Something Fishy
(U.S.: The Butler Did It)
by
P. G. Wodehouse
Literary and Cultural References
The following notes attempt to explain cultural, historical, and literary allusions in Wodehouse’s text, to identify his sources, and to cross-reference similar references in the rest of the canon. These notes, a work in progress, were compiled by Neil Midkiff with contributions from others as noted by bracketed initials and keyed at the end.
Something Fishy was published in the UK on January 18, 1957 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd., and in the US as The Butler Did It by Simon & Schuster
on January 28, 1957. Condensations of a somewhat earlier version of the novel had been serialized in US Collier’s and UK John Bull magazines in 1956; see Neil Midkiff’s novel pages for details. Since the earlier magazine story had significant plot differences from the book editions, these notes currently do not attempt to annotate textual differences beyond the point where the stories diverge.
Page numbers in the notes below refer to the UK first edition, published by Herbert Jenkins Ltd. For those using other editions, here is a cross-reference table (the link opens in a new browser tab or window) to the pagination of some other available editions.
Chapter 1
millionaires (p. 7)
To account for inflation since 1929, a simple calculation based on the consumer price index would use a factor of 19, but measuringworth.com suggests that a better comparator of wealth held would involve a factor of about 104 to account for the relative economic status of millionaires compared to others, as measured by GDP per capita.
pre-October days of the year 1929 (p. 7)
The Wall Street crash of 1929 began on October 24 (“Black Thursday”) and continued until October 29 (“Black Tuesday”), when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 25 percent over four trading days.
[Not in magazine serials.]
the stuff (p. 7)
Slang for money; cited in the OED as early as 1775 in Sheridan’s play The Rivals. Used by Wodehouse as early as 1915; see “Concealed Art”.
[Not in magazine serials.]
Keggs (p. 7)
Augustus Keggs is one of several butlers with the occupationally-appropriate surname of Keggs in the Wodehouse canon. Earlier butlers named Keggs appear in “An Official Muddle” (1903); “The Gem Collector” (1909); “The Good Angel” (“The Matrimonial Sweepstakes”) and “Love Me, Love My Dog” (1910), possibly the same butler as in A Damsel in Distress (1919); and in The White Hope (1914)/Their Mutual Child (1919)/The Coming of Bill (1920). Augustus Keggs returns in The Ice in the Bedroom (1961).
Park Avenue (p. 7)
From 1949 to 1955, Plum and Ethel Wodehouse had had an apartment at 1000 Park Avenue, New York.
[Not in magazine serials.]
Meadowhampton, Long Island (p. 7)
Fictitious, but intended to remind readers of several villages and hamlets on the South Fork of Long Island, at the east end of the island. “The Hamptons” include such communities as Southampton (including the hamlet of Remsenburg, where Wodehouse lived from 1952 until his death in 1975), Westhampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and non-Hampton names such as Quogue, Speonk, Wainscott, and Sag Harbor.
[Not mentioned until a later point in magazine serials, corresponding to book chapter 2.]
Mephistopheles (p. 8)
Wodehouse introduces this personification of the devil in one of his earliest humorous essays, “Work” (1900). Jimmy Pitt rebukes Spike’s temptation by calling him “a regular Mephistopheles” in The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure (1910). Most famously, Jeeves advises Gussie Fink-Nottle to costume himself as Mephistopheles for a fancy-dress ball in Right Ho, Jeeves (1934).
[Not mentioned here in magazine serials.]
[Mortimer Bayliss] …considered his fellow diners clods and Philistines (p. 8)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
“Oh God, oh Montreal.” (p. 8)
A repeated refrain from Samuel Butler’s 1878 poem “A Psalm of Montreal” – which is not a psalm either, but a humorous critique of a museum in that city that refused to put on show any copies of Greek statues without clothes on. [OvL]
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“That was Tosti, my poor oaf.” (p. 8)
Paolo Tosti (1846–1916), Italian composer and music teacher, active in Britain 1885–1913. His 1880 song “Good-bye” (lyrics by George Whyte-Melville) was among his most popular compositions. A performance by Deanna Durbin is on YouTube.
[Omitted in US magazine serial.]
The Wrong Box (p. 9)
Stevenson’s novel (co-authored with Lloyd Osbourne) is online at gutenberg.org.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“I don’t suppose you read anything except the Wall Street Journal and Captain Billy’s Whizz Bang.” (p. 9)
Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang (the additional z is Wodehouse’s) was a popular American humour magazine in the 1920s. It was created in 1919 by Wilford Hamilton Fawcett, who had been a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I. According to Fawcett he had started his magazine to give the doughboys – as World War I servicemen were popularly called – something to laugh about. [OvL]
A representative issue is online at archive.org.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
a thousand dollars … fifty thousand (p. 9)
Multiply 1929 dollar amounts by about 19 to calculate the equivalent buying power in 2025 dollars, according to US government consumer price index data. Thus each participant’s stake would have a value of nearly a million dollars today.
“apparently it did not penetrate the concrete” (p. 9)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
[Omitted in US magazine serial.]
“cheap imitation heads … never satisfactory” (p. 9)
Thinking necessitated mental effort, and Spencer, in Kennedy’s opinion, had no mind, but rubbed along on a cheap substitute of mud and putty.
“The Guardian” (1908)
On the other hand, it would be quite in keeping with the cheap substitute which served the Earl of Dreever in place of a mind that he should have forgotten to mention some important turning.
The Intrusion of Jimmy/A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 11 (1910)
His was one of those just-as-good cheap-substitute minds, incapable of harboring more than one idea at a time, and during those sixty days of quiet seclusion it was filled with an ever-growing resentment against Officer Kelly.
“Misunderstood” (1910)
“Yes, but you’ve got one of those cheap substitute brains which are never any good.”
Catsmeat to Bertie in The Mating Season, ch. 14 (1949)
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
high blood pressure (p. 9)
The first mention of this ailment so far found in Wodehouse is in “The Fiery Wooing of Mordred” (1934, collected in Young Men in Spats, 1936). After then the next reference is in Spring Fever (1948), and mentions become more frequent through Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974). The topic has not been found so far in the biographies and collected letters, but even if Wodehouse himself did not suffer from it, it naturally would come to mind more often as the writer and his friends became older.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
waiting for dead men’s shoes (p. 9)
Proverbially, looking ahead to one’s expectations of inheriting wealth or property. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs has early forms of this back to 1530, including a c. 1549 citation “Who waitth for dead men shoen shal go long barfote.”
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“Compound interest” (p. 10)
Wodehouse mentions the advantages of compound interest as early as 1923, in “Ukridge Sees Her Through.”
[Not mentioned as such in magazine serials.]
“ ‘It is too large, a bubble blown so big and tenuous that the first shock will disrupt it in suds.’ ” (p. 10–11)
A quote from James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions (1917).
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“Shoot, if you must, this old grey head, but these things will come to pass.” (p. 11)
The first portion of the quotation is from John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1863 poem “Barbara Frietche”; the poem continues “but spare your country’s flag.” [NM]
“It came to pass” and “it shall come to pass” may be seen as typically biblical turns of phrase, but they have little or no meaning and are considered redundant in more recent translations such as NRSV. One example out of many: Romans 9:26 in the KJV / “And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.” [OvL]
[Both parts omitted in magazine serials.]
Chapter 2
The sunshine of a fine spring morning (p. 13)
Elliott Milstein noted in his paper “A Study of the Openings of the Novels of P. G. Wodehouse” (Plum Lines, Spring 1992, p. 15) that eleven of the seventy Wodehouse novels begin with an image of sunlight. It is not clear whether this imagery, starting Chapter Two, was included in Elliott’s count.
Valley Fields (p. 13)
The television antennae are mentioned here for the only time so far found in Wodehouse’s fiction, but much of the description of the suburb is familiar to long-time readers. See the notes to Sam the Sudden for its real-life model, West Dulwich, and for other mentions of Valley Fields and its desirable residences in the novels and stories.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
Major Flood-Smith (p. 13)
In one of Wodehouse’s more puzzling references to earlier stories, much of this is lifted from a similar passage in chapter 5 of Big Money (1931), but with significant alterations. The Gas Light and Water Company of the earlier book is replaced in the UK edition Something Fishy with the Rates and Taxes Department, suggesting perhaps that the utilities have been municipalized. (In the US edition The Butler Did It “Gas, Light and Water Company” is retained.) Flood-Smith’s earlier letter alluded to Mulberry Grove as a fragrant backwater, rather than the whole of Valley Fields as a fragrant oasis. The earlier letter was given to his parlour-maid instead of his cook, but the outcome was the same. In the next paragraph, the central point of London is cited as Hyde Park Corner in Big Money instead of Piccadilly Circus as in the present book, but the distances of seven and five miles (if a crow) are the same. One wonders why these changes in otherwise stock descriptions came about; could Wodehouse have been quoting himself from imperfect memory? Surely he would have had copies of his own earlier books at hand.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
more garden-rollers borrowed (p. 13)
This image of ideal suburbia is used by Wodehouse as early as 1907, in the spoof newspaper serial “For Love or Honour” (ch. 18, July 27, 1907). It recurs in Sam the Sudden (1925) and in Big Money (1931), chapter 4, part VI. A more complete echo of this sentence appears in chapter 1, part 3, of The Purloined Paperweight/Company for Henry (1967).
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
green fly (p. 13)
Another name for the aphid; see the notes to A Damsel in Distress. In that book, an insecticidal soap made from whale oil was the treatment; by the time of Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 2 (1925), “patent mixtures” had taken over, as in the present book.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
island valley of Avilion (p. 14)
From Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, the passing of King Arthur:
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst—if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)—
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
Reginald Humby, in “Reginald’s Record Knock” (1909), and his golfing alter ego Archibald Mealing, in the parallel story “Archibald’s Benefit” (1910), each know this passage because of having to write it out one hundred and fifty times at school. One suspects that Wodehouse may have suffered the same imposition as a student.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
Mulberry Grove (p. 14)
The description of Mulberry Grove’s trees is repeated from Big Money, chapter 5, but the mention of Rosendale Road is new here; there is a Rosendale Road in the real-life West Dulwich. Norman Murphy (In Search of Blandings, A Wodehouse Handbook) identifies Mulberry Grove with the real-life Acacia Grove, which is longer and not a cul-de-sac, but which contains a house fitting the description of Peacehaven, the home next door to Castlewood.
[Mentioned but not described in detail in magazine serials.]
Augustus Keggs (p. 14)
In the magazine serializations of this novel, Keggs’s name is given as Harold, and in the following paragraph he looks precisely as he did a quarter of a century earlier; there is no mention of his having become somewhat stouter.
The date on the paper was June 20, 1955 (p. 14)
Exact dates are extremely unusual in the Wodehouse canon of fiction; the mention of September the tenth, 1929, in the opening paragraph of chapter 1 and the newspaper date here are the only ones I can recall at present. Rather oddly, both magazine serials read June 18, 1956 here, and in each the next paragraph begins “The twenty-six years and nine months…” Both dates were Mondays.
resembled a Roman emperor (p. 14)
A few others of Wodehouse’s butlers are also so described:
“When I was at Oxford I used to go and stay with a friend of mine who had a butler that looked like a Roman emperor in swallowtails.”
Ashe Marson to Joan Valentine, in Something New/Something Fresh (1915)
The door was now open, and I perceived, illuminated by a candle, the Roman-emperor features of Bowles, my landlord.
Corky Corcoran, narrating “Ukridge and the Home from Home” (1931)
a stout man who looked like a Roman emperor … Horace Appleby
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 2.3 (1968)
Other characters with this resemblance include Elmer Ford in The Little Nugget (1913); Joe Danby in “Extricating Young Gussie” (1915); Mr. Donaldson in “The Custody of the Pumpkin” (1924) and in Full Moon (1947); Alexander Slingsby in “Jeeves and the Spot of Art” (1929); and Smedley Cork in The Old Reliable (1951).
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
like a courtly hippopotamus (p. 15)
Other characters resemble hippos in Wodehouse:
A paternal fondness for the girl, dating from the days when he had stooped to enacting—and very convincingly, too, for his was a figure that lent itself to the impersonation—the rôle of a hippopotamus for her childish amusement, checked the words he would have uttered.
Beach, in “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!” (1927)
Except for the bulge under the bedclothes which covered his enormous frame, very little of Stanwood Cobbold was visible, and that little scarcely worth a second look, for Nature, doubtless with the best motives, had given him, together with a heart of gold, a face like that of an amiable hippopotamus.
Spring Fever, book 1, ch. 2 (1948)
“A Mrs. Delancy I met on the boat, coming over. She called me a hippopotamus.”
Horace Prosser in “The Fat of the Land” (1958)
“I know Ivor Llewellyn. I interviewed him once.”
“What’s he like?”
“A hippopotamus.”
Biff Christopher and Gwendoline Gibbs, in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions (1964)
“She looks like a hippopotamus.”
Blair Eggleston, speaking of Trixie Waterbury in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” in Plum Pie (1966)
Men of Beach’s build do not leap from seats. He did, however, rise slowly like a hippopotamus emerging from a river bank, his emotions somewhat similar to those of a beleaguered garrison when the United States Marines arrive.
A Pelican at Blandings (1969)
“I wouldn’t care to take on a human hippopotamus like him in physical combat…”
Chippendale, speaking of Constable Simms in The Girl in Blue, ch. 12.3 (1970)
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
ice tinkling in a glass of Rockcup (p. 15)
The US book and magazine serial have “ice tinkling in a highball glass” here; the UK magazine has “ice tinkling in a cocktail glass.” I have so far not identified Rockcup.
big shot (p. 15)
US slang dating from the late 1920s for an important person, the head of an organization, someone in charge. Originally mostly used in criminal contexts, but later in general usage. First used by Wodehouse (capitalized) to describe Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe in Heavy Weather, ch. 3 (1933); last known usage in ch. 5 of Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974).
Labour Day (p. 16)
Labor Day in US book, of course; an official US holiday from 1894, celebrated on the first Monday in September, and the unofficial close of the summer season in many communities.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
swelled like a gasometer (p. 17)
A building-sized container for storing fuel gas and buffering its pressure before its distribution to individual customers via gas mains; typically cylindrical, with a rising and falling upper section to accommodate changes in volume of gas at constant supply pressure.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
Emma … Elaine Dawn (p. 17)
Omitted in magazine serials; see p. 24, below for more on Flossie.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” (p. 18)
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, no. 1 (1776)
“No harm in hoping” (p. 18)
Both magazine serials have her say “They ought to be worth a packet” here instead.
James Barr Brewster, only son of the late John Waldo Brewster (p. 19)
For unknown reasons, both magazine serials read “James Waldo Brewster, only son of the late James Barr Brewster” here. There is also a J. B. Brewster mentioned in Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) as the winner of an academic award at Cambridge University, but the connection is uncertain.
who on the previous day had been united in matrimony to Sybil… (p. 19)
In the magazine serials, the last portion of the sentence is omitted, so we are not told at this point why Keggs makes a tick mark against young Brewster’s name.
Deep was calling to deep, butler to butler. (p. 19)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
weird old duck … had his code (p. 19)
Both magazine serials omit the informal description (used only here in Wodehouse’s fiction) and Keggs’s reaction. Skidmore is unnamed at this point in magazines.
Chapter 3
daily dozen (p. 21)
See Laughing Gas.
[Not mentioned in UK serial.]
waiting for the ravens to feed him (p. 21)
In other words, taking no initiative to get his own breakfast. For the allusion to the prophet Elijah, see Biblia Wodehousiana and follow the link there to another such reference and its explanation.
as though nature had originally intended to make two viscounts (p. 21)
See Summer Lightning.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
In shape he resembled a pear (p. 21)
Lord Uffenham’s physical characteristics were modeled on Max Enke, a fellow-internee during World War II. See this chess site for a photo and description of Enke. See also Money in the Bank for notes on his first appearance in Wodehouse’s fiction as Lord Uffenham.
boots of the outsize or violin-case type (p. 21)
See Laughing Gas.
[Violin cases not mentioned in magazine serials.]
the White Knight … feed oneself on batter (p. 21)
See Through the Looking Glass at Google Books. Lord Uffenham’s niece Anne Benedick compares him to the White Knight in ch. 6 of Money in the Bank (1942).
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
to get into communication with him only on the ouija board (p. 22)
In other words, using a device (see Thank You, Jeeves) used by spiritualists to get in touch with the next world.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
Machiavellian (p. 22)
See A Damsel in Distress.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
wear the mask (p. 22)
See Laughing Gas.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“Lord love a duck” (p. 22)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“You don’t get summerhouses and bird baths for nothing.” (p. 23)
Unless, of course, you are a professional scrounger like Charles Percy Cuthbertson, the Old Stepper in “Ukridge and the Old Stepper” (1928), who managed to scrounge a summerhouse and a sundial from an adjoining estate, and for whom a bird bath would be a piece of cake.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
“American week-end guests never tip the butler less than a thousand dollars” (p. 23)
This tells us more about the social circles of J. J. Bunyan than it does about Americans in general, of course. This explanatory passage about Keggs’s wealth is omitted in magazine serials.
twister (p. 23)
Originally applied to one who prevaricates or takes different sides in turn; the slang usage for a crook or con man is cited in the OED from 1863 onward. Wodehouse’s use of it in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (cited from Plum Pie, 1966) is in the OED, but they missed this earlier appearance.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
Green Lion … blow the froth off (p. 23)
This is the only pub of this name so far found in Wodehouse, except that in the US edition of Cocktail Time there is another Green Lion in Dovetail Hammer (mentioned instead of the Beetle and Wedge at the start of chapter 8).
Nowhere else is blowing the froth off (that is, the foamy head of a tankard of beer or ale) mentioned; in Sam the Sudden, ch. 24.2, Hash has a vision of his Clara as a pub hostess “scraping the froth off the mugs” (presumably with a knife or other straightedge, leveling the foam at the top edge of the mug so that the excess goes into the bar sink rather than dripping onto the table).
chiselling the aborigines (p. 23)
In magazine serials, the somewhat milder “rooking the natives” appears here. In each case, “taking advantage of the locals” is the intended meaning.
“His sister married a boxer, he tells me. Feller of the name of Billson.” (p. 24)
We meet these characters in “The Début of Battling Billson” (1923) and two sequels, though in the early stories Flossie’s surname is uncertain. It turns out that barmaids seem often to have used “stage names” on the job; Wodehouse gives us the tip in Pigs Have Wings (1952) that Maudie Montrose was the nom de guerre of Maudie Beach Stubbs at the Criterion bar. This probably accounts for the multiple surnames of Battling Billson’s Flossie, who worked as Burns at the Crown in Kennington and as Dalrymple at the Blue Anchor in Knightsbridge, and who turns out to have been born Flossie (probably Florence) Keggs.
ten stone four (p. 24)
In Britain, a stone equals fourteen pounds, so this is 144 lb. avoirdupois.
bobs (p. 24)
Slang for shillings. The shilling was a silver coin worth twelve pence or one-twentieth of a pound. The Bank of England inflation calculator gives a factor of about 23 from 1955 to 2025 for the cost of goods and services, so each shilling coin then would have the buying power of about £1.15 or US$1.55 today. Another source, the Retail Price Index cited by measuringworth.com, gives a factor of roughly 36 for the same period.
weighed over thirteen stone when he won the heavyweight championship from Jess Willard (p. 24)
The magazine serials instead speak of the end of his reign: was heavyweight of the world till Gene Tunney beat him.
‘I was not referring to him.’ (p. 24)
The US book precedes these words with ‘His name was William Harrison Dempsey.’ See the Wikipedia article for more on the 20th-century heavyweight, including that his elder brother Bernie had previously fought under the name Jack in tribute to the Nonpareil. Somewhat oddly, the Nonpareil was born John Edward Kelly, so the brothers William and Bernie had a better right to the surname at least.
According to Wikipedia again, the Nonpareil was a middleweight, holding the World Middleweight Championship from 1884 to 1891. In that era, the middleweight class included boxers over 135 and up to 160 pounds. Only in 1914 was that weight class divided so that boxers up to 147 pounds were classed as welterweights. Since the Nonpareil died in 1895, he can only be called a welterweight in retrospect, not in any sense contemporary to his life.
“up to something fishy” (p. 25)
Wodehouse often used a phrase from within a work as the title of a story, and this is the locus for that in the present work, at least for the magazine serials and UK book title. Peter Schwed, his American editor at Simon & Schuster, was probably responsible for the US book title. The slang sense of “fishy” as suspect or unreliable is cited in the OED from 1840 onward, even being used in Disraeli’s 1844 novel Coningsby.
“that ruddy statue” (p. 25)
Here ruddy doesn’t have its literal meaning of red in color, but is a euphemistic substitute for the taboo expletive bloody.
disliked the statue (p. 25)
Magazine editions follow this up with “—so much so that on the previous night, returning flushed with the Green Lion’s beer, he had hopped over the fence, armed with a pot of black paint, and added to its chin a small imperial beard.” (The US magazine version further explains the beard as “of the type worn by ambassadors.”) In the book editions, this event happens later, recounted in Chapter 7.
herring-gutted young son of a what-not (p. 25)
Green’s Dictionary of Slang gives two meanings for herring-gutted, each plausible: either having a very slender body like a herring; or cowardly, gutless, spineless. Here “what-not” is a euphemism, standing in for a stronger term of insult; this and other meanings for the term are considered in the notes for A Damsel in Distress.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
marcelled his hair (p. 25)
See The Code of the Woosters.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
that defect, so common in bull-dogs, of liking everyone (p. 25)
Together with George’s interest in cake, mentioned in chapter 19, it seems likely that Wodehouse is remembering his own bulldog Sammy; see Very Good, Jeeves.
[Not mentioned here in magazine serials.]
soupy voice (p. 26)
“You say ‘that instrument’, Jeeves. And you say it in an unpleasant, soupy voice. Am I to understand that you dislike this banjolele?”
Thank You, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)
tigress that slept within her (p. 26)
Let her discover that he had been trying to skin the best cook in Sussex, thus sowing in that cook’s mind possible thoughts of giving her notice, and the tigress that slept in her would be unchained.
Quick Service, ch. 8 (1940)
“Any attempt on my part to bring in a friend would rouse the tigress that sleeps within her.”
Gally about Lady Constance in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 4.4 (1969)
See Spring Fever and Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit for many more tigresses in Wodehouse.
stinker (p. 26)
This seems to be the only time Wodehouse uses it for something difficult to understand or solve; the earliest OED citation in that sense is from Kipling in 1917. Other meanings of the word are noted in Right Ho, Jeeves and Full Moon.
outrageous road-speed (p. 26)
Clues for this cryptic style of crossword puzzle contain both a hint and a suggestion of the type of wordplay involved in solving it. The Wikipedia article on cryptic crosswords notes that there are thousands of possible indicators for an anagrammed hint, including outrageous in its long list.
“It bucks you up.” (p. 27)
See Ukridge.
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]
‘So the subordinate professional on trial gets wages in advance not without demur’ (p. 27)
This crossword clue is too deep for me. It was omitted in the magazine serials.
[A competition in the Guardian newspaper suggested PAID UNDER PROTEST for this one, without full confidence that it was what Wodehouse meant.]
Adieu, he cried, and waved his lily hand (p. 27)
Adieu, he cried, and waved his lily hand.
Thomas Carlyle: “Goethe’s Works” (1832)
“Adieu”, she cries! and wav’d her lily hand.
John Gay: “Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-ey’d Susan” (1720) [found by NTPM]
[Not mentioned in magazine serials.]Chapter 4
Jaguar (p. 28)
This is apparently the only mention of this sporty British luxury car in Wodehouse. In the UK magazine version, Roscoe has a limousine. In the US magazine, it is merely a car.
published a second edition of his chin (p. 28)
See A Damsel in Distress.
[Omitted from US magazine serial.]
looked like a gorilla which had been caught in machinery of some sort (p. 29)
See Full Moon.
[The UK serial compares Billson to a dilapidated gorilla; the US serial omits the comparison.]
Cleopatra … Mark Antony (p. 29)
See Money for Nothing.
[Spelled Marc Antony in US book; omitted from US magazine serial.]
out Pinner way (p. 29)
A suburb to the northwest of London, some fifteen miles by road. In the UK magazine serial, she lives out Maida Vale way, less than a mile from St. John’s Wood; in the US serial, only specified as “in the opposite direction” from Roscoe’s destination.
It was an hour and a quarter’s drive from London to Shipley Hall (p. 30)
We learn later (ch. 9) that Shipley is near Tonbridge, southeast of London, and even on today’s roads Google Maps shows a driving time of one and a half hours from St. John’s Wood to Tonbridge, a road distance of 47 miles. Roscoe’s forty-six minutes would certainly have exceeded the speed limits of the 1950s.
[The magazine serials give the distance to Shipley as thirty miles and do not mention the elapsed time of his trip.]
a moonfaced figure with an Oxford accent (p. 30)
Other moon-faced butlers include Chaffinch at the Brinkmeyer/Brinkwater home in Laughing Gas, Coggs at Ickenham Hall in the Uncle Fred books, and another Keggs at Belpher Castle in A Damsel in Distress. The US book and both magazine versions have a Limey accent here (in the American terminology that Roscoe would probably have used when he knew Keggs).
bowler hat (p. 30)
The US book and magazine versions have derby hat instead here. See Young Men in Spats.
gooseberry eyes (p. 30)
Wodehouse seems to have used this as a descriptor for bulging or protruding eyes. See the quotation in the notes to Laughing Gas for a source. For other references to protruding eyes, see Thank You, Jeeves.
“About that dashed manuscript of Gally’s that you told me to pinch, of course,” he said with a bitter laugh, and Beach, having given a single shuddering start like a harpooned whale, sat rigid in his chair; his gooseberry eyes bulging; the beer frozen, as one might say, on his lips.
Heavy Weather, ch. 8 (1933)
The face was pale, the eyes gooseberry-like, the ears drooping, and the whole aspect that of a man who has passed through the furnace and been caught in the machinery.
Gussie Fink-Nottle in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 6 (1934)
He was like a breath from home, a large, moonfaced, gooseberry-eyed man of the fine old family butler brand and, drinking him in, I lost some of that feeling I had had of having fallen among savages.
Chaffinch in Laughing Gas, ch. 8 (1936)
But it was not simply the other’s presence that caused his gooseberry eyes to dilate to their full width, remarkable though that was.
Beach in “The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
But Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie was something special. … He had a large, bald head and pale, protruding gooseberry eyes, and those eyes, resting on mine, heightened the Dark Tower feeling considerably.
The Mating Season, ch. 5 (1949)
His moonlike face was twisted with mental agony, his gooseberry eyes bulging from their sockets.
Beach in Pigs Have Wings, ch. 2.5 (1952)
He thought nostalgically of his young manhood in London at the turn of the century and of the vintage butlers he had been wont to encounter in those brave days . . . butlers who weighed two hundred and fifty pounds on the hoof, butlers with three chins and bulging abdomens, butlers with large, gooseberry eyes and that austere, supercilious, butlerine manner which has passed away so completely from the degenerate world of the nineteen-fifties.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 16 (1953/54)
You mounted the steps of some stately home, you pulled the bell, and suddenly the door opened and there stood an august figure, weighing some sixteen stone on the hoof, with mauve cheeks, three chins, supercilious lips and popping, gooseberry eyes that raked you with a forbidding stare, as if you were something the carrion crow had deposited on the doorstep.
“Good-bye to Butlers” (Punch, April 4, 1956). Similar passages are in America, I Like You (1956) and Over Seventy (1957).
[Not mentioned in US magazine serial.]
the res (p. 31)
Legal terminology for the point at issue, the crux of the matter.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
the Plimsoll line (p. 31)
See Heavy Weather.
[Plimsoll mark in US magazine serial.]
ten miles in tight shoes (p. 31)
stout Cortez—though some say stout Balboa (p. 31)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
spot marked X (p. 32)
See A Damsel in Distress.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
high priest (p. 32)
See A Damsel in Distress.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
all flesh is grass (p. 32)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
put a stick of dynamite under himself and come to the point (p. 33)
In the non-destructive senses of encouraging to action or speeding someone up:
Monty … proposed very shortly to put a stick of dynamite under this Lord Tilbury.
Heavy Weather, ch. 15 (1933)
those words ‘motion picture screen’ … had acted on him like the stick of dynamite his employees had so often wished they could touch off under him.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 9.3 (1964)
‘The English end needs gingering up,’ he said. ‘A couple of sticks of dynamite under the seat of their pants will do those dreamers all the good in the world.’
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 1 (1973)
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
But the snort he snorted now was a very different snort from the snort he had snorted when snorting previously. (pp. 33–34)
An unusual instance of Wodehouse making wordplay from the repetition of a noun which also is a verb.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
rannygazoo (p. 34)
See The Code of the Woosters.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
Several of the young gentlemen were eliminated in the recent global hostilities (p. 34)
Another of the counterexamples to some commentators who claim that Wodehouse’s fiction never mentions war.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
the earlier Ptolemies (p. 35)
The dynasty of the Ptolemies were rulers of Egypt from 305 BC until the Roman Republic took control in 30 BC upon the death of Cleopatra. They were of Macedonian Greek descent; the first Ptolemy to declare himself Pharaoh was one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Wodehouse is here comparing Bayliss’s look to that of a mummy.
dictaphone (p. 36)
See Bill the Conqueror.
[The US magazine serial has recording machine here instead.]
works out at a million (p. 36)
In order to double in value from 1929 to 1955, the money would have had to be invested to yield an annual interest rate of about 2.7% after taxes, much higher than the rate paid on 3-month Treasury bills at any time during this period. Ten-year Treasury bonds were introduced in 1953, so would not have been available for most of this period. High-grade municipal bonds yielded returns ranging from 1.64% in 1946 to 4.71% in 1933, but it is unclear whether the net effect of this investment would have achieved a doubling. Top-grade corporate bonds (Moody’s Aaa rating) would have been the best bet for achieving this return, if taxes were not included in the calculation; one suspects that Bayliss was canny enough not to report the tontine to the government.
nobbling (p. 37)
See Heavy Weather.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
ramp (p. 37)
See Cocktail Time.
the wages of sin (p. 37)
See Biblia Wodehousiana for the theological source; Mortimer Bayliss seems to use it in the sense of “ill-gotten gains” rather than eternal punishment.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
meet with triumph and disaster … Kipling (p. 38)
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—”.
[Omitted in magazine serials.]
“The name is Twine, sir.” (p. 38)
At this point the story as told in book editions becomes significantly different from the plot of the magazine serials, which do not include the subterfuge by Keggs of suggesting Twine as a tontine candidate to be bought off by Roscoe Bunyan. In the magazines, Twine has been introduced as initially engaged to Jane Benedick, and that engagement is later broken when she will get no money from the sale of Lord Uffenham’s pictures. In the magazines, Bayliss here confirms Keggs’s statement to Roscoe that Joe Hollister is the other remaining candidate to win the tontine.
At present, it seems of little value to continue commenting at each note how the magazine serials differ from the book editions. That project can be left for a later date.
string of pearls … my rosary (p. 38)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
“It is a small world, I often say.” (p. 38)
And so said Wodehouse himself, as well as many of his characters.
The world of Bertie Wooster and his friends of the Drones Club, of which I have been writing since I was so high, is, I suppose, not only unreal but a thing of the past. It was always a small world—one of the smallest I ever met, as Bertie would say—and now it is not even small; it is nonexistent.
Wodehouse’s commentary on a letter dated October 22, 1960, in Author! Author! (1962)
The last sentence is also in “My World and What Happened to It” in Horizon, January 1959.
‘Fancy meeting you again like this!’
‘It is a small world,’ agreed Psmith.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 6.1 (1923)
Aubrey was astonished. And, being, like all writers of Pastels in Prose, a neat phrase-maker, he said what a small world it is, after all.
“Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
“I always say it’s a small world, after all. Well, I mean, when I say the very same part of the country, my dear father and mother had a cottage in Herefordshire and Mr. Finbow lived in Birmingham, but it does seem odd, all the same.”
Mrs. Wisdom in Big Money, ch. 7.1 (1931)
“Well, well! I was dining with him only last night.”
“It’s a small world, after all,” said Lady Beazley-Beazley.
“Open House” (1932; in Mulliner Nights, 1933)
“Well, it’s a small world,” said Mabelle. “Yes, sir, a small world, and you can’t say it isn’t.”
“The Castaways” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
“Egad, Jeeves! Fancy that. It’s a small world, isn’t it, what?”
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 1 (1934)
“And it’s an odd coincidence, but he’s having gas, too. Shows what a small world it is, what?”
Laughing Gas, ch. 6 (1936)
“Fancy you knowing him. Go on. You say it.”
“Say what?”
“About it being a small world.”
Joe Vanringham and Jane Abbott in Summer Moonshine, ch. 5 (1937)
“You know the old crumb, then?” I said, rather surprised, though of course it bore out what I often say—viz., that it’s a small world.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 1 (1938)
“Strange!” said Mr Pott. “Queer!”
“Curious,” assented Pongo.
“Unusual,” said Claude Pott.
“Bizarre,” suggested Pongo.
“Most. Shows what a small world it is.”
“Dashed small.”
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 1 (1939)
“Good Lord!” said Freddie, feeling what a small world it was. “I used to be at St Asaph’s.”
“Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, US edition, 1940, and Nothing Serious, 1950)
“Really? It’s a small world, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know when I’ve seen a smaller,” I said.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 1 (1946)
“It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“Not in the least.”
Terry Cobbold and Mike Cardinal in Spring Fever, ch. 7 (1948)
“So you know my minor, the major, do you? Most interesting. It’s a small world, I often say. Well, when I say ‘often,’ perhaps once a fortnight.”
Lord Ickenham in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 7 (1948)
The girl said Well, fancy that, adding that it was a small world, and Bingo agreed that he had seldom met a smaller.
“The Word in Season” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
“Shows what a small world it is.”
Bertie in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 18 (1960)
“Oh?” he said … “Is that so?”, and added something about it being a small world.
Lord Tilbury in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 9.2 (1964)
“Why, bless my soul, Egbert, that’s your name, isn’t it? Shows what a small world it is.”
Lord Emsworth in Galahad at Blandings, ch. 4.2 (1965)
“Those were the very words Mr. Prosser used when refusing to marry another niece of mine after announcing his betrothal before witnesses, same as you did. Shows what a small world it is.”
Jas Waterbury in “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966)
“I said it was a small world, and he agreed. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s a very small world, no argument about that,’ and we had some more potato chips.”
Lord Emsworth in A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 1.3 (1969)
“I’ve got a cousin who’s a clergyman, well when I say a clergyman, he cleans out a church down Hammersmith way, dusts the pews and washes the floor and sees that the hymn books are all present and correct, makes a good job of it, too, the vicar calls him Tidy Thomas, that being his name, the same as mine only mine’s Reginald Clarence. Shows what a small world it is.”
Chippendale in The Girl in Blue, ch. 11.4 (1970)
‘Really? It’s a small world, isn’t it.’
‘Pretty small.’
Ginger and Bertie in Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 13 (1971)
“Poverty is the banana skin on the doorstep of romance.” (p. 39)
See Bill the Conqueror.
his eyes popping from their sockets (p. 39)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
Sprat to catch a whale (p. 39)
See Heavy Weather.
spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar (p. 39)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
“if you don’t speculate, you can’t accumulate.” (p. 39)
See Bill the Conqueror.
Wee Holme … Kosy-Kot (p. 40)
Self-consciously cute names for dwellings. The US edition has Kozy-Kot.
“How do I find the blasted house?”
“The name’s on the door.”
“What is the name?”
“Wee Holme.”
“My God!” said Frederick Mulliner. “It only needed that!”
“Portrait of a Disciplinarian” (1927; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
It has to be paid for in hard cash like the Sans Soucis, the Resthavens, the Wee Holmes and all the other establishments turned out in the same mould by speculative builders.
Company for Henry, ch. 1.4 (1967)
“Unpleasantness at Kozy Kot”
story title in A Few Quick Ones (US edition, 1959)
Boy Orator (p. 43)
A nickname given to American politician William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), as a U.S. Representative from Nebraska (1891–95) and the youngest major party Presidential candidate at the time of the 1896 elections.
“I guess they knew that the Boy Orator would do all that was necessary.”
John Maude, speaking of General Poineau in The Prince and Betty, ch. 5 (1912)
“You must listen to this, my dear,” she said in an undertone. “He speaks wonderfully! They used to call him the Boy Orator in his home-town. Sometimes that, and sometimes Eloquent Algernon!”
Ann Chester, speaking of Jimmy Crocker in Piccadilly Jim, ch. 8 (1917)
‘Why, this is eloquence! The boy orator!’
Sally Smith, speaking to Bill Bannister in Doctor Sally, ch. 12 (1932)
“No, I had it from the Boy Orator—that steward guy.”
Lottie Blossom, speaking of Albert Peasemarch in The Luck of the Bodkins, ch. 15 (1935)
breach of promise actions (p. 44)
See Something Fresh.
Pilbeam … Argus Enquiry Agency (p. 44)
First met as a gossip journalist in Bill the Conqueror (1924) and Sam the Sudden (1925); later a private detective running the Argus Enquiry Agency in Summer Lightning (1929) and Heavy Weather (1933).
Sir Galahad (p. 45)
A knight of King Arthur’s round table who, according to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, boasted, “My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.” [IMLVG]
Chapter 5
middleweight (p. 46)
A boxer weighing over 148 pounds but less than 160 pounds.
red-hot spikes … through his temples (p. 46)
See The Old Reliable.
God was in His heaven and all right with the world (p. 46)
See Something Fresh.
salad days (p. 46)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
madness, sheer madness (p. 46)
So common a phrase in the nineteenth century that no specific source can be identified. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is probably the best-known of many early instances.
benzedrine (p. 47)
A brand name for amphetamine, introduced by Smith, Kline, and French in 1933; first used pharmaceutically as a decongestant. Forms of the drug were soon used as stimulants to treat narcolepsy, obesity, low blood pressure, and other conditions, and by soldiers in wartime to stay awake and alert. In postwar years it became clear that the risks of addiction and overuse were high, and by 1971 it became a controlled substance in most countries.
Wodehouse’s only other use found so far is in “George and Alfred” (1967; in Plum Pie and The World of Mr. Mulliner) in which “a masseur, the man with the benzedrine, the studio watchman, a shoe-shine boy and a barber” are listed as aspiring actors infesting the Hollywood studios.
‘Why don’t you brush your hair?’ … ‘You look like a sheep dog.’ (p. 47)
Reminiscent of Hot Water, ch. 2.1 (1932):
“And go and get your hair cut,” screamed Beatrice. “You look like a chrysanthemum.”
mufti (p. 47)
See Ukridge.
marriage of true minds (p. 47)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
high road … low road … banks of Loch Lomond (p. 47)
See Leave It to Psmith.
whose bite might well be fatal (p. 48)
In his office, waiting to spring, there was lurking a foreign star with a bad case of temperament, whose bite might have been fatal.
“Slaves of Hollywood” (1929; variously reused in Louder and Funnier, America, I Like You, and Over Seventy)
I felt that Ernest Plinlimmon should be warned that there lurked against his coming an infuriated female explorer whose bite might well be fatal.
“There’s Always Golf!” (1936; in Young Men in Spats, US edition, 1936, and Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
bien-être (p. 48)
French: well-being.
take the lemon out of her mouth (p. 48)
She greeted him with a cold “Good evening”, and he said, “Take that lemon out of your mouth, Mona Lisa. I want a word with you.”
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 10.1 (1965)
full of a number of things … happy as kings (p. 48)
Happy Thought.
The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
: A Child’s Garden of Verses (1905)
“if I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake” (p. 48)
A variant on the title of a 1950 popular song written by Al Hoffman, Bob Merrill, and Clem Watts.
“Well, Joe, if I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 6 (1951)
got home with the milk (p. 48)
You talk of a man “going home with the milk” when you mean that he sneaks in in the small hours of the morning.
“The Romance of an Ugly Policeman” (1915; in The Man With Two Left Feet, 1917))
Emily, lying curled up in her basket, her whole appearance that of a dog who has come home with the milk, raised a drowsy head.
Money for Nothing, ch. 9.1 (1928)
In London I can stay out till all hours and come home with the milk without a tremor, but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 22 (1934)
He was pale and leaden-eyed and looked like a butler who has come home with the milk, for he had had little sleep.
Lord Shortlands in Spring Fever, ch. 19 (1948)
photo finish (p. 48)
A race (typically a horse race) which is so closely contested that the winner is not apparent to the eye, but must be determined by examining a photograph automatically snapped at the finish line. In this case, Bill’s arrival and the milkman’s delivery were nearly simultaneous.
“Photo finish!” he shrieked. “Photo finish! Photo finish! First time in the history of the Derby. Photo finish. Escalator in third place.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 21 (1953/54)
“Beaten by Moke the Second after a photo finish.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 8 (1958)
yellow make-up … flicker at the rims (pp. 48–49)
A common side effect of hangovers as described by Wodehouse is that other people look yellowish and appear to be flickering. Among many such, here is another quotation that combines both effects:
It seemed to him that somebody had been painting Mr. Schnellenhamer yellow. Even at the best of times, the President of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum, considered as an object for the eye, was not everybody’s money. Flickering at the rims and a dull orange in colour, as he appeared to be now, he had smitten Wilmot like a blow, causing him to wince like a salted snail.
“The Nodder” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
like a cat on a hot shovel (p. 49)
A rather odd combination of like a pea on a hot shovel and like a cat on hot bricks.
smiling faces about me (p. 49)
See Summer Lightning.
sitting on top of the world with a rainbow round my shoulder (p. 49)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
my hat on the side of my head (p. 49)
See The Mating Season.
caged skylark (p. 49)
Probably alluding to “The Caged Skylark” (1879, published posthumously) by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). Both such a bird and “man’s mounting spirit” “wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage” according to Hopkins.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit (p. 49)
See Galahad at Blandings.
tooth and claw (p. 49)
A glancing allusion to Tennyson; see Heavy Weather.
motto is Service (p. 49)
See Hot Water.
‘Follower of El Greco’ … ‘Diaz Flower Piece’ … ‘Pupil of the Master of the Holy Kinship of Cologne’ (p. 50)
Wodehouse is here borrowing names and titles, as well as a gallery’s sales strategy, from Booth Tarkington’s story “Creating the Ideel” (Saturday Evening Post, January 4, 1936; as Chapters One through Four in Rumbin Galleries, 1937).
“Howie, it’s universal if you got a important article you want somebody to buy, only a bum would right away show him this article. If he likes skyscrapers and you want to sell him the Empire State Building, you wouldn’t say nothing about it until after you got him discouraged showing him t’ree-story buildings and a couple carbarns maybe. Then you spring the Empire State, just before you got him too tired out to be excited. That’s a program. It’s execkly what we do in the Galleries this afternoon.”
Bernardo Daddi (p. 50)
Italian Renaissance painter (c.1280–1348); the leading painter of his generation in Florence.
My heart belongs to Daddi (p. 50)
A joke on the song title “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” from the musical comedy Leave It to Me! by Cole Porter (1938). Probably best known today from Mary Martin’s performance in the 1946 film Night and Day.
snapperoo (p. 50)
A slangy variant, not itself found in slang dictionaries so far consulted, of snapper, meaning a closing remark, the punch line of a joke, the clinching statement in an argument. The earliest example in Google Books is from the New Yorker in 1940; Wodehouse used it in Bring On the Girls (UK edition, 1954) for the never-delivered punch line of W. S. Gilbert’s joke that was ruined by Plum’s premature laughter. Bertie also tells of reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:
The thing goes, as you probably know,
Tum tiddle umpty-pum
Tum tiddle umpty-pum
Tum tiddle umpty-pum
and this brought you to the snapperoo or pay-off, which was
Someone had blundered.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 13 (1954)
pill (p. 51)
See Hot Water.
as of even date (p. 51)
Business jargon for “today”.
Cherubim and Seraphim … Hosanna (p. 51)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
My head aches … drowsy numbness … hemlock (p. 51)
Only the second word is altered from the first stanza of a poem from which Wodehouse more often quotes the second stanza, about the blushful Hippocrene.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
John Keats: Ode to a Nightingale, lines 1–4 (1819)
Lethe in Greek mythology was one of the rivers of Hades; drinking its waters caused forgetfulness of the past.
barley water (p. 51)
A soothing nonalcoholic drink prepared by steeping pearl barley in boiling water, straining, and cooling, often with lemon and/or sugar to taste.
blown up with a bicycle pump (p. 51)
“What girl would not be delighted who finds herself unexpectedly free from a man with a pink face and a head that looks as if it had been blown up with a bicycle pump?”
Florence Craye on Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 10 (1954)
proper-size? (p. 51)
The typesetter of the UK first edition made two slips here, not corrected in at least some reprints. The US edition ends the speech correctly with three times its proper size.”
human snapping turtle (p. 52)
Aunt Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle.
“Jeeves and the Kid Clementina” (1930; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
Even in the most favourable circumstances he did not enjoy meeting his trustee; and when compelled to vex and agitate that human snapping turtle, as he feared would be the case today, he always found himself regretting that his late father had not placed his financial affairs in the hands of some reasonably genial soul like Jack the Ripper.
Lord Holbeton in Quick Service, ch. 1 (1940)
“Emerald married my Uncle Theodore, a thing I wouldn’t have done myself on a bet, he being a sort of human snapping turtle, well known throughout England as the Curse of the Eastern Counties.”
Barmy Phipps in Barmy in Wonderland, ch. 2 (1952)
Land sakes, honeychile (p. 52)
Why the son of a New York millionaire affects a Southern dialect here is unexplained. The meaning is approximately “For goodness’ sake, dear friend” in standard English.
something of the Boy Scout Bill Hollister (p. 53)
Another typesetting mistake in the UK first edition; the US edition has something of the Boy Scout about Bill Hollister.
full of strange oaths (p. 53)
See Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
passing beyond the veil (p. 53)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
native guide ’Mbongo (p. 53)
Probably intended as just another generic African name, but there is an ancestral figure called Mbongo in Sawa traditions. [MH]
Chapter 6
Tree gets mixed up with comic hat in scene of his triumphs (p. 54)
The Guardian crossword blog mentioned above suggested that the actor Herbert Beerbohm TREE gets anagrammed with HAT to yield THEATRE.
Sun God Ra and the large Australian bird Emu (p. 54)
poires Hélène (p. 54)
A dessert of pears poached in vanilla syrup served with vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate sauce. The chef Auguste Escoffier created the dish at the time that Offenbach’s operetta La Belle Hélène (1864) was the toast of Paris.
the local (p. 55)
That is, the neighborhood pub.
vintage butler (p. 55)
He thought nostalgically of his young manhood in London at the turn of the century and of the vintage butlers he had been wont to encounter in those brave days . . . butlers who weighed two hundred and fifty pounds on the hoof, butlers with three chins and bulging abdomens, butlers with large, gooseberry eyes and that austere, supercilious, butlerine manner which has passed away so completely from the degenerate world of the nineteen-fifties.
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 16 (1953/54)
The real crusted vintage butler passed away with Edward the Seventh.
“Good-bye to Butlers” in Punch, April 4, 1956,
also in America, I Like You (1956) and Over Seventy (1957)
thirty-six million (p. 56)
Lord Uffenham’s figures were somewhat out of date. In the 1955–57 period, world population was near 2.8 billion, with a growth rate near 2%, giving annual increases of roughly 54, 55, and 57 million for those three years respectively.
space which might be utilized for other purposes (p. 557)
“Since you ask, Spode, I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 7 (1938)
“You wanted me to leave?”
“I did. You were taking up space which I required for other purposes.”
Stilton and Bertie in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 4 (1954)
A pigeon in the country, fine. But in New York it just takes up space which could be utilized for other purposes.
“Pigeons in the Grass, Alas” (in Punch, March 30, 1955; also in America, I Like You, 1956, and Over Seventy, 1957)
His whole manner seemed to suggest that he felt that I was taking up space in the room which could have been better employed for other purposes.
Bertie describing Aubrey Upjohn in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 16 (1960)
“I admit that I’m always happier when I don’t have Spink-Bottle breathing down the back of my neck and taking up space in the house which I require for other purposes, but the girl was as welcome as manna in the wilderness.”
Aunt Dahlia in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 17 (1963)
‘Fill me in on two points, Messrs Plank and Cook, if you will be so good,’ I said. ‘(a) Why are you taking up space in my cottage which I require for other purposes, and (b) What the hell are you talking about?’
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 19 (1974)
“May good digestion wait on appetite.” (p. 57)
From Macbeth: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
would never see a hundred and four again (p. 57)
Wodehouse uses this figure of speech both for age and for increasing weight:
Many of these old acquaintances had been contemporaries of his at school, and the fact that most of them looked as if they would never see a hundred and four again was a reminder of the passage of time that depressed him, as far as he was capable of being depressed.
Lord Ickenham in Cocktail Time, ch. 2 (1958)
I might—indeed I would—have dotted in the eye a small young gawd-help-us or a gawd-help-us of riper years of the large economy size, but I couldn’t possibly get tough with an undersized little squirt who would never see fifty-five again.
Bertie speaking of Pop Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 15 (1974)
He then melted away as softly and gracefully as was within the power of a butler who would never see fourteen stone again, and Gally and Jeff were, as the former would have put it, alone and unobserved.
Beach in Sunset at Blandings, ch. 7 (1977)
iron front (p. 58)
“What bloody man is this?” (p. 59)
Bayliss uses a Shakespeare quotation (in which bloody is a literal description of a wounded soldier) to get around the social gaffe of using the word as an oath (taboo because it refers to swearing “by God’s blood”).
a bit of a poop (p. 59)
See Summer Lightning.
Chapter 7
at nine-thirty … gazing up at the stars (p. 60)
Wodehouse had not been in England during the summer since 1939, so he may have forgotten that London is far enough north that in late June sunset is about 9:21 pm, so at 9:30 the sky will still be in bright twilight and few if any stars will be visible. (In summers during the 1950s, as currently, the UK was on British Summer Time, one hour ahead of GMT, essentially the same pattern as Daylight Saving Time in the USA.) When this novel was written, Wodehouse was living in Remsenburg, Long Island, New York, and late-June sunsets were at about 8:26 pm, with civil twilight over by 9 pm.
a child could have played with him (p. 60)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Roumanian (p. 60)
Spelled Rumanian in US editions.
correspondence course (p. 60)
Balmoral (p. 60)
Chatsworth (p. 61)
See Cocktail Time.
voice … treatment with sandpaper (p. 61)
A man who is by nature a light baritone cannot conduct a conversation for any length of time in a deep bass without acquiring a parched and burning throat. Monty came out of the booth feeling as if his had been roughly sandpapered.…
Heavy Weather, ch. 16 (1933)
“Because he’s got an Ohio accent you could turn handsprings on … it’s got to be sandpapered around the edges as soon as ever it can be, or we’ll be losing out on him.”
Miss Brinkmeyer/Brinkwater in Laughing Gas, ch. 14 (1936)
As the door closed behind them, Lady Constance expelled the breath which she had been holding back during these exchanges. In a woman of less breeding it would have come out as an oath, for conversing with Gally had had its usual effect on her, making her feel as if her nerve centres had been scrubbed with sandpaper.
A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 8.1 (1969)
electric torch (p. 61)
Thus in both US and UK books, although the more usual North American term would be a flashlight, and indeed Bill Hollister uses that term on p. 63.
bread and salt (p. 61)
See Carry On, Jeeves.
Fenimore Cooper Indians … letting a twig snap (p. 61)
See Summer Lightning.
imperial beard (p. 62)
Apparently there has been a great shift in usage in recent years; Wodehouse refers to the chin, so the OED definition of “a small pointed beard growing beneath the lower lip” seems to be what he means. Vocabulary.com gives the small tufted beard of Emperor Napoleon III as the origin of the term. The Chambers Dictionary, Webster’s New World Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and the 1934 Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition all agree (some referring to his name of Louis Napoleon as President in 1848 [right] before restoring the Empire).
[More recent barbering guides and web pages use “imperial” to mean a bare-chinned style of facial hair in which the mustache ends are joined to the lower point of abundant sideburns, but this cannot be relevant to Lord Uffingham’s artistic achievement.]
unpleasantnesses, But (p. 62)
A typographical error in the UK edition; the US edition has a period instead of this comma.
“If yer know me a thousand years, … never do that again.” (p. 62)
‘If you know me a thousand years,’ he was beginning, as he turned, ‘never do that again!’
Lord Tidmouth in Doctor Sally, ch. 11 (1932)
stoutly denying all charges (p. 63)
See Summer Lightning.
catapults (p. 63)
These toys would be called slingshots by an American.
“Tough.” (p. 64)
Bill uses the American colloquial expression, a short version of “Tough luck.” Lord Uffenham interprets it literally as a description of cooked liver, and responds accordingly.
driven out into the snow (p. 64)
See Heavy Weather for the melodramatic original of this flippant variant on a stock phrase.
Chapter 8
having sown the wind, reaping the whirlwind (p. 65)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
Spasmodic as a busy tailor (p. 65)
The Guardian crossword blog suggests FITFUL for this one, which seems reasonable.
ratty (p. 65)
The OED calls this sense of the word ‘British colloquial’ and meaning irritable, annoyed, cross.
madder than a wet hen (p. 65)
See Galahad at Blandings.
a dignity that became him well (p. 65)
See Summer Lightning.
Ladies Night In a Turkish Bath (p. 65)
“ ‘Home isn’t home,’ he used to say, running a thoughtful hand through his whiskers, ‘without plenty of nude Venuses.’ The result being that in certain parts of the grounds you have the illusion of having wandered into a Turkish bath on ladies’ night.”
Lord Ickenham speaking of his grandfather in Uncle Dynamite, ch. 4 (1948)
“Old Fothergill painted it. He’s just the sort of man who would paint a picture of Ladies Night In A Turkish Bath and call it Venus.”
“Jeeves Makes an Omelette” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
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)
Doctor Watson saying ‘Holmes, a child has done this horrid thing!’ (p. 66)
From The Sign of Four, ch. 6 (1890).
Note that the UK first edition has an extraneous opening quotation mark on the next part of the same speech, beginning “There are three of them”.
the Big Four at Scotland Yard (p. 66)
A nickname for the superintendents of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Professor Moriarty … arsenic in the Ruritanian ambassador’s soup (p. 66)
A conflation of familiar Wodehouse themes; the following quotations and links will have to suffice:
“Professor Moriarty, Doctor Fu Manchu and The Ace of Spades, to name but three. And every one of them the sort of chap who would drop cobras down your chimney or lace your beer with little-known Asiatic poisons as soon as look at you.”
Cocktail Time, ch. 18 (1958)
“And in poisoning Mr. Pim’s soup, don’t use arsenic, which is readily detected. Go to a good chemist and get something that leaves no traces.”
“Jeeves and the Spot of Art” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
For Ruritania, see Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
Barribault’s (p. 67)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
“We’ll go on a regular bender.” (p. 67)
Here this implies feasting beyond the normal diet; the usual meaning is a bout of drinking. The OED calls this originally American slang from the mid-nineteenth century, and one of the citations is from Wodehouse in that sense:
“Where’s the harm in an occasional bender? Boys will be boys.”
The Old Reliable, ch. 4 (1951)
Bond Street (p. 67)
See Summer Lightning.
Majarajahs (p. 67)
A typo in the UK first edition; the US edition has maharajahs here.
The ointment in short has no point (p. 68)
The Guardian crossword blog suggests the aromatic oil NARD, also known as SPIKENARD when its “point” (spike) is not missing.
No see here, it’s a sort of church with a chapter (p. 68)
The Guardian blog had a few suggestions which I do not find plausible, since they do not mention the ecclesiastical meaning of see: the office of a bishop. The Chambers Dictionary has the alternate definition “[wrongly according to some] a cathedral city”, and the OED concurs that this is historical, also denoting the use of see to mean “a cathedral; the principal church of a diocese” as historical and rare. Since chapter can refer to the assembly of the canons of a cathedral, I suggest that CATHEDRAL is the answer to the crossword clue.
one in the eye (p. 68)
A shocking blow, a surprising setback. Colloquial use since 1891.
“Oh, I say, this ’ll be one in the eye for Riggetts, poor little feller.”
Love Among the Chickens, Epilogue (1906)
One in the Eye (chapter title)
Not George Washington, ch. 18 (1907)
“That’ll be one in the eye,” said the Zouave Harry.
The Swoop!, ch. 6 (1909)
“She thinks it would be one in the eye for Mrs. Alderman Blenkinsop.”
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 19 (1954)
“One in the eye for old Armitage.”
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 4 (1968)
in loco parentis (p. 68)
See Blandings Castle and Elsewhere.
young Miller, who married yer sister Anne (p. 69)
As recounted in Money in the Bank (1942).
getting the push (p. 69)
Getting fired or dismissed; British slang cited from 1893 on.
Gawd-help-us (p. 69)
lay … on the mat (p. 69)
See Money in the Bank for an earlier usage, also by Lord Uffenham.
the right stuff (p. 69)
Here used in the sense of fortitude, grit, honor. See Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.
Marlene (p. 70)
Rivoli cinema at Herne Hill (p. 70)
The cinema (apparently fictitious) is named after a fashionable street in Paris, the Rue de Rivoli. Herne Hill, southeast of London, was originally the site of large estates but in late Victorian times was redeveloped in terraced streets for middle-class housing, and by the mid-twentieth century had also been built up with new flats replacing older properties damaged by bombing during the second World War.
cotton to (p. 70)
Colloquial for “become attached or drawn to”; found in nineteenth-century sources like Dickens and Trollope. This is the only usage so far found in Wodehouse.
espièglerie (p. 70)
French: mischievousness, impishness, roguishness.
English summer … more than ordinarily severe (p. 70)
The late English summer had set in with all its usual severity, and the Cossacks, reared in the kindlier climate of Siberia, were feeling it terribly.
The Swoop!, ch. 5 (1909)
They had been Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan. But never till now had they been cooped up together in an English country-house in the middle of a bad patch of English summer weather.
Three Men and a Maid, ch. 10 (1922)
A quiet, genteel awning, of course, nothing to offend the eye—but an awning which offers a quite adequate protection against those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer: one of which had just begun to sprinkle the West End of London with a good deal of heartiness and vigour.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 3 (1923)
…the thunder, lightning and rain which so often come in the course of an English summer to remind the island race that they are hardy Nordics and must not be allowed to get their fibre all sapped by eternal sunshine like the less favoured dwellers in more southerly climes.
Summer Lightning, ch. 12.1 (1929)
“Our English summers are severe.”
Ring for Jeeves/The Return of Jeeves, ch. 22 (1953/54)
Too often on an English summer day you find the sun going behind the clouds and a nippy wind springing up from the north-east.…
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 15 (1960)
Guardee (p. 70)
As a member of the Brigade of Guards, we know that young George was tall, good-looking, and wealthy enough that his family could support the costs of his military outfit and upkeep as an honored member of the military unit attached to the protection of the royal family.
Sidney Carton (p. 70)
do the square thing (p. 70)
See Galahad at Blandings.
Noblesse oblige (p. 70)
French: Nobility has its obligations.
on a lead (p. 70)
In American terms, on a leash.
chuckleheaded (p. 71)
Acting like a blockhead, a numbskull, a dolt.
“Well, of all the chuckle-headed muddlers, I’m——”
“A Technical Error” (1903)
“It was precisely the chuckle-headed sort of thing you would have done, to put no name on the thing.”
“Pots o’ Money” (1911; in The Man Upstairs and other stories, 1914)
She paused a moment, brooding on the thoughtless folly of that chuckleheaded gardener.
Pigs Have Wings, ch. 8.1 (1952)
‘Jeff refused to sit in on your chuckleheaded idea of eloping for a very good reason.’
Sunset at Blandings, ch. 11 (1977)
that lifelong habit of his of proposing marriage to girls whenever the conversation seemed to be flagging a bit and a feller felt he had to say something (p. 71)
“I have often speculated,” said Mr. Bunting, “as to why our Judson does these things. Is it because he is unusually susceptible or does he ask them to marry him just because he can’t think of anything to say and feels he must keep the conversation going somehow?”
“Life With Freddie” in Plum Pie (1966/67)
his opportunity to speak the word in season (p. 71)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
corn before her sickle (p. 71)
See If I Were You.
a godforsaken little village on the Welsh border in Shropshire (p. 71)
In 1899, Wodehouse’s parents moved to the hamlet of Stableford in Shropshire, about ten miles from the Welsh border. It isn’t clear whether Wodehouse himself would have agreed with Lord Uffenham’s view of the area. In Bring On the Girls (1953), Plum said:
“Yes, quite remote,” Plum agreed. “I loved it. I’ve never found a better place for work. At the age of twenty I once wrote fourteen short stories there in ten days.”
the Society For The Propagation of The Gospel In Foreign Parts (p. 71)
Despite its somewhat outlandish-seeming title, this was a real-life missionary organization within the Church of England, founded in 1701. See the Library of Congress page for more on their collection of its archives. It is now known as the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
monumental mason (p. 72)
Not that Stanhope Twine is himself monumental; Lord Uffenham is referring to his sculptures as monuments.
what a young girl ought to know (p. 72)
See Summer Lightning.
‘Naked without a penny has the actor become’ (p. 72)
I think I’ve got this one. The abbreviation for penny was d., so “Nake” remains, and that is an anagram of the actor Kean.
Chapter 9
off the King’s Road, Chelsea (p. 73)
When Wodehouse first moved to London in September 1900, he rented a bed-sitting room in Chelsea, off the King’s Road. Other characters whom he placed in the area include James Orlebar Cloyster in Not George Washington (1907), the artists Alan Beverley and Annette Broughham in “The Man Upstairs” (UK version, 1910), Teddy Weeks in “Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate” (1923), Sally Painter in Uncle Dynamite (1948), Cosmo Wisdom in Cocktail Time (1958), and Jerry West in The Girl in Blue (1970).
dwells in marble halls with vassals and serfa at his side (p. 74)
See French Leave.
cordon bleu (p. 74)
French for “blue ribbon”; the title of a France-based international association of cooking and hospitality schools, and informally an adjective for its graduates.
cipher in the body politic (p. 74)
As with the more common cipher in the home, the word cipher is an old-fashioned way of saying “zero”: in other words, someone of no importance, someone whose opinions or desires are not considered.
digestion had ceased to function (p. 74)
See Piccadilly Jim.
coming over all Dickensy (p. 74)
By implication, in the spirit exemplified by Mr. Fezziwig and the reformed Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.
Everywhere you see it, this genial, Dickensy, hearty, peace-and-good-will-and-all-that-sort-of-thing spirit.
“Christmas Presents” (1915)
It was over a hundred and fifty quid, more than he had ever possessed at one time since the Christmas, three years ago, when his Uncle Wilberforce had come over all Dickensy as the result of lemon punch and had given him a cheque on which next day he had vainly tried to stop payment.
“All’s Well with Bingo” (1937; in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, UK edition, 1940)
“It all comes of letting that Dickens spirit creep over you, Bertie. The advice I give to every young man starting life is Never get Dickensy.”
Catsmeat in The Mating Season, ch. 21 (1949)
“Quite all right, my dear,” said Pop Bassett, more Dickensy than ever.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 16 (1963)
orgy (p. 74)
Following its classic definition as rites celebrating Bacchus, the term for most of its history denoted drunken revelry; only in the latter part of the 20th century did connotations of licentious sexual activity become the most common use of the word.
“I think I can give him five minutes” (p. 74)
Bill’s headiness is well illustrated by this flippant attitude toward his boss.
“When the fields are white with daisies, I’ll return” (p. 74)
See Sam the Sudden.
‘Every day is a fresh beginning…’ (p. 75)
From the poem “New Every Morning” by American author Susan Coolidge (1835–1905).
what’s cooking (p. 75)
This colloquial phrase for “what’s going on” is first cited in the OED from a 1932 American newspaper. This seems to be its only use in Wodehouse, and appropriately he has it spoken by an American character.
morons (p. 75)
See Hot Water.
cauliflower ear (p. 76)
See Piccadilly Jim.
amateur boxing (p. 76)
Wodehouse himself was an enthusiastic amateur boxer in his school days, although his poor eyesight limited his effectiveness in competition. No sign of a cauliflower ear can be spotted in photographs of him.
cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff… (p. 76)
From Macbeth: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
me lud (p. 76)
Stereotypically used in addressing a British judge; the equivalent of “Your Honor” in America.
Judge: It is more customary to address me as “my lord,” Mr. Green, or, alternatively, as “me lud.”
Money in the Bank, ch. 4 (1942)
a cartoon of Capital in the Daily Worker (p. 77)
See Spring Fever. The Daily Worker was a Communist and socialist newspaper published first in Chicago in 1924, moving to New York in 1927 and continuing there until 1958.
“Everybody works but Father.” (p. 77)
A comic song by Jean Havez, published in 1905. Sheet music online at the Levy Sheet Music Collection. Early recording by Billy Murray at YouTube. Based on an 1891 British music-hall song, “We all go to work but father”.
“Everybody works but father!” said Jimmy.
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 12 (1917)
“Everybody works but Father. I’ve never known one of these tycoons who wasn’t a clockwatcher.”
Biff Christopher about Lord Tilbury in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 4.2 (1964)
slap-up (p. 78)
The first OED citation is from an 1823 slang dictionary, calling this a northern variant of “bang-up” (up to the mark, stylish, fashionable, cited from 1810). Later in the nineteenth century it was commonly applied to meals of superior quality, as by Jerome K. Jerome in Three Men in a Boat (1889). Wodehouse seems most often to use it for meals, and also for entertainment.
“I recommend the five-shilling tickets. Say, one for yourself, one for your good lady to be and—to make up the round sovereign—a couple for any gentlemen friends you may meet at the club ’oo may desire to be present at what you can take it from me will be a slap-up entertainment, high class from start to finish.”
Sam the Sudden/Sam in the Suburbs, ch. 29.3 (1925)
Well, you can’t entertain a multitude of mothers in slap-up style on one pound, three and fourpence, so it was obvious that he would be obliged to get into somebody’s ribs for something substantial.
“The Masked Troubadour” (1936; in Lord Emsworth and Others, 1937)
For a proper slap-up binge, of course, on the lines of Belshazzar’s Feast, five pounds is an inadequate capital, but you can unquestionably do something with it.
Spring Fever, ch. 4 (1948)
I seem to remember a time when, if one sold a story, one spent most of the proceeds on a slap-up dinner somewhere, but now it never seems to run to much more than a ham sandwich.
Over Seventy, ch. 14 (1957)
They gave a slap-up picnic to all their thousand workers, and it would not be overstating it to say that joy reigned supreme.
“America Day by Day” in Punch, April 17, 1957
He would have his reward, George told him, for only one adjective could be applied to the forthcoming concert, the adjective slap-up.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 24 (1961)
a voice in a million (p. 79)
Apparently telephone technology had much improved since the earlier part of Wodehouse’s career. Compare the note at A Damsel in Distress.
stirred him up as with a ten-foot pole (p. 79)
Rather a change from the usual idiom of a ten-foot pole to express distaste for something that one would not touch with such a pole! And even that idiom begins to show up only late in Wodehouse’s career.
It was no good telling her that I would prefer not to touch young Thos with a ten-foot pole and that I disliked taking on blind dates.
Bertie on Aunt Agatha in The Mating Season, ch. 1 (1949)
“I wouldn’t let him touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
Bring On the Girls, ch. 3.2 (1953)
“I was going on to say that, left to myself, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, when he proceeded.”
Stilton to Bertie in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 7 (1954)
She told him that she had gone around with this Prosser because he had made such a point of it, but, left to herself, she would not have touched him with a ten-foot pole.
Mabel Murgatroyd in “The Word in Season” (in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
Feeling as she did so allergic to Bertram, I wouldn’t have thought she’d have phoned me with a ten-foot pole.
Lady Wickham in Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 2 (1960)
“Didn’t you kiss Mrs. Molloy?”
“Certainly not. I wouldn’t kiss her with a ten-foot pole.”
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 25 (1961)
‘I can state authoritatively that, left to herself, she wouldn’t marry you with a ten-foot pole.’
Lord Ickenham to Archie Gilpin about Myra Schoonmaker in Service with a Smile, ch. 9.3 (1961)
“Biff wouldn’t kill himself with a ten-foot pole.”
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 1.2 (1964)
“You don’t want to marry Trixie?”
“I wouldn’t marry her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” in Plum Pie (1966)
“I wouldn’t touch a turkey with a ten-foot pole.”
Egbert Mulliner in “Another Christmas Carol” (1970; in The World of Mr. Mulliner, 1972/74)
‘But why do you want to win the election? I’d have thought you wouldn’t have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,’ I said, for I knew the society there was very mixed.
Bertie to Ginger Winship in Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
Her late mother, he recalled, had been the same, always insisting that their position demanded that they entertain as dinner guests people whom, if left to himself, he would not have asked to dinner with a ten-foot pole.
J. B. Butterwick in Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, ch. 6 (1972)
‘Ask you to lunch? Ask you to lunch? I wouldn’t ask you to lunch—’
I think he was about to add ‘with a ten-foot pole’…
Pop Cook to Bertie in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, ch. 4 (1974)
strange thrills ran up his spine and out at the roots of his hair (p. 79)
An amusing contrast with two other spinal sensations:
A thrill went down my spine and out at my tail, for of course I saw now what was happening.
Narration in “first person dog” in “The Mixer — I. He Meets a Shy Gentleman” (1915; in The Man with Two Left Feet, 1917)
…a sort of piercing, shrieking squeal that got you right between the eyes and ran all the way down your spine and out at the soles of your feet.
“The Purity of the Turf” (1922; in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923)
squeal and gibber like the sheeted dead… (p. 80)
Though referring to Julius Caesar, this is from Hamlet: see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse. Note squeal here; Wodehouse in other books quotes it accurately as squeak.
a sheep dog operating a funeral parlour as a side line (p. 80)
This seems to be an entirely original comparison. The only other simile about sheep dogs so far found:
The fact remains that all the great literary rows you read about were between men who looked like English sheep dogs.
“To the Critics, These Pearls,” part 2, in America, I Like You (1956)
peahen (p. 80)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
‘Oh, Perfect Love’ (p. 80)
See Heavy Weather.
Bishop and assistant clergy (p. 80)
See Galahad at Blandings.
for better and for worse… (p. 81)
the feast of reason and the flow of soul (p. 81)
Ruritanian Field-Marshal (p. 81)
See Uncle Dynamite.
all dressed up and no place to go (p. 81)
For the usually cited source, see Bill the Conqueror.
You were, in a word, all dressed up and no place to go.
“Thoughts on Home Life” (1914)
If it is bad to be all dressed up and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to have no one to talk it to.
Jill the Reckless/The Little Warrior, ch. 18.3 (1920)
There were a number of important letters waiting to be dictated; and, if the plight of a man all dressed up and having no place to go is bad, that of one full of dictation with nobody to dictate it to is hardly less enviable.
Bill the Conqueror, ch. 9.3 (1924)
All over the country there are shows waiting wistfully for a chance to come into New York, but they are all dressed up and no place to go.
“Curtain Going Up” (in Punch, November 7, 1956)
beat his breast like the wedding guest when he heard the loud bassoon (p. 81)
See Uncle Fred in the Springtime.
the fleshy part of his leg (p. 82)
Wodehouse genteelly refrains from specifying the calf, the thigh, or the buttocks in most of these references.
A cat belonging to a New York lady clawed a burglar in the fleshy part of the leg with such vim and abandon the other night that the latter upset a chair and a table, and was duly roped in by the police.
News item reworked for “By the Way” in the Globe, March 5, 1907
Twice he is saved from the vile attacks of his enemies by Her Grace the Lady Marjorie Stagg-Mantle, a beautiful young Suffragette, who is hanging about Palace Yard in the hope of getting a chance to slip about two inches and a-quarter of jewelled hat-pin into the fleshy part of Mr. Asquith’s leg.
“Women, Wine and Song!”, second episode (1908)
He broke off, as a sharp pain manifested itself in the fleshy part of his leg. Elizabeth was looking at him reprovingly, her weapon poised for another onslaught.
Uneasy Money, ch. 25 (1916)
“You would be in the position of the female jaguar of the Indian jungle, who, as you doubtless know, expresses her affection for her mate by biting him shrewdly in the fleshy part of the leg.”
Piccadilly Jim, ch. 26 (1917)
“Just as he was leaving the front door his favourite hound mistook him for a tramp—or a varlet, or a scurvy knave, or whatever they used to call them at that time—and bit him in the fleshy part of the leg.”
“Dear Old Squiffy” (1920; in Indiscretions of Archie, ch. 7, 1921)
Something infinitely more painful than all the thorns which had recently pierced him smote the fleshy part of his left leg.
“The Awful Gladness of the Mater” (1925; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
Few things so speedily modify an uncle’s love as a nephew’s airgun bullet in the fleshy part of the leg.
“Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court” (1929; in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929/30)
It cut through the air like a knife, and old Mr. Anstruther leaped up as if it had run into the fleshy part of his leg.
“Jeeves and the Love that Purifies” (1929; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
The stampede was started by a young Nodder, who, in fairness be it said, had got a hat-pin in the fleshy part of the leg that time when Miss Burwash was so worried over “Hearts Aflame.”
“The Juice of an Orange” (1933; in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, 1935)
He might be in the soup, he might be a financial wreck, he might be faced with a tête-à-tête with his uncle, Lord Blicester, in the course of which the testy old man would in all probability endeavour to bite a piece out of the fleshy part of his leg, but at least he had done the fine, square thing.
“Noblesse Oblige” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
He spoke so casually that it was perhaps three seconds by the stop watch before Uncle Percy got the gist. When he did, he started, like one jabbed in the fleshy parts with a sudden bradawl.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 28 (1946)
A thoughtful look came into Bill Oakshott’s face. He winced slightly, as if a Brazilian alligator had attached itself to the fleshy part of his leg.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 1 (1948)
Aunt Dahlia leaped about a foot and a quarter. It was as though that calm response had been a dagger of Oriental design thrust into the fleshy part of her leg.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 19 (1954)
It was just after I had run the eye down the Births and Marriages that I happened to look at the Engagements, and a moment later I was shooting out of my chair as if a spike had come through its cushioned seat and penetrated the fleshy parts.
Jeeves in the Offing, ch. 2 (1960)
The males might have lost their grip in recent years, but the female element, it seemed, still had the right stuff in them, though of course where somebody like Plank is concerned, a stab in the fleshy part of the leg is only a step in the right direction, merely scratching the surface as you might say.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1963)
“A what?” he cried, wincing as if some unfriendly tooth had bitten him in the fleshy part of the leg.
“Bingo Bans the Bomb” (1965; in Plum Pie, 1966/67)
a sock full of wet sand (p. 82)
See Uncle Dynamite.
Chapter 10
Aristotelian ideal of pity and terror (p. 83)
See The Old Reliable.
eyes protruding to their fullest extent … eyes sticking six inches out (p. 83)
See Thank You, Jeeves.
the caterpillar which she had discovered in her salad (p. 83)
See Money for Nothing.
like a startled kitten (pp. 83–84)
See Bill the Conqueror.
ant at a picnic (p. 84)
“Hardly that,” said Jerry, wishing not for the first time that his host’s eyes were a little less pale and icy or, alternatively, that if they had to be pale and icy, their proprietor would not direct them at him with such unpleasant intensity, for the young diplomat was making him feel like an unwanted ant at a picnic.
Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 2.3 (1964)
seeing him steadily and seeing him whole (p. 84)
The source is quoted in the notes to The Clicking of Cuthbert.
Emily Post (p. 84)
See Summer Moonshine.
the Taj Mahal by moonlight … a fairly decent-looking sort of tomb (p. 84)
music of the spheres (p. 85)
This seems to be Wodehouse’s only direct reference to the ancient notion (based on Pythagoras) that the motions of the sun, moon, and planets are coordinated in a harmony of proportions and rhythms in a way analogous to musical harmonies.
Wodehouse did often allude to a passage from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in which this concept is developed.
faery lands forlorn … Keats (p. 85)
See Money for Nothing.
obiter dicta (p. 85)
See Money in the Bank. But note that Wodehouse here uses it more for an intended warning than in its traditional sense of a side remark not bearing on the point at issue.
like billy-o (p. 86)
See A Damsel in Distress.
floating on a pink cloud (p. 86)
“Dancing with you was like floating on a pink cloud above an ocean of bliss.”
Sue Brown to Hugo Carmody in Summer Lightning, ch. 4.2 (1929)
“Have you ever felt that you were floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of bliss?”
Terry to Stanwood Cobbold in Spring Fever, ch. 18 (1948)
It was a statement of faith well calculated to make any young authoress feel that she was floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of joy, and that was how Hermione felt as she listened.
Uncle Dynamite, ch. 10.3 (1948)
She was conscious of a dreamlike sensation, as if she were floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of joy.
Agnes Flack in “Feet of Clay” (1950; in Nothing Serious, 1950)
It is not easy to drive in a taxi cab of the 1947 vintage and feel that you are floating on a pink cloud high up in the empyrean, but he did it.
Cosmo Wisdom in Cocktail Time, ch. 13 (1958)
“I’m floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of bliss, while harps and sackbuts do their stuff and a thousand voices give three rousing cheers.”
Biff Christopher in Frozen Assets/Biffen’s Millions, ch. 3.1 (1964)
according to Nancy Mitford (p. 87)
English novelist, biographer, journalist (1904–1973), daughter of a baron and sister-in-law of a duke, prominent as one of the “bright young things” between the wars. Her 1955 magazine article quoting linguist Alan Ross about upper- and lower-class patterns of speech and usage popularized his terms “U” and “non-U”, and Ross’s original paper and Mitford’s article were incorporated among other contributions into the book Noblesse Oblige in 1956.
Wodehouse errs here, though; Ross remarks that “U-speakers eat lunch in the middle of the day (luncheon is old-fashioned U) and dinner in the evening.… Non-U-speakers … have their dinner in the middle of the day.” Mitford’s portion of the book does not mention lunch or luncheon at all.
apostolic claims of the church of Abyssinia (p. 88)
See The Old Reliable.
two pounds five (p. 88)
Measuringworth.com suggests a present-day equivalent of £80. Some lunch!
it’s a poor heart that never rejoices (p. 88)
See the linked comment at Gilbert & Sullivan References in Wodehouse for a likely literary source, and see the fourth item below that comment for more Wodehouse usages of the phrase.
l’addition (p. 88)
French: The total of the items ordered, the check, the bill.
Oo là là! (p. 88)
See Uncle Dynamite.
short-short (p. 89)
thieves’ kitchen (p. 89)
The OED definition has no mention of food preparation; merely as “a place inhabited by thieves or other criminals”, citations begin in 1851.
“Why, the place is a perfect Thieves’ Kitchen.”
“Pillingshot, Detective” (1910)
“All the nobility and gentry for miles around will be at the garden party. The place will become practically a thieves’ kitchen.”
Quick Service, ch. 12 (1940)
“I took her into the Bollinger for a quick tissue restorer. And,” said Freddie with feeling, “the prices they charge in that thieves’ kitchen are enough to whiten your hair from the roots up.”
The Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 11 (1961)
“Good heavens, what is this place, a thieves’ kitchen? My brother robs the bank, my nurse robs the bank, my butler robs the bank, my nephew robs the bank, his secretary robs the bank—”
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?, ch. 13.4 (1968)
Rocky Marciano (p. 90)
American boxer (1923–1969), undefeated world heavyweight champion from 1952 to 1956.
tried in the furnace (p. 90)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
my home town (p. 91)
It seems odd that Jane would refer to Meadowhampton as her home town when it was only a temporary refuge from the war. In the magazine condensations, she merely says “I know Meadowhampton.”
bulldog (p. 92)
See above. The UK edition usually hyphenates “bull-dog” but omits the hyphen here.
glad-hander (p. 92)
Colloquial American expression for one who is cordial to everyone, as in freely offering a handshake. OED has citations in this form since 1929; the glad hand as a noun since 1895.
dancing the shimmy (p. 92)
See Leave It to Psmith.
Chapter 11
for ever blowing bubbles (p. 93)
Alluding to the 1918 popular song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”.
a face that would have stopped a clock (p. 93)
Beginning in the 1870s, Google Books finds instances of facial expressions (as of rage or disgust) that would have stopped a clock; the first usage so far found of mere ugliness that would have done so is from 1923. All the citations so far found are American. This is apparently the only time Wodehouse uses the phrase.
a slight strabismus (p. 93)
A misalignment of the eyes, such as cross-eyes or wall-eyes in popular terminology.
Helen of Troy (p. 94)
See Uncle Dynamite.
buck-and-wing dances (p. 94)
See Money in the Bank.
one little rose from your hair (p. 95)
See Uncle Dynamite.
concealment like a worm i’ the bud (p. 95)
From Twelfth Night; see Shakespeare Quotations and Allusions in Wodehouse.
a marked respiratory embarrassment with an absence of endotracheal oxygenation (p. 95)
Each half of this phrase can be found separately in medical books, but the only instance so far found of them together is in a mystery novel, Anthony Berkeley’s Death in the House (1939), which seems a far likelier source for Wodehouse’s usage here.
throw a spanner (p. 95)
See Leave It to Psmith.
picnic … ant … quoted on an earlier page (p. 96)
See p. 84, above.
Distinctive and individual (p. 96)
These adjectives together suggest an allusion to an advertising slogan; see Ukridge.
myx-whatever-its-dashed-name-is (p. 96)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
could eat cake (p. 96)
See The Girl in Blue.
an old Barribault custom (p. 97)
Though a staple of comic strips and humorous fiction, there is little evidence that restaurants actually ever set defaulting diners to work at the sink.
two pounds ten (p. 97)
Are we to assume from this that Bill added five shillings as a tip to the total of two pounds five on the bill? That would be about eleven percent, rather slight for a place as fancy as Barribault’s.
descended from a cloud (p. 97)
A subtle allusion to the deus ex machina; see Money for Nothing.
fate that is worth than death (p. 97)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
secrecy and silence (p. 97)
See Very Good, Jeeves.
“Where were you on the night of June the twenty-second?” (p. 97)
“Purkiss,” he said, “where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?”
“The Word in Season” (in Punch, August 21, 1940, and in A Few Quick Ones, 1959)
True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.
Bertie, speaking of Stilton Cheesewright in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 2 (1954)
P.S. Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?
“To the Critics, These Pearls” (in America, I Like You, 1956)
and “Critics and the Criticized” (in Over Seventy, 1957)
‘Where were you on the night of October the fifteenth?’
Bachelors Anonymous, ch. 7 (1973)
“Mr. Gish’s assistant … Mr. Gish’s assistant … Mr. Sish’s” (p. 97)
I [NM] cannot help wondering if Wodehouse’s original text had other variants of this tongue-twister, perhaps “Mr. Gish’s agishtant” or something like that, which were corrected by an overzealous typesetter or proofreader. [Both US and UK books read as above; the magazine serials omit this.] As it stands, saying it correctly twice and then fumbling it once doesn’t seem like the way this sort of verbal stumble works.
saved him from the soup (p. 98)
mot juste (p. 98)
See Right Ho, Jeeves.
Chapter 12
“Never been in the West Indies, have yer?” (p. 99)
The way this is asked gives a hint that a tall tale may be coming. Compare:
“He was certainly a monster—fully thirty—you have never been in Central Africa, have you, Miss Weston? No? You ought to go there!—fully fifty feet from tip to tail.”
“A Mixed Threesome” (1921; in The Heart of a Goof, 1922)
Labour Government likely to get in (p. 99)
In fact, the Conservative Party had won the 1951 general elections, and would remain in power until the election of 1964 gave prime minister Harold Wilson a four-seat majority in Parliament.
Mr. Aneurin Bevan (p. 100)
British Labour politician (1897–1960): Welsh M.P. from 1929; Minister of Health 1945–51; at the left wing of the Labour Party. In a 3 July 1948 speech he told of “a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.”
to shoot some inches into the air (p. 100)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
unhitched his mind (p. 102)
See Bill the Conqueror.
in the space of a few brief years … converting herself (p. 102)
Compare Sinclair Hammond’s view of Felicia Sheridan in Bill the Conqueror.
pop up out of a trap (p. 103)
See Bill the Conqueror.
Thomas Moore … Peri … Paradise (p. 103)
See Summer Moonshine.
Bill’s heart stood still (p. 104)
To say of anyone’s heart that it stood still is physiologically inexact. The heart does not stand still. It has to go right on working away at the old stand, irrespective of its proprietor’s feelings.
Full Moon, ch. 3.4 (1947)
leeches will be leeches (p. 104)
See A Damsel in Distress.
a whacking great sum (p. 105)
See If I Were You.
a polished and slippery oak staircase (p. 105)
At this point, many readers of Wodehouse will recall the great staircase at Blandings Castle and the various calamities that took place on it.
a purler (p. 105)
A headfirst fall or trip; British colloquial from mid-19th century.
Van Meegeren (p. 106)
As far as I can tell, the only real-life forger among the names mentioned in this paragraph. Han van Meegeren (1889–1947) was a Dutch artist who was charged with selling a Vermeer painting, supposedly a Dutch national treasure, to Nazi leader Hermann Goering. Van Meegeren acquitted himself, and became famous, by demonstrating that he had painted the forged Vermeer himself. Other forgeries by van Meegeren purported to be authentic works of Gerard Peter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, and Frans Hals.
Peter Nieuwenhuizen, in a talk given to The Wodehouse Society in 2017, demonstrated that van Meegeren and Wodehouse “visited the same casinos, in the same period, on the same southeast coast of France where they both lived” in the 1930s. He concluded that it is plausible that the two had met. See Plum Lines, Summer 2019, pp. 5–9.
[Van Meegeren is not mentioned in the magazine condensations.]
a statue of himself (p. 107)
See Spring Fever.
Chapter 13
much in common with that of a stuffed frog (p. 109)
See Bill the Conqueror.
[The US book has a cigar-store Indian instead; magazines omit the sentence entirely.]
take the rough with the smooth (p. 109)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
However, one must take the rough with the smooth, and I was prepared to yield the point.
“The Mixer–II. He Moves in Society” (1915; in The Man with Two Left Feet, 1917)
The catch in being a critic is that you cannot pick and choose; you have to take the rough with the smooth, the good with the bad; and there is so much more bad than good.
“Tough Times for Critics” (1916)
“But, all in all, taking the rough with the smooth, it has worked out distinctly on the right side of the ledger.”
“No Wedding Bells for Him” (1923; in Ukridge, 1924)
“I am an old soldier, lad, an old soldier. I have learned to take the rough with the smooth.”
“Honeysuckle Cottage” (1925; in Meet Mr. Mulliner, 1927/28)
Well, we Woosters are old campaigners. We can take the rough with the smooth.
“Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit” (1927; in Very Good, Jeeves, 1930)
However, when you are the guest of a great nation, you have to take the rough with the smooth.
“Fate” (1931; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
It was not precisely the attitude Freddie had hoped for, but he could take the rough with the smooth.
“Good-bye to All Cats” (1934; in Young Men in Spats, 1936)
I suppose the fact of the matter is that in Hollywood you get to learn to take the rough with the smooth, and after you’ve lived there for a time nothing rattles you—not even waking up and finding yourself in someone else’s body.
Laughing Gas, ch. 11 (1936)
He had known that a man who marries an imperious and autocratic woman from sound commercial motives must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth, but he had never anticipated that the former would be quite so rough as this.
Summer Moonshine, ch. 13 (1937)
She reached out and grabbed my hand and pressed it. Unpleasant, of course, but one had to take the rough with the smooth.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 3 (1938)
This relieved Joss somewhat. He was prepared to take the rough with the smooth, but it was nice to feel that he was not coming up against an irritable world’s champion.
Quick Service, ch. 7 (1940)
“I don’t say it could ever be pleasant, going about knowing that the Force was gnashing its teeth at you, but one learns to take the rough with the smooth.”
Bertie in Joy in the Morning, ch. 12 (1946)
Broadly, what Tipton felt about phantom faces was that a man capable of taking the rough with the smooth could put up with them provided they kept silent.
Full Moon, ch. 10.4 (1947)
The man who has been trained in the hard school of porch climbing, where you often work half the night on a safe only to discover that all it contains is a close smell and a dead spider, learns to take the rough with the smooth and to bear with fortitude the disappointments from which no terrestrial existence can be wholly free.
Spring Fever, ch. 8 (1948)
But I quickly saw that in the role I had undertaken I must be prepared to accept the rough with the smooth.
The Mating Season, ch. 6 (1949)
She kissed Freddie, who had been afraid of this but told himself with the splendid Carpenter fortitude that at such a time one has to take the rough with the smooth.
French Leave, ch. 8.3 (1956/59)
Nevertheless, though I fully appreciate that criminals, like all of us, have to take the rough with the smooth and cannot expect life to be roses, roses all the way, I do sometimes find myself wondering if I might not have done better on leaving the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank to have bought a black mask and an ounce or two of trinitrotoluol and chanced my arm as a member of the underworld.
“Crime, Does It Pay?” in Over Seventy (1957)
“Bit of a sock in the jaw at the moment, I admit, but a feller has to take the rough with the smooth.”
[This book:] Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 13 (1957)
A rabbit learns to take the rough with the smooth.
Ice in the Bedroom, ch. 26 (1961)
He would have preferred not to have a son-in-law called Archibald, but he knew that in these matters one has to take the rough with the smooth, and he had a great respect for Dukes.
Mr. Schoonmaker in Service with a Smile, ch. 10.2 (1961)
The beer at the Blue Boar would, he knew, be vastly inferior to that of the Emsworth Arms, but he had always been a man able to take the rough with the smooth and he did not hesitate.
Galahad at Blandings, ch. 7.2 (1965)
And a couple of special variants:
“I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows.”
Anatole in Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 20 (1934)
As I once heard Anatole remark, one must learn to take a few roughs with a smooth.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 22 (1954)
a handy way of raising the wind (p. 109)
my Uncle Gregory, the one I inherited from (p. 109)
We can deduce that Lord Uffenham’s father was the younger brother of Gregory and predeceased him, and that Gregory did not have a son to inherit the title.
never had a bean (p. 109)
The OED has nineteenth-century citations for the use of bean as slang for a sovereign or guinea; twentieth-century citations are all in the negative sense, as here, for having no money at all.
mourned and would not be comforted (p. 110)
See Biblia Wodehousiana.
about a feller named Alphonso and a wench called Emily (p. 111)
Lord Uffenham slightly misquotes a Bab Ballad by W. S. Gilbert here (substituting cheek enough for “impudence” in the original, with other slight modifications); see The Girl on the Boat.
hardly knew from a hole in the ground (p. 111)
The only other similar phrase so far found in Wodehouse:
I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Jeeves’s three aunts don’t shut him up when he starts talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn’t know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the ground.
Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 15 (1971)
feelings deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship (p. 112)
For two different comments on this phrase, see Laughing Gas and Thank You, Jeeves.
Don’t dress (p. 113)
In other words, don”t change into a dinner jacket (=tuxedo, black tie) or the full soup-and-fish (=formal evening wear, white tie and tails).
melted in the mouth (p. 113)
An accolade usually given to Anatole’s cooking, occasionally applied to the work of other cooks.
A monarch of his profession, unsurpassed—nay, unequalled—at dishing up the raw material so that it melted in the mouth of the ultimate consumer, Anatole had always been a magnet that drew me to Brinkley Court with my tongue hanging out.
Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 4 (1934)
“Bless my soul, what an amazing lunch that was that Anatole gave us yesterday! ‘Superb’ is the only word. I don’t wonder you’re fond of his cooking. As you sometimes say, it melts in the mouth.”
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 2 (1938)
“If I was to tell you how that woman could cook steak and kidney pudding, you wouldn’t believe me. Melted in the mouth.”
Augustus Robb in Spring Fever, ch. 16 (1948)
“Oh, there’ll be dinner all right,” said Jill, “and you’ll probably find it’ll melt in the mouth. Bill’s got a very good cook.”
Ring for Jeeves, ch. 3 / The Return of Jeeves, ch. 2 (1953/54)
After one of Anatole’s lunches has melted in the mouth, you unbutton the waistcoat and loll back, breathing heavily and feeling that life has no more to offer, and then, before you know where you are, along comes one of his dinners, with even more on the ball, the whole lay-out constituting something about as near Heaven as any reasonable man could wish.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 8 (1954)
“The dinner she dished up last night was of the kind that melts in the mouth and puts hair on the chest.”
[Earlier in this book:] Something Fishy/The Butler Did It, ch. 9 (1957)
“How is Anatole’s cooking these days?”
“Superber than ever.”
“Continues to melt in the mouth, does it?”
Jeeves in the Offing/How Right You Are, Jeeves, ch. 9 (1960)
“What’s her cooking like?”
I could answer that. She had once or twice given me dinner at her flat, and the browsing had been impeccable.
“It melts in the mouth.”
Gussie and Bertie about Emerald Stoker in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, ch. 7 (1963)
Erb was vice-president in charge of the cooking, and I never wish to bite better pork chops than the ones he used to serve up. They melted in the mouth.
“Ukridge Starts a Bank Account” (1967; in Plum Pie, 1967)
the point of his jaw (p. 113)
See Hot Water.
Tottering, he might have fallen, had he not clutched at something solid (p. 113)
See Ice in the Bedroom.
like a ton of bricks (p. 114)
calm as a halibut on ice (p. 114)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
slab of damnation (p. 114)
See Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.
sister Anne … marrying an interior decorator (p. 115)
Anne Benedick is engaged to Lionel Green at the start of Money in the Bank (1942).
within an ace (p. 115)
See Leave It to Psmith.
Chapter 14
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Wodehouse’s writings are copyright © Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate in most countries;
material published prior to 1930 is in USA public domain, used here with permission of the Estate.
Our editorial commentary and other added material are copyright
© 2012–2025 www.MadamEulalie.org.
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