All posts tagged Bernard Shaw

My Great grandfather was a Baboon! Dumas outburst! (Post No.5497)

Compiled by London Swaminathan
swami_48@yahoo.com
Date: 2 October 2018

Time uploaded in London – 7-40 am (British Summer Time)

Post No. 5497

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Family and Children Anecdotes

The elder Dumas (Alexander Dumas) was once interviewed by an enterprising reporter, who, like many other admirers of the novelist, was curious about his ancestry.
Is it true that you are a quadroon Mr Dumas? He asked.

I am, sir, Mr Dumas replied .
So your father….?
Was a mulatto
And your grandfather?
Was a negro.
Dumas patience was running out but the reporter was a bold man and continued,
May I inquire who your great grandfather was?
A baboon, sir! Thundered Dumas .
A baboon! My ancestry begins where your ends!

quad·roon

/kwäˈdro͞on/

noun

a person who is one-quarter black by descent.

mu·lat·to

/m(y)o͝oˈlädō/

noun

a person of mixed white and black ancestry, especially a person with one white and one black parent.

Ne·gro

/ˈnēɡrō/

noun

a member of a dark-skinned group of peoples originally native to Africa south of the Sahara.

adjective

relating to black people.

ba·boon

/baˈbo͞on/

noun

a large Old World ground-dwelling monkey with a long doglike snout, large teeth, and naked callosities on the buttocks. Baboons are social animals and live in troops.

Xxx

Marrk Twain’s Ancestors

The story is told that Mark Twain was once a guest of an English man who took him, with some pride, into a manorial hall hung with a huge tapestry depicting the King Charles the First. The host placed his fingers with great pride upon the figure of one of the obscure clerks of the court and said ‘ An ancestor of mine ‘.
Twain, always offended by such ostentation, casually put his finger upon one of the judges seated on the tribunal and remarked,
An ancestor of mine but it is no matter , I have others.

Xxx

May Flower Ship

To a man who had proudly said,
My ancestors came over in the Mayflower, Will Rogers retorted,
My ancestors were waiting on the beach

Xxx

Mark Twain, whenever confronted by people who were haughty about their ancestry, was fond of saying,
My grand father was cut down in the prime of his life. My grandmother always used to say that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes earlier, he could have been resuscitated.

Xxxx

Two Irishmen

Children Anecdotes
Two Irish men were discussing their families. One was boasting about his seven sons, that he had never had any trouble with any of them.

“Yes, indade, he said, they’re just the finest boys in the world. An’ would you believe it, I niivver laid violent hand s on any one of them except in self defence”.

Xxx

Boiled eggs please!

Babies Anecdotes

Mrs K, after expressing her love for her children added tenderly,
And how do you like babies, Mr Lamb?
His answer, immediate, almost precipitate, was
B- b- boiled, Madame

Xxx

Great man Walt Whitman
When a baby in a crowded Washington horse car was screaming, Walt Whitman took it from its mother, into his own arms; the infant stared at him a long time, then snuggled against him and fell asleep. Presently the conductor got off the car to get his supper, and Whitman acted as conductor the rest of the trip, still holding the sleeping baby.

Xxx

Snoring Actress!

Eleanore Duse, the great actress, once offered to look after the year old baby of some friends while the family went for a walk.

What will you do if she cries? They asked.

Do? I will sing to her, said the resourceful Duse
I have lots of tricks to entertain babies .
When the parents returned, they found the baby sitting quietly in her carriage, her eyes fixed with a hypnotic stare upon the sofa. There lay the great actress, her head drooping, her mouth open, her eyes shut. She was snoring — regularly , sonorously snoring.

Slowly she opened her eyes
Sh! She said. If I stop for a second, she will cry .
Then she explained,
I sang for her; I danced for her; I made faces at her; I acted the whole of Paolo and Francesca, to her and she hated it all. But the snoring— from the first faint sign — she loved it.

xxx

Cross Breed is dangerous! Bernard Shaw

I posted 15 anecdotes from the life of Bernard Shaw. Following children anecdote was one of them:-

1.Children

There is a legend about the fervent message Bernard Shaw received from Isadora Duncan expressing the opinion that by every eugenics principle they should have a child.

“Think what a child it would be”, she said, “with my body and your brain.”

Shaw sent the following response, discouraging the preposition, “Think how unfortunate it would be if the child were to have my body and your brain.”

Xxx subham xxxx

Age Anecdotes (Post No. 3549)

Image of Cicero, Roman emperor

Compiled by London swaminathan

Date: 16 January 2017

Time uploaded in London:- 20–17

Post No.3549

Pictures are taken from different sources; thanks.

contact; swami_48@yahoo.com

Fabia Dollabella saying she was thirty years of age.
Cicero answered:”it must be true, for I have heard it these twenty years.

Xxx

92 year old man after a young girl!

When Oliver Wendel Holmes was still on the Supreme Court bench, he and Justice Brandeis took walk every afternoon. On one of the occasion s, Holmes, then 92, paused to gaze in Frank admiration at a beautiful young girl who passed them. He even turned to look at her as she continued down the street. Then, turning to Brandeis, he sighed, “Oh! what I wouldn’t give to be 70 again!

Xxx

A farmer called out to Colonel Thomas Hart Benton and inquired to know his age. The Colonel replied, “According to the calendar my age is seventy four, but when anything is to be done I am thirty five years old, sir”.

Xxx

Bernard Shaw on Youth!

Youth, said Bernard Shaw , ” is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children “.

Xxx

I do not approve of shadows in painting “, said Queen Elizabeth to Daniel Meyers. ” You must strike off my likeness without shadows.

The queen was near sixty when she said this and the shadows, as she charitably called them were wrinkles big enough to have had a straw in them.

Xxx

I am 38, only my Mum is 41!

Stirred by the patriotic fervour that swept over the country, an Irish man of 41 tried to enlist in
the army. Although the recruiting sergeant saw that this man would make a good soldier, he could not accept any man over 38.

“Listen, fella”, said the sergeant, ” are you sure of your age? Suppose y ou go home and think it over, and then come back tomorrow.”

Next day the Irish man returned.
“Well,how old are you now? Asked the sergeant.
“I was wrong yesterday “,said the hopeful recruit. ” Sure , I am 38. It’s e old mother who is 41″.

Xxx

Ex President of USA

In his e extreme old age John Quincy Adams was slowly and feebly walking down a street in Boston. An old friend accosted him and shaking his trembling hand asked, ” and how is john Quincy Adams today?

“Thank you “, said the ex-president, ” John Quincy Adams is well, quite well, I thank you. But the house in which he lives at present is becoming quite dilapidated. It is tottering upon its foundations. Time and the season s have nearly destroyed it. Its roof is pretty well worn out . Its walls are much shattered, and it tremble s with every wind. The old tenement is almost uninhabitable, and I think John Quincy Adams will have to move out of. It soon. But he himself is quite well, quite well “.

SUBHAM

15 Anecdotes from George Bernard Shaw’s Life- Part 1

Article No.2013

Written by London swaminathan

Swami_48@yahoo.com

Date : 23 July 2015

Time uploaded in London : 14-17

1.Children

There is a legend about the fervent message Bernard Shaw received from Isadora Duncan expressing the opinion that by every eugenics principle they should have a child.

“Think what a child it would be”, she said, “with my body and your brain.”

Shaw sent the following response, discouraging the preposition, “Think how unfortunate it would be if the child were to have my body and your brain.”

2.Shaw—an imaginary Personage?

Bernard Shaw’s name first became familiar to the general public as the result of scurrilous attacks, disguised as interviews, made upon by him by a section of the London evening press. The interviewer would force his way into Shaw’s modest apartment, apparently for no other purpose than to bully and insult him.

Many people maintained that Shaw was an imaginary personage. Why did he stand it? Why didn’t he kick the interviewer downstairs? Failing that why didn’t he call the police? It seemed difficult to believe in the existence of a being so Christian as this poor persecuted Shaw appeared to be. Everyone talked about him.

As a matter of fact, the interviews were written by Shaw himself.

XXXX

3.Shaw as a Critic

When Bernard Shaw wrote dramatic criticisms for the “London Saturday Review” he commented about a certain play in his column as follows:

“I am in a somewhat foolish position concerning a play at the Opera Comique, whither I was bidden this day week. For some reason I was not supplied with a program; so that I never learned the name of the play. At the end of the second act the play had advanced about as far as an ordinary dramatist would have brought it five minutes after the first rising of the curtain; or say as far as Ibsen would have brought it ten years before the event. Taking advantage of the second interval (intermission) to stroll out into the Strand for a little exercise, I unfortunately forgot all about my business, and actually reached home before it occurred to me that I had not seen the end of the play. Under these circumstances, it would ill become me to dogmatize on the merits of the work or its performance. I can only offer the management my apologies.”

4.Practical Joking

George Bernard Shaw was poring over a second hand book stall of volumes much marked down, when he came across a volume containing his own plays. The book was inscribed, moreover, to a friend, beneath whose name on the fly-leaf, G.B.S. saw, written in his own hand, “With renewed compliments. G.B.S,” and sent it back to the early recipient.

5.Habits

In reply to an invitation to lunch with Lady Randolph, George Bernard Shaw wired: “certainly not; what have I done to provoke such an attack on my well known habits?”

Lady Randolph sent another telegram:

“Know nothing of your habits; hope they are not as bad as your manners.

6.Shaw came to conquer England

Lillah Mc Carthy asked Bernard Shaw why he had come to live in England instead of seeking inspiration among the Dublin (Irish) poets – George Moore, A.E.Yeats and the others. He answered: “Lord bless you, I am old enough to be A.E.’s father; and George Moore had not discovered Ireland then. He was in Paris studying painting. He hadn’t even discovered himself. The Ireland that you know did not exist. I could not stay there, dreaming my life away on the Irish hills. England had conquered Ireland; so there was nothing for it but to come over and conquer England. Which, you will notice, I have done pretty thoroughly.”

7.Oscar Wilde on G.B.Shaw

When G.B.Shaw, as a young man, emerged from his native Ireland and moved to England he began writing a column for a London weekly publication. At that time Oscar Wilde was enjoying his vogue as a wit and epigram maker. One evening an acquaintance, calling upon Wilde, happened upon a copy of the paper to which Shaw was a contributor and reading therein one of Shaw’s characteristic articles which was signed with the author’s initials, said to his host:

“I say, Wilde, who is chap G.B.S. who is doing a department for this sheet?”

“He is a young Irishman named Shaw,” said Wilde. “Rather forceful, isn’t he?”

“Forceful”, echoed the other, “well, rather! My word, how he does cut and slash! He doesn’t seem to spare anyone he knows. I should say he is in a fair way to make himself a lot of enemies.”

“well,” said Wilde, “as yet he hasn’t become prominent enough to have enemies. But none of his friends like him.”

Rest of the anecdotes in Part 2……………..

Tamil and Vedas

All posts tagged Bernard Shaw

My Great grandfather was a Baboon! Dumas outburst! (Post No.5497)

Age Anecdotes (Post No. 3549)

15 Anecdotes from George Bernard Shaw’s Life- Part 1

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