Sep 19 2012

The N’s and O’s and P’s, actually

Rosemary

Same seat at the library. Did I mention that I’m in among the biographies?

Quote from a random book off a random nearby shelf:

 

“Paderewski looked conspicuous.  Newspaper cartoonists and jesters in the street delighted in him.  The little felt hat which he wore on the very top of his exuberant hair only accented its singular appearance, and many anecdotes of the day showed how extraordinary he must have looked to the man in the street.  One night after a recital in Berlin he called a cab to take him home.  Rather loudly the driver asked where he should go; but before Paderewski had time to answer, a voice from the crowd on the pavement shouted: ‘To the barber’s.'”

 

From Ignace Paderewski by Rom Landau, Crown Publishers, 1934

Apparently by the time this portrait was painted, the exuberant hair had retreated, possibly in embarassment.

As he was in 1930.

(The book is random, but the quote isn’t… I browsed a bit until I found something interesting, as with the Nightingale bio, something that caught my attention. Depending on randomness for an actual quote could have turned up something like: And then he caught a cold and spent a week in bed. There’s such a thing as too random.)