My Word!

Don Bradley, member of the Boston "We've Come for the Davenport" Chapter of the Robert Benchley Society, passed on this item of interest:

In the Spring 2011 "The Hemingway Review" they have included this topic by Nat Benchley. I received my copy of the "Review" yesterday.

Abstract: In the mid-1930s, the humorist Robert Benchley invited his friend Ernest Hemingway up to his suite at the Royalton Hotel in New York. During the visit, Hemingway wrote lewd or silly inscriptions to Benchley in four of his books: In Our Time, A Farewell to Arms, Green Hills of Africa, and The Fifth Column. Here Benchley's grandson Nat offers up those inscriptions for edification and amusement.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hemingway_review/summary/v030/30.2.benchley.html

* * *

Robert Benchley, in his essay "Why Does Nobody Collect Me?", which appears, beginning on page 354 of Chips off the Old Benchley, describes Hemingway paying a visit to Benchley's room in New York City, during which the author and adventurer "took a pen in his chubby fist, dipped it in a bottle of bull's blood, and wrote the following:

To Robert ("Garbage Bird") Benchley, hoping that he won't wait for prices to reach the peak [blank]. From his friend, Ernest ("[blank] [blank]") Hemingway

The "Garbage Bird" reference in connection with me was a familiarity he had taken in the past to describe my appearance in the early morning light of Montparnasse on certain occasions. The epithet applied to himself, which was unprintable except in Ulysses, was written deliberately to make it impossible for me to cash in on the book."

Benchley goes on to describe Hemingway's personalization of Mr. Benchley's copy of A Farewell to Arms, in which he "filled in each blank in the text where Scribner's had blushed and put a dash instead of the original word in every case."

Sunday Sudoku

Complete the grid so that each row, column, and 3-by-3 framed block contains the letters P A R K B E N C H (only once) RATED DIFFICULT

Register Now and Avoid July 1st Price Increase -- Robert Benchley Soc. Annual Gathering, Nov. 11-13, Washington, D.C.

The Eighth Annual Gathering of the Robert Benchley Society will be Friday through Sunday, November 11-13, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

The main event will be the Saturday, November 12, 2011, Annual Humor Awards Dinner will be held at the University Club of Washington, D.C. At this event we'll be giving out two Robert Benchley Society Awards for Humor. Mike Tuck of Eden Prairie, Minn., will be presented with the 2010 Robert Benchley Award for Humor for his essay Story Time with the Children. At this ceremony we'll also honor the soon-to-be-announced winner of the 2011 competion. Our 2011 celebrity judge of the competition Mark Russell is a member of the University Club, where we'll hold the ceremony.

For more information and to register go to http://www.robertbenchley.org/AG2011/registration.htm.

Cocktail Culture at RISD through July 31st

Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920-1980 is the first multi-disciplinary exhibition to explore the social ritual of the cocktail hour through the lens of fashion and design.

Organized by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art’s Department of Costume and Textiles, Cocktail Culture features stunning fashion apparel from Balenciaga to Schiaparelli, jewelry, textiles, decorative and fine art, film, photographs, and more. More than 220 objects are included, drawn from the Museum’s vast holdings and loans from other museums and private collections.

Cocktail Culture is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated book with five essays, which is available for purchase in the Museum's shop, risd|works, and online at risdworks.com.

Cocktail Culture is sponsored by Swarovski, with additional support from The Coby Foundation and the Museum Associates.

Sunday Sudoku

Complete the grid so that each row, column, and 3-by-3 framed block contains the letters P A R K B E N C H (only once) RATED EASY

Sunday Sudoku

Complete the grid so that each row, column, and 3-by-3 framed block contains the letters P A R K B E N C H (only once) RATED EASY

17th Century Venetian Scoops Benchley!

I was digging around in the Muse database at the Boston Athenaeum the other day and found twenty-nine citations about Robert Benchley.

One interesting piece of Benchley trivia is contained in an article from the Journal, Eighteenth Century Life, called Water, Windows, and Women: The Significance of Venice for Scots in the Age of the Grand Tour, by Iain Gordon Brown, in the Fall, 2006 issue.

Brown claims that Benchley's famous telegram from Venice -- "Streets full of water -- please advise." – was at least partly anticipated in 1670! He says that Benchley stole the phrase -- though I think this is a bit of good-natured hyperbole, since I refuse to believe they had telegrams back then. Here is Mr. Brown's take on things:

"Richard Lassels's The Voyage of Italy, published posthumously in 1670 [is where] the term 'Grand Tour' is first used. This early manuscript . . . personified Venice as a beautiful woman, one of the fairest in Europe, holding up her head in the midst of the sea with Neptune for her guard and the reason for her sleeping securely.

“'The streets,' Lassels writes, 'are full of water.' (fols. 322 – 25). It was he who said this long before Robert Benchley stole the phrase in the twentieth century, and got himself into the books of travel quotations."

Well, this is a fine kettle of Venetian something-or-other!