Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
by
P. G. Wodehouse
Literary and Cultural References
This is part of an ongoing effort by the members of the Blandings Yahoo! Group to document references, allusions, quotations, etc. in the works of P. G. Wodehouse. These notes are by Neil Midkiff, with contributions from others as credited below.
The book was published by Simon and Schuster in the USA on 22 March 1963 (left), and by Herbert Jenkins in the UK on 16 August 1963 (right). A two-part abridged (or perhaps early) version, described as a novelette, appeared in the US Playboy magazine in February and March 1963; this version has not been examined in detail, but my initial impression is that much rewriting took place, as it is not a mere condensation.
Page references in these notes are based on the 1963 UK first edition, whose plates were reprinted in the US Harper Perennial rack-sized paperback of 1993, so that the page images and numbering are the same. A cross-reference table to the paginations of some other available editions is at this link (opens in a new browser tab or window).
* 1 *
Runs from p. 9 to p. 16 in the 1963 UK edition.
I marmaladed a slice of toast (p. 9)
The earliest citation in the OED for the transitive verb was from 1967; I have submitted this earlier usage to the dictionary website.
“Tra-la-la” (p. 9)
See Uncle Dynamite.
mid-season form (p. 9)
See Full Moon.
God … was in His heaven (p. 9)
See Leave It to Psmith.
guff (p. 9)
The OED finds the slang sense of guff for empty talk beginning in the USA in 1888.
the circles in which he moves (p. 9)
In the circles in which I move it is pretty generally recognized that I am a resilient sort of bimbo, and in circumstances where others might crack beneath the strain, may frequently be seen rising on steppingstones of my dead self to higher things.
The Mating Season, ch. 5 (1949)
It is pretty generally recognized in the circles in which he moves that Bertram Wooster is not a man who lightly throws in the towel and admits defeat.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 21 (1954)
It is pretty generally recognized in the circles in which I move that Bertram Wooster, though he may be down, is never out, the betting being odds on that, given time to collect his thoughts and stop his head spinning, he will rise on stepping stones of his dead self to higher things, as the fellow said, and it was so now.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
If you ask about me in circles which I frequent, you will be told that I am a good mixer who is always glad to shake hands with new faces, and it ought to have been in merry mood that I braked the car at the front door of Eggesford Hall.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 5 (1974)
ball of fire (p. 9)
The OED definition applies this term to a spirited or energetic person; Wodehouse uses it at least as often for a fortunate situation or a promising concept or scheme.
“Is it or is it not a ball of fire?”
A song lyric in “Mother’s Knee” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
“Is it or is it not,” demanded Miss Peavey, “a ball of fire?”
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.1 (1923)
“I consider it a ball of fire.”
“Indian Summer of an Uncle” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
Even Chimp Twist was forced to admit that the scheme was pretty much of a ball of fire.
Money in the Bank, ch. 25 (1942)
“Isn’t that a ball of fire?” said Nobby, enthusiastically.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 23 (1946)
His, too, he could not but remember, had been a runaway match, and look what a ball of fire that had turned out.
Full Moon, ch. 2 (1947)
“He then proceeded to outline a scheme which I think you will agree was a ball of fire.”
The Mating Season, ch. 13 (1949)
Bingo is a chap who knows a ball of fire when he sees one, and that this idea was a ball of fire he had no doubts whatever.
“The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Clarence has his limitations as a social ball of fire—except when it comes to mixing salads.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (1952)
“How was I to know,” Hermione went on, her voice vibrating with pain, “that that was the sort of ball of fire Augustus Mulliner really was?”
“The Right Approach” (1958; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“I have a scheme.”
“I’ll bet it’s rotten.”
“On the contrary, it’s a ball of fire.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
He was asking himself how he could ever have doubted, when she told him she had formulated a plan of action, that that plan would be simple, effective, cast iron and, in a word, a ball of fire.
Soapy Molloy in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 9.2 (1972)
I thought at first that my guardian angel, who had been noticeably lethargic up to this point, had taken a stiff shot of vitamin something and had become the ball of fire he ought to have been right along, but reflection told me what must have happened.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 17 (1974)
eggs and b. (p. 9)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
Not much bounce to the ounce (p. 9)
Pepsi-Cola began using the slogan “More bounce to the ounce” in advertising campaigns in 1950, as an indirect way of bragging that their product was sweeter than Coca-Cola.
Ogden Nash, in “Old Dr. Valentine for Once Dreams of Wealth” (in The Private Dining Room, 1953) wrote of “a new bra called Peps-oo-la-la that delivers more bounce to the ounce.”
a tiger of the jungles tucking into its luncheon coolie (p. 9)
The term coolie for a hired Asian laborer or porter is now considered offensive in most contexts, but to Wodehouse it would have been the standard word, and his usage seems more sympathetic to an unfortunate victim, rather than being derogatory.
In earlier portions of this chronicle reference was made to the emotions of wolves which overtake sleighs and find no Russian peasant aboard and of tigers deprived of their Indian coolie just as they are sitting down to lunch.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 10.3 (1948)
So, though disturbed, I was not surprised that he now gave me that keen glance and spoke in a throaty growl, like a Bengal tiger snarling over its breakfast coolie.
Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
(Compare the case of the tiger cub which, at first satisfied with a bowl of milk, goes in strictly for blood after tasting its initial coolie.)
“Poets’s Corner” (Punch, September 9, 1955); “My Iron Resolve to Take Ish” in America, I Like You (1956); also in Over Seventy, ch. 15.2 (1957)
His bulging eye was like that of a tiger to whom the suggestion has been made that it shall part with its breakfast coolie.
Lord Uffenham in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 21 (1957)
I had cleaned up the eggs and b., and got the toast and marmalade down the hatch to the last crumb with all the enthusiasm of a tiger of the jungle tucking into its ration of coolie, and was smoking a soothing cigarette, when the telephone rang and Aunt Dahlia’s voice came booming over the wire.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 4 (1974)
proteins and carbohydrates (p. 9)
Wodehouse had in his earlier writings often used the older term proteids (see Summer Lightning). The earliest use of proteins and carbohydrates so far found:
There was something uncanny in the way fate had worked to do him out of his proper supply of proteins and carbohydrates today.
“The Awful Gladness of the Mater” (1925; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
at the old stand (p. 9)
See Bill the Conqueror.
good and deserving aunt (p. 9)
I was looking forward with bright anticipation to the coming reunion with this Dahlia—she, as I may have mentioned before, being my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
Well, this Dahlia is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young, so when she says Don’t fail me, I don’t fail her.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
Having no inkling of the soup into which I was so shortly to be plunged, I welcomed the opportunity of exchanging ideas with this sister of my late father who, as is widely known, is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the werewolf.
“Jeeves Makes an Omelet” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“Oh hullo,” I added, for the voice that boomed over the wire was that of Mrs. Thomas Portarlington Travers of Brinkley Court, Market Snodsbury, near Droitwich—or, putting it another way, my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia.
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1960)
This Mrs. Travers is my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, with whom it is always a privilege and pleasure to chew the fat.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
I had already divined who was at the other end of the wire, my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia having a habit of talking on the telephone with the breezy vehemence of a hog-caller in the western states of America calling his hogs to come and get it.
Much Obliged, Jeeves/Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, ch. 2 (1971)
The aunt to whom I alluded was my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, not to be confused with my Aunt Agatha who eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 3 (1974)
Peter Stanford reminds us that this terminology refers to the Victorian concept of dividing the poor into undeserving and deserving poor, depending on whether their poverty was their own fault or was due to ill fortune despite their best efforts. I’m reminded of Alfred P. Doolittle in Shaw’s Pygmalion:
I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more.
Wodehouse referred to this classification frequently:
“It’s a moral certainty that if he hadn’t met you he would have left all his money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or a Fund for Supplying the Deserving Poor with Niblicks.”
Uneasy Money, ch. 4 (1916)
“I’d like to settle down in this sort of place and spend the rest of my life milking cows and taking forkfuls of soup to the deserving villagers.”
Billie Dore in A Damsel in Distress, ch. 8 (1919)
“No,” I said, “take it away; give it to the deserving poor. I shall never wear it again.”
Bertie’s cummerbund in “Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1922; as Ch. 4 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
Æsthetically considered, wearing as he did a pink shirt and a slouch hat which should long ago have been given to the deserving poor, Mr. Carmody was not much of a spectacle, but Soapy, eyeing him, felt that he had never beheld anything lovelier.
Money for Nothing, ch. 10.1 (1928)
Some day, no doubt, there will be a sort of Fund or Institution for supplying the deserving poor with butlers.
“Butlers and the Buttled” (in Louder and Funnier, 1932)
Swooping down on Horace’s flat, at a moment when Pongo was there chatting with its proprietor, and ignoring her loved one’s protesting cries, Valerie Twistleton had scooped up virtually his entire outfit and borne it away in a cab, to be given to the deserving poor.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 4 (1939)
“And I,” said Myrtle, “have got to take a few pints of soup to the deserving poor. I’d better set about it. Amazing the way these bimbos absorb soup. Like sponges.”
“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
It was the custom of Lady Bostock, when the weather was fine, to sit in a garden chair on the terrace of Ashenden Manor after luncheon, knitting socks for the deserving poor.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 5 (1948)
“Lady Constance has pinched his favorite hat and given it to the deserving poor, and he lives in constant fear of her getting away with his shooting jacket with the holes in the elbows.”
Service With a Smile, ch. 2.3 (1961)
See also many references to the theme in “A Tithe for Charity” (1955; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959), and see p. 130, below for another mention.
gentleman’s gentleman (p. 9)
See The Girl on the Boat.
buttle with the best of them (p. 9)
As a transitive verb, buttle is cited in the OED as a mid-nineteenth century English northern regionalism for pouring out drinks or serving a round of them. Intransitively, as a humorous back-formation for “to do a butler’s work,” the oldest OED citation is from George Ade, one of Wodehouse’s best sources for American slang, in Forty Modern Fables (1901):
and engaged an Englishman with a petrified Face to Buttle for them
Uncle Charlie (p. 9)
We meet Charlie Silversmith in The Mating Season (1949).
deprived of its Nannie (p. 10)
Bertie seems to have a favorable recollection of his governess, unlike the attitudes of Bingo Little to his Nannie Byles in “The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950) and of Johnny Pearce to his Nannie Bruce in Cocktail Time, 1958.
eats broken bottles (p. 10)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
turns into a werewolf at the time of the full moon (p. 10)
This and the two quotations below are the only references to werewolf so far found in Wodehouse:
Having no inkling of the soup into which I was so shortly to be plunged, I welcomed the opportunity of exchanging ideas with this sister of my late father who, as is widely known, is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the werewolf.
“Jeeves Makes an Omelet” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
The aunt to whom I alluded was my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, not to be confused with my Aunt Agatha who eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 3 (1974)
Other full-moon rituals attributed to Aunt Agatha:
my Aunt Agatha, who is known to devour her young and conduct human sacrifices at the time of the full moon…
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1960)
Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do…
Much Obliged, Jeeves/Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, ch. 6 (1971)
refers to Jeeves as my keeper (p. 10)
From the early days of the saga; see “Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916).
“From sport to sport they . . .” (p. 10)
See Psmith in the City. Uncharacteristically, Jeeves makes a slight misquotation, substituting stifle for the original banish.
given him the bird (p. 10)
See Leave It to Psmith.
drain the bitter cup (p. 10)
old crumb (p. 11)
See Bill the Conqueror.
Great-Scott-ing (p. 11)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
Sir Watkyn recently entertained Mrs. Travers and yourself at Totleigh Towers (p. 11)
The situations and characters referred to in the succeeding paragraphs are from The Code of the Woosters (1938). Jeeves’s use of “recently” reminds us that the publication dates of the Wodehouse novels cannot be used as a measure of the internal time scale of the stories.
with gyves upon his wrists (p. 11)
See A Damsel in Distress.
stationing the local police force on the lawn below (p. 11)
Recalling the moody distaste which Constable Oates had exhibited at the suggestion that he should stand guard during the night hours, I had a faint hope that, once the eye of authority was removed, he might have ducked the assignment and gone off to get his beauty sleep. But no. There he was, padding up and down on the lawn, the picture of vigilance.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 14 (1938)
nip out of a window at the end of a knotted sheet (p. 11)
He knew all about knotted sheets. He had read a hundred stories in which heroes, heroines, low-comedy friends, and even villains did all sorts of reckless things with their assistance.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 13 (1919)
The scheme had never looked particularly good to Mary, and after ten minutes of her hostess on the subject of Rollo she was beginning to weave dreams of knotted sheets and a swift getaway through the bedroom window in the dark of the night.
“The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” (1923; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)
On the night when he had taken refuge on top of that outhouse roof, Flick, he now recollected, had come climbing down her knotted sheet from a window immediately above it,—presumably that of her bedroom.
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 19 (1924)
“You aren’t seriously suggesting that I climb out of window and shin down a knotted sheet?”
“The Awful Gladness of the Mater” (1925; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1927/28)
A moment before, I had been messing about with knotted sheets with a view to what you might call the departure de luxe and generally loafing about and taking my time over the thing.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1934)
“I was thinking it over under the bed, while you and Spode were chatting, and I came to the conclusion that the only thing to be done is for us to take the sheets off your bed and tie knots in them, and then you can lower me down from the window.”
Gussie Fink-Nottle in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 14 (1938)
silver cow-creamer (p. 11)
crowned with success (p. 11)
“I am sorry, sir. I have used every endeavour to hit upon a solution of the problem confronting his lordship, but I regret to say that my efforts have not been crowned with success.”
Jeeves in Joy in the Morning, ch. 22 (1946)
“Well, it’s nice to think our efforts were crowned with success.”
Aunt Dahlia in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
landed me in the jug (p. 11)
quiver like an aspen (p. 11)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
Gussie Fink-Nottle (p. 11)
First encountered in Right Ho, Jeeves (1934); also a prominent character in The Code of the Woosters (1938) and The Mating Season (1949).
sweating at every pore (p. 12)
“…what I’m going to do is have a swim in the lake. I’m sweating at every pore.”
Johnny Pearce in Cocktail Time, ch. 15 (1958)
Those were the times that … tried men’s souls (p. 12)
An allusion to Thomas Paine; see The Mating Season.
in spades (p. 12)
The OED cites this phrase since 1929 as meaning “very much, extremely” and mentions that spades is the highest-ranking suit in the game of Bridge.
mourned and would not be comforted (p. 12)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
recently succeeded to the title of Lord Sidcup (p. 12)
Jeeves had informed Bertie of Spode’s inheriting the title in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 14 (1954):
“You mean the Roderick Spode of Totleigh Towers?”
“Precisely, sir. He recently succeeded to the title on the demise of the late Lord Sidcup, his uncle.”
in my orbit (p. 12)
Those of us who grew up during the Spage Age are most familiar with the older, astronomical sense of orbit: the round or elliptical path of a planet or satellite around its parent body, first used in the seventeenth century. But by the eighteenth century, the figurative use to mean a person’s sphere of activity, the “social circles” within which one moves, had become more popular, as Bertie uses it here, and as Wodehouse uses it often.
Though John and Betty moved for nearly a week in the same orbit, they did not cross each other’s path.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 13 (US magazine version, 1912)
He was tearing himself from his daydreams in order to wrestle with a mutton chop, when a foreign body shot into his orbit and blundered heavily against the table.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 6.3 (1923)
the Rev. H. P. Pinker (p. 12)
Though not mentioned in the previous listing, he also first appeared in The Code of the Woosters.
bobbish (p. 12)
Though this word for being in good spirits and health may sound like twentieth-century slang, the OED has citations since 1780, with quotations from Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, and Trollope in the nineteenth century as well.
tonsilitis (p. 12)
This inflammatory disease of glands in the throat is more usually spelled tonsillitis as in the US edition; both versions appear a few times in Wodehouse.
It is by no means clear that newts actually have tonsils.
“Right ho,” he said in a low voice, like a premier basso with tonsillitis.
Oofy Prosser in “Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959) [both US and UK versions]
‘You mean,’ he said, speaking hoarsely, like a Shakespearian actor with tonsillitis, ‘that everything depends on Crispin pushing this policeman into a brook?’
The Girl in Blue, ch. 13.5 (1970) [The US edition has tonsilitis.]
My contribution to what I have heard called the feast of reason and flow of soul had been, as I have indicated, about what you might have expected from a strong silent Englishman with tonsillitis.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 5 (1974) [The US edition The Cat-Nappers has tonsilitis here.]
never happier than when curled up (p. 13)
This phrase is usually applied to book-lovers.
Dunsany came to lunch one day at Norfolk Street when I wasn’t there, and Ethel, greeting him in the library, told him that he was my favorite author and that I was never happier than when curled up with one of his books and all that sort of thing.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated January 11, 1929, in Author! Author! (1962)
If you are one of the better element who are never happier than when curled up with the works of B. Wooster, you possibly came across a previous slab of these reminiscences of mine…
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 16 (1954)
“Never happier than when curled up with one of them,” I said…
Bertie speaking of Mrs. Cream’s books in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 5 (1960)
His favourite reading, I must mention, is a book on pigs by a fellow named Whipple. He pores over it incessantly, savouring its golden words like artichoke leaves. He is never happier than when curled up with it.
Galahad speaking of Lord Emsworth in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 7.3 (1965)
Jeeves, for instance, is never happier than when curled up with his Spinoza or his Shakespeare.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1971)
I am never happier than when curled up with the latest Agatha Christie
Bertie in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 9 (1974)
It takes all sorts to make a world (p. 13)
A proverb derived from Cervantes’s Don Quixote: “de todos ha de haber en el mundo.” The first English translation, by Shelton in 1620, has “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.
Psmith in the City (1910; serialized as The New Fold, 1908/09)
“Well, well, well! It takes all sorts to make a world, what!”
“Doing Father a Bit of Good” (1920; in ch. 9 of 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)
“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.”
Lord Uffenham in 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.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 5/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 4 (1953/54)
Being a pretty broad-minded chap and realizing that it takes all sorts to make a world, I had always till now regarded this beefiness of his with kindly toleration.
Bertie speaking of Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
“Ah, well,” he says at length, with a nasty little snigger, “it takes all sorts to make a world, does it not?” and Earl Piccadilly slinks off with his ears pinned back and drinks far too many martinis in the hope of restoring his self-respect.
“Put Me Among the Earls” in America, I Like You (1956)
“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.
Oofy in “The Fat of the Land” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“I often say it takes all sorts to make a world.”
Kelly Stickney in Company for Henry, ch. 4.3 (1967)
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” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1967)
“Takes all sorts to make a world.”
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)
Ritz (p. 13)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
the outer crust (p. 13)
See The Girl in Blue.
the telephone rang and I went into the hall (p. 13)
Even in a small flat, Bertie’s phone is placed as it would have been in a larger establishment; see The Inimitable Jeeves.
lark … snail … Browning (p. 13)
See Something Fresh.
bronzed and fit (p. 14)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
information re (p. 14)
Here re is legal Latin for “with regard to.”
got past me (p. 14)
This phrase for failing to understand something may possibly be a figurative reference to a failure by a fielder in cricket or baseball.
“That one got past me before I could grab it.”
Archie Moffam in “Mother’s Knee” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
arsenic (p. 14)
One of the first chemotherapy drugs, a solution of 1% potassium arsenite, KAsO2, called Fowler solution, was used beginning in the late nineteenth century for treating leukemia.
loony bin (p. 15)
See Leave It to Psmith.
soupy tone of voice (p. 15)
“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘Well, sir,’ in that soupy tone of voice.”
“Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit” (1927; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
iron resolution (p. 15)
“I haven’t any contusions. Stand back!” I cried, for I was prepared to defend myself with iron resolution.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 9 (1946)
head-joy (p. 15)
Though Internet searches on hyphenated terms are difficult, no earlier usage of this term has so far been found; it may well be a Wodehouse coinage based on the earlier lip-joy: see Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit for a note on the term as quoted below.
But Jeeves and I, though we may have our differences—as it might be on the subject of lip-joy—do not allow them to rankle.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
modern progressive thought (p. 15)
Somewhat surprisingly, Bertie uses this term in a positive sense, compared to his disparagement of modern enlightened thought in Joy in the Morning and Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho…
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
hidebound (p. 16)
Bertie has described Jeeves’s conservative sartorial preferences in this way before:
The fact of the matter is, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London, is too conservative. Hide-bound, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to Progress.
“The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“…when it comes to evening shirts your nerve seems to fail you. You have no vision. You are prejudiced and reactionary. Hidebound is the word that suggests itself.”
“Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves!)
You know, whatever you may say about old Jeeves—and I, for one, have never wavered in my opinion that his views on shirts for evening wear are hidebound and reactionary to a degree—you’ve got to admit that the man can plan a campaign.
“Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
see at a g. (p. 16)
Bertie has used this abbreviation for glance earlier:
I could see at a g. that the unfortunate affair had got in amongst her in no uncertain manner.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1934)
diablerie (p. 16)
From the French: a rakish or devilish appearance or behavior.
“You don’t feel it gives me a sort of air? A . . . how shall I put it? . . . a kind of diablerie?”
Bertie asking Jeeves about his mustache in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
* 2 *
Runs from p. 17 to p. 23 in the 1963 UK edition.
old Pop Stoker (p. 17)
J. Washburn Stoker and the events described here are from Thank You, Jeeves (1934). This is the first time that Emerald is mentioned; indeed, in the earlier novel Stoker claims to have only one daughter. See Thank You, Jeeves for more on this.
ewe lamb (p. 17)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the Slade (p. 17)
The Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, established from a bequest by philanthropist Felix Slade at his death in 1868.
touch of the Pekinese (p. 18)
Presumably Emerald is slightly snub-nosed, but this is not to be taken as a criticism. Wodehouse and his wife Ethel were owners of many Pekes throughout the years and clearly loved them dearly. Nevertheless, the resemblance isn’t always taken as complimentary:
“It was something about her last hat. As far as I could gather, he told her it made her look like a Pekingese, and she told him she never wanted to see him again in this world or the next.”
Aunt Dahlia speaking of Angela Travers and Tuppy Glossop in “The Ordeal of Young Tuppy” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
True, they had had their little tiffs, notably on the occasion when Tuppy—with what he said was fearless honesty and I considered thorough goofiness—had told Angela that her new hat made her look like a Pekingese.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1934)
putting on the nosebag (p. 18)
Bertie once again is making fun of dining at places like the Ritz and at the homes of friends, by referring to the way that horses are fed their oats, from a bag literally tied around the horse’s nose.
Biffy’s man came in with the nose-bags and we sat down to lunch.
“The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy” (1924; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
If one thing was certain, it was that only the machinations of some enemy could be keeping him from being in the drawing room now, complete with nose-bag.
A. B. Filmer in “Jeeves and the Impending Doom” (1926; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
“It was at the Savoy Grill. They were putting on the nosebag together at a table by the window.”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)
Nothing sticks the gaff into your chatelaine more than a guest being constantly A.W.O.L., and it was only on the rarest occasions nowadays that Gussie saw fit to put on the nosebag at Deverill Hall.
The Mating Season, ch. 10 (1949)
“Aunt Dahlia does know Trotter. He’s the bloke she has asked me to put the nosebag on with tonight.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
“Sorry, can’t manage it. I’m putting on the nosebag with Sir Roderick Glossop.”
Aunt Dahlia in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 1 (1960)
velvet hand in the iron glove (p. 18)
more than about a week (p. 18)
Elsewhere Bertie speaks of his presence as a guest in even less flattering terms: see a quotation from Right Ho, Jeeves in the annotations to Very Good, Jeeves.
leper colony (p. 19)
Until fairly recently, leprosy was effectively incurable and believed to be highly contagious. In areas where the disease was prevalent, it was usual to oblige leprosy patients to live in separate, isolated communities. [MH]
In the figurative sense, as a place whose inhabitants are to be isolated socially, the term is applied to several sites in Wodehouse:
“Miss Stern,” he said, addressing his secretary, “what vacant offices have we on the lot?”
“There is Room 40 in the Leper Colony.”
A screenwriters’ building in “The Castaways” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Do you think Brinkley Court is a leper colony or what is it?
Aunt Dahlia’s telegram to Bertie in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1934)
“The curse has come upon me. As I warned you it would, if I ever visited Steeple Bumpleigh. You have long been familiar with my views on this leper colony.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 11 (1946)
“You aren’t suggesting that I should check in at this leper colony as Gussie?”
Deverill Hall in The Mating Season, ch. 4 (1949)
See also lazar house in Ice in the Bedroom.
he biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder (p. 19)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
drip (p. 19)
Wodehouse more often uses this slang term in the sense of “nonsense”; see Summer Lightning. This appears to be his first usage in the sense of a depressing, feeble, or dull person; that sense is dated beginning 1932 in the OED.
shook the loaf (p. 19)
Shook the head. The OED has citations for loaf beginning in 1925 as slang for the head or the mind, probably a shortening of rhyming slang: “loaf of bread” for “head.”
She pursed the lips, nodded the loaf, and ate a moody piece of crumpet.
Aunt Dahlia in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 12 (1960)
I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear.
Wodehouse’s commentary in Author! Author! (1962) following a letter dated January 7, 1952 to Bill Townend.
“Use the loaf, Pilbeam.”
Frozen Assets, ch. 9 (1964)
“Use the loaf, old flesh and blood. You’re my aunt.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
I shook the loaf sadly, for I knew that this time those hopes and dreams of his were really due for a sock in the eye.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1971)
the stars are God’s daisy chain (p. 20)
Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don’t sometimes feel that the stars are God’s daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)
rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen (p. 20)
“When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1934)
every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born (p. 20)
“In love? With a female who thinks that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born?”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
the lovesick maidens in Patience (p. 20)
See the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive for the lyrics of their opening chorus as well as music files.
one of those horrors from outer space (p. 20)
Wodehouse’s characters often compared other characters to the terrifying alien creatures featured in science-fiction books and movies.
It was like laughing lightly while contemplating one of those horrors from outer space which are so much with us at the moment on the motion-picture screen.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 2 (1960)
“Every time I see this little horror from outer space, I want to sock him with sump’n, and now seems as good a time as any.”
Dolly Molloy about Chimp Twist in Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 23 (1961)
“I said they made her look like a horror from outer space.”
Sam Bagshott speaking of Sandy Callender’s spectacles in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 3.2 (1965)
“I won’t mind a horror from outer space being there if there’s lots to eat and drink.”
The Girl in Blue, ch. 4 (1970)
He had anticipated an encounter with something resembling a horror from outer space, and the horror from outer space had turned out to be one of the boys, as bubbling over with cheeriness and good will as if he had stepped from the pages of Charles Dickens.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 3 (1972)
about eight feet high (p. 21)
Bertie’s estimates of Spode’s height vary, perhaps depending on Bertie’s level of fear.
About seven feet in height, and swathed in a plaid ulster which made him look about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
I saw that I had been mistaken in supposing him to be seven feet in height. Eight, at least.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)
It was to a silent gathering that there now entered a newcomer, a man about seven feet in height with a square, powerful face, slightly moustached towards the centre.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 20 (1954)
I had often felt the same about Spode. It seemed that there was something about me that aroused the baser passions in men who were eight feet tall and six across.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 8 (1974)
See also p. 43, below and p. 141, below.
the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces (p. 21)
vis-à-vis (p. 21)
French: face to face.
raising its ugly head (p. 22)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
keep an eye skinned (p. 22)
A colloquial expression, originally American, for keeping a careful lookout. The OED has citations since 1828.
“Here’s the stone, sonny. Don’t let it out of your hands for a minute. And keep your eyes skinned.”
The Luck Stone, ch. 3 (1908)
“What I say is, it would make us all feel more comfortable if we knew there was a detective in the house keeping his eye skinned.”
The Gem Collector, ch. 3 (1909)
Apart from the ceaseless anxiety of having to keep an eye skinned for elephants, I found myself much depressed by barking dogs, and once I received a most unpleasant shock when, alighting to consult a signpost, I saw sitting on top of it an owl that looked exactly like my Aunt Agatha.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1934)
“Suppose he does tip off his pals on shore to keep their eyes skinned when you show up at the Customs sheds.”
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 14 (1935)
“ ‘Ha!’ says your uncle, who doubtless knows a clue as well as the next man. ‘Hit him on the nose, did you? Keep your eyes skinned, everybody, for a bird with a swollen nose.’ ”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)
“Yes, I’m to take up my residence as an unsuspected guest and keep my eyes skinned to see that they don’t walk off with the objets d’art!”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 14 (1939)
I don’t know if you have ever seen one of those old maps where they mark a spot with a cross and put ‘Here be dragons’ or ‘Keep ye eye skinned for hippogriffs,’ but I had always felt that some such kindly warning might well have been given to pedestrians and traffic with regard to this Steeple Bumpleigh.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 1 (1946)
Well pleased, I made my way back to the Hall, keeping an eye skinned for prowling aunts, and won through without disaster to my room.
The Mating Season, ch. 9 (1949)
“And keep an eye skinned for those United States Marines. I’m sure they’ll be along.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 13.1 (1969)
‘Keep the door ajar and your eyes skinned till you see her go downstairs,’ Dolly had said, and he fulfilled her instructions to the letter.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 9 (1972)
a stoup of malvoisie (p. 22)
A phrase with a deliberately archaic air, denoting a cup or tankard of sweet unfortified wine made from the white malmsey grape.
“By Jove, I could do with a stoup of malvoisie.”
Wyatt in Jackson Junior, ch. 19 (1907; in Mike, 1909, but omitted from Mike at Wrykyn, 1953)
“And let’s have a stoup of malvoisie from the oldest bin. This is a special occasion!”
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 1 (1920/21)
who wanted to hurry me from sport to sport (p. 22)
See Psmith in the City.
David and Jonathan lines (p. 22)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
upset a small table (p. 23)
Wodehouse seems to delight in noting the miscellaneous contents of these obstacles of occasional furniture. A necessarily incomplete list of similar collisions:
In due season they reached the foot of the stairs and a small table covered with occasional china and photographs in frames which lay adjacent to the foot of the stairs.
That, especially the occasional china, was what Baxter had heard.
Ashe Marson and George Emerson in Something New/Something Fresh, ch. 8.4 (1915)
He moved warily, but not warily enough to prevent his cannoning into and almost upsetting a small table with a vase on it. The table rocked and the vase jumped, and the first bit of luck that had come to Sam that night was when he reached out at a venture and caught it just as it was about to bound on to the carpet.
Sam Marlowe in The Girl on the Boat, ch. 17.4 (1922)
“I will be calm!” he said, knocking over an occasional table. “Calm, dammit!” He upset a chair.
“Bingo and the Little Woman” (1922; in ch. 18 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
It had been caused by the crashing downfall of a small table containing a vase, a jar of potpourri, an Indian sandalwood box of curious workmanship, and a cabinet-size photograph of the Earl of Emsworth’s eldest son, Lord Bosham; and the table had fallen because Eve, en route across the hall in quest of her precious flower-pot, had collided with it while making for the front door.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 11.2 (1923)
Poor old Biffy leaped three feet in the air and smashed a small table.
“The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy” (1924; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of pot-pourri, I don’t know; but that was what Bingo’s Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways.
“Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves!)
And when, springing to his feet at the entrance of Gertrude, the young man performed some complicated steps in conjunction with a table covered with china and photograph-frames, he joined in the mirth which the feat provoked not only from the visitor but actually from Gertrude herself.
Rupert “Beefy” Bingham in “Company for Gertrude” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Of his frenzied circling of the room and the culmination of that circling in noisy collision with a small table laden with glass and china we will say, following out this policy of reserve, absolutely nothing.
Mr. Gedge in Hot Water, ch. 1.2 (1932)
He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Kháyyám bound in limp leather.
Tuppy Glossop in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 14 (1934)
The manner in which he now tripped over a rug and cannoned into an occasional table, upsetting it with all the old thoroughness, showed me that at heart he still remained the same galumphing man with two left feet, who had always been constitutionally incapable of walking through the great Gobi desert without knocking something over.
Stinker Pinker in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)
There was a dull, chunky sound, and the Alsatian, flying through the air, descended on an occasional table covered with china.
Quick Service, ch. 19 (1940)
He applied to Bill to support him in this view, and Bill, who had fallen into a dream about Prudence, started convulsively and kicked over the small table on which he had placed his cup.
Bill Lister in Full Moon, ch. 8.2 (1947)
Stanwood tripped over a rug and upset a small table and came to rest at her side.
Spring Fever, ch. 18 (1948)
Presently, unable to stand the sight of him any longer, I turned away and began to pace the room like some caged creature of the wild, the only difference being that whereas a caged creature of the wild would not have bumped into and come within a toucher of upsetting a small table with a silver cup, a golf ball in a glass case and a large framed photograph on it, I did.
The Mating Season, ch. 16 (1949)
Then, leaping to his feet, he sprang across the room. In doing so, he overturned a small table on which were a bowl of wax fruit, a photograph in a pink frame of the speculative builder to whom Sunnybrae owed its existence, the one who never used mortar, and a china vase bearing the legend “A Present From Llandudno”.
Jerry Vail in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10 (1952)
With a wide despairing gesture Wilfred knocked over a small table containing a vase of roses and a photograph of Colonel Wedge in the uniform of the Shropshire Light Infantry.
Wilfred Allsop in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 9.3 (1965)
Among the things she had thought he would like was a piecrust table containing on its surface a clock, a bowl of roses, another bowl holding pot-pourri, a calendar, an ashtray and a photograph of James Schoonmaker and herself in their wedding finery. It was with this that Lord Emsworth had collided as he made his entrechat, causing the welkin to ring as described.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 7.3 (1969)
* 3 *
Runs from p. 24 to p. 31 in the 1963 UK edition.
his University (p. 24)
Pinker was at Oxford with Bertie.
steady on his pins as a hart or roe (p. 24)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
more or less a sealed book to me (p. 24)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
always got his man (p. 24)
See The Girl in Blue.
engaged to be married to Stiffy Byng (p. 24)
We learn of this in The Code of the Woosters.
Shuffle-Off-To-Buffalo (p. 24)
A tap dance routine, named after a song by Al Dubin and Harry Warren written for the 1933 film musical 42nd Street.
It cannot ever, of course, be agreeable to find yourself torn into a thousand pieces with a fourteen-stone Othello doing a ‘Shuffle Off To Buffalo’ on the scattered fragments.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 8 (1954)
It was with something of the jauntiness of a couple of old-style vaudeville song-and-dance men doing a Shuffle Off to Buffalo to the O. P. exit, that a few moments later they took their departure, leaving Terry to muse alone on this surprising crisis in her affairs.
French Leave, ch. 6.6 (1956/59)
to bleach the hair (p. 24)
Not with peroxide, but with fright or annoyance.
It was the latter’s considered opinion that of all the crazy, irresponsible pests ever sent by an inscrutable Providence to bleach the hair of a respectable hotel proprietor, this finely-chiselled mummer was the worst.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 1 (1952)
Even now, if his words meant what they seemed to mean, his uncle was preparing to be off again on one of those effervescent jaunts of his which had done so much to rock civilization and bleach the hair of his nearest and dearest.
Cocktail Time, ch. 1 (1958)
thews, sinews (p. 24)
went about seeking whom he might devour (pp. 24–25)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
fiend in human shape (p. 25)
See The Mating Season.
with whom a child could have played (p. 25)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
schism in his flock (p. 25)
A religious controversy that could lead to a split in a congregation.
The Rev. Rupert Bingham, though he returned his greeting with cordiality, was far from exuberant. He seemed subdued, gloomy, as if he had discovered schism among his flock.
“Company for Gertrude” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
He looked like a Bishop who has just discovered Schism and Doubt among the minor clergy.
“The Come-Back of Battling Billson” (1935; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
“Belasco … was looking at me austerely, like a clergyman who has discovered schism in his flock.”
Bring On the Girls!, ch. 4 (US edition, 1953)
He looked like a Druid priest who has discovered schism in his flock.
Mr. Cornelius in Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 22 (1961)
Freddie stared after him, aghast. He felt like a clergyman who has found schism in his flock.
“Life with Freddie” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
reefers (p. 25)
Earlier uses of the word reefer refer to a type of knot; see Money for Nothing. This is the only instance so far found in which Wodehouse uses the term to refer to a marijuana cigarette.
something on his mind beside his hair (p. 25)
See Meet Mr. Mulliner.
the metrop (p. 25)
A clipped form of metropolis, meaning London.
the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart (p. 26)
From Macbeth, slightly altered; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
throwing a spanner into (p. 26)
See Leave It to Psmith.
alarm and despondency (p. 26)
See Ukridge.
a vicarage which he has in his gift (p. 26)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
gumboil (p. 25)
Literally, an infected sore or inflammation on the gums in the mouth; figuratively, an irritating person (sometimes, as here, used somewhat ironically and affectionately).
run a mile in tight shoes (p. 26)
plucked the gowans fine (p. 26)
to follow this Pinker’s career with considerable interest (p. 26)
See A Damsel in Distress.
move in a mysterious way your wonders to perform (p. 27)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
crossing the Gobi desert (p. 27)
letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’ (p. 27)
From Macbeth; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the course of true love (p. 27)
An allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
strychnine in his soup (p. 27)
Perhaps an in-joke for readers who would remember his 1932 short story “Strychnine in the Soup” (collected in Mulliner Nights, 1933).
me taking the high road while he took the low road (p. 28)
See Leave It to Psmith.
egged you on to pinch Constable Eustace Oates’ helmet (p. 29)
As recounted in The Code of the Woosters, chapter 4.
going by the form book (p. 29)
In racing circles, the form book is a collection of statistics on the previous performance of race horses. Figuratively, Bertie here means “if Stiffy acts as she has done in the past.”
sewage dump (p. 29)
This is the only instance of the term so far found in Wodehouse, and is perhaps the strongest description of a place that is disliked by one of his characters.
sent to try us (p. 29)
“Ah, well,” said Anselm, “these things are no doubt sent to try us.”
“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“I quite understood that these things happen——”
Gally nodded.
“Sent to try us.”
“I quite understood that these things happen——”
“Probably meant to make us more spiritual.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 4.3 (1952)
It was a look … of one who fully appreciated how his employer must be feeling and who, had their social relations permitted of it, would have patted him on the head and urged him to bear up like a man, for these things are sent to try us and make us more spiritual.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.1 (1969)
I felt that even if the fellow I was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the general idea of making us more spiritual.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1971)
a sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of the feet (p. 29)
This time the sound that emerged from the Baronet, seeming to come up from the very soles of his feet, was nothing so mild as a sigh.
Sir Gregory Parsloe in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.1 (1952)
iron front (p. 29)
A firm resolve; the facial expression of such steadfastness.
Ordinarily Joseph Keeble was accustomed to show an iron front to hairdressers who tried to inflict lotions upon him…
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.3 (1923)
People who appeal to the Code of the Woosters rarely fail to touch a chord in Bertram. My iron front began to crumble.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 13 (1938)
I preserved my iron front.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 25 (1946)
A change had come over Lady Adela’s iron front.
Spring Fever, ch. 4 (1948)
He had a strong suspicion that now that they were alone together, it was going to be necessary for him to be very firm with this uncle of his and to maintain an iron front against his insidious wiles.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 2 (1948)
To decide to introduce them and leave her to take on the job of melting his iron front was with me the work of a moment.
The Mating Season, ch. 9 (1949)
Phipps started. His iron front began to waver.
The Old Reliable, ch. 8 (1951)
Only once during our stay at the Citadel of Huy did our iron front break down.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated February 5, 1945, in Author! Author! (1962); a similar passage is in “Huy Day by Day” for August 13 in Performing Flea (1953)
Jeeves maintained his iron front.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 8 (1953/54)
“I suppose so,” said Terry, and as Kate saw the misery in her face, her iron front came very near to melting.
French Leave, ch. 8.2 (1956)
“Did you know that when you were born, it was only by maintaining an iron front that I avoided becoming your godfather?”
Mortimer Bayliss in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 6 (1957)
Then he said, “Oh,” and the monosyllable indicated clearly that his iron front had crumbled beneath the impact of second thoughts.
Crispin Scrope in The Girl in Blue, ch. 3 (1970)
Mr. Butterwick, in outlining his conditions, had made the concession that a certain amount of correspondence would be permitted, and Monty had been swift to avail himself of this unexpected softening of the old buster’s iron front.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 4 (1972)
something a.w.o.l. from a fishmonger’s slab (p. 30)
Absent without leave; for slab see Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.
making whoopee (p. 30)
As usual in Wodehouse, this refers to drinking rather than its more usual amorous connotation; see Hot Water.
newts … only she called them guppies (p. 31)
A difficult passage to explain; I can find in modern reference works only the usual definition of guppy as a small tropical fish popularly kept in aquariums. My first inclination was to think that this meant that Gussie and Emerald were talking at cross-purposes at the party. But in a late essay, Wodehouse used the names as synonyms:
These modern dances, modeled on the courtship rites of the male newt or guppy, would just have suited my style.
“Wodehouse’s Short and Tentative History of the Dance” in Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1968
charioteer (p. 31)
The driver of the taxi cab. Among many such references:
For this visitor to Blandings Castle, for all that he arrived without pomp, driven to his destination by charioteer Robinson in that humble conveyance, the Market Blandings station taxi, was none other than George Alexander Pyke, first Viscount Tilbury, founder and proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company of Tilbury House, Tilbury Street, London.
Heavy Weather, ch. 7 (1933)
Only once were my cordial relations with New York taxi drivers marred. My charioteer had opened brightly and confidently, getting some nice yaks at the expense of the police force and the street-cleaning system…
“The Slave of a Bad Habit” in America, I Like You (1956)
…the fifth Earl (“Old Sureshot”) of Ickenham, accompanied by his nephew Pongo, left the club and hailed a taxi, directing the charioteer to convey them to Lord’s cricket ground.
Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (US edition, 1958)
all of a twitter (p. 31)
* 4 *
Runs from p. 32 to p. 36 in the 1963 UK edition.
beazel (p. 32)
See Hot Water.
for better or for worse, as the book of rules puts it (p. 32)
From the Solemnization of Matrimony in the 1662 Church of England Book of Common Prayer:
I [name] take thee [name] to my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…
The facts may be readily related (p. 32)
See Right Ho, Jeeves, especially chapter 10 and following.
for it (p. 32)
British military slang, cited since 1909 in the OED, for being due for punishment.
like a ton of bricks (p. 32)
Wodehouse frequently uses this image as a figurative way of saying “heavily” or “thoroughly.” The earliest and latest so far found:
He’s on to this food business like a ton of bricks.
The Luck Stone, ch. 6 (1908)
‘And you say she still loves me?’
‘Like a ton of bricks. Love cannot be extinguished by a potty little lovers’ quarrel.’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 16 (1974)
place myself in the hands of a higher power (p. 32)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
lets the dead past bury its d. (p. 33)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (p. 33)
One of at least 33 references in Wodehouse’s fiction to this line from Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the feudal spirit (p. 33)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
perhaps an eighth of an inch (p. 33)
mopped the frontal bone (p. 33)
The frontal bone constitutes the upper front part of the skull, forming the forehead. [MH]
Since the bone itself does not perspire and cannot be mopped, this is just Bertie’s fancy way of saying “forehead” here.
Elsewhere, Bertie, other characters, and Wodehouse in his own voice refer to it as a place that can be struck, or as the bone as one part of the human skull.
No right-thinking young man can sock a complete stranger on the frontal bone with a rock cake and just let the thing go without a word.
Money in the Bank, ch. 5 (1942)
“She’s solid ivory from the frontal bone to the occiput, and so is Stanwood.”
Spring Fever, ch. 23 (1948)
It was a disquieting thought that in the heat of an argument about, say, soft-bosomed shirts for evening wear he might forget the decencies of debate and elect to apply the closure by hauling off and socking me on the frontal bone with something solid.
The Mating Season, ch. 24 (1949)
“Well, naturally he hasn’t been able to start [writing a great novel] yet, being so busy winning bread, but he says it’s all there, tucked away behind the frontal bone, and give him a little leisure, he says, a few quiet hours each day with nothing to distract him, and he’ll have it jumping through hoops and snapping sugar off its nose.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.4 (1952)
“And with that she whipped out a whacking great decanter and brought it whizzing down on the exact spot where my frontal bone would have been, had I not started back like a nymph surprised while bathing.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 7 (1953/54)
I started to render the refrain in a pleasant light baritone, but desisted on receiving Agatha Christie abaft the frontal bone.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 9 (1954)
Having spoken these words, which must have touched a responsive chord in many a bosom, this splendid fellow proceeded to stab a camera man and to hit the producer on the frontal bone with a carafe.
“Gaughan, Thou Should’st Be Living at this Hour” [in Punch, October 21, 1953; also in America, I Like You (1956) and Over Seventy, ch. 16 (1957)]
The jury took their places in the box; the official whose job it was to keep the court stuffy made it stuffier; and Jerry, gazing at the girl at the far end of the row in which he sat, became more convinced than ever that the odd illusion of having been struck on the frontal bone by an atom bomb, experienced by him on his initial glimpse of her, had been due to love at first sight.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 2 (1970)
in such a doodah (p. 33)
“Close quotes.” (p. 33)
This is the only instance so far found in Wodehouse’s fiction in which a character says this phrase to mark the end of a direct quotation from another character. [The equivalent American colloquialism “unquote” seems never to have been used by Wodehouse.]
fed to the front teeth (p. 33)
Compare fed to the eye teeth in The Mating Season.
the little rift within the lute (p. 33)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
like a stuffed frog (p. 34)
See Bill the Conqueror.
all good men to the aid of the party (p. 34)
See The Mating Season and The Code of the Woosters.
dove of peace (p. 34)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
freezes the gizzard (p. 34)
The only other usage of this phrase so far found is, appropriately, from an earlier visit to Totleigh Towers:
“You will understand,” I said, “that I am implying nothing derogatory to your cousin Madeline, when I say that the idea of being united to her in the bonds of holy wedlock is one that freezes the gizzard.”
Bertie to Stiffy Byng in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)
Time, the great healer (p. 35)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
nolle prosequi (p. 35)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
service and co-operation (p. 35)
See Laughing Gas.
half-a-league onward (p. 35)
See Money in the Bank.
* 5 *
Runs from p. 37 to p. 43 in the 1963 UK edition.
green light (p. 37)
Though lighted traffic signals began to be introduced in Great Britain in the late 1920s, Wodehouse did not use the term green light for permission to proceed until after he moved to the United States following World War II. The first instance so far found:
“Drop Esmond Haddock a civil line telling him you are aching for his presence, and he will lower the world’s record racing round to the vicarage to fold you in his arms. He’s only waiting for the green light.”
The Mating Season, ch. 12 (1949)
blot on the landscape (p. 37)
“Oh, get out, Boots,” he said moodily. “You’re a blot on the landscape.”
“Stone and the Weed” (1910)
“Your father ought to sack that chap. He was a blot on the landscape!”
“The Man Who Married an Hotel” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
She was unequal to the task of explaining, without hurting anyone’s feeling, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a piece of cheese and a blot on the landscape.
“The Unexpected Clicking of Cuthbert” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
A patch on my left shoe which had had a rather comfortable look in Ebury Street stood out like a blot on the landscape.
“First Aid for Dora” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
The only blot on the landscape was Lady Snettisham, walking among the flower-beds and probably sketching out future menus, curse her.
“Jeeves and the Love that Purifies” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
“When confiding her to my care, I remember, her poor old father, as fine a fellow as ever stepped, though too fond of pink gin, clasped my hand and said, ‘Watch her like a hawk, Percy, old boy, or she’ll go marrying some bally blot on the landscape.’ ”
Lord Worplesdon speaking of Nobby Hopwood in Joy in the Morning, ch. 26 (1946)
“Yerss,” he concluded, “that frightful young blot on the landscape has now got the stuff, and if you’re going to accomplish anything constructive, Fred, yer’ll have to look slippy.”
Lord Uffenham speaking of Stanhope Twine in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 15 (1957)
“And a rousing toodle-oo to you, you young blot on the landscape,” she replied cordially.
Aunt Dahlia to Bertie in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 1 (1960)
Anatole … God’s gift to the gastric juices (p. 37)
Though Bertie takes credit here, the phrase originated with Aunt Dahlia:
“Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices, gone like the dew off the petal of a rose, all through your idiocy.”
Aunt Dahlia to Bertie in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1934)
They do not know that this woman possesses a secret weapon by means of which she can always bend me to her will, viz., the threat that if I give her any of my lip, she will bar me from her dinner table and deprive me of the roasts and boileds of her French chef Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices.
“Jeeves Makes an Omelette” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
There are few things I find more agreeable than a sojourn at Aunt Dahlia’s rural lair. Picturesque scenery, gravel soil, main drainage, company’s own water and, above all, the superb French cheffing of her French chef Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 1 (1960)
“Your words are music to my ears, old ancestor. Nothing could tickle me pinker,” I said, for I am always glad to accept her hospitality and to renew my acquaintance with the unbeatable eatables dished up by her superb French chef Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 2 (1971)
I had squared myself with the old flesh and blood and so had put a stopper on her wrath, a continuance of which might have resulted in her barring me from her table for an indefinite period, thus depriving me of the masterpieces of her French chef Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices, but, as I say, the h. was not l. [the heart was not light]
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 13 (1974)
See “Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925) for the story of how Anatole came to cook for the Travers household.
a bit above the odds (p. 38)
UK colloquial for “past the acceptable limit.”
wisest not to stir him (p. 38)
The 1932 and 1953 quotations give the explanation of this figurative phrase.
The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
“Monkey Business” (1932; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“I love Boko like a brother, but what I always feel about the dear old bird is that it’s wisest not to stir him.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 23 (1946)
With men of the Guy Bolton type memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
Bring On the Girls, ch. 4 (1953)
a sharp crisis has been precipitated in my affairs (p. 38)
Bertie has absorbed this phrase from Jeeves:
“You agree with me that the situation is a lulu?”
“Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, sir.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)
“Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in our affairs would appear to have been precipitated, m’lord.”
Jeeves to Lord Rowcester/Towcester in Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 11 (1953/54)
“Incredulous!” (p. 38)
I stared at her.
“What? Incredulous!”
“Incredible, sir.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 5 (1938)
“This Honest Patch Perkins, as he called himself, must have borrowed your car . . . with or without your permission.”
“Incredulous!”
“Incredible, m’lord.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.”
Jeeves to Lord Rowcester/Towcester in Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 8 (1953/54)
like a cat watching a duck (p. 38)
“He remain planted there, not giving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck.”
Anatole complaining about Gussie looking down at him through the skylight in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)
see someone called Plank and ask him (p. 39)
A bit of foreshadowing; this is the first mention of Plank in this book.
“Thur-ree minutes” (p. 39)
Trunk calls (long-distance calls) were still being connected and monitored by an operator, who here reminds the caller that continuing the call beyond the initial period will cost more money.
sports model (p. 39)
See two-seater in the notes for Right Ho, Jeeves.
like the deaf adder (p. 39)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Arab steed (p. 39)
See Cocktail Time.
Where every prospect pleases (p. 39)
See Sam the Sudden.
stately homes of England (p. 40)
See Heavy Weather.
three hundred and sixty-five rooms (p. 40)
See the Wikipedia article Calendar house.
once fined me five quid … on Boat Race Night (p. 40)
The colloquial quid for a pound sterling is of unknown origin, perhaps borrowed from the classical Latin word for what. The courtroom incident is first described in “Without the Option” (1925); to account for inflation to 2023, the Bank of England inflation calculator suggests a present value of roughly £250.
trousering (p. 40)
British colloquial for putting something, such as money, in one’s own pocket, often dishonestly. The OED has citations from the mid-nineteenth century, “recorded earliest in representations of American speech by British writers.” But Wodehouse’s first usage so far found is spoken by Archie Moffam to the American Reggie Van Tuyl:
“In the cool twilight of the merry old summer evening I, friend of my youth and companion of my riper years, shall be trousering yours.”
“First Aid for Looney Biddle” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
amassing the stuff in sackfuls (p. 40)
See Full Moon.
I can well imagine that a casual observer… (p. 40)
This longish passage, through seemed most probable in the next paragraph, is borrowed with only minor changes from Chapter 3 of The Code of the Woosters (1938).
gate-leg table (p. 41)
See Summer Lightning.
Rejoice with me … for I have found the sheep that was lost (p. 41)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
chewed the fat (p. 42)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
twisting the knife in the wound (p. 42)
Making an uncomfortable situation even more painful.
“It’s a wonderful match for dear old Claire,” resumed Lady Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound with a happy unconsciousness.
Uneasy Money, ch. 15 (1916)
Left alone in the box with her nephew, Mrs Peagrim continued for some moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open wound.
The Little Warrior/Jill the Reckless, ch. 18.1 (1920/21)
“How much would you have given Mr. Carmody for all those pictures and things he showed us yesterday?” asked Dolly, twisting the knife in the wound.
Money for Nothing, ch. 5.5 (1928)
All day long, though it was like twisting the knife in the wound, he would wander through the Rooms, trying out that system of his on paper; and the more he tried it out, the more iron-clad it revealed itself.
“All’s Well With Bingo” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, UK edition, 1940)
What would it profit him to renew their acquaintance? Just twisting the knife in the wound, that’s what he would be doing.
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 1/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 5 (1953/54)
So I held back the acid crack I might have made, and went off with a mere “Oh, yeah?” No sense in twisting the knife in the wound, I mean.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 15 (1960)
Would seeing Sally alleviate that yearning feeling which so often darkened his days, or—let’s face it—would he merely be twisting the knife in the wound, as the expression was?
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 2 (1961)
music to my e. (p. 42)
Wodehouse used music to my ears frequently throughout his career; these are the earliest and latest examples so far found:
I connected with Mr. MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
The Little Nugget, ch. 16 of magazine, ch. 8.3 of book (1913)
“Your words are music to my ears, old ancestor.”
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 2 (1971)
the pip (p. 42)
map (p. 42)
Face. See The Clicking of Cuthbert.
about moths and stars (p. 43)
Madeline was apparently quoting once again from Shelley: “the desire of the moth for the star”; see “To ——” at the Poetry Foundation.
There are few things more tragic than the desire of the moth for the star; and it is a curious fact that the spectacle of a star almost invariably fills the most sensible moth with thoughts above his station.
“The Rough Stuff” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
“Miss Bassett cried buckets and said she quite understood and, of course, would cancel her visit, adding something in a low voice about the desire of the moth for the star and how sad life was.”
Corky Pirbright to Bertie in The Mating Season, ch. 18 (1949)
Monty Bodkin … once patted a weeping female on the head (p. 43)
Recounted at the end of Chapter 11 of The Luck of the Bodkins (1935):
There are practically no good things to say to a girl who is moaning ‘Oomph’ in your state-room. The finest vocabulary will not serve a man here. It becomes a matter for the gentle pat and nothing but the gentle pat. You can administer it on the head, or you can administer it on the shoulder, but you must administer it somewhere. Monty selected the head, because it was nearest.
[…]
But there is one rather bad snare in this patting business, which should be pointed out for the benefit of those who may some day find themselves having to do it. Unless you are very careful, after a while you forget to take your hand off. You just stand there resting it on the subject’s head, and that is apt to cause people who see you to purse their lips.
Gertrude Butterwick did. She came in just as Monty fell into this error.
popsy (p. 43)
The OED has citations since 1855 for this term for a female acquaintance or girlfriend, including one from Wodehouse’s Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 12 (1973):
The door was opened by a rather personable popsy, who proved to be a girl who lives with the Fitch.
about nine foot seven (p. 43)
Compare p. 21, above.
* 6 *
Runs from p. 44 to p. 49 in the 1963 UK edition.
Like Patience on a monument (p. 42)
From Twelfth Night: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the perfect pill (p. 45)
See Hot Water.
down among the wines and spirits (p. 45)
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.
conducted throughout in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality (p. 45)
dead to the last drop (p. 46)
An altered echo of the Maxwell House coffee slogan “Good to the last drop”—part of their advertising since 1915.
snootful (p. 46)
See Hot Water.
“ ‘We are lost,’ the captain shouted” (p. 46)
From “Ballad of the Tempest” by James Thomas Fields (1817–1881).
Red Indians … at the stake (p. 46–47)
restorative (p. 47)
See Sam the Sudden.
take the rough with the s. (p. 47)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
made my way to the trough (p. 47)
Bertie jocularly compares the English dinner table with the trough from which cows and pigs are fed.
He had done this before in “Jeeves and the Impending Doom” (1926), as had Hugo Carmody in Summer Lightning, ch. 13 (1929).
the fruits in their season (p. 47)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“Wooster,” those who know me have sometimes said (p. 47)
the feast of reason and the flow of soul (p. 47)
See A Damsel in Distress.
end man in a minstrel show (p. 48)
This outdated and now disparaged form of entertainment involved white actors and musicians in blackface makeup.
bijou (p. 48)
From the French for jewel; something small and attractive.
the old oil (p. 48)
Flattery; words spoken to smooth a situation, sometimes hypocritically.
guys and dolls (p. 49)
A slang phrase for men and women; the title of a 1950 musical comedy adapted from the stories and the New York slang of Damon Runyon.
The reason my choice had fallen on Jas was not that I had heard glowing reports of him from every side; it was simply because all the other places I had tried had been full of guys and dolls standing bumper to bumper and it hadn’t seemed worth while waiting.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
She explained the circumstances which had led to her being at Blandings Castle, and they spoke for a while of the old days, of parties he had given at Great Neck and Westhampton Beach, of guys and dolls who had been her fellow guests at those parties, and of the night when he had dived into the Plaza fountain in correct evening dress.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 5 (1969)
The facts governing the relationship of guys and dolls had long been an open book to me.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1971)
Erle Stanley Gardner (p. 49)
Prolific American author of detective fiction; the creator of Perry Mason. Wodehouse was an avid reader of his work and admired his rapid pace of production.
“I should mention that I write sixteen books a year, and if only I can get out of the habit of eating, I think I could work it up to twenty.”
A fictional quotation attributed to a supposed author resembling Gardner in The Old Reliable, ch. 18 (1951)
“I wonder if Erle Stanley Gardner has to go through this sort of thing when at his desk,” he mused. “No, probably not. He couldn’t turn out sixteen books a year if he did.”
Jeff, Comte d’Escrignon, in French Leave, ch. 6.2 (1956/59)
Today in my quiet rural retreat I do the same things day after day … the quiet evening with a Rex Stout or an Erle Stanley Gardner.
Letter to Bill Townend, dated January 3, 1961, in Author! Author! (1962)
I found her engrossed in an Erle Stanley Gardner, but she lowered the volume courteously as I entered.
Aunt Dahlia in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
* 7 *
Runs from p. 50 to p. 59 in the 1963 UK edition.
joint (p. 50)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
a film called The Vanishing Lady (p. 50)
Though there was an early silent short with this title, an 1897 trick film made by French magician George Méliès, it is far more likely that Bertie is remembering Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 thriller “The Lady Vanishes.”
not a wrack behind (p. 50)
Alluding to The Tempest; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
“No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.” (p. 51)
Reminiscent of an earlier exchange in “Jeeves Takes Charge”:
“But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.”
“Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.”
straight from the horse’s mouth (p. 51)
Inside information, as if a racetrack tip were communicated by the horse itself.
The smile which had been splitting my face (p. 51)
See Bill the Conqueror.
frisson (p. 51)
French: a shudder or shiver.
went through me like a dose of salts (p. 51)
A rather earthy simile, as the medicinal salts referred to had a laxative effect.
I had the unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that centipedes in large numbers are sauntering up and down your spinal column. (p. 51–52)
It was this that had blotted out the sunshine for Bingo and made him feel, warm though the day was, that centipedes with icy feet were walking up and down his spine.
“Leave It to Algy” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
His going had deprived her of the pleasure of listening to his views on this and that and wondering how he could talk the way he did without having a potato in his mouth, but she had also lost the unpleasant feeling that centipedes were crawling up and down her spine which always affected her when hobnobbing with the gendarmerie.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)
adopting a vegetarian diet (p. 52)
See Leave It to Psmith.
fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils (p. 52)
Quoting Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
stars and rabbits and … fairies (p. 52)
See three earlier notes at p. 20, above.
cheese straws (p. 53)
ruddy (p. 53)
A euphemistic substitute for the impolite oath bloody (taboo because it refers to swearing “by God’s blood”).
from soup to nuts (p. 54)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
his n. and dearest (p. 54)
His nearest and dearest, a conventional phrase for one’s family and closest friends. Wodehouse had used the full phrase in Love Among the Chickens, ch. 8 (1906/1909/1921) and A Damsel in Distress, ch. 1 (1919).
hotsy-totsy (p. 54)
See Hot Water.
brought home the bacon (p. 54)
See Laughing Gas.
throw in the towel (p. 55)
A metaphor from boxing; a boxer or his seconds throw a towel into the ring to concede the fight. [MH]
turn our face to the wall (p. 55)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
My cup runneth over (p. 55)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Girl Guide (p. 55)
In Britain, equivalent to a Girl Scout in America; note “her day’s good deed” in the next sentence.
regretted that I had only one stomach to give (p. 56)
A possible allusion to the reported last words of American patriot Nathan Hale before being hanged by the British as a spy in 1776: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
Mignonettes de Poulet Petit Duc (p. 56)
Timbales de Ris de Veau Toulousiane (p. 56)
Thus in the UK edition; the US edition has the proper spelling Toulousaine.
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
silver lining in the c’s (p. 56)
In the clouds; see Bill the Conqueror.
angel in human shape (p. 56)
See Full Moon.
the res (p. 57)
Legal Latin for the point at issue.
the United States Marines arrived (p. 58)
Compare MH’s comment in Cocktail Time.
touched (p. 58)
Asked for an informal personal loan or gift, as between friends. British slang cited from 1760 to modern times.
paternal parent (p. 58)
Apparently the only time Wodehouse used this double-barreled Latinism for father. An apparently unique counterpart:
The emotions of a young man on encountering his maternal parent, when in the interval since they last saw one another he has announced his betrothal to a member of the chorus, are necessarily mixed.
Ronnie Fish in Heavy Weather, ch. 6 (1933).
lost her chemise and foundation garments (p. 58)
An even more ruinous outcome of a bad bet than the usual “lost her shirt,” typically meaning being cleaned out of her ready cash.
fifth-rate power (p. 58)
A country of negligible diplomatic and military influence on the world scene; figuratively a powerless person.
“And if I can’t get the money any other way I shall have to ask Mabel for it, and then the whole facts about my financial position will come out and I shall sink to the level of a fifth-rate power.”
Mrs. Chavender in Quick Service, ch. 12 (1940)
A few more of these revelations from this voice from the past and he would sink to the level of a fifth-rate power.
Bingo Little in “The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“How long could a wife go on looking on her husband as a king among men after hearing an eye-witness’s account of his getting jerked before a tribunal and fined three week’s pocket money for throwing rocks at the kitchen window or a blow-by-blow description of the time he was sick at his birthday party through eating too much almond cake? In about two ticks I should sink to the level of a fifth-rate power.”
Johnny Pearce in Cocktail Time, ch. 8 (1958)
But I, strong in the knowledge that Orlo P. had been reduced to the level of a fifth-rate power, was able to approach the coming interview in a bumps-a-daisy spirit which might quite easily have led to my bursting into song.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 16 (1974)
gawd-help-us (p. 58)
Rummy (p. 58)
A card game involving drawing cards to one’s hand, finding sets of cards of the same rank or runs of consecutive cards in one suit, then discarding those sets or runs.
browsing (p. 59)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
* 8 *
Runs from p. 60 to p. 68 in the 1963 UK edition.
as hungry as dammit (p. 60)
The OED records the intensifying phrase as —— as dammit, meaning extremely or emphatically, with citations beginning 1846 and including Wodehouse’s use in The Little Warrior, ch. 1 (1920):
When I’m alone with Parker—for instance—I’m as chatty as dammit.
off my feed (p. 60)
Having a diminished appetite.
“You’ll hardly credit it, but for the last three weeks or more I have been forced to look on a fellow-being refusing pastry and drinking beastly extracts of meat, all for the sake of winning a couple of races. It quite put me off my feed.”
Charteris in The Pothunters, ch. 6 (1902)
I had looked in at his place while on a motor trip, and he had put me right off my feed by bringing a couple of green things with legs to the luncheon table, crooning over them like a young mother and eventually losing one of them in the salad.
Bertie with Gussie’s newts in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)
“I have been off my feed for some little time now, but I’m going to enjoy my dinner tonight.”
Catsmeat in The Mating Season, ch. 2 (1949)
pushes away his plate untasted (p. 60)
Bertie recommends this to Tuppy Glossop in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1934), in order to demonstrate to Angela that his heart is aching. He recommends a similar course to Aunt Dahlia in the next chapter, and had telegraphed to Gussie in ch. 6 to avoid sausages and ham to make Madeline think that he is pining. The outcome is that chef Anatole is offended and threatens to resign.
the gun which Perry Mason had buried in the shrubbery (p. 60)
Mason apparently made a habit of introducing extra guns in order to be able to cast doubt on prosecution evidence. One online blog links The Case of the Long-Legged Models to this P. G. Wodehouse quotation, but I seem to remember a different book in which Mason does hide a duplicate gun in the bushes, and have not yet found that.
out of evil cometh good (p. 61)
See Summer Lightning.
Nijinsky (p. 61)
See The Girl in Blue.
a fervent wish that I could have been elsewhere (p. 61)
An imperious urge came upon me to be elsewhere, before I could make a chump of myself further.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 2 (1946)
midnight marauder (p. 61)
“ ‘Stage Star and Midnight Marauder,’ ” murmured Miss Silverton, wistfully.
“A Room at the Hermitage” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
Mixed, therefore, with her disapproval of this midnight marauder, was a feeling almost of gratitude to him for being there.
Sam in the Suburbs/Sam the Sudden, ch. 7 (1925)
“He was assaulted while endeavouring to recover Sir Watkyn’s cow-creamer from a midnight marauder, sir.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 11 (1938)
“Suppose, I said to myself, I were to save the heavy’s home from being looted by a midnight marauder, that would make him feel I had the right stuff in me, I fancy.”
Boko Fittleworth in Joy in the Morning, ch. 12 (1946)
He then saw that the other was no midnight marauder, but merely his guest Popkins or Perkins or Wilbraham—the exact name had escaped his memory.
Full Moon, ch. 4.4 (1947)
It had occurred to her that if she were to tell Freddie that she was expecting a midnight marauder to put in an appearance shortly, it would be difficult to make the thing sound plausible.
Terry Trent in French Leave, ch. 7.2 (1956/59)
“I took you for a midnight marauder.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 7 (1957)
thief in the night (p. 62)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
delivery of several tons of coal (p. 62)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
At that moment the gong sounded, and the genial host came tumbling downstairs like the delivery of a ton of coals.
“Jeeves in the Springtime” (1921; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
…there came from the corridor outside a single, thunderous “Oo-er!” followed immediately by a sharp, smacking sound, and then a noise that resembled the delivery of a ton of coals.
Money for Nothing, ch. 13.4 (1928)
And it was while I was still massaging the coconut and wondering what the next move was that something barged up against the door like the delivery of a ton of coals.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1934)
She compared his descent to the delivery of a ton of coals.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1934)
She paused, not because she had finished her remarks, but because there split the welkin at this moment the sound of a female voice raised in wrath, followed by a noise not unlike the delivery of a ton of coals.
Money in the Bank, ch. 3 (1942)
roof of a conservatory (p. 62)
A room in the form of a greenhouse attached to a building; thus the roof would be of glass.
“Grab an armful of these flower-pots and go round the conservatory till you come to a tree. Climb this, tie a string to one of the pots, balance it on a handy branch which you will find overhangs the conservatory, and then, having stationed Clem near the front door, retire into the middle distance and jerk the string. The flower-pot will fall and smash the glass, someone in the house will hear the noise and come out to investigate, and while the door is open and nobody near, Clem will sneak in and go up to bed.”
“Jeeves and the Kid Clementina” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves)
trying to separate my heart from the front teeth in which it had become entangled (p. 62)
Mr. Waddington stopped in mid-sentence, and George’s heart did three back-somersaults and crashed against his front teeth.
The Small Bachelor, ch. 3.2 (1926/27)
This heartening thought had just crossed his mind when with an abruptness which caused his heart to loosen one of his front teeth the silence was again broken—this time by something that sounded like the Grand Fleet putting in a bit of gunnery-practice off the Nore.
“The Story of Cedric” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
His heart, leaping from its moorings, had loosened one of his front teeth, but there was absolutely nothing in his manner to indicate it.
Freddie Widgeon in “Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
…his heart broke from its moorings and crashed with a dull thud against his front teeth: and with a wordless cry he shot toward the ceiling.
Pongo in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 8.1 (1948)
My heart, ceasing to stand still, gave a leap and tried to get out through my front teeth.
The Mating Season, ch. 18 (1949)
The closest observer, eying his face, could not have known that his heart, leaping into his mouth, had just loosened two front teeth.
“Big Business” (1952; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
Bill blinked feebly. His heart, which had crashed against the back of his front teeth, was slowly returning to its base, but it seemed to him that the shock which he had just sustained must have left his hearing impaired.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 12 (1953/54)
It was the last contingency I had been anticipating, and it caused my heart to leap like a salmon in the spawning season and become entangled with my front teeth.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 13 (1954)
At a never to be forgotten point in his search of Miss Dawn’s apartment the door-bell had suddenly rung, and he had distinctly felt his heart leap from its base and crash into his front teeth.
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 19 (1957)
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. C.,” he gasped, as his heart, which had crashed against his front teeth, returned slowly to its base.
Albert Peasemarch in Cocktail Time, ch. 19 (1958)
My heart had leaped in the manner popularized by Kipper Herring and Scarface McColl, crashing against my front teeth with a thud which must have been audible in Market Snodsbury.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 15 (1960)
Replacing his heart, which had bumped against his front teeth, he said: “Oh, hullo, there you are.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)
Nevertheless, when the door suddenly flew open without warning, he leaped several inches in the direction of the ceiling with a distinct impression that his heart had crashed against his front teeth, nearly dislodging them from their base.
John Halliday in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 9.1 (1969)
He had an odd illusion that his heart had leaped from its moorings and crashed against his front teeth.
Jerry West in The Girl in Blue, ch. 11.3 (1970)
The sight of this sleeping beauty had, of course, given me a nasty start, causing my heart to collide rather violently with my front teeth, but it was only for a moment that I was unequal to what I have heard Jeeves call the intellectual pressure of the situation.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
He became involved with the lawn mower again, and the noise resulting from these activities came through loud and clear to the ears of Mr. Llewellyn, who happened to be passing, giving him the momentary illusion that his heart, leaping into his mouth, had dislodged two of his front teeth.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 5.3 (1972)
frogs (p. 63)
Not amphibians, but garment fastenings made of a loop of heavy braid, often in the form of a fancy decorative knot, on one side of the opening, and a thick button or toggle attached to the braid on the other side. An alternative to buttons and buttonholes, useful on heavy materials like a quilted dressing gown.
without the option (p. 63)
Without being able to pay a fine in lieu of jail time.
son of a bachelor (p. 64)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
one of those unpleasant sarcastic magistrates (p. 64)
Wodehouse treated this theme often in his early journalistic career; see for example “Chatty Methods on the Bench” (1907), and many references to magistrate A. C. Plowden in the “By the Way” column in the Globe newspaper.
dumb brick (p. 64)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
the apple of his eye (p. 64)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
cat on hot bricks (p. 65)
“very uneasy; not at all ‘at home’ in the situation; very restless” (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable)
Aberdeen terriers (p. 65)
He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, as the fellow said (p. 66)
As Longfellow almost said; see Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.
the wings of the dove (p. 66)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
an angry swan chased self and friend on to the roof (p. 67)
The story is recounted in “Jeeves and the Impending Doom” (1926; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
bear ’mid snow and ice a banner with the strange device Excelsior (p. 67)
See Cocktail Time.
Trappist monks (p. 68)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
If Scotties come … can Stiffy be far behind? (p. 68)
* 9 *
Runs from p. 69 to p. 77 in the 1963 UK edition.
into the soup (p. 69)
M.C. (p. 69)
Master of Ceremonies, to use a term more appropriate to the theater than to a church.
spies in the pay of Moscow (p. 70)
Most references in Wodehouse to the Russian capital are either purely political, as by socialists speaking highly of the organization there; cultural, as to the Russian ballet; or have reference to Napoleon’s defeat in attempting to conquer Russia (see The Old Reliable).
This is among a few “cold war” era references to Communist spying and propaganda:
“I am always stiff in my manner with elderly gentlemen who snort like foghorns when I appear and glare at me as if I were somebody from Moscow distributing Red propaganda.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 7 (1946)
“God bless you, Keggs! You ought to be head of the secret police in Moscow.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 4 (1957)
young prune (p. 70)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
the pink slip (p. 71)
“Include me out.” (p. 71)
See The Girl in Blue.
Naboth’s Vineyard (p. 73)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
amour propre (p. 73)
French: self-esteem.
London and the home counties (p. 73)
The [former] counties which contain London are Middlesex and Surrey; the surrounding counties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex (clockwise from the Thames estuary) are also usually considered as Home Counties. English counties have been revised a couple of times over the last century, this list is according to the situation as it was in 1918. [MH]
the play in Hamlet … catch the conscience of the king (p. 73)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
took the well-known biscuit (p. 73)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
the widow and the orphan (p. 74)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
boll weevil (p. 74)
once lived in Arcady (p. 74)
See Something Fresh.
“N-ruddy-o” (p. 75)
See p. 53, above, for the intensifier. It is rare in Wodehouse to see an epithet infixed inside another word.
the sins of the Scottie are visited upon its owner (p. 75)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
torch (p. 75)
A British term for what an American would call a flashlight.
bum’s rush (p. 75)
A forcible and swift ejection from a place; a rude or abrupt dismissal. [JD]
through no fault of his own he got stinko (p. 76)
Recounted in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 16. Actually, Gussie did deliberately help himself to the whisky decanter, as well as unknowingly absorbing a double dose of gin from his pitcher of orange juice, which had been laced both by Bertie and by Jeeves.
orgy (p. 76)
Following its classic definition as rites celebrating Bacchus, the term 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. Here it seems to mean overindulgence in the steak and kidney pie rather than in liquor.
as harts do when heated in the chase and panting for cooling streams (p. 76)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Napoleon of Crime (p. 76)
Sherlock Holmes uses this title for Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem” (1893).
* 10 *
Runs from p. 78 to p. 86 in the 1963 UK edition.
chased across difficult country (p. 78)
This may possibly be influenced by W. S. Gilbert’s libretto for Ruddigore, in which Dame Hannah tells of being dragged, “blindfold and shrieking, through hedges, over stiles, and across a very difficult country.” At any rate, Bertie has reason to recall an early experience of his own:
He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realise that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country.
Lord Worplesdon chasing the young Bertie, recounted in “Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
It was he who at the age of fifteen—when I was fifteen, I mean, of course—found me smoking one of his special cigars in the stable yard and chased me a mile across difficult country with a hunting crop.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 1 (1946)
“Not only being chivvied for miles across difficult country but having to listen to men in top hats uttering those uncouth cries.”
Bertie sympathizing with a hunted fox in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1971)
I have never been fond of hunting crops since at an early age I was chased for a mile across difficult country by an uncle armed with one, who had found me smoking one of his cigars.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 4 (1974)
Jeeves came shimmering in (p. 78)
Wodehouse usually applies this verb to the uncannily quiet appearances of Jeeves:
There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of shimmering into rooms the man is rummy to a degree. You’re sitting in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up, and there he is.
“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
Jeeves came shimmering down the hall, the respectful beam of welcome on his face.
“Jeeves and the Spot of Art” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
…there was a knock at the door and in floated Jeeves. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, shimmering towards old Stoker and presenting an envelope on a salver.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)
It was perhaps a couple of ticks later, or three, that Jeeves came shimmering up.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 15 (1946)
I laid down the writing materials and was preparing to turn in for the night, when Jeeves came shimmering in.
The Mating Season, ch. 27 (1949)
“Jeeves,” he began, at length finding speech, but Jeeves was shimmering through the door.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 15 (1953/54)
I was, in short, in buoyant mood and practically saying ‘Tra la’, when I observed Jeeves shimmering up in the manner of one desiring audience.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 15 (1954)
Jeeves came shimmering in shortly after she had left.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 8 (1974)
But in two cases, the verb describes the entrances of young women:
For at this moment something came shimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall, and I perceived that it was Angela.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1934)
Ever since she had come in, shimmering across the threshold like the spirit of the June day, he had known, of course, in a sort of general way that the strange emotion she awoke in him was love…
Anne Benedick in Money in the Bank, ch. 6 (1942)
And one other manservant:
Phipps came shimmering through the door, in his capable hands a whisky and soda on a tray.
The Old Reliable, ch. 4 (1951)
the harrow I found myself the toad under (p. 78)
men up top (p. 78)
Often used in its general sense of those in authority; here, with respect to senior police officers.
“Well, of course, the men up top don’t advance a young rozzer rapidly unless he comes through with something so spectacular as to make them draw in their breath with an awed ‘Lord love a duck!’ ”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 18 (1946)
“You’re doing a fine job, and the Yard will not forget it. Your heroism will be brought to the notice of the men up top.”
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10 (1952)
One presumes that when the neophyte has been issued his uniform and regulation boots, the men up top take him aside and teach him a few things likely to be of use to him in his chosen profession.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 10 (1954)
You wouldn’t care to buy a couple of tickets for the annual concert of the Policemen’s Orphanage, would you? … Sounds silly, I know, but the men up top issue bundles of the beastly things to us footsloggers, and we’re supposed to unload them on the local residents.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 10 (1961)
ruin and desolation (p. 78)
See Uncle Dynamite.
the customary eighth of an inch (p. 78)
the old salve (p. 79)
Compare the old oil at p. 48, above.
trinitrotoluol (p. 80)
An explosive chemical, commonly called TNT. See A Damsel in Distress.
brush and palette (p. 81)
Alluding to Emerald Stoker’s studies at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Upas tree (p. 81)
See Uncle Dynamite.
glibly or airily (p. 81)
I found that the post office was one of those shops you get in villages, where in addition to enjoying the postal facilities you can purchase cigarettes, pipe tobacco, wool, lollipops, string, socks, boots, overalls, picture postcards and bottles containing yellow non-alcoholic drinks, probably fizzy. (p. 82)
The post office at Ashby Paradene, like so many rural post offices, combined its official duties with the selling of picture postcards, bilious-looking sweets, comic books for children and the like.
Company for Henry, ch. 5.4 (1967)
In English villages as small as Mellingham-in-the-Vale, which was so small that the post office sold sweets and balls of worsted and there was only one oasis, the Goose and Gander, where you could get a drink, the man who matters is always the owner of the big house.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 8 (1970)
I caught sight of the shop which acted as a post office and remembered that Jeeves had told me that in addition to selling stamps, picture postcards, socks, boots, overalls, pink sweets, yellow sweets, string, cigarettes and stationery it ran a small lending library.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 9 (1974)
old gaffer (p. 82)
An elderly man; the OED calls this a country term of affectionate respect derived either from godfather or grandfather.
gormed (p. 82)
A dialect variant of damned, used in mild oaths or intensifying phrases. The OED has no citations after the nineteenth century.
gradely (p. 82)
A dialect word, a borrowing from Scandinavian languages such as Old Norse greiðlig-r, meaning suitable or handsome.
can’t do the dialect (p. 82)
smooth city ways (p. 82)
“Fifteen years ago, when I met Jimmy Duff and fell for his smooth city ways, I was a young, idealistic girl, all sentiment and romance.”
Mrs. Chavender in Quick Service, ch. 1 (1940)
sitting out in the sun quite a lot without his parasol (p. 83)
…the door of E. Jimpson Murgatroyd’s private lair opened and there emerged an elderly character with one of those square, empire-building faces, much tanned as if he was accustomed to sitting out in the sun without his parasol.
Major Plank again, in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 3 (1974)
one for the tonsils (p. 83)
juvenile delinquent (p. 83)
“I happen to know Bill offered it for a song to one of these charitable societies as a home for Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents, and they simply sneered at him.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 2/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 4 (1953/54)
…his attitude towards me had been that of an official at Borstal told off to keep an eye on a more than ordinarily up-and-coming juvenile delinquent.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
“Is he a juvenile delinquent?”
“More elderly than that, I should say.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 20 (1958)
Her face was wearing the smug expression of a female juvenile delinquent who has just played a successful practical joke on another member of her age group, and her sunny smile, which Soapy admired so much, seemed to gash him like a knife.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 23 (1961)
He brooded bleakly on the injuries he had suffered at the hands of these juvenile delinquents.
Service With a Smile, ch. 4.3 (1961)
“Not one of your juvenile delinquents who bust in on you wanting samples of your blood, but a sensible, comfortable middle-aged woman in her forties.”
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 12 (1973)
Federal Malay States (p. 83)
More properly the Federated Malay States, a union of four states on the Malay Peninsula in southeast Asia, established by the British government as a protectorate in 1895, lasting until 1946 when it was merged into the Malayan Union.
my Brazilian expedition (p. 84)
Perhaps the first intimation that Major Plank may be the same man as Major Brabazon-Plank of Uncle Dynamite (1948). More details later will strengthen this assumption.
Daily Express (p. 84)
See Money in the Bank.
tiller of the soil (p. 85)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
what-not (p. 85)
Here, a substitute term for something whose true name one does not know.
shiver my timbers (p. 85)
Boy Scoutful (p. 85)
Having the manner of a Boy Scout; here, feeling the satisfaction of having done one’s daily good deed. The term is apparently unique to Wodehouse, at least in the Google Books searchable canon.
“You bet I’m up early,” he replied with a sort of Boy Scoutful exuberance which turned the kipper to ashes in Monty’s mouth.
Reggie Tennyson in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 14 (1935)
Since parting from Jane he had been filled with a sort of Boy Scoutful benevolence towards the whole human race.
Bill Hardy in Company for Henry, ch. 5.4 (1967)
Oofy Prosser (p. 85)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
The original UK edition has the misprint Ooofy here.
french window (p. 86)
See Summer Lightning.
* 11 *
Runs from p. 87 to p. 92 in the 1963 UK edition.
fakirs (p. 87)
My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn’t have to open doors. He’s like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about—the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he’s not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 18 (1934)
He says the whole thing rather resembled an effort on the part of one of those Indian fakirs who bung their astral bodies about all over the place, going into thin air in Bombay and reassembling the parts two minutes later in Darjheeling.
“Trouble Down at Tudsleigh” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK edition, 1936)
He had read of Indian fakirs who had acquired the knack of disembodying themselves and reassembling the parts at some distant spot, but he could not bring himself to credit Biff with this very specialized ability.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 10.2 (1964)
“I was thinking he might have been one of those Indian fakirs who dematerialise themselves and reassemble the parts elsewhere, but then he wouldn’t have bothered to unlock the door, and it was open when we looked in.”
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 10.2 (1965)
telepathy (p. 87)
It was one of those which seemed to call imperiously for a word or two of advice from Jeeves. And I was just regretting that he was not there, when a gentle cough in my rear told me that he was. It was as if some sort of telepathy, if that’s the word I want, had warned him that the young master had lost his grip and could do with twopennyworth of feudal assistance.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 28 (1946)
Every other valet I’ve ever had used to barge into my room in the morning while I was still asleep, causing much misery: but Jeeves seems to know when I’m awake by a sort of telepathy. He always floats in with the cup exactly two minutes after I come to life.
The Inimitable Jeeves, ch. 1 (1923)
bulging at the back (p. 87)
See sticking out at the back in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
eating lots of fish (p. 87)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
Zulu knobkerrie (p. 88)
the Wooster bean (p. 89)
That is, Bertie’s head.
gall and w. (p. 90)
Gall and wormwood as examples of bitterness; see Biblia Wodehousiana.
as far as I could throw an elephant (p. 90)
Not to be trusted as far as you could throw an elephant, he considered, and just the sort who would spring with joy to the task of nicking a good man’s bank roll.
G. Ellery Cobbold’s first impression of Eileen Stoker in Spring Fever, ch. 1 (1948)
“I wouldn’t trust a French markee as far as I could throw an elephant.”
Chester Todd in French Leave, ch. 4.6 (1956)
“Well, I still say I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw an elephant.”
Myra Schoonmaker’s impression of George Cyril Wellbeloved in Service With a Smile, ch. 1 (1961)
chez Plank (p. 90)
At Plank’s home.
calaboose (p. 91)
An American term, borrowed from Louisiana French Creole calabouse, for a jail. Wodehouse’s uses of the term apparently began in the early 1960s.
The Greenville calaboose had always been one of the most popular in the country, for a kindly warden allowed the student body to decorate their cells with pin-up pictures of members of the other sex.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, February 21, 1962
“Well, I’ve got the earth, or shall have in another week, always provided I stay out of the calaboose. And you can take it from me, Jerry o’ man, that staying out of calabooses is what from now on I’m going to specialize in.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 5 (1964)
He was telling himself that he would never have credited him with the vision and know-how required for such a transaction—still less with the cool intrepidity that enabled him to contemplate without a tremor a deal where one false step meant a spell in the calaboose.
Company for Henry, ch. 9.3 (1967)
“How long do you suppose the hockey-knocker is going to hold you to it when she hears you’re in the calaboose?”
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 10.3 (1972)
recently returned from an expedition into the interior of Brazil (p. 91)
Bertie already knows this, as Plank tried to tell him about it when mistaking him for the Daily Express reporter; see p. 84, above.
“I do not know what the term signifies.” (p. 91)
Jeeves is not quite omniscient, after all, but this is a very rare time when he is at a loss for a definition.
blow me tight (p. 92)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
* 12 *
Runs from p. 93 to p. 99 in the 1963 UK edition.
if prescience is the word I want (p. 93)
This synonym for foreknowledge seems to be just the right word; it is apparently the only time Wodehouse used it in his fictions.
deep in the mulligatawny (p. 93)
armed so strong in honesty (p. 93)
From Julius Caesar: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
Singer midget (p. 94)
See Nothing Serious.
niffy (p. 95)
Rural Sussex dialect (recorded 1903; from the 1920s in broader colloquial usage) for “smelly.”
dagger of Oriental design (p. 95)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
the forces of darkness (p. 95)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
chanting hosannas like the Cherubim and Seraphim (p. 96)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
my heart stood still (p. 96)
To say of anyone’s heart that it stood still is physiologically inexact. The heart does not stand still. It has to go right on working away at the old stand, irrespective of its proprietor’s feelings.
Full Moon, ch. 3.4 (1947)
all-in wrestling (p. 96)
All-in is a type of wrestling without restrictions, with virtually every type of hold permitted. [JD]
all of a doodah (p. 96)
hard boiled egg (p. 96)
A figurative way of describing a stubborn or irascible person. See “Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917) for an early example, and compare twenty-minute egg elsewhere in Wodehouse.
oil on the troubled w.s (p. 96)
Troubled waters; see Laughing Gas.
elves’ bridal veils (p. 97)
“Did you know she thinks those bits of mist you see on the grass are the elves’ bridal veils?”
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1971)
the Blessed Damozel leaning out (p. 97)
See Leave It to Psmith.
This exchange is recollected in much the same words in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1971).
the something acids (p. 97)
Jeeves had explained the need for amino acids in Chapter 7 (p. 53 of the UK edition).
Harley Street (p. 98)
Just north of Oxford Street, the home of London's most prestigious doctors for over a century [NTPM].
down in Bethnal Green spreading the light (p. 98)
Along with his studies for the ministry, Pinker was preaching in a district in the East End of London, in the Borough of Tower Hamlets.
costermonger (p. 98)
A street seller of fruit and vegetables, associated especially with London’s East End.
solar plexus (p. 98)
Strictly speaking, the solar plexus is a concentration of nerve cells located under the diaphragm and behind the stomach, which controls the functioning of the digestive system. Loosely it is used to refer to the stomach area when talking about painful blows. [MH]
the flesh of animals slain in anger (p. 99)
Wodehouse had used this phrase in “Leave It to Jeeves” (1916); it sounds as if it should be a quotation from a vegetarian tract, but so far no earlier use has turned up in a search.
a mere shell of my former self (p. 99)
The ordeal would whiten my hair from the roots up and leave me a mere shell of my former self, but it was one that I must go through.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 16 (1960)
* 13 *
Runs from p. 100 to p. 107 in the 1963 UK edition.
gave me the pip (p. 100)
melancholy had marked me for her own, as the fellow said (p. 100)
See A Damsel in Distress.
obiter dicta (p. 100)
See Money in the Bank.
What, I asked myself, would the harvest be (p. 100)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
Jeeves trickled in with the morning cup of tea (p. 100)
Wodehouse usually uses this verb for the aimless or languid movements of dudes like Bertie; see The Inimitable Jeeves. When used for Jeeves, the connotation seems to be of silent arrival:
He trickled into my room one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was something doing.
“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917)
Jeeves trickled back.
“Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
“He does. Doesn’t he, Jeeves?” I said, putting it up to him, as he trickled in with the brandy.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 11 (1938)
I could hear Jeeves out in the hall dealing with it, and presently he trickled in.
“Jeeves Makes an Omelette” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
like a seal going after a slice of fish (p. 100)
This physical limitation caused him to remain speechless and to do the best he could in the way of stern fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal after a long dive in search of fish.
Mr. Bennett in Three Men and a Maid/The Girl on the Boat, ch. 14 (1922)
“Do you know, one of my earliest recollections – I couldn’t have been more than ten – is of a ring at the front-door bell and father diving like a seal under the sofa and poking his head out and imploring me in a hoarse voice to hold the fort.”
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 3 (1923)
He rounded on Mr. Paradene, puffing like a seal.
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 2.4 (1924)
“But think!” implored Mr. Previn, flapping like a seal.
“The Exit of Battling Billson” (1924; in Ukridge, 1924)
It was as she stood there, puffing slightly like a seal after diving for fish, that something seemed to shoot past her in the darkness.
“The Man Who Gave Up Smoking” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Barking like a seal, Major Flood-Smith disappeared down the passage, and Lord Hoddesdon, saved at the eleventh hour, snatched at the hat-stand, wrenched the front door open, banged it behind him, leaped into the street, and raced madly out of Mulberry Grove in the direction of the railway-station.
Big Money, ch. 6.2 (1931)
“But what I was saying was that Bernard used to gulp like a seal and stand on one leg when father came along.”
“The Voice from the Past” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
Joe, to whom recent events had given animation enough for two, barked like a seal.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 7 (1937)
I now gazed at him hopefully, like a seal awaiting a bit of fish.
Bertie at Jeeves in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 5 (1938)
There was a wardrobe not far from where he stood, a handsome piece in old walnut, and he dived into it like a seal going after a chunk of halibut, taking his roll with him.
“Success Story” (1948; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“You barked like a seal.”
“I always bark like a seal at about this hour.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 2 (1951)
When Jeeves came in with the shaker, I dived at it like a seal going after a slice of fish and drained a quick one, scarcely pausing to say ‘Skin off your nose’.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 1 (1954)
“She didn’t hesitate. Grabbed at it like a seal going after a slice of fish.”
Lavender Briggs in Service with a Smile, ch. 12 (1961)
“Still inclined to bark at one a bit.”
“I remember that trait of his. Like a seal surprised while bathing.”
Mr. Donaldson described in “Life with Freddie” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Nevertheless, it must be stated that between Mr. Butterwick’s catching sight of this one and his leaping at it like a seal going after a slice of fish only a few seconds elapsed.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 6 (1972)
cuppa (p. 101)
The OED notes that this is a short variant of cup o’ usually meaning a cup of tea, as it does here; the earliest citation, though, is from Wodehouse: “Come and have a cuppa coffee,” from Sam the Sudden, ch. 6 (1925).
Hell’s foundations are quivering (p. 101)
palsy-walsy (p. 101)
like a slice of underdone beef (p. 101)
“The sun had just gone down; and it was a lovely sunset, and the sky looked like a great, beautiful slice of underdone beef; and I said so to him, and he said, sniffily, that he was afraid he didn’t see the resemblance.“
“The Good Angel“ (1910; in The Man Upstairs, 1914)
and as rare beef 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)
“I say,
Doesn’t that sunset remind you
Of a slice
Of underdone roast beef?“
Percy Gorringe’s poem “Caliban at Sunset“ in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 10 (1954)
the Blessed Damozel (p. 101)
See Leave It to Psmith.
as sore as a sunburned neck (p. 102)
See The Girl on the Boat.
“Most disturbing, sir.” (p. 102)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
a sword hanging over him (p. 102)
oiling out (p. 102)
Leaving, or extricating oneself from a situation or commitment. The OED first cites Wodehouse for this sense:
“Biffy, old egg,” I said, “as man to man, do you want to oil out of this thing?”
“The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy“ (1924; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
the story I had heard Pongo Twistleton tell (p. 102)
Recounted in “Tried in the Furnace“ (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK version, 1936)
Dead End kids (p. 102)
A name for tough urban street youths; from a group of young actors playing such roles in Sidney Kingsley’s play Dead End on Broadway in 1935, who were hired for the 1937 United Artists film version of the play, then went on to play similar roles in other films under group names like the Dead End Kids, East Side Kids, and Bowery Boys for two decades.
Braid Bates at that time was a young plug-ugly of some nine summers, in appearance a miniature edition of William and in soul and temperament a combination of Dead End Kid and army mule.
“Rodney Has a Relapse“ (1949; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Jerry’s previous encounters with Beach—in corridors, in the hall, at lunch and at dinner—had left him with the impression that his feet were too large, his ears too red and his social status something in between that of a Dead End kid and a badly dressed leper.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.3 (1952)
Suprême de Foie Gras au Champagne (p. 103)
Neige aux Perles des Alpes (p. 103)
Literally “snow with Alpine pearls“; Victoria Madden translates it as “An egg dish? scattered with small sweets made from Chartreuse liqueur.“ I would guess it to be a dessert with a meringue base.
optimism had returned to its throne (p. 103)
A similar personification of Reason enthroned is named more frequently; see Hot Water.
till his ribs squeaked (p. 103)
Wodehouse usually uses this image for an enthusiastic hug:
“After all I said, in spite of the fact that I pleaded with you—yes, dash it, with tears in my eyes—to grab Anne and hug her till her ribs squeaked, you appear to have been muddling along with that idiotic troubadour stuff of yours and, as I foresaw, getting nowhere.“
Lord Uffenham in Money in the Bank, ch. 23 (1942)
Here was a girl who frankly admitted that in her opinion he was Prince Charming galloping up on his white horse and would have liked nothing better than to be folded in his embrace and hugged till her ribs squeaked, and here was he all eagerness to do the folding and hugging, and no chance of business resulting because the honour of the Bodkins said it mustn’t.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 9 (1972)
“You followed my advice?“
“Yes.“
“Close embrace?“
“Yes.“
“Till ribs squeaked?“
“Yes.“
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 14 (1973)
sweetness and light (p. 103)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
got the bird (p. 103)
A theatrical term meaning hissing by the audience; nothing to do with the rude hand gesture more recently called by that name.
what is called the quiet evenfall (p. 103)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
Bosher Street Police Court (p. 104)
The account in “Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27) does not mention hard-boiled eggs or a thrown boot.
apes, ivory and peacocks (p. 105)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
into each life some rain must fall (p. 105)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
bulldog breed (p. 105)
See Money for Nothing.
clear to the meanest i. (p. 106)
Wodehouse used clear to the meanest intelligence as a stock phrase throughout his career; these are the earliest and latest so far found:
“We tried to make it clear to the meanest intelligence. Sorry you can’t understand it.”
“A Corner in Lines” (1905)
‘I must begin by making clear to the meanest intelligence—yours, to take an instance at random—how extremely sticky my position was on coming to stay with the Briscoes.’
Aunt Dahlia in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 11 (1974)
blotting his copybook (p. 106)
the straight and narrow path (p. 106)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
beazel (p. 106)
See Hot Water.
in the bag (p. 106)
See Hot Water.
lit a moody gasper (p. 106)
A gasper is a cheap or harsh cigarette; applying the adjective moody to the cigarette rather than to himself is a perfect example of a transferred epithet, one of Wodehouse’s favorite rhetorical devices.
popping up out of a trap (p. 107)
See Bill the Conqueror.
couth (p. 107)
The OED lists several obsolete senses of the word, and in current usage describes it as a deliberate back-formation from uncouth so as to mean cultured or well-mannered, with citations since 1896. Since Wodehouse used uncouth earlier in the same paragraph, this is clearly his intent. This appears to be his only use of couth in his fiction.
* 14 *
Runs from p. 108 to p. 114 in the 1963 UK edition.
what I believe is called a baleful light (p. 108)
The adjective baleful is one of the oldest in the English language, with citations back to Old English times, having connotations of threatening evil and malignant influences.
There are moods in which even the mildest man will turn to bay, and there gleamed in Roland Attwater’s eyes as he strode to the door and flung it open a baleful light.
“Something Squishy” (1924; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Her face twisted, her eyes shone with a baleful light, and those shapely hands of hers tightened into two fists.
Mrs. Gedge in Hot Water, ch. 17.6 (1932)
the quality (p. 108)
A somewhat archaic term for people of high social position, cited since the eighteenth century.
can take it or leave it alone (p. 108)
See Meet Mr. Mulliner.
Very white (p. 109)
No reference to skin color is intended; the reference is to purity of soul.
Very pukka (p. 109)
The word pukka is borrowed from Hindi and Punjabi, with the senses of being reliable, genuine, authentic, correct in behavior.
Pure as the driven snow … if not purer (p. 109)
gone off to the local (p. 109)
That is, to the nearest pub.
V-shaped depression (p. 109–110)
See wedge-shaped depression in Summer Lightning, and follow the links within that note for additional information.
yew alley (p. 110)
A garden path flanked on both sides with tall yew trees making a continuous hedge. The yew alley at Blandings Castle is a famous bone of contention between Lord Emsworth and his gardener McAllister; see Leave It to Psmith.
pegged out and left it a packet (p. 110)
Died and bequeathed it a substantial sum of money.
Soul’s Awakening expression (p. 110)
ministering angel (p. 111)
See Sam the Sudden.
working on all twelve cylinders (p. 111)
the scales fell from my eyes (p. 111)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower and sipping (p. 112)
the plaything of an idle hour (p. 112)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
letting-I-dare-not-wait-upon-I-would-ness (p. 113)
Making a noun phrase out of an allusion to Macbeth: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
Standing not on the order of his going, as the fellow said (p. 114)
Another Macbeth reference: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
entered left centre (p. 114)
Bertie’s familiarity with theatrical jargon shows up again here; he uses the terminology of stage directions in a play script. Left centre is stage left (on the right, as viewed by the audience), midway between the front and back of the stage playing area.
* 15 *
Runs from p. 115 to p. 123 in the 1963 UK edition.
Washington Square (p. 115)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
sad-eyed Italian kids (p. 115)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
third waistcoat button (p. 115)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
swayed like some forest tree beneath the woodman’s axe (p. 115)
Lord Uffenham descended like some monarch of the forest felled by a woodman’s axe, and Anne drove on.
Money in the Bank, ch. 7 (1942)
My left shoe got all mixed up with my right ankle, I tottered, swayed, and after a brief pause came down like some noble tree beneath the woodman’s axe, and I was sitting there lost in a maze of numbing thoughts, when an unseen hand attached itself to my arm and jerked me back to safety.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1971)
a hamlike hand (p. 115)
See Bill the Conqueror.
macédoine or hash (p. 115)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
young prune (p. 116)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
like a cat in an adage (p. 116)
A third reference in this book to a single quotation from Macbeth; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
I’ve heard Jeeves use the word . . . pusillanimity (p. 116)
Wodehouse had used the word in other series of stories, beginning in 1923, but this is the first mention in the Bertie and Jeeves stories so far found. The word would recur through his last completed novel.
As he stood there, chafing at his uncle’s pusillanimity, an idea was vouchsafed to him.
Freddie Threepwood in Leave It to Psmith, ch. 1.3 (1923)
‘Would pusillanimity be the word for which you are groping, sir?’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 9 (1974)
taken his correspondence course (p. 116)
brass hats of the Church (p. 116)
A mixed metaphor; brass hats are high-ranking military officers, so called from the gold braid on their caps.
the soft word that’s supposed to turn away wrath (p. 116)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
letting his angry passions rise (p. 116)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
snow leopard of the Himalayas (p. 117)
in holy orders (p. 117)
Having been ordained as a minister of the Church.
It was at that moment, I fancy, that the Rev. Joseph Dacre experienced a fleeting regret that he had ever taken holy orders. Clergymen have to be so guarded in their speech.
“The Lost Bowlers” (1905)
“Now, look here, Jeeves,” I said, “I can stand a lot, but when it comes to your casting asp-whatever-the-word-is on the sweetest girl in the world and a bird in Holy Orders——”
“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1922; as Ch. 4 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
“He did not give his name, sir. He is a gentleman in Holy Orders.”
“Buttercup Day” (1925; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“But that Harold Pinker, a clerk in Holy Orders, a chap who buttons his collar at the back, should countenance this thing appalls me.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)
Here was this man, he meant to say, unable as a clerk in Holy Orders to use any of the words which would have been at the disposal of a layman, and yet by sheer force of character rising triumphantly over the handicap.
“Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and Nothing Serious, 1950)
A captious critic might have felt on seeing the Reverend Cuthbert that it would have been more suitable for one in holy orders to have looked a little less like the logical contender for the world’s heavyweight championship, but it was impossible to regard his rugged features and bulging shoulders without an immediate feeling of awe.
Service With a Smile, ch. 2 (1961)
beezer (p. 117)
The nose; see Hot Water.
the cloth (p. 117)
Colloquial term for the clergy; first cited in the OED from Jonathan Swift in 1709.
Church Militant (p. 117)
A term for the body of Christians here on earth, considered as an army fighting the forces of evil. The OED has citations beginning in the fifteenth century.
His prayer for the Church militant on Sunday of that week is said to have been impressive to a degree.
“Rural Hooligans” (1902)
science (p. 117)
See Ukridge.
Boxing blue … football blue (p. 117)
had been in the water several days (p. 117)
vital flow (p. 117)
Apparently Spode’s punch had given Stinker a bloody nose.
wake up cross (p. 118)
“I’ve got to be at Paddington in ten minutes, and everything seems to point to the fact that Mr. Prosser, if roused abruptly, may wake up cross.”
“Sonny Boy” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“Girls often wake up cross after a binge.”
Spring Fever, ch. 8 (1948)
Reckless of the possibility that the other might wake up cross, he shook his host by the arm.
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 5 (1952)
Roused abruptly from slumber, the most easy-going cat is apt to wake up cross.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 15 (1960)
I was thinking how right the ancestor had been in predicting that, if aroused suddenly, he would wake up cross.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
though crushed to earth, will rise again (p. 118)
See A Damsel in Distress.
out of the mouths of babes and sucklings (p. 118)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“You look like a devastated area.” (p. 119)
What with being a novice with the scissors and having allowed his concentration to be impaired by the necessity of drinking in what these two had been saying about their private affairs, he had undeniably made something approaching a devastated area of that noble white mop.
Hot Water, ch. 2.3 (1932)
Percy Pilbeam continued to sit where he was, looking like a devastated area.
Heavy Weather, ch. 14 (1933)
In the matter of camping out in devastated areas my nephew had, of course, become by this time an old hand.
“The Fiery Wooing of Mordred” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
His host’s upper lip had become a devastated area.
“Buried Treasure” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
The story which the duke had told at dinner on the previous night, at great length and with a ghoulish relish, of the lesson which he had taught his nephew Horace had made a deep impression on her, and she fully expected on reaching the Blue Room to find it—possibly owing to some lapse from the required standard in His Grace’s breakfast—a devastated area.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 2 (1939)
“I’m afraid the old lid isn’t what it used to be. Pretty much of a devastated area, I fear.”
Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 4 (1952)
“Beefy!” he cried. “My dear old bird, what on earth’s the matter? You look like a devastated area.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 10 (1958)
the colour of Gussie’s insides (p. 119)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
menace in the treatment (p. 120)
Here, treatment is used in its theatrical sense: similar to a scenario, it is a detailed outline of the action of a play or film script in scene-by-scene form, especially as it is being adapted from another literary source. So this is equivalent to naming Spode as the villain of the plot here.
Assyrians … came down like a wolf on the fold (p. 120)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
had the bulge on him (p. 120)
This phrase from Wodehouse is cited in the OED as one example of the figurative use of the bulge to mean an advantage, a superior position; this sense is slang and originally from the USA in the nineteenth century.
Spode fell to earth he knew not where (p. 120)
a louse in human shape (p. 120)
A variant on fiend in human shape.
“Nice, my foot! He’s a louse in human shape.”
Sir Gregory Parsloe speaking of Gally Threepwood in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 7.2 (1952)
the mills of God grind slowly (p. 120)
fought the good fight (p. 120)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
a nymph surprised while bathing (p. 120)
See The Mating Season.
bonneting (p. 120)
Wodehouse is using an unrecorded sense of the verb; clearly he means “striking a blow to the head” here. See The Code of the Woosters.
looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin (p. 121)
The animal hopped from the bed and, advancing into the middle of the room, took a seat, breathing through the nose with a curious whistling sound, and looking at us from under his eyebrows like a Scottish elder rebuking sin from the pulpit.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 7 (1938)
the iron had entered into my soul (p. 122)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
lays you a stymie (p. 122)
Figuratively, a situation in which one’s action is blocked. Deriving from golf jargon; see A Glossary of Golf Terminology on this site.
saved (p. 122)
Used here, as in evangelical Christianity, for having accepted God’s grace through faith.
welter of emotions (p. 122)
Any previous usage by Jeeves is not recorded by Bertie; only a few instances have been so far found in Wodehouse.
It seemed curious to me that in a life of thirty years I should have been able to find, among the hundreds of women I had met, only one capable of creating in me that disquieting welter of emotions which is called love, and hard that that one should reciprocate my feeling only to the extent of the mild liking which Audrey entertained for me.
The Little Nugget, ch. 20 (ch. 10 of book) (1913)
Emerging from this welter of emotion, stood out the one clear fact that, be the opposition bidding what it might, he must nevertheless secure the prize.
“Doing Father a Bit of Good” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, 1921)
The one clear thought that stood out from the welter of his emotions was the reflection that it was advisable to remove himself without delay.
“The Truth About George” (1926; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
snifter (p. 122)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
life-saver (p. 123)
Another way of referring to an alcoholic drink as medically useful.
When George presently returned with the life-saving fluid, he thanked him and turned his thoughts to other things.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 14 (1919)
a spot before dinner (p. 123)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
* 16 *
Runs from p. 124 to p. 131 in the 1963 UK edition.
licked to a splinter (p. 124)
See Laughing Gas.
buck-and-wing dance (p. 124)
See Money in the Bank.
the heart bowed down with weight of woe to weakest hope will cling, as the fellow said (p. 124)
See Sam the Sudden.
blessings on the falling-out that all the more endears (p. 124)
See Cocktail Time.
rare and refreshing fruit (p. 125)
A phrase with a political history dating back to 1909.
While the provisions of the National Health Insurance Act were still awaiting discussion in Parliament, Mr. Lloyd George, waxing enthusiastic in a platform speech, described its prospective benefits to the working classes as “rare and refreshing fruit.” The phrase, from its persistent ironical application by his opponents, has become famous.
Everyday Phrases Explained, p. 193 (1913)
Wodehouse used it a few times through the years:
To Mr. Cobbold, as he sat there drawing at his cigar, it was a very soothing reflection that three thousand miles of land and another three thousand miles of water separated his son and Miss Stoker, and for some moments he savoured it like some rare and refreshing fruit.
Spring Fever, ch. 1 (1948)
All of which was as rare and refreshing fruit to two battered wrecks who had just groped their way out of the ruins of The Riviera Girl, The Rose of China, and Miss 1917.
Bring On the Girls, ch. 4 (US edition, 1953)
“After you, Reggie will come to her like rare and refreshing fruit.”
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 3 (1960)
On the one hand I felt a pang of regret for having missed what had all the earmarks of having been a political meeting of the most rewarding kind: on the other, it was like rare and refreshing fruit to hear that Spode had got hit in the eye with a potato.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1971)
the banns (p. 125)
The public announcement in church of a forthcoming marriage.
“April fool!” (p. 125)
See Summer Moonshine.
Doctor Somebody’s Tonic Swamp Juice (p. 125)
Although she had, as I recalled from the reports of the case, been compelled some years earlier to request the Court to sever her marital relations with Vincent Jopp on the ground of calculated and inhuman brutality, in that he had callously refused, in spite of her pleadings, to take Old Dr. Bennett’s Tonic Swamp-Juice three times a day, her voice, as she spoke, was kind and even anxious.
“The Heel of Achilles” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
“Blizzard’s hiccups. How are they? Suggest Doctor Murphy’s Tonic Swamp-Juice.”
High Stakes (1925; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)
All through those weary months in Brazil the image of this girl had been constantly before his mental eye, but now that he was seeing her face to face her beauty numbed him, causing trembling of the limbs and that general feeling of debility and run-down-ness which afflicts so many people nowadays and can be corrected only by the use of such specifics as Buck-u-Uppo or Doctor Smythe’s Tonic Swamp Juice.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 11.3 (1948)
acts directly on the red corpuscles (p. 125)
“I tell you, Mrs Peagrim, that there is nothing, there is no lack of vitality which Nervino cannot set right. I am no physician myself, I speak as a layman, but it acts on the red corpuscles of the blood . . .”
The Little Warrior, ch. 20.4 (1920)
“I have been feeling for some time that you ought to take a tonic, and by a lucky chance Wilfred has just invented one which he tells me is the finest thing he has ever done. It is called Buck-U-Uppo, and acts directly on the red corpuscles.”
“Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo” (1926; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
imparts a gentle glow (p. 125)
Wodehouse used gentle glow very frequently for emotional warmth; the following are the instances when it is caused by food or drink, by pharmaceutical means, or by physical activity.
“Sends a gentle glow all over you, and makes you supple.”
“An Affair of Boats” (1905)
A gentle glow began to steal over him. The coffee was the kind of which, after a preliminary mouthful, you drink a little more just to see if it is really as bad as it seemed at first, but it was warm and comforting.
Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 6 (1925)
Soapy had finished his martini, but though agreeable to the taste and imparting a gentle glow, it brought no inspiration.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 16 (1961)
Even when speaking in monosyllables the other’s voice was a distinctive one, and he had no difficulty in recognizing it, and the knowledge that he had found a friend and sympathizer sent the red corpuscles racing through his veins as if he had drained a glass of one of those patent mixtures containing iron which tone up the system and impart a gentle glow.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 5.3 (1969)
Here I was, back in the old familiar headquarters, and the thought that I had seen the last of Totleigh Towers, of Sir Watkyn Bassett, of his daughter Madeline and above all of the unspeakable Spode, or Lord Sidcup as he now calls himself, was like the medium dose for adults of one of those patent medicines which tone the system and impart a gentle glow.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1971)
It was Mr. Trout’s healthy practice to take a brisk walk after lunch when the weather was fine. It tuned up his system and imparted a gentle glow.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 9 (1973)
“…gone?” “With the wind.” (p. 126)
See Cocktail Time.
special licence (p. 126)
The Archbishop of Canterbury grants exceptional permission for a marriage to take place in a place other than the church of one’s own parish. The current fee (2024) is about £325. See the Church of England web site.
spot of grease (p. 126)
When Millett, one of Leicester’s juniors, evolved some laborious sarcasm on the subject of Farnie’s swell friends, Farnie, in a series of three remarks, reduced him, figuratively speaking, to a small and palpitating spot of grease.
A Prefect’s Uncle, ch. 5 (1903)
Florence was a dear girl and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff. I’ve seen her reduce a butler to a spot of grease with about three words and a look.
“Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916)
“If it hadn’t been for the referee blowing his whistle all the time and putting me off my stroke, there would have been no Lionel Green left in that witness box—just a small spot of grease.”
Money in the Bank, ch. 21 (1942)
Lord Tilbury shot him a look which, if it had been directed at some erring minor editor of Tilbury House, would have reduced that unfortunate to a spot of grease.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 9.3 (1964)
“Arrange a meeting with Mrs. Bingo in your normal robust state with not even a cold in the head to help you out, and she will unquestionably reduce you to a spot of grease.”
“Bingo Bans the Bomb” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
This relative, though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn in a flash into a carbon copy of a Duchess of the old school reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so remarkable is that she doesn’t have to use a lorgnette, just does it all with the power of the human eye.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
striking while the iron was h. (p. 128)
Wodehouse had used the fuller phrase with hot a few times; it is an allusion to blacksmithing.
Without delay she must repair to the offices of the Superba-Llewellyn on Seventh Avenue, whither the man always went like a homing pigeon the moment he stepped off the boat, and strike while the iron was hot—slip it across him, in other words, before he had time to come out from under the influence.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 22 (1935)
I saw that the iron was hot, and that the moment had come for Boko to strike it.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 26 (1946)
“I wonder,” said Lord Emsworth, striking while the iron was hot, “if I could interest you in a good dog biscuit?”
“Birth of a Salesman” (1950; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
the milk of human kindness (p. 128)
Macbeth again: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
one of Jeeves’ larks on the wing (p. 128)
No doubt Jeeves has been quoting Browning: see Hot Water.
running under wraps. (p. 128)
A typo in the UK first edition; the US book has Running properly capitalized in this sentence fragment.
The term is from racing, apparently meaning keeping a runner’s or a horse’s speed a secret until the time the full capability is needed in competition.
hot as a pistol (p. 128)
The only other use found so far in Wodehouse’s fiction:
I knew all about this atmosphere thing. Bingo Little’s wife, the well-known novelist Rosie M. Banks, is as hot as a pistol on it, Bingo has often told me.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
the nibs (p. 128)
The aristocracy; those of high social position.
Muscular Christianity (p. 129)
A mid-Victorian ideal combining religion, patriotism, discipline, and athletic development; the English public school was an exemplar of the concept, with Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) as an early expression of these virtues.
The Rev. Sidney [Gooch] was a fine, upstanding specimen of the muscular Christian, but somewhat deficient in tact.
“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
the balloon’s going up (p. 129)
In other words, that an action is about to take place. See Ice in the Bedroom.
one of those wing threequarters (p. 129)
Alluding back to the discussion of Rugby football in chapter 10 (p. 83 of UK first edition).
strewing roses from her hat (p. 130)
“Naturally I don’t expect you to start dancing round and strewing roses out of a hat, but you might preserve the decencies of debate.”
Heavy Weather, ch. 6 (1933)
And, just as Bulstrode was about to accost him, a troupe of lightly-clad dancing girls surrounded this stout man, strewing roses…
Jacob Z. Schnellenhamer in “The Castaways” (this is only in Strand magazine version, June 1933)
Left to himself, this Stoker in about another half-minute would have been dancing round the room, strewing roses out of his hat.
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 20 (UK edition only, 1934)
You could see that he shared the almost universal opinion of parents and uncles that curates were nothing to start strewing roses out of a hat about.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 9 (1938)
Instead of dancing round in circles on the tips of his toes, strewing roses from his bowler hat and crying “My benefactor!” he pursed his ruddy lips and dished out an unequivocal refusal to co-operate.
“Success Story” (1947; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Beach helped himself to another glass of port, his third. It was pre-phylloxera, and should have had him dancing about the room, strewing roses from his hat, but it did not so much as bring a glow to his eye.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 8.4 (1952)
“I give three rousing cheers and start strewing roses from my hat.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 18 (1954)
“Well, I suppose you’re walking on air and strewing roses from your bowler hat?”
Cocktail Time, ch. 23 (1958)
He had that to tell which would be a verbal shot in the arm and set her dancing all over the place and strewing roses from her hat.
Service With a Smile, ch. 7.4 (1961)
“He started strewing roses from his hat and dancing the Can-Can all over the premises.”
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 7.3 (1965)
“It’ll have you dancing around on the tips of your toes and strewing roses from your hat.”
Company for Henry, ch. 8.3 (1967)
“You ought to be strewing roses from your hat.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 11.3 (1969)
Without hesitation Jerry added his contribution to the unanimous vote, and the diligent jurors filed back into court to bring the glass bottlers the glad news which would send them strewing roses—or possibly bottles—from their hats all over Lincolnshire and the eastern counties.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 2.1 (quoted from US edition, 1970)
young shrimp (p. 130)
Used mostly for diminuitive young women and once for a small boy.
When he considered that he had actually wasted several valuable minutes that day conversing with a young shrimp like Elizabeth Bottsworth, he could have kicked himself.
“The Amazing Hat Mystery” (1933; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
“I have another well-laid plan for encompassing that young shrimp.”
Bertie speaking of Angela in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1934)
After what had passed between this young shrimp and myself at our last meeting, I would have been well within my rights, no doubt, in being a bit stand-offish.
Joey Cooley in Laughing Gas, ch. 27 (1936)
The first impression I received on giving the apartment the once-over was that for a young shrimp of her shaky moral outlook Stiffy had been done pretty well in the matter of sleeping accommodation.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 7 (1938)
I saw that Catsmeat had not erred in his diagnosis of this young shrimp’s motives in giving Gussie the old treatment, and I had no option but to slip her the lowdown without further delay.
Corky Pirbright in The Mating Season, ch. 12 (1949)
packed all my troubles in the old kitbag (p. 130)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
doling out soup to the deserving poor (p. 130)
See page 9, above.
the maddest merriest day of all the glad new year (p. 130)
See A Damsel in Distress.
* 17 *
Runs from p. 132 to p. 137 in the 1963 UK edition.
I paled beneath my tan (p. 132)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
splitting a gusset (p. 132)
A gusset is an additional piece of fabric, often triangular or diamond-shaped, sewn between the main fabric panels of a garment to improve the fitting or to allow for more freedom of movement. The more common phrase would be “splitting a seam”: expressing anger or other emotion in such a physical manner as to tear the stitching of one’s clothing.
V-shaped depression (p. 133)
See wedge-shaped depression in Summer Lightning, and follow the links within that note for additional information.
burning fiery furnace (p. 133)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
ticking over (p. 133)
Functioning, especially as a figurative comparison with an engine at slow idle when its vehicle is in a neutral gear.
put a sock in it (p. 134)
Stop talking. The term relates to the early use of gramophones, invented in 1887; to lower the volume one stuffed a sock in the horn. [JD]
space in the house which I require for other purposes (p. 134)
as welcome as manna in the wilderness (p. 134)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
mal au foie (p. 135)
French for an illness of the liver; see A Damsel in Distress.
scorched earth policy (p. 135)
In warfare, a strategy of destroying all supplies, crops, tools, infrastructure, and so forth that an enemy would require in order to be able to continue to fight. Wodehouse uses it more lightly, to describe an incompetent cook’s blackening or overcooking of a meal.
Breakfast, in the absence of Mrs. Punter, the cook, away visiting relatives in Walham Green, had been prepared by the kitchen maid, an indifferent performer who had used the scorched earth policy on the bacon again.
Spring Fever, ch. 3 (1948)
well-to-do American millionaire (p. 135)
Compare this tautology with rich millionaire in Bill the Conqueror.
full of strange oaths (p. 135)
From As You Like It: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the fixture has been scratched (p. 135)
wave his magic wand (p. 135)
“Jeeves will be back in a moment,” I said, “and will doubtless put everything right with one wave of his magic wand.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 12 (1954)
I suppose I’ve become so used to having Jeeves wave his magic wand and knock the stuffing out of the stickiest crises that I expect him to produce something brilliant from the hat every time…
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
a fiver (p. 136)
A five-pound note. The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests the equivalent purchasing power in 2024 would be roughly £115.
altar rails … escape unscathed … faith in your star (pp. 135–136)
“When a fellow has been engaged as often as I have and each time saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour, he comes to have faith in his star. He feels that all is not lost till they have actually got him at the altar rails with the organ playing ‘Oh, perfect love’ and the clergyman saying ‘Wilt thou?’ At the moment, admittedly, I am in the soup, but it may well be that in God’s good time it will be granted to me to emerge unscathed from the tureen.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 15 (1954)
initiated … the theft of the cow-creamer (p. 136)
Recounted in Chapter 2 of The Code of the Woosters:
“I’m going to pinch the damn thing. … Or, rather, you are!”
shuddered like a jelly in a high wind (p. 137)
Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
“Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg” (1917; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
“My ganglions are vibrating like a jelly in a high wind.”
Eggy Mannering in Laughing Gas, ch. 9 (1936)
Bingo swayed like a jelly in a high wind.
“The Editor Regrets” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
And Conky, following his gaze, felt his heart execute four separate buck and wing steps and come to rest quivering like a jelly in a high wind.
“How’s That, Umpire?” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Listen,” said Cyril, and his voice shook like a jelly in a high wind.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Crispin, who on receipt of Barney’s bombshell had quivered like a jelly in a high wind, was still quivering…
The Girl in Blue, ch. 13 (1970)
* 18 *
Runs from p. 138 to p. 143 in the 1963 UK edition.
a month of Sundays (p. 138)
one of those Dictators … black shorts (p. 138)
lit a cigarette in what I intended to be a nonchalant manner (p. 139)
base over apex (p. 139)
See Cocktail Time.
muscles of his brawny arms just as much like iron bands as they always had been (p. 139)
See Ukridge.
catspaw (p. 140)
A person used as a tool by another to accomplish a purpose. [OED]
for it (p. 140)
British military slang, cited since 1909 in the OED, for being due for punishment.
wart hog (p. 141)
See Bill the Conqueror.
a fellow eight foot six in height (p. 141)
See p. 21, above.
oxyacetylene blowpipe (p. 141)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
chokey (p. 141)
Slang for prison, derived from Hindi chauki, a police-station or lock-up. [MH]
coming on visiting days and making faces at me through the bars (p. 141)
“I’ll come and jeer at you through the bars on visiting days.”
“Helping Freddie” (1911; in My Man Jeeves, 1919; revised for Bertie Wooster as “Fixing It for Freddie” in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
“And if they send me to the Bastille, you can come and see me on Visiting Days and hand me tracts through the bars.”
Big Money, ch. 1.1 (1931)
“And then off to the cooler for an exemplary sentence. I shall come on visiting days and make faces at you through the bars.”
Spring Fever, ch. 11 (1948)
all buck and beans (p. 141)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
standing on one leg (p. 142)
Often a physical manifestation of nervousness or unease in Wodehouse.
He had a long and vacant face topped by shining hair brushed back and heavily brilliantined after the prevailing mode, and he was standing on one leg. For Freddie Threepwood was seldom completely at his ease in his parent’s presence.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 1.1 (1923)
Freddie had been standing on one leg, and his constrained attitude annoyed Lord Emsworth.
“Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best” (1926; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“But what I was saying was that Bernard used to gulp like a seal and stand on one leg when father came along.”
“The Voice from the Past” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
“Er, yes,” said Pongo, standing on one leg. “Frightfully sorry.”
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 3.2 (1948)
“Oh . . . er . . . hullo,” said Cosmo, standing on one leg.
“You wished to see me?”
“Er . . . yes,” said Cosmo, standing on the other leg.
Cocktail Time, ch. 5 (1958)
“Mr. Mulliner,” she said, indicating Augustus, who was standing on one leg, looking ingratiating.
“The Right Approach” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“I wonder if you could spare me your attention for a moment, Mr. Widgeon.”
By standing on one leg and allowing his lower jaw to droop Freddie indicated that he would be delighted to do so.
“You have no objection to me talking shop for a little while?”
None whatever, Freddie indicated by standing on the other leg.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 2 (1961)
snootful (p. 142)
See Hot Water.
quivering like a stricken blancmange (p. 143)
A blancmange is a cold dessert of flavored milk stiffened with gelatin or cornstarch, and it has a tendency to quiver. Wodehouse often used for humorous effect the image of one that had been struck or otherwise attacked.
“Her engagement!” exclaimed Sam, leaping like a stricken blanc-mange.
Three Men and a Maid, ch. 8 (1922)
Old Bittlesham quivered from head to foot like a poleaxed blancmange.
“Comrade Bingo” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
Kay looked up into Sam’s face with a cordial, congratulatory friendliness which caused him to quiver like a smitten blancmange.
Sam the Sudden, ch. 12.3 (1925)
…so repellent was his aspect that after a brief “Good morning”—and even that caused the pig man to quiver like a smitten blancmange—Sir Gregory averted his gaze and transferred it to the occupant of the sty.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 6.2 (1952)
Well, you know what sort of condition the average advertiser is in during Christmas week, after those daily office parties. Let so much as a small fly stamp its feet suddenly on the ceiling and he leaps like a stricken blancmange.
“Christmas and Divorce” in Over Seventy (1957)
If you see a man with dark circles under his eyes and a tendency to quiver like a stricken blancmange if anybody speaks to him suddenly, you can be pretty certain that he is connected with the television industry, probably on the script-writing end.
“Our Man in America” in Punch, September 26, 1962
cinnamon bear (p. 143)
See A Damsel in Distress.
stubbed its toe (p. 143)
Bingo uttered a quick howl like that of a Labrador timber wolf which has stubbed its toe on a jagged rock.
“The Shadow Passes” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
Whether or not this clever move brought a hoarse cry to Stilton’s lips, I cannot say for certain, but I fancied I heard something that sounded like the howl of a timber wolf that has stubbed its toe on a passing rock.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 11 (1954)
He shuddered, accordingly, and in addition to shuddering uttered a sharp quack of anguish such as might have proceeded from some duck which, sauntering in a reverie beside the duck pond, had inadvertently stubbed its toe on a broken soda-water bottle.
Cocktail Time, ch. 1 (1958)
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)
the air was rent, as the expression is, by a sharp yowl such as you hear when a cougar or a snow leopard stubs its toe on a rock
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
interest, elevate, and amuse (p. 143)
See Leave It to Psmith.
* 19 *
Runs from p. 144 to p. 151 in the 1963 UK edition.
having moved pigs without a permit (p. 144)
failed to abate a smoky chimney (p. 144)
See Summer Lightning.
viv-whatever-the-word-is (p. 144)
The word vivacity had been used in other Wodehouse books, but this is the first time so far found where it is referenced in the Jeeves and Wooster saga. Bertie recalls it in time to use it in a later story, and Jeeves uses it as well:
For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt Agatha has her lair.
Bertie speaking of Ginger Winship in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1971)
“Then one day the cat returned, and the horse immediately recovered both vivacity and appetite.”
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 5 (1974)
fug (p. 145)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
dock briefs (p. 145)
A system, now outdated, in which an accused person in court who does not have legal representation may choose a barrister from those present; a sort of last-minute Legal Aid, not very lucrative to the lawyer but giving a chance for experience.
the res (p. 145)
Legal Latin for the point at issue.
There is a time for girlish frivolity (p. 145)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
those curious circular fish (p. 145)
Bertie probably means a member of the family that includes pufferfish and blowfish.
impending doom (p. 145)
hep (p. 145)
See Money for Nothing.
silvery laugh (p. 145)
Often in Wodehouse used to describe a laugh that is not well-received by its hearer.
“I say, old girl,” he said one evening, “I know you won’t mind my mentioning it, and I don’t suppose you’re aware of it yourself, but recently you’ve developed a sort of silvery laugh. A nasty thing to have about the home. Try to switch it off, old bird, would you mind?”
“Jane Gets Off the Fairway” (1924; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)
She was in lively mood, and her silvery laugh often rang out over the din and chatter. And every time it did so it seemed to go right through Archibald like an electric drill.
“The Code of the Mulliners” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936).
“That’s good. I was afraid you might want to be off somewhere, roller-skating. Ha, ha, ha,” said Evangeline, laughing a silvery laugh. “He, he, he,” she added, laughing another.
Now, against silvery laughs qua silvery laughs there is, of course, nothing to be said. But there are moments in a man’s life when he is ill-attuned to them, and it must be confessed that this particular couple, proceeding whence they did, stirred Angus McTavish up to no little extent. … Angus was still thinking of those silvery laughs and feeling that they had been, all things considered, in the most dubious taste.
“Farewell to Legs” (1935; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
Mrs. Bingo laughed a silvery laugh.
“You are silly!” she said indulgently, and Bingo knew that hope, never robust, must now be considered dead.
“Bingo and the Peke Crisis” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
Madeline Bassett laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh which was one of the things that had got her so disliked by the better element.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)
strength is as the strength of ten (p. 145)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
“Let’s get the show on the road.” (p. 146)
Here, this theatrical turn of phrase means to get the action started, as with a stage show going from town to town for performances. Bertie uses it the same way at the end of the chapter (p. 151 of the UK edition), and in a later book:
It had never occurred to me that Tuppy might be seriously short of doubloons, but I saw now why there had been all this delay in assembling the bishop and assistant clergy and getting the show on the road.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1971)
This should not be confused with take the show on the road, which more often refers to out-of-town tryouts when a show is being polished before its formal premiere.
So though we would, of course, be opening cold, it being impossible to take the show on the road and knock it into shape, I had high hopes of a successful first night.
“Unpleasantness at Kozy Kot” (in A Few Quick Ones, US edition, 1959)
a bomb falling on an ammunition dump (p. 146)
In assembling this note, I [NM] was greatly surprised by how often Wodehouse refers to ammunition dumps.
You cannot conduct a full-throated long-distance conversation in the early morning and finish up by ejaculating “Hell!” in a voice like the bursting of an ammunition dump without rousing such sleepers as may be in your vicinity.
Hot Water, ch. 11.3 (1932)
And he had just reached the point where he had found her in his arms and was in the process of dwelling on this phase of their relationship with a tender, reminiscent smile when his attention was attracted by a noise in his rear like the explosion of an ammunition dump, and he looked round to see Mrs. Steptoe.
Quick Service, ch. 16 (1940)
The words, spoken in his left ear just as he was shooting, were little more than a whisper, but they affected Horace as if an ammunition dump had exploded beneath him.
“Excelsior” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
A passer-by at this point might have supposed that an ammunition dump had exploded in the near neighbourhood. But it was only Adela.
The Old Reliable, ch. 16 (1951)
He had drained his glass and refilled it and was sitting dreamily watching the beaded bubbles winking at the brim, and beginning to feel a little better, when abruptly all the good that the excellent wine was doing him was undone by what sounded like the explosion of an ammunition dump in his immediate rear.
French Leave, ch. 6.3 (1956/59)
Something not unlike an explosion in an ammunition dump made itself heard at the other end of the line.
Service with a Smile, ch. 8.1 (1961)
A snort of about the calibre of an explosion in an ammunition dump escaped my late father’s sister.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 13 (1960)
Her eyes were inclined to bulge a little, but people of her acquaintance had no objection to this provided they did not flash, for when they did it was as if lightning had struck an ammunition dump.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 3 (1969)
Her snorts are not the sniffing snorts snorted by Ma McCorkadale, they resemble more an explosion in the larger type of ammunition dump and send strong men rocking back on their heels as if struck by lightning.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 11 (1971)
shook from wind-swept-hair-do to shoe-sole (p. 146)
I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
if she hadn’t clutched at Stinker’s arm might have taken a toss (p. 146)
For many similar hypothetical falls, see The Ice in the Bedroom.
tremolo (p. 146)
A wavering effect in the singing or speaking voice, used to express emotion.
I could see that this had moved him. He plainly wavered. He did a sort of twiddly on the turf with his foot. And, when he spoke, one spotted the tremolo in the voice: “You really think that?”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1934)
It was when he had reached this point, with that sort of lingering, caressing, treacly tremolo on the “eyes” which makes all the difference, that the mothers of Notting Hill, unable to restrain themselves any longer, had started whooping and stamping and whistling through their fingers.
“The Masked Troubadour” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
My voice, which had been firm and resonant, took on a melting tremolo.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)
“You are aware, Uncle Percy,” I said, bunging a bit of a tremolo into the old voice, “that he loves young Nobby.”
Joy in the Morning, ch. 26 (1946)
Nature had not given Veronica Wedge more than about as much brain as would fit comfortably into an aspirin bottle, feeling no doubt that it was better not to overdo the thing, but apart from that she had everything and it is scarcely surprising that Tipton Plimsoll, when he spoke of her, did so with a catch in his throat and a tremolo in his voice.
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 2.2 (1965)
It was some little time before Jas Waterbury spoke, and when he did his voice had a sort of tremolo in it, as if he’d begun to realize that life wasn’t the thing of roses and sunshine he’d been thinking it.
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Persuasiveness might serve him better. When he spoke, it was with a tremolo in the voice.
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 7.3 (1968)
Let him once get Linda to the negotiating table, he had told himself, let her once hear the tremolo in his voice and see the melting look in his eyes, and all would have been well.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 6.1 (1969)
“My fiancée wanted me to,” he said, and as his lips framed the word “fiancée” his voice took on a sort of tremolo like that of a male turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 3 (1971)
“Daph,” he said, getting the tremolo into his voice which he found so effective in his dealings with women, “I’m in a terrible hole.”
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 6.2 (1973)
a heart of stone (p. 146)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
stuffed by a good taxidermist (p. 146)
See Summer Lightning.
trouble and expense (p. 146)
His own name was Pugh, and the whole party, like the other visitors whom they represented, had, it seemed, come to Mervo, at great trouble and expense, to patronize the tables, only to find these suddenly, without a word of warning, withdrawn from their patronage.
The Prince and Betty, ch. 9 (1912)
“It’s always been a habit of mine in these little matters,” he went on, “to let other folks do the rough work and chip in myself when they’ve cleared the way. It saves trouble and expense.”
The Little Nugget, ch. 19 (1913)
“What’s the good of putting yourself to all the trouble and expense of going to America?”
Uneasy Money, ch. 1 (1915/16)
Each was connected with a business in the metropolis; and often, before he left for the links, Peter would go to the trouble and expense of ringing up the office to say he would not be coming in that day…
“A Woman Is Only a Woman” (1919; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
At great trouble and expense, I was taught to throw up a rubber ball with my left hand and catch it with my right, keeping the small of the back rigid and generally behaving in a graceful and attractive manner.
“Keeping Up with Terpsichore” (1919); quoted by Hugo Carmody in Summer Lightning, ch. 4.2 (1929)
“What guarantee have I,” demanded Ukridge, “that if I go to enormous trouble and expense getting him another match, he won’t turn aside and brush away a silent tear in the first round because he’s heard that the blighter’s wife has got an ingrowing toenail?”
“The Début of Battling Billson” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
“And what I say is, it’s a shame if I’m not to be allowed a go at him after all the trouble and expense I’ve been put to.”
Marcella Tyrrwhitt in “Open House” (1932; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
“I doubt if I will, though. Lot of trouble and expense.”
Lord Uffenham, about suing Mrs. Cork in Money in the Bank, ch. 28 (1942)
As he sat in the small smoking room, listlessly thumbing one of those illustrated weekly papers for which their proprietors have the crust to charge a shilling, he was experiencing all the effects of a severe hangover without having had to go to the trouble and expense of manufacturing it.
Tipton Plimsoll in Full Moon, ch. 7.1 (1947)
“I mean to say, it’s a bit thick, going to all the trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon that you’ve become brother-in-law to a fellow with St. Vitus’s Dance.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 9 (1953/54)
And a famous variant on the phrase:
To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying.
“An Old Sweetheart Who Has Put on Weight”, section 2, in America, I Like You (1956)
flatter than a Dover sole (p. 147)
Kipling introduced Stalky as a subsidiary character in a short story, and he fell as flat as a Dover sole.
Letter to Bill Townend dated September 29, 1924, in Author! Author! (1962)
Must we abolish Twickenham and Murrayfield because some sorry reasoner insists that if the scrum half had been a cat he would have been squashed flatter than a Dover sole?
“Smokers of the World, Unite” (in Punch, August 4, 1954; also in ch. 12.4 of Over Seventy, 1957)
Many years previously in their mutual nursery Lady Hermione, even then a force to be reckoned with, had once struck her brother Galahad on the head with her favourite doll Belinda, laying him out as flat as a Dover sole.
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 9.2 (1965)
“It laid me out as flat as a Dover sole.”
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 10 (1968)
turn the other nose (p. 147)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
the shot heard round the world (p. 148)
The opening battles of the American Revolutionary War, at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 18, 1775, in a phrase coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem “Concord Hymn”:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Wodehouse had alluded to it at least once before:
“Yes, I did,” said Mr. Schoonmaker, taking time out for a snort similar in its resonance to the shot heard round the world.
Service with a Smile, ch. 11 (1961)
brought home the bacon (p. 148)
See Laughing Gas.
a man with no bowels—of compassion (p. 148)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
as I’m told the sound of bugles acts on war-horses (p. 149)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
lower slopes (p. 151)
Sometimes this term refers to the bottom of a hill; sometimes to part of a person’s face. Here Bertie clearly means his legs and hindquarters.
He could indeed scarcely have started more violently if a bradawl had come through the seat of the deck chair in which he was reclining and impaled his lower slopes to the depth of an inch and a quarter.
Henry Paradene in Company for Henry, ch. 8.2 (1967)
as full of holes as a Swiss cheese (p. 151)
“It was my duty to examine her and make it plain to the jury that she was cockeyed and her testimony as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.”
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 4.4 (1969)
behind the sofa (p. 151)
Many of Wodehouse’s young men are compelled to take this refuge; here are the references to Bertie Wooster doing it.
As he came into the room I backed behind a sofa and commended my soul to God.
“Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)
My eye had been caught by a substantial sofa in the corner of the room, and I could have wished no more admirable cover. I was behind it with perhaps two seconds to spare.
The Mating Season, ch. 16 (1949)
To do a backward jump of some eleven feet and install myself behind the sofa was with me the work of an instant…
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 17 (1954)
I was hiding behind a sofa at the time, a thing I have been compelled to do rather oftener than I could wish . . .
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1971)
* 20 *
Runs from p. 152 to p. 159 in the 1963 UK edition.
pretty generally recognized at the Drones Club and elsewhere (p. 152)
For similar third-person references to Bertie’s qualities, see The Code of the Woosters.
keep … the upper lip stiff (p. 152)
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster by those who enjoy his close acquaintance that if there is one quality more than another that distinguishes him, it is his ability to keep the lip stiff and upper and make the best of things.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 5 (1946)
Beneath the bludgeonings of Fate, his head is bloody but unbowed (p. 152)
A slight misquotation from Henley; see Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.
family spectre (p. 152)
In addition to the quotations below, note the early ghost stories from Punch in 1903 under the series title Mr. Punch’s Spectral Analyses. Many of these involve family ghosts.
“It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience.”
“A Shocking Affair” (in Tales of St. Austin’s, 1903)
All the best people keep ghosts nowadays, but how few of them think of making any provision for them while they are away from home? In the excitement of packing nobody has time to give the family spectre a thought.
“Deserted Ghosts” (1904)
Immediately after dinner he began to flit about the castle like a family spectre of active habits.
Spennie, Lord Dreever, in A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 24 (1910)
The Manor was not haunted, but if it had been and if the family spectre had suddenly presented itself at his elbow and barked at him, he would have reacted in a very similar way.
Doctor Sally, ch. 10 (1932)
“I don’t mind telling you that your habit of haunting my state-room like a family spectre has caused Gertrude considerable alarm and despondency.”
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 15 (1935)
I sat up quivering in every limb. It was as if a family spectre had edged up and breathed down the back of my neck.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 6 (1938)
“The way you keep shimmering in and out, one would think you were the family spectre.”
Said to Phipps in The Old Reliable, ch. 18 (1951)
“Quite, quite,” said Lord Emsworth, and drifted back into the drawing room like a family spectre disappointed with the room it had been told off to haunt.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.2 (1952)
He was conscious of a passing wish that this woman would not keep flitting into his life every hour on the hour like a family spectre, but she was linked by marriage to the man who had set his feet on the ladder of affluence by letting him have that Silver River stock, so she must not be allowed to think that her presence was unwelcome.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 15 (1961)
Cats prowling at dusk could always have learned much from Percy, and family spectres would have benefited by taking his correspondence course.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 11 (1964)
When our conversations are interrupted by the arrival of what you might call the quality, he always disappears like a family spectre vanishing at dawn.
Jeeves in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1971)
He was as difficult to dislodge as a family spectre.
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 12.3 (1973)
Jeeves, I need scarcely say, had vanished like a family spectre at the crack of dawn. He always does when company arrives.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 7 (1974)
Empire-building (p. 153)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
competitions for bonny babies (p. 153)
See Bill the Conqueror.
“See that scar on my calf?” (p. 153)
Plank’s story is almost identical with the account told by Major Brabazon-Plank in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 13 (1948). See Uncle Dynamite for the conclusion drawn from this.
the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world (p. 154)
From a poem by William Ross Wallace (1819–1881).
the right stuff (p. 154)
the Association code (p. 154)
That is, the type of football that is usually called soccer today in the USA.
hooks (p. 157)
Hands; see The Code of the Woosters.
downing tools (p. 157)
A phrase more commonly associated with a labor strike than with retirement.
a vicar who was a good prop forward (p. 157)
A variant on a classic joke about needing a curate who was a good fast bowler at cricket; see “Personally Conducted” (1907) which refers to a Punch cartoon.
a broken reed (p. 157)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
squirt (p. 158)
A colloquial term with various meanings cited in the OED since the nineteenth century, including a dandy, a weakling, a child, and a person of slight stature. Wodehouse is cited as one example:
Even when calling her a squirt and a half-portion he had thought of her as a comely squirt and a half-portion with plenty of sex appeal.
Company for Henry, ch. 7 (1967)
Using the phrase little squirt:
“Who’s de little squirt, Mr. Maude?”
The Prince and Betty, ch. 29 (US edition, 1912)
“If there’s one bozo in this world I got no use for it’s a little squirt that double-crosses his pals.”
Joe the Dip to Horace in Bill the Conqueror, ch. 6 (1924)
She was leaning back with closed eyes, and he thought he had never seen such a little squirt in his life.
“Honeysuckle Cottage” (1925; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
“What induced me to speak as I did was the fact that Angela, the little squirt, had just been most offensive, and I seized the opportunity to get a bit of my own back.”
Tuppy Glossop in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 8 (1934)
Whether it was excusable in the circumstances for Ricky at this point to tell Mr Pott that he was lying in his teeth, and that only the fact of his being an undersized little squirt whom no decent man would bring himself to touch with a barge pole saved him from having his neck wrung, is open to debate.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 15 (1939)
“And I seem to recollect a conversation on the same subject with that little squirt, Trumper.”
Money in the Bank, ch. 20 (1942)
Tipton had no time for niece Prudence. Briefly noting that this one was a blue-eyed little squirt who appeared to be in the highest spirits, he returned to the scrutiny of Veronica.
Full Moon, ch. 4.1 (1947)
“A frightful pie-faced little squirt named Celia Todd,” said Sidney.
“Tangled Hearts” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Good God! Now I have you placed. So you were that little squirt.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1953/54)
“She’s so majestic, and I’m such a little squirt. You agree that I’m a little squirt, Tippy?”
Wilfred Allsop in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 1.1 (1965)
“Would you feel he had the right idea, or would you give him the horse’s laugh and say ‘Drop dead, you little squirt’?”
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 6.2 (1965)
I might—indeed I would—have dotted in the eye a small young gawd-help-us or a gawd-help-us of riper years of the large economy size, but I couldn’t possibly get tough with an undersized little squirt who would never see fifty-five again.
Describing Pop Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 15 (1974)
bitten by a puma (p. 159)
Johnny Byng must have been on one of Plank’s expeditions in the Americas, as pumas are found only in the Western Hemisphere. See Full Moon.
from Johannesburg to Cape Town (p. 159)
On modern highways, a distance of about 1,400 km (about 870 miles).
no accounting for tastes (p. 159)
She seemed to be feeling that there was no accounting for tastes.
Miss Brinkwater in Laughing Gas, ch. 12 (1936)
No accounting for tastes is the way one has to look at these things, one man’s caviar being another man’s major-general, as the old saw says.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 7 (1960)
“There’s something about onion soup that seems to draw them like a magnet. Can’t stand the muck myself but there’s no accounting for tastes.”
Service with a Smile, ch. 9.3 (1961)
“And yet his mother dotes on him, which just shows there’s no accounting for tastes.”
Speaking of Huxley Winkworth in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 2.1 (1965)
“Where you and I shrink from this cinnamon bear, the young Rockmeteller will be all over it. No accounting for tastes.”
“Life with Freddie” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
“No accounting for tastes.”
“You’re right.”
“Takes all sorts to make a world.”
“Exactly. Very well put.”
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 5.6 (1968)
* 21 *
Runs from p. 160 to p. 165 in the 1963 UK edition.
compiling his Memoirs, never misses (p. 160)
An apparent misprint in the UK editions; US book and Australian serial texts have compiling his memoirs and never misses here.
split straws (p. 160)
See chop straws in Right Ho, Jeeves.
incumbent (p. 160)
The person currently holding an office; in this case, old Bellamy, the vicar.
the old oil (p. 161)
Flattery; words spoken to smooth a situation, sometimes hypocritically.
slam (p. 161)
The OED labels this as US slang for an insult or put-down, with citations since 1884. Wodehouse had used it as early as the ’teens:
“I think that was another slam,” said Ashe pensively. “Well, I deserve it.”
Something New, ch. 1 (1915) [UK version Something Fresh has insult here.]
I have a suspicion that George Pleydell, the author, was working off a delicate slam at the stupidity of the average theater audience, for the audience at the Maxine Elliott’s is supposed to be the jury in the trial scene.
“Some Theatrical Mysteries” (1916)
shook the loaf (p. 161)
See p. 19, above.
cut a long story down to a short-short (p. 162)
Definitions vary for this category of brief fiction; some sources say “under 1,000 words”; others define the limits as 750 to 1,500 words.
“So, to condense a novelette into a short-short, I arranged with him to give me first refusal of the goodwill and effects, or whatever they’re called.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 3 (1951)
“It’s a long story, but I think I can condense it into a short-short.”
Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 10 (1957)
“It’s a long story, but I’ll condense it into a short-short, and I would like to stress before embarking on my narrative that you can rely on its being accurate, for when Jeeves tells you anything, it’s like getting it straight from the mouth of the stable cat.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
a corpse spring from its bier (p. 163)
“Guaranteed to make a week-old corpse spring from its bier and enter for the Six-Day Bicycle-Race.”
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 2 (1924)
With the possible exception of a certain brand of cigarette—one puff of which, one gathers from the advertisements, will make a week-old corpse spring from its bier and dance the Carioca—there is nothing that so braces a girl up as a reconciliation with the man she loves.
The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 18 (1935)
“Lord love a duck!” (p. 163)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
vicking (p. 163)
Bertie coins a verb here for the activities of a vicar; the word is not included in the OED.
understudy (p. 163)
As is his habit, Bertie uses theatrical jargon. See The Inimitable Jeeves.
real ginger (p. 164)
Reference works so far consulted do not define this term, but Wodehouse used it a few times in various ways, in general meaning something spicy or exciting.
“You recall all she said.”
“I do indeed. It was the real ginger.”
“But, unfortunately, untrue.”
The Small Bachelor, ch. 14.1 (1926/27)
“The way you used to talk about him, one would have thought he was the real ginger. Quite the reverse I found him. As nice a soft-spoken old bird as one could wish to meet.”
“The Voice from the Past” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
This, she was telling herself, or the whole trend of the conversation had deceived her, was the real ginger.
Quick Service, ch. 18 (1940)
“She says ‘dream rabbit’ is dashed strong stuff. The real ginger.”
Full Moon, ch. 1.3 (1947)
twin stars (p. 164)
See Money for Nothing.
covering his upturned face with kisses (p. 164)
See the end notes to “In Alcala”.
louse of the first water (p. 164)
For another mingling of an insult with a term denoting high quality, see snakes of the first water in Heavy Weather.
base Indian … threw away a pearl (p. 164)
Alluding to the final scene of Othello: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
simp (p. 164)
Colloquial shortening of simpleton.
* 22 *
Runs from p. 166 to p. 171 in the 1963 UK edition.
put the frosting on the cake (p. 166)
As with put the lid on it, this sometimes means the final blow, the last stage of things getting worse. The 1974 quotation below, however, gives a positive spin to the phrase.
This was the end. This put the frosting on the cake.
“Bingo Bans the Bomb” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
By an unfortunate coincidence Herman had selected a melody to which he—Monty, not Herman—had so often danced with his arm about the substantial waist of Gertrude Butterwick, and if that wasn’t putting the frosting on the cake and rubbing salt into the wound, he—still Monty—would have been glad to know what was.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 7.1 (1969)
And what she resumed about unquestionably put the frosting on the cake.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1971)
The weather couldn’t have been better, blue skies and sunshine all over the place, and to put the frosting on the cake E. Jimpson Murgatroyd had been one hundred per cent right about the spots.
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 4 (1974)
made our paths straight (p. 166)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
nolle prosequi (p. 166)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
“Do you remember something I said … on our previous visit to Totleigh Towers?” (p. 167)
“One has to face it, Jeeves—Stiffy, who is pure padded cell from the foundations up, is about to marry the Rev. H. P. Pinker, himself about as pronounced a goop as ever broke bread, and there is no reason to suppose—one has to face this, too—that their union will not be blessed. There will, that is to say, ere long be little feet pattering about the home. And what one asks oneself is, Just how safe will human life be in the vicinity of those feet, assuming—as one is forced to assume—that they will inherit the combined loopiness of two such parents? It is with a sort of tender pity, Jeeves, that I think of the nurses, the governesses, the private-school masters and the public-school masters who will lightly take on the responsibility of looking after a blend of Stephanie Byng and Harold Pinker, little knowing that they are coming up against something hotter than mustard.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 13 (1938)
preached about the Hivites and Hittites (p. 167)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Beginning with a thoughtful excursus on Brotherly Love among the Hivites and Hittites, it came down through the Early Britons, the Middle Ages and the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth to these modern times of ours, and it was here that Anselm Mulliner really let himself go.
“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
If it were done when ’twere done (p. 167–8)
A slight misquotation from Macbeth: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
as the gentle rain from heaven upon the spot beneath (p. 168)
Also slightly misquoted from The Merchant of Venice: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
the essential me (p. 169)
This seems to be the only use of this term in Wodehouse’s writing, and at first glance it seems something that he might have picked up from the culture of the 1960s. But the term is much older in metaphysical literature, and it may have been shared with him by his brother Armine, a theosophist. One example among many:
Yet it is still the essential Me, soul of my soul, spirit of my spirit, and so must it be throughout the eternities.
Michael Monahan in Metaphysical Magazine, vol. 22, p. 244 (1908)
in an antique shop in the Brompton Road (p. 171)
Recounted in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
* 23 *
Runs from p. 172 to p. 179 in the 1963 UK edition.
a very old sheep clearing its throat (p. 172)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
swam into his ken (p. 172)
A glancing allusion to a line from Keats; see The Clicking of Cuthbert.
kleptomaniac (p. 173)
A few examples of Wodehouse’s use of this plot device:
“But you get boy kleptomaniacs just as much in proportion as grown-up kleptomaniacs.”
The Pothunters, ch. 10 (1902)
“Bet you he’s well-known in society as a kleptomaniac.”
Mr. Peters speaking of Lord Emsworth in Something Fresh/Something New, ch. 3.4 (1915)
“The conclusion to which one is irresistibly impelled is that we have a kleptomaniac in our midst.”
Bertie’s Uncle Willoughby in “Jeeves Takes Charge” (1916; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)
“Do you realize that Betty, the girl you are going to marry, is a kleptomaniac?”
“A Mixed Threesome” (1921; in The Clicking of Cuthbert, 1922)
“Well, he says that Wilbert Cream is a . . . what’s the word?” I referred to the letter. “A kleptomaniac,” I said. “Which means, if the term is not familiar to you, a chap who flits hither and thither pinching everything he can lay his hands on.”
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 6 (1960)
There was a kleptomaniac who was always pinching things from people, and one day he took a packet of banknotes from the overcoat pocket of a man named Gibbs.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 12.2 (1970)
a sound like a dying soda-water syphon (p. 173)
See The Mating Season.
the psychology of the individual (p. 174)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
the surgeon’s knife (p. 174)
An allusion to accepting temporary pain in order to effect a longer-lasting improvement.
champing at the bit (p. 174)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
obviate—is it obviate?—all unpleasantness (p. 174)
Bertie is recalling a phrase from Jeeves:
“Well, I was wondering, sir, if on the whole it would not be best if you were to obviate all unpleasantness and embarrassment by removing yourself from the yacht.”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 12 (1934)
ten quid (p. 174)
Roughly equivalent to £500 in 2024 purchasing power.
practical politics (p. 174)
See Cocktail Time.
only a month or so ago that he and that aunt of his stole my cow-creamer (p. 175)
One more indication that publication dates are no clue to the internal time scheme of the stories. The cow-creamer was stolen in The Code of the Woosters (1938).
silver cream jug (p. 175)
See The Code of the Woosters for an illustration and description.
meum and tuum (p. 175)
See Something Fresh.
came up before me in my court once (p. 175)
See “Without the Option” (1925).
like the wind going out of a dying duck (p. 176)
See The Mating Season.
young slab of damnation (p. 176)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
Federated Malay States (p. 177)
See p. 83, above.
boomps-a-daisy (p. 177)
See The Mating Season.
second division (p. 179)
An intermediate class of prison treatment, more strict than first division. Both these classes were for first offenders, to separate them from hardened criminals or those sentenced to hard labour. First division prisoners could wear their own clothes, send and receive mail, and order in food from outside at their own expense. Second division prisoners had none of these privileges.
These divisions were established by the Prison Act 1898 and abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1948; if Wodehouse was aware of this, he was presumably setting these novels in an earlier era.
* 24 *
Runs from p. 180 to p. 189 in the 1963 UK edition.
police bin … village coop (p. 180)
Colloquial names for a small local jail.
“I always felt I was slipping in those days if it didn’t take two of them to get me to the police bin, with another walking behind carrying my hat.”
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 6.1 (1965)
private school (p. 180)
top brass (p. 180)
The one in authority; by analogy to high-ranking military officers, so called from the gold braid on their caps.
went with a swing (p. 180)
See Bill the Conqueror.
on the lawn below (p. 180)
See p. 11, above.
emporium (p. 181)
Wodehouse usually uses the word in its normal sense of a shop or department store; here Bertie is using it ironically for a different sort of public establishment.
plank bed (p. 181)
Percy had been shaken to the core of his being. Physically, he was still stiff and sore from the plank bed. Mentally, he was a volcano.
A Damsel in Distress, ch. 6 (1919)
“Do you know I spent the night on a beastly plank bed,” he said, huskily.
“The Long Arm of Looney Coote” (1923: in Ukridge, 1924)
A few months before, while celebrating Boat Race night, I had fallen into the clutches of the Law for trying to separate a policeman from his helmet, and after sleeping fitfully on a plank bed had been hauled up at Bosher Street next morning and fined five of the best.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
I have never slept better in my life than on that plank bed, and I am convinced that the secret of health and well-being is to turn in at nine and get up at six.
“Huy Day by Day” (Wodehouse’s internment camp recollections) in Performing Flea (1953)
I had slept but fitfully on the plank bed which was all that Vinton Street Gestapo had seen their way to provide for the use of clients, so after partaking of a hearty meal I turned in between the sheets.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 6 (1954)
He had slept only fitfully on the plank bed with which the authorities had provided him and he had had practically no breakfast, but he felt that the vicissitudes through which he had passed had made him a deeper, graver man, which is always a good thing.
“Bingo Bans the Bomb” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
I got outside it (p. 181)
a list of Credits and Debits, as I believe Robinson Crusoe used to (p. 181)
Wasn’t it Robinson Crusoe or some one who, when things were working out a bit messily for him, used to draw up a sort of Credit and Debit account, in order to see exactly where he stood and ascertain whether he was behind or ahead of the game at that particular moment?
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1934)
But I am innocent. My hands are clean (p. 181)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
put the bee on this suggestion (p. 183)
taking the rap (p. 183)
link his lot with yours (p. 183)
A Victorian-era term for marriage, in the sense of a couple sharing each other’s fate and fortunes. First appearing about 1840, the phrase got a big boost of popularity from its use in Trollope’s The Claverings (1867).
He pictured him as a handsome, powerful, robust individual with a strong jaw and a loud voice, for he could imagine no lesser type of man consenting to link his lot with such a woman.
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 3 (1917)
But to link his lot with a girl who read his aunt’s books and liked them; a girl who could tolerate the presence of the dog Toto; a girl who clasped her hands in pretty, childish joy when she saw a nasturtium in bloom—it was too much.
“Honeysuckle Cottage” (1925; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
Twenty-five years ago, when he had whisked this woman off in a hansom cab to the registrar’s to link his lot with hers, he had known that he was getting the sweetest and loveliest girl on earth; but even then, intoxicated with love though he was, he had not thought particularly highly of her intelligence.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 22 (1937)
Quite possibly she would grow out of it in time, and in any case he felt that as a man who went about shooting sixty-twos in medal contests he owed it to himself to link his lot with a golfer of her caliber.
“Sleepy Time” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
Even before his soul mate had come into his life he had begun to entertain doubts as to whether in contracting to link his lot with that of Vera Upshaw he might not have been a little precipitate.
The Girl in Blue, ch. 2.3 (1970)
encourage you with word and gesture (p. 184)
It is merely unfortunate that those duties are not such as to enable us to toil side by side, encouraging each other with word and gesture.
The New Fold (1909)/Psmith in the City, ch. 23 (1910)
Was she picturing the Rev. Rupert as she had seen him then—gallant, fearless, cleaving the air with long sweeps of his clerical hat, encouraging her the while with word and gesture?
“The Go-Getter” (1931; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
Crimson in the face, his eyes gleaming with partisan enthusiasm, he danced round the combatants, encouraging his nominee with word and gesture.
“Cats Will Be Cats” (1932; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
“He was the life and soul of the party, giving up his water ration to the sick and ailing, conducting himself with cool aplomb among the alligators, and encouraging with word and gesture the weaker brethren who got depressed because they couldn’t dress for dinner.”
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 6.3 (1948)
When I arrived at one o’clock at the little Italian restaurant on Fifty-eighth Street where he had told me to meet him, he was there all right, but he had done his stoking-up at eleven, so I tucked in by myself with him looking on and encouraging me with word and gesture.
Letter to Bill Townend dated December 24, 1951, in Author! Author! (1962); a similar passage is in a letter dated May 2nd, 1950, in Performing Flea (1953).
“Come along and encourage me with word and gesture.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1953/54)
When some Friday night there is a big fight on, you will always find me at the ringside, encouraging Sugar Ray Robinson or Carmen Basilio or whoever it may be with word and gesture, but apart from that television scarcely enters my life.
“Television” (in Over Seventy, 1957)
It was owing to his grandmother’s fondness for bazaars (said Mr. Mulliner) that Augustus found himself in the garden of Balmoral, and it is ironical to reflect that when she ordered him to escort her there, he was considerably annoyed, for he had been planning to go to Kempton Park and with word and gesture encourage in the two-thirty race a horse in whose fortunes he was interested.
“The Right Approach” (1958; in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
Winter may send the birds flying south and pile up the snow against the terrace doors, but while not actually shoveling the latter away, I am still there encouraging the shovelers with word and gesture, as firmly rooted to the spot as a limpet on a rock.
“Dogs and Cats and Wodehouse” (in New York Times, October 3, 1971)
secrency and silence (p. 184)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
as I remember telling you once (p. 184)
“You will understand,” I said, “that I am implying nothing derogatory to your cousin Madeline when I say that the idea of being united to her in the bonds of holy wedlock is one that freezes the gizzard. The fact is in no way to her discredit. I should feel just the same about marrying many of the world’s noblest women. There are certain females whom one respects, admires, reveres, but only from a distance. If they show any signs of attempting to come closer, one is prepared to fight them off with a blackjack. It is to this group that your cousin Madeline belongs.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)
“What’s all this?” (p. 184)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
road company rozzers (p. 185)
Rozzer alone is generally an uncomplimentary slang term for a policeman; here Stiffy is comparing Oates to an actor in a touring company playing a policeman.
shackling the police (p. 185)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
Fling wide those gates (p. 185)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
a sound like a hippopotamus taking its foot out of the mud (p. 185–86)
See Money for Nothing.
not put into this world for pleasure alone (p. 186)
bring his ginger hairs in sorrow to the grave (p. 186)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
lily-livered poltroon (p. 186)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
what I believe is called a moue (p. 186)
French: a grimace of discontent, a pout.
she made what I believe is known as a moue—is it moue? . . . Shoving out the lips, I mean, and drawing them quickly back again.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4 (1938)
soigné (p. 186)
French for “well-groomed, elegant.”
“I would not go so far as that, sir, but I have unquestionably seen you more soigné.”
It crossed my mind for an instant that with a little thought one might throw together something rather clever about “Way down upon the soigné river,” but I was too listless to follow it up.
The Mating Season, ch. 20 (1949)
The pun is on a line from Stephen Foster’s song “Old Folks at Home” (1851), which begins “Way down upon the Swanee River/Far, far away”.
Gawd-help-us (p. 187)
tempers justice with mercy (p. 187)
like a stuffed frog (p. 187)
See Bill the Conqueror.
dig you (p. 187)
Dig is slang, originally American from the 1930s, for understanding or admiring someone or something.
George nodded. “I dig you, chief.”
Lord Emsworth’s grandson in Service with a Smile, ch. 7.1 (1961)
‘I still don’t dig you.’
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 10.3 (1969)
talking through the back of his neck (p. 187)
St. Vitus dance (p. 188)
See Summer Moonshine.
scarcely able to b. my e. (p. 188)
to believe my ears.
Others abide our question, but you don’t (p. 188)
Alluding to Matthew Arnold’s poem “Shakspeare”: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
even unto half my kingdom (p. 188)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
throwing his child from the sledge (p. 189)
See Full Moon.
well stricken in years (p. 189)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
life in the old dog yet (p. 189)
The Dolly whom Colonel Wyvern beheld was a beautiful woman with just that hint of diablerie in her bearing which makes elderly widowers feel that there is life in the old dog yet.
Money for Nothing, ch. 5.2 (1928)
“Old Joe is supposed to have reformed and got away from it all, but, if you ask me, there’s a lot of life in the old dog yet.”
“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)
“That, at any rate,” proceeded Lord Ickenham, “was how Emsworth felt. The fever of spring was coursing through his veins, and he told himself that there was life in the old dog yet.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 20 (1939)
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