Galahad at Blandings
(The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood)
by
P. G. Wodehouse
Literary and Cultural References
This is part of an ongoing effort by the members of the Blandings Yahoo! Group to document references, allusions, quotations, etc., in the works of P. G. Wodehouse. These notes, a work in progress, are by Neil Midkiff, with contributions from others as credited below.
The first American edition was published by Simon and Schuster, New York, on 31 December 1964, with the title The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood. The first British edition, titled Galahad at Blandings, was published by Herbert Jenkins Ltd., London, on 26 August 1965.
The American title was an invention of editor Peter Schwed, who re-titled several of Wodehouse’s novels over the years. “Brinkmanship” was a mid-fifties coinage credited to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, supposedly the art of diplomacy in the midst of a situation just short of going to war. Schwed’s blurb on the inside flaps of the dust jacket says that Galahad “comes perilously close to the Brink” in his machinations to bring young sundered hearts back together. However, even the word “brink” does not appear in Wodehouse’s text of either edition of the book, let alone “brinkmanship”; it seems clear that the British title was Wodehouse’s original choice. Indeed, he wrote to his UK publisher regarding the US dust jacket: “Did you ever see a ghastlier jacket in your life? … Taken in conjunction with the loathsome title, one feels that P. Schwed ought to rent a padded cell in some not too choosy lunatic asylum.”
Page references in these notes are based on the Penguin paperback edition, originally published 1966, in which the text runs from p. 5 to p. 192. A table of correspondences between the pagination of several available editions will open in a new browser window or tab upon clicking the link.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 |
Chapter One
Tipton Plimsoll (p. 5)
We met this wealthy young American, heir to a fortune based on a chain of supermarkets founded by his late uncle Chet Tipton, in Full Moon (1947). The short story “Birth of a Salesman” (1950; in Nothing Serious) takes place after the events of the present novel, as Lord Emsworth is in America in that story to attend Tipton’s wedding to Veronica Wedge.
Wilfred Allsop (p. 5)
This is the only book in which he appears; he is a nephew of Lord Emsworth. As his mother is never mentioned, he may possibly be the son of Lord Emsworth’s deceased sister Lady Jane, whose married surname is never mentioned; if so, he would be the brother of Angela who appeared in “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927).
head between his hands (p. 5)
Compare some similar passages in the annotations to Spring Fever.
Veronica, only daughter of Colonel and Lady Hermione Wedge (p. 5)
These characters were introduced in Full Moon (1947); Lady Hermione is one of Lord Emsworth’s ten sisters.
Rutland Gate, London S.W.7 (p. 5)
A very posh address in Knightsbridge; a street developed in the 1830s to the 1850s. Houses in Rutland Gate sell for many millions of pounds today, and are rarely on the market.
The Wedges’ London address was not given in Full Moon; perhaps the mention here is intended to indicate that the family is wealthy enough that Veronica’s attraction to Tipton Plimsoll is an appropriate match and not mere fortune-hunting.
Washington Square neighbourhood (p. 5)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
tickling the ivories (p. 6)
Playing the piano: the “white” keys of a piano were traditionally covered with ivory.
pint-size bozo (p. 6)
Pint-size or pint-sized as a colloquial description of a child or an adult of small stature dates from around 1920; Wodehouse also used it to describe Sandy Miller in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972).
For bozo see Bill the Conqueror.
fry me for an oyster (p. 6)
See The Girl in Blue.
jug (p. 6)
hoosegows (p. 6)
See Cocktail Time.
Monica Simmons (p. 7)
First appeared in Pigs Have Wings (1952).
Empress of Blandings (p. 7)
First appeared in “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927).
all-in wrestler (p. 7)
All-in is a type of wrestling without restrictions, with virtually every type of hold permitted. [JD]
little squirt (p. 7)
The OED calls this originally U.S. colloquial for a paltry or contemptible person, a whippersnapper, a fop. Wodehouse is cited from the 1967 quotation below.
“Who’s de little squirt, Mr. Maude?”
The Prince and Betty, ch. 29 (US edition, 1912)
“If there’s one bozo in this world I got no use for it’s a little squirt that double-crosses his pals.”
Joe the Dip to Horace in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 6.3 (1924)
She was leaning back with closed eyes, and he thought he had never seen such a little squirt in his life.
“Honeysuckle Cottage” (1925; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
“What induced me to speak as I did was the fact that Angela, the little squirt, had just been most offensive, and I seized the opportunity to get a bit of my own back.”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1934)
Whether it was excusable in the circumstances for Ricky at this point to tell Mr. Pott that he was lying in his teeth, and that only the fact of his being an undersized little squirt whom no decent man would bring himself to touch with a barge pole saved him from having his neck wrung, is open to debate.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 15 (1939)
“And I seem to recollect a conversation on the same subject with that little squirt, Trumper.”
Money in the Bank, ch. 20 (1942)
Briefly noting that this one was a blue-eyed little squirt who appeared to be in the highest spirits, he returned to the scrutiny of Veronica.
Full Moon, ch. 4.1 (1947)
“A frightful pie-faced little squirt named Celia Todd,” said Sidney and hung up with a hollow groan.
“Tangled Hearts” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Now I have you placed. So you were that little squirt.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1953/54)
I should imagine Stinker didn’t care overmuch for hearing his loved one described as a little squirt, though reason must have told him that that was precisely what she was, but he replied without heat.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1963)
Even when calling her a squirt and a half-portion he had thought of her as a comely squirt and a half-portion with plenty of sex appeal.
Company for Henry, ch. 7 (1967)
I might—indeed I would—have dotted in the eye a small young gawd-help-us or a gawd-help-us of riper years of the large economy size, but I couldn’t possibly get tough with an undersized little squirt who would never see fifty-five again.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 15 (1974)
beyond the veil (p. 8)
See Summer Lightning and Biblia Wodehousiana.
a long, stringy policeman… (p. 8)
Longtime Wodehouse readers will recognize the physical description of Officer Garroway from The Small Bachelor (1927) before we learn his name (p. 12 of the current edition).
youse … Mac (p. 9)
Garroway doesn’t use this sort of dialect in The Small Bachelor, where he is under the tutelage of Hamilton Beamish in pure English. Apparently by the time of the present novel he has reverted to his native forms of speech.
nights of wine and roses (p. 9)
Probably a joking alteration from the title of a 1958 play, The Days of Wine and Roses, by J. P. Miller, and its 1962 film adaptation, directed by Blake Edwards, about a young New York couple whose marriage and business success are tainted by alcoholism.
Dry (p. 10)
A teetotaler and advocate of prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Senator Opal in Hot Water (1932) is also (at least in his public persona) a Dry.
snifter (p. 10)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
highball (p. 10)
A drink of whiskey with ice and soda or other carbonated mixer such as ginger ale, served in a tall, straight-sided glass.
a guy at the Drones Club … who once got roped in to make a speech to a girls’ school (p. 10)
That was Bertie Wooster; see “Bertie Changes His Mind” (1922; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925).
For the Drones Club, see The Code of the Woosters.
shoot the breeze (p. 10)
American slang, first cited in military circles from the 1940s, for idle chat. This is the only instance of the phrase so far found in Wodehouse.
porch climbers (p. 10)
See Summer Moonshine.
dope pushers, sex fiends (p. 10)
This seems to be the only mention in Wodehouse of these miscreants.
whole boiling (p. 10)
Slang for “the whole lot”; figurative, derived from the complete set of ingredients boiled together in a stew pot or something similar. OED has a citation from 1837.
Sidney Price, one of the narrators of Not George Washington (1907), uses the term in ch. 17 of that book by Herbert Westbrook and Wodehouse; that is the only other usage so far found in Wodehouse.
take a gander (p. 10)
American slang for giving a glance at something, especially when stretching the neck in imitation of a goose. The only other usage so far found in Wodehouse is at the end of Money in the Bank (1942), in which Dolly Molloy is ”telling her Soapy to fetch out the li’l old jar so that she might take a gander at its contents.”
checked out (p. 11)
A colloquial American euphemism for having died, cited in the OED since 1921; presumably a figurative adaptation from checking out of a hotel. This is the only usage in this sense so far found in Wodehouse.
toad beneath the harrow (p. 11)
See The Girl in Blue.
Stock Exchange crash they’ve been having (p. 11)
It is difficult to assign dates in the real-life world to the Wodehouse stories and novels, but this would make a dating in the late 1920s or early 1930s at least plausible.
child of unmarried parents (p. 11)
an apartment house on Park Avenue (p. 11)
From 1949 to 1955, Plum and Ethel Wodehouse had an apartment at 1000 Park Avenue, New York.
in my kick (p. 11)
In my pocket. British and American slang cited since 1851, including an OED citation from Wodehouse’s Summer Moonshine [below].
“Set me back two-seventy-five, including tax, and I wish I’d got it in my kick right now.”
Mostly Sally/The Adventures of Sally, ch. 16.1 (1922)
“My dear old son, you may take it from me that there’s no limit—absolutely no limit—to what I can accomplish with fifty o’goblins in my kick.”
“Ukridge Sees Her Through” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
“Net result—three quid in my kick to keep me going till then and pay my fare down and buy flowers and so on.”
“A Bit of Luck for Mabel” (1925; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“After deducting expenses and paying off my fellow-shareholders, every extra week these people remained at The Cedars meant a matter of thirty-odd quid in my kick.”
“Ukridge and the Home from Home” (1931; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
A fellow with fifty millions in his kick doesn’t have to wear the mask.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1934)
So there Freddie was with five hundred and fifty francs in his kick, and needing a thousand.
“Noblesse Oblige” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
“And with only ten dollars in his kick, mind you.”
Summer Moonshine, ch. 1 (1938)
“Fifteen quid in my kick that makes.”
Lord Shortlands in Spring Fever, ch. 4 (1948)
“And meanwhile,” said Fanny, “every single individual person in the city with four dollars eighty in his kick will come burning up the sidewalks to get at the box office window.”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 20 (1952)
Lashings (p. 11)
“Floods”: an abundance of something. Anglo-Irish dialect cited in the OED since 1829. This is the only instance of the word in Wodehouse so far found.
a corpse that had been in the water several days (p. 12)
Jael the wife of Heber (p. 12)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
stewed (p. 13)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
Labour Day (p. 13)
Spelled Labor Day in US editions. A federal holiday in the United States since 1894, after being celebrated in several states in earlier years; it has been held on the first Monday in September from its inception, unlike other Monday holidays (e.g. Columbus Day, Presidents Day) which have been moved from their traditional dates to Mondays for the convenience of allowing long weekends.
the Plaza (p. 13)
A famous New York City hotel, designed in French chateau style and operating since 1907 at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South.
Mentioned in Psmith, Journalist, ch. 26 (1915); Ginger Kemp stays there briefly in The Adventures of Sally, ch. 16.5 (1922). George Finch’s first sight of Molly Waddington is when she is lunching at the Plaza in The Small Bachelor (1927). Bertie Wooster proposed to Pauline Stoker at the Plaza, recalled in Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1934). This is not a complete list.
a Yank called Schoonmaker (p. 13)
James R. Schoonmaker, financier, is offstage in Summer Lightning (1929) as the father of Myra, remembered as a pal of Galahad Threepwood (who refers to him there as “Johnny”). In Service With a Smile (1961) Lady Constance Keeble writes to him as a friend in Chapter 1, having met him in London earlier and having taken charge of Myra when he returned to America. Lord Ickenham recalls him in Chapter 2 as a friend of earlier days in America; Schoonmaker comes to Blandings Castle in Chapter 10.2 and with the assistance of Galahad Threepwood proposes to Lady Constance.
Except when he was attending sisters’ weddings in America (p. 13)
As noted above, Lord Emsworth also travels to America to attend the wedding of his niece Veronica; that story had already been published, but in fictional chronology it must happen after the events of this novel.
messuages (p. 13)
A dwelling house with outbuildings and land assigned to its use [OED].
On The Care Of The Pig (p. 14)
See Lord Emsworth and Others for earlier references to the book, in which the author’s name is given as Whiffle.
In the US edition, the book title is capitalized according to American typographic practice as On the Care of the Pig.
Popgood and Grooly (p. 14)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
thirty-five shillings (p. 14)
That is, 1.75 pounds sterling in pre-decimalization terms. Measuringworth.com compares this to £42.80 or US$53.00 in 2023 purchasing power. In 1965, the equivalent price in US dollars was $4.90.
For comparison, in 1965 the first edition of Galahad at Blandings was priced at sixteen shillings, so the pig book costs more than twice the price of a novel.
Like Hamlet, he had become irresolute (p. 14)
See similar allusions in Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
Limeys (p. 14)
American slang for Britons, cited in the OED since 1918, originally from the use of citrus juice to prevent scurvy among British sailors. Now often considered derogatory.
“Go on back to London or whatever Limey town it was you said you come from, and take her with you, because she’s fired.”
Joe Lehman in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 16 (1952)
Out of the dead past there emerged slowly before Roscoe’s mental eye a moonfaced figure with a Limey accent and a spreading waistline.
The Butler Did It, ch. 4 (US, 1957); in the UK edition Something Fishy it is “an Oxford accent.”
“Limey by birth, but converted in the course of the years into the typical American tycoon, all cold grey eye and jutting jaw.”
Describing Edmund Biffen Pyke in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.2 (1964)
a chin modelled on the ram of a battleship (p. 14)
Everything about him was large—his hands, his feet, his shoulders, his chest, and particularly his jaw—which even in his moments of calm was aggressive, and which stood out, when anything happened to ruffle him, like the ram of a battleship.
Mr. McEachern in The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 3 (1910)
“Why, when he came back from Oxford College the time the old man sent for him—what I’m going to tell you about soon—he had a jaw on him like the ram of a battleship.”
“The Making of Mac’s” (1915; in The Man With Two Left Feet, 1917)
I seem at this point to see the reader—a great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram of a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and will stand no nonsense—rising to remark that he doesn’t care what happened to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs. Hignett made out on her lecturing-tour.
The Girl on the Boat, ch. 17.1/Three Men and a Maid, ch. 16.1 (1922)
A Daniel come to judgement (p. 14)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the milk of human kindness (p. 15)
From Macbeth; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
no oil painting (p. 15)
That is, not considered attractive enough to warrant having a portrait painted.
Authors as a class—let’s face it—are no oil paintings. You have only to go to one of those literary dinners to test the truth of this.
“We Have with Us To-night” (Punch, May 5, 1954)
Without the interjection, in “Gaughan the Deliverer,” section 2, in America, I Like You (1956)
“Drowned rats to you, with knobs on,” she said coldly. “You’re no oil painting yourself.”
Dolly Molloy in Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)
Spenser of the Argus Enquiry Agency, though of polished manners, was no oil painting. He had a snub nose, and he was heavily spectacled.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 10.3 (1964)
alarm and despondency (p. 16)
See Ukridge.
Chapter Two
knoll of rising ground (p. 17)
Wodehouse is borrowing from Gertrude Jekyll, whose description of Berkeley Castle opens:
This venerable pile, one of the oldest continuously-inhabited houses in England, stands upon a knoll of rising ground at the southern end of the tract of rich alluvial land known as the Vale of Berkeley . . .
Some English Gardens, Longmans, Green and Co, London (1904), p. 23
,close to the Welsh border (p. 17)
Compare the description of Dreever Castle and its original purpose in The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 8 (1910):
In the days before the Welshman began to expend his surplus energy in playing Rugby football, he was accustomed, whenever the monotony of his everyday life began to oppress him, to collect a few friends and make raids across the border into England, to the huge discomfort of the dwellers on the other side. It was to cope with this habit that Dreever Castle, in Shropshire, came into existence.
Even Tipton Plimsoll… (p. 17)
This sentence is an almost verbatim repeat from Full Moon, ch. 6.2 (1947).
Jukes family (p. 17)
See Cocktail Time.
let his mouth hang open (p. 17)
Freddie … contented himself with rolling over in bed and dropping his lower jaw.
Something New, ch. 11/Something Fresh, ch. 10.1 (1915)
His lower jaw had fallen and his white beard wabbled agitatedly.
Professor Appleby in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 12.2 (1924)
George Finch’s agreeable features seemed to be picked out in a delicate Nile-green. His eyes were staring. His lower jaw had fallen.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 9 (1927)
The girl continued to gape at him. She was small and pretty, with vivid black eyes and a mouth which, if it had not been hanging open at the moment like that of a fish, would have been remarkably attractive.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 16.5 (1927)
And he had just relaxed his lower jaw in order to examine Dover Street more comfortably, when there swam into his line of vision something that looked like a Greek goddess who, contrary to the usual practice of Greek goddesses, had had time to put some clothes on.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
…there seemed to be nothing in the way of intellectual occupation offering itself, so he just leaned back in a chair and unhinged his lower jaw and let it droop, and sank into a sort of coma.
Mervyn Mulliner in “The Knightly Quest of Mervyn” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
His lower jaw drooped feebly, like a dying lily.
Blair Eggleston in Hot Water, ch. 2.4 (1932)
At the beginning of the address, Gussie had subsided into a sort of daydream, with his mouth hanging open.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1934)
Chuffy hitched up a lower jaw which had sagged a bit.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)
Lady Prenderby having replied that, owing to being deficient in the savage instincts and wanton blood-lust that went to make up a callous and cold-hearted murderess, she was not, he relapsed into silence with his lower jaw hanging down.
“Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Ivor Llewellyn’s lower jaw moved slowly downward, as if seeking refuge in his chins.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 1.2 (1935)
As he perused its contents by the light of the library window, his lower jaw drifted slowly from its moorings, so that by the time he had finished his second chin had become wedged into the one beneath it.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 5 (1935)
Lord Emsworth hitched up his lower jaw, and said Yes, he was all alone.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” in Lord Emsworth and Others (1937)
There was no need to explain to him why I now lighted a feverish cigarette and hitched the lower jaw up with a visible effort.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)
Lord Emsworth, as always when confronted with a problem, had allowed his lower jaw to sag restfully.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 6 (1939)
In lulling suspicion as he had done on the station platform by looking pink and letting his mouth hang open, while all the time he was planning to send for detectives, the other had acted, he was forced to confess, with a shrewdness amounting to the snaky.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 14 (1939)
Apart from his own, and excluding those of the Pekinese, the Alsatian and the cat, there were three lower jaws in the room, and each had fallen to its furthest extent.
Quick Service, ch. 19 (1940)
It was not easy for Harold Pickering to sneer, for his lower jaw kept dropping, but he contrived to do so.
“Scratch Man” in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (US edition, 1940) and A Few Quick Ones (1959)
Man and boy, I have seen a good many lower jaws fall, but never one that shot down with such a sudden swoop as his. It was surprising that the thing didn’t come off its hinges.
Boko Fittleworth in Joy in the Morning, ch. 28 (1946)
He tottered out, hoping for the best, and Lord Shortlands, allowing his lower jaw to droop restfully, gave himself up to meditation.
Spring Fever, ch. 5 (1948)
Pongo’s lower jaw dropped a notch. Love might be dead, but he had a feeling heart.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 2 (1948)
“Gussie gave me that same sense of hopeless desolation. He sat there with his lower jaw drooping, goggling at me like a codfish—”
The Mating Season, ch. 3 (1949)
For as Sidney McMurdo started to remove the obstacle, his eye fell on the insurance policy. He stopped as if spellbound, staring at it, his lower jaw sagging.
“Tangled Hearts” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Mr. Anderson … was regretting that the latter’s extraordinary wealth made it impossible for him to hurl at Barmy’s head the silver presentation inkpot on his desk, to teach him not to let his lower jaw droop like that.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 2 (1952)
Barmy stood gaping after it, his lower jaw drooping in the manner which had so often aroused the fiend that slept in J. G. Anderson.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 4 (1952)
Dinty … had observed Barmy’s lower jaw droop like a dying lily, and the sight had aroused all that was maternal in her.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 16 (1952)
“And I do wish, Clarence, that you would not let your mouth hang open when I am talking to you. It makes you look like a goldfish.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.2 (1952)
He stood staring, his lower jaw drooping on its hinge.
Jerry Vail in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.3 (1952)
“Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish pallor and a drooping lower jaw.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 9 (1953/54)
“Even today I’m about as pronounced an oaf as ever went around with his lower jaw drooping and a glassy look in his eyes, but you have literally no conception what I was like in my early twenties.”
Wodehouse’s self-description in Bring On the Girls, ch. 15.3 (US edition, 1953) and ch. 14.5 (UK edition, 1954)
There is one drawback to not wearing a moustache, and that is that if you don’t have one, you’ve got nothing to twirl when baffled. All you can do is stand with your lower jaw drooping like a tired lily, looking a priceless ass, and that is what Stilton was doing now.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 17 (1954)
People would see me walking around with a dreamy look in my eyes and my mouth hanging open as if I had adenoids and they would whisper to one another, “He’s thinking of America.”
“An Old Sweetheart Who Has Put On Weight” in America, I Like You (1956)
and Chapter Two in Over Seventy (1957); also quoted by W. Townend in the introduction to Author! Author! (1962)
…it was through a sort of mist that he stared pallidly at his companion, his eyes wide, his lower jaw drooping, perspiration starting out on his forehead as if he were sitting in the hot room of a Turkish bath.
Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time, ch. 4 (1958)
You found the noble lord lying on the sofa with his mouth open and his lower jaw hanging down, and when he said “Yes?” or “Well?” or “Who on earth let you in?” you explained that you had merely come to look at him.
“Attention, All Patrons” in Punch, July 13, 1958
At an early point in these remarks Oofy’s lower jaw had drooped like a tired lily.
“The Fat of the Land” in A Few Quick Ones (1959)
His lower jaw, as he teed up his ball, was drooping quite perceptibly.
“Joy Bells for Walter” in A Few Quick Ones (1959)
He reached for his hip-pocket, and his jaw fell like a drooping lily.
Ukridge in “A Tithe for Charity” in A Few Quick Ones (UK edition, 1959)
“Why, hullo,” she proceeded, seeing that Kipper was slumped back in his chair trying without much success to hitch up a drooping lower jaw.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1960)
By standing on one leg and allowing his lower jaw to droop Freddie indicated that he would be delighted to do so.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 2 (1961)
Dolly paused, panting a little, and Soapy’s lower jaw fell slowly like a tired flower drooping on its stem.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 16 (1961)
Well, I had more or less steeled myself to something along these lines, so except for quivering like a stricken blancmange and letting my lower jaw fall perhaps six inches I betrayed no sign of discomposure…
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 18 (1963)
He would, as he had rather suspected he would, congeal in every limb like a rabbit confronted with a boa constrictor and stand staring with his lower jaw drooping to its fullest extent, fearing the worst.
Horace Appleby in Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 8 (1968)
And even Smithy deviated from his customary placidity sufficiently to allow his lower jaw to fall an inch or two as if he had been taking the bag round in church and had seen a worshiper drop a penny in it.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 9 (1968)
Though of a dreamy temperament and inclined in most crises to sit still and let his lower jaw droop, he could on occasion be the man of action.
Lord Emsworth in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 10.1 (1969)
His jaw had dropped, and his eyes were threatening to part from their sockets.
The Duke of Dunstable in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 13.4 (1969)
See also p. 52, below; p. 115, below; p. 134, below; and p. 154, below.
Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him that were fat (p. 18)
From Shakespeare: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
who had made two chins grow where only one had been before (p. 18)
“whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”
Quoting the King of Brobdingnag, from Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany (p. 18)
Though the specified date changes slightly, Wodehouse obviously enjoyed recalling this criterion for choir boys’ participation in bicycle or foot races. See The Inimitable Jeeves for a singer’s commentary on this topic.
the Choir Boys’ Hundred Yards Handicap, for a pewter mug presented by the vicar—open to all whose voices have not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany.
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
There had been a time, back in the distant past, when Sebastian Beach had yielded to none as a performer on the velocipede—once, indeed, actually emerging victorious in the choir boys’ handicap at a village sports meeting, open to all whose voices had not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.3 (1952)
He could not remember having whizzed along like this, touching the ground only here and there, since the afternoon sixty-three years ago when, a boy of twelve, he had competed at a village sports meeting in the choir boys’ hundred-yard race, open to all those whose voices had not broken by the second Sunday in Epiphany.
Mr. Saxby in Cocktail Time, ch. 17 (1958)
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman uncle’s place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany,—nervous, but full of the will to win.
Bertie in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1971)
Jno. Robinson (p. 18)
Robinson (first name unspecified) is the proprietor of the Market Blandings station taxi in Heavy Weather (1933), and Ed. Robinson runs it in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939). Jno. [a conventional abbreviation for John] Robinson is the cab driver in Pigs Have Wings (1952), Service With a Smile (1961), the present book, A Pelican at Blandings (1969), and Sunset at Blandings (1977).
Percy Bulstrode (p. 18)
The chemist in the High Street of Market Blandings in Pigs Have Wings (1952) is named Bulstrode, and is presumably the same man.
in the early fifties … the Hon. Galahad Threepwood (p. 18)
We met Gally Threepwood in Summer Lightning (1929), in which he was in the late fifties, and Heavy Weather (1933) and Full Moon (1947), in which he was in his fifty-seventh year. in Pigs Have Wings (1952) he is once again in his late fifties. So his reported age here is an anomaly.
first prize for pumpkins (p. 18)
See “The Custody of the Pumpkin” (1924; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935).
Empress of Blandings had three times been awarded the silver medal for fatness (p. 18)
Unlike medals at the Olympic Games, it is clear from context that the silver medal is the first prize at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. Her first medal is won in “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey” (1927; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935); the winning of her second medal is foreshadowed at the end of Heavy Weather (1933) and confirmed in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939) and Full Moon (1947), in which she has won twice, in successive years. Her third successive silver medal is awarded at the end of Pigs Have Wings (1952).
skittle sharps (p. 18)
See Summer Lightning.
jellied eel sellers (p. 18)
See Ukridge.
race glasses (p. 18)
See Summer Lightning.
pawing in search of a brass rail (p. 19)
See Summer Lightning.
He only does it to annoy… (p. 19)
Quoting from the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter 6:
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Carroll is parodying an earlier poem, “Speak Gently,” by David Bates; see the Carleton College website for the original verses.
within an ace (p. 20)
See Leave It to Psmith.
the old Pelican Club (p. 20)
See Heavy Weather.
Sandy Callender (p. 21)
This is the only book in which she appears.
Sons Of Toil Buried Beneath Tons Of Soil (p. 21–22)
See the note for horny-handed toiler in A Damsel in Distress.
below par (p. 22)
See Heavy Weather.
Halsey Court (p. 22)
See p. 26, below.
Boko Bagshott (p. 22)
In full, Berkeley Bagshott. Never onstage in any of the novels, but Gally recalls him in Heavy Weather and Full Moon.
whacking big (p. 22)
See If I Were You.
Jubilee Cup (p. 22)
There are many trophies so named in several countries, in several sports including rugby, but the most likely reference is to a horse-racing trophy known from 1887 onward as the Ascot Jubilee Cup. See “The Ascot Trophies” in the Pall Mall Budget of June 16, 1887, for a description and illustration.
…a manifesto from one Howard Hill, of Newmarket, recommending him to apply without delay for Hill’s Three-Horse Special, without which—“Who,” demanded Mr Hill in large type, “gave you Wibbly-Wob for the Jubilee Cup?”—no sportsman could hope to accomplish the undoing of the bookmakers.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 6.1 (1923)
“The day my aunt was shut up in the private asylum I collected five hundred quid by backing Crazy Jane for the Jubilee Cup.”
“The Long Arm of Looney Coote” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
“Stake and winnings go on Bismuth for the Jubilee Cup, again at ten to one.”
Ukridge in “Buttercup Day” (1925; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
Gally, who had been comparing Freddie to his disadvantage with a half-witted whelk-seller whom he had met at Hurst Park the year Sandringham won the Jubilee Cup, stopped in mid-sentence.
Full Moon, ch. 9.1 (1947)
He made but one exception, the sixth Earl, who he said reminded him of a charming pea and thimble man with whom he had formed a friendship one afternoon at Hurst Park race course the year Billy Buttons won the Jubilee Cup.
Gally in Sunset at Blandings, ch. 4 (1977)
seek my advice. (p. 22)
The US edition has a sentence following this phrase which was omitted from the UK book:
That was one of the reasons why there was a mortgage on that house of his in Sussex.
It sounds from this as if Gally wasn’t as good at picking winners as Boko thought he was.
drawn a whistle from the least susceptible of the Armed Forces of the United States of America (p. 23)
This is one of the more puzzling of Wodehouse’s turns of phrase. Surely at this time the men of the American armed forces were thought to be healthily virile, so even the least susceptible of them would without doubt be attracted by Veronica’s beauty. An even stronger tribute would have been to draw a whistle from the least susceptible of some less-stereotypically-masculine group, perhaps (not meaning to be invidious) the ribbon clerks’ union or something like that.
about as much brain as would fit comfortably into an aspirin bottle (p. 23)
Men capable of governing empires fail to control a small white ball which presents no difficulties whatever to others with one ounce more brain than a cuckoo-clock.
“The Heart of a Goof” (1924)
Even at the Drones Club, where the average of intellect is not high, it was often said of Archibald that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” in Mr. Mulliner Speaking (1929/30)
“About as much brain as you could put comfortably into an aspirin bottle, but what are brains if the heart be of gold?”
Lord Ickenham speaking of Bert Peasemarch in Cocktail Time, ch. 7 (1958)
See also Money in the Bank.
Lady Hermione Wedge … looked like a cook (p. 23)
Indeed, in Full Moon, ch. 6.4 (1947), Bill Lister mistakes her for a cook and bribes her to take a love letter to her niece Prudence Garland.
Colonel Egbert Wedge (p. 23)
First met in Full Moon (1947).
Others in Wodehouse with this unusual given name are Sergeant-Major Egbert Flannery in Money for Nothing (1928); Egbert Mulliner in “Best Seller” (1930; in Mulliner Nights, 1933); another Egbert Mulliner in “Another Christmas Carol” (1970; in The World of Mr. Mulliner); and others whose last names we do not know. One is a cousin of Jeeves in “Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves); one is a cousin of Barmy Phipps in “The Masked Troubadour” (1936) and Cocktail Time (1958); one is a policeman once known to Clarence and Gally Threepwood, as recalled below. Another Egbert is the title character of “Egbert, Bull-Frog”; another is a swan in Valley Fields in Big Money (1931).
wax in her hands (p. 23)
Comparing him to the pliable variety of wax used by jewelers and sculptors to create a figure to be cast in hot metal.
“Her word is law to him. He will be wax in her hands.”
Bertie speaking of Corky Pirbright’s influence on Gussie Fink-Nottle in The Mating Season, ch. 20 (1949).
something squashy (p. 23)
Reminiscent of, but not related to, a story with a similar title: “Something Squishy” (1924; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30).
a blot on the escutcheon (p. 24)
See Heavy Weather.
racecourse touts (p. 24)
See Full Moon.
A blinding light flashed upon Gally (p. 24)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
like a pea on a hot shovel (p. 24)
the only onion in the stew (p. 25)
The OED’s first citation for this phrase is from Right Ho, Jeeves as listed below; their second is from Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin. Their definition is “the only person or thing to be taken into consideration.”
“His Grace was speaking—rather authoritative, as his custom is—and young Syd told him to remember he wasn’t the only onion in the mince.”
If I Were You, ch. 13 (1931)
“But I claim the right to have a pop at these problems, as they arise, in person, without having everybody behave as if Jeeves was the only onion in the hash.”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1934)
With each low note that he pulled up from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew that he was, if one may coin a phrase, the only onion in the stew and that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere…
“Big Business” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“But that’s the whole idea, to show her she isn’t the only onion in the stew and that if she doesn’t want me, there are others who feel differently.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1960)
“You know what you do when your girl gives you the push. You dash off and propose to another girl, just to show her she isn’t the only onion in the stew.”
Service With a Smile, ch. 2.1 (1961)
“By showing you you weren’t the only onion in the stew she would get your attention, and that would be half the battle.”
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 7 (1972)
those wedding bells would not ring out (p. 25)
“…he went on to add that unless I got a job of some kind and held it down for a solid year, to show him that I wasn’t a sort of waster, those wedding bells would never ring out.”
Heavy Weather, ch. 5 (1933)
“The idea was that if he proved himself steady and serious, those wedding bells would ring out. If not, not a tinkle.”
“Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and Nothing Serious, 1950)
“She said unless I ceased to resemble a captive balloon poised for its flight into the clouds, those wedding bells would not ring out.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.1 (1952)
“Those wedding bells would not ring out.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 4 (1953)/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 3 (1954)
“Yes, sir, if someone were to drop an incautious word to her about tonight’s orgy, those wedding bells would not ring out.”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1963)
She gave no reasons, she offered no explanations, she merely stated, though she put it a little differently, that having given the matter careful thought she had decided that those wedding bells would not ring out and that Horace, if he had been planning to buy new trousers for the ceremony, would do well to cancel the order.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 5.4 (1968)
“You mentioned that without his cooperation Tuppy and Angela’s wedding bells would not ring out?”
Much Obliged, Jeeves/Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, ch. 14 (1971)
See also A Damsel in Distress and If I Were You.
business double (p. 25)
In the game of Bridge, a double made with the intent of increasing the penalty points earned when a player believes the opponents cannot make their bid.
“And would undoubtedly hesitate before taking his partner out of a business double.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 8 (1953/54)
In the state of Washington, for instance, there are eleven separate and distinct grounds for divorce. (Just try taking your husband out of a business double in Washington and see what happens to you.)
“Grave News from America” (in Punch, August 18, 1954)
“No, sir, the hands dealt to me were uniformly satisfactory, but I was twice taken out of business doubles, and I had not the heart to continue.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Nosey Parker (p. 25)
See Something Fresh.
sundered hearts (p. 25)
Chapter Three
Halsey Court (p. 26)
Identified by Norman Murphy in A Wodehouse Handbook as being based on Hay’s Mews, London, just west of Berkeley Square. Ian Hay, Wodehouse’s theatrical collaborator [e.g. the play of A Damsel in Distress, 1928] lived at 47 Charles Street, immediately opposite Hay’s Mews, so Wodehouse would have known the neighborhood well.
In addition to the names mentioned in this paragraph, Chimp Twist pretends to be private investigator J. Sheringham Adair, with an office in Halsey Court, in Ice in the Bedroom (1961); Johnny Halliday lives there in A Pelican at Blandings (1969); and Ma Balsam serves as housekeeper for Jeff Miller and Johnny Halliday.Halsey Chambers (p. 26)
This block of flats is also mentioned by name in Money in the Bank, ch. 1 (1942); Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 1 (1964); and A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 6.1 (1969), in which it is described as a ramshackle building.
Jeff Miller (p. 26)
From Money in the Bank (1942).
Jerry Shoesmith (p. 26)
From Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions (1964)
barrister (p. 26)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
Like so many commencing barristers, he wrote (p. 26)
Barrister-authors in Wodehouse include Jeff Miller, as mentioned here, and Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time (1958).
Real-life barrister-authors known to Wodehouse include Frank Richardson, coiner of “face-fungus” (see Right Ho, Jeeves) and especially Plum’s idol W. S. Gilbert.
great lovers through the ages (p. 26)
See If I Were You.
the modern girl (p. 26)
First, references to the subject as a topic of articles, conversations, discussions, interviews, and the like:
“Our modern girl is very slangy,” he replied, “but if her remarks are clever they are perfectly acceptable anywhere.”
“Cheerio!” – Wodehouse interviewed in the Evening World, March 23, 1922.
What nonsense, he reflected, these newspapers and people talked about the modern girl.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.3 (1923)
It seemed to me that, if the modern girl goes about building sand-castles with kids she has only known for five minutes and probably without a proper introduction at that, then all that has been written about her is perfectly true.
“Fixing It for Freddie” (in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
In the kitchen which he had left conversation had now resolved itself into a monologue by Mrs. Evans, on the Modern Girl. It need not be reported in detail, for Mrs. Evans on the Modern Girl was very like all the other members of the older generation who from time to time have given their views on the subject in the pulpit and the press. Briefly, Mrs. Evans did not know what girls were coming to nowadays.
Money for Nothing, ch. 13.1 (1928)
What nonsense, Lord Emsworth felt, the papers talked about the modern girl. If this was a specimen, the modern girl was the highest point the sex had yet reached.
“Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
The conversation in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest, which always tends to get deepish towards closing time, had turned to the subject of the Modern Girl; and a Gin-and-Ginger-Ale sitting in the corner by the window remarked that it was strange how types die out.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
And then who will write you your Sunday-paper articles on The Modern Girl or The Decay of Home-Life?
“The Hollywood Scandal” in Louder and Funnier (1932)
“Nelson,” he said at length, “what are your views on the Modern Girl?”
“I think she’s a mess.”
“The Amazing Hat Mystery” (1933; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Except for the tendency to write articles about the Modern Girl and allow his side-whiskers to grow, there is nothing an author to-day has to guard himself against more carefully than the Saga habit.
Preface to Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935); also in “Put Me among the Earls” (in America, I Like You, 1956) and in Author! Author! (1962, following a letter dated August 13, 1932)
He was just throwing a few sentences together in his mind about the modern girl being sound at heart despite her freedom of speech, and how there isn’t really any harm in it if she occasionally gets off one from the smoking room.
“Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Now I know what the papers mean when they talk about the headstrong modern girl.”
Spring Fever, ch. 15 (1948)
And one could, no doubt, have shoved in a thoughtful word or two deploring the growing laxity of speech of the modern girl.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 15 (1954)
From the fact that he headed in my direction I deduced that this must be the author of that series of powerful novels which plumbed the passionate heart of Woman and all that sort of thing and rendered him in consequence an ideal set-up for an interview on the Modern Girl.
Corky meeting Horace Wanklyn, novelist, in “A Tithe for Charity” (1955; in A Few Quick Ones, UK edition, 1959)
It wants photographs of him smoking a pipe or being kind to the dog and interviews with him telling the world what his favourite breakfast cereal is and what he thinks of the modern girl.
Cocktail Time, ch. 3 (1958)
“Blair Eggleston, the writer?”
“Yes, Jeeves tells me he writes books.”
“And articles. He’s doing a series for me on the Modern Girl.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
And a necessarily incomplete list of descriptions of or opinions about the Modern Girl:
The reckless impulsiveness of the modern girl had undone him.
The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 23 (1910)
“I can assure you that I am quite confident that this girl is just the sort of harum-scarum, so-called ‘modern’ girl who is sure some day to involve herself in a really serious scandal.”
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 5.3 (1920)
Freddie, as he would have admitted frankly, was not much of a lad for the modern girl. The modern girl, he considered, was too dashed rowdy and exuberant for a chappie of peaceful tastes.
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 6.1 (1920)
“For my part I’d be better pleased if our Miss B. would let the cash go, and obey the dictates of her own heart; but these modern girls are all alike; all out for the stuff, they are!”
Three Men and a Maid/The Girl on the Boat, ch. 16 (1921/22)
I’m a bit apt, as a rule, to give the modern girl a miss, but there was something different about Aline Hemmingway.
“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (UK magazine only, 1922)
“She is not one of these flippant, shallow-minded modern girls.”
“The Metropolitan Touch” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, ch. 15 (1923)
Miss Wickham did not appear to share the modern girl’s distaste for her home.
“Something Squishy” (1924; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Although Lord Tilbury had not seen much of what had passed between Kay and Sam at the luncheon table, he had seen quite enough; and as he drove back to Tilbury House in his cab he was thinking hard and bitter thoughts of the duplicity of the modern girl.
Sam in the Suburbs/Sam the Sudden, ch. 19.1 (1925)
When Anastatia got up and said good-bye with a final reference to her dressmaker, Jane shuddered at the depths of deceit to which the modern girl can sink.
“The Purification of Rodney Spelvin” (1925; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926/27)
She reached out a clutching hand, seized his lordship’s beard in a viselike grip, and tugged with all the force of a modern girl, trained from infancy at hockey, tennis, and Swedish exercises.
“Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Now, no doubt, as she watched her stepmother gulping before her like a moose that has had trouble in the home, she regretted that she was not one of those sensible modern girls who always carry a couple of shots around with them in a jewelled flask.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 2.2 (1926/27)
Hamilton Beamish frowned. He seemed to be deploring the get-rich-quick spirit of the modern girl, who is not content to sit down and wait for her alimony.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 9 (1926/27)
“No? Very broad-minded, these modern girls,” said Lord Hunstanton, turning away and trying not to inhale.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 14.1 (1926/27)
“The growing tendency on the part of the modern girl to read trashy magazine stories,” said Frederick Pilcher severely, “is one that I deplore.”
“Those in Peril on the Tee” (1927; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
The march of civilization has given the modern girl a vocabulary and an ability to use it which her grandmother never had.
“Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
He supposed the practice of calling a father by a nickname in preference to the more old-fashioned style of address was the latest fad of the Modern Girl.
Money for Nothing, ch. 4.4 (magazines and US book only, 1928)
And, though, being a modern girl, she did not as a rule respond with any great alacrity to parental mandates, she had her share of clan loyalty and realized that she must conform to the rules of the game.
Money for Nothing, ch. 5.1 (magazines and US book only, 1928)
To listen in on a private conversation—especially a private conversation between two modern girls when you never know what may come next—is rightly considered an action incompatible with the claim to be a gentleman.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
There was no denying that it was enjoyable, this exhibition of tremulous weakness in one who, if she had had the shadow of a fault, had always been inclined to matter-of-factness and the display of that rather hard, bright self-sufficiency which is so characteristic of the modern girl.
Summer Lightning, ch. 12.2 (1929)
Violet had the modern girl’s impatience with slowness of wit in her elders.
If I Were You, ch. 10 (1931)
“He kissed me,” said Ann stoutly, wishing, for she was a self-respecting modern girl, that she had been able to refrain from blushing.
Big Money, ch. 9.6 (1931)
Really, one sometimes despairs of the modern girl.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1960)
Wee Tots (p. 27)
First mentioned in “Bingo and the Peke Crisis” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940) as a children’s magazine owned by Henry Cuthbert Purkiss. Bingo continues as editor through eight further short stories and in The Mating Season (1949).
Gustave Flaubert (p. 27)
Most often mentioned by Wodehouse regarding the mot juste; see Right Ho, Jeeves.
He seemed to be one of those writers, like Flaubert, who spared no pains in the quest for perfect clarity and are prepared to correct and re-correct indefinitely till their artist-souls are satisfied.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 14.5 (1926/27)
Evidently its author had only just risen from the task of polishing it, for the ink was still wet on a paragraph where, searching like some Flaubert for the mot juste, he had run his pen through the word “intoxicated” and substituted for it the more colourful “pickled to the gills.”
Heavy Weather, ch. 7 (1933)
Though his inferior in actual composition, Monty had the literary conscience of a Flaubert.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 1 (1935, in magazines and US book only)
It seemed to be his fate to-day to mix with eccentrics, and in the case of this one, he had no hesitation whatever in discarding the adjective “genial.” In describing Tubby Vanringham, it was the last word a precisian like the late Gustave Flaubert would have selected.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 18 (1937)
“A brilliant summing up of the situation. Flaubert could not have put it better.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 11 (1939)
(I have used the word ‘feeling’ three times in above. Flaubert would have had something to say about that.)
Letter to Leonora Wodehouse, 4 January 1939, in Donaldson, Yours, Plum
That, or its French equivalent, was the word which would have leaped to the mind of the stylist Flaubert, always so careful in his search for the mot juste.
Spring Fever, ch. 16 (1948)
I can’t remember his name, but I believe he was one of those slow, careful workers, like Flaubert, who chisel and polish every line of a song before letting it out of their hands.
“The ’Alls” in Theatre Arts, January 1949
Fixed now as solidly financially as any woman in America and freed from the necessity of truckling to the tastes of editors, she was able to take the wraps off her romantic self, and as she sat on the rustic seat, looking at the moon and listening to the nightingale, a stylist like the late Gustave Flaubert, tireless in his quest of the mot juste, would have had no hesitation in describing her mood as mushy.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 10 (1953/54)
She said it was coming very well but not quickly, because she was a slow, careful worker who mused a good bit in between paragraphs and spared no pains to find the exact word with which to express what she wished to say. Like Flaubert, she said, and I said I thought she was on the right lines.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 5 (1954)
“You must pardon me, a rude unlettered man, if by inadvertence I have selected an adjective that fails to meet your critical approval. One is not a Flaubert.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 5 (1958)
And when one reflects that the Hartford home had six little feet pattering about in it, while the New Haven establishment had no fewer than fourteen—in the absence of evidence to the contrary, one is assuming that each child had two legs—one feels that the term “idleness” would never have satisfied a precisian like the late Gustave Flaubert as being the mot juste.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, May 25, 1960
“Put your shirt on Whistler’s Mother for the two o’clock at Hurst Park tomorrow,” whispered Wilberforce, and having added that prompt action would enable him to get odds of eight to one, he went about his butlerine duties, leaving Bingo in a frame of mind which some one like the late Gustave Flaubert, who was fussy about the right word, would have described as chaotic.
“Stylish Stouts” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Binstead … pursed his lips, apparently thinking that the adjective ‘nice’ was not the one Gustave Flaubert, that exact stylist, would have chosen.
Company for Henry, ch. 11 (1967)
She was thinking of Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, and a stylist like Gustave Flaubert, with his flair for the mot juste, would have described her as being as mad as a wet hen.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 8.1 (1969)
Boneless is more the one a stylist like Gustave Flaubert would have chosen, though being French he would have used whatever the French is for boneless—étourdit perhaps, or something like that.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 6.2 (1970)
‘Sozzled,’ said Mac with his Flaubert-like gift for finding the mot juste.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 3 (1973)
Forbidding was the adjective a stylist like Gustave Flaubert would have applied to her aspect, putting it of course in French, as was his habit.
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 9 (1977)
dur or coriace (p. 27)
Hard or tough.
one of the Possibles in an England international Rugby trial game (p. 27)
Wodehouse himself had been on the Rugby football first fifteen team in his last year at Dulwich College, 1899–1900, though never at the level of being considered to represent England in international matches, as Sam Bagshott had been. He was always interested in the game and wrote up reports of Dulwich matches for the school magazine The Alleynian as late as 1933.
Besides Sam Bagshott in the present novel, and many students in the school stories, other Rugby players include Sir Raymond Bastable (for Oxford, thirty years ago) in Cocktail Time (1958); John Carroll (for Rugby, Oxford, and England) in Money for Nothing (1928); Gerald Foster and Ginger Kemp (at school) in The Adventures of Sally (1922); Tuppy Glossop (village Rugby) in “The Ordeal of Young Tuppy” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930); Jeff Miller (for his university and England) in Money in the Bank (1942); Rev. Harold “Stinker” Pinker (for Magdalen College and England) in The Code of the Woosters (1938) and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963); Bertie Weaver (for Cambridge), recalled as a suitor of a young Lady Constance in A Pelican at Blandings (1969).
fondness for boxing (p. 27)
Another similarity between author and character! Wodehouse had been an avid amateur boxer in his school days and young adulthood, and references to boxing in his fiction are numerous and written with the aid of personal experience. No trace of distortion to his nose or ears is evident in photographs, though, so he must have protected himself well in the ring.
one of his ears twisted (p. 27)
More often mentioned is the cauliflower ear also caused by boxing injuries, and indeed Tipton Plimsoll refers to Sam as having a cauliflower ear in chapter 10.1 below. But this mention of a twisted ear will become a plot point later in this book.
all sweetness and light (p. 27)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
Solicitors, if they call on barristers (p. 27)
In the traditional division of the British legal profession, solicitors dealt directly with members of the public but do not represent them in court; only barristers were admitted to plead cases in a court of law. These distinctions have been blurred somewhat in 21st-century regulations, but hold true for the era of Wodehouse’s fiction.
extraordinarily fit for his years (p. 27)
See p. 18, above.
rising on stepping stones of dead whiskies and sodas to higher things (p. 28)
See Something Fresh.
“Doesn’t he look marvellous?” (p. 28)
This is a direct quotation from his niece Millicent in Summer Lightning, ch. 1.2 (1929).
handed in his dinner pail (p. 29)
A euphemism for dying; see Money for Nothing.
often heard the chimes of midnight (p. 29)
Alluding to King Henry IV, Part 2: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
The UK book text reads as above; the US edition The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood correctly cites chimes at midnight as Shakespeare wrote it.
Barribault’s Hotel (p. 29)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
trickle (p. 29)
Here Gally is using the young-man-about-town slang that we more often associate with Bertie Wooster. See The Inimitable Jeeves.
restorative (p. 30)
See Sam the Sudden.
Monty Bodkin (p. 30)
First encountered in Heavy Weather (1933), but Gally (or Wodehouse) is conflating competing children’s magazines. Monty had been the editor of Tiny Tots for Lord Tilbury’s Mammoth Publishing Company in Heavy Weather. For Wee Tots see above, p. 27.
wanted you to resign (p. 30)
Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, last year’s winner [of the Drones Club Darts sweep], had gone and got married and at his wife’s suggestion resigned his membership
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt Agatha has her lair. This, somebody told me, was due to the circumstance that he had got engaged to a girl of strong character who disapproved of the Drones Club.
Ginger Winship, engaged to Florence Craye in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1971)
She didn’t like the Drones Club, and she made it quite clear that at the conclusion of the honeymoon I would cross its threshold only over her dead body.
Vanessa Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 15 (1974)
a horror from outer space (p. 31)
silver ring bookmakers (p. 31)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
headlights (p. 31)
A slangy reference to eyeglasses.
“That bacillus in the goggles. The germ with the headlights. The tree crooner. Ernest Plinlimmon, in short. The nerve of the little glass-eyed insect!”
“There’s Always Golf!” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
redheads are always easily stirred (p. 32)
See Piccadilly Jim.
dead snip (p. 32)
Oofy Prosser (p. 32)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
Got the stuff in sackfuls (p. 32)
See Full Moon.
twenty thousand pounds (p. 32)
The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests a factor of 16.4 to account for rising prices from 1965 to 2024, so this would be the rough equivalent of £330,000 in modern values. Measuringworth.com uses a different factor and suggests a modern equivalent in US dollars of $620,000.
On the other hand, if the events of this book are to be taken as happening in about 1930,
Buckets … to catch the water coming through the roof (p. 33)
“Then you might remove the two buckets you put to catch the water under the upper hall skylight. They create a bad impression.”
At Rowcester/Towcester Abbey in Ring for Jeeves, ch. 5/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 4 (1953/54)
touch (p. 33)
To ask for an informal personal loan or gift, as between friends. British slang cited in the OED from 1760 to modern times.
sweep (p. 33)
See A Damsel in Distress.
sclerosis of the liver (p. 33)
A hardening and scarring of the tissues of the liver, typically the result of excessive alcoholic consumption. Some authories cite this as one stage of progressive liver disease on the way to irreversible cirrhosis; others describe the two terms as synonymous.
Wodehouse more often uses the term cirrhosis, in at least seven books, from Full Moon (1947), in which Boko Bagshott is remembered as dead from cirrhosis of the liver, to Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972) in which Orlando Mulligan is similarly recalled.
Federated Malay States (p. 33)
The Federated Malay States was a British protectorate of four states in the Malay peninsula created in 1895 which survived until 1946 and is now part of the modern state of Malaysia. [IM/LVG]
Buffy Struggles (p. 33)
See Full Moon.
outsider (p. 33)
Here and often in Wodehouse, referring to a racehorse or other competitor who is not expected to win, a “long shot” or dark horse, as Gally mentions here and again on p. 36.
[See Right Ho, Jeeves for another meaning of the term as a social misfit.]
“On a long-priced outsider. Little Prudence Baxter, sir, the child of his lordship’s head gardener.”
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“There was an absolute outsider running in the third race at Kempton Park the day after the car went called Stolen Goods, and somehow it seemed to me that the thing had been sent for a purpose.”
“The Long Arm of Looney Coote” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
“He sends his regards to you, and asks me to tell you to put your shirt on Baby Bones for the Medbury Selling Plate.”
The butler pursed his lips dubiously.
“A long shot, sir. Not generally fancied.”
“Rank outsider. Leave it alone, is my verdict.”
Hugo Carmody and Beach in Summer Lightning, ch. 1 (1929)
I felt as if I had backed an outsider in the Grand National and seen it skip over the last fence three lengths in front of the field.
Laughing Gas, ch. 15 (1936)
Well, Anthony Mildmay was riding a horse at Kempton next day which he thought might finish in the first three, so I told Peter to put my tenner on it, five to win and five for a place. It won at 100 to 7, being the complete outsider of the race, and I scooped in ninety quid and so am exactly as I was at the start.
Letter to Guy Bolton, 4 January 1938, in Yours, Plum, ed. F. Donaldson (1990)
He looked like a vicar who has just seen the outsider on whom he has placed his surplice nose its way through the throng of runners and flash in the lead past the judge’s box.
The Rev. Sidney Pirbright in The Mating Season, ch. 26 (1949)
“So I took the hundred and put it on an outsider in the Derby. Ballymore.”
Johnny Pearce in Cocktail Time, ch. 8 (1958)
“Is it right, is it fair, I asked myself, that I, to whom money means nothing, should have drawn the favourite, while somebody who really needs the stuff, like my old friend Freddie Widgeon, gets stuck with a rank outsider?”
Oofy Prosser in “The Fat of the Land” (1958; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
The principle, he said, was the same as when someone gives you a tip on a fifty-to-one outsider straight from the mouth of the stable cat and tells you to keep it under your hat so as not to shorten the odds.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 12 (1961)
“The day before you were lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name.”
Aunt Dahlia to Bertie, explaining his middle name of Wilberforce, in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1971)
ten pounds … twenty quid (p. 34)
Quid is slang for pounds; using the Bank of England figures cited above the modern equivalent would be about £164 and £328 respectively.
tennis player (p. 34)
Most references to tennis in Wodehouse are to play among family and friends, but play and players on the competition level are referenced as well:
I suppose a plus two golfer and a Wildingesque tennis-player, such as Wilton was, does feel like that.
“Wilton’s Holiday” (1915; in The Man With Two Left Feet, 1917)
[See Wikipedia for Wilding.]
Miss Plummer was not damped. She was at the hero-worshipping age, and George shared with the Messrs. Douglas Fairbanks, Francis X. Bushman, and one or two tennis champions an imposing pedestal in her Hall of Fame.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 23 (1919)
“Look out particularly for the Tilden Back-Handed Slosh. A winner every time.”
Love Among the Chickens, ch. 13 (1921 edition)
[See Wikipedia for Tilden.]
NOTE—I find on re-reading the Editor’s letter, that it was the Wimbledon, not the Wambledon, Lawn Tennis Championships with which he wished me to deal; and, strictly speaking, I suppose, I ought to write this article all over again.
“Prospects for Wambledon” (1929; in Louder and Funnier, 1932)
“There’s Billy Biffing, Jack Guffington, Ted Prosser, Freddie Boot—he’s the tennis champion of the county, Tommy Mainprice, and—oh, yes, Algy Fripp—the big-game hunter, you know.”
Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett in “The Fiery Wooing of Mordred” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Helen Wills is here now, having tests at Fox.
Letter to Leonora Wodehouse, 10 April 1937, in Yours, Plum, ed. F. Donaldson (1990)
[See Wikipedia for Wills.]
“You saw my friend Hilda Gudgeon. There is another tragedy. Her whole happiness has been ruined by a wretched quarrel with the man she loves, a man called Harold Anstruther. They were playing in the Mixed Doubles in a tennis tournament not long ago and—according to her—I don’t understand tennis very well—he insisted on hogging the game, as she calls it.”
Madeline Bassett in The Mating Season, ch. 17 (1949)
“Looking over the field, I think my most formidable rival is a pin-headed string bean of a fellow named Dwight Messmore. You know him?”
“By sight. She would naturally be attracted by him. I believe he is very expert at this outdoor ping-pong.”
“In the running for a place in the Davis Cup team, they tell me.”
“Up from the Depths” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Affinities, they had seemed to be, always being “seen” together at Cannes or “glimpsed” together at Ascot or “noticed” together playing in the mixed doubles at some seaside tennis tournament. To hear Gloria Salt talking in this acid strain about Orlo, Lord Vosper was as surprising…
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 3.1 (1952)
At Forest Hills, if you so much as clear your throat during a rally in a championship tennis match, at the end of the rally a loud speaker will bellow rebukingly that absolute silence is required while play is in progress.
“Brooklyn Bridge Is Falling Down” in Punch, October 5, 1955
When Australia regained the Davis Cup, there was not unnaturally chagrin and disappointment and a tendency on the part of the citizenry to let the upper lip unstiffen a bit, but the downhearted were able to console themselves with the reflection that, whatever might happen on the tennis court, in one field America still led the world.
“Say It with Rattlesnakes” in America, I Like You (1956); adapted from “Grave News from America” (Punch, August 18, 1954)
“It would be like playing in the Market Snodsbury tennis tournament instead of electrifying one and all on the center court at Wimbledon.”
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 14 (1971)
on velvet (p. 34)
See Bill the Conqueror.
“My hero!” (p. 34)
A phrase made popular as the title of an operetta song; see The Mating Season.
an abstemious young man as a rule (p. 35)
Nearly always the term abstemious is mentioned in Wodehouse when, as here, an exception to the rule is brought up.
Abstemious as a rule, there were moments when Archie found the Eighteenth Amendment somewhat trying.
“Strange Experiences of an Artist’s Model” (1921; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
An abstemious man himself, Sir Claude Lynn had a correct horror of excess in others.
“Something Squishy” (1925; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Abstemious cove though I am as a general thing, there is one night in the year when, putting all other engagements aside, I am rather apt to let myself go a bit and renew my lost youth, as it were.
Bertie in “Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
Besides, at the Purple Chicken you could get “it,” if they knew you. And George, though an abstemious young man, felt that “it” was just what, at the moment, he most required.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 15 (1926/27)
John, as became one who prized physical fitness, had been all his life a rather unusually abstemious young man. But on certain rare occasions dotted through the years of his sojourn at Oxford he had permitted himself to relax.
John Carroll in Money for Nothing, ch. 11.1 (1928)
Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1934)
“We’re rather an abstemious chap, as a rule, but if you thought it would be all right just this once, it would be a great comfort to saunter out and get absolutely fried.”
Horace Davenport in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 10 (US edition, 1939)
“How disgusting,” said Anne. “I’m sure Mr. Adair is most abstemious.”
“Mr. Adair,” Jeff pointed out, “has never been tried as high as he seems likely to be at Shipley Hall.”
Jeff Miller pretending to be J. Sheringham Adair in Money in the Bank, ch. 6 (1942)
Bill Oakshott had comported himself at Lord Ickenham’s residence with the most exemplary abstemiousness. In a situation where many men would have started lowering the stuff by the pailful, this splendid young fellow had exercised an iron self-control. One fairly quick, followed by another rather slower, and he had been through.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 3.2 (1948)
An abstemious man as a rule, he was conscious of an imperious desire for a drink, and a strong one, at that, and he intended to have it immediately.
Oscar Fritchie in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 19 (1952)
Had it not been that I knew him to be abstemiousness itself, rarely indulging in anything stronger than a light lager, and not even that during Lent, I should have leaped to the conclusion that there beside me sat a curate who had been having a couple.
Bertie talking of ‘Stinker’ Pinker in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1963)
In the old Pelican days he would automatically have attributed a similar exuberance in a fellow member to his having had one, if not more, over the eight, but he knew John to be as abstemious as befits a rising young barrister and told himself that it would be necessary to probe more deeply for an explanation.
Gally with John Halliday in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 2 (1969)
monocle flashed fire (p. 35)
Clarence’s eyes flashed fire.
The Swoop!, ch. 10 (1909)
Lady Wickham’s eyes flashed fire.
“Mr. Potter Takes a Rest Cure” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Rupert Baxter quivered. His spectacles flashed fire.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
To my surprise, he did not agree with me. His eye flashed fire.
Uncle Percy, Lord Worplesdon in Joy in the Morning, ch. 22 (1946)
Then, as the gist penetrated, his face lit up, his horn-rimmed spectacles flashed fire and he clasped my hand, saying rather handsomely that while as a general rule he yielded to none in considering me the world’s premier half-wit, he was bound to own that on this occasion I had displayed courage, resource, enterprise and an almost human intelligence.
Gussie Fink-Nottle in The Mating Season, ch. 24 (1949)
Adela’s eyes flashed fire. Indeed, there was a sort of incandescence about her whole person.
The Old Reliable, ch. 7 (1951)
Gally’s monocle flashed fire.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.2 (1952)
I imagine that at this coarse insult Florence’s eyes flashed fire.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 13 (1954)
Jane entered, bearing a basin, and as she saw the head of the family her eyes flashed fire.
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 16 (1957)
The man’s horn-rimmed spectacles flashed fire.
Wally Judd in “Leave It to Algy” (1959; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
Her face was red, her eyes flashed fire, and her general appearance was that of a woman who with some difficulty has managed to escape from a train wreck.
Aunt Kelly in Company for Henry, ch. 3.2 (1967)
flutter (p. 35)
The OED describes as slang the sense of flutter as having a go at something, especially a small-scale bet or speculation, with citations as far back as 1874.
“If you want me to forget about this little flutter in fake diamonds of yours, you’ve got to pull up your socks and start in to do things.”
Spennie, Lord Dreever, in The Intrusion[s] of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 27 (1910)
“It is merely a little sporting flutter to relieve the hintense monotony of country life.”
Keggs in “The Matrimonial Sweepstakes” (1910)
The thought of these hounds, these demons, coolly gossiping and speculating below stairs about Elsa, making her the subject of little sporting flutters to relieve the monotony of country life, choked him.
Martin Rossiter in “The Good Angel” (1910; in The Man Upstairs, 1914)
…eggs at the current prices. It is all we can do to buy one for ourselves on occasions of especial joy, as for instance after a successful flutter in Steel.
“All About New Year’s Day” (1917)
Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock Exchange fellows must have when the public isn’t biting freely. Nowadays I read that bit they put in the financial reports about “The market opened quietly” with a sympathetic eye; for, by Jove, it certainly opened quietly for us! You’d hardly believe how difficult it was to interest the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy.
“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves!, 1925/27)
“A little sporting flutter—nothing more—designed to alleviate the monotony of life in the country.”
Keggs in A Damsel in Distress, ch. 18 (1919)
I think my own flutter of twelve golf-balls, taken up by Percival Brown, was the most substantial of any of the wagers.
“A Woman Is Only a Woman” (1919; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
“A silly ass at the club named Jimmy Monroe told me to take a flutter in some rotten thing called Amalgamated Dyes.”
Freddie Rooke in Jill the Reckless/The Little Warrior, ch. 6.1 (1920)
“When I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up. Multiple Steel’s worth looking at. They tell me it’ll be up to a hundred and fifty before next Saturday.”
The Adventures of Sally/Mostly Sally, ch. 1.1 (1922)
“Jeeves, old son, do you want a sporting flutter?”
“The Great Sermon Handicap” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“Just a little flutter to relieve the monotony of country life,” he said.
Steggles in “The Metropolitan Touch” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“What I came to see you about this morning, Bertie,” he said, fishing a sheet of paper out of his pocket, “was to ask if you would care to come in on another little flutter.”
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
There is a keen sporting streak in Jeeves, and I knew he had been looking forward to a little flutter at the tables.
“Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit” (1927; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
And Mr. Molloy, though ordinarily a man of sanguine temperament, could not bring himself to believe that a hard-boiled bunch of trustees, most of them probably lawyers with tight lips and suspicious minds, would ever have the sporting spirit to take a flutter in Silver River Ordinaries.
Money for Nothing, ch. 5.4 (1928)
“Oh?” said Lord Brangbolton. “Well, since you’re here, how about a little flutter?”
“The Smile That Wins” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
After all, he reasoned, ten dollars wasn’t so much to lose, and a little flutter helped to pass the time and make the evening interesting.
“The Luck of the Stiffhams” (1933; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
“Gentlemen and sportsmen, I know gentlemen and sportsmen when I see them, and what I have been privileged to overhear of your conversation since entering this room has shown me that you are all gentlemen and sportsmen who are ready at all times to take part in a little sporting flutter.”
The words “sporting flutter” were words which never failed to touch a chord in the members of the Drones Club.
Mustard Pott in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 4 (1939)
“Well, why shouldn’t we float a loan in some quarter? Hollywood must be full of rich sportsmen who would like a flutter.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 3 (1951)
“I don’t mind a flutter from time to time, of course. At Harrige’s we always run a Sweep on big events, five-bob chances.”
Rory Carmoyle in Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3 (1953)
“I don’t mind a small flutter from time to time, of course. At Harrod’s we always run a Sweep on the big events, five bob chances.”
Rory Carmoyle in The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1954)
“Then what I wish you would do, Jimmy, is go and see the Duke and tell him all about that Venus Island thing of yours. I’ve just been talking to him, and oddly enough, he was saying he wished he could find some business opportunity which would give him the chance of having a little flutter. He’s a great gambler at heart.”
Lord Ickenham in Service With a Smile, ch. 11 (1961)
‘So, as I say, she has set her face against my having a little flutter at the tables, and when she sets her face against something there is nothing to be done about it.’
Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 3 (1972)
ten bob (p. 36)
Ten shillings, half of one pound sterling.
planked (p. 36)
Colloquial for putting money down “on the spot,” as on a table or counter. The OED says this was originally and chiefly in the US, but gives a 1915 citation from Somerset Maugham as well.
the Grand National (p. 36)
ewe lamb (p. 36)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Market Blandings (p. 37)
The closest small town to Blandings Castle that is big enough to have railroad service; we learn in Heavy Weather, ch. 8, that it is two miles from the Castle. Norman Murphy (In Search of Blandings) suggests Shifnal in Shropshire as a model for it.
rat of the underworld (p. 37)
Except for the fact that he hadn’t taken out a notebook and a stub of pencil, he might have been questioning some rat of the underworld as to where he had been on the night of June the twenty-fifth.
Stilton Cheesewright in Joy in the Morning, ch. 8 (1946)
All the evening he had been irked by the necessity of playing the genial host—or the fairly genial host—to this rat of the underworld, and now not even the thought of possible repercussions from his daughter Hermione could restrain him from speaking out.
Sir Aylmer Bostock in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 9 (1948)
“What safe?” asked Phipps keenly, like a prosecuting attorney questioning some rat of the underworld as to where he was on the night of June the fifteenth.
The Old Reliable, ch. 12 (1951)
[Lord Emsworth] recognized his sister, Lady Constance Keeble.
He eyed her apprehensively, like some rat of the underworld cornered by G-men.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.1 and 1.2 (1952)
“Who do you think you are? One of these G-men fellows questioning some rat of the Underworld?”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 5/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 4 (1953/54)
True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.
Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
“Keggs,” said Mortimer Bayliss, closing the door behind them and halting before him with monocle poised and a look on his mummified face like that of a district attorney about to cross-examine the stuffing out of a rat of the underworld, “a word with you, my fishy major-domo. What’s the game?”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 4 (1957)
…ever since that hot-water-bottle episode my relations with this parent of Bobbie’s had been on the strained side. It was, indeed, an open secret that my standing with her was practically that of a rat of the underworld.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 2 (1960)
‘What better term would you suggest? Hoodlum? Yegg? Rat of the Underworld?’
Company for Henry, ch. 8.2 (1967)
Visitors’ Day (p. 38)
The sightseer could invade Belpher Castle on Thursdays only, between the hours of two and four.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 7
“I wouldn’t have thought Oates would have let you in. It isn’t Visitors Day, is it?”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 24 (1963)
“If you’d come on Visitors Day, you’d have been soaked half a crown, but now you’ll be getting it all for nothing.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 8.1 (1969)
“I wanted to see it, and when I say see it, I mean see it. Live in it, soak myself in it, not just come on Visitors Day and be one of a mob shown around by the butler.”
Vanessa Polk in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 8.1 (1969)
amber drawing-room (p. 38)
Blandings Castle shares this feature with Belpher Castle in A Damsel in Distress.
And as for the castle and its surroundings, including the model dairy and the amber drawing-room, you may see them for yourself any Thursday, when Belpher is thrown open to the public on payment of a fee of one shilling a head.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 1 (1919)
The hour of the after-dinner coffee found Blandings Castle apparently an abode of peace. The superficial observer, peeping into the amber drawing-room through the French windows that led to the terrace, would have said that all was well with the inmates of this stately home of England.
“The Go-Getter” (1931; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
In stating that Gally was in the amber drawing-room with the rest of the household, Beach had spoken with an imperfect knowledge of the facts.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (1952)
The Duke of Dunstable, who had come uninvited for a long visit and showed no signs of ever leaving, sat spelling through The Times on the terrace outside the amber drawing-room…
Service With a Smile, ch. 1 (1961)
Precisely as stated Lady Constance was in the amber drawing-room, sipping sherry and looking as formidable and handsome as ever.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.2 (1969)
Wolverhampton, Bridgnorth (p. 38)
Norman Murphy’s conclusion in In Search of Blandings is that Blandings Castle is essentially Sudeley Castle transplanted to the grounds of Weston Park, so the mention of these cities makes sense. Weston Park is about 12 miles from Wolverhampton and 17 miles from Bridgnorth by the most direct routes, probably older roads than the faster modern motorways.
Sudeley Castle’s actual site is 55 miles from Wolverhampton and 56 miles from Bridgnorth.
in the bag (p. 38)
See Hot Water.
one of the Blandings’ landmarks (p. 38)
The apostrophe is omitted in the US edition, making Blandings into an attributive (a noun functioning as an adjective) rather than a possessive form.
draped like a wet sock (p. 38)
He found Lord Emsworth, as usual, draped like a wet sock over the rail of the Empress’s GHQ…
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 4.2 (1969)
And similar descriptions:
Lord Emsworth, as his custom was, had pottered off there directly after breakfast, and now, at half past twelve, he was still standing, in company with his pig-man Pirbright, draped bonelessly over the rail of the sty…
Heavy Weather, ch. 3 (1933)
The ninth earl was down by the pigsty near the kitchen garden, draped in his boneless way over the rail of the bijou residence of Empress of Blandings, his amiable sow, twice in successive years a popular winner in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show.
Full Moon, ch. 1 (1947)
“Let me begin,” said Lord Emsworth, groping his way to the rail of the sty and drooping over it like a wet sock, “by saying that Sir Gregory Parsloe is nothing short of a rogue and a swindler.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.5 (1952)
He found Lord Emsworth, as be had expected, drooping over the Empress’s sty like a wet sock and gazing at its occupant with a rapt expression.
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 4 (1977)
See also a suit of overalls below, p. 49.
an earthly Paradise (p. 38)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
uncoiling itself (p. 39)
“Ah, Egbert,” he said, courteously uncoiling himself.
Lord Emsworth in Full Moon, ch. 1 (1947)
pince-nez … at the end of their string (p. 39)
His jaw had fallen and his pince-nez were dancing on their string like leaves in the wind.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
This time Lord Emsworth did lose his pince-nez, and lose them thoroughly. They flew at the end of their string like leaves in a storm.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 2 (1939)
In moments of emotion Lord Emsworth’s pince-nez always sprang from their base, dancing sportively at the end of their string.
Full Moon, ch. 4.4 (1947)
Recovering his pince-nez, which, as always in times of emotion, had fallen off and were dangling at the end of their string, he slipped the card absently into his pocket and reached out for his book.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.2 (1952)
Lord Emsworth started. His pince-nez, which always dropped off his nose when he was deeply stirred, did an adagio dance at the end of their string.
Service with a Smile, ch. 2.2 (1961)
The start Lord Emsworth gave at this suggestion was so violent that it detached his pince-nez from the parent nose. Hauling them in on their string, he gazed at her reverentially.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 5 (1969)
sole mornay (p. 39)
Fish in a sauce based on béchamel (butter, flour, milk) with the addition of grated cheese (often Gruyère and/or Parmesan) and seasonings, often thinned with fish broth or chicken bouillon.
mashed up in a glass (p. 39)
See Leave It to Psmith for an illustration of the way Lord Emsworth was used to eating a boiled egg.
Her residence in Great Britain had done much to put her abreast of the customs of the country—for weeks she had been eating her boiled eggs out of the shell instead of mashed up in a glass…
Mrs. Steptoe, an American, in Quick Service, ch. 7 (1940)
‘Do you know that in America they give you boiled eggs mashed up in a glass? … It takes away all the fun of eating a boiled egg.’
Lord Emsworth in Sunset at Blandings, ch. 14 (1977)
One day you’re a millionaire, the next you’re selling apples (p. 40)
“It’s only the poor fat-headed publishers that end up selling apples in the street.”
French Leave, ch. 12 (1956)
a town called Cape Cod (p. 40)
Actually a peninsula in Massachusetts extending in a hook shape into the Atlantic Ocean. There is no town of that name.
flourished like a green bay tree (p. 40)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Dora (p. 41)
Lady Dora Garland, relict of the late Sir Everard Garland, K.C.B. We meet her in Full Moon (1947) as the mother of Prudence Garland; in Pigs Have Wings (1952) she is the London hostess of Penny Donaldson.
Julia (p. 41)
Lady Julia Fish, another of the ten sisters of Lord Emsworth; relict of Sir Miles Fish. Mentioned in Money for Nothing (1928) and more extensively in Summer Lightning (1929) as the domineering mother of Ronnie Fish; onstage finally in Heavy Weather (1933) attempting to break up Ronnie’s engagement to Sue Brown.
Constance was there all the time (p. 41)
Though not present in Something Fresh/Something New (1915), Lady Constance Keeble has been presiding over the social life of Blandings Castle from Leave It to Psmith (1923) until her marriage noted at the start of the present book, except for Full Moon (1947) in which Lady Hermione Wedge is acting as chatelaine. Lady Constance returns to Blandings in “Sticky Wicket at Blandings” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67) and A Pelican at Blandings (1969), but is living in America in Sunset at Blandings (1977).
school treat … top hat … stiff collar (p. 41)
As recounted in “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935).
Since the death of his wife … (p. 41)
The remainder of this paragraph is closely adapted from a passage in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (1952), in which he had been a widower for twenty rather than twenty-five years. But Wodehouse was not scrupulous about details like this; compare p. 49, below.
disappearing like a diving duck (p. 42)
“I married her myself last Wednesday,” said Lord Marshmoreton, and disappeared like a diving duck.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 25 (1919)
What was needed here was the way of a diving-duck.
Summer Lightning, ch. 14.2 (1929)
She directed him to the bed, and he disappeared beneath it like a diving duck.
“The Voice from the Past” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
Long, therefore, before the handle had turned I was down in the depths like a diving duck.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1934)
The sun, which had been shining with exceptional brilliance, seemed to Freddie to slip out of sight like a diving duck.
“Trouble down at Tudsleigh” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK edition, 1936, and Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940)
To my surprise, however, the last female had no sooner passed through the door than Gussie, who had been holding it open, shot through after her like a diving duck and did not return, leaving me alone with my host and Roderick Spode.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 6 (1938)
…he was quick on his feet and his policy of suddenly disappearing like a diving duck had had excellent results.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (1952)
“See yer later,” said Lord Uffenham, and disappeared like a diving duck.
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 16 (1957)
One was either soaring like an eagle on to the top of chests or whizzing down behind sofas like a diving duck, and apart from the hustle and bustle of it all that sort of thing wounds the spirit and does no good to the trouser crease.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1963)
And he disappeared through the door like a diving duck, while Joe proceeded to follow his instructions with something of the emotions of a young lion-tamer about to enter the lion’s cage and nervously conscious that he has only got as far as lesson three of the correspondence course which has been teaching him lion-taming.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 7 (1973)
hock (p. 42)
See Something Fresh.
the surgeon’s knife (p. 42)
An allusion to accepting temporary pain in order to effect a longer-lasting improvement.
chastised with scorpions instead of … with whips (p. 43)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
a conniption fit (p. 43)
The OED has no known etymology for this colloquial Americanism for a fit of hysterics, with citations beginning in 1833.
“I seem to have heard people talking of having conniption fits,” said Shakespeare diffidently. “How about ‘And she suffered from fits (viz., conniption)’? Just a suggestion.”
“My Iron Resolve to Take Ish” in America, I Like You (1956); also in “How I Became a Poet” in Over Seventy (1957).
Reginald had one of those nice little bachelor incomes which allow a man to get his three square meals a day and do a certain amount of huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’, but before the descent of these pennies from heaven he had been in no sense a matrimonial prize, and Amanda’s theory that Sir Jasper, if informed of the betrothal, would have fifty-seven conniption fits was undoubtedly a correct one.
“Big Business” (as revised for A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
‘Wendell’s having conniption fits about that darned paperweight.’
Company for Henry, ch. 6 (1967)
She would, he anticipated, have a series of conniption fits.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 10.2 (1972)
“I can’t possibly plot and plan with you having conniption fits at my elbow.”
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 8 (1977)
Dame Daphne Winkworth … last Birthday Honours (p. 43–44)
First met in The Mating Season (1949) as one of Esmond Haddock’s five aunts; already a widow and a Dame in that book, giving us a hint that this novel takes place very near that work in story time. Also, she is another link between the Jeeves-and-Wooster and Blandings Castle sagas.
For the Honours, see Heavy Weather.
There’s nothing like a dame, he told them (p. 44)
“He” was Oscar Hammerstein II, librettist and lyricist of South Pacific (1949), with music by Richard Rodgers. “There is nothin’ like a dame” is one of the rousing numbers for male chorus and soloists from the show.
make his eyes, like stars, start … fretful porpentine (p. 44)
One of many references to the ghost of Hamlet’s father: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the Good Old Man in old-fashioned melodrama (p. 45)
See Piccadilly Jim.
not a great deal of flesh … what there was was creeping (p. 45)
Movie buffs may be reminded of the 1952 film Pat and Mike, in which Mike (Spencer Tracy) remarks of Pat (Katharine Hepburn): “Not much meat on her, but what’s there is ‘cherce’.” (Clip at Turner Classic Movies) But Wodehouse was using similar turns of phrase well before this:
There was very little vulgar curiosity in the composition of Angus McTavish, but what there was was sufficient to make him follow the pair at his best speed.
“Farewell to Legs” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, US version, 1936, and Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
There was not much of her, but what there was was good.
Prudence Garland in Full Moon, ch. 2 (1947)
madrilene soup. It quivered (p. 45)
Madrilene soup is a consommé of strong clarified beef broth flavored with tomatoes; when served cold it has a jellied consistency.
ceaseless vigilance (p. 45)
“From now on, Jeeves, we must watch Harold like hawks.”
“Undoubtedly, sir.”
“Ceaseless vigilance, what?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“Well, then, the only thing I can do, I suppose,” [Bingo] said sombrely, “is not to let the pie-faced little thug out of my sight for a second.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Ceaseless vigilance, eh, Jeeves?”
“Jeeves and the Impending Doom” (1926; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
“Then when I tell you that, unless ceaseless vigilance is exercised, I shall undoubtedly propose marriage to her, you will appreciate my concern.”
“Cats Will Be Cats” (1932; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
“He looks on himself as the stern Victorian father who has parted the young lovers and has got to exercise ceaseless vigilance to keep them from getting together again.”
Pauline Stoker speaking of her father in Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1934)
“I shall have to employ ceaseless vigilance, so as to give him no loophole for exercising his official powers.”
Bertie speaking of Stilton Cheesewright in Joy in the Morning, ch. 11 (1946)
“And ceaseless vigilance will be required if we are not to gum the game.”
Bertie speaking of his and Gussie’s pretending to be each other in The Mating Season, ch. 8 (1949)
As long as he remained in the neighbourhood, he would be compelled to exercise ceaseless vigilance and would have to hold himself in readiness, should the occasion arise, to pick up his feet and run like a rabbit.
Smallwood Bessemer in “Tangled Hearts” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Precisely what I think myself,” he agreed. “From now on, Wellbeloved, ceaseless vigilance.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.3 (1952)
“You haven’t dried up yet.”
“No.”
“Well, be careful you don’t. Exercise ceaseless vigilance.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 4 (1961)
Indian Love Lyrics (p. 45)
Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar (p. 46)
See Hot Water.
Puffy Benger (p. 45–46)
Always offstage, but frequently recalled by Galahad Threepwood in many books beginning with Summer Lightning (1929), especially for putting old Wivenhoe’s pig in Plug Basham’s bedroom.
Chapter Four
the tentacles of an octopus (p. 47)
practised skill (p. 47)
This is the only indication that comes to mind telling us that Galahad drives his own car. Lord Emsworth, of course, is generally chauffeured by Voules.
to keep body and soul together (p. 47)
See Something Fresh.
Colonel Egbert Wedge stood … against the mantelpiece over the fireplace (p. 47)
gate-leg table (p. 47)
See Summer Lightning.
post office … telephoned this telegram (p. 47)
wizened (p. 48)
Rather an unusual adjective for a boy! Wodehouse uses it in describing a variety of others, though:
A wizened little man and two ladies of determined aspect were looking up disapprovingly.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 6 (1912)
He stopped, to allow the statuesque Miss Chester to sail out under escort of a wizened little man with a horseshoe pin in his tie, whose name, in company with nearly all the others that had been spoken to him since he came into the room, had escaped Ashe’s memory.
Something Fresh/Something New, ch. 5 (1915)
The thought that it was even remotely possible that he in any way resembled this wizened, greedy-looking little person, cut like a knife.
Bill West looking at his uncle Jasper Daly in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 2.3 (1924)
“Men who once were men,
Women that once were women,
Children like wizened apes,
And dogs that snarl and snap and growl and hate.”
Officer Garroway’s poem “Streets!” in The Small Bachelor, ch. 7 (1927)
She was a small girl, of uncertain age—possibly twelve or thirteen, though a combination of London fogs and early cares had given her face a sort of wizened motherliness which in some odd way caused his lordship from the first to look on her as belonging to his own generation.
“Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“A little, short, broad, bow-legged individual with long arms and a dark, wizened face.”
A monkey kept by Seabury at the Dower House in Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1934)
you get wan, wizened little snails which have stunted their growth with early cigarette smoking
“The Snail Situation (latest)” in Punch, January 19, 1955; “The Meteorite Racket” in America, I Like You (1956); “Bridges, Snails and Meteorites” in Over Seventy (1957)
Ferdie was small and wizened and wore always a rather anxious look, as a man well might who so often found himself forty feet up in the air with only his natural endowments to keep him there.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 4 (1968)
a year or two ago … listening to his pig (p. 49)
Evidence that the events of Full Moon (1947) and the present novel are reasonably close in story time; an apparent contradiction with the comparison of the time for which Lord Emsworth had been a widower (see p. 41, above).
a suit of overalls hanging on the rail (p. 49)
See draped above, p. 38.
“Reciting Gunga Din?” (p. 49)
A famous narrative poem by Kipling; see online text at the Poetry Foundation. Many of Wodehouse’s characters recite it.
lumbago (p. 49)
Pain in the muscles of the lower back.
the Black Moustache gang (p. 50)
In an apparent homage to Wodehouse, the Black Moustache gang are the villains in a mystery novel for young readers, The Mystery of the Fiery Eye by Robert Arthur (1967), in a series featuring Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. Wodehouse’s three mentions of the gang, of course, all came in earlier books, of which Galahad at Blandings is the latest.
“Good-bye, sweetheart, and never forget that Gilbert Glendale in ‘The Missing Toe’ won the girl he loved in spite of being up against two mysterious stranglers and the entire Black Moustache gang.”
Cyril Mulliner in “Strychnine in the Soup” (1932; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
In an unpublished story by Gerald Vail there is a scene where a character with a criminal face sidles up to the hero as he pauses on Broadway to light a cigarette and hisses in his ear “Say, listen, youse! Youse’ll get out of this town if youse knows what’s good for youse!”, and the hero, realizing from this that Louis The Lip’s Black Moustache gang have become aware of the investigations he has been making into the bumping off of the man in the green fedora, draws in his breath sharply and, though a most intrepid young man, is conscious of a distinct chill down the spine.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.3 (1952)
wear the mask (p. 50)
See Laughing Gas.
a hospitable cucumber sandwich (p. 50)
An excellent example of a transferred epithet.
know her from Eve (p. 51)
Wodehouse used the common phrase “know him from Adam” in at least five books, but this is the only instance so far found of the female equivalent.
obiter dicta (p. 52)
See Money in the Bank.
Eyes widened, jaws dropped. (p. 52)
See p. 17, above.
Tipton has probably found someone who understands (p. 53)
Considering that Tipton owns most of the shares of Tipton’s Stores, Lord Emsworth’s speculation here is likely unnecessary.
twenty dollars … in our currency (p. 54)
We learned in chapter 1.2 that Tipton’s bail was ten dollars, so presumably he asked Lord Emsworth for enough for bail for both men.
Until Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, the conversion rate was US$4.86 to £1, and in most discussions in Wodehouse’s fiction, an approximate ratio of five dollars to the pound is used, so if Lord Emsworth’s memory had been sharper, he would likely have thought of twenty dollars as “four pounds in our currency.”
let’s have another cup of coffee (p. 54)
Quoting the lyrics of an Irving Berlin song. See Wikipedia and hear a 1932 recording at YouTube.
Hustle, bustle, do it now (p. 54)
See Leave It to Psmith.
“I’m not Shakespeare.” (p. 55)
It seems that Lord Emsworth has at one time or another read something other than books on pigs and on gardening; this literary reference is surprising but apt. Of course Wodehouse was an avid reader of Shakespeare, and quotations and allusions are frequent in his narration and in the speech of his characters, not only to specific lines from the plays, but also references to the man himself, as here. See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse for more like this; go on to explore the rest of this extensive resource for well over 1,800 Shakespearean citations in Wodehouse.
Bow Street (p. 55)
See A Damsel in Distress for the real-life magistrates’ court, and Summer Lightning for the fictional equivalent, Bosher Street Police Court, in many of Wodehouse’s stories.
did not wear a monocle (p. 56)
Lady Hermione’s distaste for Gally’s monocle was mentioned earlier, in chapter 2, section 2 (p. 24 of the current edition).
sliding away from the other sex had given him a technique (p. 56)
As cited by Frances Donaldson (see Books About Wodehouse) and echoed by most other biographers, Wodehouse himself was an expert in leaving a room before others present noticed his absence, a trick known to his family as the “Wodehouse Glide.” In his case, it was not due to an aversion to women, but rather to his preference to being alone, working at his typewriter, rather than participating in social gatherings.
vocal chords (p. 56)
Spelled thus in the Penguin edition whose pagination we are using to index these notes, but vocal cords in both US and UK first editions. See Very Good, Jeeves for more, and p. 62, below for a counterexample in this book.
babble from the padded cell (p. 56)
Bertram Wooster has no objection to listening to drivel, but it must not be pure babble from the padded cell, as this appeared to be.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1960)
Wodehouse earlier often used a similar phrase for this sort of delirium.
This, Mr. Slingsby seemed to think, judging from his expression, was simply asinine—mere babble from the sick-bed.
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 18 (1924)
See Bill the Conqueror for more like this.
hasn’t a bean (p. 57)
The OED has nineteenth-century citations for the use of bean as slang for a sovereign or guinea; twentieth-century citations are all in the negative sense, as here, for having no money at all.
jugged (p. 57)
Imprisoned; American slang from the nineteenth century. Of course the Wedges are influenced by Lord Emsworth’s inaccurately referring to a holding cell for drunks in a police station as a prison; inmates of a prison have been tried and convicted for more serious crimes.
Chapter Five
lichened church … (p. 58)
Wodehouse is copying from himself once again:
Market Blandings had a comforting air of having been exactly the same for centuries. Troubles might vex the generations it housed, but they did not worry that lichened church with its sturdy four-square tower, nor those red-roofed shops, nor the age-old inns whose second stories bulged so comfortably out over the pavements.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.3 (1923)
second storeys bulging comfortably over the pavements (p. 58)
In order to build the largest house or inn on a given lot, medieval builders often jettied, or cantilevered, the upper floors forward over the pavement (US: sidewalk).
softening of the brain, always an occupational risk with editors (p. 58)
But the work had told upon the Editor. Work of that sort carries its penalties with it. Success means absorption, and absorption spells softening of the brain.
Psmith, Journalist, ch. 1 (1915)
Gally resumed his crossword puzzle, more than ever convinced that the compiler of the clues was suffering from softening of the brain
“Sticky Wicket at Blandings” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
the sun was very sultry … the poet Coward (p. 59)
In his 1931 song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (recording at YouTube) Noël Coward says that “in tropical climes … the sun is far too sultry and one must avoid its ultry-violet ray.”
the historian (p. 59)
See Bill the Conqueror.
Marlene Wellbeloved (p. 59)
stuffed shirt … ‘Hoy, cocky’ (p. 59)
Once again Wodehouse is borrowing from himself:
George Cyril … held the view, and had voiced it fearlessly many a time in the tap room of the Emsworth Arms, that Beach was an old stuffed shirt.
“Hoy, cocky,” he said, incredible as such a mode of address might seem.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.1 (1952)
kiss again with tears … Tennyson (p. 60–61)
See Money in the Bank.
in the bag (p. 60)
See Hot Water.
wiped from his mind as with a sponge (p. 61)
He had got as far as a preliminary “Say!” when speech was wiped from his lips as with a sponge, and he stood gaping and ashamed, for the murderer of sleep and untimely knocker on front doors was Betty.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 20 (US book only, 1912)
he knew, both from experience and observation, that strange madness which may at any moment afflict the collector, wiping out morality and the nice distinction between mine and thine as with a sponge.
Something Fresh/Something New, ch. (1915)
He was passing the Inquiry Bureau on the C-Deck, striding along with bent head and scowling brow, when a sudden exclamation caused him to look up, and the scowl was wiped from his brow as with a sponge.
The Girl on the Boat/Three Men and a Maid, ch. 2 (1922)
And the next instant there appeared in the middle of a flower-bed containing lobelias something that was so manifestly not a lobelia that he stared at it in stunned amazement, speech wiped from his lips as with a sponge.
Summer Lightning, ch. 10.1 (1929)
one of your Malemute saloons … whooping it up … Dangerous Dan McGrews (p. 62)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
vocal cords (p. 62)
This time the Penguin edition matches the spelling of the US and UK books, unlike p. 56, above.
mid-season form (p. 62)
See Full Moon.
Her voice came to them like a bugle call to a couple of war horses. (p. 62)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“Smatter?” (p. 63)
Thus in the UK first edition as well, but the US book has an apostrophe of elision: “ ’Smatter?” which is more in keeping with Wodehouse’s usual practice of indicating omitted words or letters in short forms like this quick way of saying “What’s the matter?”
poets who were always losing dear gazelles (p. 63)
See Heavy Weather.
The cross which all English country policemen have to bear (p. 63)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
fiends with hatchet slaying six (p. 63)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
peddling (p. 64)
A mistake in the Penguin edition; the UK first has pedalling; the US edition has pedaling.
six-day bicycle race (p. 64)
These events of athletic endurance on indoor tracks originated in Victorian times in England and America; see Wikipedia for a convenient summary of their history.
“Do take the advice of an old pal and mix up a Never-Say-Die. It never fails. Guaranteed to make a week-old corpse spring from its bier and enter for the Six-Day Bicycle Race.”
Judson Coker in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 2.1 (1924)
All I had ever done was to mention to him—casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race—that at the age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys’ Handicap at the local school treat.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1934)
“He simply pedalled on furiously, as if he had been competing in a six-day bicycle race and had just realized he was dropping behind the leaders.”
Nobby Hopwood speaking of Stilton Cheesewright in Joy in the Morning, ch. 12 (1946)
“I said, ‘Dash it, old girl, what’s all this about? I’m not proposing to enter for the six-day bicycle race or something,’ but nothing would move her.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.1 (1952)
little friend of all the world (p. 64)
See Summer Moonshine.
a face that seemed to have been carved from some durable substance like granite (p. 64)
Compare the policeman who calls upon Jerry Vail at Sunnybrae in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 9.3, “who might have been carved out of some durable substance like granite,” and bouncer McTeague at Mario’s in Summer Lightning, ch. 4.3, who “had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood.”
flatty (p. 64)
See Uncle Dynamite.
bluebottle (p. 65)
A slang term for an officer who wears a blue uniform, such as a beadle (citations in the OED beginning with Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2) or a policeman (OED citations starting in 1845, and including Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning, ch. 11, in which “Stilton turns out to be the village bluebottle”).
a comedian who has been fed the line by his straight man (p. 66)
His straight man had let him down. He was feeling as Danny Kaye might feel if his supporting cast started hogging the comedy.
“Merrily We Roll Along” in Punch, May 26, 1954
“Did you know that these magistrates were expert comedians?”
“No, sir. The fact had not been drawn to my attention.”
“Think of Groucho Marx and you will get the idea. One gag after another, and all at my expense. I was just the straight man, and I found the experience most unpleasant.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 6 (1954)
If in a weak moment you let yourself become a prominent figure in the public eye these days, you are nothing but a straight man for all the comedians in the country.
“Thanks for the Memory, Such As It Is,” section 2, in America, I Like You (1956)
It convinced Lord Emsworth. He no longer felt that he had been cast in the role of straight man supporting a butler who was playing for laughs.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.1 (1969)
loud enough for two constables (p. 66)
See Summer Lightning.
Blandings Parva (p. 66)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
Arab steed (p. 67)
See Cocktail Time.
Gary (p. 67)
The only character named Gary so far found in Wodehouse. One wonders if the local fad for naming children after Hollywood stars was responsible for this lad’s christening; after all Gary Cooper did star with Marlene Dietrich in two films, Morocco (1930) and Desire (1936).
a shilling (p. 67)
One-twentieth of a pound sterling, equivalent to twelve pence. If this story is meant to take place circa 1930, shortly after the stock market crash, a rough equivalent value in modern terms would be on the order of £4 or US $5.
Chapter Six
strengthening cocktail (p. 68)
Besides other items said to be strengthening, including breakfast in general, eggs, tea, coffee, soup, a rusk, and even (for Empress of Blandings) bran-mash, alcoholic drinks can fall into this category. See also restorative in Sam the Sudden.
“Could you bring us some strengthening cocktails?”
Wilhelmina “Bill” Shannon to Phipps in The Old Reliable, ch. 18 (1951)
“While I’m dressing, will you be mixing me a strengthening cocktail?”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
“But I’ll tell you something about Roddy Glossop, Jeeves,” I said, having swallowed a rather grave swallow of the strengthening fluid.
A whisky-and-s in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Liberty Hall (p. 68)
See Summer Moonshine.
worse than Baxter (p. 68)
See Heavy Weather.
three thousand miles away in Pittsburg (p. 68)
Wodehouse is somewhat underestimating the distance; it is something over 3,600 miles as the crow flies. For the spelling of Pittsburg see Piccadilly Jim.
Lavender Briggs (p. 68)
She appeared in Service With a Smile (1961).
resigned her portfolio (p. 69)
like a dashed dog bringing his dashed bones (p. 69)
Wodehouse was speaking from personal experience with his own dog Sammy.
My own attitude, when I begin to write, is like that of the late Sammy, the bulldog, when he used to bring a decaying bone into the dining room at dinnertime.
Wodehouse’s note in Author! Author! (1962) following a letter to Bill Townend dated July 11, 1960.
dinning-room (p. 69)
A misprint in the Penguin edition. The UK book has dining-room; the US book has dining room.
fan mail (p. 69)
As one would expect, there are a few references to fan mail in Wodehouse’s letters and theatrical memoirs, but the only other reference so far found in his fiction is in Laughing Gas, ch. 11, in which child actor Joey Cooley tells Lord Havershot (after the two of them have temporarily swapped bodies) “Wait till you see the fan mail.”
Hell’s bells! (p. 69)
The phrase sounds more appropriate if taken as Gally’s own words than as a supposed quotation from Sandy Callender. See Cocktail Time.
spit on my hands and pull up my socks (p. 69)
These two clichés for preparing for hard work have not been found elsewhere in Wodehouse’s fiction.
Harley Street physicians (p. 70)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
“I do not allow myself to be dictated to by my secretary” (p. 70)
Though said without intent to make a nifty, this is another of the most clever things that Lord Emsworth has ever said, if taken ironically. He means it, though, just as he has on the few occasions on which he has asserted himself.
“I value your services highly, McAllister, but I will not be dictated to in my own garden, McAllister. Er—dash it,” added his lordship, spoiling the whole effect.
“Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“I shall point it at you,” replied Lord Emsworth with spirit. He was not a man to be dictated to in his own house.
Summer Lightning, ch. 18 (1929)
self-contained flat (p. 70)
The Empress’s pigsty has been given various architectural and real-estate names in the course of the stories. This may not be a complete list.
The bijou residence of the Empress of Blandings looked very snug and attractive in the moonlight.
Inside the Empress’s boudoir there sounded the movement of a heavy body.
“Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, after many a longing lingering look behind, had dragged himself away from the Empress’s boudoir…
Summer Lightning, ch. 1.5 (1929)
Within a liberal radius of the Empress’s headquarters other scents could not compete.
[Lord Emsworth] was drooping his long body over the rail of the Empress’s sanctum…
Heavy Weather, ch. 3 (1933)
why he found Sandy Callender such a thorn in the flesh (p. 70)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“Oh, shoot.” (p. 71)
This interjection of anger or frustration is labeled as U.S. slang in the OED and defined as a substitution for a similar-sounding four-letter word, with citations beginning in 1934 — the same year that it first appears in Wodehouse. All but the first citation below are spoken by American characters.
“Oh, shoot,” said the Whisky and Splash.
“The Fiery Wooing of Mordred” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
“Oh, shoot,” mumbled Fred—evidently dashed, poor chap.
Laughing Gas, ch. 24 (1936)
“Say, listen, Jane,” he said, “what’s all this I hear about the houseboat being rented?”
“Quite correct. Tenant clocks in to-day. Name of Peake.”
“Oh, shoot!”
Tubby Vanringham in Summer Moonshine, ch. 1 (1937)
Veronica said that perhaps they had better be going in now. Tipton said, “Oh, shoot!”
Full Moon, ch. 4.3 (1947)
bobbish (p. 71)
Healthy; good-spirited. Though it seems like twentieth-century slang, OED citations for the word begin in 1780.
a Kipling poem … if you can something something and never something something, you’ll be a man, my son, or words to that effect. (p. 71)
“If—” by Rudyard Kipling.
ante up and contribute largely to the kitty (p. 72)
Terms from poker and other card games, for a pool of money to be won or to defray expenses of the card party.
the needful (p. 72)
See the last end note for long green at Kid Brady—Light-Weight for a list of turn-of-the-century slang terms for money including “the needful.”
lived in Arcady (p. 72)
See Something Fresh.
the old Gardenia (p. 72)
See Summer Lightning.
the Bal Bullier (p. 72)
A ballroom and bar in the fifth arrondissement of Paris, created by François Bullier in 1847. It closed its doors in 1940.
fifty-seven hundred calories (p. 73)
A slip-up here; from the beginning the caloric requirement has been cited at a greater value.
“According to the Wolff-Lehmann feeding standards, a pig, if in health, should consume daily nourishment amounting to fifty-seven thousand eight hundred calories, these to consist of proteids four pounds five ounces, carbohydrates twenty-five pounds——”
“Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
The caloric value of proteins or carbohydrates is usually given in round figures as four calories to the gram. So this would be 469 ounces or 13,296 grams; multiplied by 4 that gives 53,185 calories. The discrepancy may be that there are some fats in the diet not yet named. In any case, the 5,700 calorie figure in the present book is wrong by an order of magnitude.
On consulting Feeds and Feeding, the Wolff-Lehmann standard for fattening swine, first period, per day per 1000 lb. of live weight of the animal, is given as 4.5 pounds of crude protein, 25 pounds of carbohydrates, and 0.7 pounds of fat. Allowing 9 calories per gram of fat, the total calculates out to be 56,380 calories, much closer to the given figure, and easily explained by rounding errors in the 4 and 9 calorie per gram figures.
Remember that these are daily values per 1000 pounds of the weight of the animal. I don’t recall the Empress’s weight ever being stated explicitly.
fours pounds (p. 73)
Another Penguin typo; both books have four pounds here.
a face like a prune run over by a motor bus (p. 73)
Monica Simmons shows herself to be a worthy addition to the Wodehouse dramatis personae with this descriptive phrase.
switch knives (p. 74)
More often referred to as switchblade knives: folding pocketable knives, with a blade that springs open when a button on the handle is pressed. Wodehouse is the source of the second OED citation for switch-knife:
At Eightieth Street he produced a switch-knife
Over Seventy, ch. 15 (1957)
The OED missed the same phrase in America, I Like You, ch. 1 (1956).
brass knuckles (p. 74)
Thus in the Penguin paperback, but both US and UK first editions have brass knucks here.
Wodehouse used the longer form in his first reference to these fist-protectors and punch-enhancers; the slang term knucks is first cited in the OED from 1897 from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, but Wodehouse makes the OED with the 1966 quotation below.
How true it is that in this world we can never tell behind what corner Fate may not be lurking with the brass knuckles.
“The Story of Cedric” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
“Have you everything you need? Revolver? Brass knucks? Oxy-acetylene blow-pipe? Wodehouse novel? Black jack? Skeleton keys? Mask?”
“My Gentle Readers” (1930; in Louder and Funnier, 1932)
It is in a precisely similar way that Fate likes to work, waiting with the brass knucks and the sock full of sand until its victims are at the peak of one of those boom periods when life appears to be roses, roses all the way.
Bring On the Girls, ch. 6 (1953/54)
“Have you everything you need? Gat? Brass knucks? Wodehouse novel? Oxyacetylene blowpipe? Trinitrotoluol? Mask?”
“Put Me among the Earls,” section 3, in America, I Like You (1956)
To reason successfully with that king of the twisters one would need brass knucks and a stocking full of sand.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
the muscles of her brawny arms were strong as iron bands (p. 74)
See Ukridge for the Longfellow poem “The Village Blacksmith.”
Confronting him was a vast man whose muscles, like those of that other and more celebrated village blacksmith, were plainly as strong as iron bands.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 15 (1919)
His mobile lips curved slightly, showing a gold tooth; and the muscles of his brawny arms, which were strong as iron bands, twitched a little.
“The Return of Battling Billson” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
I was shocked to observe that practically every second male might have been the Village Blacksmith’s big brother. The muscles of their brawny arms were obviously strong as iron bands…
“Tuppy Changes His Mind”/“The Ordeal of Young Tuppy” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
A peerless scrapper, this Billson, with muscles strong as iron bands, but of the very maximum boneheadedness.
“The Come-back of Battling Billson” (1935; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
The individual to whom he was directing her attention was of such impressive proportions that, had he not decided to earn a living among the biscuits, he might quite easily have become a village blacksmith. She quailed at the sight of the muscles of his brawny arms.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 19 (1937)
He was plainly a man who, had he felt disposed, could have understudied the village blacksmith and no questions asked, for it could be seen at a glance that the muscles of his brawny arms were strong as iron bands.
Ernest Dobbs in The Mating Season, ch. 21 (1949)
His chest is broad and barrel-like and the muscles of his brawny arms strong as iron bands.
Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
“Resistance was hopeless. The muscles of his brawny arms were strong as iron bands.”
“A Tithe for Charity” (1955; in A Few Quick Ones, UK edition, 1959)
“Kipper’s mere appearance commands respect. The muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands, and he has a cauliflower ear.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1960)
He had suffered reverses, true, but they had left him with his spirit unbroken and the muscles of his brawny arms just as much like iron bands as they had always been…
Roderick Spode in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 18 (1963)
“Porter is Spode plus. Hasty temper. Quick to take offence. And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands, as the fellow said.”
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
could not see her with a spyglass (p. 74)
[Cuthbert] proposed to Adeline and was badly stymied.
That fair, soulful girl could not see him with a spy-glass.
“The Unexpected Clicking of Cuthbert” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
“When first I met Fillmore, I couldn’t see him with a spy-glass, and now he’s just the whole shooting-match…”
The Adventures of Sally, ch. 14.2 (1922)
“Something seemed to whisper to me that the reason Pat couldn’t see you with a spy-glass was that all these years she had been secretly pining for me.”
Money for Nothing, ch. 15.2 (1928)
going over Niagara Falls in a barrel (p. 74)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
Patience on a monument lines (p. 74)
From Twelfth Night; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
talking turkey (p. 74)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
rave notice (p. 75)
An enthusiastic recommendation; usually a term used for theatrical or book reviews, coined by Variety in the 1920s. The OED includes the 1951 citation from Wodehouse quoted below.
“Of course he can open the safe. He’s an expert. You should have read what the papers said of him at the time of the trial. He got rave notices.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 9 (1951)
Shy creatures of the night rustled in the bushes at her side and, to top the whole thing off, somewhere in the woods beyond the river a nightingale had begun to sing with the full-throated zest of a bird conscious of having had a rave notice from the poet Keats and only a couple of nights ago a star spot on the programme of the B.B.C.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 10 (1953/54)
Well, after the bad Press the old fungus had been getting of late, you might have thought that a rave notice like this would have been right up my street.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 3 (1954)
“But it’s only an hour or so,” I said, “since I left her outside a hostelry called the ‘Fox and Goose’, and she had just been giving you a rave notice.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1960)
It isn’t often that I get unstinted praise from my late father’s sister, she as a rule being my best friend and severest critic, but on this occasion she gave me a rave notice.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (1966; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
The age of chivalry is not dead, the murmurer would have murmured, realizing that it was just behavior of this sort that used to get the Chevalier Bayard such rave notices in his day.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 9.3 (1970)
“Well, you will certainly get a rave notice in my prayers next time I make them.”
Much Obliged, Jeeves/Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, ch. 4 (1971)
It was from the Bridmouth Argus, with which is incorporated the Somerset Farmer and the South Country Intelligencer, the organ, if you remember, whose dramatic critic gave the old ancestor such a rave notice when she sang ‘Every Nice Girl Loves A Sailor’ in her sailor suit at the Maiden Eggesford village concert.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 20 (1974)
that schoolgirl complexion (p. 75)
See Sam the Sudden.
sons of toil … of whom Gally had spoken (p. 75)
See above.
geological strata (p. 75)
As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being.
Three Men and a Maid, ch. 9 (1921/22)
In the morning we were paraded and marched off in batches to the laundry above the cookhouse, where we found a number of enormous wooden tubs and were enabled to scour off the geological strata which had accumulated during our journey.
“Huy Day by Day” in Performing Flea, 1953
Her substantial foot, moreover, had begun to trace coy arabesques on the turf. (p. 75)
Wodehouse uses this term in the artistic sense of curlicues and abstract flowing patterns characteristic of non-representational Islamic art. Most of them in the stories are traced by a female foot on the ground, often representing coyness or hesitation. This action is not to be confused with the ballet or skating stance of the same name, in which the dancer stands on one foot, with the other leg extended straight out behind her with the foot pointed.
Hash Todhunter was not a swift-thinking man. Nor was he one of those practised amateurs of the sex who can read volumes in a woman’s glance and see in a flash exactly what she means when she scrapes arabesques on a gravel path with the toe of her shoe.
Sam the Sudden, ch. 22.2 (1925)
Pat traced an arabesque on the grass with the toe of her shoe.
Money for Nothing, ch. 15.1 (1928)
Her foot made arabesques on the turf.
“Up from the Depths” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
With the toe of one of her mules, she traced an arabesque on the carpet.
The Old Reliable, ch. 11 (1951)
“Gally,” said Penny, who for some moments had been tracing arabesques on the turf with her shoe and giving other indications of nerving herself to an embarrassing task, “can you lend me two thousand pounds?”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3 (1952)
A faint blush mantled her cheek and she drew an arabesque on the carpet with the toe of her shoe.
French Leave, ch. 9.2 (1956)
Agnes Flack drew a second arabesque on the gravel, using the toe of the other shoe this time.
“Scratch Man” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
The Professor continued to weave arabesques in the air with his hands, and suddenly Sidney McMurdo sat up.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Words poured from him in a steady stream, while the object of his encomiums stood blushing and drawing arabesques on the pavement with her foot.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 2.4 (1968)
It would perhaps be too much to say that a girl of her strength of character giggled, but she certainly gave a short laugh and one of her feet traced an arabesque on the carpet.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 5.4 (1969)
leap like a startled fawn (p. 75)
See also hunted fawn in A Damsel in Distress.
A butler, felt the Hon. Galahad, is a butler, and a startled fawn is a startled fawn. He disliked the blend of the two in a single body.
Summer Lightning, ch. 8 (1929)
Packy leaped like a startled fawn, and his brain, to which he had hoped to grant a brief rest, began whirring again under the fullest pressure.
Hot Water, ch. 13 (1932)
And I had reached it and was on the point of whipping out the jewel-case and depositing it, when a voice spoke behind me, and, turning like a startled fawn, I perceived L. G. Trotter.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 18 (1954)
It has been well said of me by those who have seen me at social gatherings that I look like something stuffed by a good taxidermist, but nobody has ever been known to leap away from me like a startled fawn, fearing a soliloquy on the good old days.
“In the Seventies” in Punch, June 25, 1968
her eyes rounded to about the dimensions of standard golf balls (p. 75)
Since 1990, British and American joint regulations specify a minimum diameter of 1.68 inches (42.67 mm) for a golf ball. Before that time, British regulations allowed smaller balls; since 1925 the British specification had been a minimum of 1.62 inches (41.15 mm).
Homer’s eyes widened to about the size of standard golf balls.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 5 (1970)
But this was the first time a multi-millionaire had expressed a desire to get into his ribs, and he gazed at Mr. Llewellyn with what the poet Keats would have called a wild surmise, his eyes widening to the dimension of regulation golf balls.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 3 (1969)
And while her two eyes didn’t actually start from their spheres, they widened to about the size of regulation golf balls, and a tender smile lit up her map.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
so far above me (p. 76)
Here Wodehouse reverses a joke which he had used twice earlier.
“She is so far above me.”
“Tall girl?”
“Spiritually. She is all soul.”
“The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy” (1926; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
‘Ever spoken to her?’
‘No, I haven’t the nerve. She’s so far above me.’
‘Tall girl, eh?’
‘Spiritually, you ass!’
Doctor Sally, ch. 2 (1932)
little squirt (p. 76)
See above.
bringing home the bacon (p. 76)
See Laughing Gas.
centre-aisleing (p. 76)
Spelled center-aisling in the US first edition. A figure of speech for proceeding up to the church altar in a wedding ceremony.
The thought of my peril had never left me, and I wasn’t going to be really easy in my mind till these two were actually center-aisling.
The Mating Season, ch. 1 (1949)
“I consider that this J. Davenport is the right man for you, and it is my dearest wish to park myself in a ringside pew and bellow The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden while you and he go centre-aisle-ing.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 11 (1951)
“Well, I’m delighted about you and Kipper or, as you would prefer to say, Reggie. There’s nobody I’d rather see you centre-aisle-ing with.”
How Right You Are, Jeeves/Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 3 (1960)
“She stoutly declines to go centre-aisling with him until his daughter Honoria gets married.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
to flicker a good deal like an early silent motion picture (p. 77)
See Bill the Conqueror.
brass tacks (p. 77)
See The Girl on the Boat.
the res (p. 77)
Legal Latin for the point at issue.
broad (p. 78)
Wodehouse uses this often derogatory slang term for woman only in the speech of some of his American characters.
“Are you engaged to that broad?” asked Mr. Murgatroyd.
“The Castaways” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“The Beenstock broad. I want a word with her.”
Kirk Rockaway in “Stylish Stouts” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
‘Yessir, that’s what it was, it was the bag of the identical broad I was battling on behalf of.’
Kelly Stickney in Company for Henry, ch. 3.3 (1967)
‘She’s one of those strongminded broads, and she’s always had Wendell hypnotized.’
Kelly Stickney in Company for Henry, ch. 6.1 (1967)
‘No, Bodkin, you don’t want to go messing about with a dumb broad who lets her father tell her what to do and what not to do.’
Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 5.2 (1969)
‘Ah,’ said Mr Llewellyn as the door bell rang, ‘this may or may not be the broad we have in mind…’
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 7 (1973)
ace high (p. 78)
See Piccadilly Jim.
she would die for one little rose from your hair (p. 78)
See Uncle Dynamite.
clasp her in your arms … and kiss her (p. 78)
Though we have no account of any meeting between Tipton Plimsoll and Lord Ickenham, it appears that Tipton’s advice to Wilfred is just what Uncle Fred would have recommended. See Ickenham system in Cocktail Time.
married to a man named Lister. Bill Lister (p. 78–79)
We learn of their engagement in Full Moon (1947); this confirms the happy ending.
“You’re in love with Vee, aren’t you?” (p. 79)
As recounted in Full Moon, ch. 6.2 (1947).
snort (p. 79)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
with bells on (p. 79)
Rather oddly, the OED doesn’t seem to recognize the phrase in the sense that Wodehouse uses it. Green’s Dictionary of Slang gives senses of “enthusiastically, definitely” which each could apply here.
“She’ll be waiting at the church at eleven. With bells on,” said Mr. Mortimer.
Three Men and a Maid, ch. 1 (1922)
“Tell her I’ll be there in two ticks, with bells on,” said Bingo.
“Sonny Boy” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“Then you’ve really definitely and finally decided to attend the binge?”
“With bells on, my dear boy, with bells on.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 24 (1946)
“And what the coffee-caddie needs is not a female novelist with a firm chin and flashing eyes, but a jolly little soul who, when he bills, will herself bill like billy-o, and who will be right there with bells on when he starts to coo.”
Uncle Fred in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 2 (1948)
“The Phippses are coming—and I may add with bells on.”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 21 (1952)
“Expect me among the roses at an early date. You’ll be there?”
“With bells on.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 8.3 (1952)
‘You don’t mean Florence is here as well?’
‘With bells on.’
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1971)
And, even earlier than his use in fiction, in this letter to his adopted daughter:
I will come down and see you the very first moment I can manage. I simply must take a day to clean up the Savage play as he wants it by Saturday. But after that down I come with bells on.
Letter to Leonora, 15 June 1921, in Yours, Plum, ed. F. Donaldson (1990)
too nautical a ring (p. 79)
Originally mentioned in Full Moon, ch. 6.3 (1947).
Shelley … ‘blithe spirit’ rhymes with ‘near it’ (p. 79–80)
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
To a Skylark (1820).
not that it does (p. 80)
Even though Wodehouse had been living in America for almost two decades and had been an American citizen for a decade, his preferences in phonetics are clearly still British. At least in my own American speech (brought up in Kansas City, Missouri; living in California for many years) the rhyme is a good one. I’m assuming that Plum is comparing the shorter /ı/ in spirit with a longer diphthong /ıə/ in near, sounding something like nee-uh in British English. [NM]
No risk involved. It’s good Scotch. (p. 80)
Another hint that the story takes place soon after the stock-market crash, as this means that Prohibition would still have been in effect in America, and there was a risk that bootleg liquor would have been adulterated with poisonous substances such as wood alcohol.
goggle-eyed (p. 80)
This term can mean “bespectacled” in Wodehouse (see Uncle Fred in the Springtime), but usually refers to the eyes themselves; see Piccadilly Jim.
get to first base (p. 80)
This can be taken in two ways: to make the first successful step toward one’s goal, and as a metaphor for kissing as the first step in romantic intimacy (an originally American usage cited as early as 1897 in the OED).
Wodehouse seems to have used it mostly in the simple planning sense, even though his first usage so far found is from 1942; he would surely have learned the phrase in its intimate sense from the talk of his fellow internees during the start of the Second World War. Tipton’s phrase quoted above and the 1961 quotation below are the only ones so far found with a romantic implication.
“All I got to do is simply drive up to the front door and say I’m a rich millionaire from the other side who’s heard about the place and wants to sit in, and they’ll lay down the red carpet for me, same as they seem to have done for Soapy. How’s that?”
“Not so good.”
“No?”
“No. You’d never get to first base.”
Chimp Twist and Dolly Molloy in Money in the Bank, ch. 12 (1942)
“You wouldn’t get to first base. If you knew as much about cops as I do, you’d know that they don’t rush from rooms.”
French Leave, ch. 11.1 (1956)
“He would be on his guard against me,” he said, inspired. “I’d never get to first base.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 19 (1957)
‘But there’s a sort of cool aristocratic dignity about her . . . a kind of aloofness . . . I don’t know how to put it, but she gives you the feeling that you’ll never get to first base with her.’
[…]
‘Any red-blooded man would be glad to get to first base with Connie.’
Mr. Schoonmaker and Lord Ickenham in Service with a Smile, ch. 10.2 (1961)
A powerful plea, which with any other man would undoubtedly have brought home the bacon. With Pop Bassett it didn’t get to first base.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 19 (1963)
“I intend to contest [the will] and have it set aside.”
“Forget it, Tilbury. You won’t get to first base.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 8.2 (1964)
It made me feel like that fellow in the Bible who tried to charm the deaf adder and didn’t get to first base.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
‘Me neither. But try selling that idea to Wendell. You wouldn’t get to first base.’
Company for Henry, ch. 6.1 (1967)
He could understand how those Old Testament snake charmers must have felt who tried to ingratiate themselves with the deaf adder and did not get to first base.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 9.2 (1969)
“If this son of a Butterwick thinks he can get to first base with me, he’s very much mistaken.”
Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 6.2 (1972)
Chapter Seven
charabangs (p. 82)
The spelling in British editions reflects the Anglicized pronunciation of this originally French word, as well as a plural formed as in English; in French the plural would be chars-à-bancs. The US first edition has charabancs here and charabanc as the singular in chapter 8.2; UK editions have char-a-banc for the singular.
Originally referring to open horse-drawn vehicles with rows of benches for passengers, the current meaning is motor coaches or tourist buses.
hussies … as bold as brass (p. 82)
This is the only usage of this phrase so far found in Wodehouse. The footman, even though he is a servant, seems to consider himself superior to the visiting public.
half-a-crown (p. 82)
Two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound sterling. If we date the events of this novel to 1930, an equivalent value in 2024 would be on the order of seven pounds or ten US dollars.
thrustful (p. 82)
A relatively rare word meaning forceful or energetic, first cited in 1909 in the OED. Wodehouse used it a few other times:
At this excellent emporium one may buy, in addition to second-hand clothing, practically anything that exists: and the difficulty—for the brothers are all thrustful salesmen—is to avoid doing so.
“The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
On every side, thrustful cavaliers, like knights jousting for their ladies, were hurling themselves into the dense throng that masked the table where food and drink were being doled out. Supper at a Bassinger ball was always a test of manhood, and the lucky ones were those who had played Rugby football at school.
Big Money, ch. 7.2 (1931)
But dinner had wrought a wondrous change in his outlook. It had made him his old thrustful self again.
Ivor Llewellyn in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 18 (1935)
He was also an admirer of spirit in the young of the male sex, and Bill’s thrustful policy in the matter of ladders and water pipes appealed to him.
Colonel Wedge in Full Moon, ch. 10.5 (1947)
tut-tuttered (p. 83)
A Penguin misprint. Both US and UK first editions have tut-tutted here.
If Sandy Callender’s come (p. 84)
Thus in the UK first edition as well as in Penguin; the US book omits the apostrophe, which is clearly the better way of forming the plural of a name.
can letters to be answered at once be far behind? (p. 84)
photographs of Society brides who looked like gangsters’ molls (p. 84)
Most of the photographs in the weekly paper over which Beach had been relaxing were of peeresses trying to look like chorus-girls and chorus-girls trying to look like peeresses.
Summer Lightning, ch. 1 (1929)
Put Me Among The Pigs (p. 84)
See A Damsel in Distress.
banned in Boston (p. 85)
For many years, the civic authorities in Boston, Massachusetts, exerted censorship over books, plays, movies, and other artworks deemed to be objectionable; see Wikipedia for a summary of the history of these bans. Some publishers and producers found that “banned in Boston” was a profitable catch-phrase to use in advertising their works elsewhere, giving potential customers a hint that they would find these to be racy or titillating.
Gally’s quip here is absurd for a pig book, and when it goes over Lord Emsworth’s head, he abandons the jest immediately.
Just as all American publishers hope that if they are good and lead upright lives, their books will be banned in Boston, so do all English publishers pray that theirs will be denounced from the pulpit by a bishop.
Cocktail Time, ch. 3 (1958)
“You see,” said Cyril, falling smoothly into his stride, “a book like yours always involves a serious risk for the publisher owing to the absence of the Sex Motif, which renders it impossible for him to put a nude female of impressive vital statistics on the jacket and no hope of getting banned in Boston.”
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Sherlock Holmes used to keep his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper (p. 85)
At first glance this might seem a non sequitur, but in fact the mention of the coal scuttle is linked to it.
But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.
Dr. Watson’s narration beginning “The Musgrave Ritual” in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893).
Athenaeum Club (p. 85)
See A Damsel in Distress.
throwing soft-boiled eggs at an electric fan (p. 85)
See Laughing Gas for a similar reference from another author.
What I mean to say is, I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan.
“Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest” (1916; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
“Throwing soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan in the better class of restaurant?”
Laughing Gas, ch. 1 (1936)
“I never saw you looking mouldier, not even on the morning after that night at the Angry Cheese, when you threw the soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan.”
Full Moon, ch. 3.4 (1947)
“Well, when I tell you that in a few short hours Russell Clutterbuck got self and guest thrown out of three grillrooms and a milk bar, you will appreciate what I mean. Rightly or wrongly, he feels that electric fans are placed there to have eggs thrown at them, and he saw to it that before we started making the rounds he was well supplied with these.”
“The Right Approach” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
And what of the life-of-the-party man who at social gatherings throws eggs into the electric fan? Very difficult to estimate character there.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, August 17, 1960
“In the days before he fell under Florence’s spell he was rather apt to get slung out of restaurants for throwing eggs at the electric fan, and he seldom escaped unjugged on Boat Race night for pinching policemen’s helmets.”
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1971)
smashing the piano (p. 85)
We’re pretty broad-minded here, and if you stop short of smashing the piano, there isn’t much that you can do at the Drones that will cause the raised eyebrow and the sharp intake of breath.
“Uncle Fred Flits By” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
perished of a surfeit of Brazil nuts (p. 85)
The noun surfeit for an excessive quantity, especially one that when consumed leads to illness or death, is rare in modern writing, and is mainly associated with the tradition that King Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys. Wodehouse spoofs this with reference to a variety of items; this is a partial list.
He finally died of a surfeit of hard-boiled egg, of which he was passionately fond, and I was as miserable as if I had lost a brother.
“Egbert, Bull-Frog” (1914)
Still more was he annoyed that Steve’s material mind should attribute to a surfeit of lobster a pallor that was superinduced by a tortured soul.
The White Hope/The Coming of Bill, ch. 4 (1914/20)
This may be due to a gipsy strain in my ancestry—one of my uncles travelled with a circus—or it may be the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum, which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an established reputation on the music-hall stage as one of Professor Pond’s Performing Poodles.
“The Mixer: He Meets a Shy Gentleman” (1915; in The Man with Two Left Feet, 1917)
It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist’s and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of tenpenny nails; Freddie who mixed and administered the dose.
Jill the Reckless, ch. 8.2 (1920)
“For the moment I’ve had what you might call rather a surfeit of dogs.”
The Adventures of Sally, ch. 2.6 (1921/22)
As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma.
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
Amy finished the leg of mutton and fell into a surfeited slumber, and peace descended on Burberry Road.
Sam the Sudden, ch. 17 (1925)
He had seen a good deal of the cloth-capped man in the last quarter of an hour, and he was feeling surfeited.
Big Money, ch. 6.2 (1931)
Surfeited after awhile by the spectacle of it chewing the cud and staring glassily at nothing, Lord Emsworth decided to swivel the apparatus round in the hope of picking up something a trifle more sensational.
“The Custody of the Pumpkin” (in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
A slight disorder of the digestive tract, due to a surfeit of cheese, had been the cause of that visit to the vet, and on these occasions the dumb chum was apt to want to head for the lawn and nibble.
Quick Service, ch. 11 (1940)
A surfeit of office parties has left him a nervous wreck.
“Christmas in New York” in Punch, December 23, 1953
His niece, who lived with him, had recently been presented by her employer with a pedigree boxer, and only yesterday it had behaved in a similar manner when about to give up its all after a surfeit of ice cream, a delicacy of which it was far too fond.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.1 (1964)
He had always been fond of his nephew, and what more likely than that he should have fetched up in Hollywood, made a packet, perished of a surfeit of brandy smashes, and left that packet to that nephew.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 13 (1973)
mental retina (p. 86)
A scientific-sounding way of saying “the mind’s eye”; Google Books finds examples as early as 1800.
He had seen quite a good deal of Walsingford Hall in these last few days, and a clear picture of it in all its forbidding hideousness was etched on his mental retina.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 23 (1937)
“And the picture most deeply imprinted on my mental retina—is that the correct expression?”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)
Stamped indelibly on his mental retina was the memory of last year’s fête, when he had watched the Rev. Aubrey Brotherhood preparing to embark on his duties in the big tent.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 6.2 (1948)
“Yours is a face that impresses itself on the mental retina.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 1 (1951)
Lord Ickenham agreed that it did indeed stamp itself on the mental retina.
Service with a Smile, ch. 5.3 (1961)
He had parted so recently from Sidney McMurdo that he had not had time to erase from his mental retina what might be called the over-all picture of him.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
sepia maelstrom of the child’s thumb had soiled it a good deal outwardly (p. 87)
Claire took the envelope from him. He had been holding it in his hand for safety, and it was damp and seemed to simmer with a gentle glow. A Bertillon expert would have been interested in the perfect reproduction of the lines of Percy’s little thumb in the left-hand corner.
Uneasy Money, ch. 3 (US edition, 1915/16)
On the chest of drawers is a grubby envelope, addressed in an ill-formed hand to R. Byng, Esq.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 14 (1919)
Roland went to the mantelpiece; and, having inspected the dirty envelope for a moment with fastidious distaste, opened it in a gingerly manner.
“Something Squishy” (1924, in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Clean when it had left Adrian Peake’s hand, the envelope was now rather liberally smeared with foreign matter. Everywhere on its surface was to be detected the sepia maelstrom of young Cyril Attwater’s clammy thumb.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 21 (1937)
Now … was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party (p. 87)
the hart that pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase (p. 88)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
He is never happier than when curled up with it (p. 89)
strewing roses from his hat (p. 89)
My cup runneth over (p. 89)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
makes your path straight (p. 89)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
in like Flynn (p. 89)
This is the only instance so far found of this phrase in Wodehouse’s writings. Various theories of its origin have been given; a useful summary is at Wikipedia.
telegram … German measles (p. 90)
Reminiscent of the telegram sent to Myra Schoonmaker in Summer Lightning, ch. 2.2, by Ronnie Fish in Lady Constance’s name. Sue Brown says “Send her a wire saying she mustn’t come to Blandings, because scarlet fever or something has broken out.”
with his hair in a braid (p. 90)
See The Mating Season.
Napoleon … asked his army to advance … not in the mood (p. 91)
Albert was becoming impatient. He was in the position of a great general who thinks out some wonderful piece of strategy and can’t get his army to carry it out.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 13 (1919)
She was in the position of a general who comes from his tent with a plan of battle all mapped out, and finds that his army has strolled off somewhere and left him.
Aileen Peavey in Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.1 (1923)
Freddie pondered with knit brows. He was feeling something of the chagrin of a general who, after sweating himself to a shadow planning a great campaign, finds his troops unequal to carrying it out.
“Company for Gertrude” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
A lady of the manor, with an important fête coming along and the curate in bed with measles, is in the distressing position of an impresario whose star fails him a couple of days before the big production or a general whose crack regiment gets lumbago on the eve of battle.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 3.2 (1948)
He was in much the same position as a General who, with his strategic plans all polished and ready to be carried out, finds that his army has gone off somewhere, leaving no address.
Oily Carlisle in Cocktail Time, ch. 11 (1958)
It was impossible to say, and Gally’s emotions were similar to those of a general who, having planned a brilliant piece of strategy, finds himself dubious as to the ability of his troops to carry it out. Generals in such circumstances chew their mustaches in an over-wrought sort of way, and Gally would have chewed his, if he had had one.
“Sticky Wicket at Blandings” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
He felt like a General who, having devised a plan of campaign calling for the whole line to advance, goes into the camp and sees his troops loafing about there with cigarettes and mouth-organs, the last thing in their minds a forward movement.
Algy Martyn in Company for Henry, ch. 12.2 (1967)
directly I hit the joint (p. 92)
Tipton is decriminalizing the word “joint” here (see Sam the Sudden) and merely using it as an informal way to say “house.”
fondness for bijouterie (p. 92)
French for “jewellery.” Wodehouse explains this fondness when we are first introduced to Veronica:
A lovely girl needs, of course, no jewels but her youth and health and charm, but anybody who had wanted to make Veronica understand that would have had to work like a beaver.
Full Moon, ch. 1.1 (1947)
a packet (p. 92)
The OED calls this a colloquialism (mostly in British use) for a large sum of money, with citations beginning 1922. Wodehouse began using it shortly thereafter:
“But there’s pictures and things, any one of them worth a packet.”
Money for Nothing, ch. 7.2 (1928)
“Get in on the short end,” said Aurelia, earnestly, “and you’ll make a packet.”
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
eight thousand pounds (p. 92)
If this is taken to be happening in 1930, a modern rough equivalent would be £440,000 or US$570,000 (using consumer-price index data to account for inflation).
Ouled Nail dancers (p. 92)
See Nothing Serious.
five-thousand-guinea (p. 92)
Luxury goods such as expensive automobiles were traditionally priced in guineas rather than pounds; see Ukridge. This would have been the equivalent of £5,250 at the time.
the celebrated Indian who threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe (p. 92)
From Othello: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
solar plexus (p. 93)
face split by an outsize in grins (p. 94)
See The Old Reliable.
Othello … had allowed his subdued eyes to drop tears as fast as the Arabian tree their med-cinable gum (p. 94)
Some editions of Shakespeare render the word as med’cinable, but I have seen none with the hyphen used in the UK editions of this book. The First Folio of Shakespeare has medicinable here; the US book has medicinal.
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
ears were sticking up (p. 95)
“Can I have a word with you in private, Gally?” said Bill, with an unfriendly glance at the chauffeur, whose large pink ears were sticking up like a giraffe’s and whose whole demeanour indicated genial interest and a kindly willingness to hear all.
Full Moon, ch. 6.6 (1947)
My ears were sticking up like a wirehaired terrier’s, and I could scarcely believe that they had heard aright.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 11 (1954)
‘I’ll tell you what about him, just as soon as this pie-faced female has removed herself. Don’t want her muscling in with her ears sticking up, hearing every word I say.’
Service with a Smile, ch. 4.2 (1961)
clairaudient (p. 95)
Usually used in the occult sense of perceiving sounds not audible through ordinary hearing, as a parallel to clairvoyant for seeing the unseen; here Wodehouse seems merely to mean “keen-hearing.” This is the only use of the word so far found in his works.
dumbest blonde in Shropshire and its adjoining counties (p. 95)
Veronica Wedge, if the dumbest, was certainly the most beautiful girl registered among the collateral branches in the pages of Debrett’s Peerage.
Full Moon, ch. 1.3 (1947)
bishop and assistant clergy (p. 95)
“I say,” said Barmy, in sudden alarm, “you don’t want a fashionable wedding with full choral effects, do you? All that stuff Potter was talking about . . . the Bishop and assistant clergy and bridesmaids and choir boys and sextons and beadles and first and second gravediggers and all that?”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 18 (1952)
A bishop and assistant clergy had done their stuff, the returns were all in, and she was his . . . his . . . his . . . for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, till death did them . . .
Bill Hollister’s fantasy in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 9 (1957)
One would certainly have expected him by this time to have raised the price of a marriage license and had the Bishop and assistant clergy getting their noses down to it.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
“It was not pottiness, Dunstable, it was the natural exuberance of a young girl who has found love and happiness and is looking forward to the wedding with full choral effects, with the man she adores standing at her side in a morning coat and sponge bag trousers and the bishop and assistant clergy doing their stuff as busily as one-armed paperhangers with the hives.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 9.3 (1969)
It had never occurred to me that Tuppy might be seriously short of doubloons, but I saw now why there had been all this delay in assembling the bishop and assistant clergy and getting the show on the road.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1971)
“And then, just as it looked as if all they had to do was collect the bridesmaids, order the cake and sign up the Bishop and assistant clergy, along came the sleeve across the windpipe.”
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972)
‘I won’t believe you’re married till I see the bishop and assistant clergy mopping their foreheads and saying, “Well, that’s that. We’ve really got the young blighter off at last.” ’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 13 (1974)
See also below and another citation from Barmy in Wonderland in piece of cheese below.
wedding bells … would not ring out (p. 95)
See A Damsel in Distress and If I Were You.
the salt of the earth (p. 96)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
suck up to (p. 96)
In its original citation of schoolboy jargon from an 1860 slang dictionary, the OED quotes the definition “to insinuate oneself into [another’s] good graces”; its own definition is “to curry favour with, to toady to.”
“You mean you would advise me to suck up to his pig, this what’s-its-name of Blandings, to omit no word or act to conciliate it?”
Heavy Weather, ch. 5 (1933)
The way he would suck up to the old dad would be nobody’s business. He proposed to exert upon him the full force of his magnetic personality, and looked forward to registering a very substantial hit.
“Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
It was too dashed absurd, he considered, to stand here trying to suck up to a bally steward who declined to expand and be matey, when he might be out in God’s air, taking Gertrude for a spin round the deck.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 8 (1935)
I don’t think it matters in the long run, but there’s no doubt that all these other fellows who shove themselves forward and suck up to the critics do get a lot of publicity, and it helps them for a while.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated August 1, 1945, in Performing Flea (1953).
“He was in here last night trying to suck up to me, but I sent him off with a flea in his ear.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 10.3 (1969)
The doctors are baffled. (p. 97)
“Worse,” replied the other curtly. “Much worse. The doctors are baffled. Mine is a very complicated case.”
“Romance at Droitgate Spa” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, UK edition, 1940)
Chapter Eight
optimism and the will to win (p. 98)
Wodehouse seemed to like coupling another quality with “the will to win”; as seen here, he did this over half the time he mentioned that will.
His was a game into which the niblick had always entered very largely. It was the one club with which he really felt confident of expressing his personality. It removed all finicky science from the proceedings and put the issue squarely up to the bulging biceps and the will to win.
“The Letter of the Law” (1936; in Young Men in Spats, US edition, 1936, and Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
Housemaids, after all, are but broken reeds to lean upon in such an emergency. They lack stamina and the will to win.
Money in the Bank, ch. 16 (1942)
You could have described Tipton at this moment as the dominant male with the comfortable certainty of having found the mot juste. He exuded the will to win.
Full Moon, ch. 6.3 (1947)
“Stap my vitals, Horace,” he cried, deeply concerned, for naturally what he would have liked to see on the eve of the Darts tournament was a rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed Horace Davenport, full of pep, ginger and the will to win.
“The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
It seemed to him that the younger generation was totally lacking in the bulldog spirit and the will to win.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 8.3 (US edition, 1952)
Actors might walk through their parts, singers save their voices, but the personnel of the ensemble never failed to go all out, full of pep, energy and the will to win.
Bring On the Girls, ch. 1.1 (1953)
And those who in an iron age like this have succeeded in prising fivers out of a hard-hearted world cannot be said never to have worked. It is a task that calls for all that a man has of energy, courage and the will to win.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated April 18, 1953, in Performing Flea (1953)
“But the trouble with Bill was, I imagine, that he lacked drive . . . the sort of drive you see so much of at Harrige’s. The will to win, I suppose you might call it.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 2/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 1 (1953/54)
These last few days, with Jeeves apt to return at any moment, it had been borne in upon me quite a good deal that when the time came for us to stand face to face I should require something pretty authoritative in the way of bracers to nerve me for what would inevitably be a testing encounter, calling for all that I had of determination and the will to win.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
It sounds good, and it is quite possible that it may work up there, for Washington pigeons probably have not the same morale and will to win as New York pigeons, but our lot would scoff at such childish devices.
“Pigeons in the Grass, Alas” in Punch, March 30, 1955
But this was no time for idle meditation on the will to win of the Roville police force, it was a time for action.
French Leave, ch. 7.4 (1956)
“How in the space of a few brief years she can have succeeded in converting herself from the gargoyle of 1939 into the radiant, lovely, glamorous, superlative girl she is today simply beats me. It’s the nearest thing to a miracle I ever struck. It just shows what can be done if you have the right spirit and the will to win.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 12 (1957)
With self all eagerness and enthusiasm for the work in hand, straining at the leash, as you might say, and full of the will to win, it came as a bit of a damper when I found on the following afternoon that Jeeves didn’t think highly of Operation Upjohn.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1960)
He had to rely solely on personal magnetism and the will to win.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, July 20, 1960
Fortunately Providence in its infinite wisdom had given Scotties short legs, and though full of the will to win he could accomplish nothing constructive.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1963)
“Given the will to win, you should be able to cut him out.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5.3 (1964)
Aunt Julia had shelves of books about old furniture which I could borrow and bone up on, thus acquiring the necessary double talk, so next moaning I set out for The Cedars, Wimbledon Common, full of zeal and the will to win.
“Ukridge Starts a Bank Account” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
With any luck, he reflected, he should be able to get rid of his nephew long before the expiration of that period of time. He had done it before, and he could do it again. It only required perseverance and the will to win.
Company for Henry, ch. 9.3 (1967)
His guardian angel had certainly given satisfaction to date, but there remained much for him to do, and there must be no folding of the hands, no sitting back and taking it easy, no slackening of the will to win on his part.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 6 (1970)
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman uncle’s place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany,—nervous, but full of the will to win.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1971)
stage wait (p. 98)
Wodehouse, a man of the theatre, often used theatrical jargon even in offstage situations. This term means a pause, usually unexpected, in the performance of a play, during which nothing is happening. Most often this means that an actor has failed to enter on cue or has forgotten a line.
Note the two quotations from The Mating Season: one is offstage, another is onstage.
In the midst of this brilliant scene Claridge stepped before the footlights and announced that to-night had witnessed the longest stage-wait on record.
“Women, Wine and Song!”, ch. MMMCCCVIII (1908)
There followed one of the tensest “stage waits” of Mike’s experience. It was not long, but, while it lasted, the silence was quite solid.
“The Lost Lambs”, ch. 29 (1908; later published as Enter Psmith and Mike and Psmith; in Mike (1909) as ch. 58)
An awkward stage wait followed, which lasted until John was seen crossing the deck, when there were more cheers, and General Poineau, resuming his pince-nez, brought out the address of welcome again.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 5 (1912)
They would sit down. There might be a stage wait of a few minutes. Then, infallibly, Sidney Mercer would come up and ask Minnie to dance.
“The Man with Two Left Feet” (US magazine version only, 1916)
But, when he arrived, a hitch occurred. There was a stage wait. The butler at Eaton Square told him the girl was dressing.
“The Knightly Quest of Mervyn” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
But now, as so often happened when he started to write to the girl he loved, there occurred a stage wait. He paused, wondering how to begin.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 1 (1935)
I sent the Post the first 50,000 words of The Code of the Woosters, and they like it, but they feel that the early part needs cutting. “Too many stage waits” was what Brandt said, and when I looked at it, I saw he was right.
Letter to Bill Townend dated November 22, 1937, in Performing Flea (1953); dated November 22, 1938, in Author! Author! (1962)
A stage wait then occurred, but not such a long one as you might have expected. It was only about a minute before Stiffy appeared.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 9 (1938)
There was consequently a longish stage wait, and as the minutes passed Freddie began to find the atmosphere of the study distinctly oppressive.
“Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and in Nothing Serious, 1950)
The stage wait which followed the butler’s exit was filled in by a masterly résumé of the affair by Mrs Steptoe who, like the detective in the final chapter of a thriller, proceeded to sum up and strip the case of its last layers of mystery.
Quick Service, ch. 19 (1940)
During the stage wait, which was not of long duration, the old relative filled in with some ad lib stuff about Boko, mostly about how much he disliked his face.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 22 (1946)
She pressed the bell. There was a stage wait. She pressed it again, and there was another stage wait. She was on the point of giving it a third prod, when the hour produced the man.
The Mating Season, ch. 21 (1949)
There was a brief stage wait, and then a small, bullet-headed boy in an Eton jacket came staggering on like Christopher Robin going hoppity-hoppity-hop, in a manner that suggested that blood relations in the background had overcome his reluctance to appear by putting a hand between his shoulder-blades and shoving.
The Mating Season, ch. 22 (1949)
“Well, if you were holding book, where were you during that stage wait of Whittaker’s in the second act?”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 15 (1952)
Then, most nerve-racking of all—the stage wait. “What’s the matter? What’s supposed to be happening?”
Bring On the Girls, ch. 5.2 (1953)
There was a stage wait of about a minute and a half, during which, my moodiness now much lightened, I rendered ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘I Love a Lassie’, and ‘Every Day I Bring Thee Violets’, in the order named.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
He had sent his stories from Kentucky to a friend in New York, and the friend had handed them on to Archie, and Archie had sold them with magical skill, and then there had occurred that painful stage-wait in the matter of the cashing up.
“Archie Had Magnetism” in America, I Like You (1956)
“I have just been speaking to my lawyer on the telephone,” he said, getting going after a short stage wait.
How Right You Are, Jeeves/Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 18 (1960)
“The only trouble is that in these legal matters there’s always a long stage wait before the balloon goes up.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.2 (1964)
spoiling ships for ha’pworths of tar (p. 98)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well (p. 99)
This is the only reference to this adage so far found in Wodehouse’s fiction; he did use it in encouraging book-buyers to purchase previous books in the Jeeves series:
And what I do feel very strongly is that, if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well and thoroughly.
Wodehouse’s Preface to Right Ho, Jeeves (UK edition only, 1934)
one of those boys who tell their mother everything (p. 99)
“Nice boy, Vernon,” said Millicent.
“He tells his mother everything.”
“That’s what I meant. I think it’s so sweet of him.”
Summer Lightning, ch. 1.3 (1929)
stout denial (p. 99)
See Summer Lightning.
brass tacks (p. 99)
See The Girl on the Boat.
to beat about bushes (p. 99)
From the common phrase beating about the bush: circling round an uncomfortable topic rather than bringing it up directly.
what alcohol does to the common earth-worm? (p. 99)
“—And after that,” said Judson, “he took some worms and slipped them a stiff bracer, and, believe me or believe me not, Bill o’ man, what it did to them was plenty.”
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 20.2 (1924)
“ ‘No more alcohol for me,’ said Buffy. ‘Look what it does to the common earthworm.’ ‘But you’re not a common earthworm,’ I said, putting my finger on the flaw in his argument right away.”
Gally Threepwood in Summer Lightning, ch. 1 §2 (1929)
laughed an eldritch laugh (p. 100)
This is one of only two uses so far found in Wodehouse of this relatively rare word for “weird, frightful, hideous” from Scottish; the most recent citation in the OED is from 1866.
Once more Gladys had uttered that eldritch scream so like in its timbre to that of a domestic cat with a number eleven boot on its tail.
“A Good Cigar Is a Smoke” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
mopping it up (p. 100)
Wilfred groaned in spirit. (p. 100)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
There is a time for worrying about pigs and a time for not worrying about pigs. (p. 101)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
a costermonger calling attention to his brussels sprouts (p. 101)
The costermonger (see The Clicking of Cuthbert) is usually thought of as an apple-seller, but Wodehouse more often mentions him in relation to these dainty miniature cabbages.
Windows closed, areas emptied themselves, and presently the street was given over once more to the cat lunching in the gutter and the coster hymning his Brussels sprouts.
“No Wedding Bells for Him” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
A few minutes later, however, just as Kay’s head was beginning to nod, from an upper window there suddenly blared forth on the still air a loud and raucous voice, suggestive of costermongers advertising their Brussels sprouts or those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.
Sam in the Suburbs/Sam the Sudden, ch. 2 (1925)
Freddie thinks he was under the impression that he was speaking in a guarded whisper, but, as a matter of fact, the words boomed through the air as if he had been a costermonger calling attention to his Brussels sprouts.
“Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Bottleton East is crammed from end to end with costermongers dealing in tomatoes, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and fruits in their season, and it is a very negligent audience there that forgets to attend a place of entertainment with full pockets.
“The Masked Troubadour” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
“All set?” he asked, in a hearty voice that seemed to boom through the garden like a costermonger calling attention to his Brussels sprouts, and I grabbed him feverishly, begging him to pipe down a bit.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 13 (1946)
“Oh?” said Ma Trotter, and her voice rang through the room like that of a costermonger indicating to his public that he has brussels sprouts and blood oranges for sale.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 20 (1954)
His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood oranges and Brussels sprouts.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
annual school treat … wear a top hat (p. 102)
Compare “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935).
demesne (p. 102)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
unions had been blessed (p. 102)
In other words, that their marriage had produced offspring. But Wodehouse uses it another time in reference to a hen:
The rendition started quietly, almost inaudibly, with a sort of soft, liquid crooning—the joyful yet half-incredulous murmur of a mother who can scarcely believe as yet that her union has really been blessed, and that it is indeed she who is responsible for that oval mixture of chalk and albumen which she sees lying beside her in the straw.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
snapping feverishly at a potato on the end of a string (p. 102)
“He was leaning over the rail of the Empress’s sty, where he had no business to be, and he was dangling a potato on a string in front of her nose and jerking it away when she snapped at it. Might have ruined her digestion for days.”
One of the Church Lads in Service with a Smile, ch. 4.2 (1961)
Crusading ancestors (p. 102)
The impression seemed to be that Bertram had not acquitted himself in a fashion worthy of his Crusading ancestors.
“Jeeves and the Old School Chum” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
He thought of his Crusading ancestors, particularly Sir Pharamond, the one who did so well at the Battle of Joppa.
Lord Emsworth in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 10.1 (1969)
as if his hands and feet had swollen in a rather offensive manner (p. 103)
See The Girl on the Boat.
the old gentleman with the bushy eyebrows in Little Lord Fauntleroy (p. 104)
Frontispiece illustration by Roland Birch from the original edition of Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1885).
overalls (p. 104)
See above.
esposed the Communist cause (p. 105)
Only two other characters are described as Communists, although several others are socialists; see If I Were You.
“Though I suppose you know you’re an anachronistic parasite on the body of the State? Or so Otis says. He’s just become a Communist.”
Sally Painter speaking of her brother in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 4 (1948)
But Orlo Porter was under no such restraint. Being a Communist, he was probably on palsy-walsy terms with half the big shots at the Kremlin, and the more of the bourgeoisie he disembowelled, the better they would be pleased.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
a subtle but well-marked difference (p. 105)
The alteration in the demeanor of people of parsimonious habit, when they discover that the guest they are entertaining is a pauper and not, as they had supposed, an heiress, is subtle but well-marked. In most cases, more well-marked than subtle.
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 7.3 (1920/21)
About the demeanour of the man who presently entered the room into which we had been shown there was that subtle but well-marked something which stamps your creditor all the world over.
“Ukridge’s Dog College” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
His limited acquaintance with the theatre had not yet taught him that between the demeanour of a manager on the eve of a production and that of the same manager immediately after the failure of that production there is a subtle but well-marked difference, generally more well-marked than subtle.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 14 (1952)
“I was,” said Biff, “but the difference between me getting pinched in the old home town three years ago and being thrown into a dungeon below the castle moat in London as of even date is subtle but well-marked, Jerry o’ man.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5 (1964)
The difference between the way an uncle looks at a nephew who has lost his job and whom there is a danger of him having to support and the way he looks at a nephew who has large holdings in a fabulously rich oil company is always subtle but well marked.
The Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 19 (1961)
Well, I had had a sort of idea that there would be what they call subtle but well-marked differences between Maiden Eggesford and such resorts as Paris and Monte Carlo, and a glance told me I had not erred.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 4 (1974)
There is a difference, subtle but well-marked, between the emotions of a lover who has been told by the girl he loves that all is over between them and those of a lover who, tottering from this blow, sees a Claude Duff beginning to exercise his fascinations on her. In the former case he has a hope, if only a weak one; in the latter, merely despair.
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 13 (1977)
the deaf adder in Holy Scripture (p. 105)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
a year or so ago a young fellow… (p. 106)
James Bartholomew Belford, in “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935). Another indication that the events of this novel precede the 1965 publication date by many years.
like a lamb in springtime (p. 106)
see her steadily and see her whole (p. 106)
heart stood still (p. 107)
To say of anyone’s heart that it stood still is physiologically inexact. The heart does not stand still. It has to go right on working away at the old stand, irrespective of its proprietor’s feelings.
Full Moon, ch. 3.4 (1947)
when you call your brother a fool (p. 107)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“You’re not my brother!” (p. 107)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Boat Race night (p. 107)
toot (p. 108)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
plastered (p. 108)
See the list of synonyms under shifting it a bit in The Inimitable Jeeves.
The pig at eve had drunk its fill (p. 108)
See Leave It to Psmith.
a chemist in the Haymarket who fixes the most wonderful pick-me-up (p. 108)
See Piccadilly Jim.
not as a rule fond of his juniors (p. 108)
See Bill the Conqueror.
“There is a Santa Claus! I do believe in fairies!” (p. 108)
“I do believe in fairies!” he said. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”
Gally in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (US edition, 1952)
“I do believe in fairies!” said Bill, and Jill said she did, too.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 22 (1953/54)
“This,” he said, “is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad new year. I do believe in fairies! I do!”
Mortimer Bayliss in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 25 (1957)
‘I do believe in fairies!’ he said. ‘Yessir, I do believe in fairies.’
Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 6.3 (1972)
He shook from fishing hat to shoe sole. (p. 109)
Could this common image for the entire person be derived from Biblical sources? Wodehouse often mentions Job’s boils, and Job 2:7 says “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.” In 2 Samuel 14:25, “But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”
See also from base to apex.
Sam thrilled from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.
Three Men and a Maid/The Girl on the Boat, ch. 12 (1921/22)
I don’t know if you know that feeling when you get an inspiration, and tingle all down your spine from the soft collar as now worn to the very soles of the old Waukeesis?
“Scoring Off Jeeves” (1922, in ch. 5 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
One moment a dreamy hush was all over the place, broken only by old Heppenstall talking about our duty to our neighbours; and then, suddenly, a sort of piercing, shrieking squeal that got you right between the eyes and ran all the way down your spine and out at the soles of your feet.
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922, in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
He shivered ecstatically from the top of his bald head to the soles of his roomy shoes, and, bounding gleefully from the window, started to amble across the room.
Lord Emsworth in Leave It to Psmith, ch. 14 (1923)
“He doesn’t drink cocktails, he doesn’t smoke cigarettes, and the thing he seems to enjoy most in the world is to sit for hours listening to the conversation of my aunt, who, as you know, is pure goof from the soles of the feet to the tortoiseshell comb and should long ago have been renting a padded cell in Earlswood.”
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Osbert boiled from his false wig to the soles of his feet with a passionate fury.
“The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Having popped and nipped, as planned, he was in the very act of searching the desk when the sound of a footstep outside froze him from his spectacles to the soles of his feet.
Baxter in Summer Lightning, ch. 10.2 (1929)
I know women from beads to shoe sole.
Lord Biskerton in Big Money, ch. 9.5 (1931)
“I now worship that girl, Percy, from the top of her head to the soles of her divine feet.”
“The Amazing Hat Mystery” (1933; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
Mr. Busby quivered from the top of his round head to the soles of his number ten shoes.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 3 (1937)
A simple word, but as she spoke it a shudder ran through me from brilliantined topknot to rubber shoe sole.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 2 (1946)
One points at Augustus Robb with pride. A snob from the crown of his thinly-covered head to the soles of his substantial feet, his heart had been set on going to stay at Beevor Castle.
Spring Fever, ch. 8 (1948)
Life looked very good to Otis Painter. In the old left bank days he had been at some pains to cultivate a rather impressive pessimism, but now he was pure optimism from side-whiskers to shoe sole.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 14.1 (1948)
I was at a loss to comprehend how the society of Madeline Bassett could cheer anyone up, she being from topknot to shoe sole the woman whom God forgot, but I didn’t say so.
The Mating Season, ch. 1 (1949)
I quivered from brilliantine to shoe sole.
The Mating Season, ch. 27 (1949)
Simple words, but their effect on Conky as he recognized that silvery voice was to make him quiver from stay-combed hair to shoe sole.
“How’s That, Umpire?” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Ambrose quivered from the top of his head to the soles of his sure-grip shoes, as worn by all the leading professionals.
“Up from the Depths” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Stiffy took it big. She shook from wind-swept-hair-do to shoe-sole, and if she hadn’t clutched at Stinker’s arm might have taken a toss.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 19 (1963)
“This looks a nice piece,” he said, and as he spoke I saw in his eye the unmistakable antique-furniture-collector’s gleam which I had so often seen in my Aunt Julia’s at sales, and I quivered from hair to shoe sole.
“Ukridge Starts a Bank Account” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
A strong shudder shook Wendell from his thinning hair to the soles of his shoes.
Company for Henry, ch. 5.4 (1967)
A thrill passed through Monty from butter-coloured hair to shoe sole.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 10.3 (1969)
It was the word “Alaric!” and it froze him from bald head to the soles of the bedroom slippers on which Lady Constance a moment before the bell rang had been about to comment.
Lord Emsworth in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.3 (1969)
And as he spoke as above a snort rang through the quiet room; a voice, speaking with every evidence of horror and disgust, exclaimed ‘Wooster!’; and I quivered from hair-do to shoe sole.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1971)
Mr Llewellyn quivered from bald head to shoe sole.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 8.2 (1973)
I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
A similar category mentions only the lower extremity, whether downward to it or upward from it:
A thrill permeated Mr. Pickering’s entire one hundred and ninety-seven pounds, trickling down his spine like hot water and coming out at the soles of his feet.
Uneasy Money, ch. 20 (1916)
“I am not equal to being questioned this morning. I have a headache that starts at the soles of my feet and gets worse all the way up.”
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 5 (1917)
The curate chappie prattled on of this and that; the girl admired the view; and I got a headache early in the proceedings which started at the soles of my feet and got worse all the way up.
“Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer” (1922; in ch. 3 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
She had the appearance of one who is about to play Boadicea in a pageant; and John Gooch, as he gazed at her, was conscious of a chill that ran right down his back and oozed out at the soles of his feet.
“Those in Peril on the Tee” (1927; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Another sigh, seeming to start at the soles of his flat feet, set the butler’s waistcoat rippling like corn in the wind.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
“When I sing I sing openly and honestly, starting from the soles of the feet, very deep and loud and manly, so that anyone can see that my heart is in the right place.”
Joss Weatherby in Quick Service, ch. 15 (1940)
The thirst of which he was dying was one of those lively young thirsts which seem to start at the soles of the feet and get worse all the way up.
Pongo in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 8.1 (1948)
This time the sound that emerged from the Baronet, seeming to come up from the very soles of his feet, was nothing so mild as a sigh.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.1 (1952)
She came out with it poised on her head, and Barmy quivered to the soles of his suède shoes as he gazed at it.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 4 (1952)
To extract the last drop of juice from Ol’ Man River, you have to take a deep breath and bring it up from the soles of the feet, and that was precisely where, on this occasion of the Lower Smattering on the Wissel village concert in aid of the Church Organ Fund, Reginald Watson-Watson had brought it up from.
“Big Business” (in Collier’s, December 13, 1952)
A hollow groan escaped him, and he liked the sound of it and gave another. He was starting on a third, bringing it up from the soles of his feet, when a voice spoke at his side.
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 4/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 3 (1953/54)
It was not often that he received anything in the nature of an inspiration, for his brain moved as a rule rather sluggishly, but one had come to him now, and it had shaken him to the soles of his shoes.
Roscoe Bunyan in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 19 (1957)
Sufficient to say that on this occasion, though hampered by shooting pains that started at the soles of his feet and got worse all the way up, he placed the facts before Bill and Jane as lucidly as some days earlier he had placed them before Roscoe Bunyan.
Augustus Keggs in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 22 (1957)
I would think twice before putting my confidence in the tenor who makes noises like gas escaping from a pipe, and baritones are not much better, but when a man brings it up from the soles of his feet, very loud and deep and manly, you know instinctively that his heart is in the right place.
“Bring On the Earls,” section 4, in Over Seventy (1957)
Pongo drew a shuddering breath that seemed to come up from the soles of his feet.
Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (UK edition, 1958)
With each low note that he pulled up from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew that he was, if one may coin a phrase, the only onion in the stew and that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere…
“Big Business” (as rewritten for A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“I tell you, Soapy, whenever I think of that undersized boll weevil, I go hot all over, clear down to the soles of my shoes.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 5 (1961)
With a sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of the feet, he rose, said goodbye, knocked over the glass from which I had been refreshing myself and withdrew.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1963)
With a groan that came up from the soles of his feet he felt in his pocket for Mr. Purkiss’s ten pounds and with trembling finger beckoned to the waiter.
“Stylish Stouts” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Myself, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to marry Orlo Porter and it would have jarred me to the soles of my socks if I had had to marry Vanessa Cook, but they had unquestionably been all for teaming up, and it seemed a shame that harsh words had come between them and the altar rails.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 9 (1974)
“When she is as sick as mud about anything she stiffens from the soles of her feet upwards and gives the offending party the sort of look the Gorgon used to give people.”
Gally, speaking of Lady Florence Moresby, in Sunset at Blandings, ch. 7 (1977)
And one more, not quite beginning at the sole but otherwise parallel:
I have rather a severe headache. It starts somewhere down at the ankles and gets worse all the way up.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 2 (1935)
Never lets the grass grow under his feet (p. 109)
See Laughing Gas for a literary precursor.
Briggs, after a lifetime spent in doing three things at once, is not a man who lets a great deal of grass grow under his feet.
Not George Washington, ch. 25 (1907)
The Grand Duke Vodkakoff was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet.
The Swoop!, ch. 7 (1909)
At half-past twelve that morning business took Mr. Benjamin Scobell to the royal Palace. He was not a man who believed in letting the grass grow under his feet.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 8 (1912)
That Buck MacGinnis was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet in a situation like the present one, I would have gathered from White’s remarks if I had not already done so from personal observation.
The Little Nugget, ch. 8.1 (1913)
I remembered that he had said he was coming to pay me a visit in order to sample my cellar, and I might have known he would not let the grass grow under his feet.
Laughing Gas, ch. 8 (1936)
J. B. Duff was not a man who procrastinated. He thought on his feet and let no grass grow under them.
Quick Service, ch. 10 (1940)
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the grass grow under his feet.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1971)
Do it now is his slogan (p. 109)
See Leave It to Psmith.
keep off the sauce (p. 109)
A more recent euphemism for alcoholic drink than one might have supposed; the earliest OED citation is from 1940, in John O’Hara’s Pal Joey.
“I have a slight headache, madam.”
“Well earned. You should keep off the sauce, Phipps.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 17 (1951)
“From now on spirituous liquor is not to pass my lips. One move on my part toward the sauce, and those wedding bells will not ring out.”
Mervyn Potter in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 6 (1952)
“Ask me, the man must have been pie-eyed. Pliny the Elder should have kept off the sauce.”
“Hi, Bartlett!” section 1, in America, I Like You (1956)
“It has probably not escaped you, Mulliner, that I am a trifle under the influence of the sauce.”
Oswald Stoker in “The Right Approach” (1958; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“…she was thinking of her first husband, who was a heel to end all heels and a constant pain in the neck to her till one night he most fortunately walked into the River Thames while under the influence of the sauce and didn’t come up for days.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1960)
“She kept telling me she couldn’t understand a word I was saying and accused me—with some justice, I admit—of being under the influence of the sauce.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5.1 (1964)
“I was about to turn down his offer, because I’d promised Linda to lay off the sauce, but then her call came through and I no longer considered that I was bound by my promise, so I accepted the commission, strongly influenced by the fact that there was a hundred and forty dollars at the current rate of exchange in it for me.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 8.2 (1964)
I felt a natural resentment at being considered capable of falling under the influence of the sauce at ten in the morning, but I reminded myself that aunts will be aunts.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 2 (1971)
One could not have said that the vine leaves were in this man’s hair, for he had practically no hair, but it would have been plain to a far less able diagnostician than the keeper of the stage door that he was under the influence of what is technically known as the sauce.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 3 (1973)
Alcoholics Anonymous (p. 109)
Alcoholics Anonymous will shortly, if all goes well, have a sister society which should do just as much good to weak-willed sufferers who need assistance in overcoming an unfortunate habit.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, February 21, 1962
“We call ourselves Bachelors Anonymous. It was Alcoholics Anonymous that gave the founding fathers the idea. Our methods are frankly borrowed from theirs.”
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 1 (1973)
“On one occasion somebody drank from a flask while at the rails of the sty and dropped it into the Empress’s trough, and I am sorry to say that she became completely intoxicated. My brother Galahad, I remember, suggested that she ought to join Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was very doubtful whether the committee would accept a pig. Fortunately we discovered the truth.”
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 12 (1977)
raw egg beaten up in Worcester sauce (p. 109)
Two of the ingredients of Jeeves’s hangover mixture; see The Mating Season.
conversation enough for two (p. 109)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
Tim Simms, the Safe Man (p. 110)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
as dust beneath your chariot wheels (p. 110)
fixed him with an uncordial eye (p. 111)
Perhaps an echo of holds him with his glittering eye from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
slipped a word in edgeways (p. 111)
The OED has citations for forms of this phrase dating back to 1692; it suggests that edgeways is now more common than edgewise in Britain and Ireland, with edgewise standard in North America. [My own experience is that edgeways is more often used in America in this particular phrase, but that may be colored by familiarity with Wodehousean usage. —NM]
“Perhaps you’ll kindly allow me to get a word in edgeways, you two,” said Mrs. Bramble, her temper for once becoming ruffled.
“Keeping It from Harold” (1913)
“Now listen to me for a moment. Let me get a word in edgeways.”
Love Among the Chickens, ch. 2 (1921 edition)
"Nothing’s the matter. Nothing whatever, except that that old beaver—”—here he wronged Lord Emsworth, who, whatever his faults, was not a bearded man—“that old beaver invited me to lunch, talked all the time about his infernal flowers, never let me get a word in edgeways, hadn’t the common civility to offer me a cigar, and now has gone off without a word of apology and buried himself in that shop over the way.”
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 6.4 (1923)
You know how the detective in those tales always jumps on his friend and shushes him down if he tries to get a word in edgeways. James has become rather like that.
“Honeysuckle Cottage” (1925; magazine versions only)
When they came to lunch, we were all set to listen to his brilliant table talk, and she wouldn’t let him get a word in edgeways, monopolizing the conversation while he sat looking like a crushed rabbit.
Letter to William Townend, dated 1932, in P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters, ed. Sophie Ratcliffe (2011)
“If you’ll let me get a word in edgeways——”
Money in the Bank, ch. 23 (1942)
She paused, in order to laugh again, and I seized the opportunity to get a word in edgeways.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 12 (1946)
“Did you say you wanted to speak to me about something?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, why don’t you?”
“Because you won’t let me get a word in edgeways.”
Corky and Bertie in The Mating Season, ch. 12 (1949)
“Ah!” said Gally. “I’m glad you asked me that. I’d have told you long ago, only you wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 8.1 (1952)
Seeing an opportunity now of getting a word in edgeways, he seized it.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 1 (1952)
“I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.”
“One can’t sometimes.”
“Women talk so damn quick.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1960)
“He wouldn’t talk about anything else for the first ten minutes, but when I could get a word in edgeways, I handed him the bijouterie, and he said, ‘What’s this?’ ”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 26 (1961)
For some time Stiffy monopolized the conversation, not letting me get a word in edgeways. Women are singularly gifted in this respect.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1963)
It was plain to Percy Pilbeam that whoever was doing it was of the female sex, which is celebrated, when on the telephone, for never allowing the party of the second part to get a word in edgeways.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 6.3 (1964)
On these occasions when she comes to town and I give her dinner at the flat there is always a good deal of gossip from Brinkley Court and neighborhood to be got through before other subjects are broached, and she tends not to allow a nephew to get a word in edgeways.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
‘You should have told Mrs Travers the facts relating to Major Plank, sir.’
‘I did, the moment I could get a word in edgeways…’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 13 (1974)
the sailor being home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill (p. 112)
See Money in the Bank.
“Look at Lord Bacon. Went about calling himself Shakespeare.” (p. 112)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
a dam thing (p. 112)
The US book has a damn thing here.
“Did I ever tell you about Buffy?” (p. 112)
Yes; he gives the story in very similar terms in Summer Lightning, ch. 1.2 (1929). Gally’s story is also mentioned in the narration of Full Moon, ch. 8.1 (1947).
a Turner sunset (p. 112)
One example from J.M.W. Turner, dated to the early 1830s, is at the Tate Museum website.
Entering it at a rapid gallop, he collided with a solid body, and this proved on inspection to he none other than Professor Pepperidge Farmer, looking more sinister than ever in Bermuda shorts, a shirt like a Turner sunset and a Panama hat with a pink ribbon round it.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
bracer (p. 112)
Freddie Potts … hedgehog (p. 113)
Gally recounted this tale first in Heavy Weather, ch. 4 (1933).
nineteen years (p. 113)
As Terry Mordue demonstrated when beginning the audit of Wodehouse’s account book, Plum was “a dreadful bookkeeper,” and my continuation of that analysis confirms that he was not comfortable with numbers. (See P. G. Wodehouse’s Early Years for more on the subject.) So, as with the inconsistencies with ages noted above, one cannot expect Plum to get Beach’s term in office straight every time. The numbers vary only slightly, even as the passage of years is marked by the annual medals won by Empress of Blandings. And there is ambiguity about whether the span is to be taken to include his service as under-footman and footman before becoming butler.
In the notes to Sunset at Blandings, Richard Usborne remarked that “Wodehouse has never treated time with anything other than irreverence.”
“Eighteen years have I served in his lordship’s household, commencing as under-footman and rising to my present position, but now the end has come.”
“Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
All butlers are sportsmen, and Beach had been a butler for eighteen years.
Summer Lightning, ch. 3.5 (1929)
Eighteen years of close association with Clarence, Earl of Emsworth, had left the butler with a very fair estimate of his overlord’s character.
Heavy Weather, ch. 16 (1933)
Eighteen years, eighteen happy years, he had been in service at Blandings Castle, and now he must go forth, never to return.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
“How long has Beach been at the castle? Eighteen years? Nineteen? Well, the exact time is immaterial.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3 (1952)
Beach! Eighteen years of spotless buttling, and now this!
Service with a Smile, ch. 7.3 (1961)
“Fire Beach, indeed! After eighteen years’ devoted service. The idea’s monstrous.”
“Sticky Wicket at Blandings” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Unobserved by them, Beach had approached the hammock, panting a little, for he had been instructed to make haste and he was not the slim footman he had been eighteen years ago.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 11.1 (1969)
After paying and tipping Jno Robinson and enquiring after his wife, family and rheumatism, for in addition to being fit and rosy he had a heart which was not only of gold but in the right place, he made his way to the butler’s pantry, eager after his absence in London to get in touch with Sebastian Beach, for eighteen years the castle’s major domo.
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 2 (1977)
not generally known … that he suffered from corns (p. 114)
And yet he made no secret of it when being introduced to Ashe Marson, in his first appearance in the Blandings saga.
“You are a young man, Mr. Marson. Probably you do not know what it is to suffer from your feet.” He surveyed Ashe, his toddy and the wall beyond him, with heavy-lidded inscrutability. “Corns!” he said.
Something Fresh/Something New, ch. 5 (1915)
cicerone (p. 114)
See Something Fresh, also relating to Beach as a tour guide.
Bollinger (p. 115)
See A Damsel in Distress.
“What do you mean ‘Sir’ and why does your jaw drop?” (p. 115)
See above.
twice-told tale (p. 116)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
bending and stretching exercises every morning before breakfast (p. 116)
See Sam the Sudden, and be sure to follow the link to the Daily Dozen in that note.
Agatha Christie (p. 117)
See Cocktail Time.
perplexed in the extreme (p. 117)
From Othello; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
The Case Of The Bewildered Butler (p. 117)
Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) wrote many series of stories and novels, but is best known for the Perry Mason series of 81 novels and four short stories, all with titles beginning The Case of the… published from 1933 through 1973.
Port is what works the magic. (p. 117)
See Meet Mr. Mulliner.
Chapter Nine
dictaphone (p. 118)
See Bill the Conqueror and The Girl in Blue.
how many s’s (p. 118)
“Clarissa. Clarissa Binstead.”
“How many s’s?”
“Three, if you count the Binstead.”
“How’s That, Umpire?” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Stokes was his name (p. 119)
See Leave It to Psmith.
chatelaine (p. 119)
See A Damsel in Distress.
silver ring bookmaker (p. 119)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
addressing her as ‘ducky’ (p. 120)
Despite the implication here, Wodehouse characters of all social classes use this informal mode of address.
“Never you mind, ducky,” said Charteris, “I’m all right. I’ll look after myself.”
“The Manœuvres of Charteris”, ch. 1 (1903; in Tales of St. Austin’s, 1903)
“Don’t call me a woman, ducky; I’m a lady.”
The Friendly Creature in the society dialogue “In Town” in Not George Washington, ch. 19 (1907)
“The family must be represented, ducky,” said Lady Lydia.
If I Were You, ch. 1 (1931)
“Don’t apologize, ducky. Can’t you see how pleased we all are?”
Aunt Dahlia in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1934)
It wavered in style between the formal and the chummy, beginning “Dear Madam” and ending “So you see what a spot I’m in, ducky,” but it did present the facts.
A note written by Sam Bulpitt in Summer Moonshine, ch. 23 (1937)
“Coo!” she exclaimed, sighting Freddie. “There you are, ducky! Excuse me half a jiff.”
The substantial blonde in Bramley Is So Bracing (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“No, don’t you go making silly remarks, ducky.”
Augustus Robb in Spring Fever, ch. 16 (1948)
“No, I’m afraid your great scheme is off, ducky.”
Terry Trent in French Leave, ch. 1 (1956)
“So you will cooperate, won’t you, ducky?”
Jill Willard in Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 6.3 (1968)
Sandown Park (p. 120)
See Leave It to Psmith.
Catterick Bridge (p. 120)
Both a bridge and a hamlet, but better known as the site of a horse racecourse in North Yorkshire, England. Racing has taken place there since 1783, and the permanent racetrack dates from 1813.
a thoughtful writer (p. 120)
Wodehouse himself! See the following note.
it had impostors the way other houses had mice (p. 120)
Lady Constance spoke with a wealth of emotion. In the past few years Blandings Castle had been peculiarly rich in impostors, notable among them Lord Ickenham and his nephew Pongo, and she had reached saturation point as regarded them, never wanting to see another of them as long as she lived. A hostess gets annoyed and frets when she finds that every second guest whom she entertains is enjoying her hospitality under a false name, and it sometimes seemed to her that Blandings Castle had impostors the way other houses had mice, a circumstance at which her proud spirit rebelled.
Service with a Smile, ch. 6.3 (1961)
bona fides (p. 121)
Latin for ‘good faith, freedom from intent to deceive.’
Not … by a jugful (p. 121)
It would have been well, then, had the Invaders, before making too sure that America lay beneath their heel, stopped to reckon with Clarence Chugwater. But did they? Not by a jug-full.
“The Military Invasion of America” (1915)
Does the management let it go at that and permit bygones to be bygones? Not by a jugfull.
“Reviewing a Theatre Audience” (1919)
He had meant to continue putting business in their way, expanding their trade. But would he after what had occurred? Not by a jugful!
Love Among the Chickens, ch. 23 (1921 edition)
“A man who loves that noble girl ought to consider himself almost in the light of a priest or something. But do you? Not by a jugful.”
Conscience speaking, in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 2.1 (1924)
“Good Lord! Can’t you understand the position?”
“Not by a jugful, laddie.”
“The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy” (1926; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
With all the emphasis at his command he had urged upon them the vital necessity of being casual and nonchalant. And were they? Not by a jugful.
If I Were You, ch. 9 (1931)
And there, Corky, if there was any justice in the world, if Providence really looked after the deserving as it ought to, the story should have ended. But did it? Laddie, not by a jugful.
“Ukridge and the Home from Home” (1931; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
“That’s what you say now, but I don’t despair.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not by a jugful.”
Spring Fever, ch. 7 (US edition, 1948)
All I could do was to urge him not to lose hope, and he said he hadn’t lost hope, not by a jugful.
The Mating Season, ch. 6 (1949)
“I’m in love with a man who’s been saying no for the last twenty years. But do I despair? Not by a jugful.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 3 (1951)
“But between that arrow and my cigar there is a substantial difference, because my cigar didn’t fall to earth, not by a jugful. It fell on your hat.”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 4 (1952)
“There was some slight feeling of attraction, possibly, due to her lissom figure, but you couldn’t call it love, not by a jugful.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 7.2 (1952)
There is nothing that makes a woman sicker than the sudden realization that somebody she thought she was holding in the hollow of her hand isn’t in the hollow of her hand by a jugful.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 20 (1954)
But did they listen? Did I sway them with my remorseless reasoning? Not by a jugful.
“How Do You Mean, Relax” in Punch, March 3, 1954
“You mean you don’t recoil from me in horror?”
“Not by a jugful,” said the girl, and even from where I stood I could see the lovelight in her eyes.
“Joy Bells for Walter” (1956; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
And what happens? Do they quail? Do they falter? Not by a jugful.
About mosquitos, in “Life among the Armadillos,” section 2, in America, I Like You (1956); also in Over Seventy, ch. 11.3 (1957)
“What?” he cried. “Go to the local on a night like this, when yer’ve seen the light and given that perisher Twine the heave-ho, and hitched on to a splendid young feller whom I can nurse in my bosom? Not by a jugful.”
Lord Uffenham in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 16 (1957)
“Was she cold and proud and aloof?”
“Not by a jugful. She was all over me.”
Service with a Smile, ch. 9.3 (1961)
“If locking a fellow in his bedroom, as near as a toucher with gyves upon his wrists, and stationing the local police force on the lawn below to ensure that he doesn’t nip out of the window at the end of a knotted sheet is your idea of entertaining, it isn’t mine, not by a jugful.”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1963)
‘Were you touched? Did your heart melt? Not by a jugful.’
Company for Henry, ch. 12.5 (1967)
‘Then why is Tuppy short of cash? Didn’t he inherit them?’
‘Not by a jugful.’
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1971)
So when he added, ‘May I offer my congratulations, sir,’ I replied with lines which were not on the routine.
‘No, Jeeves, you may not, not by a jugful.’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 14 (1974)
written in letters of fire on the wall (p. 121)
See Spring Fever.
like a cook who has encountered an intrusive black beetle in her kitchen (p. 121)
Her stony blue eyes were fixed on me with an expression that was not exactly loathing, but rather a cold and critical contempt. So might a fastidious cook look at a black-beetle in her kitchen.
“Ukridge Sees Her Through” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
The Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook eyes a black beetle on discovering it in the kitchen sink.
Summer Lightning, ch. 7.2 (1929)
“He says my moustache is like the faint discoloured smear left by a squashed blackbeetle on the side of a kitchen sink.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 11 (1938)
Don’t crawl up to her, looking crushed and tragic like a dashed black beetle that’s just had insect powder sprinkled over it by the cook.
Money in the Bank, ch. 24 (1942)
Lady Hermione was looking like a cook who has seen a black beetle in her kitchen and the last of the beetle powder used up yesterday.
Full Moon, ch. 10.7 (1947)
He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 9 (1954)
practicing cannons (p. 121)
In billiards a cannon, which is worth two points, is when a player’s shot-ball clicks off both of the other two balls on the table. [IM/LVG]
seventh heaven (p. 122)
Besides its religious usage, as the highest heaven in some versions of Islamic and Judaic cosmology, the phrase has been used figuratively for a state of bliss or ecstatic happiness since 1786. In recent times, it was popularized by a 1922 play by Austin Strong and film versions of it in 1927 and 1937.
“And Austin Strong?”
“There was a happy ending there. He went off to Johnny Golden and wrote Three Wise Fools and Seventh Heaven for him.”
Bring On the Girls, ch. 14.8 (UK edition, 1954)
still be able to ring up on the telephone from London (p. 122)
Reminiscent of the 1933 short story “Absolutely Elsewhere” by Dorothy L. Sayers, which Wodehouse surely would have enjoyed. In that story, though, the apparent call from London is a trick to provide an alibi, rather than evidence of an imposture as here.
restorative (p. 123)
See Sam the Sudden.
soused as a herring (p. 123)
A colloquialism for being drunk. The recipe for soused herring, though, does not usually contain alcohol; it is raw herring preserved and made edible with a salt brine or an acid marinade of vinegar and seasonings. See Wikipedia.
“A charming personality, I thought. Allowing, of course, for the fact that he was as soused as a herring.”
Colonel Wedge speaking of Tipton Plimsoll in Full Moon, ch. 1.2 (1947)
Lady Hermione … had once struck her brother Galahad on the head with her favourite doll Belinda (p. 123)
“You wouldn’t believe the things that went on in that nursery. My sister Hermione once laid me out cold with one blow of her doll Belinda.”
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 7 (1977)
flat as a Dover sole (p. 123)
chokey (p. 124)
See A Damsel in Distress.
thousand dollar bills … next the skin (p. 125)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
tapping the barometer (p. 127)
In the hall, Webster the valet, dry and dignified, was tapping the barometer with the wrist action of an ambassador knocking on the door of a friendly monarch.
Three Men and a Maid/The Girl on the Boat, ch. 10.2 (1922)
a fermenting aunt (p. 127)
It seemed to him as he came into the bedroom that in the difficult art of bringing fermenting aunts off the boil Jill was without a peer.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 13.4 (1968)
When Jeeves blew in, it cheered me to see the way his head stuck out at the back, for that’s where the brain is, and what was needed here was a man with plenty of the old grey matter who would put his points so that even a fermenting aunt would have to be guided by him.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
reminiscent of the bucko mate of an old-fashioned hell ship addressing an able-bodied seaman (p. 127)
See Bill the Conqueror for similar phrases.
crossword puzzle … large Australian bird (p. 127)
knocked over a small table (p. 128)
Shropshire Light Infantry (p. 128)
As distinguished from his brother-in-law Lord Emsworth, whose photograph in the uniform of the Shropshire Yeomanry is mentioned in Summer Lightning. For light infantry, see Wikipedia.
has you by the short hairs (p. 129)
See Psmith in the City.
a hard-boiled egg (p. 130)
The OED has citations for the adjective with definitions including “hard-headed, ruthlessly shrewd, callous, tough and cynical” dating back to 1884; none of their examples include egg. Wodehouse started off strong with the 1917 story “Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” characterizing the Duke of Chiswick in this manner.
“And if you can get a thousand bucks out of Harry Frazee, you’re good.”
“Yes, I’ve always heard he’s a pretty hard-boiled egg.”
Bring On the Girls, ch. 3 (1953)
It just showed, I was telling myself, what a vegetarian diet can do to a chap, changing him in a flash from a soft boiled to a hard boiled egg.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1963)
“Cook may be a hard boiled egg, but dinner softens the hardest.”
Bertie speaking of Pop Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 16 (1974)
twenty-minutes-in-the-saucepan–ness (p. 130)
Minor typographic detail: the en dash shown above is from the Penguin paperback; the UK first edition has an em dash; the US book has a simple hyphen.
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
dying duck (p. 130)
See The Mating Season.
Covent Garden (p. 131)
Wodehouse often refers to the former site of London’s fruit and vegetable market and to the location of turn-of-the-century society balls, but this is the only instance so far found alluding to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
another cup of coffee (p. 131)
See above.
french window … Garden Suite (p. 131)
See Summer Lightning.
like Macbeth talking things over with Lady Macbeth (p. 132)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
No leopard on the trail could have flung itself into the chase with greater abandon. (p. 132)
It was only now, as he padded along Panton Street like a leopard on the trail, that he realized what excellent fellows they were and how fond he was of them.
Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 4 (1925)
With something in her deportment of a leopard on the trail, Leila Yorke went to it and looked in.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 21 (1961)
the Day of Judgement (p. 133)
Thus in Penguin; Day of Judgment in UK first edition and day of judgment in US edition.
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
desiderated (p. 133)
See Uncle Dynamite.
potting shed … the shooting of a bolt (p. 133)
It was imperative that he secure another situation before Lord Emsworth should apply the boot; and he could scarcely hope to find a more propitious occasion for approaching this particular employer of labour than when he had just released him from a smelly potting-shed.
Monty Bodkin and Lord Tilbury in Heavy Weather, ch. 7 (1933)
“I came to inform you that Sir Roderick had been apprehended by Constable Dobson last night and placed in the potting shed in the Hall grounds, the Constable remaining on guard at the door.”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 21 (1934)
“I wonder if you recollect, sir, the occasion at Chuffnell Hall, when Sir Roderick Glossop had become locked up in the potting shed and your efforts to release him appeared likely to be foiled by the fact that Police Constable Dobson had been stationed outside the door?”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 11 (1938)
“I don’t know if you were listening to what I was saying just now, but I’ve locked a burglar up in the potting shed.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 15 (1946)
Compare also the cow-shed into which Gladys is “put” in “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Chapter Ten
Lord Emsworth, whose jaw dropped slightly (p. 134)
See above.
he considered with a low cunning (p. 134)
A typo in Penguin; both UK and US first editions have a comma after considered.
Take that lemon out of your mouth (p. 134)
There had always been something Murphreyesque about this lady receptionist, as she liked to describe herself, and many a time had Bill urged her to take the lemon out of her mouth and look on the bright side.…
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 5 (1957)
Her full height was not much, but she drew herself to what there was of it. (p. 134)
There was, as I have indicated, not much of my nephew Archibald’s mind, but what there was of it was now in a whirl.
“The Reverent Wooing of Archibald” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
“What you want and what you’re going to get … are two substantially different things.” (p. 135)
“What you want, my lad, and what you’re going to get are two very different things.”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1934)
“What you want to talk about and what you’re going to talk about are two very different things.”
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 20 (1935)
“What one wants and what one is going to get are two different things,” said Captain Biggar, and went out, grinding his teeth, to cool off in the garden.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 11 (1953/54)
mutton-headed (p. 135)
The OED has citations for this colloquialism meaning ”stupid, foolish” dating back to 1768, including the 1934 quotation from Wodehouse as shown below.
An ordinary mutton-headed fellow like you—I use the expression without any intention of offence—would, undoubtedly, at this juncture, have raised his voice a trifle and explained to this bearded cove that the intricacies of the English language had led him into a pardonable error.
“The Level Business Head” (1926; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937, and in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940)
She had caused all the trouble by her mutton-headed behaviour in saying “Yes” instead of “No” when Gussie, in the grip of mixed drinks and cerebral excitement, had suggested teaming up.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 19 (1934)
“How you could be such a mutton-headed little juggins——”
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 12 (1935)
“So, if I was you, Chimpie,” said Mr. Molloy, “I wouldn’t go and do nothing muttonheaded like what you say.”
Money in the Bank, ch. 19 (1942)
“I ought to have remembered that Pongo does take things seriously.”
“Yes. A saintly character, but muttonheaded.”
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 4 (1948)
For an instant it seemed as though Mr. Anderson were about to forget sweetness and light and say that he had not been alluding to the Washington Monument, you mutton-headed half-wit, and go on to speak forcefully of dumb bricks with about as much quickness in the uptake as a frog.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 2 (1952)
“I can well imagine that it’s your dearest wish to see that unfortunate muttonheaded girl become the wife of a man who lets off stink bombs in night clubs and pinches the spoons and has had three divorces already and who, if the authorities play their cards right, will end up cracking rocks in Sing-Sing.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1960)
“I know he can put up a kind of story in extenuation of his muttonheaded behaviour.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 18 (1961)
rather like a string bean (p. 135)
Yet here was this long, thin string-bean of a young man actually registering annoyance and dissatisfaction before his very eyes.
“The Man Who Married a Hotel” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
“Well, say, listen, lemme tell you it’ll take someone better than a half-baked string-bean like you to put one over on me.”
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 9 (1923)
“And yet he remains as slender as a string-bean, while I, who have been dieting for years, tip the beam at two hundred and seventeen pounds and am growing a third and supplementary chin.”
“A Slice of Life” (1926; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
“I always thought they were string-bean sort of guys without any chins.”
Laughing Gas, ch. 11 (1936)
“Why you don’t marry him, instead of fooling around with your string bean of a Holbeton, beats me.”
Quick Service, ch. 13 (1940)
A ghost, was his first impression, though he would have expected a White Lady or a man in armour with his head under his arm rather than a string-beanlike young man wearing horn-rimmed spectacles.
Full Moon, ch. 4.4 (1947)
“Looking over the field, I think my most formidable rival is a pin-headed string bean of a fellow named Dwight Messmore.”
“Up from the Depths” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
often a bridesmaid but never a bride (p. 135)
The cliché is gender-switched here, but used conventionally in the only other instance so far found.
“Is that why you’re a solitary chip drifting down the river of life?”
“That’s why. Often a bridesmaid but never a bride.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 11 (1951)
the love light in his eyes (p. 135)
Wodehouse’s editors and publishers seem to have had their own preferences about the term love light, and there are a few cases of varying forms even within one work; there are quite frequent variations between different publications of the same story, so do not be surprised if the citation below does not match your favorite edition. Whether written as two words, one word, or hyphenated, the meaning is a radiant look as of a person in love. The OED has citations dating from 1833.
It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge, that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that a species of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for the fight.
Not George Washington, part II, ch. 1 (1907)
It was hopeless for Jill to try to tell herself that the tender gleam behind the glass was not the love light in Otis Pilkington’s eyes.
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 11.2 (1920/21)
Perfectly friendly though she was to both of them, the love-light was conspicuously absent from her beautiful eyes.
“The Long Hole” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
Yet here was young Bingo obviously all for her. There was no mistaking it. The love-light was in the blighter’s eyes.
“Scoring Off Jeeves” (1922; in ch. 5 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
For ten days Barbara Medway had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the lovelight sparkling in his eyes, and words of devotion trembling on his lips.
“The Heart of a Goof” (1923; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)
“And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love-light in her eyes.”
“Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
I watched him narrowly as he read on, and, as I was expecting, what you might call the love-light suddenly died out of his eyes.
“Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
“But it’s only half an hour ago,” we cried, “that she went off to meet him in her best black satin with the lovelight in her eyes.”
“The Story of Cedric” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
She arrived home at four-fifteen on a sunny afternoon, and at four-sixteen-and-a-half Egbert shot through the door with the love-light in his eyes.
“Best Seller” (1930; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
Wilmot Mulliner was on his feet, and his eyes met hers with the love-light in them.
“The Nodder” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“That night I saw them dining together with every indication of relish, their differences made up and the lovelight once more in their eyes.”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1934)
“Her feminine intuition has enabled her to read his secret. She detects the lovelight in his eyes.”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1934)
And then she suddenly sighted Chuffy, gave a kind of gasping squeak, and the love light came into her eyes as if somebody had pressed a switch.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1934)
Monty was shooting his cuffs masterfully. In his eyes there was no lovelight to soften resentment.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 6 (1935)
And, having booked a room there and toddled into the saloon bar for a refresher with the love-light in his eyes, the first thing he saw was Pongo chatting across the counter with the barmaid.
“Tried in the Furnace” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK edition, 1936)
And then, as she stood there with the love-light shining in her eyes . . . socko!
Laughing Gas, ch. 21 (1936)
Oh, the moon is bright and radiant,
But its radiance fades and dies
When the silver of the moonlight
Meets the love light in your eyes.
Song lyric [see the notes to Lord Emsworth and Others] from “The Masked Troubadour” (1936, in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
He had observed the love light in Tipton Plimsoll’s eyes, and what he wished to see in the fellow now was a spot of the Young Lochinvar spirit.
Full Moon, ch. 6.1 (1947)
“I shall follow you around a good deal and keep gazing at you with the lovelight in my eyes, and one of these days my hypnotic stare will do the trick.”
Spring Fever, ch. 7 (1948)
The re-insertion of the love light in Valerie Twistleton’s eyes would put Horace Davenport right back in mid-season form and the ticket bearing his name would once more be worth thirty-three quid of the best and brightest.
“The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“You mean you don’t recoil from me in horror?”
“Not by a jugful,” said the girl, and even from where I stood I could see the lovelight in her eyes.
“Joy Bells for Walter” (1956; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
He drew an emotional breath, and even the most short-sighted could have seen the love light in his eyes.
Cocktail Time, ch. 13 (1958)
I gave a quick glance at the offspring of Colonel and Mrs. Boote as I spoke, hoping to see the love light in her eyes, but could not spot anything of that nature.
“Unpleasantness at Kozy Kot” in A Few Quick Ones (US edition, 1959)
“It does look like it,” I agreed, “and I don’t understand how it can have happened considering that she left me with the love light in her eyes and can’t have been back here more than about half an hour.”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1960)
And it may be said at once that he was doing it with the love-light in his eyes and in a voice which a poet would have had no hesitation in comparing to that of a turtle dove calling to its mate.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 4.1 (1964)
Even when he was liberally coated with burned cork that night at Chuffnell Regis, I had been able to detect the love light in his eyes as he spoke of her.
“And the moment we came in I could see the love light in your eyes, and the love light was in her eyes, too, and it wasn’t five minutes after that that you’d got her on your lap and there you were, as snug as two bugs in a rug.”
Two quotations from “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
She was telling herself that if what she had detected in the eyes of Wilbur Trout had not been the love light, she did not know a love light when she saw one.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 13.2 (1969)
bishop and assistant clergy (p. 135)
See above.
Today’s Safety Bet (p. 135)
A sure thing; a reference to a recommendation in a horse-racing tipster’s column or newsletter.
‘The Sporting Express called it “Today’s Safety Bet”. It was Bounding Willie for the two-thirty race at Sandown last Wednesday.’
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 2.2 (1923)
As this scarcely comes within the scope of my present article, I will not deal with the prospects for this event, merely contenting myself with recommending as a Safety Bet William Anstruther Simpson, the son and heir of Simpson’s Bon Ton Drapery Stores, who, I am told, shoves a very fine ha’penny.
“Prospects for Wambledon” (1929; in Louder and Funnier, 1932)
“A snip?” he repeated dazedly.
“Definitely. Today’s Safety Bet.”
Full Moon, ch. 6.2 (1947)
“Surely it’s a mug’s game to throw away a life’s happiness just because Johnny has made you momentarily a bit hot under the collar. You know in your heart that he is Prince Charming and Today’s Safety Bet.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 9.1 (1969)
telling the tale (p. 136)
See Summer Lightning.
to talk the hind leg off a donkey (p. 136)
Enemies said that he liked the sound of his own voice, and could talk the hind-leg off a donkey.
“Keeping It from Harold” (1913)
As her brother Edwin, who was fond of homely imagery, had often observed, she could talk the hind-leg off a donkey.
Lady Underhill in The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 5.3 (book versions only, 1920/21)
this world or the next (p. 136)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
similarly coloured hair (p. 136)
See Piccadilly Jim.
resembled those of the storm outside (p. 136)
An entire essay could be written on how Wodehouse uses Nature to assist in conveying the emotions of his characters or the mood of a scene. Most of the time at Blandings, it is high summer with fair weather and tea-time on the lawn, but this passage joins the chilly weather as Joan and Ashe visit Blandings for the first time in Something Fresh, ch. 5, the thunderstorm in Summer Lightning, ch. 12, and the storm in Heavy Weather, ch. 7, as examples of Plum’s skill in this technique.
unquestionably a lamb (p. 137)
Compare baa-lamb in Uncle Dynamite.
the bum’s rush (p. 137)
Doris Jimpson (p. 138)
That very Doris Jimpson, of whom he had once supposed himself enamoured, had become Doris Boole, Doris Busbridge, and Doris Applejohn in such rapid succession that the quickness of the hand almost deceived the eye.
Full Moon, ch. 4.4 (1947)
Angela Thurloe, Vanessa Wainwright, Barbara Bessemer (p. 138)
Mentioned only in this conversation.
feel like a piece of cheese (p. 139)
For the use of piece of cheese as a mild insult, see Hot Water.
“I feel like a piece of cheese. Run out of London just at the very moment when I want to be sticking to Eileen like a poultice, and chased off to this damned castle.”
Spring Fever, ch. 5 (1948)
And as I tottered up the aisle, these Bishops, these assistant clergy, these bridesmaids, these reporters, these photographers and these guests would have laughed their fat heads off at me, making me feel like a piece of cheese.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 17 (1952)
“And I’m fed to the teeth with all these smart alecks who do parodies of me, hoping to make me feel like a piece of cheese.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 4 (1961)
Their remarks are generally printed in the evening papers with the word ‘laughter’ after them in brackets, and they count the day lost when they don’t make some unfortunate pickpocket or some wretched drunk and disorderly feel like a piece of cheese.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1963)
I was alluding to the powerful bi-weekly sheet which falls over itself in its efforts to do down the Conservative cause, omitting no word or act to make anyone with Conservative leanings feel like a piece of cheese.
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
the intellectual kind that wanted to mould me (p. 139)
Bertie Wooster would have sympathized with Tipton in this manner, having had similar experiences with Lady Florence Craye, Honoria Glossop, Heloise Pringle, and Vanessa Cook.
Clarice Burbank … Marcia Ferris (p. 139)
Mentioned only in this conversation.
a brand of instant coffee with ninety-seven per cent of the caffeine extracted (p. 139)
Not Kafka but Sanka, marketed in the USA under that name since 1923.
make a jay bird fly crooked (p. 139)
“Most of them haven’t enough brains to make a jay bird fly crooked.”
Russell Clutterbuck on his publishing competitors in French Leave, ch. 11.1 (1956)
a lot of prune juice (p. 139)
Slang for nonsense, with citations in the OED since 1904 including this sentence from Galahad at Blandings.
On the previous night, Agnes Flack, his fiancée, had broken their engagement, owing to a trifling disagreement they had had about the novel she had written. He had said it was a lot of prune juice and advised her to burn it without delay, and she had said it was not, either, a lot of prune juice, adding that she never wanted to see or speak to him again, and this had affected him adversely.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
at the registrar’s (p. 139)
right plumb spang (p. 139)
See Sam the Sudden.
the soft music which was filling the room (p. 140)
Wodehouse uses the illusion of background music as a metaphor for sudden joy, especially in a romantic sense.
…the office of Pyke’s Home Companion became all at once flooded with brilliant sunshine. Birds twittered from the ceiling, and blended with their notes was the soft music of violins and harps.
Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 12.3 (1925)
The rat, a noisy feeder, had changed into an orchestra of harps, dulcimers and sackbuts that played soft music.
Summer Lightning, ch. 12.3 (1929)
And then, at seven fifty-seven, the whole aspect of affairs abruptly changed. Gloom vanished, hope dawned, soft music seemed to fill the air, and that air became suddenly languorous with the scent of violets and roses.
Full Moon, ch. 4.1 (1947)
“My niece Prudence,” continued the voice, speaking now from the centre of a rosy mist to the accompaniment of harps, lutes and sackbuts.
Full Moon, ch. 4.1 (1947)
But Pongo and Sally were alone together in a world of their own, enjoying the scent of the violets and roses which sprouted through the bedroom floor and listening to the soft music which an orchestra of exceptional ability, consisting chiefly of harps and violins, was playing near at hand.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 11.4 (1948)
There came to Bingo, listening to these words, the illusion that a hidden orchestra had begun to play soft music, while somewhere in the room he seemed to smell the scent of violets and mignonette.
“The Word in Season” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“I’m floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of bliss while harps and sackbuts do their stuff and a thousand voices give three rousing cheers.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.1 (1964)
He had been sitting there for perhaps ten minutes when a burst of sunshine filled the lobby, harpsichords and sackbuts began to play soft music, and he saw Dinah coming through the swing door.
“Life with Freddie” in Plum Pie (1966/67)
Somewhere out of sight an orchestra was playing soft music and the air was heavy with the scent of roses and violets sprouting through the floor.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 15 (1968)
Let the bishops bish elsewhere (p. 140)
The OED has a single entry for both the noun and verb senses of bish as a humorous shortening of bishop. Wodehouse is cited in the noun sense (“Vicar! Bish!”) from Meet Mr. Mulliner (1929); the original magazine story is “Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo” (1926). I have not yet found another Wodehouse usage of the verb sense.
jumping off the dock (p. 140)
cauliflower ear (p. 140)
See twisted ear above.
You’ll find him in the pig sty, you can tell him by his hat (p. 140)
See Heavy Weather.
the scent of manure and under-gardeners (p. 140)
look on the bright side (p. 141)
It is not surprising, given what we are told of Wodehouse’s sunny and optimistic disposition, to find so many instances of this phrase in his works. Google Books ngram viewer finds a few uses of the phrase in the mid-eighteenth century, but it becomes increasingly popular after 1800, with a significant rise in usage beginning in the 1970s.
My very dear Sir,—Take my advice, and look on the bright side.
“Balm for the Broken-Hearted (1904)
“But we must look on the bright side. If you had stayed in, you might have broken a record.”
“The Milk of Kindness Supply” (1905)
"We must, however," he said, "always endeavour to look on the bright side, Dunstable.”
“A Corner in Lines” (1905)
Mr. H. G. Pelissier urged the public to look on the bright side. There was a sun still shining in the sky.
The Swoop!, ch. 4 (1909)
Sybil, though anxious to look on the bright side, could not quite rise to these heights of scorn for the earthquake which had shaken her world.
The White Hope/The Coming of Bill, ch. 12 (1914/20)
“Let us look on the bright side. We are in no hurry.”
Something Fresh/Something New, ch. 6 (1915)
“That’s right,” he said approvingly. “Always look on the bright side.”
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 6 (1917)
And yet the modern lyrist, to look on the bright side, has advantages that Gilbert never had.
“On the Writing of Lyrics” (1917)
Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings. Then he seemed to overcome them and to force himself to look on the bright side.
“Doing Father a Bit of Good” (1920, in ch. 11 of Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
“All the comforts of home! Look on the bright side, old bean.”
“Washy Makes His Presence Felt” (1920, in ch. 21 of Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
“Well, that was all to the good, what?” I said, hoping to induce the poor fish to look on the bright side.
“Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer” (1922; in ch. 4 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“We must always,” he said, “endeavor to look on the bright side.”
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 12 (1923)
“You’ve got one of those sunny temperaments which look on the bright side and never fail to spot the blue bird.”
Heavy Weather, ch. 5 (1933)
An idea struck me, enabling me to look on the bright side. If you could call it the bright side.
Laughing Gas, ch. 26 (1936)
I’m beginning to agree with the lawyer in the New Yorker—that picture where his client is being led off to the penitentiary and he says ‘Look on the bright side. After all, it’s three squares a day and a roof over your head.’
Letter to Guy Bolton, 2 October 1946, in Donaldson, Yours, Plum.
“However, let us look on the bright side. Shall we?”
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 1 (1948)
“So, if I were you, I would try to look on the bright side. Count your blessings one by one, if you know what I mean.”
The Mating Season, ch. 18 (1949)
Moody, wavering, irresolute, Oscar Fritchie was the sort of man who would have got on well with Hamlet. He seemed to find it impossible to look on the bright side.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 18 (1952)
Naturally, pig-lovers like their protégés to look on the bright side—a pig that goes about wrapped in a Byronic gloom can cast a shadow on the happiest farm—but one does not want them getting over-familiar with strangers and telling long stories without any point.
Over Seventy, ch. 15.3 (1957)
There had always been something Murphreyesque about this lady receptionist, as she liked to describe herself, and many a time had Bill urged her to take the lemon out of her mouth and look on the bright side….
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 5 (1957)
“Still, let’s look on the bright side. There’s always a silver lining.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (UK edition, 1958)
A certain chagrin was inevitable after she had come so near to success in the object of her quest and failed owing to an Act of God at the eleventh hour to achieve her aims, but hers was a resilient and philosophical nature, and she was able to look on the bright side and count her blessings one by one.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)
It is always my policy to look on the bright side, but in order to do this you have to have a bright side to look on, and under existing conditions there wasn’t one.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1963)
It was impossible for Henry in his exalted mood not to look on the bright side.
Company for Henry, ch. 7.2 (1967)
Horace refused to look on the bright side. He had a strong objection to being plugged in the leg or arm or somewhere.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 4.3 (1968)
It is always my policy in times of crisis to try to look on the bright side, but I make one proviso,—viz. that there has to be a bright side to look on, and in the present case there wasn’t even the sniff of one.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 14 (1971)
something lingering with boiling oil in it (p. 141)
See The Girl in Blue.
Pentonville (p. 141)
See Ukridge.
ministering angel (p. 142)
See Sam the Sudden.
speaking diffidently (p. 142)
The US edition adds a comma after this phrase, which seems to be grammatically required.
regulation tennis ball (p. 142)
Not as tightly regulated as golf balls; the International Tennis Federation specifies a diameter from 6.54 to 6.86 cm (2.57 to 2.70 inches).
Sweethearts still (p. 142)
A frequent announcement of a reconciliation.
“I seem to see us in our old age, you on one side of the radiator, I on the other, warming our old limbs and thinking up snappy stuff to hand each other—sweethearts still!”
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 26 (1917)
Hugo inhaled vigorously. He felt like a man who has just dodged a wounded tigress.
“Banzai!” he said. “Sweethearts still!”
Summer Lightning, ch. 1.4 (1929)
“You said ‘darling’.”
“Well, of course,” said Ann.
“But . . .”
“Sweethearts still,” explained the Biscuit.
Big Money, ch. 13.4 (1931)
“They are all right, those two. Sweethearts still is the term.”
Heavy Weather, ch. 10 (1933)
“I saw Madeline just now,” I said. “She tells me that you are sweethearts still. Correct?”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Jill. “There’s been a change in the situation. Sweethearts still.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 19 (1953/54)
“In fact, to coin a phrase, you’re sweethearts still?”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1960)
“No more baseless suspicions?”
“Not one.”
“In short, sweethearts still?”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 11 (1961)
“About that lute we were speaking of. No rift. Sound as a bell. I have it straight from the horse’s mouth that Miss Bassett and Gussie are sweethearts still.”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1963)
“Time, the great healer, had done its stuff and we were sweethearts still.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5.3 (1964)
‘Making it clear that all is forgiven and forgotten and that you are sweethearts still,’ said Gally, and he went off to get a glass of port in Beach’s pantry.
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 11 (1977)
a quid (p. 143)
Slang for a pound sterling.
pop up out of a trap (p. 143)
See Bill the Conqueror.
the troops of Midian (p. 144)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the boys in blue (p. 144)
Here, meaning police officers.
pourparlers (p. 144)
French: informal discussions preliminary to actual negotiations. [TM]
lived for pleasure alone (p. 144)
tiled roof (p. 145)
The larger potting shed at Chuffnell Hall also has a tiled roof, in Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 21 (1934). At Blandings, the new sty of the Empress of Blandings next to the kitchen garden includes a squat building of red brick and timber with a stout tiled roof, in Heavy Weather, ch. 12 (1933).
those Indian fakirs who dematerialize themselves (p. 145)
Constable Evans’s granite face (p. 146)
I liked Michael, and the contrast between his words and his granite, expressionless face appealed to me.
“Mike’s Little Brother” (1913)
Out in the street George Pennicut, now the centre of quite a substantial section of the Four Million, was causing a granite-faced policeman to think that the age of miracles had returned by informing him that the accident had been his fault and no other’s.
The White Hope/The Coming of Bill, ch. 1 (1914/20)
Constable Plimmer scowled. His face was scarlet. His jaw protruded like a granite break-water.
“The Romance of an Ugly Policeman” (1915; in The Man with Two Left Feet, 1917)
But Officer Donahue permitted the left corner of his mouth to twitch slightly, and a momentary muscular spasm disturbed the calm of Officer Cassidy’s granite features, as a passing breeze ruffles the surface of some bottomless lake.
“Strange Experiences of an Artist’s Model” (1921; in Indiscretions of Archie, ch. 6, 1921)
His face had the appearance of having been carved out of granite, and the eye which collided with Archie’s as the latter, with an attempt at an ingratiating smile, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table was hard and frosty.
“Mother’s Knee” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, ch. 24, 1921)
On most nights in the week you would find the tables occupied by wispy poets and slender futurist painters. But now, though these were present in great numbers, they were supplemented by quite a sprinkling of granite-faced men with knobby shoulders and protruding jaws.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 16.1 (1926)
[Millicent’s] soft blue eyes appeared to have been turned into stone.
[...]
The granite eye took on an added hardness.
Summer Lightning, ch. 1.4 (1929)
His face, which in repose resembled a slab of granite with suspicious eyes, was softened now by a genial smile.
Hot Water, ch. 1.3 (1932)
There is a breed of granite-faced, strong-jawed business man to whom Lord Emsworth’s attitude towards Rupert Baxter would have seemed frankly inexplicable.
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” in Lord Emsworth and Others (1937)
Roderick Spode … had been standing by, thoughtfully sucking the muzzle of his gun and listening to my statements as if he thought it all pretty thin; but now a flicker of human feeling came into his granite face.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)
Horace Bewstridge met his accusing glare without a tremor. His face was like granite.
“Excelsior” (1948; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Well, ma’am,” said the sergeant, his granite face wreathed in smiles, “we’ve done it.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 20 (1951)
She looked at J. Bromley Lippincott as if trying to detect in his granite features some evidence of human feeling.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 19 (1952)
He pictured Inspector Jarvis as a man who might have been carved out of some durable substance like granite, and that was the material which seemed to have been used in assembling this zealous officer.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 9.3 (1952)
A backers’ audition is composed of cringing mendicants—the management, a pianist, some hired singers and some friends and supporters who are there to laugh and applaud—and a little group of fat, rich men with tight lips and faces carved out of granite, whom you have assembled somehow and herded into a hotel suite.
“Shadow over Broadway” in Punch, September 30, 1953; “Francis Bacon and the Play Doctor,” section 1, in America, I Like You (1956); Over Seventy, ch. 18 (1957)
“You had better start saving your money,” said Mrs. Pegler, and went off to join the Argentines, Portuguese and Greeks who with tight lips and granite eyes had gathered about the green board, waiting for the croupier to start the game.
French Leave, ch. 9.1 (1956)
But actually, behind those granite features I was far from being tranquil.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 17 (1974)
nothing to do but say “Ho!” (p. 146)
See Summer Lightning.
Marie Celeste (p. 146)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
The Man In The Iron Mask (p. 146)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
make us more spiritual (p. 146)
See Cocktail Time.
your hearts were no longer sundered (p. 146)
the poet said about lovers’ reconciliations (p. 146)
Wodehouse doesn’s make this certain, but one strong possibility is a frequently-quoted passage from Tennyson, already cited above in this book: see Money in the Bank.
serio (p. 147)
See Summer Lightning.
Jack Cotterleigh in the Irish Guards (p. 147)
See two adjacent notes in Summer Lightning.
Clarence has always been allergic to top hats (p. 147)
As recounted in “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935).
everybody’s cup of tea (p. 148)
That is, a suitable partner for everyone. The OED first cites my cup of tea in this sense from Nancy Mitford in 1932. Wodehouse used this figurative sense of cup of tea only a few times, and so far it has only been found with everybody’s rather than with my, his, or her.
“Charming woman, of course.”
“Connie?” said Lord Emsworth, surprised.
“Though perhaps not everybody’s cup of tea,” said Lord Ickenham, sensing the incredulity in his companion’s voice.
Service with a Smile, ch. 2.2 (1961)
“She’s the daughter of a well-to-do American millionaire called Stoker, who, I imagine, will be full of strange oaths when he hears she’s married Gussie, the latter being, as you will concede, not everybody’s cup of tea.”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1963)
Gally, as always when they met, was impressed by the thought of how little resemblance there was between poor old Stiffy and this son of his. The former—splendid chap, but let’s face it not everybody’s cup of tea—had presented, as so many Pelicans did, the appearance of a man with a severe hangover who had slept in his clothes and had not had time to shave: the latter was neat, trim, fit and athletic looking.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 2 (1969)
marrying and giving in marriage (p. 148)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Indian Love Lyrics (p. 149)
See Hot Water.
Debrett (p. 149)
Blotto … Pie-eyed (p. 150)
Drunk. See the list of synonyms under shifting it a bit in The Inimitable Jeeves.
tender and sentimental subjects (p. 150)
An allusion to Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, in which Sir Joseph Porter wants to woo the Captain’s daughter: “Now, Captain Corcoran, a word with you in your cabin, on a tender and sentimental subject.”
I pushed off to where April was greeting a covey of guests and barged in, hoping ere long to be able to detach her from the throng and have a private word with her on a tender and sentimental subject.
Laughing Gas, ch. 4 (1936)
“And now,” said Joe, “to a more tender and sentimental subject.”
Summer Moonshine, ch. 17 (1937)
thin end of the wedge (p. 150)
The first, easily overlooked sign of a growing threat. See Lord Emsworth and Others.
Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar (p. 150)
See Hot Water.
dead snip (p. 150)
for the wedding stakes (p. 150)
Gally is speaking figuratively, as if there were a sweepstake in which the winner would be the one who draws the name of the first person to get married. In effect, he means that Clarence’s ticket would be the winning one: his wedding is imminent unless he takes immediate steps.
the fate that is worse than death (p. 150)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
Chapter Eleven
Augean stables (p. 152)
In Greek mythology, the stables of King Augeas housed three thousand oxen and had not been cleaned of manure in 30 years. One of the twelve labors of Heracles (Hercules) was to clean them, which he did by diverting two rivers to rinse out the building.
But his labours in the Augean stables of Kay’s were by no means over.
The Head of Kay’s, ch. 14 (1905)
three-card trick (p. 152)
See Full Moon.
“Death, damnation and despair!” (p. 153)
This is the only instance of the phrase so far found, but it is one of many similar compound expletives in Wodehouse. See The Mating Season for one possible literary precedent.
Monty, on his side, found the novelist’s presence jarring upon him because the latter seemed to bring with him into the room an atmosphere of doom and desolation and despair, of charnel houses and winding sheets and spectral voices wailing in the wind.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 13 (1935)
“I stick to that necklace, and what ensues? Ruin and misery and desolation.”
Full Moon, ch. 10.7 (1947)
And then what? Ruin, desolation and despair.
The Mating Season, ch. 10 (1949)
“Misery, desolation and despair,” said William. “That is the programme, as I see it.”
“Rodney Has a Relapse” (1949; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“No, this is the end. Doom, desolation and despair. Well, see you in the breadline,” said Bill.
The Old Reliable, ch. 3 (1951)
“Clouds,” he said. “Black, inky clouds. And murky shadows threatening doom, disaster and despair.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 18 (1951)
“And then what? I’ll tell you what. Doom, desolation and despair.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 9.1 (1952)
“Exposure, ruin, desolation and despair.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 12 (1954)
“Oh, death and damnation!”
Terry Trent in French Leave, ch. 1 (1956)
“Oh, death and despair, the dinner! It must be burned to a cinder.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 16 (1957)
A bunch of bad men are beleaguering a bunch of good men in a stockade or an embassy or wherever it may be and seem to be getting along splendidly, and then suddenly the bottom drops out of everything and all is disaster, disillusionment and despair.
Cocktail Time, ch. 16 (US edition, 1958)
A bunch of bad men are beleaguering a bunch of good men in a stockade or an embassy or wherever it may be and seem to be getting along splendidly, and then suddenly the bottom drops out of everything and all is darkness, disillusionment and despair.
Cocktail Time, ch. 16 (UK edition, 1958)
On such occasions the customer has the feeling that the great globe itself has faded, leaving not a wrack behind, and that, as in the case of bad men interrupted in their activities by the United States Marines, all is darkness, disillusionment and despair.
Cocktail Time, ch. 19 (1958)
“Only doom, disaster, desolation and despair,” he said, scowling darkly at a fly which had joined us and was doing calisthenics on the rim of my glass.
Walter Judson in “Joy Bells for Walter” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959/60)
“Ruin, desolation and despair, that’s what the outcome would have been.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5.1 (1964)
If he leads the diamond, disaster, desolation and despair.
“My Bridge Career” (in Cavalier, March 1965)
“Death and despair!”
“George and Alfred” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
I had had some idea of going into the possibility of Aunt Agatha reading the contents of the club book and touching on the doom, desolation and despair which must inevitably be my portion if she did, but I saw that it would be fruitless or bootless.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1971)
Ruin, desolation and despair all round, in short.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 18 (1974)
the eleventh ult (p. 153)
Business jargon for “the eleventh day of last month”; from Latin ultimo.
corked (p. 153)
Wines are said to be corked when contaminated by a chemical reaction between fungi naturally occurring in cork and certain chloride compounds. The resulting musty off-taste is variously compared to damp cardboard, moldy basement, or even wet dog.
sitting on top of the world (p. 154)
See The Mating Season.
I have my spies everywhere. (p. 154)
“When did you know he was a manager here?” asked Mike.
“At an early date. I have my spies everywhere.”
The New Fold/Psmith in the City, ch. 6 (1908/10)
Tipton’s mouth, which emotion had caused to fall open like that of a mail box, opened an inch or two further. (p. 154)
See above.
The hand is the hand of Veronica, but the voice is the voice of her blasted mother. (p. 154)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the mixture would be too rich (p. 155)
The direct meaning is that the combination would be extravagant, but the wording is a takeoff on internal-combustion engine principles; see Thank You, Jeeves.
as dumb a brick (p. 155)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
the cream in her coffee and the salt in her stew (p. 156)
See The Old Reliable.
another three minutes (p. 156)
Long-distance telephone calls at this period required the services of an operator to make connections and to remind callers of additional charges for longer calls.
sometimes made bookies cry (p. 157)
Wodehouse apparently thought this idea, first expressed here, worth repeating:
As far as that was concerned, there was nothing more to worry about, and a few well-chosen words from one who in his time had made bookies cry would soon adjust the matter of the incandescent popsy.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 7.4 (1969)
‘When at my best, I could make bookies cry and sometimes lend me a fiver to be going along with.’
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 8 (1977)
martini (p. 157)
Though many Wodehouse characters enjoy the martini cocktail, and it was a favorite with Wodehouse himself in his later years, this is the first time that Galahad is depicted with a craving for one. We first meet him in Summer Lightning, ch. 1.2, with a whisky-and-soda in his hand, and that is his choice in Heavy Weather, ch. 3. In Full Moon, ch. 3.7, he has been “ever rising on stepping-stones of dead whiskies and sodas to higher things.” In Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3, he wants a whisky-and-soda to “bring the roses back to my cheeks.”
extra-sensory perception (p. 157)
Though the term was coined in the 1930s by Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke University for his controversial experiments in paranormal abilities, and quickly rose in popular usage during the 1940s and 1950s, it was not until the 1960s, coinciding with a peak in its popular usage, that Wodehouse began mentioning the term in his fiction.
He had never made a study of extra-sensory perception, but he could tell what had been passing in Lord Tilbury’s mind as clearly as if the latter had drawn a diagram for him.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 10.1 (1964)
“Then how did you find out about his spot of trouble? By extra-whatever-it’s-called?”
“Extra-sensory perception? No, sir. I happened to be glancing yesterday at the G section of the club book.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
It seemed to her that he must either have had extrasensory perception or had been briefed by an accomplice inside the house—by, for instance, the butler.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 3.2 (1968)
an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality (p. 157)
two bob (p. 158)
Two shillings; one-tenth of a pound sterling.
hoisting a few (p. 158)
Having a few drinks; a similar euphemism to bending one’s elbow. The OED fails to note this, but Green’s Dictionary of Slang has many examples of this sense of hoist dating back to 1862.
Late one night this fellow rang the bell of a neighbour’s house, and the neighbour, donning bathrobe and slippers, went downstairs and let him in, and it was apparent to him right away that the visitor had recently been hoisting a few.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated March 14, 1951 in Performing Flea (1953); dated November 10, 1953 in Author! Author! (1962)
“But his manner was brusque and, as I have indicated, I had been hoisting a few.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.1 (1964)
keep harmony in the home (p. 159)
A nicely turned double meaning!
adrenal glands (p. 159)
These sit atop the kidneys (named from Latin roots meaning near the kidneys) and produce the hormone epinephrine (a name that comes from Greek roots meaning upon the kidneys). The hormone (also known as adrenalin, once a trademark for its pharmaceutical form) is a neurotransmitter involved in the fight-or-flight response, increasing blood flow to the muscles and otherwise stimulating bodily activity.
“Though it is a very moot point whether such shocks aren’t good for one. They stimulate the adrenal glands.”
Gally to Jerry Vail in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.2 (1952)
“I have had a shock, Galahad.”
“Nothing better, they say, for the adrenal glands.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 7.4 (1969)
‘I’ve been going through hell.’
‘Good for the adrenal glands.’
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 14
Beach will give her her calories. He’s done it before (p. 159)
In Summer Lightning, at the behest of Ronnie Fish, who has stolen Empress of Blandings and hidden her away in order to make Lord Emsworth grateful when she is “found.”
all that sort of apple sauce (p. 160)
See Bill the Conqueror.
done the square thing (p. 160)
The OED has citations for doing the square thing as performing a fair, honest, or honourable action dating to c. 1860. It seems clear that Wodehouse ranked this highly in his sense of ethics, as he used the phrase throughout his career.
“However, you seem to have been doing the square thing by him, showing him round and so on.”
“Harrison’s Slight Error” (1903; in Tales of St. Austin’s, 1903)
What annoyed him more than anything else was the knowledge that if only Fenn chose to do the square thing and help him in his work, the combination would be irresistible.
The Head of Kay’s, ch. 14 (1905)
“She said you had been partners all her life, and she was going to do the square thing by you.”
“She did?” said McEachern eagerly.
“I think you ought to do the square thing by her. I’m not much, but she wants me. Do the square thing by her.”
The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 29 (1910)
“The present arrangement of equal division,” said Sam, breaking a long silence, “holds good, of course, only in the event of your quitting this fool game and doing the square thing by me.”
The Little Nugget, ch. 19 of serial, ch. 9.2 of book (1913)
“Well, then, check your grouch with your hat. Do the square thing.”
The White Hope/The Coming of Bill, ch. 9 (1914/20)
If I were going to run a train, I would feel that the square thing to do was to provide the customers with railway lines and see that the points were in working order.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated June 27, 1922, in Author! Author! (1962)
Waiting expectantly, therefore, for Colonel Wyvern to do the square thing, she was stunned to find that he apparently had no intention of even apologizing.
Money for Nothing, ch. 1.2 (1928)
“You know, guv’nor,” proceeded Freddie, “there’s nothing to prevent you doing the square thing and linking two young hearts in the bonds of the Love God, if you want to.”
“Company for Gertrude” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“I look back through the years, and I seem to see you and me standing side by side, each helping each, each doing the square thing by the other. You certainly always did the square thing by me.”
Summer Lightning, ch. 3.5 (1929)
He liked him, and considered that he had done the square thing.
If I Were You, ch. 21 (1931)
“There were no barbers there, and there didn’t seem any prospect of there ever being any, so I stepped into the breach. I thought it was the square thing to do.”
Hot Water, ch. 2.3 (1932)
It serves to keep the records straight, and is a convenience to a public to whom he wants to do the square thing—affording as it does a bird’s-eye view of the position of affairs to those of his readers who, through no fault of their own, are not birds.
Hot Water, ch. 7 (1932)
“It’s a simple issue. Are you going to do the square thing or are you not?”
Heavy Weather, ch. 17 (1933)
Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at his best. St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers could not have bustled about more assiduously.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)
I did the square thing again.
“Never mind which aunt, Jeeves.”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 21 (1934)
He might be in the soup, he might be a financial wreck, he might be faced with a tête-à-tête with his uncle, Lord Blicester, in the course of which the testy old man would in all probability endeavour to bite a piece out of the fleshy part of his leg, but at least he had done the fine, square thing.
“Noblesse Oblige” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
“About what extraordinarily good pals we had always been, so that if there ever happened to be a moment when one of us could do the square thing by the other he wouldn’t hesitate.”
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 4 (1935)
He had not done the square thing, he told himself, by dear old Pongo.
“Tried in the Furnace” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK edition, 1936)
And once more I felt that Providence was doing the square thing by one who deserved it.
“The Come-back of Battling Billson” (1935; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
I told him about the frogs, and he said whatever might happen, I should have the consolation of knowing that I had done the fine, square thing.
Laughing Gas, ch. 18 (1936)
“Poor soul! I hope you will do the square thing by her.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 1 (1939)
“I can see her up there now . . . watching . . . waiting . . . all agog . . . wondering if you are going to do the square thing.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 14 (1939)
“He had been relying on Purkiss to do the square thing, and Purkiss let him down.”
“The Word in Season” (1940; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959/60)
It seemed to me that everybody was trying to go out of his way to do the square thing.
“My Year Behind Barbed Wire” (Cosmopolitan, October 1941)
It being, however, one of those situations where noblesse more or less obliges, I decided that I had better do the square thing, and I had torn off my coat and flung it from me and was preparing to plunge into the burning building, though still feeling that it was a bit thick having to get myself all charred up to gratify a kid who would be far better cooked to a cinder, when he emerged.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 10 (1946)
There come times in a man’s life when he rather tends to think only of self, and I must confess that the anguish of the above tortured souls was almost completely thrust into the background of my consciousness by the reflection that Fate after a rocky start had at last done the square thing by Bertram Wooster.
The Mating Season, ch. 24 (1949)
The obvious answer was “Yes, certainly”, but the inherited chivalry of a long line of ancestors, all of whom had been noted for doing the square thing by damsels in distress, caused Lord Emsworth to shrink from making it.
“Birth of a Salesman” (1950; in Nothing Serious)
“The moral obligation of a lady bursting with a gentleman’s spaghetti to do the square thing by the gentleman is equally strong.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 2 (1951)
“Then did you not learn at that knee to do the square thing by all and sundry and not to go about steeping yourself in crime?”
The Old Reliable, ch. 18 (1951)
“It’s a play about a feller with a heart of gold, see? Feller who’s always trying to do the square thing by everybody.”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 9 (1952)
It seemed to Bill that, for a pretty good sort of chap who meant no harm to anybody and strove always to do the square thing by one and all, he was being handled rather roughly by Fate this summer day.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 9 (1953/54)
I always like, if I can, to do the square thing by one and all on these occasions. Scratch Bertram Wooster, I sometimes say, and you find a Boy Scout.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 17 (1954)
It takes a man who can reach down into the recesses of his socks and come up with “He must know sumfin’, he don’t say nuffin, He just keeps rollin’ along” to do the square thing, with no thought of self, on such a majestic scale.
Over Seventy, ch. 3.4 (1957)
“Quite all right,” said Lord Uffenham, looking like Sidney Carton. “Got to do the square thing. Noblesse oblige.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 8 (1957)
He, in short, had done the square thing by me, and it was up to me to do the s.t. by him.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1960)
“Yes, those are the facts, and I took the view that as Molloy had done the square thing by me in so stupendous a fashion, the least I could do in return was to lead his stricken wife into the Bollinger and tell the man behind the bar to fill her up…”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 11 (1961)
Hitherto, his endeavors to spread sweetness and light and give service with a smile had been uniformly successful, but a man whose aim in life it is to do the square thing by his fellows is never content to think with modest pride to past triumphs; it is the present on which he feels the mind must be fixed, and it was to Lord Emsworth’s problem that he gave the full force of his powerful intellect.
Service with a Smile, ch. 7.2 (1961)
Her theme was the stupendous bit of good luck which was about to befall Stinker’s new parishioners, for they would be getting not only the perfect vicar, a saintly character who would do the square thing by their souls, but in addition the sort of vicar’s wife you dream about.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1963)
“The idea was to go to Uncle Watkyn and tell him he wouldn’t get it back unless he did the square thing by Harold.”
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1963)
I am probably wrong, but it seems to me that the square thing to do if you are planning to take people on a train journey is to see that the rails, points, signals and whatnot are in working order and that the engine driver knows more or less where he is going.
“Genesis of a Novel” in Punch, May 4, 1966
Mark you, what I had said about wanting to do the square thing by the aged relative and heal the breach and all that sort of thing was perfectly true, but there was a lot more than that behind the gesture.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
“First, we must ask ourselves if you are really doing the square thing in asking her to marry you.”
“Life with Freddie” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
With the feeling that even if her tastes lay in the direction of champagne he must do the square thing, he said: “And now, madam, if you have no urgent engagements, I think we would both like a little something after all this excitement. Might I persuade you to join me?”
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 2.4 (1968)
I could appreciate that this put him in quite a spot, the feudal spirit making him wish to do the square thing by the young master, while a natural disinclination to get bunged out of a well-loved club urged him to let the young master boil his head.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1971)
In the long afternoons when business was slack and there was the opportunity of exchanging confidences she had revealed the whole Sandy Miller Story—the childhood in the small Illinois town, the leisurely passage through high school, the lucky break when rich Uncle Alexander, doing the square thing by his goddaughter, had put her through secretarial college, the graduation from same, the various jobs, some good, some not so good, and finally the coming to Hollywood because she had always wanted to see what it was like there.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 1 (1972)
strew a little happiness (p. 160)
It being my constant policy to strew a little happiness as I go by, I hastened to point out the silver lining in the c’s.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1963)
“Come on, Juddy, be a sport and strew a little happiness as you go by.”
“Life with Freddie” in Plum Pie (1966/67)
purely medicinal (p. 160)
Thinking that it must be the circumstance of his having found me restoring the tissues with a spot of the right stuff that was causing his chagrin, I was about to say that the elixir in my hand was purely medicinal and had been recommended by a prominent Harley Street physician when he spoke.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
‘As thirsty as ever, I observe. I thought I would find you tucking into the drinks.’
‘Purely medicinal. I’ve had a shock.’
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1971)
as corn before my sickle (p. 160)
See If I Were You.
played on him as on a stringed instrument (p. 160)
by-election (p. 161)
stepped-on cat (p. 162)
He thought he had heard a stepped-on cat utter a piercing yowl. But it was only Gladys commenting on what he had said.
Once more Gladys had uttered that eldritch scream so like in its timbre to that of a domestic cat with a number eleven boot on its tail.
“A Good Cigar Is a Smoke” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
‘Anything I can do for you, Mr. Molloy?’ Chimp asked, and Soapy uttered a stifled cry like a stepped-on cat suffering from laryngitis.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972)
Sam soared some six inches in the direction of the ceiling (p. 162)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
hot-foot (p. 162)
See The Mating Season.
He tottered and might have fallen (p. 162)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
What a helpmeet (p. 162)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
you have to go to the man who’s got a thousand quid (p. 164)
See The Old Reliable.
wire-haired terrier (p. 165)
Wire-haired terriers are in the list of dogs that George Finch is fond of in The Small Bachelor, ch. 3.3 (1926/27). A wire-haired terrier tells the dog Emily about a burglary in Money for Nothing, ch. 7.5 (1928). Augustus Robb recalls being bitten in the seat of his trousers by one in Spring Fever, ch. 2 (1948). Bertie Wooster compares his sticking-up ears to those of a wirehaired terrier in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 11 (1954); a similar comparison involving Harold Nicolson’s ears is in America, I Like You, ch. 1.2 (1956). Bobbie Wickham thinks that Bertie’s Uncle Tom Travers looks like a wire-haired terrier once very dear to her in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 5 (1960). Freddie Threepwood urges giving your wire-haired terrier Donaldson’s Dog Joy in “Life with Freddie” in Plum Pie (1966/67).
Fuller quotations for these are listed at Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
blot on the body politic (p. 165)
For a moment she supposed that it was Sam, come to bid her to the feast; then, emerging from her thoughts, she looked up and perceived that blot on the body politic, Claude Winnington-Bates.
Sam the Sudden, ch. 18/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 21 of serial, ch. 18 of book (1925)
lepidoptera (p. 165)
The order of insects that includes butterflies and moths. Butterflies are frequently mentioned throughout Wodehouse’s career: flitting from flower to flower and sipping; evening ties aim for the perfect butterfly effect; nervousness gives the effect of butterflies in the stomach; and so forth. But references to collecting and studying them are few, and are all from his earlier works.
“You were wondering what he did with himself.”
“Yes, it can’t be anything good so we’ll put beetles and butterflies out of the question right away.”
The Pothunters, ch. 5 (1902)
In the middle block, at the top of the building, far from the haunts of men, is the Science Museum, containing—so I have heard, I have never been near the place myself—two stuffed rats, a case of mouldering butterflies, and other objects of acute interest.
“A Shocking Affair” (1903; in Tales of St. Austin’s)
“Spike,” said Jimmy. “I warned you of this. I begged you to be on your guard, to fight against your professional instincts. Be a man! Crush them. Try to occupy your mind. Collect butterflies.”
The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 13 (1910)
As a matter of fact, the sudden outbreak of active hostilities with the Table Hill contingent had had the effect of taking the minds of Spider Reilly and his warriors off Cosy Moments and its affairs, much as the unexpected appearance of a mad bull would make a man forget that he had come out butterfly-hunting.
Psmith, Journalist, ch. 19 (1910/15)
He left London and retired to his native village, where, with a French cook and a series of secretaries to whom he dictated at long intervals occasional paragraphs of a book on British Butterflies on which he imagined himself to be at work, he passed the next twenty years.
“A Sea of Troubles” (1915; in The Man with Two Left Feet, 1917)
He would have become just as enthusiastic about butterflies, or old china, if he had turned his thoughts to them, but it chanced that what he had taken up was the collecting of the scarab, and it gripped him more and more as the years went on.
Something New/Something Fresh, ch. 3.2 (1915)
beetles (p. 166)
Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera, not Lepidoptera. Many amateur naturalists collect both, of course.
the angel with the flaming sword (p. 166)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“Right to the last drop.” (p. 166)
An altered echo of the Maxwell House coffee slogan “Good to the last drop”—part of their advertising since 1915.
Plug Basham (p. 167)
The story of the pig in the bedroom can be found as a brief mention in Summer Lightning, ch. 3.4 (1929), and in Heavy Weather, chs. 4 & 17 (1933). Gally mentions it again with more details in Full Moon, ch. 7.3 (1947), and in Pigs Have Wings, chs. 4.3 and 5.2 (1952).
Sandy, the weaker vessel (p. 167)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the death rattle of an expiring soda syphon (p. 167)
See a variety of death rattle noises in the notes to The Mating Season.
Chapter Twelve
bite like a serpent and sting like an adder (p. 169)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
heeby-jeebies (p. 169)
See Hot Water.
extra ace up her sleeve (p. 170)
The implication here is not so much of cheating at cards as of having ammunition unexpected by one’s opponent.
“And, what’s more,” said Freddie, pulling from his breast-pocket a buff-coloured slip of paper with the air of one who draws from his sleeve that extra ace which makes all the difference in a keenly-contested game, “I can prove it.”
“Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Well, as they keep saying, it is only a pastime and these things cannot affect us finally, but any observer who is at all keen-eyed can see that Charles Goren and Lee Hazen are good and sore, as are their colleagues, and there has been some rather sharp criticism of Jeff Glick, the non-playing captain of the American team, for not having seen to it that the playing members had a few of those extra aces up their sleeves which make so much difference in a closely contested chukker.
Over Seventy, ch. 19.2 (1957)
When will America learn that the only sure road to success at bridge is to have a good supply of extra aces up the sleeve, attached to the forearm with stout elastic?
“America Day by Day” in Punch, May 14, 1958
tied a can to Wilfred (p. 170)
See Sam the Sudden.
‘I want to make your flesh creep’ (p. 170)
In the original, the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, ch. 8, the fat boy says “I wants to make your flesh creep.”
Watch his knees. (p. 171)
“Don’t watch his eyes. Watch his knees. They will tell you when he is setting himself for a swing. And when he swings, roll with the punch.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 6 (1939)
spacious hall … telephone (p. 172)
‘Nothing trivial, I hope?’ (p. 172)
Even if spoken sarcastically, this is about as biting a comment as Wodehouse’s main characters ever make.
like a vacuum cleaner (p. 172)
Another reference to mopping is above. See a longer list of euphemisms at The Inimitable Jeeves.
“I watched him during dinner and he was mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner.”
Said of Willoughby Braddock in Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 3 (1925)
“His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into the dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner.”
Said of Gussie Fink-Nottle in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1934)
“You go sneaking off to Hollywood, and I find you here, mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner . . .”
Lord Havershot to Eggy Mannering in Laughing Gas, ch. 3 (1936)
And that was to make straight for Barribault’s bar, push four or five nourishing drinks down the hatch, and then go back and confront the man all bursting with health, and say: “Well, Murgatroyd, dear old chap, it may interest you to learn that since I saw you last I’ve been mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner, and I feel, if possible, better than ever.”
Tipton in Full Moon, ch. 3 (1947)
“But Reginald is a teetotaller.”
“While your eye is on him, perhaps. But only then. At other times he shifts the stuff like a vacuum cleaner.”
Said of Pongo Twistleton in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 12.2 (1948)
“The old coot’s been mopping it up like a vacuum cleaner,” he explained amusedly.
Said of Smedley Cork in The Old Reliable, ch. 12 (1951)
It was plain to him that the other, fatigued no doubt after a long day’s rehearsal, had yielded to the dictates of his lower self and for some considerable time must have been mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner.
Mervyn Potter in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 5 (1952)
“I was sitting here, you were sitting there, lapping up martinis like a vacuum cleaner, and I said . . . Yes, it all comes back to me. I’m sorry.”
Lord Ickenham to Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time, ch. 10 (1958)
“So you found out nothing?”
“Only that he can mop the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 9.1 (1964)
‘Would it be fair to say that you had been mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner all the afternoon?’
Gally suggesting a cross-examination of the Duke of Dunstable in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 13.3 (1969)
“But I could see it was just the drunken babble of someone who had been mopping it up all day like a vacuum cleaner, so I dismissed the thing from my mind.”
The Girl in Blue, ch. 7 (1970)
today is paying the price (p. 172)
We are not told the size of Tipton’s flask, but online searches indicate the most common sizes are six and eight ounces. I haven’t found any mention of the weight of the Empress, but at the 1936 Indiana State Fair, the prizewinning Berkshire aged sow weighed 783 pounds. Round down to 700 pounds as a safe estimate for the Empress, then divide by four to compare to a 175-pound man so that we can use human charts for blood alcohol level. Eight ounces of 80-proof whisky consumed quickly would raise that man’s blood alcohol concentration to 0.14%, too drunk to drive. But in a pig four times that size, we can estimate one-fourth the effect at BAC of about 0.035% (mild euphoria, relaxation, talkativeness, decreased inhibition as the immediate effects in humans) and the alcohol level would decrease to zero within three hours or so, and the likelihood of a notable hangover is small.
These calculations ignore that Wilfred had taken “a few mouthfuls” (p. 101) from the flask before he dropped it into the sty. And we don’t even know if the Empress emptied the trough of bran mash. So unless Tipton’s flask was enormous or filled with cask-strength (undiluted) Scotch, it seems to me that Wodehouse overestimated the effect it would have on the Empress, either immediately or the next day.
Lord love a duck! (p. 173)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
(p. )
(p. )
(p. )
(p. )
Originally posted 2024-08-04 NM; last updated 2024-11-09
Notes marked [JD] by John Dawson; [IM/LVG] by Ian Michaud and Lynn Vesley-Gross; [TM] by Terry Mordue.
Wodehouse’s writings are copyright © Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate in most countries;
material published prior to 1929 is in USA public domain, used here with permission of the Estate.
Our editorial commentary and other added material are copyright
© 2012–2024 www.MadamEulalie.org.