Mark Twain
Classy insults
If you love clever use of words these classy insults from a former era might tickle your fancy and brighten your day when the news is grim and the weather forecast is on the highest alert.
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill:
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”
Winston Churchill:
“Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second … If there is one.”
A member of Parliament to Disraeli:
“Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”
Disraeli:
“That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”
Walter Kerr:
“He had delusions of adequacy.”
Clarence Darrow:
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway:
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
Moses Hadas:
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”
Mark Twain:
“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
Oscar Wilde:
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
Stephen Bishop:
“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
John Bright:
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
Irvin S. Cobb:
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Samuel Johnson:
“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
Paul Keating:
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
Charles, Count Talleyrand:
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
Forrest Tucker:
“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
Mark Twain:
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
Mae West:
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
Oscar Wilde:
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
Andrew Lang:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts … for support rather than illumination.”
Billy Wilder:
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
Groucho Marx:
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
Winston Churchill:
‘He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Sometimes it’s enough just to have a good laugh.
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- “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
– Mae West
- “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
– Oscar Wilde
- “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… For support rather than illumination.”
– Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
- “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
– Billy Wilder
- “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx.
22.”He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Posthumous acclaim
Whenever I prepare for a lot of travelling the thought of my death flashes across my brain. Not in a morbid way, you understand, but just as a possibility. As someone once told me in my teens, always make sure you’re wearing decent undies when you go out in case you end up in a hospital or a morgue. (Well, I did have a very sheltered upbringing!) Anyway, I’ve just returned from four days hurtling along the Scottish, Welsh and English roads, grateful to God, the elements, and other drivers for my survival.
But during this latest epic journey it also crossed my mind that I hadn’t left instructions as to the disposal of two and a half as-yet-unpublished novels. Goodness, what might I have missed out on if I’d ended my days crushed between an articulated Tesco lorry and a Skoda in a remote Welsh village with an unpronounceable name?
After all, many now-famous writers have had their works published ages after their deaths. Did you know, for example, that fewer than a dozen of Emily Dickinson’s 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime? Her younger sister discovered a treasure-trove of her work after Emily’s death; but it took another 50 years before the critics recognised her talent. That’s like dying today, and waiting till my grandchildren are my age to be acclaimed. And a collection of unpublished essays and stories by Mark Twain appeared almost a hundred years after his death. Makes my couple of years’ wait seem insignificant, doesn’t it? Add to them, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, JRR Tolkien, Sylvia Plath … well, it all goes to show you don’t need an all-singing, all-dancing live author appearing on the Book Festival circuit to create a bestseller.
Indeed, plenty of the best-known names have only achieved real recognition posthumously (Jane Austen and Franz Kafka to name two of the most famous). And in some cases this was without the consent of the author (Kafka, Mark Twain); other people valued their work more highly than their personal wish to have it destroyed. Other authors have received prestigious awards after their death (Siobhan Dowd won the Carnegie medal only last week).
So the moral of my tale?
1. Stop worrying about delays in publishing and take heart from other authors who seemed to write faster than their publishers could (or would?) publish. Ernest Hemingway left five manuscripts which were published after his death; Catherine Cookson who published almost a hundred novels anyway, left nine behind when she died.
2. Keep writing, but make sure those beneficiaries named in my will know the facts about posthumous publication. And my publisher.
In writing about death, I’ve quite cheered myself up!