unearths some literary gems.
[According to her opening chapter, Wells's memoir is to be about the portion of her life *not yet lived* (hence the title), rather than a conventional autobiography covering the past--a genre she holds in contempt: "Why should a biographer look back and never forward? Why harp on the past when the future beckons?" (By the way, I don't know when Wells began drafting this book, but when it was published she was 75 years young.)
But the bad news (for her, at least) is that she doesn't deliver on this promise, and after the introductory chapter she goes on basically to write about her past. But the good news is, there are still many, many highlights [cue snippets...]
***
A more concise or better biography [than the "Solomon Grundy" nursery rhyme] can, probably, never be done.
***
My childhood? Wearisome to read. My married life, my literary career, my approaching middle age--bah, it sounds like a shelf of the Elsie Dinsmore books.
***
I invariably run up against the theory that the fourth dimension is Time. Which is silly. I know all about Time, and I think it is a negligible quantity.
***
Of course it caresses your vanity to be asked [for advice], but if you must respond, make your advice so vague and generalized that it cannot be definitely followed.
***
His riposte was so quick and apt and his further conversation so much cleverer than mine that I cease reporting it.
***
To me, the Nineties connote shirtwaists and humor. [From a chapter called "Those Nineties."]
***
On one occasion I entered [Oliver Hereford's] studio during one of these brief spells of spotlessness, and unthinkingly tore a letter to bits. Oliver walked the floor in dismay. What could be done with the scraps? I suggested that I had a half-filled waste-basket out in my New Jersey home. He hailed the fact with joy, and stuffing the scraps in an envelope, directed and mailed it to my address.
***
My sister told [Oliver Hereford] of a club we were forming and offered him the privilege of membership.
"It is," she explained, "the Esurient Club. Do you know the meaning of esurient?"
"No," said Oliver. "I've not the faintest idea what it means."
"Then you can join. A member must not know the meaning of the word, he must not ask anyone what it means and he must not look in any dictionary."
"Then how does he find out what it means?"
"Oh, you have to wait until you run across it in a book, or hear it accidentally in a casual conversation. When that occurs, you are given a degree, but, of course, you mustn't tell the other members what it means."
Oliver said he would think it over before joining the club, and later wrote to my sister that, after all, he had discovered he was ineligible for membership.
"I'm sorry," he wrote, "but I find that to belong to a club like that one must not only fail to know what esurient means, but one must care what it means. I don't."
***
[Re. misprints in Shakespeare editions.] "Ferdinand, with hair-upstaring" [someone quoted], claiming that it should be up-starting.
"No," said Oliver, "anybody could say up-starting, but that's commonplace. Up-staring,--fine!"
***
[Oliver H. thought well of the limerick form, in theory, yet rarely wrote them.]
But he said he had two lines to use as third and fourth in any limerick, so he was never at a loss, except for the other three.
His patent inside lines were:
When they said, "Goodness me!"
She replied, "That may be."
***
[Hereford wrote to Wells]
"I'm planning to re-write the alphabet, and have it begin with C is for Carolyn....It's a terribly simple thing to do if you don't lose your nerve. You just consider the alphabet as a circle, and instead of (when you straighten it out) dividing it between Z and A you divide it between B and C and make B the last letter and C the first. Don't say anything about it though, as I want to surprise the schools--and the writing world."
***
[And I guess we're fortunate that The Lark survived long enough to be digitized, because Wells tells us that it was printed on] paper which totally disintegrates if you look at it....I always turn my head as I pass the shelf that holds my copies.
***
His poems were on the order of those lays that are always asking where things are,--like the snows of yesteryear or my wandering boy tonight.
***
[In Stratford-on-Avon]
I knew there must be a fitting tribute of emotion displayed at sight of certain material memorials, and equally well knew that whatever might be my sense of reverential homage, in me such power of emotional demonstration did not abound. I should therefore take with me someone who could adequately supplement my shortcomings.
Sentimental Tommy, of course!
To be sure that was not his real name [it was Harry P. Taber], but I call my friends whatever I like.
***
[Walking Encyclopedias et al. Dept.]
Though he is a Bartlett's Concordance to Shakespeare, in men's clothing, I knew, for a surety, that he would quote no line from the poet the whole day.
***
All through the Nineties I met people. Crowds of people.
Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.
***
Richard Hovey...outwhistled Whistler in his gentle art.
***
[The British Museum] is as cold and forbidding as one of the Elgin Marbles, and it takes longer to get the book you ask for than to write one.
***
The only things I hope for are things I know I shall get anyway. I hope that tomorrow will be Tuesday, and it will be.
***
Headlessness is a great boon to ghosts. If the Headless Horseman had had a head, there would have been no story about him. A ghost always wants a severed head to carry round under his arm; I've heard they borrow them from one another.
[...]
But we have to have heads....while we might be better-looking, still we would look eccentric without them.
***
On the table is...my fountain pen, the only one in the world that will write on request.
[Cf. JC-E, "Amanda's Birthday Party": The words were barely out of her mouth before she began noisily rummaging through a drawer full of utensils, searching for the paring knife she had made a point of handing to Steve ten minutes before, with the declaration that this was “absolutely the only knife in the world” suitable for chopping carrots.]
[Back to Carolyn]
Also there is a gold pencil, but just for ornament, as no gold pencil was ever worth its keep.
***
[from a tribute by Caroll Watson Rankin]
One sees her work each month, each week;
One likes her style, her wit, her cheek.
As all the signs would indicate,
Is Carolyn Wells a syndicate?
Bonuses:
1. Gelett Burgess (I think) alludes to "a very Eiffel of a compliment," presumably, a compliment of metaphorically towering size.
2. The verb form "waste-basketed"--new to me, though I see that it brings various Google Books results.
