BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:PEOPLE

V.S. NAIPAUL’S LAUGHTER

“…V.S. Naipaul’s laughter was more than a laugh. 
It was a surprise bellow of appreciation, made 
resonant by tobacco smoke and asthma. It made 
you wonder whether he saw something you didn’t.”

            Paul Theroux. “The Enigma of Friendship”

**
OSCAR WILDE’S BROTHER DESCRIBED BY MAX BEERBOHM

  “At Broadstairs Max met Oscar Wilde’s brother 
Willie—nearly as amusing as Oscar but without 
his charm. 

   “Quel monster! Dark, oily , suspect yet awfully
 like Oscar: he has Oscar’s coy, carnal smile and 
famous giggle and not a little of Oscar’s esprit. 
But he is awful –a veritable tragedy of family-likeness.”

David Cecil. Max (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1964)

**

ELIZABETH WILKINSON

“We cannot doubt that the women fighters were athletes 
too. Elizabeth Wilkinson (later, Stokes) fought with 
swords, knives, quarter-staff, and her fists, for at 
least nine years in the amphitheaters of London. One 
eyewitness describes how these fighting women took 
the stage with a surgeon present to sew up their cuts 
as the fight progressed, to allow them to continue. 
Elizabeth Wilkinson/Stokes was the star, and in 1723 
was described as the City Championess, but by 1726 
she had progressed to Championess of England, and 
in 1728 to European Championess. Her adversaries 
described her as bold, celebrated, famous, victorious, 
and, an impregnable fortress, and commented on her 
resoluteness. Others said that she had been train’d
 from her Cradle to the Toils of War. She wasn’t 
reticent about her own ability either, and said of 
herself that she was invincible, and that she had 
always come off with victory, and was an Orb above 
her Sex; so, an undefeated champion. Does William 
Hogarth give us a glimpse of her in the top-left 
corner of the advertising card that he produced 
for James Figg and his amphitheater? We know 
that she fought there in the early 1720s before 
moving on, with her second husband, to appear 
in their own amphitheater.”

from
Glimpses of women athletes in 18th-century England 
February 11, 2022 | By Peter Radford 

**
NOEL COWARD & THE COMPOSITION OF “MAD DOGS
AND ENGLISHMEN 

"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." 
(The saying "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out 
in the midday sun" is believed to have been coined 
by Rudyard Kipling.) The song begins with the first 
10 notes of "Rule Britannia". This song is considered 
a patter song, because the lyrics are mostly spoken
 rather than sung. One of the memorable lines in 
the first chorus is "But Englishmen detest a siesta".
   According to Sheridan Morley, Coward wrote the 
song while driving from Hanoi to Saigon "without pen, 
paper, or piano". Coward himself elucidated: "I 
wrestled in my mind with the complicated rhythms and 
rhymes of the song until finally it was complete, 
without even the aid of pencil and paper. I sang it
 triumphantly and unaccompanied to my traveling 
companion on the verandah of a small jungle guest 
house. Not only Jeffrey [Amherst], but the gecko 
lizards and the tree frogs gave every vocal indication 
of enthusiasm".

from WIKIPEDIA

**

AUDIE MURPHY & TONY CURTIS  & THE
HANDKERCHIEF GAME

“… Audie was a great Western star. Nobody could outdraw 
him. One day he said, “Let’s play drop the handkerchief.” 
I didn’t know what that was, but Audie explained it: 
The two rivals stood holding the ends of a big bandana 
between their teeth. The first one that dropped the 
handkerchief could reach for his gun. Audie never 
dropped the handkerchief first; he always waited 
for the other guy, and he still beat everybody.
   “What I didn’t know was some of the guns had blanks 
in them and some didn’t. I thought we were just fooling
 around with empty guns, but he had two guns -—an empty
 one in his holster and one with a blank in it behind 
his back. When I dropped my end  of the handkerchief, 
he pressed the one gun into my belly and fired the 
other behind his back. I heard the shot, smelled 
the gunpowder, looked down, and saw smoke rising.
 Then I fainted. They carried me into one of the 
makeup rooms to bring me around. Everybody got a 
big fuckin’ laugh out of it. Audie apologized for 
years and we became friends later, sort of, but 
I never really liked him after that.”

Tony Curtis and Barry Paris. The Autobiography (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993). 


ON THE FUNERAL OF MANOLETE

“He was known as Manolete and is almost invariably 
described as the best bullfighter of the 1940s and 
among the greatest of all time. When Manolete died 
a British newspaper reported that the funeral went 
on for four hours and a military plane flew low 
overhead, showering the 100,000 mourners in attendance 
with red carnations. An American reporter wrote: 
“Manolete’s death carries for his followers the 
impact that the death of the entire Brooklyn Dodger 
team would produce in Flatbush.”

Jon Mooallem. “Manolete and Me” in The New York Times 
Magazine (May 8, 2022)
**

   ALBERT SCHWEITZER

 Albert Schweitzer at Lamberene
 Preferred the Pipe Organ to the tambourine,
 Playing ad hoc
 Johann Sebastian Bach.

**

  ELIZABETH HARDWICK

  Elizabeth Hardwicke
  Had a wick-
  ed & cutting wit.
  What else do I know about E.H.? That’s it.
  
LJP


  


**