#cass canfield

[misomythus]

Apparently Lafcadio Hearn was known at Harper's for having, uh, a way with words at business correspondence.

Liars—and losers of mss.—employers of lying clerks and hypocritical thieving editors, and artists whose artistic ability consists in farting sixty-seven times to the minute—scaliwags, scoundrels, swindlers, sons of bitches:— Pisspots-with-the-handle-broken-off-and-the-bottom-knocked-out, ignoramuses with souls of slime composed of seventeen different kinds of shit. Know by these presents there exist human beings who do not care a thimbleful of piss for "their own interests," and if it be indeed to their own interests to deal with liars, scoundrels, thieves, and sons of bitches. Know also there exists one particular individual, whose name is at the end of these words, whom all the money of all the states of the United States of America and Mexico could not induce to contribute one line to your infernally vulgar, beastly, Godey's-Lady's-Book-Magazine—you miserable, buggerly, cowardly, boorish, brutal sons of bitches.

[linusjf]

Cass Canfield: Scrambled eggs

“Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back in the shell.” —CASS CANFIELD

[misomythus]

Nevertheless, what we now regard as primitive methods were in some ways highly effective and make publishers of the present era look slow and unadventurous. Today it usually takes seven months—almost as long as for a baby to be born—from the acceptance of a manuscript to placing a book on sale, whereas the early Harpers would accomplish this in twenty-four hours!

This can't be true, can it? Even if the editing was already done, a 24-hour typesetting and printing pipeline for books in the mid-nineteenth century? They had typesetting machines but I didn't think they were that good.

[misomythus]

An Australian, an Englishman and I spent the long Christmas holiday in Paris... The Australian picked up one of the fancy girls sitting around the Café de Paris one evening and disappared with her, not returning to our hotel rooms until the next morning. I ordered breakfast and was surprised when the Englishman refused to eat with us; he explained to me later that he'd been so shocked by our friend's behavior that he couldn't bring himself to speak to him. He added that, although as head boy of the school at Harrow, he'd had his pick of the younger ones, the idea of spending the night with a tart was more than he could stand! His homosexual reaction astounded me, but I learned something about adapting my views to the contrasting standards of various nationalities.

[misomythus]

[John Jay] Chapman was an odd and extremely talented individual. Once, in Maryland, he announced his intention of delivering an antislavery speech after a lynching; he hired a large hall for the purpose, but only one old Negro woman appeared. His oration was so outstanding that it was printed in The Atlantic. Chapman had both conscience and high standards. After a [Porcellian Club] dinner, having consumed quantities of champagne, he horsewhipped a classmate for making derogatory remarks about his fiancée. Deeply ashamed of his behavior, he rushed to the fireplace and thrust his hand into the flames until it was burnt to a stub. "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off."

[misomythus]

At Sillig's [in Switzerland] we studied endlessly, without letup beyond an hour's recess; I did badly, except in history, and was duly chastened by Mother. But she did notice my good mark in history and asked what period I'd been studying. Well, I couldn't quite answer that. This naturally surprised her, and when I was unable to identify even the country involved, she couldn't believe it. I had simply done as I was told from day to day and had learned three pages of history at a time, by heart. That was the French system of education in those days.

[misomythus]

Among the pupils at Picke's school on Fifth Avenue was "Neely" Vanderbilt. The poor boy never had a chance. One afternoon his mother, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, called mine and said, "A dreadful thing happened today; my chaffeur failed to call for Neely at school so that he had to come home in a common taxi!"

The Vanderbilts' Fifth Avenue house was famous for its large, elaborate and exceedingly dull dinner parties; I attended one after the First World War and was stopped short by the war memorial to Neely in the front hall. There were his war mementos, enclosed in a vitrine, all his army equipment—even his toothbrush—on prominent display. Not particularly moving as Neely had escaped from the war unscathed.