MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON IHAVE been given a book called Ripley's New Believe It or Not. It is fully illustrated and published by Messrs. Stanley Paul for the sum of nine shillings and sixpence. Once upon a time there was an American called Robert Ripley who specialised in collecting " wonders, miracles, freaks, mon- strosities and almost impossibilities." So successful was he in the pursuit of the extraordinary that he sold the results of his researches to a number of newspapers, engaged a staff of assistants, and died an eminent man. I ought, I suppose, to have heard of the " Believe It or Not " series before ; the funny little illustrations that accompany it are, in fact, vaguely familiar to me ; I must have seen them somewhere in the past. But the inquisitiveness of Mr. Robert Ripley came as a revelation to me.. I read his book of miracles with delight and ever-renewed sur- prise. I do not usually enjoy the type of mind that revels in small facts. I, of course, envy and revere those of my friends who possess memories like filing cabinets, nor do I really resent the expression of self-esteem which they assume when correcting the errors of others. My own memory is excellent, in the sense that it is able to summon up remembrance of things past without their losing either their colour or tone ; but as a source of accurate information my memory is about as useful to me as the Aegean Sea. I have therefore taught myself to admire, and not to dislike, those of my friends who get things right ; while remaining of the opinion that those who prefer little beads of information to necklaces of fantasy do not possess, if they will forgive my saying so, attractive minds.
* * * * • I should have liked, none the less, to meet Robert Ripley. I know that he was a bore: I know that he would have insisted on telling me how people test the smoothness of billiard balls or the sex of eggs ; I fear he might even have asked me questions about the murder of the Emperor Paul of Russia or how exactly they used plaster of Paris to torture criminals in Arabistan. I should have borne all this with patience, and in gratitude to destiny for having brought me face to face with the archetype of bore, the ruler and purveyor of bores, the universal provider of boring stories, the .King bore, the Emperor bore, the bore of bores. Being one of those who are really fond of bores, provided only that I can get them to myself, I should have immediately established with Robert Ripley relations of intimacy and ease. I should have endeavoured with such deftness as I can command to distract him from his task of providing useless information and to encourage him to tell me frankly about himself. How curious and rare must be the character of a man who really did travel to the Hadramaut because he had heard it said that he would find is those. mud cities exact replicas of the skyscrapers of Manhattan ; who really did dash out to the Sinai peninsula to find the Burning Bush ; and who really did visit the upper waters of the Amazon to discover a tribe of Indians who could commit suicide painlessly by just taking thought. I should like to talk to a man who claimed to have " donated " the United States with a national anthem, who really believed that he had seen hens in Morocco wearing yashmaks, and who in February, 1944, informed listeners upon the wireless that Hitler would die at 2.30 exactly in the afternoon.
* * * * The charm conveyed by Robert Ripley's researches and-pub- lications hovers like some mirage or dust-devil in the waste land between fad and fancy, between myth and science. At one moment he will tell us in a little panting aside that " The Gazelle and the Llama never drink water," and at the next he will assure us that the caryatids of the Erectheum shrieked so shrilly when Lord Elgin sought to transport them to London- that the Athenian workmen fled in panic. Quite honestly he will delude us by saying that a glass of water in the time orNero cost the modem equivalent of £1,500, and then add what I suppose Is' the perfectly accurate item that the name " Johnson " in Welsh is written Bevan, Jevan, Shevan, Avan or Zevan. Who, had it not been for Robert Ripley, would have known that during the French Revolution Charles de la Bussiere saved the lives of 34,000 of his fellow-aristocrats by soaking the trial records in water so that they became illegible ? Who among us, but for Ripley, would have known that Sultan Mustapha of Turkey was the father of 582 sons, but never produced a single daughter ? How few of us, had it not been for Mr. Ripley's researches, would have realised the fact that the speedometer of Mr. A. P. Waxman, of New York State, recorded 11,111 miles at 11.11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month of, I suppose, 1911. I find the last item of information rather disturbing. I have been told by alienists that the earliest symptoms of certifiable lunacy are often a perplexed interest in numerology. Once people start regarding Mr. Waxman's speedometer as an object of interest, they are getting near the point when they imagine that nurse- maids scowl at them in Kensington Gardens. It is then that they have to be put away. * * * * Occasionally Mr. Ripley and his staff will abandon the short paragraph or graphic illustration for more extended articles. That on " The Camel " begins with the following startling sim- plifications: " It has a harelip, the teeth and stomach of a mouse, the feet of an elephant, the blood of a bird, the temperature of a reptile. . . Two letters of the alphabet were named after it. . . . It will die at the sight of a dead camel ; its gait is responsible for the discovery of butter." I do not say that this article was written with the definite purpose of causing bewilder- ment ; it is merely that when people concentrate too much upon what will surprise the reader, the information they convey may turn out to be lacking in correct perspective. No person who did not know camels would derive from the above description any recognisable impression of their identity. I incline to the belief that butter was first discovered by simpler means, and I am quite certain (from personal experience) that camels do not die the moment they observe the decease of one of their fellows in a caravan. One reads the article, and is left pondering on the fallibility of human knowledge. And then one passes on and the infallible charm of Mr. Ripley rises again. " The more camomile," one reads, "is trodden upon the more it grows." This instructive paragraph is followed by another. " Man is distinguished from anjmals by his ability to speak. . . . There is a tragic exception. The Queungua Indians are born with a strange natural constriction of their throat which, combined with defective vocal chords, makes it impossible for them to utter a single word."
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. Mr. Ripley has so amicable a manner that we are not for one instant depressed by the length and breadth of our own ignor- ance. I never knew till now that Prince Esterhazy used a Titian to line his overcoat, or that man is the only animal that sleeps on its back, or that there are 151 words beginning with " gl " referring to light, or that Professor Rask, of Copenhagen, spoke 230 languages, or that Sweet William was called after Butcher Cumberland. I certainly never knew, and never wanted to know, that -if you desire to multiply 105263157894736842 by 2, all you have to do is to move the 2 from the last to first place. I do not believe this, any more than I believe the bit about the Erectheum. Moreover, people who are fascinated by such multi- plication tables must be very near dementia, and those who set themselves or their friends such puzzles must be both improbous and vain. On second thoughts, I do not feel that I should really like to go a railway journey with Mr. Robert Ripley or any member of his staff. Unless, of course, they shared the affliction, of the Queungua Indians. •
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