&nbsp; &nbsp; Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

all the Biffens I know (p. vii)

Eight characters with this surname are listed in Who’s Who in Wodehouse.

Half a league (p. viii)

From The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson; see The Luck of the Bodkins.

With a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha (p. viii)

Colney Hatch (p. viii)

See Love Among the Chickens.

Chapter One

soaping a meditative foot (p. 7)

A favorite example of a transferred epithet.

‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’ (p. 7)

See Hot Water.

boomps-a-daisy (p. 7)

creeps of the first water (p. 7)

The slang sense of creep as a despicable, worthless, stupid, or tiresome person [OED] arose in the USA in the late nineteenth century. This sentence from Wodehouse is among the OED citations for the term.

For first water, see Heavy Weather.

given the old oil (p. 7)

See Spring Fever.

male half of the sketch (p. 7)

A sketch is a short stage piece with a small cast, typically a single item in a revue or vaudeville program, so Bertie is treating the Trotters as if they were a performing couple.

This is the first of numerous uses of theatrical jargon in Bertie’s narration in this book.

beautiful bountiful Bertie (p. 7)

The hit song “Beautiful Bountiful Bertie” introduced George Grossmith Jr.’s “dude” character in The Shop Girl (1894, Dam/Ross/Caryll/Monckton). A recent recording is on YouTube.

binge (p. 7)

See The Code of the Woosters for this ironic sense of the word.

the curse had come upon me (p. 7)

Like Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott: see The Inimitable Jeeves.

downs tools (p. 8)

A phrase usually used for industrial workers going on strike, first recorded in 1855.

Bognor Regis (p. 8)

A seaside resort in West Sussex about 40 kilometres west of Brighton. Jeeves and the Brinkley Court butler Seppings have both been known to go there for their holidays. [IMLVG]

poets … losing gazelles (p. 8)

Alluding to lines from Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh:

I never nurs’d a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well
And love me, it was sure to die!

ruddy (p. 8)

A milder substitute for the stronger adjective “bloody” as in swearing “by God’s blood.”

‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ (p. 8)

The popular love ballad from Naughty Marietta (1910), music by Victor Herbert, lyric by Rida Johnson Young.

bronzed and fit (p. 8)

3a Berkeley Mansions, London W. 1. (p. 8)

See Thank You, Jeeves, in which Bertie’s banjolele arouses complaints from the occupants of apartments C.6 (“the flat below”), B.5, and B.7 in Berkeley Mansions.

In A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.3, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood lives on the fourth floor of Berkeley Mansions.

when a strayed sheep comes trickling back to the fold (p. 8)

gorgonzola (p. 9)

A strong-flavored, mold-veined blue cheese produced in the northern Italian town of the same name.

Junior Ganymede (p. 9)

the Drones (p. 9)

For Bertie’s own club, the Drones Club, see The Code of the Woosters.

with a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha (p. 9)

a stage wait of about a minute and a half (p. 9)

Theatrical jargon for a period when nothing is happening on stage, as when an actor fails to come in on cue.

‘Roll Out the Barrel’ (p. 9)

Originally composed as dance music in 1927 by Czech musician Jaromir Vejvoda, with Czech and German lyrics added in 1934, and English lyrics written by Lew Brown and Walter Timm, published in 1938 and recorded under the title “Beer Barrel Polka” (YouTube recording by the Andrews Sisters from 1939).

‘I Love a Lassie’ (p. 9)

See Meet Mr. Mulliner.

‘Every Day I Bring Thee Violets’ (p. 9)

Probably referring to “Every Morn I Bring Thee Violets” (c. 1900) by Silvio Hein.

a thousand pounds (p. 9)

The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests multiplying 1954 values by a factor of 22 to get the rough equivalent in 2023 purchasing power in pounds.

causing the soap to shoot from my hand (p. 9)

Something similar happens to Lord Brangbolton in “The Smile That Wins” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933).

ear-biting (p. 10)

Asking for a loan; see Leave It to Psmith.

hound of hell (p. 10)

In Greek mythology, a three-headed dog named Cerberus guarded the gates of Hell to keep the dead souls from escaping.

put the nosebag on (p. 10)

A slangy way of referring to dining, from the actual bag of oats or other feed worn over its mouth by a horse.

sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and nephews (p. 10)

Probably influenced by the chorus of “sisters and cousins and aunts” of Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., in Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore.

step-cousin or cousin once removed (p. 10)

Step-cousin would be more accurate, as the relationship was created by a marriage as explained in the paragraph. “Once removed” refers to a relationship extended by one generation on the family tree; for instance, the child of your first cousin is your first cousin once removed.

Lord Worplesdon (p. 11)

His given name is Percival and the family name is Craye; he is first met in “Disentangling Old Percy” (1912) as the father of a friend of Reggie Pepper. Bertie Wooster describes his relationship with the family in “Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916). Lord Worplesdon’s marriage to Bertie’s Aunt Agatha has recently taken place in Joy in the Morning (1946).

en secondes noces (p. 11)

In a second marriage.

little grey cells (p. 11)

divine fire (p. 11)

Artistic inspiration, seen as a gift from the gods as in the legend of Prometheus in Greek mythology.

begins with an l (p. 11)

Wodehouse leaves us to guess which adjective Bertie had in mind; my supposition is “loony” but that is mere speculation.

significant form (p. 11)

deep waters (p. 11)

to go to someone who has got a thousand quid (p. 12)

…when you are up against it for a sum like two hundred pounds it is necessary to sink personal prejudices and go to the man who has got two hundred pounds.

Cocktail Time, ch. 5 (1958)

the stuff (p. 12)

See Something Fishy.

king of the mugs (p. 12)

An outstandingly gullible simpleton, a person easily persuaded or taken advantage of (British slang, mid-nineteenth century).

nolle prosequi (p. 12)

legal Latin: to be unwilling to prosecute or pursue a case.

old oak chest (p. 12)

Figuratively, a place of safekeeping for money and documents.

When Spennie became Earl of Dreever there was about eighteenpence in the old oak chest.

The Intrusions of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 8 (1910)

“There is still a tolerable supply of doubloons in the old oak chest.”

Psmith in the City (serialized as The New Fold), ch. 6 (1910)

“There are doubloons and to spare in the old oak chest.”

Psmith, Journalist, ch. 15 (1909/15)
and The Prince and Betty, ch. 18 (US edition, 1912)

“We’ve got the will in the old oak chest,” went on Jerry Nichols.

Uneasy Money, ch. 4 (1915/16)

“Just a few hard-earned pieces of eight. Just a few doubloons from the old oak chest.”

Indiscretions of Archie, ch. 16 (1921)

It is perfectly possible, no doubt, to read Very Good, Jeeves! as a detached effort—or, indeed, not to read it at all: but I like to think that this country contains men of spirit who will not rest content till they have dug down into the old oak chest and fetched up the sum necessary for the purchase of its two predecessors—The Inimitable Jeeves and Carry On, Jeeves! Only so can the best results be obtained.

Preface to Very Good, Jeeves! (UK edition, 1930)

A man who is not rich does not go about giving people half a million dollars. If the urge to do so comes upon him, he resists it, feeling that it is best to keep the money in the old oak chest.

Summer Moonshine, ch. 18 (1937)

Hermione attributed them not to any lack of merit in the books themselves, for she knew their merit to be considerable, but to the firm’s preference for keeping its money in the old oak chest instead of spending it on advertisements in the papers.

Uncle Dynamite, ch. 10.3 (1948)

“You see,” explained Barmy, “my Uncle Theodore of course copped the jackpot. Most of the stuff in the old oak chest went to him.”

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 3 (1952)

Such, then, was Mrs Spottsworth, a woman with a soul and about forty-two million dollars in the old oak chest.

Ring for Jeeves, ch. 1 (1953) / The Return of Jeeves, ch. 5 (1954)

From now on, a script will have to be a singularly good script to attract the backers of that little entertainment. One predicts a well-marked disposition on their part to keep the money in the old oak chest.

“Shadow over Broadway” in Punch, September 3, 1953

America’s book-buyers have decided as one book-buyer to keep the money in the old oak chest, and I don’t blame them.

“Gaughan the Deliverer,” part 2, in America, I Like You (1956)
and “Television,” ch. 16.2, in Over Seventy (1957)

“Don’t dream of parting. I was wrong to ask you. Keep the money in the old oak chest.”

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 12.3 (1965)

“A warning to them in future to keep their money in the old oak chest and not risk it on wagers.”

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1971)

Let him eat cake (p. 12)

bracers (p. 13)

swam into his ken (p. 13)

A glancing allusion to Keats; see The Clicking of Cuthbert.

a-twitter (p. 13)

‘Skin off your nose’ (p. 13)

A drinking toast, first cited in the OED from a 1925 collection of military slang. Wodehouse is cited for using it in Young Men in Spats, ch. 2 (“Tried in the Furnace,” 1935/36).

rot (p. 14)

Slang for nonsense.

bally (p. 14)

caterpillars … salad (p. 14)

raise its ugly head (p. 14)

The moment he entered the club-house Disaffection reared its ugly head.

Wallace Chesney in “The Magic Plus Fours” (1922; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)

But towards the middle of the afternoon Judson’s view began to be that, while a joke was a joke and he as fond of a laugh as any one, there was such a thing as overdoing a jest, running it to death: and when Bill firmly declined to collaborate with him in that ante-dinner cocktail without which, as everybody knows, food can hardly be taken into the system, Tragedy definitely reared its ugly head.

Bill the Conqueror, ch. 3.2 (1924)

It is only when we come to Pat that we find Disapproval rearing its ugly head.

Money for Nothing, ch. 5.2 (1928)

At the far end of the omnibus Trouble was rearing its ugly head.

“The Passing of Ambrose” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)

We cannot here go into the rights and wrongs of the case, though it was one fraught with great interest: we must content ourselves with stating that for some little while past disaffection had been rearing its ugly head among the hairdressing staff of the Hotel Northumberland, with the result that at precisely four o’clock that afternoon a lightning strike had been called and the rebels had downed scissors.

Hot Water, ch. 2.2 (1932)

“Unpleasantness is rearing its ugly head in Berkeley Mansions, W.”

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)

The day on which Lawlessness reared its ugly head at Blandings Castle was one of singular beauty.

“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)

“We can’t have Sex rearing its ugly head in the butler’s pantry.”

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3 (1952)

But they were much too pretty and they lived on a scale which caused jealousy to rear its ugly head among the less fortunately placed.

Bring On the Girls, ch. 4 (US edition, 1953)

The thought that Jeeves was at my side, his fish-fed brain at my disposal, caused a spot of silver lining to gleam through the storm clouds, but only a spot, for I was asking myself if even Jeeves might not fail to find a solution of the problem that had raised its ugly head.

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 11 (1960)

Then the economic factor reared its ugly head.

Letter to Bill Townend dated October 22, 1960 in Author! Author! (1962)

Disaffection is raising its ugly head in New York, and it is not too much to say that there is a good deal of sullen murmuring going on.

“Our Man in America” in Punch, January 11, 1961

He had never considered himself psychic, but he was conscious of a strong premonition that trouble was about to raise its ugly head.

Lord Ickenham in Service With a Smile, ch. 7.2 (1961)

There’s a touch of the superstitious in my make-up, and the way the Bassett ménage seemed to be raising its ugly head, if you know what I mean, struck me as sinister.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 2 (1963)

But a snag raises its ugly head.

Company for Henry, ch. 7.4 (1967)

Lady Constance was standing in the doorway, and one look at her told him that trouble was about to raise its ugly head.

A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.3 (1969)

It seemed to me that the snag which had raised its ugly head was one of formidable—you might say king-size—dimensions, well calculated to make the current of whatever he proposed to do about it turn awry and lose the name of action.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1971)

like billy-o (p. 14)

smut (p. 14)

A black smudge, possibly soot from a coal-burning railroad engine.

mulligatawny (p. 14)

A curry-flavored soup of East Indian origin, made with chicken or meat stock. [JD]

to the gills (p. 15)

See Carry On, Jeeves.

diablerie (p. 15)

From the French: a rakish or devilish appearance or behavior.

the velvet hand in the iron glove, or, rather, the other way about (p. 15)

Thomas Carlyle attributed “iron hand in a velvet glove” to Napoleon in Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850).

His tone annoyed Mr. Scobell. Off came the velvet glove, and the iron hand displayed itself.

The Prince and Betty, ch. 8 (US edition, 1912)

This man knew well when to brandish the iron fist and when to display the velvet glove.

“The Castaways” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)

She was switching from the iron hand to the hand in the velvet glove, or rather the other way round, and letting me know without being crude about it that if I didn’t allow myself to be bent to her will she would put sanctions on me and bar me from Anatole’s cooking.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 16 (1974)

maintain the status quo (p. 16)

Bertie has remembered his Latin well in this instance and on p. 19, below. See Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.

J’y suis, j’y reste (p. 16)

French: Here I am, here I remain.

Chapter Two

Sir Roderick Glossop (p. 17)

Introduced in “Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923). Somewhat reconciled to Bertie after mutual difficulties in Thank You, Jeeves (1934).

J. Washburn Stoker … kidnapping people on his yacht (p. 17)

Recounted in Thank You, Jeeves (1934).

G. D’Arcy (‘Stilton’) Cheesewright (p. 17)

Introduced in Joy in the Morning (1946).

vis-à-vis (p. 17)

French: face to face.

private school (p. 17)

Damon and what’s-his-name (p. 17)

For Damon and Pythias, see The Clicking of Cuthbert.

Colney Hatch (p. 17)

See Love Among the Chickens.

rozzers (p. 18)

“Rozzer” is British slang for a policeman. It is first recorded in use in the 1890s. [TM]

bluebottle (p. 18)

A bluebottle is a type of large fly that feeds by using its long tentacles to ensnare small crustaceans, perhaps thus leading to the adaptation of the Cockney term as slang for a policeman. [JD]

the Big Four (p. 18)

A nickname for the superintendents of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard.

snifter (p. 19)

in statu quo (p. 19)

See Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen for Bertie’s correct distinction between status and statu.

sweep (p. 19)

Short for sweepstake: see A Damsel in Distress.

ten bob (p. 19)

Ten shillings; half a pound sterling.

kitty (p. 19)

The accumulation of cash from selling tickets to the sweepstake, which becomes the prize money for the winner.

Horace Pendlebury-Davenport … married (p. 19)

Introduced in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), in which he is engaged to Valerie Twistleton. He wins the Drones Club darts championship in “The Shadow Passes” (1950; in Nothing Serious).

sitter (p. 19)

the deadest of snips (p. 19)

throws a beautiful dart (p. 19)

Another transferred epithet; the straightforward way of saying it would be “throws a dart beautifully.”

Borstal (p. 20)

a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and ringlets (p. 20)

tailed up (p. 20)

Followed, as by a detective; originally US colloquial from the early twentieth century.

a fool’s paradise (p. 20)

A state of seeming happiness based on false hopes or misapprehensions; OED has citations since 1462. Wodehouse used the phrase often, first in A Damsel in Distress, ch. 20 (1919):

…the sight of Reggie in that room reminded [George] that on the last occasion when they had talked together across this same table, it was he who had been in a fool’s paradise and Reggie who had borne a weight of care.

Freddie Widgeon (p. 20)

you might say I bridled (p. 20)

To bridle is to draw oneself up with the head held high and the chin drawn in, as a horse’s head does when reined in; to visibly show oneself to be affronted or indignant. A few examples among many in Wodehouse:

“How like a woman!”
Miss Milliken bridled reproachfully at this slur on her sex.

The Girl on the Boat/Three Men and a Maid, ch. 8.1 (1921/22)

Mr. Frisby bridled a little. He shifted irritably in his chair.

Big Money, ch. 8 (1931)

“Voules is an ass.”
The sergeant bridled somewhat.

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1934)

To Joss, who had a sensitive ear, it seemed that there was far too strong a note of “Silly little woman” about that laugh, and it was plain that Miss Pym thought so, too, for she bridled visibly.

Quick Service, ch. 10 (1940)

Adela bridled. She resented criticism of her favoured guest.

The Old Reliable, ch. 4 (1951)

Fanny bridled. Her professional pride had been touched.

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 7 (1952)

George, who was given to homely similes, thought she looked like a drowned rat. Being also somewhat deficient in tact, he said so, and Dolly bridled.

Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)

Whether or not Aunt Dahlia bridled, as the expression is, I couldn’t say, but I think she must have done, for her next words were straight from the deep freeze.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1971)

amour propre (p. 20)

French for self-esteem.

registering scorn (p. 20)

less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels (p. 20)

See Summer Moonshine.

cold bath (p. 21)

Swedish exercises (p. 21)

Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright (p. 21)

Bertie’s old school friend is first recalled in Thank You, Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves (both 1934); his most prominent appearance is in The Mating Season (1949).

This police persecution was intolerable. (p. 21)

The US first edition continues this paragraph with “Was I in Russia?”

pained to his foundations (p. 21)

The US first edition has pained in his foundations here.

to the level of the beasts of the field (p. 21)

nameless orgy (p. 22)

Following its classic definition as rites celebrating Bacchus, the term orgy for most of its history denoted drunken revelry; only in the latter part of the 20th century did connotations of licentious sexual activity become the most common use of the word.

old Falernian (p. 22)

See The Old Reliable.

barley water (p. 22)

A soothing soft drink prepared by steeping pearl barley in boiling water, straining, and cooling, often with lemon and/or sugar to taste.

waiting for his soup (p. 22)

The soup course was the first course of a traditional formal dinner.

immediately wished I hadn’t (p. 23)

Bertie forgets this lesson, and later makes a similar mistake in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.

palsy (p. 23)

An old-fashioned word for various kinds of paralysis, weakness, and tremors of the body; Bertie is not using it for a specific disease here.

not long ago I unfortunately got tangled up in his love life (p. 23)

Bertie is referring to the events of Joy in the Morning (1946), which in story time is just a year or two before the events of the present book.

modern enlightened thought (p. 23)

“I told him that modern enlightened thought held that imprisonment merely brutalizes the criminal. … He spoke in a most unpleasant, sneering voice. ‘It does, does it?’ he said. And I said ‘Yes, it does.’ He then said something about modern enlightened thought which I cannot repeat.”
I wondered what this had been. Evidently something red hot, for it was clear that it still rankled like a boil on the back of the neck. Her fists, I saw, were clenched, and she had started to tap her foot on the ground—sure indications that the soul is fed to the eyeteeth. Florence is one of those girls who look on modern enlightened thought as a sort of personal buddy, and receive with an ill grace cracks at its expense.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 18 (1946)

buck-and-wing dances (p. 23)

See Money in the Bank.

at the old stand (p. 23)

green-eyed monster (p. 23)

Jealousy; an allusion to Othello. See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

“A fig for Jeeves” (p. 24)

From the sense of fig as something small and valueless, the expression means that Bertie cares little for Jeeves’s opinion on this matter.

“A fig for Hermione, if I may use the expression. Her views on the matter in hand don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 12.2 (1965)

handed to him on a skewer (p. 24)

A variation on “handed on a silver platter” meaning given to someone easily, without them having to work for it.

“I wouldn’t know a clue if you brought me one on a skewer.”

Heavy Weather, ch. 7 (1933)

“You wouldn’t know a martyred proletariat if they brought it to you on a skewer with Béarnaise sauce.”

“Archibald and the Masses” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)

I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought, if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.

Referring to Stiffy Byng in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)

Chapter Three

bloomer (p. 25)

Bloomsbury (p. 25)

See Hot Water.

ink spots on the chin (p. 25)

More frequently mentioned as being on the nose; see Summer Lightning.

dressed up to the nines (p. 25)

This phrase for being clad elegantly or in the height of fashion is older than one might suppose; the OED has citations of “to the nines” beginning in the eighteenth century.

hazel (p. 25)

Wodehouse seems to have appreciated this greenish-brown eye color, as it is often mentioned in his descriptions.

He had expressionless hazel eyes, and a general air of being present in body but absent in spirit.

Mr. Blatherwick in “Out of School” (1910)

Her eyes, which disappeared when she laughed, which was often, were a bright hazel; her hair a soft mass of brown.

Sally Nicholas in The Adventures of Sally/Mostly Sally, ch. 1 (1921/22)

“He must have misunderstood me,” said Bobbie, with a clear and childlike light shining in her hazel eyes.

“Something Squishy” (1925; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)

She had the bright hazel eyes which seldom go with a meek and contrite heart.

Dolly Molloy in Sam the Sudden, ch. 13 (1925)

Bobbie Wickham’s hazel eyes clouded pensively.

“Mr. Potter Takes a Rest Cure” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)

Her challenging eyes were of a bright hazel—beautiful but intimidating.

Dolly Molloy in Money for Nothing, ch. 4.4 (1928)

Her charming face was rose-flushed, her hazel eyes shining.

Gertrude Butterwick in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 2 (1935)

Her bright, rather prominent hazel eyes were glowing unpleasantly, her face was hard and her manner had now come to resemble that of a leopardess which has just been deprived of a T-bone steak.

Princess Dwornitzchek in Summer Moonshine, ch. 13 (1937)

He had always pictured this girl of his as rather on the tall side. And her eyes, he had fancied, would be hazel.

Quick Service, ch. 3 (1940)

“He has a small, silky moustache, and his eyes are a soft hazel.”

Lionel P. Green in Money in the Bank, ch. 8 (1942)

Her eyes are a kind of browny-hazel and her hair rather along the same lines.

Corky Pirbright in The Mating Season, ch. 3 (1949)

Her eyes and hair were a browny hazel.

Clarissa Binstead in “How’s That, Umpire?” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)

Gertrude (“Sweetie”) Carlisle was a strapping young woman with bold hazel eyes and a determined chin.

Cocktail Time, ch. 6 (1958)

Her hair was golden, her eyes hazel, her lips and cheeks aflame with colour, and she carried herself with a challenging jauntiness.

Dolly Molloy in Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 5 (1961)

She had come in a moment ago, a small, trim, alert girl whose tiptilted nose, bright hazel eyes and brisk manner had made an immediate appeal to him.

Biffen’s Millions/Frozen Assets, ch. 1.2 (1964)

With his melting hazel eyes, his perfectly modelled features, his silky moustache and his flashing smile he might have been a motion picture star whose face had launched a thousand bags of popcorn.

Lionel P. Green in Company for Henry, ch. 2 (1967)

Soul’s Awakening (p. 26)

fungus (p. 26)

Othello (p. 26)

An archetype of jealousy; for this and other references to the Shakespeare character, see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

a couple of bisques and be dormy one at the eighteenth (p. 26)

Golf jargon: see Bisque and Dormy for details. The basic idea is that even giving Othello a handicap advantage, Stilton would still be a sure winner at the end of the competition.

miss-in-baulk (p. 27)

An intentional avoidance; see Love Among the Chickens.

a noise like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp (p. 27)

“Who does he attract?”
“Never mind whom he attracts.” (p. 28)

Florence’s response subtly points out Stilton’s informal grammar; he should have asked “Whom does he attract?”

just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wants to eat (p. 28)

Whereas poor old Soapy, who had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wished to eat, would go through life eking out a precarious existence, selling fictitious oil stock to members of the public who were one degree more cloth-headed than himself.

Sam in the Suburbs/Sam the Sudden, ch. 27 (1925)

Years of association with the boy had left him with the opinion that he had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.

Lord Emsworth thinking of his son Freddie Threepwood in Full Moon, ch. 1.2 (1947)

p’fft (p. 29)

the burned child fears the spilled milk (p. 29)

Bertie is mixing his proverbs; see The Girl in Blue along with the traditional injunction not to cry over spilled milk.

pin-up girl (p. 29)

An attractive young woman whose photograph is popularly displayed by men in barracks, dormitories, lockers, and the like; first cited in 1941 from the U.S. Army. Bertie Wooster describes Madeline Bassett as “physically in the pin-up class” in ch. 1 of Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971).

beazels (p. 29)

See Hot Water.

get behind … and start shoving (p. 29)

A nice way, he felt contritely, to behave to a girl who had gone to such pains to get behind his spiritual self and push.

Hot Water, ch. 2 (1932)

The root of the trouble was that she was one of those intellectual girls, steeped to the gills in serious purpose, who are unable to see a male soul without wanting to get behind it and shove.

Florence Craye in Joy in the Morning, ch. 2 (1946)

“Algy … ought to marry some nice girl with a private income and an iron will, who would get behind him with a spiked stick and make him do a job of work.”

Company for Henry, ch. 7.3 (1967)

gives me the pip (p. 29)

a bird call Tolstoy (p. 29)

An obvious misprint for called in the UK first edition; the US edition has a bird called Tolstoi, using an alternate transliteration of the name of the Russian novelist Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910).

to bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave (p. 29)

the Savoy (p. 29)

See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

the moon of his delight (p. 30)

An ironic allusion to a line from Omar Khayyam: see Cocktail Time.

Mrs. Trotter a burly heavyweight (p. 30)

The US first edition has Mrs. Trotter was a burly heavyweight here. Apparently the Simon and Schuster editor didn’t think readers would remember the “was” that appeared in the parallel passage at the beginning of the sentence.

totter (p. 30)

restorative (p. 30)

flagon (p. 30)

Bertie is almost certainly being ironic in using an archaic term for a large drinking vessel, usually with a handle and lid in the manner of a beer stein; no doubt the Drones Club barman served his drink in an ordinary glass.

snootered (p. 30)

Chapter Four

bimbo (p. 31)

Henley Regatta (p. 31)

Leander Club (p. 31)

A real-life rowing club based at Henley-on-Thames, founded in 1818. More at the Club website. Leander, in Greek mythology, was a young man who nightly swam across the Hellespont to spend time with Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite who lived on the other side of the strait.

thews and sinews (p. 31)

the muscles of his brawny arms strong as iron bands (p. 31)

Like Longfellow’s Village Blacksmith: see Ukridge.

strength was as the strength of ten (p. 31)

Referring to Tennyson’s Sir Galahad: see Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

all-in wrestler (p. 31)

One who competes in a style of wrestling without restrictions, with virtually every type of hold permitted. [JD]

Fiends with Hatchet … Slaying Six (p. 31)

See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

restoring the tissues (p. 32)

the right stuff (p. 32)

Here, meaning liquor. For this and other meanings of the phrase, see The Inimitable Jeeves.

elixir (p. 32)

Wodehouse usually uses “elixir” in its generic (and originally alchemical) sense of a liquid with transformative power, when referring to the seemingly magical effects of good alcoholic beverages.

Harley Street physician (p. 32)

See The Girl in Blue.

‘Oh, for the wings of a dove’ (p. 32)

See Laughing Gas.

girls would be girls (p. 33)

See the discussion under boys will be boys in A Damsel in Distress.

like a dose of salts (p. 33)

A rather earthy simile, as the medicinal salts referred to had a laxative effect.

a head like a pumpkin (p. 33)

“Miss Hopwood addressed him as Stilton.”
“Big chap?”
“Noticeably well developed, sir.”
“With a head like a pumpkin?”
“Yes, sir. There was a certain resemblance to the vegetable.”
“It must have been a companion of my earlier years named G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. In our whimsical way we used to call him Stilton.”

Joy in the Morning, ch. 1 (1946)

“Fellow with a head like a pumpkin.”

The Duke of Dunstable, speaking of James Schoonmaker in Service With a Smile, ch. 1.2 (1961)

the dome of St. Paul’s (p. 34)

Sir Roderick Glossop’s head is also compared to the dome of St. Paul’s; see Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

with knobs on (p. 34)

cut-and-thrust stuff (p. 34)

Verbal combat, figuratively described with swordfighting language, in which a cut is made with the edge and a thrust with the point of the blade.

“Why, Daddy!” said Madeline. I dare say you have been wondering at this pancake’s silence during all the cut-and-thrust stuff which had been going on.

The Code of the Woosters, ch.3 (1938)

“You see, a good deal of what you might call cut-and-thrust has been going on these last few days…”

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.2 (1952)

“Was it Jeeves who wove this snare for my feet?” (p. 35)

taking up space which I required for other purposes (p. 36)

“Since you ask, Spode, I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 7 (1938)

His whole manner seemed to suggest that he felt that I was taking up space in the room which could have been better employed for other purposes.

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 16 (1960)

“I admit that I’m always happier when I don’t have Spink-Bottle breathing down the back of my neck and taking up space in the house which I require for other purposes, but the girl was as welcome as manna in the wilderness.”

Aunt Dahlia in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1963)

‘Fill me in on two points, Messrs Plank and Cook, if you will be so good,’ I said. ‘(a) Why are you taking up space in my cottage which I require for other purposes, and (b) What the hell are you talking about? What is all this song and dance about daughters?’

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 19 (1974)

a hamlike hand (p. 36)

bowed down with weight of woe (p. 36)

gets it into his nut (p. 36)

The colloquial “nut” for “head” is cited as far back as 1841 in the OED.

whisky and splash (p. 36)

Whisky with soda water, especially as dispensed from a soda syphon, which squirts carbonated water into one’s glass using the pressure of the carbon dioxide gas in the top of the bottle.

lip-joy (p. 37)

Apparently a Wodehouse coinage for the pleasure attained by growing a moustache. The only references found in a Google search for the term relate to various brands of lipstick and lip balm, including a trademark registered in 1927 for a lip balm manufactured in Denver, Colorado.

“The conversation, too, rarely fails to touch a high level of interest.” (p. 37)

The UK first edition omits the second comma. The US first edition reads “The conversation, too, is always of a high order.”

“there is the club books” (p. 37)

The UK first edition reads as above. The US first edition reads “there is the club book.”

when I was relating the doing at Totleigh Towers (p. 37)

As recounted in The Code of the Woosters (1938). The US first edition has doings in this phrase, as most often used in Wodehouse.

put it across the powers of darkness (p. 38)

sine qua non (p. 38)

Essential, indispensable. Latin “without which [it is] not.” [MH]

nothing eases the tension … like a well-spotted bit of blackmail (p. 39)

“Good old blackmail! You can’t beat it. I’ve always said so and I always shall. It works like magic in an emergency.”

Aunt Dahlia in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 7 (1938)

Lady Florence Craye (p. 39)

Jeeves gives her the title of “Lady”; that lets us know that her father, Lord Worplesdon, has at least the rank of an earl.

give her a buzz (p. 39–40)

Slang for making a telephone call, first cited in the OED from 1930. The first explicit usage so far found in Wodehouse:

“Would you wish me to call Mrs Travers on the telephone?”
“Why?”
“She has rung up several times this morning.”
“Oh? Then perhaps you had better give her a buzz.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

ammunition for her next chapter (p. 40)

The US first edition has ammo here. See “All’s Well With Bingo” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, UK edition, 1940) for a story in which Rosie M. Banks sends Bingo to Monte Carlo for atmosphere and local colour.

writing you stinkers (p. 40)

The slang use of stinker for a strongly critical letter or bad review is cited in the OED beginning in 1912, with an example from Wodehouse from “The Luck of the Stiffhams” (1933; in Young Men in Spats, 1936):

For weeks and weeks, you see, Stiffy had been yearning to write an absolute stinker to old Wivelscombe, telling him exactly what he thought of him.

beano (p. 41)

British slang from late 19th century: a binge; a festive, rowdy party. Bertie’s usage here seems to be ironic, anticipating that he will not enjoy the meeting.

piece of cheese (p. 41)

See Hot Water for this mild insult, here aptly used to refer to a man with the name of Cheesewright.

Sir Eustace Willoughby, Bart (p. 42)

Bart is an abbreviation for Baronet; see Summer Moonshine. The US book uses a period after the abbreviation.

the Mottled Oyster (p. 42)

Named after a relatively obscure phrase used (but not coined) by Wodehouse:

“I have been in some tough spots in my time, but this one wins the mottled oyster.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

See The Code of the Woosters for more on this phrase.

Chapter Five

night clubs … raided (p. 43)

In A Wodehouse Handbook, Norman Murphy tells us that in the 1920s, night clubs were only allowed to serve alcoholic drinks until midnight, but many of them bent the rules to satisfy their customers until a series of raids by the police reduced the number of operating clubs in London from “hundreds” early in the decade to a mere six by 1930.

bore … mid snow and ice (p. 43)

Alluding to Longfellow’s Excelsior: see Sam the Sudden.

she remained about as silent as the tomb (p. 43)

Thus in the UK first edition; the US edition reads she remained sotto voce and the silent tomb here, a takeoff on the burbled English of F. Anstey’s Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. (1897). In Italian, sotto voce refers to speaking or singing in an undertone, not to being completely silent.

When I remained sotto voce and the silent tomb, he proceeded.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1971)

You would have expected this to have drawn some comment from me such as ‘Oh, my God!’ or ‘You’ll be my what?’, but I remained sotto voce and the silent tomb, my eyes bulging like those of the fellows I’ve heard Jeeves mention, who looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 10 (1974)

tout ensemble (p. 44)

French: “everything together”; the general appearance of a place.

kippered herrings (p. 44)

Salt-cured and smoked fish.

adenoids (p. 44)

I know one or two song writers (p. 44)

Of course Wodehouse himself knew many; he had written or co-written lyrics for musical comedies since 1904.

medias res (p. 44)

Latin for “the middle of a thing”; figuratively, the heart of the matter.

Diego Seguí notes that this is from Horace, Ars Poetica vv. 148–9, speaking of Homer’s narrative technique:

semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res
non secus ac notas auditorem rapit

“Ever he hastens to the issue, and hurries his hearer into the story’s midst, as if already known” (tr. Loeb)

the exact word … like Flaubert (p. 45)

See mot juste in Right Ho, Jeeves.

Milady’s Boudoir … What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing (p. 45)

As told in “Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves).

gravel soil, company’s own water (p. 45)

See The Clicking of Cuthbert.

Anatole’s cooking (p. 45)

See “Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925) for the story of how Anatole came to cook for the Travers household.

Daphne Dolores Morehead (p. 45)

It is possible that Wodehouse’s name and description of this character were influenced by real-life novelist Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989), though this must be taken as speculation.

frightful bounders of both sexes (p. 46)

A bounder is a British colloquial term for a cad, one whose manners are outside the norms of society; originally cited in an 1889 slang dictionary.

know a cue when he hears one. Throw him the line (p. 46)

Bertie is again showing his familiarity with theatrical jargon; he is speaking in the terms actors use for how one speech in a play prompts the next one.

“You interest me strangely” (p. 46)

See Money in the Bank.

the bill of fare (p. 47)

The menu. At this point the US edition has the additional sentence She was plainly collecting some useful material.

giving … the raspberry (p. 47)

Knatchbull-Huguessen or whatever the name might have been (p. 48)

See Thank You, Jeeves for similar passages.

The compound surname, more usually spelled Knatchbull-Hugessen, is the family name of the Barons Brabourne and other notables; see Wikipedia for details.

laid a stymie (p. 48)

Blocked; see A Glossary of Golf Terminology for the history of the term.

go off to the Rocky Mountains and shoot grizzly bears (p. 48)

Riffs (p. 48)

A colloquial term for members of the Berber people of the Rif region of Morocco. The term was probably most familiar to Wodehouse as the “heavies” of the 1926 operetta The Desert Song by Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, and Frank Mandel, which was inspired by a 1925 uprising against the French colonial rule in Morocco by Riff rebels.

those birds in Holy Writ … with the deaf adder (p. 48)

looked as if she bred cocker spaniels (p. 49)

An interesting inconsistency; in the original passage in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 16 (1939), she “looked as if she might have something to do with breeding Pekinese.”

a simple posy of white violets … ‘It might have been’ (p. 49)

See two adjacent notes at Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

a brain like a peahen (p. 50)

The female of the peacock family gets little respect in Wodehouse for intelligence.

Veronica Wedge, if the dumbest, was certainly the most beautiful girl registered among the collateral branches in the pages of Debrett’s Peerage. With the brains of a peahen…

Full Moon, ch. 1.3 (1947)

the grey matter (p. 50)

See under little grey cells in Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

the substance in the bottle (p. 50)

The US edition has the hell-brew here instead.

told everybody to keep their seats (p. 50)

The description of the police raid is largely copied from Wodehouse’s story “The Word in Season” in its initial appearance in Punch, August 21, 1940:

The band stopped in the middle of a bar. A sudden hush fell upon the room. Square-jawed men shot up through traps. And one, who seemed to be skippering the team, stood out in the middle and in a voice like a fog-horn told everybody to keep their seats.

In that story Bingo Little has taken Mabel Moresby to The Feverish Cheese night club; her Uncle Joseph is a magistrate at Bosher Street Police Court; Bingo says he calls himself Ephraim Gadsby of The Nasturtiums, Jubilee Road, Streatham Common. Much of the rest of the incident is taken almost verbatim as well; Bingo trips up a constable, reasoning that the Chevalier Bayard would have done just the same. Clearly Wodehouse mined that story, never collected in books in its original form, for the present chapter. (The story of the same title in A Few Quick Ones (1959) is substantially rewritten and contains none of this material.)

Another account has some similarities:

‘As a young man I was frequently involved in police raids, and many is the fine I have paid to the clerk of the court next day. But I soon learned the lesson which ought to be taught in the schools, and that is that when a bunch of flatfeet burst in with their uncouth cry of “Everybody keep their seats, please,” the thing to do is to iris out unobtrusively through the kitchen. Outside the kitchen there is always a yard where they put ash cans and so forth, and you just climb over the wall into the street and walk away to safety.’

Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin, ch. 7.1 (1972)

the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race (p. 50)

many a time and oft (p. 51)

a cat on hot bricks (p. 51)

See The Girl in Blue.

get the breeze up (p. 51)

To worry, to be disturbed. See Green’s Dictionary of Slang online.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail or knock the breast (p. 51)

From John Milton: Samson Agonistes.

in plain vans (p. 51)

Rather a different application of this phrase from the usual one: see Very Good, Jeeves.

East Dulwich (p. 51)

See Very Good, Jeeves.

She refused to be consoled (p. 51)

Chevalier Bayard (p. 52)

See The Girl in Blue.

Chapter Six

durance vile (p. 53)

beak (p. 53)

Vinton Street (p. 53)

Bosher Street (p. 53)

Solon (p. 53)

Solon, an Athenian who lived during the 6th century BC, was one of the “seven wise men” of Greece. He was chosen by the Athenians as their ruler and was instrumental in repealing the harsh laws of Dracon and substituting in their place his own, milder laws. [TM]

twenty-minute egg (p. 53)

In other words, extremely hard-boiled.

the role of Heavy in this treatment (p. 53)

More theatrical jargon: the heavy is the character who opposes the aims and goals of the hero or romantic lead, and treatment is the term for the adaptation of the plot of a novel or other long work into dramatic form for a play or film.

Devil’s Island (p. 53)

the J’accuse stuff (p. 54)

French for “I accuse”: famous as the title of an 1898 open letter by Émile Zola in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, who was imprisoned on Devil’s Island.

base over apex (p. 54)

See Cocktail Time.

arrière-pensée (p. 54)

French for “ulterior motive”.

cross-talk act (p. 54)

bed had not been slept in (p. 54)

Eugene-Aram-walked-between-with-gyves-upon-his-wrists (p. 54)

chokey (p. 55)

Slang for prison, derived from Hindi chauki, a police-station or lock-up. [MH]

a hollow square of butlers (p. 55)

See If I Were You.

Vinton Street Gestapo (p. 56)

The US edition has the before this phrase, which seems better.

After Wodehouse’s experiences with real-life Nazis when he was interned by the Germans during World War Two, it seems somewhat surprising that he puts this slur on the British police into Bertie’s voice. Even as the war was just beginning, though, he treated the Gestapo with some levity:

At this moment the umbrella-stand moved from its place and arrested the two speakers. The Gestapo never sleeps and Himmler is a master of disguise.

“The Big Push” in Punch, December 13, 1939

And even while interned, he could write:

Here in this camp an Englishman may be anything from a Borneo headhunter to a son of a Bulgarian of Indo-Chinese parentage and a Senegambian mother. I am pretty sure that several of us are baboons, and it is here I feel that a line should be drawn. The authorities ought to release at least anything that goes on all fours. A trained body of men like the Gestapo could easily weed out the doubtful cases. If an internee has a tail, he should be given his freedom.

“My War with Germany” in the Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1941

In his later fiction:

‘You may well say “Tut”, sir. Not to mention making allusions to the Gestapo and calling me the fuzz, which is an expression she must have picked up at the cinema.’

Ernest Simms quoting Marlene Hibbs in The Girl in Blue, ch. 8 (1970)

“I am confident that Otto will have slipped the local Gestapo their cut and that we are in no danger of being the victims of zeal; nevertheless I lost no time after we were at our table in locating the door through which the waiters were coming and going with the food, which incidentally was excellent.”

Ivor Llewellyn in Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin, ch. 7.1 (1972)

hell for leather (p. 56)

a punch on the third waistcoat button (p. 57)

chewing the fat (p. 58)

This slang phrase for an informal discussion or an exchange of gossip and grievances is cited in the OED beginning in 1885 from military jargon. Wodehouse is cited for using it in Money in the Bank, ch. 12 (1942); so far only one earlier usage has been found, in Quick Service, ch. 20 (1940).

Slewing the old bean round (p. 58)

Turning the head; bean is US baseball slang for the head, as in bean ball.

“If you slew the old bean round at an angle of about forty-five, Bevan old top, you can see her.”

Reggie Byng in A Damsel in Distress, ch. 21 (1919)

Chapter Seven

Cornish express (p. 60)

In full, the Cornish Riviera Express, a passenger train operated by the Great Western Railway between London and Penzance since 1904. Wodehouse uses the shortened name often:

The relative let out a screech rather like the Cornish Express going through a junction.

Aunt Agatha in “Indian Summer of an Uncle” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves)

I rose to my feet with some of the emotions of a man who has just taken the Cornish Express in the small of the back.

Laughing Gas, ch. 22 (1936)

…like a man who, stooping to pluck a nosegay of wild flowers on a railway line, is unexpectedly struck in the small of the back by the Cornish Express.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 15 (1946)

…that disagreeable sensation which comes to those who, pausing to tie a shoelace while crossing a railway line, find themselves struck in the small of the back by the Cornish express.

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 9.3 (1952)

going through a tunnel (p. 60)

“Have you ever heard Sir Watkyn Bassett dealing with a bowl of soup? It’s not unlike the Scottish express going through a tunnel.”

Gussie in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)

“Upon which, chuckling like a train going through a tunnel, she gave me a slap on the back which nearly drove my spine through the front of my pull-over…”

Harold Pickering, speaking of Agnes Flack in “Scratch Man” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

“You’ll find a lot of people who don’t like July in London” (p. 60)

I hate London in July.

Jeremy Garnet’s narration in Love Among the Chickens, ch. 1 (1921 version)

eyes, like stars, starting from their spheres (p. 60)

Quoting from Hamlet’s father’s ghost: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

jellied eels (p. 61)

See Ukridge.

son of a bachelor (p. 62)

Wodehouse did not invent this euphemism for “bastard”; it is found in an 1807 English translation of Rabelais, and defined in an 1813 collection of English Proverbs. But clearly Wodehouse was fond of the phrase:

“Clustering round him. Doing him little acts of kindness. Trying to fascinate the old son of a bachelor.”

Reggie Tennyson speaking of Ivor Llewellyn in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 20 (1935)

“You and he are that way. You love the little son of a bachelor.”

Tubby Vanringham speaking to Prudence Whittaker about Sam Bulpitt in Summer Moonshine, ch. 24 (1937)

“If young Parsloe did you down in that scurvy fashion, you will be up and doing with a heart for any fate, unremitting in your efforts to get a bit of your own back on the son of a bachelor, straining every nerve to foil his evil schemes.”

Galahad Threepwood to Maudie Beach Stubbs in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 4.1 (1952)

Myself, I have sometimes used “You fatheaded fool” and once “Listen, you son of a bachelor,” but I prefer “Sir.”

“To the Critics, These Pearls” in America, I Like You (1956)

“Who is this son of a bachelor?” he asked, giving him the cold stare he would have given a best-selling author who had transferred his allegiance from the firm of Winch and Clutterbuck to some rival publishing house.

Russell Clutterbuck speaking of M. Boissonade in French Leave, ch. 10.4 (1956)

He had been so hoping that it would have been possible to get through today’s lunch without the old son of a bachelor perpetrating some major outrage on the public weal.

Pongo thinking of Uncle Fred in Cocktail Time, ch. 1 (1958)

So now she quite naturally blossomed like a rose in June and asked if the old son of a bachelor had mentioned anything about when he was coming back.

Aunt Dahlia speaking of Aubrey Upjohn in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 13 (1960)

A thing about this undersized little son of a bachelor I ought to have mentioned earlier is that during his career on the bench he was one of those unpleasant sarcastic magistrates who get themselves so disliked by the criminal classes.

Sir Watkyn Bassett, described by Bertie in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1963)

And then the agency had sent him Gwendoline Gibbs, and it was as if one of his many employees who were always saying to one another that what the old son of a bachelor needed was to have a bomb touched off under him had proceeded from words to action.

Describing Lord Tilbury in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 4 (1964)

“This son of a bachelor can’t suspect you of robbing your own bank.”

Miss Bond to Mike Bond in Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 13.4 (1968)

“The superfatted old son of a bachelor,” the ancestor interposed, and once more I shushed her down.

Aunt Dahlia speaking of L. P. Runkle in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)

pure, sweet English girl (p. 63)

“Then, as I was saying,” said Albert Peasemarch with quiet rebuke, “a pure, sweet English girl is hardly likely to come wandering in and out of a bachelor young gentleman’s bathroom. She wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, not a pure, sweet English girl wouldn’t.”

The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 10 (1935)

“What’s money? Be she never so broke, a pure, sweet English girl is a fitting mate for the highest in the land.”

Jeff Miller in Money in the Bank, ch. 28 (1942)

improving book (p. 63)

Bertie’s idea of an improving book is rather different from Jeeves’s.

“It is my practice at this hour to read some improving book; but, if you desire my services, this can easily be postponed, or indeed, abandoned altogether.”

“Jeeves in the Spring-Time” (1921; in ch. 1 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

the volume in question (p. 63)

The US edition simply has it in place of the above phrase.

to say ‘Violà’! (p. 64)

Thus in the UK first edition, a total of three errors in a small space. The US edition has to saying “Voilà!” here, which is clearly correct: the verb ‘saying’ makes more sense; the French word for “There!” or “that’s it!” is properly spelled; the exclamation point is inside the quotation marks as it should be.

difficult to see what it does leave me without (p. 64)

A brilliant example of Wodehouse’s creativity in crafting Bertie’s language: educated in tone, but in places such as this, actually meaningless.

“It’s a curious thing… (p. 64)

The British first edition has this extraneous opening quotation mark on a paragraph of narration. The US edition omits it.

up and doing with a heart for any fate (p. 64)

From an often-quoted Longfellow poem; see Leave It to Psmith.

come in like a lion … go out like a lamb (p. 64)

See Summer Moonshine.

snootful (p. 64)

See Hot Water.

fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, as the fellow said (p. 64)

Quoting Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

snifter (p. 64)

Colney Hatch (p. 64)

See Love Among the Chickens.

dove of peace (p. 65)

soldered (p. 65)

The only reference so far found in Wodehouse to this method of joining or repairing softer metals such as copper using solder (usually pronounced ‘sole-der’ in the UK, ‘sodder’ in the US), a low-melting-point alloy of lead and tin: it requires less heat than brazing or welding.

come off it (p. 65)

Colloquialism for “stop saying that” with the implication of “don’t be foolish.” Cited in the OED since 1904; first usage so far found in Wodehouse:

Morrison asked for explanation, where with anybody else he might merely have thrown a book and requested the speaker to come off it.

The Luck Stone, ch. 7 (1908)

my foot (p. 65)

The OED calls this an expression of disbelief or contemptuous contradiction, and in this form has citations only since 1945. Green’s Dictionary of Slang has older examples including Wodehouse:

“Pleasant morning ramble my number nine foot!” he replied, peevishly.

“The Long Hole” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)

alienate her affections (p. 65)

Historically, “alienation of affection(s)” was recognized in law as a cause for a civil lawsuit against a third party who interferes in a marriage, causing one spouse’s love and attention to be turned away from the married partner and toward the interloper. Most jurisdictions no longer recognize this as a tort.

in the soup (p. 65)

within the merest toucher (p. 65)

British colloquial for “as close as possible without actually touching (or, figuratively, taking place).”

Chapter Eight

fizzy (p. 65)

Bubbly, effervescent, lively. Wodehouse is cited in the OED:

A very different Bassett from the fizzy rejoicer who had exited so short a while before.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 18 (1963)

An earlier figurative usage:

Freddie didn’t like her looks much, but he was feeling, as I say, fairly fizzy, so he carried on with a bright zip.

“Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)

this halcyon period (p. 67)

A time of calmness, peace, prosperity, or pleasant weather. From a mythological bird said to nest upon the sea during midwinter, “charming the wind and waves into calm” [OED].

restorative (p. 67)

Mary … lamb (p. 67)

See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

—bing— (p. 67)

Telegrams have so often been the heralds or harbingers… (p. 67)

Beginning with the earliest in story sequence:

Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:
Return immediately! Extremely urgent! Catch first train.
Florence.

“Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916)

See also Chapter 3 of Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) and Chapter 2 of The Code of the Woosters (1938) for series of telegrams that bode ill for Bertie.

the sinister episode of Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and the silver cow-creamer (pp. 67–68)

Recounted in The Code of the Woosters (1938).

if Hell’s foundations were about to quiver again (p. 68)

request for more light (p. 68)

Compare Heavy Weather.

Aspinall’s in Bond Street (p. 69)

In A Wodehouse Handbook, Norman Murphy noted that “Asprey’s, not Aspinall’s, are still famous jewellers in Bond Street.” Recently their flagship store has relocated to Bruton Street, London; see their website.

Wheels within wheels (p. 70)

Baedeker (p. 70)

Karl Baedeker (1801–59) was a German publisher who began publishing tourist guidebooks. After his death, his son Fritz continued the business, which became so successful that “Baedeker” became almost a generic term for tourist guidebooks. [TM]

a whoop and a holler (p. 70)

Both the OED and Green’s Dictionary of Slang define this phrase in American usage as “a short distance”—from the distance over which such shouts would be audible. Wodehouse seems to use it simply to mean noises of exuberance or excitement.

Yet here he was, levelheaded old J. J. Vanringham, smacking into it with a whoop and a holler, just as if he had been his brother Tubby, who, from the age of fourteen onward, had been unable to see a girl on the distant horizon without wanting to send her violets and secure her telephone number.

Referring to falling in love at first sight, in Summer Moonshine, ch. 17 (1937)

It often happens like that with girls and men of high spirit. They start off with a whoop and a holler, and then, their better selves prevailing, pipe down.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 17 (1946)

Far less provocation than he had just been giving it had in the past brought it out with a whoop and a holler, and Prudence’s encouraging words had not wholly removed the apprehension lest it might report for duty now.

Full Moon, ch. 6.3 (1947)

If Silver Bands and Boy Scouts had come to welcome him at a station, he would have leaped to meet them with a whoop and a holler, and would have been out taking bows almost before the train had stopped.

Lord Ickenham in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 1 (1948)

“In next to no time the news will have reached Parsloe, stirring him up like a dose of salts and bringing him round to Sunnybrae with a whoop and a holler.”

Galahad Threepwood in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 9 (1952)

Ichabod was the word that sprang to the lips when the mind dwelt on Pongo Twistleton, and for a moment, looking back on the days when a telephone call had always been enough to bring his nephew out with, as the expression is, a whoop and a holler, Lord Ickenham was conscious of a slight depression.

Cocktail Time, ch. 25 (UK edition only, 1958)

A man in Jimmy’s position, a monarch of finance up to his eyes all the time in big deals, with barely a moment to spare from cornering peanuts or whatever it might be, does not drop everything and come bounding across the Atlantic with a whoop and a holler unless there is some great attraction awaiting him at the other end.

Service With a Smile, ch. 10 (1961)

What he was intending to convey, he said, was that the holy state was not a thing the prudent young man should jump into with a whoop and a holler as if he were going to the Cannes Casino with his pockets full of money, because there were snags attached to it which became visible only when it was too late.

Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 3 (1972)

young Lochinvar (p. 70)

what, I asked myself, would the harvest be? (p. 70)

From Biblical analogies of sowing seed and reaping harvests, this phrase is common in devotional literature for the results of one’s actions and efforts. Wodehouse seems to have absorbed it, probably from sermons as well.

Here was I, going to butt into the private affairs of a perfect stranger, and what would the harvest be?

“Jeeves in the Springtime” (1921)

With Angus gone, what would the harvest be?

“The Custody of the Pumpkin” (1924; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)

Words and combinations of whose existence he had till then been unaware, floated to Osbert’s ears: and more and more he asked himself, as the combat proceeded: What would the harvest be?

“The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner” (1928; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)

“It is prowling. Grade A prowling. And what, I am asking myself, will the harvest be?”

Heavy Weather, ch. 7 (1933)

We had reached the bedroom door now, and what I was asking myself was, What would the harvest be when Chuffy opened it and noted the contents?

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1934)

It was only too plain to him by now that his uncle had got it thoroughly up his nose and had settled down to one of his big afternoons, and he was asking himself, as he had so often asked himself before, what would the harvest be?

“Uncle Fred Flits By” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)

I really had become this blasted Cooley child, complete to the last button, and what I had once more to ask myself was: What would the harvest be?

Laughing Gas, ch. 12 (1936)

As always when confronted with some new manifestation of his uncle’s activities, he was filled with a nameless fear, saying to himself as so often in similar circumstances, “What will the harvest be?”

Uncle Dynamite, ch. 9.3 (1948)

What, I asked myself, would the harvest be, and I was still shuddering at the thought of what the future might hold, when Jeeves trickled in with the morning cup of tea.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1963)

And if this one went agley, what would the harvest be?

“Stylish Stouts” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

green in my memory (p. 70)

mot juste (p. 71)

Quorn and Pytchley (p. 71)

chummy to the last drop (p. 71)

An echo of the Maxwell House coffee slogan “Good to the last drop”—part of their advertising since 1915.

Gadarene swine (p. 71)

ruddy (p. 71)

A milder substitute for the stronger adjective “bloody” as in swearing “by God’s blood.”

looking like Hamlet (p. 72)

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse for other general references to Hamlet’s character.

dance before him (p. 72)

Memory had returned to its throne (p. 72)

I’m dashed (p. 73)

festive board (p. 73)

a fourteen-stone Othello (p. 74)

In other words, a jealous man weighing 196 pounds or more; the traditional British weight unit of one stone equals 14 pounds.

‘Shuffle Off To Buffalo’ (p. 74)

A tap dance routine, popularized in the song of the same name by Harry Warren and Al Dubin from the 1933 film 42nd Street.

Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane (p. 74)

A dish of calves’ sweetbreads in a mushroom-truffle-cream sauce, served in a small drum-shaped pastry shell for each portion. Although both US and UK first editions of this book spell it as above, the Larousse Gastronomique and various online recipes spell the adjective as Toulousaine, and it is spelled that way in both UK and US editions of The Code of the Woosters, chapter 14, and in the US edition of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, chapter 7. Both spellings also appear variously in other Wodehouse works, so either he or his editors were unsure of the proper term.

at Agatha’s (p. 74)

Bertie’s aunts Agatha and Dahlia are both sisters of his late father.

her ewe lamb (p. 74)

Rodgers had decided to sell Hammerstein (p. 74)

Composer Richard Rodgers had known lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II when both were students at Columbia University and had even collaborated on a few songs then, though his commercial successes began when partnered with lyricist Lorenz Hart from 1925 through Hart’s last illness in 1943. Rodgers and Hammerstein then had a string of musical successes beginning with Oklahoma! (1943) and as producing partners as well as artistic creators, became wealthy together, thus justifying Bertie’s comment here as an unlikely circumstance.

on the dole (p. 75)

On government-supplied welfare payments.

female voice off-stage (p. 75)

As so often in this book, Bertie uses theatrical terminology to describe everyday life.

‘Three-ee-ee minutes’ (p. 75)

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.

couple of bob (p. 75)

Two shillings, one-tenth of a pound sterling.

beano (p. 76)

See p. 41, above.

the late Barnum … one born every minute (p. 76)

The phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute” is often attributed to the 19th century American showman Phineas T. Barnum (1810–91), but there seems to be no evidence that he actually said it.

a more biteable ear (p. 76)

A more willing lender; see Leave It to Psmith.

Chapter Nine

quiet evenfall (p. 77)

Alluding to Tennyson’s Maud; see Carry On, Jeeves.

ankled (p. 77)

come aboard (p. 77)

Now Bertie is using nautical terminology for activities on land. Did Wodehouse’s early education at a naval preparatory school plant this phrase in his mind? The term is used regarding boats in The Coming of Bill, book two, ch. 1; The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 7; Summer Moonshine, ch. 15; and Bring On the Girls, ch. 10.4 (US edition); but also often ashore:

He did not quite know what to say or do with regard to his new house-master at this their first meeting in the latter’s territory. “Come aboard, sir,” occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase, but he discarded it.

The Head of Kay’s, ch. 10 (1905)

“Come aboard, sir,” said Kay. “Where’s Phipps?”

The Old Reliable, ch. 9 (1951)

“Well, now that we’ve got all that straight, I suppose I’d better be going and saying ‘Come aboard’ to Aunt Dahlia.”

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 3 (1960)

snuggery or den (p. 77)

A small, cozy, comfortable room for quiet, solitary enjoyment; OED has citations since 1812, including Tom Brown’s School Days (1857).

It had the appearance of being the den or snuggery of some female interested in sports and pastimes and was, I assumed, the headquarters of Madeline Bassett’s solid school friend.

Bertie at The Larches in The Mating Season, ch. 16 (1949)

Agatha Christie (p. 77)

One of the best-selling mystery writers of all time; see Cocktail Time.

a nymph surprised while bathing (p. 77)

stopped a thousand clocks (p. 77)

A humorous alteration of a tribute to Helen of Troy: see The Luck of the Bodkins.

with my hair in a braid (p. 77)

Freddie Widgeon (p. 78)

This prominent member of the Drones is featured in nine short stories and the novel Ice in the Bedroom; he is mentioned frequently by Bertie Wooster but never appears onstage in the Jeeves and Wooster saga.

brine baths at Droitwich (p. 78)

Wodehouse himself enjoyed the spa at Droitwich, and stayed at the Chateau Impney Hotel there while writing Money for Nothing. See Money for Nothing. Lord Stockheath’s father in Something New, ch. 5, has gone to Droitwich to treat his gout.

a sealed book (p. 78)

a bit of a nib (p. 78)

Something of an authority.

house in Charles Street (p. 79)

In The Code of the Woosters we learn that the Travers town house is at Number 47, Charles Street; in real life this was the home of Wodehouse’s friend and theatrical collaborator Ian Hay.

virtuoso (p. 79)

A word borrowed from Italian into English since the seventeenth century, with a variety of meanings. Originally referring to a scientist or other learned scholar; later, as here, referring to an amateur with a special interest in or knowledge of one area of arts, antiques, and the like; a connoisseur. Most often in current usage, the word refers to a musician or artist with great technical skills.

it takes all sorts to make a world (p. 79)

From Cervantes, Don Quixote: de todos ha de haber en el mundo, translated by Shelton in 1620 as “In the world there must surely be of all sorts.”

It takes all sorts to make a world. It took about four thousand of all sorts to make the Senior Conservative Club.

The New Fold, ch. 9 (1908; in book form as Psmith in the City, 1910)

Archie looked at Pongo once more, and shook his head. “Well, well, well! It takes all sorts to make a world, what!”

“Doing Father a Bit of Good” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)

“But I always say,” she went on, “that it takes all sorts to make a world, and I will say for Polly that I’ve never found her shooting and murdering like these Americans do all the time.”

Ma Price in If I Were You, ch. 3 (1931)

“We may have exchanged an occasional remark about it taking all sorts to make a world, but nothing more.”

Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)

“They tie bells to their trousers and dance old rustic dances, showing that it takes all sorts to make a world.”

“The Come-Back of Battling Billson” (1935; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)

Just another proof, of course, of what I often say, that it takes all sorts to make a world.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 11 (1938)

“ ‘Lord-love-a-duck!’ I said, thinking to myself that it takes all sorts to make a world, and then, just as I was going to break his neck, he skipped away like a cat on hot bricks.”

Money in the Bank, ch. 20 (1942)

“Still she’s a genuine private eye. Golly, it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?”

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3 (1952)

“Well, I’ll be blowed. It just shows you that it takes all sorts to make a world. Is she coming to stay?”

Ring for Jeeves, ch. 5 (1953) / The Return of Jeeves, ch. 4 (1954)

You can see the Earl of Brighton’s lip curling. “Ah, well,” he says at length, “it takes all sorts to make a world, does it not?” and Earl Hove slinks off with his ears pinned back and drinks far too many sherries in the hope of restoring his self-respect.

“Put Me Among the Earls” (Punch, June 9, 1954; adapted in America, I Like You, 1956, and Over Seventy, 1957)

“Still,” said Lord Uffenham, “it’s an interesting thought. Makes yer realize that it takes all sorts to make a world.”

Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 18 (1957)

Ah, well, he felt, it takes all sorts to make a world.

“The Fat of the Land” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

Leila Yorke said it took all sorts to make a world and Mr. Cornelius was to be pitied rather than censured, if he was weak in the head, and the car drove off.

The Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 21 (1961)

“Yet Gussie revels in their society and is never happier than when curled up with them. It takes all sorts to make a world, Jeeves.”

Referring to newts, in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1963)

For mark you, Corky, though you and I wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with the average antique, there are squads of half-wits who value them highly—showing, I often say, that it takes all sorts to make a world.

“Ukridge Starts a Bank Account” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

“I often say it takes all sorts to make a world.”

Company for Henry, ch. 4.3 (1967)

“Takes all sorts to make a world.”
“Exactly. Very well put.”

Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 5.6 (1968)

“Well, it certainly takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it,” said Mabel disapprovingly.

The Girl in Blue, ch. 7 (1970)

Rognons aux Montagnes (p. 80)

Lamb kidneys “from the mountains” or “mountain style.”

In Rex Stout’s Too Many Cooks (1938), Philip Laszlo “stole the secret of Rognons aux Montagnes in 1920 from my friend Zelota of Tarragona and claimed the creation” according to Jerome Berin. The recipe is in The Nero Wolfe Cookbook.

Selle d’Agneau aux laitues à la Grecque (p. 80)

Saddle of lamb with lettuce, Greek style. Also mentioned in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 17, as one of the dishes to be prepared by Anatole for Bertie’s get-out-of-jail dinner.

in the bag (p. 80)

See Hot Water.

La Morehead (p. 80)

Bertie uses the French feminine article, in the manner of one referring to an operatic diva, as in Sardou’s play La Tosca, source for the Puccini opera Tosca.

extract the necessary ore (p. 80)

Bertie likens getting money out of Tom to getting gold or silver from a mine. Compare his reference to dross in Thank You, Jeeves.

abundantly provided with the chips (p. 81)

See Cocktail Time.

socialistic legislation (p. 81)

For other references to socialists and their works, see If I Were You.

soul in torment (p. 81)

Balaam’s ass (p. 81)

cribbed (p. 81)

Here, this is schoolboy slang for using a “cheat sheet” (to use the modern American term) on an examination. In Wodehouse, cribbing can also mean using a published English version of a Latin or Greek work as a shortcut to doing one’s own translation homework. Both are mentioned in Wodehouse’s early essay “Treating of Cribs” (1902).

Nosy Parker (p. 81)

See Something Fresh.

mauve (p. 82)

son of Belial (p. 82)

brass tacks (p. 82)

See The Girl on the Boat.

“hums—…—and haws” (p. 82)

See the variant phrase hemming and hawing in The Girl in Blue.

talk turkey (p. 82)

‘She didn’t say Yes’ (p. 82)

A song from the score of The Cat and the Fiddle (1931), music by Jerome Kern, lyric by Otto Harbach. 1932 recording at YouTube.

Western B. picture (p. 82)

During the heyday of the Hollywood studios, most companies produced movies of different classes: some were high-budget prestige offerings with top stars and directors, and some were turned out quickly and cheaply, usually along well-known genre lines such as Western and detective stories. These last were often given the designation “B” within the studio (never advertised as such); served to meet the demands of theatres for content, often as the second half of a double feature; offered a training ground for newer directors and actors; and could be good of their kind, if not expected to be groundbreaking or classic.

wept with delight when she gave him a smile and trembled with fear at her frown (p. 83)

brought home the bacon (p. 83)

See Laughing Gas.

running the gamut of the emotions (p. 84)

See the first paragraph of the note at Heavy Weather.

buff envelope (p. 84)

pride of Piccadilly (p. 84)

One of the leading citizens of the West End of London, speaking figuratively. Wodehouse had quoted the phrase from Arthur Wimperis’s lyric to “Gilbert the Filbert” in a Vanity Fair article, “The Knuts o’ London” (1914).

a dead mouse in his pint of beer (p. 84)

New York’s Four Hundred (p. 85)

See the end notes to the fourth Kid Brady story.

Once more into the breach (p. 85)

The UK edition slightly misquotes Shakespeare’s King Henry V; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse. The US edition correctly has unto here.

Yoicks! Tally-ho! Hark for’ard! (p. 85)

As Bertie says, these are cries from the hunting field. See two adjacent notes at The Mating Season for derivations of these terms.

great open spaces (p. 85)

A possible allusion: see Leave It to Psmith.

Chapter Ten

bobbish (p. 86)

Though this may seem like a twentieth-century slangy adjective for “healthy, good-spirited,” the OED has citations dating back to 1780 including Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Trollope, and Galsworthy.

intermission (p. 86)

Once again Bertie uses theatrical terms in everyday life.

glorious technicolor (p. 86)

See The Old Reliable.

Parnassus (p. 87)

Mount Parnassus was the home of the Muses in Greek mythology, so would be an appropriate name for a literary magazine, and indeed it has been used thus at least twice in the later twentieth century in America. But no evidence of such a journal from the time of this novel has been found, so apparently this was intended fictionally by Wodehouse.

Caliban (p. 87)

A semi-human character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, son of the witch Sycorax, living a sullen existence alone on an island until Prospero and Miranda are shipwrecked there.

air was full of murmurous summer scents … brave breeze sang like a bugle (p. 87)

Percy’s poetic language verges on synesthesia here: he describes smells and air currents as if they were sounds.

a slice of underdone roast beef (p. 87)

“The sun had just gone down, and it was a lovely sunset, and the sky looked like a great beautiful slice of rare beef, and I said so to him, and he said—sniffily—that he was afraid he didn’t see the resemblance.”

Elsa Keith in “The Matrimonial Sweepstakes” (1910)

I remember Mrs Bingo Little once telling me, shortly after their marriage, that Bingo said poetic things to her about sunsets—his best friends being perfectly well aware, of course, that the old egg never noticed a sunset in his life and that, if he did by a fluke ever happen to do so, the only thing he would say about it would be that it reminded him of a slice of roast beef, cooked just right.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)

“Mr. Fink-Nottle was commenting to me on the sunset yesterday evening. He said it looked so like a slice of underdone beef that it tortured him to see it.”

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1963)

morceau (p. 87)

French for a morsel or fragment: either a tidbit of food or a short musical, literary, or poetic composition.

height of its fever (p. 88)

seidlitz powder (p. 88)

Actually a pair of packeted powdered chemicals sold by druggists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sort of a predecessor of digestive tablets such as Alka-Seltzer. One packet contained tartaric acid, the other a mix of potassium sodium tartrate and baking soda. The user would dissolve the powders separately in water, then mix the solutions, which would then give off fizzy bubbles of carbon dioxide. Drinking the mixture was supposed to be cooling as well as having a laxative effect.

“Like Sir Eustace Willoughby.”
“I beg your pardon?” (p. 89)

Percy Gorringe is later revealed to be the author of the mysteries supposedly by Rex West, so here his question must be from surprise at having one of his character names mentioned, and perhaps some worry about having his incognito punctured. Wodehouse neatly manages to preserve the secret for the first-time reader without making us think this conversation to be odd upon a second reading.

doing the shimmy (p. 89)

getting outside its evening worm (p. 89)

Wodehouse didn’t invent this humorous inversion of putting food or drink inside oneself, but he certainly helped to popularize it, beginning in 1906; see the endnote to “How Kid Brady Joined the Press” on this phrase.

‘Whoopee!’ (p. 90)

This exuberant exclamation is recorded in the US in 1862 and in Kipling in 1890; it long predates the word’s euphemistic use in a sexual context, as in the 1928 song “Makin’ Whoopee” by Gus Kahn (lyrics) and Walter Donaldson (music), popularized by Eddie Cantor in the 1928 musical “Whoopee!” and the 1929 film based on it.

white man’s burden (p. 90)

Though this phrase may jar our modern sensibilities, it may help to think of it in terms of responsibilities rather than privileges, in the manner of noblesse oblige. See Bill the Conqueror for a reference to the Kipling poem from which the phrase comes.

in-and-out running (p. 91)

A horse-racing term for inconsistency; see The Inimitable Jeeves.

Love had twined its silken fetters (p. 91)

straight from the horse’s mouth (p. 91)

Inside information, as if a racetrack tip were communicated by the horse itself.

rift within the lute (p. 92)

See Ice in the Bedroom.

okey-doke (p. 92)

An American variant on ‘OK’ or “all right”; first cited in the OED from a 1934 dictionary of American slang. Wodehouse’s first use seems to be in Joy in the Morning, ch. 29 (1946):

However, as I say, he took pen in hand and, having scribbled for a minute or so, handed the result to Boko, who read it through and handed it to Nobby, who read it through and tucked it away with a satisfied “Okey-doke” in some safe deposit in the recesses of her costume.

fell an ox with a single blow (p. 93)

Clearly a stock phrase in literature; Google Books finds it in a French grammar exercise book from 1846:

Milo of Crotona used to fell an ox with a single blow of his fist.

Henry Turrell: Oral Exercises in French phraseology

Wodehouse seemed to be fond of the image:

“Nay,” said the maiden, “It is true that your biceps is Considerably Enlarged, and you could doubtless, if so disposed, Fell an ox with a Single Blow, but Mere Strength has ceased to appeal to me.”

“Proverbial Fables” (1904)

Already, after doing these exercises for a few weeks, I am confident that I could fell an ox with a blow.

“The Physical-Culture Peril” (1914)

“Oh, he’s robust enough. He could fell an ox with a single blow, if he wasn’t fond of oxen.”

“Scratch Man” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

He had the same poetic look, as if at any moment about to rhyme June with moon, yet gave the impression, as Esmond did, of being able, if he cared to, to fell an ox with a single blow.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 1.3 (1971)

Hercule Poirot (p. 93)

A fictional Belgian detective in Agatha Christie’s mystery novels and stories, beginning in 1920 and continuing through 1975.

measuring blood stains and collecting cigar ash (p. 94)

Detective strategies associated with Sherlock Holmes: see The Code of the Woosters for cigar ash. Blood stains were an important clue even in the first Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet.

pith and moment (p. 94)

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse for a discussion of this phrase and its variant readings.

tragedy queen (p. 94)

An actress who specializes in royal roles in tragedies, or a woman who acts in a grandiose manner suitable to such roles. The OED has citations dating back to the eighteenth century, and quoting authors such as Thackeray and George Eliot.

The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy, looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, looking like a tragedy queen.

A Damsel in Distress, ch. 9 (1919)

“I’ve got news,” said Lady Vera, sinking into a chair like a tragedy queen.

Big Money, ch. 9.6 (1931)

glimmering landscape was now fading on the sight (p. 94)

soup-and-fish (p. 94)

Winged creatures of the night (p. 94)

Winged creatures of the night barged into me, but I gave them little attention.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)

Winged creatures of the night came bumping into the old face and bumping off again, while others used the back stretches of my neck as a skating rink, but I did not even raise a hand to interfere with their revels.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 19 (1946)

Except for the winged creatures of the night which haunt English country house terraces when the shadows have fallen, nothing was to be seen except a small oblong object lying in the fairway.

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.4 (1952)

out of the night that covered me, black as the pit from pole to pole (p. 95)

sitting pretty (p. 95)

‘He cometh not’ (p. 95)

Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh (p. 95)

This is the only book in which this longer address for Aunt Dahlia’s country home is mentioned. Beginning in Right Ho, Jeeves, the nearest town to Brinkley Court and the telegraphic address are usually given as Market Snodsbury, Worcestershire.

Chapter Eleven

My ears were sticking up (p. 96)

“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)

Colonel Wedge had no intention of saying on in the hearing of Voules, though he could see by the way the latter’s ears were sticking up that he was perfectly willing to act as a confidant.

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 7.4 (1965)

wirehaired terrier (p. 96)

“I am fond of Airedales and wire-haired terriers and bull-dogs and Pekingese and Sealyhams and Alsatians and fox-terriers and greyhounds and Aberdeens and West Highlands and Cairns and Pomeranians and spaniels and schipperkes and pugs and Maltese and Yorkshires and borzois and bloodhounds and Bedlingtons and pointers and setters and mastiffs and Newfoundlands and St. Bernards and Great Danes and dachshunds and collies and chows and poodles and . . .”

George Finch in The Small Bachelor, ch. 3.3 (1927)

Recognizing Hugo, she saw all things clearly, and realized in a flash that here at last was the burglar for whom she had been waiting ever since her conversation with that wire-haired terrier over at Webleigh Manor.

The dog Emily in Money for Nothing, ch. 7.5 (1928)

He read all the society columns, and the only episode of his burglarious past to which in his present saved condition he could look back with real pleasure was the occasion when he had got in through a scullery window belonging to a countess in her own right and had been bitten in the seat of his trousers by what virtually amounted to a titled wire-haired terrier.

Augustus Robb in Spring Fever, ch. 2 (1948)

Day after day the good gray poet—if he was a good gray poet, I can never remember which of them were—would be starting to dig in and get his, and he would look up and there would be Harold Nicolson, back again in the same old chair with the same popeyed expression on his face and his ears sticking up like a wire-haired terrier’s.

“Thanks for the Memory, Such As It Is” part 2, in America, I Like You (1956)

She is very fond of T. Portarlington Travers, who, she tells me, is the living image of a wire-haired terrier now residing with the morning stars but at one time very dear to her, and she remembered that for his sake the Cream had to be deferred to and handled with gloves.

Bobbie Wickham in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 5 (1960)

It was a quarter of an hour before Gally returned. There was always something about him that reminded those with whom he mixed of a wire-haired terrier. He was looking now like a wire-haired terrier which after days of fruitless searching for a buried bone has at last managed to locate it.

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 11.3 (1965)

“Place your wire-haired terrier’s paws on the broad Donaldson highway and watch him scamper away to health, happiness, the clear eye, the cold nose and the ever-wagging tail.”

“Life With Freddie” in Plum Pie (1966/67)

bozo (p. 96)

as near the outside rim (p. 97)

Close to the bounds of acceptable behavior. Bertie often uses “limit” or “frozen limit” in similar phrases, as in “The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923). Another variant:

That he should expect me, who had told him that I loved this girl, to sit in with him on his loathsome programme of giving her a poke in the snoot struck me as being about as near the outer rim as you could get.

Laughing Gas, ch. 19 (1936)

stinker (p. 97)

See Full Moon.

telegram … post-office clerk (p. 97)

perfect butterfly shape (p. 97)

hunk of boloney (p. 97)

See Young Men in Spats.

disturbing (p. 98)

Bertie often finds Jeeves’s use of this word to be inadequate to describe the current crisis. See also page 114 of this book, and page 140, where Aunt Dahlia has the same reaction.

“It’s pretty rotten, you know.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

“The Aunt and the Sluggard” (1916; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

“Great Scott, Jeeves! This is awful!”
“Somewhat disturbing, sir.”

“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

“Well, never mind about him, Jeeves. Read this letter.” He gave it the up-and-down.
“Very disturbing, sir!” was all he could find to say.

“Jeeves and the Chump Cyril” (1918; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

“And, as she will probably have been considerably seasick all the way over, you will readily perceive, Jeeves, that, when I break the news that her dog has been given away to a total stranger, I shall find her in no mood of gentle charity.”
“I see, sir. Most disturbing.”
“What did you say it was?”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

“Walked into my suite as cool as dammit and took the animal away.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

“The danger, as I see it, is that after a bit more of this Mrs. Little will decide that tinkering is no use and the only thing to do is to scrap Bingo and get a newer model.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Jeeves and the Old School Chum” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

“The lining of his stomach is Uncle George’s favourite topic of conversation. It means that he and she are kindred souls. This woman and he will be like . . .”
“Deep calling to deep, sir?”
“Exactly.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Indian Summer of an Uncle” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

“She found him closeted with a steak-and-kidney pie, and appears to have been a bit caustic about fat men who lived for food alone.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1934)

“I think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug are at this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in that already brilliantly lit man’s interior. Disturbing, Jeeves.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1934)

“He was thus occupied when Miss Stoker strolled in, wearing my heliotrope pyjamas.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1934)

“But, Jeeves, this is frightful.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1934)

He ran his eye over the dossier, then transferred it to mine, and I could read in it the respectful anxiety he was feeling for the well-being of the young seigneur.
“Most disturbing, sir.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

“But it was left for this aunt to present to the world a Wooster who goes to the houses of retired magistrates and, while eating their bread and salt, swipes their cow-creamers. Faugh!” I said, for I was a good deal overwrought.
“Most disturbing, sir.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

“A laughable misunderstanding, sir.”
“Laughable, Jeeves?” He saw that his mirth had been ill-timed. He reassembled the features, ironing out the smile.
“I beg your pardon, sir. I should have said ‘disturbing’.”

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

It occasionally happens, and I have had to tell him off for doing so, that this man receives announcements that the young master’s world is rocking about him with a mere “Most disturbing, sir.”

Joy in the Morning, ch. 11 (1946)

Jeeves was the first to speak.
“Most disturbing, m’lord.”

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 14 (1953/54)

Jeeves listened with gratifyingly close attention while he poured out his tale. There was no need for Bill at its conclusion to ask him if he had got the gist. It was plain from the gravity of his, “Most disturbing, m’lord,” that he had got it nicely.

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 18 (1953/54)

I told him in a few simple words, and his left eyebrow rose perhaps an eighth of an inch, showing how deeply he was stirred.
“Very disturbing, sir.”

“Jeeves Makes an Omelet” (1959; in A Few Quick Ones)

When I had finished unfolding, he said, “I can readily appreciate your concern, sir. The situation, as you say, is one fraught with anxiety,” which is pitching it strong for Jeeves, he as a rule coming through with a mere “Most disturbing, sir.”

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 11 (1960)

It’s always what Jeeves would call most disturbing to hear that a chap with whom you have plucked the gowans fine, as the expression is, isn’t making out as well as could be wished.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1963)

“But this is frightful, Jeeves!”
“Certainly somewhat disturbing, sir.”

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1963)

To my surprise, instead of raising an eyebrow the customary eighth of an inch and saying “Most disturbing, sir,” he came within an ace of smiling.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1963)

“Well, be that as it may, Gussie said she made him sick, too, and Miss Bassett’s as sore as a sunburned neck.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1963)

“The lute is mute,” I said, and as briefly as possible put him in possession of the facts. When I had finished, he agreed that it was most disturbing.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1963)

…in a few crisp words I gave him a resume of Spode’s remarks.
“Most disturbing, sir.”

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1971)

“You know how Jeeves takes things. One of his eyebrows rose a little and he said he was shocked and astounded.”
“That’s strong stuff for him. ‘Most disturbing’ is as far as he goes usually.”

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1971)

a Roget’s Thesaurus (p. 98)

See Summer Moonshine.

And now, beneath that quiet roof, there remained only Mrs. Waddington, no doubt trying out blistering phrases in the seclusion of her boudoir—here, discarding an incandescent adjective in favour of a still zippier one that had just suggested itself: there, realizing that the noun ‘worm’ was too mild and searching in Roget’s Thesaurus for something more expressive.

The Small Bachelor, ch. 12 (1927)

Only the author of a thesaurus could have done justice to his emotions as he walked. Roget, for instance, would have described him as glad, happy, pleased, elated, entranced, ecstatic and overjoyed, and he would have been right.

Summer Moonshine, ch. 8 (1937)

“Well, what else can you call him?” asked Lord Shortlands, like Roget trying to collect material for his Thesaurus. “I’ve studied him closely, and I say he’s a potbellied perisher.”

Spring Fever, ch. 3 (1948)

As Roget would have put it in his Thesaurus, she was surprised, astonished, perplexed, bewildered and at a loss, but she was not the woman to accept this sort of thing with meek detachment.

The Old Reliable, ch. 5 (1951)

Unquestionably, indubitably, uncontrovertibly and past all dispute, as Mr. Roget would have put it in his Thesaurus, it was a sweet socko.

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 18 (1952)

“And off they go, Father with his Roget’s Thesaurus under his arm in case he runs short of adjectives.”

Bring On the Girls, ch. 14.5 (US edition, 1953)

As Roget would have put it in his excellent Thesaurus, he was angry, wroth, irate, ireful, up in arms, flushed with passion and in high dudgeon, and he intended to make his presence felt.

Cocktail Time, ch. 12 (1958)

He was what Roget in his Thesaurus would have called “not easily stirred or moved mentally,” in which respect he differed sharply from the large young man standing facing him, whose deportment resembled rather closely that of a pea on a hot shovel.

Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 1 (1964)

Roget, searching in his Thesaurus for adjectives to describe Lord Emsworth as he drooped bonelessly in his chair, would probably have settled for stunned, flustered, disturbed, unnerved and disconcerted.

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 12.2 (1965)

Analysing this, she found that what was causing it was what Roget in his Thesaurus would have called violent anger, extreme agitation, fury, wrath and the rest of the emotions listed under the heading of ‘Rage’.

Company for Henry, ch. 2.1 (1967)

Le Caviar Frais (p. 98)

Fresh caviar.

Le Consommé aux Pommes d’Amour (p. 98)

A clear soup based on a rich clarified beef stock, with tomatoes. Also on Bertie’s get-out-of-jail menu in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 17.

Les Sylphides à la crême d’Ecrevisses (p. 98)

Puff pastry “boats” filled with a lobster mousse and a sauce made with crayfish, carrots, shallots, and butter. Also on Bertie’s get-out-of-jail menu in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 17.

turned to ashes in my mouth (p. 98)

dull, half-witted animal (p. 99)

Quoting from “Caliban at Sunset” (p. 87 of this book).

making bread pills (p. 99)

There was none of this sort of thing about Madeline Bassett and Gussie. He looked pale and corpselike, she cold and proud and aloof. They put in the time for the most part making bread pills and, as far as I was able to ascertain, didn’t exchange a word from start to finish.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 6 (1938)

blew the whistle for the gentler sex to buzz off (p. 99)

Not literally; the hostess would have a subtler way to signal the ladies that it was time to depart for the drawing room. See Heavy Weather.

howl of a timber wolf that has stubbed its toe (p. 99)

Bingo had never heard the howl of a timber wolf which had stubbed its toe on a rock while hurrying through a Canadian forest, but he thought it must closely resemble the sound that nearly cracked his eardrum.

“Bingo Bans the Bomb” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

Had circumstances been different from what they were (p. 99)

air was full of murmurous summer scents … brave breeze sang like a bugle (p. 100)

Bertie is quoting from Percy’s poem “Caliban at Sunset.”

To remain in statu quo (p. 100)

flying like a youthful hart or roe (p. 100)

face like a walnut (p. 100)

A man with a face like a walnut, who had hitherto lurked almost unseen behind a stout person in a serge suit, bobbed into the open, and spoke his piece.

Psmith, Journalist, ch. 8 (1909/15)

Suppose I win, and the croupier pays up like a man, and then that freak in front of me with a face like a walnut and a mouth like a scar pinches my winnings!

“The Small Gambler” (1913)

As the King stood sombrely surveying the garden, his attention was attracted by a small, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a face like a walnut, who stood not far away on a gravelled path flanked by rose bushes.

“The Coming of Gowf” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)

tribal medicine man (p. 100)

paused for station identification (p. 101)

A term from radio and television broadcasting, in which government regulations typically require a periodic break in programming so that the station’s call sign, location, and frequency or channel number may be stated or shown, usually at the top of each hour.

After a brief pause for station identification, she introduced me to the gang, and I was on the point of doing the civil thing by asking Everard Fothergill if he had been painting anything lately, when he stiffened.

“Jeeves Makes an Omelet” (1959; in A Few Quick Ones)

jolly-innkeeper-with-entrance-number-in-act-one (p. 101)

He liked to wander about there, keeping a paternal eye on things, rather in the manner of the Jolly Innkeeper (hereinafter to be referred to as Mine Host) of the old-fashioned novel.

“Washy Makes His Presence Felt” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)

“Why don’t you try to look on yourself as a sort of jolly innkeeper? You know—shirt sleeves and joviality. Entrance number in Act One just after the Opening Chorus of Villagers.”

Summer Moonshine, ch. 2 (1937)

The heartiness and hospitality reminded one of the Jolly Innkeeper (with entrance number in Act One) of the old-style comic opera.

“The Girl in the Pink Bathing Suit” (in America, I Like You, 1956, and Over Seventy, 1957)

His manner, consequently, when he opened the door to Kay’s ring, had nothing in it of the jolly innkeeper of old-fashioned comic opera.

Biffen’s Millions/Frozen Assets, ch. 2.3 (1964)

deleterious young slab of damnation (p. 101)

“Well, he looks a pretty frightful young slab of damnation to me. What I’d call a criminal face.”

Sir Mortimer Prenderby, speaking of Freddie Widgeon in “Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)

“That slimy, slithery, moustache-twiddling young slab of damnation? Lord-love-a-duck!”

Lord Uffenham, speaking of Lionel Green in Money in the Bank, ch. 7 (1942)

He did not waver in his view that his daughter’s future husband was bound to be a deleterious slab of damnation like all other young men nowadays, but if Hermione desired it he was prepared to coo to him like a turtle dove; or as nearly like a turtle dove as was within the scope of one whose vocal delivery was always rather reminiscent of a bad-tempered toastmaster.

Sir Aylmer Bostock in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 3.2 (1948)

“When the wench breezed in one morning while I was doing my crossword puzzle and sprang it on me as calm as a halibut on ice that she was going to marry Stanhope Twine, I nearly swooned where I sat. ‘What!’ I said. ‘That young slab of damnation? Yer kidding.’ ”

Lord Uffenham in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 13 (1957)

“Seems to be a great demand for that thing,” said Plank. “There was a young slab of damnation with a criminal face round at my place only yesterday trying to sell it to me.”

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 23 (1963)

“You mean you seriously intend to marry that pop-eyed young slab of damnation?”

Colonel Pashley-Drake, speaking of Lancelot Bingley in “A Good Cigar Is a Smoke” (1967; in Plum Pie)

waved a concerned cigar (p. 101)

Another transferred epithet.

meet me in the breadline (p. 103)

Though wealthy, Uncle Tom fears that taxes will reduce him to the need to stand in line for the free handouts of food to the indigent that were common during tough economic times such as the Great Depression.

It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.

“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

“Otherwise, all that stands between her and the bread-line is the chance of really getting taken on as a dentist’s assistant.”

Laughing Gas, ch. 28 (1936)

“No, this is the end. Doom, desolation and despair. Well, see you in the breadline,” said Bill.

The Old Reliable, ch. 3 (1951)

Osborne Cross (p. 103)

The name of Rex West’s detective character is, probably coincidentally, also that of an American military officer, born 1803 in Maryland, graduated 1825 from West Point; rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Union army during the Civil War; died in 1876. Author of several books.

penetrate into my sanctum (p. 104)

strength was as the strength of ten (p. 104)

all of a-twitter (p. 105)

The phrase usually appears with a space instead of the hyphen here, and indeed in the US edition it is all of a twitter here in the usual manner.

Chapter Twelve

topknot (p. 106)

From the hairstyle with hair pinned into a knot or bun on top of the head, generalized as a slang term for the head as a whole. The OED cites this sentence from Wodehouse as one example of this sense, first cited from the mid-nineteenth century, but he had used it earlier and later as well:

It is true that at the age of six, when the blood ran hot, I once gave my nurse a juicy one over the topknot with a porringer, but the lapse was merely a temporary one.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 12 (1938)

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)

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)

A woman, he meant to say, does not go out of her way to bring the conversation round to the dear old days when a feller used to whack her over the top-knot with clubs and drag her into caves, unless she intends to convey a certain impression.

Ring for Jeeves, ch. 12 (1953) [The Return of Jeeves has the possible misprint top knob here.]

“As a young man, in the course of a political argument in a Third Avenue saloon in New York, I was once struck squarely on the topknot by a pewter tankard in the capable hands of a gentleman of the name of Moriarty—no relation of the Professor, I believe—and it was days before I was my old bright self again.”

Lord Ickenham in Cocktail Time, ch. 22 (1958)

“You doubt whether even Jeeves can heal the rift?” I patted her on the top knot. “Dry the starting tear, old ancestor, it’s healed.”

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 12 (1960)

“…she whispers to me to open the cupboard door quick, which I done, revealing a bloke in a crouching posture, and she reaches in and lets him have it on the topknot with the statuette, using a good deal of follow-through, and he tumbles out, and it’s that gingerheaded young fellow that blew in a couple of days ago, your nephew somebody told me he was, Best or West or something like that.”

The Girl in Blue, ch. 11 (1970)

I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper-knife of Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are always getting stabbed in the back with.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1971)

fluttering old aspen (p. 106)

“Push along into the dining saloon, my fluttering old aspen,” I said.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)

gulped like a stricken bull pup (p. 106)

“Mr. Little tells me that when he came to the big scene in ‘Only a Factory Girl,’ his uncle gulped like a stricken bull-pup.”

“Jeeves in the Spring-Time” (1921; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

Portarlington (p. 106)

A town in Ireland on the River Barrow, on the border of County Laois and County Offaly, around 70 km west of Dublin.

“Scene, your room. Discovered sitting, you. Enter Uncle Tom, pottering.” (p. 106)

Once again Bertie speaks in theatrical terms, here in the language of stage directions in a printed play. Discovered means present on stage at the opening or rising of the curtain on a scene.

another and a dreadful world (p. 107)

See Very Good, Jeeves.

mewling and puking (p. 107)

From As You Like It; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

‘anything goes’ (p. 107–08)

Put it up the spout (p. 108)

“Spout” was the name for a lift used in pawnbrokers’ shops to transfer goods to storage and, by a transfer of meaning, came to be used for a pawnshop. [TM]

fiver (p. 108)

Five-pound note.

cultured stuff (p. 108)

Apparently the economics of the pearl industry have changed since the era of this book. Wodehouse writes as if cultured pearls (produced by manually introducing a core of similar material, such as a bead of shell from river mussels, into an oyster, which then coats it in the same manner as it does a tiny piece of grit to create a natural pearl) were at the time of little value, a form of costume jewelry. Today more than 99 percent of pearls sold worldwide are cultured, and many are quite expensive.

Jeeves goes into more detail on pp. 112–13 of this book.

the Koh-i-noor (p. 108)

A diamond of 105.6 carats cut weight, part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

Woolworth’s (p. 108)

sconces, foliations, scrolls and ribbon wreaths (p. 109)

a sealed book (p. 109)

fiend in human shape (p. 109)

perm (p. 109)

This clipped form of “permanent hair wave” is rare in Wodehouse, even though it is originally a British term, cited since 1927 in the OED. The only other uses so far found in Wodehouse:

“It missed my perm by an inch, and I backed out, sort of feeling that I’d best not get mixed up in what begun to look like a vulgar brawl.”

Dolly Molloy in Money in the Bank, ch. 26 (1942)

I had expected to freeze her young—or, rather, middle-aged—blood and have her perm stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, and she hadn’t moved a muscle.

Bertie speaking of Aunt Dahlia in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 12 (1960)

The hands pointed to one-fifteen, and he began to feel worried, for though he knew that she would be having a shampoo and a facial and possibly a perm after leaving her recent abode, he had expected her long before this.

Soapy and Dolly Molloy in Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 5 (1961)

“Goodbye, sweetie, I must rush. I’m having a perm and I’m late already.”

Mrs. Bingo Little in “Stylish Stouts” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

right plumb spang (p. 110)

melting-pot (p. 110)

See Meet Mr. Mulliner.

the moon would have been turned to blood (p. 110)

bimbo (p. 110)

the end of all things (p. 110)

the fate that is worse than death (p. 110)

In Victorian times, this idiom frequently referred to the loss of an unmarried woman’s virginity, but Wodehouse never uses it in that sense. Most often, it is used from a man’s perspective about an unwanted or imprudent marriage; generally when used in an different way, it is defined in the surrounding text.

“And then, when I have braved a fate worse than death, so to speak, all to please her, I find that she didn’t bother to come and watch the game.”

“Tuppy Changes His Mind”/“The Ordeal of Young Tuppy” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

A moment before, he had been all remorse at the thought of having disturbed the night’s rest of one who had saved him from the fate, so to speak, that was worse than death.

Hot Water, ch. 11 (1932)

“I may be wrong in supposing it the fate that is worse than death. But I’ll tell you this much: the prospect of that prize-giving on the thirty-first of this month has been turning my existence into a nightmare.”

Gussie Fink-Nottle in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1934)

I was grateful to the man, of course, for having saved me from the fate that is worse than death, but one has to check this sort of thing.

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1934)

“The way Bingo looks at it is that he has escaped the fate that is worse than death, and I am inclined to agree with him.”

“All’s Well With Bingo” (1937; in UK edition of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)

In the great majority of cases, a man who married proved himself thereby a sap of the first order, and he could understand how marriage had come to be referred to as the fate that is worse than death.

Quick Service, ch. 20 (1940)

He refused to pay ten quid for Bingo’s story, and this at a crisis in Bingo’s affairs when only ten quid could save him from the fate that is worse than death—viz. having the wife of his bosom draw in her breath sharply and look squiggle-eyed at him.

“The Word in Season” (1940; slightly rewritten in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

“I say,” he said, “I forgot to mention it in the swirl and rush of recent events, but I’m most frightfully obliged to you for the very sporting way you’ve rallied round and saved me from the fate that is worse than death—viz,” explained Pongo, “getting glared at by that goggle-eyed old Jack the Ripper with the lip fungus.”

Uncle Dynamite, ch. 3.3 (1948)

”You are fully aware that should the evil spread, should sand be shoved into the gears of the Fink-Nottle–Bassett romance to such an extent that it ceases to tick over, Bertram Wooster will be faced with the fate that is worse than death—viz. marriage.”

The Mating Season, ch. 12 (1949)

Might it not quite easily prove, mused Smedley, that marriage was not, as it was generally called, the fate that is worse than death, but something that has its points?

The Old Reliable, ch. 21 (1951)

“Yessir, I seen a rehearsal, and I know now what they mean when they talk about the fate that is worse than death.”

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 7 (1952)

“Fortunately Bill descended from a cloud in the nick of time, and saved me from the fate that is worse than death.”

Jane Benedick, about washing dishes in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 11 (1957)

“The only way he can avoid the fate that is worse than death—viz. letting his employers get nicked for a sum beyond the dreams of avarice—is by ingratiating himself with Upjohn, which would seem to any thinking man a shot that’s not on the board.”

Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 14 (1960)

Until she had spoken, he had seen in her merely a misty, indistinct female figure hovering on the brink of the fate that is worse than death, viz. being closeted with a police sergeant whose conversational methods reduced even strong men to shells of their former selves, and his only thought had been to save her before it was too late.

Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 2 (1964)

“Well, there you are. You have been warned,” said Gally, and stumped out, feeling that he had done all that man could do to save a loved brother from the fate that is worse than death.

Galahad at Blandings, ch. 10.3 (1965)

Furthermore, she could scarcely not be relieved to learn that a loved nephew had escaped the fate that is worse than death—viz. marrying Honoria.

“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

“He saved me from the fate that is worse than death. I allude to marriage with the Bassett disaster.”

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1971)

‘Because she thought she was going to marry you.’
‘I see. The fate that is worse than death, you might say.’

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 18 (1974)

And, punningly:

“You ever been to one of these fêtes that are worse than death, Sally?”

The Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 10 (1961)

none like him, none (p. 111)

the old familiar juice (p. 111)

“Bags I” (p. 111)

A colloquial exclamation usually used by children to say “I am the first to claim it.” The OED has citations beginning in 1866.

“Your need is greater than mine, as whoever-it-was said to the stretcher case.” (p. 111)

Alluding to Sir Philip Sidney. See Right Ho, Jeeves.

elixir (p. 111)

‘Mud in your eye’ (p. 111)

A drinking toast, first cited from the USA in 1912. Wodehouse is cited for its use in The Mating Season, ch. 23.

“Lend me your ears.” (p. 111)

From Julius Caesar; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

moistening her clay (p. 111)

From the Genesis story of the creation of Adam, clay here alludes to the human body; using this phrase as a humorous reference to drinking dates back to 1711 from Addison and to 1841 from Dickens. Wodehouse may have remembered Strephon’s “With infant food she moistened my clay” from W. S. Gilbert’s libretto for Iolanthe (1882). See also Omar Khayyam in Heavy Weather.

unseeing eyes (p. 111)

See Mr. Mulliner Speaking.

a hart when heated in the chase (p. 111)

trinitrotoluol (p. 111)

See Spring Fever.

blushful Hippocrene (p. 112)

See The Old Reliable.

inner meaning (p. 112)

Wodehouse usually uses this term literally, for the essence or import of a communication, but used it in one other instance for the effect of something consumed:

“And later, when I watched you wading into that Ambrosia Chiffon Pie, obviously enjoying it, I mean to say understanding it, not pecking at it the way most of these dashed women would have done but plainly getting its inner meaning and all that, I said to myself ‘My mate!’.”

Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe to Mrs. Stubbs in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 7.2 (1952)

A rather tight place has popped up out of a trap (p. 112)

Bertie slightly mangles his theatrical jargon here; see Bill the Conqueror for this and other more traditional uses of this phrase.

posish (p. 112)

Shortened form of position; see Very Good, Jeeves.

the plot thickens (p. 112)

studying jewellery (p. 112)

Jeeves’s expertise is reminiscent of Jimmy Pitt’s in A Gentleman of Leisure/The Intrusion[s] of Jimmy, ch. 27 (1910):

“A jeweller can’t say exactly how he gets on the track of faked stones. He can feel them. He can almost smell them. I worked with a jeweller once. That’s how I got my knowledge of jewels.”

In Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes, Kristin Thompson notes that this explanation of the source of Jeeves’s expertise was one of the last things that Wodehouse added in the course of writing this novel.

one dam thing after another (p. 113)

The UK first edition reads as above; it is damn in the US version.

“Great Scot, Jeeves!” (p. 113)

A few of Wodehouse’s British editors in magazines and books seem to prefer this spelling, but “Great Scott!” is found earlier and more frequently even in his British works, as it is in the US version of the present book and most American publications. The OED says the exclamation apparently derived from an American expression naming General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican-American War and 1852 candidate for President, and served as a substitute oath instead of swearing “Great God!”

Wodehouse’s preference can be inferred from these and many other early British uses:

Great Scott, yes! Here, I say, I must start.

“Work” (1900)

Whose is this form, this knock-kneed, bowed, repulsively-respectable form, that ambles towards you? Great Scott! Can it be! No! Yes! Yes, it is Smythe…

“Under the Flail” (1901)

“Great Scott,” he observed, as his eye fell on the words “Ode to the College.”

“The Prize Poem” (1901)

sapphire … corundum (p. 113)

Jimmy Pitt used a ruby, another color variant of corundum, to make a scratch test on the false diamonds in A Gentleman of Leisure/The Intrusion[s] of Jimmy, ch. 27 (1910).

gramophone needle (p. 113)

The US edition has phonograph needle here.

Moh’s scale of hardness (p. 113)

Thus in both editions, but incorrect; it should be Mohs’ after Friedrich Mohs, a German geologist who devised the scale in 1812.

not worth the paper it’s written on (p. 113)

A humorously loose usage of a common phrase, usually applied to items that are actually written on paper.

Every schoolboy, even Macaulay’s schoolboy, knows that a report is not worth the paper it is written upon.

“Under the Flail” (July 1901)

“Nasty, oily, lop-eared lepers that creep up to a fellow and sell him scabrous stock that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.”

The Small Bachelor, ch. 7 (1924)

With pitiless clarity it was borne in on him that the Blicester ticket over which he had been gloating was not worth the paper it was written on.

“The Fat of the Land” (as rewritten for A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

scenario (p. 113)

A detailed summary or outline of the plot of a play or film. Bertie, like his creator, is conversant with theatrical terms and uses them freely in everyday life.

Exposure, ruin, desolation and despair (p. 114)

down among the wines and spirits (p. 114)

I had always thought this referred to one’s spirits being “down in the cellar” where the drinking spirits were stored, but Norman Murphy discovered that this phrase has its origin in the programs of vaudeville entertainments. See The Mating Season.

disturbing (p. 114)

See p. 98, above.

rocketing pheasant (p. 114)

aged r. (p. 114)

Short for “aged relative”; Bertie uses the longer form affectionately in Chapter Nine (p. 77 of the UK first edition).

a stuffed frog (p. 115)

nerve centres (p. 115)

if stuffed frogs come, can ripe solutions be far behind? (p. 115)

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind” (1820)

enabled me to put it across Roderick Spode at Totleigh Towers (p. 115)

As recounted in The Code of the Woosters (1938), especially chapter 7. For put it across, see Thank You, Jeeves.

his head sticking out at the back (p. 115)

“Have you ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the back!”

“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

“All brain, that chap. His head sticks out at the back and he feeds entirely on fish.”

“The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy” (1924; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

“Owing solely to the fact that your head sticks out at the back, thus enabling you to do about twice as much bright thinking in any given time as any other two men in existence, happiness, you might say, reigns supreme.”

“Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)

“Have you ever noticed how his head sticks out at the back?”
“Often.”
“That’s where the brain is. Packed away behind the ears.”

Joy in the Morning, ch. 16 (1946)

True, he was looking in rare intellectual form, what with his head sticking out at the back and all the acumen gleaming from his eyes, but he had stated so definitely to Uncle Percy and self that he had been laid a stymie.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 23 (1946)

Still, here he was, with his head bulging at the back and on his face that look of quiet intelligence which comes from eating lots of fish, and I welcomed his presence.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1963)

“…from her sea of troubles. Shakespeare.” (p. 116)

Alluding to Hamlet; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

like a bear about to receive a bun (p. 116)

Through the glass door he had stared at her like a bear at a bun, and though his breeding restrained him from doing so now, there was a stunned goggle implicit in his manner.

Joe Vanringham, seeing Jane Abbott in Summer Moonshine, ch. 4 (1937)

cause the necklace to disappear (p. 116)

Reminiscent of other Wodehouse plots, notably the pearl necklace that is to be Molly Waddington’s wedding present in The Small Bachelor, which her father has sold and replaced with a substitute. Hamilton Beamish advises him:

“Short of stealing the necklace and dropping it in the Hudson River, I fear I can think of no solution.”

The Small Bachelor, ch. 6.1 (1924)

Rem acu tetigisti (p. 116)

Army and Navy Stores (p. 116)

A former chain of department stores in the UK, originally organized as a co-operative formed by a group of military officers in 1871 to provide household and personal goods to their families at the lowest possible prices. Reorganized as a limited liability company in 1934, it bought out other department stores in the following years, until it was itself acquired by the House of Fraser in 1973.

her dial lighting up (p. 116)

The use of dial as slang for the face is cited in the OED beginning in 1837. The first usage so far found in Wodehouse:

A graver look came into her dial.

Stiffy Byng in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 9 (1938)

like a stage moon (p. 116)

Continuing the series of theatrical allusions in Bertie’s language in this book.

that time when we were all locked out (p. 117)

Recounted in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1934).

dandled me on her knee (p. 117)