Miscellany Hodgepodge

By Donald Morrison

As a young man, J. Bryan III learned a great secret from Sherlock Holmes: the world's first consulting detective kept a "commonplace book," a volume in which he set down observations and literary snippets for future reference. That discovery prompted Bryan, 82, a veteran U.S. magazine editor and author -- his memoir, Merry Gentlemen (and One Lady), was published last year -- to compile a commonplace book of his own. In less skillful hands, the rubber , cement would have shown through. Hodgepodge, happily, is a literate, lifelong miscellany, illuminated with flashes of comedy and rue.

Where else could a reader find in one place that the most popular numbers on a roulette wheel are 17 and 29, that until the mid-19th century, many Swiss believed washing the feet weakened the eyes, or that the absentminded Voltaire once began a letter "My dear Hortense" and ended it "Farewell, my dear Adele"? Where else is it written that 22 of the 633 men aboard Lord Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar were Americans, that the Syrian general Nicator fainted at the sound of a flute, that the 1883 explosion of the Krakatoa volcano was the loudest sound ever heard on earth -- it was clearly noted 2,058 miles away in Ceylon -- that the Spanish Steps, Rome's great gathering place for tourists, are actually owned by France and leased to Italy for an annual fee of one lira (about .07 cent)? Where else can it be learned that Henry VII's Queen Elizabeth was the original model for the four queens in a deck of playing cards, that Venus is the only planet with a rotation from east to west or that Cyrus the Great could address every soldier in his army by name?

Though the book is organized topically, Bryan scatters memorable quotes throughout. Among them: Thomas de Quincey's observation that "if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing, and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking," as well as Balzac's "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" and Fred Allen's "A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on." There are quizzes: 1. Was Romeo a Capulet or a Montague? 2. Which Wright brother made the first flight at Kitty Hawk? 3. What word has six successive consonants? 4. How many countries does Brazil border?* And lists of products that need inventing, like a device that reminds the forgetful driver in the car ahead that he is still blinking for a turn. For lagniappe, Hodgepodge offers foreign words the English language could use: magari!, Italian for "Would that it were so!"; razliubito, Russian for the feeling one has for someone he once loved but now does not. And some of history's more memorable deathbed utterances: "Either that wallpaper goes or I do" (Oscar Wilde).

This ultimate scrapbook suggests an inevitable question: Why would anyone want to know the Lord's Prayer in Maltese, the age at which John Stuart Mill began learning Greek (three) or any of the other variegated trivia Bryan has gathered? Answer: to enrich the mind, astound friends and amuse dinner-table partners. The latter objective receives its own 19-entry chapter, in which Novelist Virginia Faulkner's advice is cited: "I ask the gentleman on my right, 'Are you a bed-wetter?', and when we have exhausted that, I remark to the gentleman on my left, 'You know, I spit blood this morning.' " Hodgepodge has an erudite word for just about every purpose and contingency, including, in a section on critics, Ambrose Bierce's review of another volume: "The covers of this book are too far apart." The covers of this one are too close together.

FOOTNOTE: *Answers: 1. Montague; 2. Orville; 3. latchstring;

4. ten.