W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

W. C. Fields mastiffs, perhaps because of their colonial upbringing, and he never even nicked one. The King at last persuaded the maharajah to tie the dogs to a tea table, and Fields ran through a number of tricks with all his old skill. Notwithstanding his cavalier treatment of England, Fields liked many things about the country. He was one of the few foreigners, at the time of his death, who had learned to savor English food. While he admitted that the vegetables often tasted as though they had been boiled in a strong soap, he took a fancy to such standard British preparations as Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, mutton chops, dressed fowls hanging outside poulterers' shops, and kidney pie. Also, he approved of the English custom of reading good literature. He found a noticeable difference, he said, in the quality of reading matter favored by Americans and Englishmen. Whereas most Americans, in his opinion, were content with best sellers and the stories in popular magazines, even relatively uneducated Englishmen stuck pretty close to material of classic dimensions. Patriotically determined to raise his own cultural level, at least, to that of the English, Fields bought a huge trunk and transported it in a hansom to a secondhand bookstore. "Serve you?" asked the proprietor with politely concealed astonishment when Fields and the driver staggered in under their burden. "Fill her up," said Fields, pointing to the trunk. "Anything particular the gentleman desires?" asked the proprietor (according to Fields). "Books? Nice bunch old magazines? Some wadding, or tow?" "Books," said Fields. "Fill the trunk with books." "Gentleman favor any particular color? A nice red looks uncommonly well in a trunk. Ferdl" — here he raised one hand and snapped his fingers at a scrawny youth in the rear — "bring up the Bidwell folio! Man was recently took up on suspicion of scut 94