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

[George Thompson]

As an adaptation of this thought, there was the characterization of Moe Berg, the educated baseball player of the 1930s, that he spoke [x number] of languages, but couldn't hit in any of them.

He's been the subject of a biography: The Catcher Was A Spy.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Saturday, July 17, 2010 7:26 pm
Subject: Re: Quote: [Remark on death of Calvin Coolidge] How can they tell? (antedating Dorothy Parker 1936)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org