Since 1913, U.S. Capitol antiquarians have had a small embarrassment on their hands. It was in that year that a handsome bronze bust was discovered squirreled away in a room under the Capitol building’s crypt in Washington, D.C. You don’t throw something like that away, obviously, even if you have no place to keep it; even, in fact, if you don’t know who the bust is supposed to represent. And so far, no one does, though, as the New York Times reported on July 17,1979, “hundreds of people have studied it, some becoming convinced it was of Thomas Jefferson, Hans Christian Anderson, Abner Doubleday, or even George Washington.” Well, there it sits, on top of a filing cabinet in room HB28 of the Capitol building, under the watchful eye of researcher Florian Thayn. If any of our readers can provide clues, we will be happy to pass them along.
UP TO THEIR EARS IN TRADITION
Every December 21, Farmington, Maine, erupts into its annual winter festivities in hectic observance of Chester Greenwood Day. At the age of fifteen, Chester Greenwood (18581937), a local boy, fashioned a pair of muffs to protect his ears from the cold while skating. He later perfected the design, and at nineteen received a patent for what he insisted on calling Greenwood Ear Protectors. Whatever he chose to call them, what Greenwood had done was to invent earmuffs, and for more than sixty years he made it his business to manufacture and sell them.
Myron Starbird, past chairman of the Chester Greenwood Day Committee, was kind enough to pass along further information about Greenwood: “As an inventor, he was granted more than one hundred patents, and was selected by the Smithsonian Institution as one of the fifteen outstanding American inventors. … Other Greenwood inventions were: a mechanical mousetrap, self-priming spark plugs, doughnut hooks, portable camps, a conical bearing for automobiles, airplane shock absorbers, spring steel rakes, steel bows for archery, wood-boring tools, lathes of many descriptions—including a jewelers lathe made for his brother —and a host of others.”
A man of many parts, obviously, but for anyone forced to endure a New England winter, the invention of earmuffs alone would have guaranteed Greenwood’s immortality.
MARY, MARY? QUITE THE CONTRARY
Some observant Anglophiles have Owritten in to take issue with one of the captions that accompanied “When Does This Place Get to New York?” in our June/July, 1979, issue. That caption identified “Queen Mary herself” on page 87 visiting the Queen Mary. Not so, these readers point out. The visitor in question (see photo at right) is in fact the then Queen Elizabeth, consort of King George VI, and the mother of today’s Queen Elizabeth II.
There were other responses to the article, which related the career of the Queen Mary in peace and war. One such was from Joseph L. Glenn of Falls Church, Virginia, who was on the vessel on October 2,1942, when it rammed the British cruiser H.M.S. Curaçao: “The caption accompanying the picture on page 88 is in error. The Curaçao and her men did not go to the bottom of the North Sea. Instead, it was in the North Atlantic off the coast of Northern Ireland; you could faintly see land on the horizon. … We left New York the morning of September 27 and docked in Scotland early Saturday morning, October 3. We were supposed to land on October 2, but the accident delayed us. When we first arrived, we had to wear the same clothes for over two weeks, because our barracks bags got wet in the hold.”
The Reverend William B. Holberton of Rochester, New York, boarded the ship in New York on September 18,1944, and on the trip to the British Isles got a glimpse of Winston Churchill: “Rumors flew left and right … including the rumor that there was to be a VIP aboard. We sailed on Wednesday, September 20, early in the morning in a dense fog. All troops had to be below decks with the portholes secured. Some men said later that we paused momentarily in the Lower Bay in order for the VIP to board from a destroyer. Exactly how he boarded I do not know, but the next story making the rounds was that Winston Churchill was aboard, on his return to England from the Quebec Conference just concluded. My first view of this great wartime figure occurred the next evening when a showing of the film Wilson was scheduled. … All the replacement officers were on hand in the Main Salon, and the ‘brass’ began to make their appearances. Finally, the doors opened and in walked Mr. Churchill and his most gracious and attractive wife, together with a large group of his working party. Amidst the applause and cheers of the assembled officers, Mr. Churchill waved a cheery greeting, and we noticed that he was cigar-less! The strict ‘no-smoking’ rule for the makeshift theater applied even to him.
“I have always wished that he had checked with me when he wrote in his memoirs about the trip. This highlight of my wartime career was described by Churchill himself in Triumph and Tragedy in rather flat terms: ‘The voyage home was without incident.’”
INDIGESTION, SALT RHEUM, AND CASH ON THE BARRELHEAD
In our June/July, 1978, issue we ran a short article having to do with Mark Twain’s invention of a “self-pasting” scrapbook, then followed it up with a “Postscripts” feature in the February/March, 1979, issue that emphasized Twain’s willingness to write promotional letters for the use of the scrapbook’s manufacturer, the Slote & Woodman Company. Now, Robert Daley of the Burbank Studios of California sends along yet another promotional squib put out by the author of Huckleberry Finn: Certificate Messrs. Slote, Woodman & Co.:
I hereby certify: That during many years I was afflicted with cramps in my limbs, indigestion, salt rheum, enlargement of the liver, & periodical attacks of inflammatory rheumatism complicated with St. Vitus’s dance, my sufferings being so great that for months at a time I was unable to stand upon my feet without assistance, or speak the truth with it. But as soon as I had invented my Self-Pasting Scrap Book & began to use it in my own family, all these infirmities disappeared. In disseminating this universal healer among the world’s afflicted ones you are doing a noble work; & I sincerely hope you will get your reward—partly in the sweet consciousness of doing good, but the bulk of it in cash. Very Truly Yours, Mark Twain
Given under my hand this 10th day of February, A.D. 1878.
