Uncle Dynamite

Part One
One

Runs from pp. 3 to 15 in US first edition.

Wockley Junction, Eggmarsh St. John, Ashenden Oakshott, Bishop’s Ickenham (p. 3)

Wodehouse once again shows his skill in making up place names reminiscent of real English towns and sites. Probably the largest one alluded to here is Bishop’s Stortford, a market town in Hertfordshire; other similar real names include Bury St. Edmunds and a hamlet called Oakshott in East Hampshire.

Wodehouse later tells us (p. 45, below) that Ashenden Oakshott is in Hampshire.

sons of the soil (p. 3)

trouser (p. 3)

As a verb, a typically British colloquialism for putting money (etc.) into one’s pocket, generalized to taking or accepting money; the OED has citations since 1865, and the earliest are from British writers recording or simulating American turns of phrase. Wodehouse is cited in the OED for one use in Laughing Gas (1936).

third-class … first-class (p. 3)

hat was on the side of his head (p. 3)

bore his cigar like a banner (p. 3)

Not a certain reference, but the use of “bore” and “banner” together may be a glancing allusion to Longfellow’s “Excelsior!”; see Sam the Sudden.

usual decent silence of the traveling Englishman (p. 3)

Well-brought-up Britons apparently had a horror of speaking to someone to whom they had not been introduced, especially in trains and other public conveyances. The paragraph on p. 4 beginning “Well, if you hadn’t been—” takes this further.

Lord Ickenham (p. 4)

Introduced in “Uncle Fred Flits By” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936) and Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton is the fifth Earl of Ickenham, uncle of Pongo Twistleton-Twistleton.

five bob (p. 4)

Five shillings, one-fourth of a pound sterling. On the guess that the tip took place during Bill and Pongo’s school days some fifteen years before, roughly 1933, we can estimate an approximate equivalent in current purchasing power [2023] by multiplying by a factor of 60, so this would have the effect of something like £15 or US$20 in round figures today.

half a crown (p. 4)

A coin worth two shillings and sixpence, just half the value of the five bob mentioned above.

something to do with the bone structure of the head (p. 4)

“The fact of the matter is, sir, women haven’t got the heads men have got. I believe it’s something to do with the bone structure.”

Albert Peasemarch in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 15 (1935)

“All women are like that,” said George Spenlow. “It’s something to do with the bone structure of their heads. They let their imagination run away with them. They entertain unworthy suspicions.”

“Birth of a Salesman” (1950; in Nothing Serious, 1950)

“All women are like that,” said Bill. “It’s something to do with the bone structure of our heads.”

Wilhelmina “Bill” Shannon in The Old Reliable, ch. 16 (1951)

The Duke, a clear-headed man, saw the objection to this immediately, and once again the inability of females to reason anything out impressed itself upon him. It was something, he believed, to do with the bone structure of their heads.

The Duke of Dunstable in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 4.1 (1969)

she went of her own free will (p. 4)

Lord Ickenham pretends to have misunderstood “Jamaica?” as a slurred form of “Did you make her?” for the sake of wordplay.

Peter Stanford noted in the Facebook P. G. Wodehouse Book Club that even at the time of writing, this was “a hoary old Music Hall joke”; it was not original with Uncle Fred or with Wodehouse.

human tomato (p. 5)

Wodehouse compared a pink or red complexion to a tomato a few other times:

He started to get pink in the ears, and then in the nose, and then in the cheeks, till in about a quarter of a minute he looked pretty much like an explosion in a tomato cannery on a sunset evening.

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

There entered a small boy in an Eton suit, whose face seemed to the bishop vaguely familiar. It was a face that closely resembled a ripe tomato with a nose stuck on it…

“The Bishop’s Move” (1927; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)

“Ronald! Goes about behaving like a bereaved tomato.”

Galahad Threepwood referring to Ronnie Fish’s pinkness in Summer Lightning, ch. 8 (1929)

Aunt Dahlia’s face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish tinge to the patient’s complexion, and her best friends could not have denied that even at normal times the relative’s map tended a little toward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.

Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)

His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and his face had taken on the color and expression of a devout tomato. I could see that he loved like a thousand of bricks.

Stilton Cheesewright blushing when acknowledging his engagement in Joy in the Morning, ch. 3 (1946)

Inasmuch as Captain Biggar, as we have seen, had not spoken his love but had let concealment like a worm i’ the bud feed on his tomato-coloured cheek, it may seem strange that Mrs. Spottsworth should have known anything about the way he felt.

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 6 (1953/54)

Kirk Rockaway hesitated for a moment. He seemed to be blushing, though it was hard to say for certain, his face from the start having been tomatoesque.

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

bestrides the world like a Colossus (p. 5)

A slight paraphrase from Julius Caesar: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

Moab is his washpot and over what’s-its-name has he cast his shoe (p. 5)

face his tailor without a tremor (p. 5)

Apparently Pongo, like many of Wodehouse’s young men, has been dilatory about paying for his clothes.

unexpectedly wide vocabulary (p. 5)

That is, responding “Good” instead of “Fine.”

protégé (p. 5)

The UK edition has the feminine form protégée here, more correct when the person who is being sponsored, guided, or protected is female.

sense enough for two (p. 5)

something with a platinum head and an Oxford accent (p. 6)

The implication is that Pongo is likely to be ensnared by dyed pale-blonde hair and an acquired accent that implies more education or social standing than the young woman possesses.

flitting from flower to flower like a willowy butterfly (p. 6)

Little Lord Fauntleroy suits (p. 6)

See Uncle Fred in the Springtime, and be sure to follow the link to the illustration in the original book.

Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his hue? (p. 6)

sunburned (p. 6)

Wodehouse seems sometimes to use this to mean a deep brown tan acquired over time in the sun, as well as its more common modern use for the bright pink or red of an acute reaction to overexposure to the sun, as in sorer than a sunburned neck: see The Girl on the Boat. See also Meet Mr. Mulliner regarding the social history of tanning.

When I got back to Ebury Street, Bowles, my landlord, after complimenting me in a stately way on my sunburned appearance, informed me that George Tupper had called several times while I was away.

“No Wedding Bells for Him” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)

Miss Angela Purdue … was one of these jolly, outdoor girls; and Wilfred had told me that what attracted him first about her was her wholesome, sunburned complexion. … “It’s such a pity,” said Miss Purdue, “that the sunburn fades so soon. I do wish I knew some way of keeping it.”

“A Slice of Life” (1926; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)

“How brown you are!”
“That’s Montego Bay. I worked on this sunburn for three months.”

Jill Wyvern to Monica Carmoyle in Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1953/54)

Ashenden really belongs to me (p. 6)

Bill is in much the same situation as Spennie, Lord Dreever, at Dreever Castle:

The castle was now a very comfortable country-house, nominally ruled over by Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever (“Spennie” to his relatives and intimates), but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt.

A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 8 (1910)

bally (p. 6)

Rhymes with “tally”; a very slangy intensive adjective, usually used as an euphemism for bloody; it has the effect of a mild imprecation such as “confounded” or “blasted.”

a shoe like a violin case (p. 7)

See Laughing Gas.

moot (p. 8)

See Money for Nothing.

girding up your loins (p. 8)

to rouse the emotions and purge the soul with pity and terror (p. 8)

See The Girl on the Boat.

penny-in-the-slot machine (p. 9)

Silver Band (p. 9)

See Hot Water.

looking like a stag at bay (p. 10)

Alluding to the popular painting by Sir Edwin Landseer; see Right Ho, Jeeves.

a whoop and a holler (p. 10)

wolves … sleigh … Russian peasant (p. 10)

See Full Moon.

the chap in Damon Runyon’s story (p. 11)

Norman Murphy (A Wodehouse Handbook) found this in Runyon’s “A Nice Price” (1934); the chap is Sam the Gonoph. See the quotation in context, the second paragraph of p. 262, at the Internet Archive (login required to “borrow” the book).

spreading sweetness and light (p. 11)

a first-class earl who keeps his carriage (p. 11)

Quoting Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience, from Archibald Grosvenor’s poem about Gentle Jane. See the libretto at gsarchive.net.

durbar (p. 11)

See Carry On, Jeeves.

Clemenceau (p. 11)

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (1841–1929); Prime Minister of France 1906–09 and 1917–20.

connected with the Brazil nut industry (p. 12)

Lord Ickenham would later himself be closely connected with a Brazil nut, the one he uses in Cocktail Time, ch. 1 (1958), to knock off the top hat of Sir Raymond Bastable. In Service With a Smile, chs. 2 and 3 (1961), he brings Cuthbert “Bill” Bailey to Blandings Castle under the alias of Meriwether, pretending that he is connected with the Brazil nut industry.

go to the Rocky Mountains and shoot grizzlies (p. 12)

I could have stuck on a lot of dog (p. 12)

See Spring Fever.

the sort of man whose bite spells death (p. 13)

“Is your sister Adela what is technically known as a tough baby?”
“None tougher. Her bite spells death.”

Spring Fever, ch. 9 (1948)

all-in wrestler (p. 13)

All-in is a type of wrestling without restrictions, with virtually every type of hold permitted. [JD]

kills rats with his teeth (p. 13)

Bertie Wooster claims that his Aunt Agatha chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth (The Mating Season, ch. 1, 1949).

governor of one of those crown colonies (p. 13)

Colonial governors and their widows appear in a few other stories:

As a Colonial governor [Sir Godfrey Tanner, K.C.M.G.] had just that taste of power and authority which is enough for the sensible man; more might have spoiled him for the simpler pleasures of life; less would have left him restless and unsatisfied.

“Creatures of Impulse” (1914)

The late Sir Rupert Lakenheath, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.V.O., was one of those men at whom their countries point with pride. Until his retirement on a pension in the year 1906, he had been Governor of various insanitary outposts of the British Empire situated around the equator, and as such had won respect and esteem from all.

“Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner” (1924; in Ukridge)

This father of Aurelia’s was not one of those mild old men who make nice easy insulting. He was a tough, hard-bitten retired Colonial Governor of the type which comes back to England to spend the evening of its days barking at club waiters.

“The Code of the Mulliners” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)

It is only very rarely that there can exist a perfect fusion of soul between the widow of a British colonial governor, accustomed to associate with service people in a town like Cheltenham, and a girl who is not only American (always a suspicious thing to be) but who lives in Paris (of all cities the one with the most dubious reputation) and is probably a bohemian with loose friends who drink absinthe and play guitars in studios.

Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 7 (1964)

Mugsy (p. 13)

The only other Mugsy in Wodehouse is Howard “Mugsy” Steptoe in Quick Service (1940), an ex-boxer with a squashed nose. The nickname may possibly derive from the slang sense of mug to mean an unattractive face; see Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

six of the juiciest with a fives bat (p. 13)

See Sam the Sudden and The Pothunters.

taking her on to Crewe (p. 14)

Alluding to the music-hall song “Oh! Mr. Porter” (1892) made famous by Marie Lloyd. Wikipedia article. Lyrics, with link to sheet music.

come Lammas Eve (p. 14)

July 31, the evening before Lammas, a religious celebration of the first fruits of the harvest. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon for Loaf-Mass, a ceremony in which bread made from the first yield of grain is eaten.

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse for the source in Romeo and Juliet and other references in Wodehouse to the phrase.

Gawd-help-us (p. 14)

cut by the county (p. 14)

See two adjacent notes to Laughing Gas.

behind the ear with a sock full of wet sand (p. 15)

Another way of describing a knockout blow to the base of the skull with a sandbag.

…he’ll drop as if you had hit him behind the ear with a sandbag.

“The Love-r-ly Silver Cup” (1915)

any interruption at such a moment would have affected him like a blow behind the ear from a sandbag…

Bill the Conqueror, ch. 16.2 of serial; ch. 14.2 of book (1924)

At this point, when everything was going as sweet as a nut and I was feeling on top of my form, Mrs. Pringle suddenly soaked me on the base of the skull with a sandbag.

“Without the Option” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves!, 1925/27)

Blair Eggleston was looking as like a younger English novelist who has just stopped a sandbag with the back of his head as any younger English novelist had ever looked…

Hot Water, ch. 2.5 (1932)

gulping grunt, like that of a bulldog … while eating a mutton chop (p. 15)

Biffy made a sort of curious gulping noise not unlike a bulldog trying to swallow half a cutlet in a hurry so as to be ready for the other half.

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

[Orlo Porter’s] voice was low and guttural, like that of a bull-dog which has attempted to swallow a chump chop and only got it down half-way.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 2 (1974)

Two

Runs from pp. 16 to 29 in US first edition.

Buffy-Porson (p. 16)

two-seater (p. 16)

A small, lightweight car with room for only the driver and one passenger. Typically a sporty car with a convertible top, bought by people who enjoy driving themselves rather than being driven by a chauffeur.

restoring his tissues (p. 16)

Goodwood Cup (p. 17)

Horse races have been held on the Duke of Richmond’s estate on the Sussex Downs since 1802. The Goodwood Cup takes place at the beginning of August, and is one of the classic summer events for the fashionable world. (cf. “Bingo Has a Bad Goodwood”, ch. 12 of The Inimitable Jeeves, originally part of the magazine story “Comrade Bingo” from 1922)

what you would do … if you found a dead body in your bath one morning with nothing on but a pair of spats (p. 17)

Probably a take-off on Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (1923), in which Lord Peter Wimsey is introduced, detecting a case of a dead body found in a bath wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez spectacles.

‘Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away’ (p. 17)

See Biblia Wodehousiana. The hymn, however, poses this line as a question, asking how one’s mind can be at rest when friends and family are not safe at home, and answering it with the assurance of divine protection. Wodehouse typically quotes it, as here, with a humorous alteration to its meaning: that it is more peaceful without the loved ones nearby.

Eustace became aware, as never before, of the truth of that well-known line—“Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away.” There was certainly little hope of peace with loved ones in his bedroom.

The Girl on the Boat, ch. 17.3 (1922)

He looked forward contentedly to a succession of sunshine days of peace, perfect peace with loved ones far away; days when he would be able to work in his garden without the fear, which had been haunting him for the last two weeks, of finding his niece drooping wanly at his side and asking him if he was wise to stand about in the hot sun.

“Company for Gertrude” (1928; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)

How right, he felt, the author of the well-known hymn had been in saying that peace, perfect peace, is to be attained only when loved ones are far away.

Service With a Smile, ch. 2.3 (1961)

“This is very pleasant, Galahad,” he said, and Gally endorsed the sentiment.
“I was thinking the same thing, Clarence. No Connie, no Dunstable. Peace, perfect peace with loved ones far away, as one might say.”

A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 14 (1969)

I had looked on Maiden Eggesford as somewhere where I would be free from all human society, a haven where I would have peace perfect peace with loved ones far away, as the hymnbook says, and it was turning out to be a sort of meeting place of the nations.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 6 (1974)

Coggs (p. 17)

Lord Ickenham’s butler is first mentioned in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939). Coggs is a variant of Wodehouse’s favorite butler name, Keggs. [MH]

St. Anthony … temptation (p. 17)

one of our pleasant and instructive afternoons (p. 18)

So when, on the occasion to which I allude, he stood pink and genial on Pongo’s hearth-rug, bulging with Pongo’s lunch and wreathed in the smoke of one of Pongo’s cigars, and said: “And now, my boy, for a pleasant and instructive afternoon,” you will readily understand why the unfortunate young clam gazed at him as he would have gazed at two-penn’orth of dynamite, had he discovered it lighting up in his presence.

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

“No, sorry, three pangs. What caused one of them was the thought that, going off to stay with Johnny, I shall be deprived for quite a time of your society and those pleasant and instructive afternoons we have so often had together.”

Cocktail Time, ch. 7 (1958)

“I know,” said Pongo austerely. “One of our pleasant and instructive afternoons. Well, pleasant and instructive afternoons are off.”

Service With a Smile, ch. 2 (1961)

a thoughtful Crumpet had once said (p. 18)

The Crumpet (a member of the Drones Club; see Uncle Fred in the Springtime) uses very similar language to describe Uncle Fred and his “excesses” in “Uncle Fred Flits By” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, 1936) and the later novels in which he appears; see Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

step high, wide and plentiful (p. 19)

See Young Men in Spats.

well stricken in years (p. 19)

Later, in ch. 6.2, Lord Ickenham’s age is established at sixty.

that day at the dog races (p. 19)

We never get the full story of what happened, but hints about the circumstances of being arrested are revealed later in this book, and the incident is mentioned at least obliquely in all the Uncle Fred stories.

losing dear gazelles (p. 19)

cloud … some sort of a silver lining (p. 19)

West End (p. 20)

up and doing with a heart for any fate (p. 20)

From the last stanza of an often-quoted Longfellow poem; see Leave It to Psmith.

with my hair in a braid (p. 20)

Recording Angel (p. 20)

A personification of the heavenly record-keeping of one’s good and bad deeds. Wodehouse twice uses the term to refer to the angel in James Leigh Hunt’s poem “Abou Ben Adhem.”

Get thou behind me (p. 20)

Pongo isn’t quite tuned in to Elizabethan grammar here; the Authorized (King James) Version has “Get thee behind me.” See Biblia Wodehousiana.

get into an uncle’s ribs (p. 21)

along the primrose path (p. 21)

Alluding to Ophelia’s caution to Laertes in Hamlet; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

It’s no good saying ‘Ichabod’ (p. 21)

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

sponge-bag trousers (p. 21)

Part of formal morning attire, appropriate for weddings; see The Code of the Woosters.

neither chick nor child (p. 22)

An archaic phrase for having no offspring; unlike the usage of twentieth-century slang, a chick referred to a boy and a child meant a girl, according to NTPM in A Wodehouse Handbook.

take a dekko (p. 22)

Take a look; British army slang from the 1890s, derived from Hindi dekho, imperative form of the verb “Look!”

photograph … of cabinet size (p. 22)

See Leave It to Psmith.

winter woolies (p. 23)

Long underwear made of wool.

lily-livered poltroon (p. 24)

district messenger boy (p. 24)

See Leave It to Psmith.

put the lid on it (p. 25)

See Ukridge.

like a sheik (p. 25)

In a domineering manner, like the romantically captivating hero of Edith Maude Hull’s 1919 novel The Sheik, famously portrayed in a 1921 silent film by Rudolph Valentino. [MH/NM]

Take some jewelry … and smuggle it through the customs (p. 26)

Plum and Ethel Wodehouse had had an experience that may have informed this plot device:

On arriving in New York, we had a passing unpleasantness with the Customs people. Ethel had bought a necklace in London, and she filled up the form they give you to fill up before you land with “Nothing to Declare,” and the Customs people decided that here was the jewel smuggler they had been waiting for so long.

Letter to Bill Townend dated December 16, 1922 in Author! Author! (1962)

“Grayce has bought a peach of a pearl necklace in Paris, and she wants you, when you sail for home next week, to take it along and smuggle it through the Customs.”

Mabel Spence to Ivor Llewellyn in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 1.2 (1935). Note that when the story is recounted by a Whiskey Sour in Chapter 2 of Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972), the jewelry is called “a very valuable diamond thingummy” rather than a pearl necklace.

“Do you remember when she smuggled her pearls through the New York Customs?”
“Inside a Mickey Mouse which she bought at the ship’s shop.”

Mr. Bunting and Mr. Satterthwaite, talking about Julia Cheever in “Life with Freddie” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

sheet anchor (p. 27)

From the former name for the largest of a ship’s anchors, to be used only in an emergency; figuratively, something upon which one relies in extreme circumstances.

commish (p. 27)

A shortening of “commission” as in the 1920s craze for shortened words, such as the Gershwin song “ ’S Wonderful” (1927), whose verse rhymes humble fash and tender pash.

whitest man I know (p. 27)

reminded me of Hamlet (p. 28)

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

apple-pie bed (p. 28)

a couple for the tonsils (p. 28)

angel in human shape (p. 28)

See Full Moon.

about fifty-seven romances (p. 29)

George Eliot (p. 29)

Pen name of English author Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880).

Boadicea (p. 29)

the late Mrs. Carrie Nation (p. 29)

American reformer (1846–1911) known for radical advocacy of the temperance movement; notorious for smashing up taverns and bottles of alcoholic beverages with a hatchet.

twenty-minute egg (p. 29)

That is, thoroughly and firmly hard-boiled.

“Shall we join the ladies?” (p. 29)

At the time, according to British etiquette for a formal dinner, after the last course was finished, the hostess and female guests retired to the drawing room, allowing the host and his male guests to turn the conversation to more masculine topics, and to enjoy an after-dinner drink, typically port. This phrase would have been the conventional signal for the men to conclude their separate session and go to the drawing room themselves.

Three

Runs from pp. 30 to 58 in US first edition.

tra-la-la (p. 30)

A conventional phrase representing the singing of a wordless melody or sequence of notes, often expressing joy or freedom from care.

Summer is here. (If I had been writing a lyric for musical comedy I should have added the words Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, but in a serious and technical article these would, of course, be out of place.)

“A Timely Chat About Gardens” (1916)

“Tra-la-la!” I said.
“Precisely, sir.”

“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1922; in ch. 3 of The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

“Gentleman, eh?” said Mr. Slingsby, almost adding “Tra-la-la!”

Bill the Conqueror, ch. 18 (1924)

It was, indeed, practically with a merry tra-la-la on my lips that I latchkeyed my way in and made for the sitting room.

The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I have ever come much closer to saying “Tra-la-la” as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1963)

successfully resisted a Tempter (p. 30)

tied the can (p. 30)

“Faugh!” (p. 30)

crust (p. 30)

See the discussion under immortal rind in Something Fresh.

old geezers (p. 31)

avuncular (p. 31)

Used here in its root sense of “of or from an uncle” without its usual connotation of being benign or kindly. Wodehouse uses it both ways:

Two weeks of poker had led to his writing to his uncle a distressed, but confident, request for more funds; and the avuncular foot had come down with a joyous bang.

The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 23 (1910)

The light of avuncular affection died out of the old boy’s eyes.

Bertie, breaking the news of Bingo’s engagement to a waitress to Bingo’s uncle Mortimer Little in “Bingo and the Little Woman” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923))

from soup to nuts (p. 31)

See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

Cheeryble Brother (p. 31)

See Hot Water.

grappling them to his soul with hoops of steel (p. 31)

Alluding to Polonius’s speech of advice in Hamlet; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

Ashenden Manor … a fortress to be defended against uncouth intruders (p. 31)

Compare the description of Dreever Castle as a haven of refuge from marauding invaders in The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 8 (1910).

French window (p. 32)

a different and a dreadful world (p. 32)

whatnot (p. 32)

Here, an indefinite or undescribable object. See A Damsel in Distress for other meanings and uses of the term.

trade gin (p. 32)

Gin (a distilled spirit flavored with juniper berries) bottled for the purpose of bartering with indigenous peoples. No doubt this was not the highest quality liquor.

knobkerrie (p. 32)

(Afrikaans) A short weighted club or throwing stick. [MH]

Last Trump (p. 32)

macédoine (p. 32)

foot on the self-starter (p. 33)

a trapped cinnamon bear (p. 33)

looked like a horse (p. 34)

brightness enough for both of them (p. 34)

pot of cyanide (p. 34)

the status of an ewe lamb (p. 35)

Lower Barnatoland (p. 35)

A fictional British colony in Africa, whose name is derived from the real Lower Basutoland and from British diamond magnate Barney Barnato (1852–97). A. M. “Pitcher” Binstead of the Pelican Club had used the name “Barnatoland” by itself in “The Gents of the Garrison” (in Houndsditch Day by Day, 1899).

In Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 7 (1964), Wodehouse tells us that the late Sir Hubert Blake-Somerset, Henry’s father, had been governor of Lower Barnatoland.

brilliantined hair (p. 35)

See Leave It to Psmith.

look for the silver lining and try to find the sunny side of life (p. 35)

Quoting the lyrics of a song; see Bill the Conqueror.

stewed to the gills (p. 36)

Very drunk; see Right Ho, Jeeves.

One fairly quick, followed by another rather slower (p. 36)

See The Inimitable Jeeves.

clicking noise, like a wet finger touching hot iron (p. 37)

Somewhat inconsistent with another mention:

Occasionally he would draw in his breath with a sharp hissing sound like somebody putting a wet finger on a hot stove lid…

“My Bridge Career” (in Cavalier, March 1965)

young toad (p. 37)

The Hon. Galahad listened with fire smouldering behind his monocle.
“The young toad!” he cried. “Monty Bodkin.”

Heavy Weather, ch. 9 (1933)

“Half-witted, I’d call him—if that. Besides being the most offensive-looking young toad I’ve ever seen on the premises.”

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

Jane, the parlormaid (p. 38)

In many households, servants were addressed by names not their own; the parlormaid might be called Jane, no matter what she had been christened, as if she were taking on a role in a play.

deleterious slab of damnation (p. 38)

The phrase “slab of damnation” appears to be original with Wodehouse; Google Books search finds no instance prior to the first of these:

“Well, he looks a pretty frightful young slab of damnation to me.”

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

“That slimy, slithery, moustache-twiddling young slab of damnation?”

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

“Who invited Cheesewright here? Dahlia, I suppose, though why we shall never know. A deleterious young slab of damnation, if ever I saw one.”

Uncle Tom Travers in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 11 (1954)

“When the wench … sprang it on me as calm as a halibut on ice that she was going to marry Stanhope Twine, I nearly swooned where I sat. ‘What!’ I said. ‘That young slab of damnation? Yer kiddin.’ ”

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

“There was a young slab of damnation with a criminal face round at my place only yesterday trying to sell it to me.”

Major Plank in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 23 (1963)

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

Colonel Pashley-Drake speaking of Lancelot Bingley in “A Good Cigar Is a Smoke” (in Plum Pie, 1966/67)

coo to him like a turtledove (p. 38)

Practically a coo. As it might have been one turtledove addressing another turtledove.

Joy in the Morning, ch. 2 (1946)

“I’ll be like a turtledove cooing to a female turtledove.”

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 6 (1953/54)

Stiffy … had spoken of Stinker cooing to Spode like a turtledove, and if memory served me aright that was just how he had cooed, and it was of a cooing turtledove that she now reminded me.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 19 (1963)

see each other steadily and see each other whole (p. 39)

A paraphrase from a Matthew Arnold poem: see The Clicking of Cuthbert.

top dressing of mustache (p. 39)

Top dressing is an agricultural term for mulch, compost, or fertilizer spread on the surface of garden soil. Wodehouse often uses it for such things as books and papers spread over a desk; this is the only instance so far found applying it to facial hair as itself being spread upon a face, though once it is used for Chimp Twist waxing his mustache (Money in the Bank, ch. 5, 1942), and once Bertie contemplates fertilizing his mustache in these terms:

I had hoped to nurse it through the years with top dressing till it became the talk of the town.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 22 (1954)

gumboil (p. 39)

An infected sore or inflammation on the gums in the mouth; figuratively, an annoying or irritating person.

clocked socks (p. 39)

Socks with decorative embroidery at the ankles.

“It’s priceless.”
“Really? How priceless!” (p. 40)

Sir Aylmer uses the word in its usual sense of having an inestimable value; Pongo’s response is in the colloquial sense of being original, amusing, or absurd, as Bertie and his pals often use it:

It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with that Broadway Special hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much admired by the lads.

“Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest” (1916; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925)

like breath off a razor blade (p. 40)

Apparently also an original Wodehouse simile; a Google Books search finds no earlier usage.

There was a light breeze blowing in through the open window, and so musical a rustling did it set up as it played about the heaped-up wealth that Mr. Nickerson’s austerity seemed to vanish like breath off a razor-blade.

“Ukridge’s Dog College” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)

And then his eye fell on the slip of paper, and pomposity slipped from him like breath off a razor blade.

Money for Nothing, ch. 14.2 (1928)

Lord Emsworth had been smirking. He now congealed, and the smile passed from his lips like breath off a razor blade, to be succeeded by a tense look of anxiety and alarm.

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

The puzzled frown that had begun to gather on Lord Emsworth’s forehead vanished like breath off a razor blade.

A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.1 (1969)

“Gorbl . . .!” (p. 40)

Gorblimey: a Cockney contraction of “God blind me” to express surprise, anger, etc. [IM/LVG]

Sir Aylmer was one of them (p. 40)

See Hot Water.

like Marius among the ruins of Carthage (p. 41)

whirring sound without (p. 41)

For this sense of “without” see confused noise without in Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

some solid body was passing down the hall at a high rate of m.p.h. (p. 41)

See The Girl on the Boat.

measles (p. 41)

Measles was a highly infectious virus for which no vaccine was available until 1963.

bravest and fairest (p. 42)

See Mr. Mulliner Speaking.

Belshazzar’s Feast (p. 42)

to judge the babies (p. 42)

See Bill the Conqueror for other Wodehouse references to baby-judging contests.

lumbago (p. 42)

Pain in the muscles of the lower back.

dashed (p. 43)

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth (p. 43)

soul in torment (p. 43)

blinding and stiffing (p. 44)

went on toots (p. 45)

the pure Hampshire breezes (p. 45)

Hampshire is a ceremonial county on England’s southern coast, containing the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth.

awful majesty of the law (p. 46)

Potter, the Romeo (p. 46)

For similar references, see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

a fair cop (p. 46)

An arrest when the perpetrator has been caught dead-to-rights, in the act. [JD]

Boat Race Night (p. 47)

See Laughing Gas and The Code of the Woosters.

“What’s all this?” (p. 47)

Policemen in Wodehouse always say “What’s all this?” and “Ho!” This is a running joke throughout the canon, presumably sending up the way the walk-on policemen in plays of the time talk. [MH]

enclosed premises (p. 47)

Under the Vagrancy Act 1824, “being found on enclosed premises” was grounds for arrest on suspicion of being there for unlawful purposes. The text of the law actually read “being found in or upon any Dwelling House, Warehouse, Coach-house, Stable, or Outhouse, or in any inclosed Yard, Garden, or Area,” but the shorter phrase was the usual abbreviated reference.

tête-à-tête (p. 47)

A face-to-face meeting (from French: “head to head”).

turned-up nose (p. 47)

According to the OED, this means the same as Wodehouse’s more usual adjective tip-tilted: see A Damsel in Distress.

chewing the fat (p. 48)

To discuss or complain about something, especially at length. One of the OED citations for this phrase is from Money in the Bank, ch. 12 (1942).

mooch along (p. 49)

To move, especially in an aimless or uncertain fashion.

I was mooching slowly up St. James’s Street…

“Comrade Bingo” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

“R.” (p. 50)

Wodehouse doesn’t otherwise seem to characterize Elsie’s dialectal pronunciations, but spelling “Ah” as “R” gives a hint as to her manner of speech.

Others thus characterized include the woman in the cricket cap in Summer Moonshine, ch. 19 (1937); Augustus Robb in Spring Fever, ch. 8 (1948); Constable Ernest Dobbs in The Mating Season, ch. 26 (1949); George Cyril Wellbeloved in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 5.6 (1952); and an employee of Pop Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 17 (1974). This does not purport to be a complete list.

Bottleton East (p. 50)

See Young Men in Spats.

spliced to a copper (p. 50)

Married to a policeman. Spliced as slang for married is cited as early as 1751, from Smollett; copper for policeman has OED citations since 1846.

a blot on the Bean escutcheon (p. 51)

See Heavy Weather. Using terms of heraldry for Elsie’s Bottleton East family is a humorous misapplication.

resigned his portfolio (p. 51)

See Lord Emsworth and Others. A term from high diplomatic and government circles, also humorously misapplied.

three hundred pounds (p. 51)

The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests a factor of roughly thirty to account for purchasing-power change from 1948 to 2023, so in modern terms this would be on the order of nine thousand pounds. I doubt if any pubs can be bought for that sum today, of course.

overbearing dishpot (p. 52)

Wodehouse never explains Elsie’s term; presumably we are to conclude that she really means “despot.”

good egg (p. 52)

The term is usually applied to a person of reliable character in Wodehouse, but here it seems to refer to the scheme of getting married to Hermione.

The Boy Explorers Up The Amazon (p. 53)

Apparently fictitious.

liver wing (p. 53)

The right wing of a chicken or other fowl, with the liver tucked into it before cooking. OED has quotations dating from 1796.

kick the bucket (p. 53)

‘Coo!’ (p. 53)

An exclamation of surprise or amazement; often a verbal marker for those of humbler origins. When Elsie later in this chapter (p. 58) quotes Pongo as saying “Coo! I think I’ll go to London” we are intended, I think, to regard the exclamation as Elsie’s own interpolation rather than a direct quote from Pongo.

His Nibs (p. 53)

one of those peculiar puddings (p. 54)

Pudding is here used in the British sense of any dessert; the description is of “baked Alaska”: a block of ice cream on a base of cake, the whole covered in meringue and briefly oven-baked to crisp and brown the surface of the meringue, while the ice cream insulated inside stays frozen.

nice bit of box fruit (p. 55)

See Laughing Gas.

a dozen miles … in about three minutes and a quarter (p. 55)

Taken literally, this works out to just over 221.5 miles per hour.

understudy (p. 55)

Theatrical jargon for an actor who prepares to play a role in the absence or illness of the actor who normally portrays that part.

the fate that is worse than death (p. 56)

goggle-eyed (p. 56)

See Piccadilly Jim.

lip fungus (p. 56)

in the soup (p. 56)

See The Inimitable Jeeves.

going down for the third time (p. 56)

kissing her in a grateful and brotherly manner (p. 56)

Consequently James stooped, and—in a purely brotherly way—kissed Violet.

“Out of School” (1910)

everybody kisses everybody else … like the early Christians (p. 57)

Can the leopard change his spots (p. 57)

non compos (p. 58)

See Cocktail Time.

Four

Runs from pp. 59 to 73 in US first edition.

Budge Street (p. 59)

Apparently fictitious; the 1915 London directory lists a Budge Row in the City of London (E.C.), and Google Maps shows a Budge Lane in Mitcham, but these are nowhere near Chelsea.

the Enclosure at Ascot on Cup Day (p. 59)

In full, the Royal Enclosure at the Ascot Racecourse, the most formal members-only-by-invitation section of the most prestigious racing venue in the United Kingdom, founded in 1711 by Queen Anne. Formal morning dress is mandatory for gentlemen.

King’s Road (p. 60)

When Wodehouse moved to London in 1900 to begin working at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, he first rented rooms in Markham Square, Chelsea, then in Walpole Street. Both were just off the King’s Road, so he knew the neighborhood well. In The Girl in Blue, ch. 10 (1970), Jerry West lives “in one of the streets off the King’s Road.”

Columbine (p. 60)

A young female character from the Italian commedia and English pantomime, the girlfriend of Harlequin.

the secret of a happy and successful life (p. 60)

Many of Wodehouse’s characters use similar phrases when giving advice:

“Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life.”

Psmith in Leave It to Psmith, ch. 6.5 (1923)

But it so happened that Rollo’s mother had recently been reading a medical treatise in which an eminent physician stated that we all eat too much nowadays, and that the secret of a happy life is to lay off the carbohydrates to some extent.

“The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” (1923; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)

“If you want to know the secret of a happy and successful life, Barmy, old man, it is this: Keep away from parsons’ daughters.”

Pongo in “Tried in the Furnace” (1935; in Young Men in Spats, UK edition, 1936)

“The secret of a happy and successful life is to know when things have got too hot and cut your losses.”

Galahad Threepwood in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.2 (1952)

“Cut women out of your life, Phipps, and you will be a better, brighter man. It is the secret of a happy and prosperous career.”

Mervyn Potter in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 13 (1952)

It was a favourite dictum of the late A. B. Spottsworth … that the secret of a happy and successful life was to get rid of the women at the earliest possible opportunity.

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 8 (1953/54)

“Always watch snails,” said Mortimer Bayliss approvingly. “It is the secret of a happy and successful life. A snail a day keeps the doctor away.”

Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 20 (1957)

I had long since learned that the secret of a happy and successful life was to steer clear of any project masterminded by that young scourge of the species.

Bertie speaking of Stiffy Byng in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1963)

A.W.O.L. (p. 60)

A military abbreviation for Absent Without Leave.

Barribault’s (p. 61)

grillroom (p. 61)

An informal restaurant, specializing in steaks, chops, and the like.

you look like Helen of Troy (p. 61)

Others whose beauty is compared to “the face that launched a thousand ships” (see The Girl in Blue):

This girl before him was marvellous. Helen of Troy could have been nothing to her.

Sam Shotter’s opinion of Kay Christopher in Sam the Sudden, ch. 12.3 (1925)

Confronted with this girl, Cleopatra would have looked like Nellie Wallace, and Helen of Troy might have been her plain sister.

Lancelot Mulliner’s opinion of Angela, daughter of the Earl of Biddlecombe, in “Came the Dawn” (1927; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)

“Oh, Gertrude. … She begins where Helen of Troy left off.”

Catsmeat speaking of Gertrude Winkworth in The Mating Season, ch. 7 (1949)

“My wife,” A. B. Spottsworth had said, indicating the combination of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy by whom he was accompanied…

Ring for Jeeves, ch. 1/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 5 (1953/54)

“You’re more the Helen of Troy type. Not that Helen of Troy was in your class. You begin where she left off.”

Biff Christopher to Gwendoline Gibbs in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 4.2 (1964)

“…why, you begin where Helen of Troy left off.”

Bill Hollister to Jane Benedick in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 11 (1957)

“Dash it all, Johnny, Linda Gilpin isn’t the Queen of Sheba.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Or Helen of Troy.”
“Yes, she is, and also Cleopatra.”

A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 8.2 (1969)

anachronistic parasite on the body of the state (p. 61)

“We know what lords are. Anachronistic parasites on the body of the state, is the kindest thing you can say of them.”

Lord Ickenham, in Cocktail Time, ch. 9 (1958)

bloodsuckers (p. 61)

Various characters use this term to describe creditors, sponging relatives, and tax collectors, but the Communist perspective on the aristocracy brings this to mind:

“Look at the tall thin one with the face like a motor-mascot. Has he ever done an honest day’s work in his life? No! A prowler, a trifler, and a blood-sucker!”

Bingo Little (in disguise) haranguing Bertie in “Comrade Bingo” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

five Christian names (p. 62)

As far as I am aware, we only learn three of them: Frederick Altamont Cornwallis.

coronet hanging on a peg (p. 62)

A small crown made of gilt silver with a cap of crimson velvet trimmed with ermine, part of the official regalia of an earl; the golden band is decorated with eight tall points with ball finials and with strawberry leaves between the points. Lord Ickenham would no doubt have treated it with more care than to hang it on a hat rack.

a younger son, a mere honorable (p. 62)

The style “The Honourable” is given to younger sons of earls, as well as the sons and daughters of viscounts and barons. Informally abbreviated “hon.” and used as a noun in his next speech here, also in ch. 12 (p. 257).

Debrett (p. 62)

go into dinner behind the Vice-Chancellor (p. 62)

The rules of precedence for social events are complicated enough that reference books such as Debrett’s are essential tools for those in society.

I see no objection to earls. A most respectable class of men they seem to me. And one admires their spirit. I mean, while some, of course, have come up the easy way, many have had the dickens of a struggle starting at the bottom of the ladder as mere Hons., having to go in to dinner after the Vice-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and all that sort of thing. Show me the Hon. who by pluck and determination has raised himself from the depths, step by step, till he has become entitled to keep a coronet on the hat peg in the downstairs closet, and I will show you a man of whom any author might be proud to write.

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

jerked soda (p. 62)

The verb jerk, a colloquial Americanism for dispensing drinks by pulling a lever handle, dates from 1868. The noun soda-jerker is cited from 1883 in the OED and defined as one who mixes and sells soft drinks. Wodehouse is cited from Louder and Funnier (1932) as using the hyphenated noun.

Horatio Alger (p. 63)

SOS (p. 63)

A telegraphic distress call; see Summer Lightning. The US edition has it properly spelled without periods as above; the UK first edition (p. 55) has it as “S.O.S.” which is incorrect.

truite bleue (p. 64)

A French dish of very fresh trout cooked with vinegar, which turns the fish’s skin a metallic blue in color. [IM/LVG]

part brass rags (p. 65)

Hants (p. 66)

Classical abbreviation for Hampshire, used in postal addresses. Derives from Old English Hantescire as used in the Domesday Book.

Tatler (p. 66)

A glossy British monthly magazine emphasizing society, fashion, lifestyle, and entertainment; founded 1901, and since the 1980s owned by Condé Nast Publications. It takes its name from an 18th-century journal published by Richard Steele with Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison, but has no direct connection to it.

under the ether (p. 66)

Reminiscences … to pay for their publication (p. 67)

Unlike Galahad Threepwood’s reminiscences, which promised to be a moneymaker for Lord Tilbury until withdrawn by their author, Sir Aylmer seems to have needed to use a “vanity press” arrangement. In Summer Moonshine (1937), Sir Buckstone Abbott’s My Sporting Memories are similarly published at his expense.

head on a charger (p. 68)

Here a charger is a large service plate; see Biblia Wodehousiana for the Scriptural allusion to John the Baptist.

persona grata (p. 68)

Latin: a welcomed or acceptable person.

a cat on hot bricks (p. 69)

See The Girl in Blue.

Edwin Smith of 11 Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich (p. 69)

the big four (p. 70)

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

wandered into a Turkish bath on ladies’ night (p. 70)

I should imagine that if you happened to wander by accident into the steam room of a Turkish bath on Ladies’ Night, you would have emotions very similar to those I was experiencing now.

Much Obliged, Jeeves/Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, ch. 13 (1971)

It had Alice’s jewels in it (p. 71)

Reminiscent of the plot device of “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1904; in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905).

“dash my wig and buttons” (p. 71)

A phrase used to give the effect of swearing without using profane language. See Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, p. 332).

“Well, dash my wig and buttons!” exclaimed Lord Uffenham, looking like a sibyl about to prophesy.

Money in the Bank, ch. 24 (1942)

the boys in the back room (p. 72)

See Heavy Weather. That note was written for a book published before 1939; for the present book, the allusion might be to the 1939 song or to the older popular phrase.

when Pongo and I started out last spring for Blandings Castle in the roles of Sir Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist, and his nephew Basil (p. 72)

Recounted in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939).

Part Two
Five

Runs from pp. 77 to 92 in US first edition.

deserving poor (p. 77)

A very Victorian concept of charity, requiring adherence to “middle-class morality” among the impoverished in order that they deserve to receive charity. Shaw lampoons this in Pygmalion in the voice of Alfred Doolittle.

“No,” I said, “take it away; give it to the deserving poor. I shall never wear it again.”

“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

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…

Money for Nothing, ch. 10.1 (1928)

“And I,” said Myrtle, “have got to take a few pints of soup to the deserving poor.”

“Anselm Gets His Chance” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, 1940)

Swooping down on Horace’s flat … 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)

“Lady Constance has pinched [Lord Emsworth’s] 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)

mignonette (p. 77)

A garden plant, Reseda odorata, with fragrant yellow-white flowers, native to North Africa. Wodehouse mentions it one other time:

There came to Bingo, listening to these words, the illusion that a hidden orchestra had begun to play soft music, while somewhere in the room he seemed to smell the scent of violets and mignonette.

“The Word in Season” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

but the word also refers to one of Anatole’s classic dishes, Mignonette de Poulet Petit Duc, named in several books beginning with The Code of the Woosters, and the houseboat in Summer Moonshine (1937) is named the Mignonette as well.

counting her blessings one by one (p. 77)

This could allude to one of several popular hymns and spiritual songs using this phrase.

Cheltenham with its gay society (p. 77)

Almost certainly meant ironically. Wodehouse’s parents had retired there in 1905, and it is mentioned in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 2 (1957) and in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 7 (1964) as the home of couples retired from government or military service.

a consummation always devoutly to be wished (p. 78)

Paraphrasing Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

his wealth being a burly spear and brand… (p. 78)

From the song “Hybrias the Cretan” (lyric by Thomas Campbell, translated from Greek; music by J. W. Elliott).
Campbell’s lyric at Google Books.
Sheet music online at the National Library of Australia.

Wodehouse himself sang this song at a Dulwich College concert in 1899, and in the UK edition of The Prince and Betty, ch. 5 (1912), John Maude says:

I haven’t felt such a fool since I sang ‘Hybrias the Cretan’ at the school concert.

a bit of goose (p. 78)

the sleeve across the windpipe (p. 78)

smoking a somber pipe (p. 79)

An example of one of Wodehouse’s favorite literary devices, the transferred epithet.

unpleasant things to an odalisque with a bowstring (p. 79)

“I don’t know if you happen to know it, but in Turkey all this insubordinate stuff, these attempts to dictate to the master of the house and the head of the family, would have led long before this to you being strangled with bowstrings and bunged into the Bosporus.”

Esmond Haddock to his aunts in The Mating Season, ch. 26 (1949)

Barmy was robbed of speech, and Mr. Lippincott, his task completed, was now preparing to relax, like an executioner in some Oriental court taking a breather after strangling a few Odalisques with his bowstring.

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 19 (1952)

He realized how a good-hearted executioner at an Oriental court must feel after strangling an odalisque with a bowstring.

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 4.3 (1952)

drooping his lower jaw (p. 81)

Only instances of drooping are listed here; there are many other places where lower jaws have fallen or are hitched up.

His lower jaw drooped feebly, like a dying lily.

Blair Eggleston in Hot Water, ch. 2.4 (1932)

He polished his shoes with one of the sofa-cushions, and took his hat from the table where he had placed it and gave it another brush: but after that there seemed to be nothing in the way of intellectual occupation offering itself, so he just leaned back in a chair and unhinged his lower jaw and let it droop, and sank into a sort of coma.

Mervyn Mulliner in “The Knightly Quest of Mervyn” (in Mulliner Nights, 1933)

Lord Shortlands, allowing his lower jaw to droop restfully, gave himself up to meditation.

Spring Fever, ch. 5 (1948)

“Gussie gave me that same sense of hopeless desolation. He sat there with his lower jaw drooping, goggling at me like a codfish—”

Catsmeat in The Mating Season, ch. 3 (1949)

Mr. Anderson … was regretting that the latter’s extraordinary wealth made it impossible for him to hurl at Barmy’s head the silver presentation inkpot on his desk, to teach him not to let his lower jaw droop like that.

Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 2 (1952)

He stood staring, his lower jaw drooping on its hinge.

Jerry Vail in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 10.3 (1952)

“Even today I’m about as announced an oaf as ever went around with his lower jaw drooping and a glassy look in his eyes, but you have literally no conception what I was like in my early twenties.”

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

“Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish pallor and a drooping lower jaw.”

Monica Carmoyle, about Bill Belfry in Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 9 (1953/54)

All you can do is stand with your lower jaw drooping like a tired lily, looking a priceless ass, and that is what Stilton was doing now.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 17 (1954)

…it was through a sort of mist that he stared pallidly at his companion, his eyes wide, his lower jaw drooping, perspiration starting out on his forehead as if he were sitting in the hot room of a Turkish bath.

Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time, ch. 4 (1958)

At an early point in these remarks Oofy’s lower jaw had drooped like a tired lily.

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

“Why, hullo,” she proceeded, seeing that Kipper was slumped back in his chair trying without much success to hitch up a drooping lower jaw.

Aunt Dahlia in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 13 (1960)

By standing on one leg and allowing his lower jaw to droop Freddie indicated that he would be delighted to do so.

Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 2 (1961)

He would, as he had rather suspected he would, congeal in every limb like a rabbit confronted with a boa constrictor and stand staring with his lower jaw drooping to its fullest extent, fearing the worst.

Horace Appleby in Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 8 (1968)

Though of a dreamy temperament and inclined in most crises to sit still and let his lower jaw droop, he could on occasion be the man of action.

Lord Emsworth in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 10.1 (1969)

trinitrotoluol (p. 82)

as if he had been stuffed by a good taxidermist (p. 83)

beat about bushes (p. 83)

To circle round an uncomfortable topic rather than bringing it up directly.

against the public weal (p. 83)

Causing harm to the general welfare of a country or society.

Giuseppe … looked like one of the executive staff of the Black Hand plotting against the public weal.

The Small Bachelor, ch. 16.1 (1927)

Lady Bostock’s eyes were already bulging … protrude a little further. (p. 83)

the sixteenth inst. (p. 84)

The sixteenth day of the present month; short for instant. An abbreviation commonly used in commercial correspondence as well as legal testimony.

Mark the sequel (p. 85)

Wodehouse often quoted this phrase from Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

bona fides (p. 85)

Bona fides, treated as a plural noun, has acquired the meaning “proofs of good faith” in English. [MH]

gasper (p. 86)

Slang for a cigarette, especially an inexpensive or harsh one. First OED citation is from Isis, an Oxford University student magazine, in 1914.

dog races down Shepherd’s Bush way (p. 86)

In West London, between Hammersmith and North Kensington. Greyhound racing began in 1926 at the White City Stadium there, originally built for the 1908 Summer Olympics.

lighted matches between his toes (p. 88)

The first of many speculations of this nature in Wodehouse; see The Old Reliable.

young poop (p. 89)

Six

Runs from pp. 93 to 123 in US first edition.

boomps-a-daisy (p. 93)

pie-faced (p. 93)

looked sweet in a sailor suit (p. 94)

That could certainly be said of the young Plum, age about seven, in the image at right.

mangoldwurzel (p. 94)

Spelled mangel-wurzel in UK editions. See Young Men in Spats.

our afternoon at The Cedars (p. 95)

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

a super supporting a star (p. 97)

Short for “supernumerary”—theatrical term for what in films is called an extra: a player who fills out a crowd scene, but has no individual lines to speak nor a character name. [MH]

a pippin of a girl (p. 97)

From the sense of “pippin” as a sweet dessert apple, the further meanings of “a dear young girl” and “an excellent thing, a pleasing example of its kind” were derived.

“We are amused?” (p. 98)

The use of the “royal we” may be an allusion to a phrase often attributed to Queen Victoria: “We are not amused.” See The Girl in Blue.

“Nerves vibrating?” (p. 98)

See the discussion of vibrating ganglions in Sam the Sudden.

like a watered flower (p. 101)

Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.

“The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)

It was as good a dinner as I have ever absorbed, and it revived Uncle Thomas like a watered flower.

“Clustering Round Young Bingo” (1925; in Carry On, Jeeves, 1925/27)

He paused, and in the background Pongo revived like a watered flower.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 11 (1939)

Bill revived like a watered flower.

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 6 (1953/54)

During this halcyon period, if halcyon is the word I want, it would not be too much to say that I revived like a watered flower.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 8 (1954)

Horace revived like a watered flower.

Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 9.2 (1968)

tidings of great joy (p. 101)

skip like the high hills (p. 101)

somnambulist (p. 102)

sleepwalker

Well met by moonlight (p. 102)

Adapted from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

Bloody awful (p. 102)

The adjective bloody used as an intensifier has long been considered impolite or sacrilegious in Britain; Shaw created a minor furore by putting “Not bloody likely!” in Eliza Doolittle’s mouth in Pygmalion (1914).

In his earlier works, Wodehouse often used euphemistic substitutes such as ruddy or crimson for it; the word begins appearing in his works in Money in the Bank (1942). Richard Usborne (A Wodehouse Companion) suggests that Wodehouse’s exposure to the all-male environment of the internment camp accounts for the occurrence of such phrases as “bloody awful” and “too bloody much” in this and later books.

See also Piccadilly Jim.

Black Death (p. 186)

The epidemic of bubonic plague which struck Europe in 1346–1353, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the population.

“I, personally, consider that all times are good times for Mr. Pilbeam to have headaches. Not to mention botts, glanders, quartan ague, frog in the throat and the Black Death.”

Lady Julia Fish in Heavy Weather, ch. 13 (1933)

“To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot—certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are a worse scourge than the Black Death.”

Aunt Dahlia to Bertie in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)

It is like the Black Death, which, starting with occasional isolated cases in scattered villages, suddenly caught on and became such a popular craze that eventually there was scarcely a resident of the British Isles who did not look like the end man in a minstrel show asking Mister Bones why a chicken crossed the road.

“Looking Back” (in Punch, January 12, 1955)

What steps, he could not at the moment suggest, but if, say, something on the order of the Black Death were shortly to start setting about these young pests and giving them what was coming to them, it would have his full approval.

Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (1958)

Father Mariana … was particularly down on the Saraband, which he said did more harm than the Black Death.

“Our Man in America” (in Punch, November 15, 1961)

stout denial (p. 186)

stinker (p. 186)

cami-knickers (p. 187)

preux chevalier (p. 187)

See Lord Emsworth and Others and The Code of the Woosters.

a pair of number eleven boots (p. 187)

Size 11 on the British scale is a rather large shoe (equivalent to European size 46 and US men’s size 12). [MH]

one of those great race movements (p. 188)

See The Girl on the Boat.

who intends not to let a twig snap beneath his feet (p. 188)

a collection of gray cells (p. 188)

Spelled grey in the UK edition. See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.

elixir (p. 188)

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

one for the tonsils (p. 188)

his journey to the promised land (p. 189)

fewer and better Twistletons (p. 189)

By the time the clocks were striking five, Mr. Waddington had come definitely to the decision that what the world wanted to make it a place fit for heroes to live in was fewer and better Mulcahys.

The Small Bachelor, ch. 12 (1926/27)

It seemed to her that what the world wanted was fewer and better Peasemarches.

Lottie Blossom in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 12 (1935)

“And, by George, that is what Bumpleigh Hall wants, to make it an earthly paradise—fewer and better Fittleworths.”

Lord Worplesdon in Joy in the Morning, ch. 22 (1946)

“What England needs is fewer and better Kegley-Bassingtons.”

Esmond Haddock in The Mating Season, ch. 25 (1949)

“The more I see of this joint, the more clearly do I realize that what Blandings Castle needs, to make it an earthly Paradise, is fewer and better Connies.”

Galahad Threepwood in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.3 (1952)

Our views on each other were definite. His was that what England needed if it was to become a land fit for heroes to live in was fewer and better Woosters, while I had always felt that there was nothing wrong with England that a ton of bricks falling from a height on Spode’s head wouldn’t cure.

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 5 (1971)

sitting high jump (p. 189)

“What is wrong with this picture?” (p. 190)

Just before Emily Post’s Etiquette came out in 1922, Lillian Eichler’s The Book of Etiquette was published and sold widely; Eichler, an advertising copywriter, conceived a widely discussed series of ads with illustrations of someone committing a social faux pas along with the title question.

Still other advertisements carry cuts showing a man spilling soup over a lady’s gown, stepping on a lady’s foot or knocking over an upright piano, and inquiring archly, ‘What Is Wrong With This Picture?’ The inquiry being followed by the admonition that only by buying the Book of Good Manners and getting up on it can the reader learn what is the social mode and vogue.

The Smart Set, vol. 70, p. 55 (March 1923)

that inevitability which was such a feature of the best Greek tragedy (p. 191)

See The Girl in Blue.

“Yes, sir. I agree with you that the whole affair has something of the dark inevitability of Greek tragedy.”

Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1934)

“Events moved towards the big moment with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.”

Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 12 (1939)

“Mark how it works out with the inevitability of Greek tragedy or whatever it was that was so bally inevitable.”

Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 9 (1953/54)

There was nothing coincidental in their meeting. One sees in it something of the inevitability which was such a feature of Greek tragedy.

The Girl in Blue, ch. 5 (1970)

“The whole affair had in it something of the inevitability of Greek tragedy.”

Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 12.2 (1973)

the gold cure (p. 193)

See Laughing Gas.

a one-armed paperhanger with the hives (p. 194)

See Cocktail Time.

reefer knot (p. 194)

See Money for Nothing.

“What will the harvest be?” (p. 194)

Pongo placed a hand on either side of his head to shore it up. (p. 196)

Compare p. 138, above.

a shakedown (p. 196)

An informal place prepared for sleeping; originally Scots dialect for a bed of straw spread on the floor (OED citation from 1754).

reach-me-downs (p. 197)

See Full Moon.

where she lists (p. 197)

Here list is a nearly archaic verb with the sense of “desire, choose, wish, please”; perhaps the best-known use is in the Authorized (King James) version of the Bible, from John 3:8:

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

square (p. 197)

Here, a slang term meaning to gain someone’s assistance or non-interference by means of compensation; to bribe. The OED has citations beginning in 1859, referring to squaring a policeman.

Forgotten Sports of the Past (p. 197)

“Forgotten Sports of the Past—Splitting the Straw.”

Jill the Reckless/The Little Warrior, ch. 14.3 (1920)

“Forgotten Sports of the Past—Number Three, Meeting the Mater.”

“Something Squishy” (1924; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)

(Forgotten Sports of the Past—Getting The Scenario)

“Genesis of a Novel” (in Punch, May 4, 1966)

Chingachgook … Fenimore Cooper (p. 198)

scared her out of a year’s growth (p. 199)

Watching the relative soar skywards with a wordless squeak, obviously startled out of a year’s growth, I was conscious of a distinct sensation of getting a bit of my own back.

Bertie speaking of Lord Worplesdon in Joy in the Morning, ch. 14 (1946)

“I don’t say she hadn’t scared me out of a year’s growth, because she had, but owing to this presence of mind I was speaking of I was enabled to up with my finger and put it to my lips and whisper ‘ ’Ush!’ ”

Chippendale in The Girl in Blue, ch. 11.5 (1970)

fiver … tenner (p. 200)

Five-pound or ten-pound notes. As above, multiply by approximately thirty to give modern equivalent purchasing power, accounting for inflation from 1948 to 2023.

“Well, I dunno” (p. 200)

Wodehouse uses this spelling of don’t know elsewhere only twice, for exasperatingly dimwitted characters.

Ma Price was bewildered.
“I dunno,” she said helplessly.

If I Were You, ch. 19 (1931)

“The Stoker is one of those dumb females whose impulse, if you ask them to do something, is to say ‘Well, I dunno’ and do the opposite, and there were times, I confess, when I felt like giving the thing up and getting what small consolation I could from beating her over the head with a bottle.”

Mike Cardinal speaking of Eileen Stoker in Spring Fever, ch. 22 (1948)

time is of the essence (p. 201)

Battle of Joppa (p. 202)

See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

upas tree (p. 202)

A widely distributed tropical tree, Antiaris toxicaria, related to mulberry and fig trees. Its latex sap is highly toxic and is used to make poisoned arrows and darts in several Southeast Asian cultures; upas is one of the names given to the poison sap in Indonesia. Many exaggerated legends are told of the tree’s deadly influence on nearby animals and people; some say that no one can even walk up to the trunk and remain alive, and one eighteenth-century account had it destroying all animal life within miles. More at Wikipedia.

He was one of those delightful, irresponsible, erratic persons into whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a upas tree.

Mr. Warden in “Ruth in Exile” (1912; in The Man Upstairs, 1924)

“What’s the tree I read about somewhere that does you in if you sit under it?”
“The Upas tree, sir.”
“She’s a female Upas tree. It’s not safe to come near her. Disaster on every side is what she strews.”

Speaking of Stiffy Byng in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 10 (1963)

King Claudius … The Mouse Trap (p. 203)

From Hamlet: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo (p. 203)

or it may have been “Goo!” (p. 204)

The UK edition has “Coo!” here, repeating the exclamation from earlier on the page, and probably a better reading.

blood will tell (p. 204)

See If I Were You.

commending his soul to God (p. 204)

the Regency (p. 205)

regardless of their age and sex (p. 206)

See Cocktail Time.

a bit of goose (p. 207)

“The berries?” (p. 207)

Pongo assumes that Bill is about to use the 1920s slang of “the berries” for something excellent, rather like “the cat’s pajamas” and similar phrases.

the lodestar of my life (p. 207)

A star that shows the way, something that serves as a guide or on which attention is fixed. [JD]

the bezuzus (p. 208)

An obscure word not found in the OED or Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Sinclair Lewis used it in Babbitt (1922):

“But there wouldn’t be any class to saying ‘got the degree of Stamp-licker from the Bezuzus Mail-order University!’ ”

Strikes a new note (p. 208)

See Spring Fever.

The parable of the talents crossed his mind. (p. 210)

fifteen-stone policeman (p. 210)

Weighing 210 pounds, that is, or about 95 kg.

beezer (p. 210)

See Hot Water.

my great sponge, Joyeuse (p. 211)

streamlined body (p. 212)

Streamlined was originally a technical term for the design of vehicles with smooth contours intended to reduce air or water resistance; the earliest OED citation is from 1910 regarding airplanes. By the 1930s it became generalized to other objects, especially with the flowing outlines of Moderne or Art Deco styles. The Wodehouse quotation from Plum Pie below is among the OED citations.

Brandy, like port, has the disadvantage that it is not good for the figure, but Mr. Molloy, though a man whose constant aim it was to preserve the streamlined body, was prepared in consideration of the special circumstances to disregard this.

Money in the Bank, ch. 27 (1942)

At these frightful words, the spirit of the Woosters felt as if it had been sat on by an elephant. And not one of your streamlined, schoolgirl-figured elephants, either. A big, fat one.

The Mating Season, ch. 23 (1949)

This occurred after he had proceeded some hundred yards, the object into which he bumped being a slender, streamlined, serpentine female who looked like one of those intense young women who used to wreck good men’s lives in the silent films but seem rather to have died out since the talkies came in.

“Feet of Clay” (in Nothing Serious, 1950)

Beach the butler … was not the streamlined young under-footman he had been thirty years ago…

Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1 (1952)

“He had put on weight terribly the last time I saw him. I suppose he’s worse than ever now.”
“He is far from streamlined.”

Sir Raymond Bastable in Cocktail Time, ch. 24 (1958)

Faced with a choice between compartments filled with outsize adults and those where the adults were more streamlined but were accompanied by children, he chose one of the former.

Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 2 (1961)

Dieting continues to be all the go … and the number of those who hope to become streamlined by pushing their plates away untasted increases daily.

From the “Our Man in America” items (originally from Punch) in the UK edition of Plum Pie (1966), p. 75.

In appearance Kelly was on the buxom side. In her middle forties she still retained much of the spectacular beauty of her youth, but a carelessness these last years in the matter of counting the calories had robbed her figure of its old streamlined look.

Company for Henry, ch. 3 (1967)

Part Four
Ten

Runs from pp. 215 to 227 in US first edition.

Waterloo (p. 215)

One of London’s main railroad stations; see Hot Water.

had what it takes (p. 215)

Something that enables one to achieve success or attain a desired end, as good looks, ability, or money. [JD]

look like a walrus (p. 215)

Most often this description is due to a large mustache; here is a sampling from many instances:

“Well, my old uncle—I’m not blaming him, don’t you know—more his misfortune than his fault—I can see that now—but he’s got a heavy moustache. Like a walrus, rather, and he’s a bit apt to inhale the stuff through it.”

Ginger Kemp speaking of his Uncle Donald in The Adventures of Sally, ch. 9 (1922)

“You have observed his walrus moustache, his double chin, his protruding eyes.”

“The Romance of a Bulb-Squeezer” (1926; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)

Peering through the golden mists which float about a lover, he perceived a rubicund little man of middle age with a walrus moustache and two chins.

Sir Herbert Bassinger in Big Money, ch. 7.2 (1931)

A bald-headed man with a walrus moustache was seated at the desk.

Jno. Philbrick in “The Voice from the Past” (1931; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)

The thought of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum cashier ceasing to be a fount of gold and becoming just a man with a walrus moustache had turned Wilmot’s spine to Jell-o.

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

“Lord Bromborough looks like a walrus, yes, but unfortunately not a funny walrus. That moustache of his is majestic rather than diverting.”

“Buried Treasure” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)

I wouldn’t say the moustache softened his face, but being of the walrus or soup-strainer type it hid some of it, which was all to the good.

Aubrey Upjohn in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 3 (1960)

The Duke of Dunstable … was a large, stout, bald-headed man with a jutting nose, prominent eyes and a bushy white mustache of the type favored by regimental sergeant majors and walruses.

Service with a Smile, ch. 1.2 (1961)

Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, … was an opinionated, arbitrary, autocratic man with an unpleasantly loud voice, bulging eyes and a walrus moustache which he was always blowing at and causing to leap like a rocketting pheasant…

A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.3 (1969)

Catterick Bridge (p. 216)

Both a bridge and a hamlet, but better known as the site of a horse racecourse in North Yorkshire, England. Racing has taken place there since 1783, and the permanent racetrack dates from 1813.

stirring up Bill Oakshott’s soul like an egg whisk (p. 216)

See The Old Reliable.

Barribault’s (p. 216)

treating her nominee like a ewe lamb (p. 216)

Augustus Popgood … Cyril Grooly (p. 217)

cheese straw (p. 217)

A cheese straw is a cheese-flavored stick of baked pastry, usually well-shortened with butter to be intermediate in texture between a breadstick and a pie crust.

a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune (p. 217)

Quoting Brutus in Julius Caesar; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

the book beautiful (p. 218)

In 1899 publisher John Lane advertised his firm as “publishers of the book beautiful” and the usage came into popular use. [NTPM]

an interior decorator and a seller of antiques (p. 219)

Wodehouse seems to have had a disparaging view of men in these occupations. Lionel P. Green and Orlo Tarvin (Money in the Bank, Company for Henry) and Cyril Mulliner (“Strychnine in the Soup”) are described in less than flattering terms.

Boulevard Raspail (p. 219)

In Paris, running north-south through the seventh, sixth, and fourteenth arrondisements.

old crumb (p. 219)

the apple of his eye (p. 219)

spoiling the ship for a hap’worth of tar (p. 219)

hock (p. 220)

adenoids (p. 220)

side whiskers (p. 220)

Hyphenated as side-whiskers in the UK edition. See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

the left bank of the Seine … rive gauche (p. 220)

The artistic quarter of Paris.

Ye Panache Presse (p. 220)

For Ye and the spelling with a final e, see Ye Cosy Nooke in A Damsel in Distress.

Panache, a borrowing from French, originally referred to a plume of feathers decorating the hat of an aristocrat or royalty; by transference, it can refer to flamboyance of style or manner. The earliest figurative use in English seems to be in an 1898 translation of Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac.

the gaily appareled official (p. 220)

The doorman at Barribault’s Hotel is variously described:

the uniformed exquisite who looked like an ex-King of Ruritania

Full Moon, ch. 3.2 (1947)

On the sidewalk outside the main entrance of Barribault’s Hotel there is posted a zealous functionary about eight feet in height, dressed in what appears to be the uniform of an admiral in the Ruritanian navy, whose duty it is to meet cars and taxis, open the door for their occupants and assist them to alight.

Spring Fever, ch. 20 (1948)

the Ruritanian Field-Marshal who gets taxis for Barribault’s clientele

Something Fishy, ch. 9 (1957)

all the swing of a Babylonian orgy (p. 222)

in a spirit of the utmost cordiality (p. 222)

“Oo-la-la” (p. 222)

A widely used French interjection with varying meanings, usually to express surprise or to point out something worth noticing. Many of Wodehouse’s characters know little French other than this.

“I don’t know any French myself except ‘oo la la!’ ”

The Adventures of Sally, ch. 2.4 (1921/22)

Packy, except for “Oo là là!” which he did not quite know how to bring in, had now shot his bolt.

Hot Water, ch. 10 (1932)

“What’s that French expression?”
“Oo la la?”
“Fait accompli.”

Full Moon, ch. 2 (1947)

Terry was mystified. If she had been an international spy, with one eye always out for the police force of any country in which she happened to be, she would no doubt have taken this piece of information with a careless ‘Oo là là’ and a wave of a jewelled hand, but she was not an international spy.

French Leave, ch. 6.6 (1956)

“…what I know of it. Which is just that word ‘l’addition’ and, of course, ‘Oo là là!’.”

Bill Hollister in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 10 (1957)

“L’audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace.” (p. 223)

A quotation attributed (in slightly varying forms) to Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–1794), French revolutionary, in an address to the National Assembly in 1792. “Audacity, audacity, always audacity” is the literal translation of this version; “Always be bold and daring” is one paraphrase.

keeping the money in the old oak chest (p. 223)

the best of all possible worlds (p. 224)

struck a minor chord (p. 224)

A figurative use of a musical term for a combination of musical notes including the flattened third degree of the scale, such as C - E♭ - G in the key of C minor. Like melodies based on such a scale, conventionally in Western music these chords are used to signify sadness, grief, or misfortune. See Leave It to Psmith for references to tunes and themes in a minor key.

wolves … sleighs … Russian peasant (p. 225)

See Full Moon.

all the illustrated papers (p. 227)

A probable allusion to W. S. Gilbert’s libretto to The Gondoliers (with Arthur Sullivan, 1889), in which Don Alhambra refers to Inez waiting in the torture chamber: “She’s all right. She has all the illustrated papers.”

commending his soul to God (p. 227)

Eleven

Runs from pp. 228 to 255 in US first edition.

I’m biding my time. That’s the sort of man I’m, as the song says. (p. 229)

The song “Bidin’ My Time” was written by George and Ira Gershwin for Girl Crazy (1930). Ira Gershwin’s lyric has “kind of guy” where Lord Ickenham says “sort of man.”

one little rose from your hair (p. 230)

“He worships you, that boy. He adores you. He would die for one little rose from your hair. And does he get one? Not so much as a blasted petal.”

Bill Shannon, speaking to Kay Shannon about Joe Davenport in The Old Reliable, ch. 11 (1951)

“When you dived off the high board, I would look up at you from the shallow end and whisper ‘My hero!’ I would have died for one little rose from your hair.”

Jane Benedick to Bill Hollister in Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 11 (1957)

“She didn’t actually say she would die for one little rose from your hair, but that was the impression she conveyed.”

Tipton Plimsoll to Wilfred Allsop about Monica Simmons in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 6.3 (1965)

baa-lamb (p. 230)

Most often used in the sense of a romantic partner seen as sweet and cuddly, as here:

“He’s a baa-lamb,” said Jane.

Speaking of George Abercrombie in “The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936)

It was enough for her, she said, that she was going to marry Joe, because Joe was a woolly baa-lamb.

Kay Shannon referring to Joe Davenport in The Old Reliable, ch. 17 (1951)

“He’s a baa-lamb. And you can’t say a baa-lamb isn’t a nice thing to have around the house.”

Penny Donaldson speaking of Jerry Vail in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 1.4 (1952)

“Jeff’s a baa-lamb.”

Terry Trent, speaking of Jefferson, comte d’Escrignon, in French Leave, ch. 12 (1956)

“Lancelot is a baa-lamb.”

Gladys Wetherby speaking of Lancelot Bingley in “A Good Cigar Is a Smoke” (in Plum Pie, 1967)

Also used for someone to whom the speaker has reason to be grateful:

“Well, you certainly are the most wonderful woolly baa-lamb that ever stepped.”

Stiffy Byng to Jeeves in The Code of the Woosters, ch. 8 (1938)

“You’ve saved my life. Do you think I want to be called sir by … a woolly baa-lamb the hem of whose garment I ought to be kissing.”

Mike Bond to Horace Appleby in Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 15 (1968)

Once used by Wodehouse for the intended victim of a swindle, someone about to be “fleeced”:

sticking poor trusting half-witted baa-lambs with dud oil stock

“Big Business” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)

lets concealment like a worm i’ the bud feed on his damask cheek (p. 231)

From Twelfth Night: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.

‘Oh, My Dolores, Queen Of The Eastern Sea’ (p. 232)

The refrain of the once-popular tenor solo “In the Shade of the Palm” from the 1899 hit musical Florodora.

Your annotator [NM] was musical director and arranger of a revival of Florodora in 2009; a video recording of this number sung by Nicholas Patton is on YouTube.

making such heavy weather (p. 232)

Allowing one’s emotions to be stormy; making a fuss about something. Wodehouse used Heavy Weather as the title of a 1933 Blandings Castle novel.

Boadicea (p. 232)

Jael, the wife of Heber (p. 233)

to pinch-hit (p. 234)

To substitute at bat for another player in the game of baseball; figuratively, to take another’s place at a crucial time.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.” (p. 234)

Quoting Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens.

notes, cash, or lima beans (p. 235)

The only other reference so far found to lima beans so far found in Wodehouse is also a pseudo-monetary one:

They played the game for lima beans at her house, and there were occasions when the loss of a hundred or so of these useful little adjuncts to fun in the home would lash her into a species of frenzy.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford in “The Dinner of Herbs” (1913).

stinko (p. 237)

The OED calls this American slang for being drunk, first cited from 1927. The earliest usage so far found in Wodehouse is by Eggy Mannering from chapter 9 of Laughing Gas (1936):

“Are you by any chance under the impression—have you allowed yourself to run away with the foolish notion—are you really such a poor judge of form as to imagine that I am stinko?”

tight as an owl (p. 237)

Young Lochinvar (p. 238)

Hesperus (p. 239)

Even without the childish lisp, Lord Ickenham slightly misquotes the Longfellow poem; see Something Fresh.

on to your saddlebow (p. 239)

Alluding to the Lochinvar poem; see Right Ho, Jeeves.

stern and rock-bound coast (p. 239)

Alluding to a poem by Hemans: see Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.

Daily Dozen (p. 240)

Fitness exercises; see Laughing Gas.

roly-poly pudding (p. 240)

A dessert made by spreading jam or fruit on a rectangle of pastry dough, rolling it up into a cylinder, and steaming or baking it.

Ethel M. Dell (p. 240)

cut business (p. 241)

Theatrical jargon for “omit the action.”

shower kisses on her upturned face (p. 241)

See the comments on this phrase in the end notes to “In Alcala” (1909).

Cheshire cat (p. 241)

six ice creams in a quarter of an hour (p. 242)

Not quite a record; that seems to be held by Sir Raymond Bastable:

Years ago, when a boy at school, he had once eaten seven vanilla ice creams at a sitting because a syndicate of his playmates had betted him he couldn’t.

Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (1958)

adagio dancer (p. 243)

Buck-u-Uppo (p. 245)

A fictional tonic in three of Wodehouse’s stories told by Mr. Mulliner, beginning with “Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo” (1926).

Doctor Smythe’s Tonic Swamp Juice (p. 245)

Compare:

“Blizzard’s hiccups. How are they? Suggest Doctor Murphy’s Tonic Swamp-Juice. Highly spoken of. Three times a day after meals. Try for week and cable result.”

“High Stakes” (1925; in The Heart of a Goof, 1926)

Little wonder, then, that Stiffy’s announcement had bucked him up like a dose of Doctor Somebody’s Tonic Swamp Juice, which acts directly on the red corpuscles and imparts a gentle glow.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1963)

horrible, blasting voice (p. 246)

Thus in the US edition, but almost certainly a misprint for bleating as in the UK first edition.

any being erect upon two legs and bearing the outward semblance of a man (p. 246)

Before the bill had been in the parlor-window three days—three days, gentlemen—a Being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not a monster, knocked at the door of Mrs. Bardell’s house.

Sergeant Buzfuz’s testimony in ch. 34 of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1837).

as if a gimlet had suddenly penetrated the cushions (p. 247)

the gamut of the emotions (p. 247)

See Heavy Weather.

his last summer but one at Eton (p. 248)

Approximately age seventeen.

the scent of the violets and roses which sprouted through the bedroom floor (p. 248–49)

The aroma of mouse and mildew had passed away. Violets seemed to be spreading their fragrance through the cottage. Violets and roses.

Summer Lightning, ch. 12.3 (1929)

And then, at seven fifty-seven, the whole aspect of affairs abruptly changed. Gloom vanished, hope dawned, soft music seemed to fill the air, and that air became suddenly languorous with the scent of violets and roses.

Full Moon, ch. 4 (1947)

they recked nothing (p. 249)

That is, they were not at all concerned. See Thank You, Jeeves.

some strong swimmer in his agony (p. 250)

quivering with gratitude to his helpmeet for her timely suggestion (p. 250)

soaring ceilingwards … Pongo leaped an inch or two (p. 250–51)

barmy (p. 251)

British slang, from late nineteenth century, for being foolish or silly; derived from an earlier literal sense of the word meaning frothy (like beer). Capitalized as a nickname, Wodehouse uses it as a schoolboy epithet for Lord Ickenham (ch. 12, p. 256) as well as Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps in many Drones Club tales, Lord George “Barmy” Barminster in “Ways to Get a Gal” (1957), and even Major Plank (as recalled by E. Jimpson Murgatroyd in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, 1974).

bringing the good news from Aix to Ghent (p. 252)

all of a sudden—bing (p. 252)

A fascinating glimpse into the creative process. For bing see Thank You, Jeeves.

saloon bar (p. 252)

A separate room in a pub, more comfortable and with better service than the public bar.

Jno. Humphreys (p. 253)

A conventional abbreviation for John, as often seen on shop signs and the like. The landlord’s name is given as John Humphreys later in the same section of the chapter (p. 255 of US first edition).

reculer pour mieux sauter (p. 253)

French, literally to draw back in order to make a better leap; to make a strategic withdrawal or a pause in order to come back stronger.

however thin the house (p. 253)

Theatrical jargon: however sparse the audience may be.

to walk through his part (p. 253)

Theatrical jargon: to act a role with the minimum of energy or expression.

wet with unshed tears (p. 254)

Twelve

Runs from pp. 256 to 271 in US first edition.

mahogany face (p. 256)

The only other instance so far found where a human is compared to this rich reddish tropical wood:

Cremorne, a mahogany derelict who had spent his youth on the sea when liners were sailing-ships

Not George Washington, ch. 6 (1907)

Barmy (p. 256)

See above.

loving cup (p. 258)

A drink shared as a sign of friendship, especially in a ceremonial sense, or the two-handled tall silver cup often used when passed from hand to hand in this way, as at a banquet.

a sandbagged silence (p. 258)

As if he had been knocked out with a blow to the head from a soft weapon; see Right Ho, Jeeves.

inked darts (p. 259)

my name will be mud (p. 259)

In other words, his reputation will be soiled.

look slippy (p. 259)

Act quickly; from a British word slippy first recorded in 1847 in a dictionary of provincial words. The phrase is cited from 1885 in the OED; Wodehouse is cited for “make it slippy” from Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972).

a fool’s paradise (p. 260)