Tattle Tales

By Paul Gray

THE OXFORD BOOK OF LITERARY ANECDOTES

Edited by JAMES SUTHERLAND 382 pages. Oxford University Press. $15.

And then there was the story of Richard Burbage, the original Richard III. An Elizabethan groupie approached him after a performance in the early 1590s and asked him to visit her that night, announcing himself "by the name of Richard the Third." Burbage complied and was greeted by a message from one Will Shakespeare announcing "that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third."

Anyone who has faith in the veracity of that anecdote may also wish to make a down payment on Waterloo Bridge. As this grab bag of 484 snippets of British literary gossip demonstrates, when the unvarnished truth is lost a lacquered fabrication will do handsomely. Editor Sutherland, a professor at the University of London, may claim to have weeded out proven forgeries and falsehoods. But he readily admits to choosing (when more than one exists) the stylish version of each story, even though "it may have no apparent authority." And why not? As a class, authors may have no more spontaneous wit than plumbers or bank presidents. What they do have are literary friends (and enemies) who follow Santayana's dictum: "Sometimes we have to change the truth in order to remember it."

Terrible Superlatives. Assembled chronologically from Caedmon (circa 670) to Dylan Thomas, these footnotes and headstones have a variety of uses. Literary Anecdotes forms a handy vade mecum of great and terrible superlatives. What, for instance, is the best way to die? Surely it must be singing lustily, as did William Blake. Who invented the most uncomfortable method of fishing? The appropriately named Thomas Birch, who tried to make himself inconspicuous to the fish by dressing up as a tree. What is the most gallant method of repulsing a bore at a party? Undoubtedly, Robert Browning's: "But, my dear fellow, this is too bad. I am monopolizing you."

The book also presents a collage of classic one-liners for use in very special circumstances. Perhaps only once a millennium will a nobleman state that an actor-playwright will die either from venereal disease or hanging. Samuel Foote's riposte: "My Lord, that will depend upon one of two contingencies --whether I embrace your lordship's mistress or your lordship's principles." Hardly more common is the straight line offered to James Joyce by a burbling admirer: "May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?" Snapped Joyce: "No, it did a lot of other things too!" When prompted by the right question, even T.S. Eliot was capable of turning in a passable impression of Groucho Marx. Asked if most editors are not failed writers, Eliot said, "Perhaps, but so are most writers."

Most of these stories catch authors with their wigs off or their guards down. But not all anecdotes diminish their subjects. For every example of crankiness or distemper, there is a peek at private heroism and unsuspected virtues: Sir Walter Scott dictating three novels while he writhed in agony from attacks of gallstones; Samuel Johnson quietly doing public penance for a childhood act of disobedience committed 50 years earlier; Oscar Wilde, in prison and disgrace, discussing books with his respectful jailer; Poet John Stubbs, condemned to have his right hand cut off for offending Queen Elizabeth I, lifting his hat with his left hand and crying out, "God save the Queen!"

Surprisingly, Sutherland leaves out some prominent -- and promising --names. Where, for example, is Christopher Marlowe? Lewis Carroll is absent, not to mention his celebrated crushes on Victorian nymphets. And the book shows a predilection for minor clerics and third-rate poetasters that is a bit too donnish for 1975. Yet in the end, the musty, bibliomaniacal quality only adds to the volume's charm. Lord Chesterfield once told his son that "there are very many [books], and even very useful ones, which may be read with ad vantage by snatches and unconnectedly." This is one of them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.