Conversations were in progress in the smoking room of the Drones with a view to maing up a party to go and see the Wrestling Championship at the Albert Hall, and a Bean suggested that Oofy Prosser be invited to join the expedition. Oofy, he put it to the meeting, had more pimples than the man of taste liked to be seen about with and was perhaps the nearest approach to a piece of cheese which the human race had so far produced, but he possessed one outstanding merit which went far to counter-balance these defects - viz., a stupendous bank acount, and it was quite conceivable that, if handled right, he might loosen up and stand supper after the performance.
(from "Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
All through Reginald's deeply moving performance she had sat breathless, her mind in a whirl and her soul stirred to her very depths. With each low note that he pulled from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew that he was, if one may coin a phrase, the only onion in the stew and that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere, particularly as the wife of a man with large ears and no chin, who looked as if he were about to start in the two-thirty race at Kempton Park.
(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Reginald was not a quickwitted man, but, reading btween the lines, he seemed to sense what she was trying to say.
"This sounds like the raspberry."
"It is."
"You mean all is over?"
"I do."
"You are casting me aside like a . . . what are those things people cast aside?"
"'Worn-out glove' is, I presume, the expression for which you were groping?"
"Do you know," said Reginald, struck by a thought, "I always give mine to the Salvation Army. However, that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that you have broken my bally heart."
"A girl with less self-control," said Amanda, switching her tennis racquet, "would have broken your bally head."
(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"When you know him really well you will realize that you are up against something quite exceptional. Take a wart hog, add a few slugs and some of those things you see under flat stones, sprinkle liberally with pimples, and you will have something which, while of course less loathsome than Alexander Prosser, will give you the general idea."
(from "The Word in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Purkiss looked at him fishily. Nature havign made it impossible or him to look at anyone otherwise, he being a man with a face like a halibut.
"Story?"
Bingo explained the circumstances. He said that he was the author of "Tibby's Wonderful Adventure" in the current issue, and Purkiss Oh-yes-ed and said he had read it with considrable interest, and Bingo oh-thanks-ed and simpered coyly, and then there was a rather long silence.
"Well, how about the emolument?" said Bingo at length, getting down to the res.
Purkiss started. The fishy glitter in his eye became intensified. He looked like a halibut which has just been asked by another halibut to lend it a couple of quid till next Wednesday.
(from "TheWord in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It would be idle to pretend that, as I made my way down the stairs, I was my usual debonair self. The feet cold, and if there had been any sudden noises, I would have started at them. My meditations on Aunt Dahlia, who had let me in for this horror in the night, were rather markedly lacking in a nephew's love. Indeed, it is not too much to say that every step I took deepened my conviction that what the aged relative needed was a swift kick in the pants.
(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Suppose you were a great musician. Would you like to have to listen to a cheap, vulgar tune - the same tune - day after day? Or suppose that every time you went to lunch at the Drones you had to sit opposite someone who looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Would you enjoy that? Of couse you wouldn't. You'd be sick as mud."
I saw her point. Many a time at the Drones I have had to sit opposite Oofy Prosser, and it has always taken the edge off a usually keen appetite.
(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall. I couldn't help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It's not the easist thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I've tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
We said earlier that he did not need the cash, but it was we who said it, not Oofy. His views on the matter were sharply divergent. Whenever there was cash around, he wanted to get it. It was well said of him at the Drones taht despite his revolting wealth he would always willingly walk ten miles in tight boots to pick up twopence. Many put the figure even lower.
(from "The Fat of the Land," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
But though, with the desk between us, I could not see these two, I could hear them, and most unpleasant it was. I have known Chuffy, as I say, practically from childhood, and in the course of the years I have seen him in a variety of differing circumstances and in many moods. And I never would have believed him capable of the revolting slush which now proceeded from his lips at the rate of about two hundred and fifty words to the minute. When I tell you that the observation, "There, there, little girl" was the only one I can bring myself to quote, you will be able to gather something of the ordeal to which I was subjected. And, to make matters worse, on an empty stomach, mind you.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"That is why I say that, no matter if father does tear the roof off, I am not going to marry that poor, persecuted lamb. Why should I? I've nothing against him."
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
By this time a shrews bloke like this Stoker wa sbound to have guessed that his were the brains behind my escape, and it seemed not unlikely that he would make some tenative move towards scattering these brains on the hearthrug. His voice, when he spoke, undoubtedly indicated that some such idea was floating in his mind. It was harsh and roopy, and though all that he actually said by way of a start was "Ah!" a determined man can get a lot of meaning into an "Ah!"
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Speaking for myself, I have, as a rule, to be more or less lured to the feast. I mean to say, I don't as a general thing become what you might call breakfast-conscious till I've had my morning tea and rather thought things over a bit. And I can give no better indication of the extraordinary change which had come over my viewpoint now than by mentioning that there was a young fowl of sorts not far away engaged in getting outside a large, pink worm, and I could willingly have joined it at the fine board. In fact, I would have taken pot luck at this juncture with a buzzard.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
You know how it is. You go along for years looking on a fellow as a blister and a menace to the public weal, and then one day you suddenly hear of some decent thing he's done and it makes you feel there mut be good in the chap, after all. It was so in the matter of this Glossop. I had suffered much at his hands since first our paths had crossed. In the human Zoo which Fate has caused to centre about Bertram Wooster, he had always ranked high up among the more vicious specimens - man good judges indeed, indeed, considering that he even competed for the blue ribbon with that great scourge of modern times, my Aunt Agatha. But now, reviewing his recent conduct, I must admit that i found myself definitely softening towards him.
Nobody, I reasoned who could slosh young Seabury like that could be altogether bad. There must be fine metal somewhere among the dross.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while halfway through "The Vision of Salome," steps on a tin tack.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You sound annoyed. And I can't see why. I should have thought you would have been only too glad of the chance of helping me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold I hear so much about."
"The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Heaps of people have hearts of gold and yet would be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms in the small hours. What you don't seem to realize, what you and this Jeeves of yours have omitted to take into your calculations, is that I have a reputation to keep up, and unspotted name to maintain in its pristing purity. This cannot be done by entertaining girls who come in, in the middle of the night, without so much as a by-your-leave and coolly pinch your heliotrope pyjamas . . ."
"You didn't expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?"
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The author of the famous (infamous) novel beginning, "It was a dark and stormy night" was Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton. His son, Robert, was made 1st Earl of Lytton. The current holder of the title is John Peter Michael Scawen Lytton, 5th Earl of Lytton, 18th Baron Wentworth. Lord Lytton is a descendent of the famous poet Lord Byron.
"This has certainly put the butter on the spinach. I feel a new man."
This expression is from the Wodehouse novel, Thank You, Jeeves, published in 1934. It was not familiar to me. It obviously is intended to be positive. It supposedly means getting an extra source of income to help ends meet. I don't know that I would want to try it from a dietary standpoint, but it would be nice from a financial viewpoint.
Moira Lister was an actress who appeared in a couple of the old movies that we have, including The Limping Man. She was South African. There were a few interesting details about her life.
First, she was married for about 38 years to Jacques Gachassin-Lafitte, Viscount of Orthez. Her husband was a hero of the Rif War and owned a champagne vineyard.
In 1946, she went on a date with Neville Heath, a former South African Air Force Captain who months later murdered two women and was hanged.
