Hose and Cons

Sir John Cutler had pair of silk stockings, which his housekeeper, Dolly, darned for a long term of years with worsted; at the end of which time, the last gleam of silk had vanished, and Sir John’s silk stockings were found to have degenerated into worsted. Now, upon this, a question arose amongst the metaphysicians, whether Sir John’s stockings retained (or, if not, at what precise period they lost) their personal identity. The moralists again were anxious to know, whether Sir John’s stockings could be considered the same ‘accountable’ stockings from first to last. The lawyers put the same question in another shape, by demanding whether any felony which Sir John’s stockings could be supposed to have committed in youth, might legally be the subject of indictment against the same stockings when superannuated; whether a legacy left to the stockings in their first year, could be claimed by them in their last; and whether the worsted stockings could be sued for the debts of the silk stockings.

— Thomas de Quincey, “Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater,” from Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, September 1838

Moonlighting

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J.J. Sylvester was a brilliant mathematician but, by all accounts, a lousy poet. The Dictionary of American Biography opines delicately that “Most of Sylvester’s original verse showed more ingenuity than poetic feeling.”

What it lacked, really, was variety. His privately printed book Spring’s Debut: A Town Idyll contains 113 lines, every one of which rhymes with in.

Even worse is “Rosalind,” a poem of 400 lines all of which rhyme with the title character’s name. In his History of Mathematics, Florian Cajori reports that Sylvester once recited “Rosalind” at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute. He began by reading all the explanatory footnotes, so as not to interrupt the poem, and realized too late that this had taken an hour and a half.

“Then he read the poem itself to the remnant of his audience.”

See Poetry in Motion.

Painting the Lily

About 50 years after Shakespeare’s death, John Dryden’s brother-in-law James Howard rewrote Romeo and Juliet as a tragicomedy in which the lovers are happily married. His production was so unpopular that the play was performed as a tragedy on alternate evenings, but it was enough to inspire a series of dramatists to try their hands at revising the Bard.

British poet laureate William Davenant added dancing and singing to Macbeth, all reportedly “excellently performed, being in the nature of an opera.” In Irish poet Nahum Tate’s 1681 revision of King Lear, the fool is absent, the king survives, Cordelia marries Edgar, and the three sisters are reconciled. In the 1740s, David Garrick raised Juliet’s age to 18, dropped the bedroom scene, removed Rosaline, and added a brief reunion between the lovers in the tomb. (He considered these changes “few and trifling.”)

The one really interesting such idea lay with Lewis Carroll, who dreamed of “Bowldlerising Bowldler,” “i.e. of editing a Shakespeare which shall be absolutely fit for girls.” He planned to “erase ruthlessly every word in the play that is in any degree profane, or coarse, or in any sense unsuited for a girl of from 10 to 15; and then to make the best I can of what is left.” Alas, he never completed the project.

Right Thinking

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At a London dinner, Sydney Smith overheard the woman next to him decline gravy. He turned to her and said, “Madam, I have been looking all my life for a person who disliked gravy–let us swear eternal friendship.”

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

— Edmund Clerihew Bentley

C Sickness

“Light crosses space with the prodigious velocity of 6,000 leagues per second.”

La Science Populaire, April 28, 1881

“A typographical error slipped into our last issue that it is important to correct: the speed of light is 76,000 leagues per hour — and not 6,000.”

La Science Populaire, May 19, 1881

“A note correcting a first error appeared in our issue number 68, indicating that the speed of light is 76,000 leagues per hour. Our readers have corrected this new error. The speed of light is approximately 76,000 leagues per second.”

La Science Populaire, June 16, 1881

Rejection Slip

John Irving’s 1978 novel The World According to Garp contains the complete text of a novella, “The Pension Grillparzer.” Garp, an aspiring writer, submits it to a magazine and receives a summary rejection: “The story is only mildly interesting, and it does nothing new with language or with form. Thanks for showing it to us, though.”

When Irving’s editor asked whether this might seem too abrupt, Irving showed him a rejection slip from the Paris Review — he had submitted “The Pension Grillparzer” to them just to see what would happen and, receiving this response, inserted it verbatim into the novel. “I tried the story with American Review, too, they turned it down. And even two non-literary magazines didn’t want it: The New Yorker and Esquire.”

“It was a good feeling when ‘The Pension Grillparzer’ was repeatedly singled out as one of the strongest parts of the novel, and it won the Pushcart Prize for short fiction that year. One literary magazine, Antaeus, did publish it. Naturally, I’ve liked them ever since.”

In Memoriam

While Bret Harte was serving as proofreader for a provincial newspaper in Yreka, Calif., he was asked to consider a flowery obituary that contained the sentence “Even in Yreka her chastity was conspicuous.”

Harte realized with a smile that the writer had probably meant “charity,” so he underscored “chastity” and put a question mark in parentheses in the margin, to indicate that the word should be checked.

The following morning he picked up the paper and read: “Even in Yreka her chastity was conspicuous (?)”

Road Games

Lord John Russell told us a good trick of Sheridan’s upon Richardson. Sheridan had been driving out three or four hours in a hackney coach, when, seeing Richardson pass, he hailed him and made him get in. He instantly contrived to introduce a topic upon which Richardson (who was the very soul of disputatiousness) always differed with him; and at last, affecting to be mortified at Richardson’s arguments, said, ‘You really are too bad, I cannot bear to listen to such things; I will not stay in the same coach with you.’ And accordingly got down and left him, Richardson hallooing out triumphantly, ‘Ah, you’re beat, you’re beat!’ Nor was it till the heat of his victory had a little cooled, that he found out he was left in the lurch to pay for Sheridan’s three hours’ coaching.

Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, 1853

All’s Fair

Literary critic A.N. Wilson panned Bevis Hillier’s 1988 biography of John Betjeman. To get even, Hillier forged a love letter ostensibly written by Betjeman in 1944 and forwarded it to Wilson under the name Eve de Harben (an anagram for “Ever been had?”). Wilson took the bait and included the forged letter in his own biography of Betjeman, which was published in 2005.

Here’s the letter. It contains a hidden message — can you find it?

Darling Honor,

I loved yesterday. All day, I’ve thought of nothing else. No other love I’ve had means so much. Was it just an aberration on your part, or will you meet me at Mrs Holmes’s again — say on Saturday? I won’t be able to sleep until I have your answer.

Love has given me a miss for so long, and now this miracle has happened. Sex is a part of it, of course, but I have a Romaunt of the Rose feeling about it too. On Saturday we could have lunch at Fortt’s, then go back to Mrs. H’s. Never mind if you can’t make it then. I am free on Sunday too or Sunday week. Signal me tomorrow as to whether and when you can come.

Anthony Powell has written to me, and mentions you admiringly. Some of his comments about the Army are v funny. He’s somebody I’d like to know better when the war is over. I find his letters funnier than his books. Tinkerty-tonk, my darling. I pray I’ll hear from you tomorrow. If I don’t I’ll visit your office in a fake beard.

All love, JB

Click for Answer

A Marketing Problem

In 1938, poet Chard Powers Smith took a half-finished novel to Scribner’s. They liked the text but objected to the title, which they thought would discourage customers. Smith agreed to change it, and the next year The Artillery of Time was published.

Smith’s original title was The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck’s novel appeared a few weeks later.