mentally computing the day of the week for any given date, I send it you in the hope that it may interest some of your readers. I am not a rapid computer myself, and as I find my average time for doing any such question is about 20 seconds, I have little doubt that a rapid computer would not need 15.
Take the given date in 4 portions, viz. the number of centuries, the number of years over, the month, the day of the month.
Compute the following 4 items, adding each, when found, to the total of the previous items. When an item or total exceeds 7, divide by 7, and keep the remainder only.
The Century-Item. — For Old Style (which ended September 2, 1752) subtract from 18. For New Style (which began September 14) divide by 4, take overplus from 3, multiply remainder by 2. [The Century-Item is the first two digits of the year, so for 1811 take 18.]
The Year-Item. — Add together the number of dozens, the overplus, and the number of 4’s in the overplus.
The Month-Item. — If it begins or ends with a vowel, subtract the number, denoting its place in the year, from 10. This, plus its number of days, gives the item for the following month. The item for January is ‘0’; for February or March (the 3rd month), ‘3’; for December (the 12th month), ’12.’ [So, for clarity, the required final numbers after division by 7 are January, 0; February, 3; March, 3; April, 6; May, 1; June, 4; July, 6; August 2; September, 5; October, 0; November, 3; and December, 5.]
The Day-Item is the day of the month.
The total, thus reached, must be corrected, by deducting ‘1’ (first adding 7, if the total be ‘0’), if the date be January or February in a Leap Year: remembering that every year, divisible by 4, is a Leap Year, excepting only the century-years, in New Style, when the number of centuries is not so divisible (e.g. 1800).
The final result gives the day of the week, ‘0’ meaning Sunday, ‘1’ Monday, and so on.
Examples
1783, September 18
17, divided by 4, leaves ‘1’ over; 1 from 3 gives ‘2’; twice 2 is ‘4.’
83 is 6 dozen and 11, giving 17; plus 2 gives 19, i.e. (dividing by 7) ‘5.’ Total 9, i.e. ‘2.’
The item for August is ‘8 from 10,’ i.e. ‘2’; so, for September, it is ‘2 plus 3,’ i.e. ‘5.’ Total 7, i.e. ‘0,’ which goes out.
18 gives ‘4.’ Answer, ‘Thursday.’
1676, February 23
16 from 18 gives ‘2.’
76 is 6 dozen and 4, giving 10; plus 1 gives 11, i.e. ‘4.’ Total ‘6.’
The item for February is ‘3.’ Total 9, i.e. ‘2.’
23 gives ‘2.’ Total ‘4.’
Correction for Leap Year gives ‘3.’ Answer, ‘Wednesday.’
(Via Edward Wakeling, Rediscovered Lewis Carroll Puzzles, 1995.)
