Ukridge
by
P G Wodehouse
Literary and Cultural References
This is part of an on-going effort by the members of the Blandings Yahoo! Group to document references, allusions, quotations, etc in the works of P G Wodehouse.
Ukridge was originally annotated by Mark Hodson (aka The Efficient Baxter). They have been reformatted somewhat, but credit goes to Mark for his original efforts, even while we bear the blame for errors of fact or interpretation.
Ukridge’s Dog College (pp 1 to 22)
This story runs from pp. 1 to 22 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in April 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in May 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
[Jasen, David A., P.G. Wodehouse, A Portrait of a Master (1981) ]
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge (p 1)
The character Ukridge (pronounced "Yoo-kridge") first appeared in the novel Love among the Chickens (1906, 1909, 1921) Apart from the present collection, there are Ukridge stories in Lord Emsworth and Others, Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940), Nothing Serious (1950) and Plum Pie (1966). The distribution of stories between these books varies between the UK and US, of course! Usborne has an interesting chapter comparing the Ukridge of the short stories to Love among the Chickens. Murphy has done some detective work into the real prototypes for Ukridge, and claims to have found Aunt Julia's house.
The origin of the name Ukridge is unclear.
Featherstonehaugh (pronounced “Fanshaw”) is a Northumbrian surname, from the name of a village near Haltwhistle.
Stanley is a common English surname, which possibly owes its popularity as a boys’ name in the late nineteenth century to the Welsh-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904).
half-a-crown (p 2)
A coin worth 2/6 (12.5 p in decimal currency). For obscure reasons the half-crown continued to exist until the introduction of decimal currency, even though the crown had long since disappeared.
sported on the green (p 2)
It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar’s work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
[Southey, Robert After Blenheim 1-7]
Buenos Ayres (p 2)
Obsolete spelling of Buenos Aires (Argentina), common in the nineteenth century, and still often seen in the names of older institutions.
George Tupper (p 2)
Tupper is usually claimed to be a Huguenot name, and nothing to do with the reproductive habits of sheep. A Professor Tupper-Smith appears in “A Prisoner of War” (1915).
The only famous bearers of that name sems to have been:
(1) Martin Tupper (1810-1880), author of Proverbial Philosophy, the much-mocked Sophie’s World of the mid-Victorian period.
(2) Sir Charles Tupper was one of the Fathers of Confederation, that bushy-bearded gaggle of nation-builders that, against all the odds, managed to create the dominion of Canada July 1, 1867, blazing the trail for the younger dominions, (Australia, NZ, SA, etc.) to follow in the years to come. When not serving as high commissioner to London, Tupper was a senior cabinet minister in Prime Minister John A. MacDonald’s Tory cabinets (1867-73; 1878-91), finally becoming the country’s sixth Prime Minister in 1896, ten weeks before the Tories were thrashed by Laurier’s Grits in the general election of that year. Unfortunately, Charles Tupper’s periods as High Commissioner in London seem to have been at least a decade before George Tupper would have secured his position in the Foreign Office.
[Ian Michaud]
commissionaires (p 3)
Uniformed doorkeepers, especially outside expensive shops and hotels.
Selfridge’s (p 3)
The Oxford Street department store was opened by the American retailer H. Gordon Selfridge (1856-1947) in 1909. Selfridge learnt his trade with Marshall Field in Chicago, and caused eyebrows to rise in London with his ideas of shopping as entertainment.
Ichabod (p 3)
Inglorious. From the name of an Old Testament character (Eli’s grandson) who had the bad luck to be born at the moment that the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, the same day that his father, uncle and grandfather died.
15 Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes
were dim, that he could not see.
16 And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army,
and I fled today out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my
son?
17 And the messenger answered and said, Israel is fled before
the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the
people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phin'ehas, are dead, and the
ark of God is taken.
18 And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God,
that he fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and
his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he
had judged Israel forty years.
19 ¶ And his daughter-in-law, Phin'ehas' wife, was with child,
near to be delivered: and when she heard the tidings that the ark of
God was taken, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead,
she bowed herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her.
20 And about the time of her death the women that stood by her
said unto her, Fear not; for thou hast borne a son. But she answered
not, neither did she regard it.
21 And she named the child Ich'abod, saying, The glory is departed
from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father-in-law
and her husband.
22 And she said, The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark
of God is taken.
[Bible 1 Samuel 4:15-22]
Elba ... Napoleon (p 4)
Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba after the allied forces entered France in 1814. He remained there from the 4th of May, 1814 until the 1st of March, 1815, when the unpopularity of Louis XVIII encouraged him to come back for another go. He landed on French soil at Cannes, where Wodehouse was to live for a while in the 1930s.
Ebury Street (p 4)
A mainly-residential street in the Belgravia district of London, behind Victoria coach station.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=528592&Y=178880&A=Y&Z=1
Bowles (p 4)
First appears in these stories.
Sheep’s Cray, in Kent (p 6)
There are a number of Kent villages on what is now the edge of London with names like Foot’s Cray, St Mary Cray, etc., (cray is an archaic word for chalk, of which there is no shortage in Kent). Sheep’s Cray seems to be fictitious, however. Possibly it was inspired by Sheepscombe (Gloucestershire)?
life is stern and ... earnest (p 6)
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
a forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
[Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882) A Psalm of life ]
sumptuous raiment (p 6)
Seems to be a literary cliché, rather than a specific allusion. Sir Richard Burton’s overuse of it in his translation of the 1001 Nights may have been responsible for bringing the expression into common use, but he certainly didn’t invent it: the OED cites Alexander Barclay’s Eclogues (ca. 1515).
mackintosh (p 6)
A waterproof coat. To judge by the colour, probably a sailor’s oilskin coat.
ginger-beer wire (p 6)
Ginger-beer contains a lot of carbon dioxide under pressure, because most of the fermentation takes place in the bottle. Consequently, it was sold in bottles sealed like champagne bottles with a cork held down by twisted wire. This wire would have been useful for improvised repairs in the days before adhesive tape.
Pince-nez are spectacles without earpieces that clip on to the nose: Ukridge has converted his to ordinary spectacles.
England paved with Pekingese dogs (p 7)
The surface area of England is about 130 000 sq km. If we assume that to pave England with Pekingese requires about four dogs per square metre (and ignore the practicalities), Ukridge’s stated business plan would reach this output after the 37th group of dogs.
nine hundred dollars ... Ford car business (p 8)
James Couzens (1872-1936) was working as a book-keeper to the Detroit coal-dealer Alexander Malcolmson when Malcolmson and Henry Ford set up the Ford Motor Company in 1903. Couzens scraped together $900 of his own savings and borrowed a further $1500 to buy 24 shares in the new company.
His investment made him a millionaire, and he went into banking and became mayor of Detroit. At the time this story appeared he had just entered the US senate, which would have brought his story to Wodehouse’s attention.
Charing Cross (p 8)
Charing Cross station, near Trafalgar Square, is the West End terminus of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. It’s a small mystery why Ukridge would take a taxi to Charing Cross rather than travel from the London, Chatham and Dover Railway’s terminus at Victoria, about two minutes’ walk from Ebury Street, starting point for many trains to Kent.
Job ... Bildad (p 8)
Bildad the Shuhite, presumably one of the descendants of Abraham’s son Shuah, is the second of Job’s (uncomforting) comforters in the Bible (see Job chapters 8, 18 and 25).
Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,
How long wilt thou speak these things?
And how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?
Doth God pervert judgment?
Or doth the Almighty pervert justice? (etc.)
[Bible Job 8:1-3]
Ballet Russe (p 9)
The Ballets Russes company (the name was always given in the plural form) was founded in Paris in 1909 by Serge Diaghilev, and broke up after his death in 1929. Diaghilev worked with all the most famous dancers, choreographers, composers and designers of the early twentieth century, and his company had a huge influence on the development of ballet and music.
Gooch, the grocer (p 9)
Gooch is a name that appears quite frequently for minor characters in Wodehouse - Garrison lists eleven, from a fag in “Educating Aubrey” (1911) to the cook in Uncle Dynamite (1948). In A Damsel in Distress there is a (fictitious) Little Gooch Street.
It is not a particularly uncommon name, but the only real Gooch of any note seems to have been the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, Sir Daniel Gooch (1816-1889), often described as “Brunel’s right hand”.
[Garrison, Daniel H., Who’s Who in Wodehouse (1991) ]
Six pounds, three and a penny (p 9)
i.e. six pounds, three shillings and one old penny, or roughly 6 pounds, 15.5p in decimal coinage.
Upon my Sam (p 9)
The origins of this expression seem rather obscure - it may have been popularised by Kipling's Stalky and Co (1899), but according to the OED it existed in Devon, at least, before that, so Kipling could have picked it up at school. The similarly obscure "Upon my salmon/Salomon/sang" seem to be much older.
Nickerson (p 10)
This is the only Nickerson in the canon. It seems to be a fairly common name in the USA (possibly they are all Nixons who have changed their names??), but not often seen in Britain: there is no obvious Wodehouse link.
Kempton Park (p 10)
Racecourse, opened in 1878 at Sunbury-on-Thames, just outside London.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party (p 11)
This is allegedly the first sentence ever written on a typewriter, by Charles Weller in 1867.
subscription lists ... memorials and presentations (p 11)
In the early twenties, most school Old Boys’ groups would have been raising money to erect memorials to staff and former pupils killed in the recent war.
declare war on Switzerland (p 11)
Presumably in response to the Swiss navy’s bombardment of Lyme Regis (cf. The Swoop, ch.3)
cold welsh rabbit (p 11)
Welsh rabbit is one of those mysterious names that has no obvious connection with the thing it is describing, in this case grilled cheese on toast.
San Marino (p 11)
The tiny republic of San Marino (an enclave within Italy) was technically neutral in both World Wars. However, it did have a government closely allied to Mussolini’s Fascists from the early 1920s until 1943.
like one that on a lonesome road (p 13)
And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And look’d far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen—
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn’d round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
[Coleridge, Samuel Taylor The Rime of the Ancient Mariner VI]
Amalekites (p 14)
The descendants of Esau’s son Amalek, who were displaced from Canaan and the Sinai peninsula by the Israelites after a long struggle.
Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate (pp 23 to 43)
This story runs from pp. 23 to 43 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in May 1923 and in the Strand in the UK (as “Ukridge, Teddy Weeks and the Tomato”) in June 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
[Jasen, David A., P.G. Wodehouse, A Portrait of a Master (1981) ]
Ukridge, sternest of bachelors (p 23)
He was, of course, married to Millie on his previous appearance in Love Among the Chickens. Wodehouse evidently decided that he could do more with the character if he became a bachelor again.
obsequies (p 23)
Funeral honours - Corky is using the term ironically.
Number eleven foot (p 23)
Size 11 in the British system for men’s shoes is roughly equivalent to 12 in the US and 44 or 45 everywhere else. Large feet, however measured.
Barolini’s ... Beak Street (p 23)
Beak Street is a side street off Regent Street in the Soho district of London, a likely place to find a cheap Italian restaurant in those days, and an expensive one today.
According to the Italians I have consulted, the name “Barolini” does not have any particular regional or class associations. The Barolinis to be found on the web all seem to be writers or academics.
a shilling and sixpence (p 24)
7.5p (!)
Teddy Weeks (p 24)
Only appears in this story. The only other Weeks listed in Garrison is the butler in “The Mixer” (1915). There is a Weems in French Leave, of course.
Only a Shop-Girl (p 24)
Compare the Rosie M. Banks novel Only a Factory Girl. Could perhaps be a reference to Margaret Leahy, a shop-girl from Brixton who, in a flood of publicity, won a competition in the Daily Sketch in 1922 to become a film star.
Victor Beamish (p 24)
The first of a number of characters in the canon to be called Beamish. The most prominent is of course the self-improving author J. Hamilton Beamish (The Small Bachelor).
Sally Beamish may sound as though she should be a Wodehouse character, but is actually a respected Scottish composer.
Beamish is a village in County Durham, now the site of a large open-air museum. Cf. also Lewis Carroll’s use of the word as an adjective (“my beamish boy...”) in “Jabberwocky”.
Piccadilly Magazine (p 24)
??? From the few references I have found, it isn’t easy to say whether this really existed, or is meant as a pastiche on the real Strand Magazine (where this story appeared). If it existed, there may have been two or three different, presumably short-lived, publications with this title.
Bertram Fox (p 24)
Seems to be the only Fox in the canon. Given the next name on this page, it is a reasonable assumption that Wodehouse looked at the lid of his tobacco tin for inspiration: James J. Fox of London have been marketing pipe tobacco since the 1880s.
Wodehouse evidently liked the name Bertram - as well as Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, there is also Bertram Lushington in “The Code of the Mulliners”. It probably comes from the character in Shakespeare’s All’s well that ends well, although there are Bertrams in Scott and Jane Austen too, of course.
Robert Dunhill (p 24)
The only Dunhill in the canon. Dunhill is a brand of cigarettes and pipe tobacco.
New Asiatic Bank (p 24)
The name Wodehouse always uses for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (now HSBC) where he worked for a couple of years (at a salary of eighty pounds a year) after leaving Dulwich. This reference is a strong hint that we should see this story as set in the London of Wodehouse’s bachelor days and Not George Washington (ca. 1900) rather than 1923.
Ashes of Remorse (p 24)
Perhaps another tobacco allusion?
Ashes seem to have been popular in the cinema around this time: the Internet Movie Database lists Ashes of Hope (twice), Ashes of Three, Ashes of Remembrance, Ashes of the Past, Ashes of Love, Ashes of Desire, Ashes of Revenge, Ashes of Vengeance, and Ashes of Doom for the period 1912-1923. But Ashes of Remorse apparently remains unproduced.
Barrow-in-Furness ... Bootle (p 24)
Barrow is a port and industrial town in Cumbria (formerly Lancashire), chiefly remarkable for its remoteness from anywhere else. There are two Bootles in England - the village of this name in Cumbria is quite close to Barrow, but far too small to have had a theatre, so Wodehouse presumably means the port on Merseyside, a mile or so downstream from Liverpool city centre.
If you accept the hypothesis that the character of Lord Emsworth was inspired in part by the then Duke of Devonshire, it might be interesting to add that the Cavendish family owed much of their wealth to the development of Barrow and the Furness Railway.
Cork Street (p 25)
Cork Street was the original centre of high-class tailoring in London, where men like Beau Brummel bought their clothes. Saville Row (two streets away) later took over as the focal point of the trade: Cork Street is better known for art galleries today.
Moykoff (p 25)
Moykopf (not Moykoff) was the name of a firm of bootmakers with a shop in the Burlington Arcade. They seem to have gone out of business around 1956.
Moses Brothers (p 25)
Perhaps a dig at Moss Bros.?
Freddie Lunt (p 25)
Seems to be the only Lunt in the canon.
The name Lunt is usually said to come from Norse or Swedish words meaning a copse or small wood: there are a number of villages in the north of England with names like Lunt, Lund, Lunds, etc. Of course Lund is also the name of a city in Sweden.
Cicero ... Clodius (p 34)
Cicero and Clodius had a long-running and bitter dispute, which started with the great orator prosecuting Clodius for sacrilege (he had sneaked into a religious ceremony dressed as a woman, in the course of a liaison with Caesar’s wife, Pompeia). Clodius got off by bribing the jury, and later found himself in a position to take revenge by driving Cicero into exile on trumped-up charges and taking possession of his estates. Cicero had the last laugh, however, defending Clodius’s main political opponent, the tribune Milo, after he had killed Clodius, apparently in self-defence.
Moses on Pisgah (p 36)
1 And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the
top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho: and the LORD showed him all the land of Gil’e-ad,
unto Dan,
2 and all Naph’tali, and the land of E’phra-im, and Manas’seh, and all the
land of Judah, unto the utmost sea,
3 and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zo’ar.
4 And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and
unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine
eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.
5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of
the LORD.
[Bible Deuteronomy 34:1-5]
eight shillings the quart bottle (p 36)
Eight shillings is 40p.
A normal English quart is two pints, or about 1136ml. However, before metrication, wines and spirits were sold in a measure known as the reputed quart, defined as one-sixth of an imperial gallon, or about 757ml (slightly larger than the standard wine bottle of today).
Nowadays a bottle of cheap Champagne sells in Britain for about 15 pounds, although other fizzy wines are cheaper: one suspects that Sr Barolini may not have been too fussy about his terminology.
The Début of Battling Billson (pp 44 to 69)
This story runs from pp. 44 to 69 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in June 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in July 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
Ukridge's boxing protégé Battling Billson appears here for the first time. He later appeared in "The Return of..." and "The Exit of...," (both in the present volume) and in ‘The Come-back of...’ in Lord Emsworth and Others. He has a walk-on part in the novel Something Fishy as the brother-in-law of Keggs.
Wodehouse was a keen amateur boxer in his school days. Poor eyesight forced him to abandon the sport, but both professional and amateur boxing feature in many of his stories, and he clearly followed it closely. On his first trip to the US in 1904 he went to meet the boxer 'Kid' McKoy in his training camp.
Saturday, September the tenth (p 44)
This suggests that the story could be set in 1921, 1910 or 1904, assuming that Wodehouse bothered to check the calendar, which seems unlikely. Corky was therefore born on 8 September, 1894, 1883, or 1887, respectively.
(Wodehouse was born on 15 October, 1881.)
photographically lined on the tablets of my mind (p 44)
One winter--I am shaky in my dates--
Came two starving Tartar minstrels to his gates;
Oh, Allah be obeyed,
How infernally they played!
I remember that they called themselves the "Ouaits."
Oh! that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,
Photographically lined
On the tablet of my mind,
When a yesterday has faded from its page!
Alas! PRINCE AGIB went and asked them in;
Gave them beer, and eggs, and sweets, and scent, and tin;
And when (as snobs would say)
They had "put it all away,"
He requested them to tune up and begin.
[Gilbert, W.S. Bab Ballads - The Story of Prince Agib l.16-30]
bezique (p 44)
A complicated card game for two players, using either two or four 32-card packs. Baxter in the Blandings stories is an enthusiast.
finnan haddie (p 45)
Finnan haddock (or haddie) is a filletted haddock smoked without additional dye, a traditional Scottish dish.
Gaiety Theatre (p 46)
The Gaiety Theatre on the Strand (near where Bush House now stands) was one of the most fashionble of Edwardian London. When George Edwardes set it up in the 1880s, he laid great stress on getting the prettiest girls in his chorus. Many of them later married into the aristocracy, as Murphy reports. The original theatre was demolished in 1903, to be replaced by the New Gaiety (closed 1939, demolished 1956).
This is another clue that the events of the Ukridge stories have more to do with Edwardian London than with the twenties.
[Murphy, N. T. P., In Search of Blandings (1986) 18-20]
The Coal Hole (p 46)
This pub, in the Savoy Building at 91-92 Strand, still exists. As well as the cellar bar frequented by Ukridge, there is a street-level bar noted for its original Art Nouveau decoration.
Tod Bingham ... Alf Palmer (p 46)
Perhaps Tod is related to the pugnacious East End curate “Beefy” Bingham? There are half a dozen other Binghams in the canon.
Alf Palmer is also presumably fictitious, but the name Palmer, although common in Britain, does not seem to occur anywhere else in the canon.
Hyacinth (p 48)
There have been lots of real and fictional ships named after flowers, from battle cruisers to Mersey ferries: it’s difficult to guess what might have been the inspiration for Wodehouse’s choice of Hyacinth here. Maybe Conrad’s Narcissus?
trimmers (p 48)
In a coal-fired ship, the trimmers were men whose job was to go into the coal bunkers and shovel the coal to where it was needed by the firemen (stokers), who fed the actual fires.
In a figurative sense, a trimmer is also someone or something with a lot of fight, or likely to succeed.
A.B.s (p 48)
“Able-Bodied” seamen - experienced sailors who could “hand, reef and steer”.
the Crown in Kennington (p 48)
It’s not clear whether Ukridge is referring to the a fictitious pub, or to the real Crown in Walworth (does that still count as Kennington?), which was later run by Great Train Robber Robert Welsh.
the White Hart at Barnes (p 49)
The White Hart (nowadays it is “Ye White Hart”) is by the Thames near Barnes Bridge, the finishing line of the Boat Race.
under-secretary (p 49)
Broadly speaking, an under-secretary is two steps from the top of the civil service hierarchy, below the deputy secretary and the permanent secretary of a ministry.
Wonderland (p 49)
A former music hall in Whitechapel Road, Mile End, where many boxing matches took place.
Wilberforce (p 50)
After William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the politician and Evangelical preacher who was one of the main leaders of the British anti-slavery campaign, and has been held up as a hero to Nonconformist Sunday-school children ever since. Anyone with Wilberforce as a first name must have had parents who were Chapel, and is therefore, almost by definition, working-class.
This doesn’t seem to apply to middle names: Bertram Wilberforce Wooster was, of course, christened in honour of a race horse on which his father won a packet. There was also a Samuel Wilberforce Gosling in the early public school novel The Prefect's Uncle and, although a mere day boy, he presumably came from middle class stock or higher.
Underground station (p 52)
If they were travelling from Ebury Street, they would presumably have taken the Metropolitan District Railway (later District Line) from Victoria to Whitechapel (opened 1884) or Mile End (1902).
jellied eels (p 53)
Jellied eels are a famous speciality of the East End of London. Wodehouse frequently uses them to stand for working-class East End culture.
Fresh eels are skinned and boned, then stewed until tender and served cold in a jelly. There seem to be two, much-copied, recipes around on the internet, one of which uses added gelatine and one of which claims that the eels form their own jelly.
http://members.aol.com/ukhostchef/recipes_www/jelliedeels.htm
http://www.psychogarage.freeserve.co.uk/clunkie/eels.htm
whistling ‘Comrades’ (p 54)
Possibly the 1916 song by R. Huntington Woodman?
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/a/a14/a1419/
burned her hand at the jam factory (p 57)
Scalding was a well-known hazard for jam workers before the introduction of jar-filling machinery.
(My great-great uncle, Arthur Lealand, patented one early type of jar-filler shortly before World War I.)
Shoreditch Empire (p 60)
The Empire Theatre in Shoreditch was designed by the well-known theatre architect Frank Matcham in 1894; it was demolished in 1935.
Shoreditch is also in the East End of London, and has a place in theatre history as the original site of “The Theatre”, where the Lord Chamberlain’s Men gave the first performances of many of Shakespeare’s plays. (When a new landlord put the rent up, in 1599, Burbage, who owned the timber, had the theatre dismantled and shipped across the river to Bankside, where it was re-erected as “The Globe”.)
Gatling gun (p 60)
The first successful design of machine gun, developed by Dr Richard Gordon Gatling in the USA in the 1860s.
Florence Burns (p 64)
Poor Flossie goes through as many different surnames as Aunt Julia’s butler: although she is still called Burns in “The Return of...”, by “The Come-Back of...” she is called Dalrymple; in Something Fishy she has changed her name to Billson for entirely legitimate reasons, but her maiden name has been retrospectively changed to Keggs.
First Aid for Dora (pp 70 to 92)
This story runs from pp. 70 to 92 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in July 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in August 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).(Wodehouse had used the similar title “First Aid for Looney Biddle” for one of the stories making up The Indiscretions of Archie three years earlier.)
Shaftesbury Avenue (p 70)
One of the main thoroughfares of the London theatre district, running between Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street. It is named after the great Victorian social reformer, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885), who is commemorated by the “Eros” statue in Piccadilly Circus.
matinée audiences (p 70)
English theatres traditionally gave afternoon performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Wednesday was a half-holiday for many shop-workers and others who had to work on Saturday afternoons.
assisting ... to mount an omnibus (p 70)
This sounds much more like the horse-buses that dominated the London streets around the turn of the century than the motor buses that had taken over some ten years before this story appeared.
Sir Walter Raleigh (p 70)
Sir Walter Ralegh (or Raleigh), c.1554-1618. Elizabethan poet, courtier and adventurer. Was involved in a certain amount of commercial piracy, and many voyages of exploration, including an abortive attempt to colonise North America.
There is an apocryphal story of him laying his cloak in a puddle to allow Queen Elizabeth to cross dryshod.
Dora Mason (p 70)
Other Masons in the canon include the theatrical agent Mortimer and the playwright Wally.
Wodehouse occasionally drops references to the Freemasons into his stories, but there’s no particular reason to see this as one.
the Apollo (p 70)
The Apollo theatre, which opened in 1901, is at the Piccadilly Circus end of Shaftesbury Avenue.
steeped to the gills (p 71)
A variant, probably invented by Wodehouse, on the conventional phrase steeped to the lips, which the OED attributes to Shakespeare. The word gills is often used jocularly to replace lips, cheeks, etc.
Pen and Ink Club (p 71)
This is clearly a reference to International P.E.N., founded in 1921 by Mrs C. Dawson Scott. The first president of the London branch was John Galsworthy. Wodehouse, of course, disapproved of writers who took themselves so seriously as to proclaim a political mission for the profession.
A.B.C. shop (p 71)
The Aerated Bread Company ran a chain of bakeries in the London area. In 1864, the manageress (often mentioned, never named) of the London Bridge branch tried the experiment of serving tea to customers in the back room. It was a success, and soon the ABC were running a chain of tea shops. Their main competitors were Lyons.
Criterion (p 72)
Bar, restaurant and theatre on Piccadilly Circus. The theatre has the unusual distinction of being largely underground; the bar and restaurant were frequented by a racy set in Edwardian days, but are now very posh - the current chef is one of the few in Britain to have been given three stars by Michelin.
the Derby (p 72)
The Epsom Derby, founded in 1780 by the 12th Earl of Derby, is one of the premier events in the English horse-racing calendar. The race, which is open only to three-year-old colts, is run each June over a distance of 1 mile 4 furlongs on Epsom Downs in Surrey.
Gunga Din ... a hundred to three (p 72)
The name of the horse is a reference to Kipling’s famous ballad, of course.
The starting odds mean that anyone who had bet three pounds on this horse would have received a hundred pounds (plus the original stake) if it had come first. This implies that the bookies, at least, did not have a very high opinion of this particular horse’s chances.
‘E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
‘E put me safe inside,
An’ just before 'e died,
“I ‘ope you liked your drink”, sez Gunga Din.
So I’ll meet ‘im later on
At the place where ‘e is gone—
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen;
‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
[Kipling, Rudyard Gunga Din (last stanza)]
sweepstake (p 72)
It is common for the members of a group (co-workers, members of a club, etc.) to organise a sweepstake on the result of a big sporting event, usually a horserace. It is a kind of raffle, relying entirely on chance. Each participant puts in the same stake, and draws a ticket with the name of a competitor in the event: the person lucky enough to hold the ticket with the name of the winner gets the pool.
Mario’s (p 72)
Fictitious - this club also appears in a number of other srories, including Summer Lightning and “The Shadow Passes”. The name suggests Ciro’s in Orange St, off the Haymarket, but on the strength of the balcony Murphy identifies it as the Café de Paris, which seems to have been one of London’s most fashionable night clubs for much of the twenties and thirties.
[Murphy, N. T. P., Reminiscences of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood (1993)
]
http://www.mgthomas.co.uk/Dancebands/IndexPages/LondonDancePlaces.htm
Earl of Oxted (p 74)
Oxted is in Surrey, on the southern fringe of London (it is just outside the ring of the M25 motorway, which is nowadays usually taken to define the limits of the Metropolis).
There does not appear to have been a real Earl of Oxted. The most celebrated Earl of Oxford was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl (1550-1604) whom some promote as the “true author” of Shakespeare’s plays. Wodehouse has fun with such ideas in a number of places in the canon.
In 1925, a couple of years after this was written, the former Liberal prime minister H.H. Asquith (1852-1928) was raised to the peerage as 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith. Asquith knew Wodehouse and was the dedicatee of Meet Mr Mulliner.
balcony ... not dressed (p 75)
Not dressed here means ‘not wearing evening dress.’ The dress code at Mario’s is a key element in the plot of Summer Lightning, of course.
James J. Jeffries (p 76)
Jeffries (1875-1953) was world heavyweight boxing champion from 1899-1905. Corky and Ukridge are surely far too young to have seen him in the ring, even at his celebrated attempted come-back fight against Jack Johnson in 1910.
Ouida (p 76)
Ouida was the pen name of the popular English writer Marie Louise de la Ramée (1839-1908), who published more than forty romantic novels about society life, children’s books, etc. during her long career.
faultless evening dress (p 76)
This expression seems to have become a cliché through the works of popular writers of the Edwardian period (e.g. Guy Boothby, Egerton Castle - oddly enough I haven’t found it in Ouida) but more serious writers of the time (Wells, Bennett) also use it. It appears frequently in Wodehouse’s own works, of course.
The use of evening dress to describe men’s evening costume seems to date from around the 1880s - before that an evening dress was a garment worn by a lady.
Hamlet ... full of bread (p 76)
This may need a bit of unpacking. The allusion is to the scene (Act III, scene 3) where Hamlet comes upon his uncle praying, and resists the urge to avenge his father’s death there and then. Hamlet sr. died without the chance to purge his soul by confessing his sins — Full of bread is a reference to Ezekiel 16.49: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness...” — and Hamlet jr. wants to serve his murderer the same way. (Well, it’s as good an excuse as any other for dragging his indecision out through two more acts...)
Corky, however, need have no such scruples: he has caught Ukridge ‘full of bread’ and could dispatch him there and then in a state of sin.
Hamlet: Now might I do it pat, now he
is praying.
And now I’ll do ’t—And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Oh, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save Heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought
’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
No!
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes.
[Shakespeare Hamlet III:iii, ll.76-99]
perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart (p 76)
Corky is in Shakespearean mode, but we have moved on to Macbeth and the Physician discussing the problems of mental illness.
Macb. (...)
How does your patient, doctor?
Doct. Not
so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
Macb. Cure
her of that:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doct. Therein
the patient
Must minister to himself.
Macb. Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll
none of it.
[Shakespeare Macbeth V:iii ll.44-58]
ex tempore (p 82)
Spontaneous, unprepared.
miss-in-balk (p 83)
(More usually miss-in-baulk)
In billiards, a player making an opening stroke from behind the baulk line is not allowed to hit any other ball behind the baulk line. Thus a miss-in-baulk is a deliberate avoidance of something.
Woman’s Sphere (p 83)
Women’s magazines come and go, so it’s difficult to be certain, but this one seems to be fictitious. The real British magazine Woman’s Realm was published from 1958 to 2001; there also seem to have been a number of magazines in Britain and the US called Woman’s World.
The idea of “Woman’s Sphere” - a narrow area of life within the bounds of which women were supposed to have a pre-eminent role - is particularly associated with Victorian writers like John Ruskin.
Heath House, Wimbledon Common (p 85)
This house appears under a nuber of names in the canon. In the later Ukridge stories it is usually ‘The Cedars’.
Murphy has identified it as Gayton Lodge, Parkside, the house (now demolished - follow the link below for a map) of a Mrs Holland, an aunt of Wodehouse's cousin, the lawyer Edward Isaac. Isaac, whom Murphy suggests as the source of much of the legal terminology Wodehouse uses, lived nearby in Wimbledon.
[Murphy, N. T. P., In Search of Blandings (1986) ]
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=523566&Y=171661&A=Y&Z=3
stately homes of Wimbledon (p 85)
The phrase “stately homes of England” seems to have been invented by Mrs Hemans of Casabianca notoriety. Noël Coward’s celebrated song of 1938 is a parody. Possibly he was provoked by Mrs Hemans’s choice of epigraph?
Where’s the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land? (Walter Scott,) Marmion
The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O’er all the pleasant land.
The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam,
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.
The merry Homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!
There woman’s voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood’s tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
The blessed Homes of England!
How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness
That breathes from Sabbath-hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell’s chime
Floats through the woods at morn;
All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.
The Cottage Homes of England!
By thousands of her plains,
They are smiling o’er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet-fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves,
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath the eaves.
The free, fair Homes of England!
Long, long in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be reared
To guard each hallowed wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child’s glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!
[Hemans, Felicia Dorothea (1793-1835) The Homes of England ]
Miss Watterson (p 87)
Another Watterson, Beatrice, appears in “Open House” (1932).
The name Watterson seems to be particularly associated with Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.
Mr Jevons (p 87)
Another Jevons is the servant in “Creatures of Impulse” (1914), and Horace Jevons is a former employer of the Efficient Baxter (see “The Crime-Wave at Blandings”).
William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) was a noted economist and logician.
The Heart of Adelaide (p 89)
Neither the British Library nor the Library of Congress list this title, so we must assume that Miss Ukridge failed to complete it, or had a different title foisted upon her by a publisher.
walked the whole way back (p 91)
The distance from Wimbledon Common to Ebury Street is about 8km (5 miles).
Sheep’s Cray Cottage (p 91)
See “Ukridge’s Dog College”.
The Return of Battling Billson (pp 93 to 117)
This story runs from pp. 93 to 117 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in August 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in September 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926). It is the second story to feature the boxer Battling Billson.
muscles ... strong as iron bands (p 93)
UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
[Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882) The village blacksmith 1-12]
to take mankind for my province (p 93)
Elsie Bean (Anne-Marie Chanet) suggests that this could be an allusion to Francis Bacon’s “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”, perhaps mixed up with the Roman playwright Terentius’s Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto (“I am a man: nothing human is strange to me”).
submerged tenth (p 93)
The lowest sector of the poor classes — the phrase was popularised by the book In Darkest England and the Way Out (1889) by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. Booth argued that one tenth of the British population were living below what we now call the poverty line. Jack London also uses the phrase in his writings on the London poor.
Ratcliff Highway (p 93)
One of the main roads in the older part of London’s docks, running from the Tower to Ratcliff (now part of Limehouse). The street was later renamed St George’s Street, and is now known simply as The Highway. Notorious for various brutal murders in Victorian times.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/districts/ratcliffhighway.htm
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=535250&Y=180750&A=Y&Z=1
Prince of Wales (p 94)
There are many pubs in East London called “The Prince of Wales,” but apparently none of them are on the Ratcliff Highway.
...upon the order of his going (p 96)
Lady M. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and
worse;
Question enrages him. At once, good-night:
Stand not upon the order of your going,
But go at once.
[Shakespeare Macbeth III:iv, ll.140-143]
Phillips-Oppenheim-like (p 99)
E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946), British author of over 150 novels, mostly mysteries or spy stories.
Euston (p 100)
London terminus of the London & North Western Railway, and starting point for trains to the West Midlands, Lancashire and the West of Scotland.
The original station, built in 1838 for the London & Birmingham Railway and with its entrance marked by a huge Doric triumphal arch, was demolished by British Railways in 1962, to be replaced by a hideous concrete structure.
...women removed their hats in Westminster Abbey (p 102)
Traditionally, men uncovered their heads and women covered theirs when entering a Christian church. The growth of feminism and decline of hat-wearing since 1945 have led to the abhorrence of bare female heads being quietly abandoned, at least in most protestant churches.
“Speaking as far as I’m personally concerned...” (p 103)
Flossie’s mother has a number of speech habits that are typical of Northern working-class speech, like transposing them/those and was/were. “Dropping aitches” is something that happens in all types of English speech, but for some reason it is popularly considered a marker of working-class speech, so that in reality people like Flossie’s mother, who want to appear to come from a higher social class, tend to overcompensate and add aitches where they are not needed.
The introduction of redundant words and phrases (e.g. “I’m personally”; “rather prefer”) is also typical of the way pompous but uneducated northerners spoke at the time - I can remember my grandfather (b.1900) talking like this.
However, “keb” (for “cab”) is surely Cockney, rather than northern?
Stepney ... Canning Town (p 103)
Both areas of East London - Stepney is just north of the Ratcliff Highway, where this story opened; Canning Town somewhat further east, about 15km from Ebury Street.
Canning Town ‘Orror ... Jimes Potter (p 103)
Seems to be fictitious. Notice how young Cecil speaks with a marked Cockney accent, even though he is a stranger to London.
the Bing Street ‘Orror (p 104)
There is currently no Bing Street in London, though there is a Byng Street in Millwall, another area of East End dockland.
...was found in the cellar (p 104)
This sounds like a reference to the celebrated case of “Doctor” Crippen (1910) - the headless body of Crippen’s wife Cora was found in the cellar of their house in Cambden Town (not Canning Town). Cambden Town is in north London, not far from Euston station.
Arundel Street, Leicester Square (p 104)
Arundell (not Arundel) Street no longer exists. It used to lie west of and run parallel to Rupert Street in the London W1 postal district, within a stone’s throw of Piccadilly Circus and two minutes’ walk from Leicester Square. Prior to being known as Arundell Street, it was called Panton Square.
In his Introduction to Performing Flea (1953), Bill Townend wrote: ‘In the year 1906 I was living in one room in Arundel (sic) Street, a cul-de-sac off Coventry Street, where Lyons’ Corner House now stands, my expenses being paid by Plum, a quid pro quo, as it were for a service I had unwittingly done him.‘ The service, as he went on to explain, was to tell an anecdote which Wodehouse worked up into his first book for adults, Love Among the Chickens (1906).
‘anged ‘im at Pentonville (p 104)
Pentonville prison was built in 1842, the first British prison to apply Bentham’s “Panopticon” design. After the closure of Newgate prison in 1902, Pentonville took over as the site of executions in the London area, a total of 120 prisoners (including Crippen) being hanged there before capital punishment ended in 1961.
Universal (p 107)
There does not seem to have been a Universal boxing venue in London - from the description on p.110, this sounds as though it is meant as a thinly-disguised version of the National Sporting Club, founded in 1891 by members of the Pelican Club. It was at 43 King Street, in Covent Garden, formerly Evans’s Supper Rooms (an up-market music hall).
put the kibosh on... (p 108)
Blocked, prevented. This is an expression of considerable obscurity. It appeared in London slang of the early 19th century, first getting into print in Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, but except for some - rather implausible - theories that it comes from Irish or Yiddish, no-one knows where it came from.
http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/kibosh.htm
till the sands of the desert grow cold (p 108)
Title of a song, written in 1911 by George Graffe Jr. (words) and Ernest R. Ball (music).
(Duke University only has the instrumental version available - see URL below)
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/a/a22/a2228/
Nippy Coggs (p 110)
Perhaps this was how Lord Ickenham - certainly someone who would have been a regular at the NSC - encountered his future butler?
je ne sais quoi (p 110)
An indefinable quality (French: literally “I don’t know what”).
I’m always chasing rainbows (p 113)
I'm Always Chasing Rainbows,
Watching clouds drifting by.
My schemes are just like all my dreams,
Ending in the sky.
Some fellows look and find the sunshine,
I always look and find the rain,
Some fellows make a winning sometime,
I never even make a gain,
Believe me,
I'm always chasing rainbows,
Waiting to find a little bluebird
In vain.
[Carroll and McCarthy I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (song, 1918)]
Ukridge Sees Her Through (pp 118 to 140)
This story runs from pp. 118 to 140 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in September 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in October 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
typewriting and stenographic bureau (p 118)
A stenographer is a person who transcribes speech into shorthand. The Pittman system of shorthand was introduced in 1837 and the Gregg system in 1888, although other systems have been in existence since ancient times.
Wodehouse describes his own unsuccessful attempt to write by dictating to a stenographer in the preface to Thank you, Jeeves, and in Over Seventy.
Dora Mason (p 118)
See “First Aid for Dora”
tête-à-tête (p 118)
A private conversation (French: “face to face”).
Norfolk Street (p 119)
Wodehouse lived at 17 Norfolk Street, Mayfair, in 1927 and again in 1928-30. The street, just east of Park Lane, is now called Dunraven Street. Lady Julia Fish (Summer Lightning) has her house there.
Mayfair seems an unlikely address for a typewriting agency: probably Wodehouse just chose a street name at random: it presumably wouldn’t have had any personal significance for him at this point.
[Murphy, N. T. P., In Search of Blandings (1986) 193]
hear the beating of its wings (p 119)
Rothschild (p 122)
The Rothschild family took their name from the banking house their ancestor Mayer Amschel Bauer (1744-1812) ran in Frankfurt-am-Main. They became very wealthy (largely by arranging government loans to pay for the American and French revolutionary wars) and established branches in all the main cities of Europe in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, more-or-less inventing the idea of international banking, and becoming a focal point of 19th and 20th century anti-semitism and conspiracy theory.
Nowadays the family’s main business activity is a London merchant bank.
Farmingdons ... Cavendish Square (p 122)
Farmingdons seem - not surprisingly - to be fictitious (possibly the name is a variant of “Farringdon”?). There are quite a number of real estate firms based in and around Cavendish Square.
five shillings ... half a sovereign (p 124)
25p; 50p (a sovereign was a coin worth one pound)
wandering boy (p 124)
Popular ballad, words and music by the Reverend Robert Lowry, 1877.
Also the title of a 1922 film starring Cullen Landis as a young man who leaves home and sweetheart and becomes involved with a cynical chorus girl.
Where is my wandering boy tonight
The boy of my tenderest care
The boy that was once my joy and light
The child of my love and prayer
Where is my boy tonight
Where is my boy tonight
My heart o'erflows, for I love him, he knows
O where is my boy tonight
Once he was pure as morning dew
As he knelt at his mother's knee
No face was so bright, no heart more true
And none was so sweet as he
O chould I see you now my boy
As fair as in olden time
When prattle and smile made home a joy
And life was a merry chime
Go for my wand'ring boy tonight
Go search for him where you will
But bring him to me with all his blight
And tell him I love him still
[Reverend Robert Lowry Where is my wandering boy tonight ]
Pall Mall (p 125)
The street linking Trafalgar Square to St James’s Street. This would be on Corky’s way home to Ebury Street from the Piccadilly Circus/Shaftesbury Avenue area, a likely place to meet actors in pubs.
Hardy’s fishing tackle shop (p 125)
The celebrated fishing tackle manufacturers, established in 1880 at Alnwick in Northumberland, still have a London shop at 9 Pall Mall.
http://www.house-of-hardy.co.uk/
Hank Philbrick (p 125)
There is another Philbrick in “The Voice From the Past” (1931).
The name Philbrick seems to be mostly confined to the East Coast of the US, from a Suffolk family who settled in New Hampshire in the early 17th century.
Carlton (p 126)
The Carlton Hotel (part of the Savoy Group, originally managed by Ritz and Escoffier) was just round the corner from Pall Mall, on the Haymarket.
Pen and Ink Club (p 127)
See “First Aid for Dora”
son of Belial (p 128)
Belial is one of the Hebrew names for the Devil. In the Bible, ‘son of Belial’ is used as a conventional expression for an evil or irreligious person.
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, they knew not the
Lord.
[Bible 1 Samuel 2:12]
Tishbite (p 128)
Elijah the prophet is designated the ‘Tishbite’, probably to signify that he was born at Tishbi, a place in Upper Galilee according to the apocryphal book of Tobit:
And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead,
said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand,
there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
[Bible 1 Kings 17:1 ]
Egypt ... Illinois (p 129)
In fact, it is Cairo which is a town in Illinois - it lies at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. There are villages called Egypt in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachussets.
Lotus Rooms, Knightsbridge (p 131)
Knightsbridge runs along the southern edge of Hyde Park: there is a cavalry barracks, Harrods, and several large hotels, but I haven’t found any reference to the Lotus Rooms.
Brooks’s ... Carlton (p 134)
Brooks’s Club on St James’s was the most prominent Whig political club in the 18th century; the Carlton Club is its Tory counterpart.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment/brookesclub.htm
Charlton Prout (p 135)
The “Progressive Utilization Theory” (Prout) was only invented by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar in 1959, so obviously isn’t relevant here.
More likely, Wodehouse is mischievously giving the club secretary a name with equal overtones of Rex Stout and Marcel Proust.
A Shriek in the Night (p 135)
Once again, Wodehouse has invented a fictitious title too good to be wasted - it was used ten years later for a movie starring Ginger Rogers. There don’t seem to be any books that use it, however.
Who killed Jasper Blossom? (p 135)
There are hundreds of books and films with titles starting “Who Killed...?” but there does not seem to be a Jasper Blossom recorded.
Grey Myrtles (p 135)
Some have suggested that this might be a dig at Aldous Huxley - however, the idea of “pastels in prose” sounds more Decadent than Modernist - maybe Ronald Firbank or even Walter Pater would be a more likely target. There are pieces of music with similar titles, but no books.
single spies ... battalions (p 136)
O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
[Shakespeare Hamlet IV:iii, 40-43]
Warner’s Stores (p 137)
Fictitious: This ought to be a little dig at the poet and novelist Rex Warner, but sadly he was only 18 at the time, and still unknown. The only Warner in the canon is the slippery Sir Jaklyn Warner, Bart., in Bachelors Anonymous, who is certainly not the heir to a retail chain.
Mr Biggs (p 137)
There are a number of other minor characters called Biggs in the canon - perhaps we can speculate that the Hon. Sec. is the future mayor of Tooting East (“Romance of a Bulb-Squeezer”, 1927).
seven hundred at five bob apiece (p 139)
The face value of the tickets is 700 times 5 shillings = 175 pounds.
After subtracting the 10% discount for cash, this leaves 157 pounds, 10 shillings, so even with the quantity reduction and the cost of printing the tickets, it is not unreasonable to imagine that Ukridge could have cleared fifty pounds for himself over and above the hundred for Dora.
No Wedding Bells for Him (pp 141 to 168)
This story runs from pp. 141 to 168 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in October 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in November 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).Haymarket (p 141)
The Haymarket runs north towards Piccadilly Circus from the Trafalgar Square end of Pall Mall.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=529653&Y=180652&A=Y&Z=1
Pall Mall Restaurant (p 141)
Oddly enough not in Pall Mall but round the corner in Regent Street (parallel to the Haymarket). It was one of London’s first proper restaurants. Nowadays it seems to be chiefly famous as the place where the rules of Rugby football were first standardised, at a dinner in January, 1871.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/food/dickens-suppers.htm
Addington (p 142)
The Addington Golf Club, near the village of that name, a few km east of Croydon in Surrey, seems to be one of London’s best-known private clubs (there are at least three other clubs around Addington). The course was designed by John Abercromby, ca. 1910.
It would take about an hour to cover the 15 km from central London by car today, if you were lucky. East Croydon (in Croydon town centre) would be the nearest station.
Nowadays the new Croydon Tramlink passes close to Addington on its way to the New Addington housing development.
trod on the self-starter (p 142)
Most cars of the period were still hand-cranked to start the engine: some luxury cars had an electric starter motor, usually operated by a foot switch.
tonneau (p 142)
The open part of a touring car’s body, where the seats are.
unsuitably clad (p 142)
A frock coat (a jacket with tails for daytime wear, as worn by office workers ca. 1890) would normally be worn with a top hat; a bowler hat should only be worn with a short jacket (it was originally invented as riding costume).
if ‘twere done, ... (p 143)
Macb. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere
well
It were done quickly; if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come.
[Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) Macbeth I,vii,1-7]
Number three omnibus (p 143)
London’s transport has been reorganised many times since the early 1920s, but bus route 3 still runs down the Haymarket and round Trafalgar Square on its way to Lambeth Bridge.
Clapham Common (p 143)
The normal way to get from Trafalgar Square to Croydon by car would be to cross Vauxhall Bridge and follow what is now the A23 through Brixton and Streatham Hill - Clapham Common would be some way to the west of this direct route. It would, however, be a plausible way to go if they were starting from Ebury Street.
Balbriggan, Peabody Road (p 145)
Balbriggan is an Irish town, just north of Dublin, which has given its name to a type of knitted cotton fabric used for making underwear. It is considered very lower-middle-class to have a house with a name if you live in a suburban street.
There is currently no real Peabody Road in the London area. Anything in London called Peabody is likely to be named after the American-born merchant banker and philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869), who established a trust to build model housing schemes for London’s poor. The implication is that we are in an area of cheapish late-19th century suburban semi-detatched housing. Probably nearby streets are named for Shaftesbury, Wilberforce, etc.
Daimler (p 145)
Confusingly, Daimler cars were not built by the German Daimler-Benz company (who used the trade name “Mercedes”), but by a British company based in Coventry, established in 1896 by a friend of Gottfried Daimler’s who had acquired the right to use his patents in the UK. Daimler always specialised in large, luxurious cars. (Since the 1930s, the Daimler name has belonged to the company that makes Jaguar cars.)
Price (p 145)
Price appears several times in the canon as the name of lower-class characters, most notably of course in Not George Washington and If I Were You.
cold beef ... blanc-mange (p 147)
Surely it can’t be coincidence that Mr Waller’s house, where Mike and Psmith go to a very similar supper in Psmith in the City, is also on the fringes of Clapham Common.
Divine Service (p 147)
This is another class marker - the term “Divine Service” was used by Chapel or Low Church people - middle-class Anglicans would say “after Evensong” or simply “after church”.
British Museum (p 147)
As well as containing archaeological treasures looted from all over the world, until recently the British Museum in Bloomsbury also housed the British Library.
Battersea Park (p 150)
A large public park on the south bank of the Thames.
Seymour’s house (p 151)
Mr Seymour is named as a Wrykyn housemaster in a number of the early school stories.
Ernie Finch (p 152)
There are quite a number of Finches and Fitches in the canon - the most prominent is probably George Finch, tenant of the Small Bachelor apartment.
Lord Warden Hotel at Dover (p 154)
Dover’s grandest hotel, built by the South Eastern Railway next to their Dover station, and opened in 1853. It was taken over by the Navy during World War II, and is now an office building used by HM Customs and Excise.
The implication is that it would be the first overnight stop of a couple taking a honeymoon on the Continent.
http://members.lycos.co.uk/dover_kent/transport/town_station.htm
breach of promise (p 154)
Under English law, an engagement to marry was regarded as a binding contract and the party who repudiated the engagement was liable to be sued for ‘breach of promise.’ As a consequence of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970, actions for breach of promise were abolished as from 1 January 1971.
In an action for breach of promise, which was a civil law matter, the plaintiff (man or woman) could sue for restitution of any pecuniary loss arising from outlay in anticipation of marriage. In some circumstances, a woman could also hope to be awarded substantial damages (‘heart-balm’).
Pyramus and Thisbe (p 154)
Two young lovers in ancient Babylon, who are supposed to have conversed through a crack in the wall. They came to a sticky end after a misunderstanding involving a lion. Shakespeare has the Rude Mechanicals act the story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Smallweed (p 156)
Ukridge has taken his alias from Dickens’s Bleak House, of course - the Smallweeds are the opposite of Ukridge: they spend all their time saving, never get into debt, and live in considerable poverty and discomfort as a result.
Lord Claude Tremaine ... Angela Bracebridge (p 160)
Lord Claude must be the younger son of a duke, from his style - this seems to be a very common rank for heros in Wodehouse’s parodies of novelettes. Tremaine is a Cornish surname (‘place near a monolith’).
Bracebridge is the name of a village in Lincolnshire.
Neither name is ever used for a Wodehouse character.
Primrose Novelette (p 161)
A novelette is a short novel written for the popular market (as opposed to a novella, which is the same thing but with literary pretensions...). Primrose is a shade of yellow, a colour long associated with popular fiction throughout the world. Publishers of popular fiction (like Mills & Boon, for whom Wodehouse wrote The Prince and Betty) often colour-code their books to make it easier for readers to identify them.
Webster, the valet in The Girl on the Boat, reads Nosegay Novelettes.
no sense in missing supper (p 162)
Wodehouse’s young men so often wait until after they have been fed before communicating disagreeable information that one feels sure that Wodehouse must have caught himself doing this!
be as a little child washed clean of sin (p 163)
This sounds like a generic Moody and Sankey hymn, but doesn’t seem to match any specific one.
Fillimore (p 166)
Seems to be an occasional variant on Fillmore.
The Long Arm of Looney Coote (pp 169 to 195)
This story runs from pp. 169 to 195 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in November 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in December 1923; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
J.G. Coote (p 169)
The only Coote in the canon, although there are also Ada and Myrtle Cootes (Do Butlers Burgle Banks and “Freddie, Oofy and the Beef Trust”, respectively) - both short, stocky women with an affinity for the kitchen - Lana Cootes, a small child mentioned in Cocktail Time; and Eddie Cootes, the petty criminal who tries to impersonate Ralston McTodd in Leave It To Psmith.
J.G. Coote reappears in “Success Story” (1947)
Coots are proverbially mad and/or bald. The name may also be a play on Coutts, the name of the wealthy banking family.
Looney (p 169)
Schoolboy slang for mad or eccentric - from “lunatic”. Cf. the Monster Raving Looney Party, which regularly contests elections in Britain, but has yet to win a seat in Parliament.
quiet smoke (p 169)
All Wodehouse’s young men seem to have been illicit smokers as children. Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining their lack of intelligence?
seen a magpie (p 169)
There are many superstitions to do with magpies: most are contradictory, but there does seem to be a consensus that seeing one magpie by itself is a bad omen.
five happy years (p 169)
Upper middle-class boys would spend around five years at their public schools, generally from leaving preparatory school at 13 until going to university at 18.
Sandown (p 169)
The racecourse at Sandown Park, near Esher, Surrey, on the southern fringes of London, is still in operation.
Spencer (p 170)
There are quite a few minor characters called Spencer, Spenser, or Spence. Possibly Cootes’s valet is related to Aunt Agatha’s butler, Spenser?
My Valet ... Crazy Jane (p 170)
Bingo Little also frequently gets into trouble by backing horses on the basis of this sort of system.
quid (p 170)
Slang: pounds
Old Wrykinian (p 171)
This seems to be the first definite evidence that Ukridge, Corky, George Tupper and Looney Coote went to the same school as Mike Jackson & co., although we have had a number of hints to that effect. Note that Ukridge and Jeremy Garnet, the narrator of Love Among the Chickens, were not classmates, but had been teachers at the same prep school.
half a sovereign ... ten shiilings (p 171)
A sovereign was a coin worth one pound (i.e. twenty shillings), so “half a sovereign” was another way of saying “ten shillings” (50p in decimal money).
It seems a little surprising that hiring a suit for one night should cost the same amount as one could realise by pawning the suit - one would expect the hire company to set its rates a little higher.
preliminary bracer (p 171)
An apéritif
Monte Cristo-like opulence (p 172)
Dantes, central character of Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo (1844), is fabulously wealthy when he returns to society to take his revenge on those responsible for imprisoning him in the Chateau d’If.
Isaac O’Brien (p 172)
Wodehouse certainly meant readers to read a racist joke into this name: in the British consciousness of the time, the Irish were every bit as strongly associated with horseracing as the Scots with golf, but Old Testament names are rare in Catholic countries, so the implication is that O’Brien is a Jew who has given himself an Irish surname for commercial reasons (cf. Ivor “Ikey” Llewellyn, who is clearly from central Europe on his first appearance, but is made Welsh when he reappears after World War II, when jokes about Jewish stereotypes were no longer considered acceptable).
Blue Street, St James’s (p 172)
There is no Blue Street listed in London, but there is a Blue Ball Yard off St. James’s Street, close to the current premises of the Carlton Club (which was still in Pall Mall when this story was written). Nowadays most of the buildings belong to the Stafford Hotel, but it would have been a convenient spot for a discreet betting shop. See the link below for a photograph.
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Cabana/9424/page5.html
telegraphic address ‘Ikobee’ (p 172)
Businesses could pay the Post Office for the use of an abbreviated address, which would save their customers money when sending telegrams.
Mutt-Spivis Gold Medal (p 173)
Spivis seems to be a very rare name, but there isn’t an obvious Wodehouse link.
Medals of this sort are more often given by learned societies (the Geological Society in this case) than by universities, although Oxford does of course have a distinguished tradition of geological research.
Perhaps the name Mutt-Spivis is a play on Pitt-Rivers (Lt.-Gen Augustus Pitt-Rivers, 1827-1900, who founded the ethnological museum at Oxford University, next door to the University Museum and the Geology Department).
sub-junior deanery ... Westchester cathedral (p 173)
There is no such appointment, of course. In a cathedral, the Dean is the clergyman with overall responsibility for the cathedral building and the services that take place in it. Deanery can refer either to the office of Dean, or to the house in which the Dean lives.
The title Junior Dean only exists in Oxford and Cambridge colleges, where the Dean is the Fellow responsible for student discipline, and most larger colleges have a Junior Dean to act as deputy and assistant to the Dean.
Sub-junior is an age category used in sports competitions (usually seems to mean under 15).
Westchester is presumably a conflation of the two cathedral cities, Westminster and Winchester, rather than the real Westchester near New York.
Streslau ... Ruritania (p 173)
In Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda (1894), the capital of the fictitious central European country, Ruritania, is called Strelsau. Most readers, like Wodehouse, remember it as Streslau, presumably because this sounds much more plausible as a German spelling of a Slavic name. (Cf. Breslau, German name of Bratislava.)
Redbridge (p 174)
Obviously intended to be fictitious - the London Borough of Redbridge is a modern amalgamation of Ilford, Wanstead and Woodford and didn’t exist in the 1920s. Most of the area that is now known as Redbridge was then represented in parliament by Winston Churchill, so Lawlor would have had a hard time.
Many British placenames start with “Red...” - examples close to London include Redhill in Surrey and Reading in Berkshire. The latter seems a strong candidate - see p.182 below for reasons.
Dr Somerville Hastings (1878-1967), a noted socialist and physician, was elected as MP for Reading in 1923. If we are to assume that the story is set before the First World War, then the MP for Reading would have been the barrister Rufus Isaacs, Attorney General in Asquith’s Liberal government and later Lord Chief Justice.
rhyme ‘Lawlor’ with ‘before us’ (p 176)
In Uncle Fred in the Springtime, another lyricist (mistakenly identified by Uncle Fred as Burns) is criticised for attempting to rhyme ‘Lomond’ with ‘afore ye,’ something that obviously irritated Wodehouse’s professional ear.
Winchester-Murphy (p 177)
Yet another fictitious car manufacturer. Perhaps there is an association with the real Lanchester here, together with the feeling that really luxurious cars need double-barreled names (Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza, etc.): it is also interesting to note that Murphy is an Irish name - cf. the Dex-Mayo which appears in Money for Nothing.
Wodehouse had spent 450 pounds - practically his entire savings - on a Darracq car in 1909.
guineas (p 178)
The guinea had ceased to exist as a coin long before, but the term remained in use until the introduction of decimal coinage, to describe a sum of 21 shillings (one pound and five pence, in decimal terms). Many luxury goods were priced in guineas, and professional fees were also usually quoted in guineas, as though, if you were forced to deal with money, it was somehow less sordid to use a unit that existed only conceptually.
Peebles Hippodrome (p 179)
Peebles is a market town in the Scottish borders. Wodehouse uses it in a few other places to stand for somewhere small and obscure, cf. for instance Cocktail Time, Ch.3.
Hippodrome, from the Greek word for a chariot-racing arena, was a name originally used in Britain by theatres with a stage large enough to put on equestrian acts (cf. the London Coliseum, a former variety theatre now the home of English National Opera), but later spread to other sorts of theatres and music halls.
Whips (p 179)
MPs in each party who are responsible for seeing that their fellow-members turn up in Parliament at the right time to vote as the party requires, whether or not they know what it is about...
Fitch and Weyman’s biscuit factory (The Long Arm of Looney Coote; page 182)
The English town most strongly associated with biscuit manufacturing is Reading, in Berkshire, home of Huntley & Palmer’s. In the early 20th century their Reading plant - a famous landmark for railway travellers to the West Country - was the world’s biggest biscuit factory.
http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk/
Associated Mechanics’ Hall (p 185)
Many British towns have a Mechanics’ Institute, typically built in the mid-19th century to house a library, lecture hall and classrooms, as charitable schemes to help give factory workers access to further education. John Ruskin was one of the most influential people in this movement, and taught evening classes in Mechanics’ Institutes. Similar movements existed in the US and Australia.
The term Associated Mechanics, however, makes it sound more as though this hall could belong to a trade union - something that would be rather unlikely, though not impossible, in Britain.
the Right Hon the Marquess of Cricklewood (p 185)
Corky has misheard, or is making a faux pas: Marquesses are styled “the Most Honourable”, not “the Right Honourable” (a style used for mere Earls and Privy Councillors).
There has never been a Marquess of Cricklewood, as far as I know, but perhaps Wodehouse is alluding to the Marquesses Camden (another North London suburb). The 4th Marquess, John Charles Pratt (1872-1944) would not have been quite as old as Cricklewood is said to be.
constabulary duty ... to be done (p 188)
SERGEANT: When a felon's not engaged in his employment
POLICE: His employment
SERGEANT: Or maturing his felonious little plans,
POLICE: Little plans,
SERGEANT: His capacity for innocent enjoyment
POLICE: 'Cent enjoyment
SERGEANT: Is just as great as any honest man's.
POLICE: Honest man's.
SERGEANT: Our feelings we with difficulty smother
POLICE: 'Culty smother
SERGEANT: When constabulary duty's to be done.
POLICE: To be done.
SERGEANT: Ah, take one consideration with another,
POLICE: With another,
SERGEANT: A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
ALL: Ah, when constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.
[Gilbert, W.S. and Sullivan, A The Pirates of Penzance Act II]
unbar the prison cell (p 192)
Seems to be a literary and pulpit cliché, not directly biblical. The word unbar does not occur in the King James Version.
“Unbar the prison door” or “Unbar the prison-house” are more common variants.
moke (p 195)
Moke is a colloquial term for a donkey or an inferior horse. It is also Monica’s nickname in Ring for Jeeves.
sent him absolutely broke (p 195)
Wodehouse developed this plot idea further many years later in Ring for Jeeves, where the betting business of Jeeves and Lord Rowcester is put into financial difficulties by the success a similar outsider bet.
The Exit of Battling Billson (pp 196 to 218)
This story runs from pp. 196 to 218 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in December 1923 and in the Strand in the UK in January 1924; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
It is the third Battling Billson story.
Theatre Royal, Llunindnno (p 196)
The name resembles more than anything the popular North Wales seaside resort Llandudno. Llan is the Welsh word for a church or a village. The town takes its name from the ancient church of St Tudno (believed to have been a 6th century hermit) on the Great Orme headland.
The main theatres in Llandudno at the time were the Arcadia, the Grand, and the Pier Paviliion; there was also a Prince of Wales’s Theatre down the road in Colwyn Bay.
Llun is Welsh for a picture (but Dydd Llun is Monday). There aren’t any Welsh placenames that start with “Llun-”.
The suffix -indnno doesn’t make any sense in Welsh - the nearest real word seems to be dinod, meaning obscure, insignificant, so Llundinod might mean “unclear picture”. Another possibility is Trindod (Trinity), which appears in placenames like Llandrindod Wells.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that Llandudno is pronounced as something like “hhlan-dyd-no” (the Welsh “ll” sound can’t really be rendered into English).
dark, dingy, dishevelled (p 196)
This might have been a good description of the North Wales coast at its nadir in the 1970s, but in the early 20th century resorts like Llandudno were flourishing. Probably, Wodehouse is just using the name as something generically Welsh, but is thinking of something more like the mining towns of the South Wales valleys.
Evan Jones (p 198)
Most Welsh surnames come from patronymics, and Jones (ap Sion) is proverbially the most common. In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, Wales, long-neglected by the Anglican church, was fertile ground for many varieties of Evangelical and dissenting preacher, especially those who were able to speak to the people in their own language. (For a biassed but engaging view of Welsh religion in the mid-19th century, see George Borrow’s account in Wild Wales, 1862.)
Oddfellows' Hall (p 198)
The name ‘Odd Fellows’ appears to have been originally assumed by local social clubs during the 18th century. The ‘Independent Order of Oddfellows, Manchester Unity’, formed about 1813, has local branches or ‘lodges’ throughout Great Britain and the Commonwealth, as well as in the United States and some foreign countries.
Isaac O’Brien ... Izzy Previn (p 199)
See “The Long Arm of Looney Coote” (p.172 above). Previn is a common Jewish surname, of course.
Caerleon Street (p 199)
Caerleon is a market town in Monmouthshire (South Wales).
Cap and Feathers (p 199)
Cap and Feathers is a rather unusual pub name - there is a celebrated example at Tillingham in Essex, but there don’t seem to be many others.
Very common for Welsh pubs is the name Three Feathers, referring to the badge of the Prince of Wales.
revival meeting (p 200)
There’s no evidence that Wodehouse ever attended a revival meeting in Wales, but he does refer a couple of times to Billy Sunday (‘Jimmy Mundy’ in “The Aunt and the Sluggard”), so it’s not unlikely that he had attended one of Sunday’s meetings in New York in 1917, probably for similar reasons to Corky.
beer ... ain’t right (p 202)
Wales has always been a strong bulwark of the Temperance Movement, and the home of many celebrated drinkers.
Feelings about alcohol ran very high on both sides in the early years of the century, not least because of the 1908 Licensing Bill of the Campbell-Bannerman government, which would have allowed a great reduction in the number of pubs and limitations on their opening hours. It was strongly supported by the large Temperance lobby (Liberal and Labour voters), and of course opposed by brewers, publicans and drinkers, as well as those who had bought shares in the recent Guiness flotation (Unionist, i.e. Conservative, voters). There was great public agitation for and against the Bill.
After being passed by the Commons, the Bill was defeated in the House of Lords, one of the last important measures to suffer this fate before the 1911 budget crisis took away the Lords’ power to block legislation.
Vell ... how’th the boy (p 207)
The confusion of “V” and “W” sounds in English is traditionallly associated with Cockney - remember Dickens’s Sam Weller? - although it’s rarely actually heard nowadays.
It also happens to many native speakers of German and Yiddish (which don’t have a ‘W’ sound) when they speak English - coming (implicitly) from the East End Jewish community, Previn could qualify on both counts.
The lisp is not a specifically Cockney or Jewish marker - Wodehouse is just using it to mark Previn’s speech as ‘different’.
fell from him like a garment (p 207)
Wodehouse often uses this expression, e.g. A Damsel in Distress (Ch. 4 and 18), Money in the Bank, and Uneasy Money (Ch.8). It isn’t clear where it comes from - definitely not the King James Bible or Shakespeare, at least - but it does appear occasionally in other authors.
Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner (pp 219 to 242)
This story runs from pp. 219 to 242 in the 2000 Penguin edition of Ukridge. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in the US in January 1924 and in the Strand in the UK in February 1924; in book form it appeared in Ukridge (Herbert Jenkins, UK, June 1924) and He Rather Enjoyed It (Doran, US, March 1926).
Sir Rupert Lakenheath KCMG, CB, MVO (p 219)
The village of Lakenheath in Suffolk is best known today as the site of a big US Air Force base.
Sir Rupert’s orders:
(i) KCMG — Knight-Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. This is an order reserved for diplomats and others who have held important non-military appointments in foreign countries (it was originally created in 1818 to mark the British acquisition of the Ionian islands). There are 375 Knights- and Dames-Commander in the order; it is a typical honour for an ambassador or colonial governor.
(ii) CB — Companion of the Order of the Bath. This is a military order, which dates back to the Middle Ages. Presumably Sir Rupert had served as an army officer before entering the Colonial Service. CB is the lowest rank in the order, held by 1455 people.
(iii) MVO — Member of the Royal Victorian Order. This order was relatively new at the time, having been founded by Queen Victoria in 1896. Unlike the others, it does not “go with the job”, but is awarded at the sovereign’s personal discretion for services to the Royal Family. Sir Rupert might have received it for a period as a royal aide de camp, or more likely for entertaining members of the Royal Family in some remote spot in his capacity as governor.
Thurloe Square (p 219)
In South Kensington, across from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=527068&Y=178886&A=Y&Z=1
Annie Laurie (p 220)
Annie Laurie (1682-1764) was the daughter of Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton House, in Dumfriesshire (SW Scotland). It’s not recorded whether Douglas did lay him doon and dee when Annie married someone else. According to Brewer, her son, Alexander Ferguson, was in turn the hero of a Robert Burns song, “the Whistler”.
Max Welton’s braes are bonnie
Where early falls the dew
And ‘twas there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true.
Gave me her promise true
That ne’er forgot shall be
And for Bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me doon and dee.
Her brow is like the snowdrift
Her nape is like the swan
And her face it is the fairest
That ‘ere the sun shone on.
That ‘ere the sun shone on
And dark blue is her E’e
And for Bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me doon and dee.
Like the dew on the Gowan Lion
Is the fall of her fairy feet
And like winds in the summer sighing
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low and sweet
And she’s all the world to me
And for Bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me doon and dee.
[William Douglas Annie Laurie ]
Millie ... Aunt Elizabeth (p 221)
In Love Among the Chickens, back in 1905, Ukridge was married to a girl called Millie, and they have a hen called Aunt Elizabeth. Apparently, history was not destined to repeat itself in this case: when we meet Ukridge again in “Buttercup Day” (1925) he is still single.
between Sloane Square and South Kensington (p 225)
Adjacent stops on the Metropolitan District Railway, no more than three or four minutes apart. This section (now part of the District and Circle Lines) was opened in 1868 and electrified in 1905.
South Kensington Station is about two minutes’ walk from Thurloe Square.
Wassick (p 229)
Seems to be a reasonably common family name in the USA, but nowhere else, oddly enough.
Savage Smoker (p 229)
The Savage Club, of which Wodehouse was a member at one time, had premises in Adelphi Terrace (it is now in Whitehall Place). It is a gentlemen’s club whose members have included many great writers and actors.
A smoker, or smoking concert, was a private entertainment put on by the members of a club (men only, hence smoking was allowed). Usually, the performers would be the members of the club itself. See Not George Washington for an account of the Barrel Club smoker.
Pen and Ink Club (p 232)
cf. “First Aid for Dora” (p 78 above).
Harrods (p 232)
A large London department store, at the Knightsbridge end of Brompton Road, not far from Thurloe Square.
Market Deeping, Sussex (p 234)
Market Deeping is in Lincolnshire, a lot nearer to Lakenheath than it is to Sussex.
