Quote: [Remark on death of Calvin Coolidge] How can they tell? (antedating Dorothy Parker 1936)

[victor steinbok]

While checking out some more facts on the subject, I came across
another comment, supposedly about Coolidge. The bio claimed that,
according to "a critic", Coolidge "could be silent in five languages".
The trouble is, an identical quip has been attributed variously for a
long time. Both the attribution and the target of the quip varied
widely and some appeared 40 years before Coolidge's presidency.
Attributions include Disraeli and Will Durant, while targets include
Von Moltke (1892--attributed to Disraeli and others), Bekker (1902)
and Baron Sidney Sonnino (1920), as well the Queen's Foreign Messenger
Service a.k.a. the King's/Queen's Messenger Corps (1898, attributed to
an anonymous Secretary of State). Disraeli's alleged remark about Von
Moltke appears to be the earliest of this bunch, although, by no means
guaranteed not to be apocryphal.

This was just a top-level quick search without getting into any
detail. I have not checked quotation collections or much else, so
there is plenty of room to dig.

VS-)

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Remark on death of Calvin Coolidge] How can they tell?
>
> This acerbic comment has been attributed to Wilson Mizner and Dorothy
> Parker. The Yale Book of Quotations has an attribution to Mizner in
> July 1938 and Parker in 1944. I found no matches in the ADS archive or
> Barry Popik's website.
>
> Calvin Coolidge died on January 5, 1933 and Wilson Mizner died April
> 3, 1933 according to Wikipedia. So it is still possible to improve the
> cite below, and the creator of the quip is still uncertain.
>
> Here is a 1936 cite attributing the remark to Parker in the volume
> "Enjoyment of Laughter" followed by a 1937 newspaper cite that reviews
> the book "Enjoyment of Laughter" and also contains the quote:
>
> Cite: 1936, Enjoyment of Laughter by Max Eastman, Page 155, Simon and
> Schuster, New York. (Google Books snippet view; Checked on paper in
> First reprinting 1970, Johnson Reprint Corporation)
>
> Or Dorothy Parker's remark when told that Calvin Coolidge was dead:
> How can they tell?
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=ZIVZAAAAMAAJ&q=Calvin#search_anchor
>
>
> Cite: 1937 May 13, The Glasgow Herald, "American Humour: Review of
> Enjoyment of Laughter by Max Eastman", Page 2, Colum 4, Glasgow,
> Scotland. (Google News archive)
>
> But here one gives the prize to Dorothy Parker, that vitriolic lady
> who "can't read Wodehouse." When told that President Coolidge was dead
> all she said was, "How can they tell?"
>
> Garson

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