"Well, what has become of Rollo? You seem to have mislaid him. Did you break off the engagement?"
"Well, it - sort of broke itself off. I mean, you see, I went and married Mike."
"Eloped with him, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"Good heavens."
"I'm awfully ashamed about that, Eve. I suppose I treated Rollo awfully badly."
"Never mind. A man with a name like that was made for suffering."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Wodehouse's artistic mechanism was set in motion by the need to exclude unpleasantness. He was a quiet, lonely boy and became a quiet, lonely man who escaped into joy at his desk. By all accounts, he was a friendly and obliging fellow; but no less an admirer than Evelyn Waugh described him privately as the dullest man he ever met. And socially he was famous for fleeing the kind of jolly scenes he wrote about to walk his dog. Generations of visitors were astounded that this taciturn blob could have produced usch streams of liveliness. In true Victorian fashion, Wodehouse had grown a second soul back in his workshop, while the first one remained as shy and unformed as a bank clerk's.
(by Wilfred Sheed, from the Introduction to Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Perhaps the greatest hardship in being an invalid is the fact that people come and see you and keep your spirits up. The Hon. Freddie Threepwood suffered extremely from this. His was not a gregarious nature, and it fatigued his limited brainpowers to have to find conversation for his numerous visitors. All he wanted was to be left alone to read the Adventures of Gridley Quayle and when tired of doing that, to lie on his back, and look at the ceiling and think of nothing. It is your dynamic person, your energetic World's Worker, who chafes at being laid up with a sprained ankle. The Hon. Freddie enjoyed it. From boyhood up he had loved lying in bed, and now that fate had allowed him to do this without incurring rebuke, he objected to having his reveries broken in upon by officious relatives.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Having bought his tobacco and observed the life and thought of the town for half an hour - it was market day and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved and brightened by pigs that eluded their keeper and a bull calf which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he was tying his shoelace and lifted him six feet - he made his way to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns which the citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to support. In most English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers blaming the Government.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
CANDID COMMENTS CONCERNING AGE AND POLITICS
In
the first place, the President does not “run” the United States. In the
Department of Defense alone there are (according to the internet) 3.4 million military
and civilian employees. Even that small slice of the government is vastly too
big to be “run” by one person. At best the President lays out the broad strokes
that he intends to guide the country within his sphere of authority, and
appoints capable people to run the different departments, and then reviews
their performance from time to time, just as the CEO of any company would do.
One
of the most admired companies in the world is Berkshire Hathaway, which has
396,000 employees. The CEO of Berkshire is Warren Buffett, who currently is 93
years old. Now, I don’t know the man personally, and he may be completely
senile by now, but people are still investing in Berkshire, so the public has
that much confidence in his ability, at least. Keep in mind that executives
really do not DO anything; their job is to see to it that things get done, and
even most of that “seeing to” is delegated to other people.
I
am old enough that I can remember clearly the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and
I consider him to have been one of the better Presidents during my lifetime.
However, Reagan left office in January of 1989, and it was generally
acknowledged that he was by that time largely a figurehead and that Mrs. Reagan
and the cabinet were playing a vastly larger role than was the case in his first
term in office. But the Republic survived, and in fact, did fairly well. I have
seen nothing in either of the major candidates that indicates they are less
functional than Mr. Reagan appeared to be by the end of his second term in
office.
The
reason that I said that I wish neither of the major party candidates had run
for office is that, while they may be functionally able do their job, statistically
they are much closer to NOT being able to continue in office due to death or
disability, and whether it be in business or government, uncertainty is one of
the principal villains. Watch what happens to the stock market when it is not sure what the Fed is going to do. No matter what the Fed does, if investors are
fairly sure about it, they can adjust their responses and make do, but if they
have no idea what the Fed will do, they are left hanging, and investors very
quickly get cold feet if they are unsure of the future.
Anytime a President is removed from office for whatever reason, the nation is thrown into a state of flux and uncertainty, and not just in the stock markets. Vast departments of the government must function temporarily without a leader. Foreign powers may be able to make bold moves during the vacuum in leadership, before the new President can get his people and policies into place. Imagine being in the shoes of President Harry Truman on April 25, 1945, when he first learned the full details of the atomic bomb and had to take over the command of the U. S. military in the middle of a World War. By that time the victory was largely won, but what if President Roosevelt had died two years earlier?
I
will turn 71 years old in August, and my cognitive skills are definitely
declining, as they generally are in anyone my age. (Just ask my wife for
confirmation of that fact.) Still, I do have enough mental acuity remaining to
write an article of this nature, and to continue my responsibility of setting
the standards and moral guidelines of my household.
Yes, I certainly wish that the major party candidates for President were younger, and any deficiencies they may have mentally are indeed a problem. I have a problem remembering certain things, but that usually is not a crisis because I have a wife who takes care of reminding me about things. (I try to return the favor, and we have managed to survive.) My declining memory IS a problem, but it is not yet such a problem that I intend to abdicate my household responsibilities. The President of the United States has access to a vast array of talent to help him in whatever capacity he needs, in matters both great and small. President Franklin Roosevelt’s health was failing during World War II, but he had as his personal Chief of Staff the most senior military official to have served during that War, that being Fleet Admiral William Leahy, so things did not fall apart as the President declined.
Yes, if he lives
long enough any person’s capabilities will reach a point at which he does not need
to be in a position of large responsibility, but I see no evidence that we are
to that point in this election. Whatever reservations I have regarding the two major candidates
fall under headings other than Cognitive Ability.
In the Wodehouse novel, Something Fresh, we encounter the game of clock golf being played by the bored guests at Lord Emsworth's castle. Evidently this was a game that originated in the 19th century in London, which the family game firm Jacques of London claimed to have originated. It was sort of a variation of what we now know as miniature golf, but that required even less space. The firm's description of the game was that it "can be played wherever there is space for 'an approximate circle of 10–30 feet in diameter,' and that shrubs and other obstacles can add to the interest.The hole is not placed centrally, so the 12 'holes' of the game can be of different lengths." It sounds as though it could be a pleasant variation on front yard croquet.
This takes me back to my youth. Because of his Great Depression upbringing, my father's family generally could not afford to buy any equipment for games, so they would just make up something with what they had at hand. I don't recall that he ever told us about this one, but it is a game that they might logically have played. The scene depicted below shows how it was played by the affluent stratum of society during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, but it could just have easily have been played in the front yard of a family in the Great Depression using whatever sticks were handy for clubs, and anything that would roll for a ball.
Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, while it takes the fine edge off whatever triumphs may come to us, had the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens at which Ardent Youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind which looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
All through dinner he brooded upon Ashe's defiance and the horrors which were to result from that defiance. One of Mr. Peters' most painful memories was of a two weeks' visit which he had once paid to Mr. William Muldoon at his celebrated health-restoring estaglishment at White Plains in the state of New York. He had been persuaded to go there by a brother-millionaire whom till then he had always regarded as a friend. The memory of Mr. Muldoon's cold shower-baths and brisk system of physical exercise still lingered.
The thought that under Ashe's rule he was to go through privately very much what he had gone through in the company of a gang of other unfortunates at Muldoon's froze him with horror. He knew these health-cranks who believed that all mortal ailments could be cured by cold showers and brisk walks. They were all alike, and they nearly killed you.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Probably the lower servants in the Servants' Hall discussed the upper servants in the Steward's Room, and the still lower servants in the housemaids' sitting-room discussed their superiors of the Servants' Hall, and the still-room group gossiped about the housemaids' sitting-room. He wondered which was the bottom circle of all, and came to the conclusion that it was probably represented by the small respectdful boy who had acted as his guide a short while before. This boy, having nobody to discuss anybody with, presumably sat in solitary meditation, brooding on the odd-job man.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Of Mrs. Twemlow little need be attempted in the way of pen-portraiture beyond the statement that she went as harmoniously with Mr. Beach as one of a pair of vases or one of a brace of pheasants goes with its fellow. She had the same appearance of imminent apoplexy, the same air of belonging to some dignified and haughty branch of the vegetable kingdom.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It was plain to Ashe that his employer was in no sunny mood. There are few things less calculated to engender sunniness in a naturally bad-tempered man than a dress-tie which will not let itself be pulled and twisted into the right shape. Even when things went well, Mr. Peters hated dressing for dinner. Words cannot describe his feelings when they went wrong.
There is something to be said in excuse for this impatience. It is a hollow mockery to be obliged to deck one's person as for a feast, when that feast is to consist of a little asparague and a few nuts.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
A curious species of mutual toleration - it could hardly be dignified by the title of friendship - had sprung up between these two men, so opposite in practically every respect. Each regarded the other with that feeling of perpetual amazement with which we encounter those whose whole viewpoint and mode of life is foreign to our own. The American's force and nervous energy fascinated Lord Emsworth. In a purely detached way Lord Emsworth liked force and nervous energy. They interested him. He was glad he did not possess them himself, but he enjoyed them as a spectacle just as a man who would not like to be a purple cow may have no objection to seeing one. As for Mr. Peters, nothing like the earl had ever happened to him before in a long and varied life. He had seen men and cities, but Lord Emsworth was something new. Each, in fact, was to the other a perpetual freak-show with no charge for admission.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Wafted through the sun-lit streets in his taxi-cab, the Earl of Emsworth smiled benevolently upon London's teeming millions. He was as completely happy as only a fluffy-minded old man with excellent health and a large income can be. Other people worried about all sorts of things - strikes, wars, suffragettes, diminishing birth-rates, the growing materialism of the age, and a score of similar subjects. Worrying, indeed, seemed to be the twentieth century's specialty. Lord Emsworth never worried. Nature had equipped him with a mind so admirably constructed for withstanding the disagreeableness of life that, if an unpleasant thought entered it, it passed out again a moment later. Except for a few of Life's fundamental facts, such as that his cheque-bok was in the right-hand top drawer of his desk, that the Honourable Freddie Threepwood was a young idiot who required perpetual restraint, and that, when in doubt about anything, he had merely to apply to his secretary, Rupert Baxter - except for these basic things, he never remembered anything for more than a few minutes.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
As a matter of fact, these speculations had passed through suspicious minds at Scotland Yard, which had for some time taken not a little interest in R. Jones. But, beyond ascertaining that he bought and sold curios, did a certain amount of book-making during the flat-racing season, and had been known to lend money, Scotland Yard did not find out much about Mr. Jones, and presently dismissed him from its thoughts. Not that Scotland Yard was satisfied. To a certain extent, baffled would be a better description of its attitude. The suspicion that R. Jones was, among other things, a receiver of stolen goods still lingered, but proof was not forthcoming.
R. Jones saw to that. He did a great many things, for he was one of the busiest men in London; but what he did best was seeing to it that proof was not forthcoming.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Larsen's Exercises are the last word in exercises. They bring in to play every sinew of the body. They promote a brisk circulation. They enable you, if you persevere, to fell oxen, if desired, with a single blow.
But they are not dignified. Indeed, to one seeing them suddenly and without warning for the first time, they are markedly humorous. The only reason why King Henry of England, whose son sank with the White Ship, never smiled again, was because Lieutenant Larsen had not then invented his admirable Exercises.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There were those who said that Yaqui Joe's father had been an Irishman, but his name was taken from his mother in the mountains of Sonora. He had been an outlaw by nature and by choice from the time he could crawl, and he was minus a finger on his left hand, and had a notch in the top of his ear. The bullet that had so narrowly missed his skull had been fired by a man who never missed again. He was buried in a hasty grave somewhere in the Mogollons.
(from "In Victorio's Country," by Louis L'Amour)
It was Mr. Slattery who for the next few minutes monopolized the conversation. In a stream of well-selected words his opinion of his friend's duplicity rumbled hollowly through the room. The occasion was one when the orator would have prefered to express himself at the full capacity of his lungs, but the circumstances of the encounter precluded that.
Even when whispered, however, Mr. Slattery's remarks were effective. After all, when you are calling a man a low-down, horn-swoggling, double-crossing skunk, it is the actual words that count, not the volume of sound.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
One of the hollowest laughs that had ever been heard on the terrace of the Chateau Blissac broke gratingly upon the afternoon stillness.
"Oh, no. There's nothing the matter. Nothing whatever. Except that when Mrs. Gedge was in Paris she saw fifty-seven varieties of photographs of the real Vicomte de Blissac and she looked out of the window just now and saw you and said, 'Who's that piece of cheese?' and I said, 'That's the Vicomte,' and she said, 'My left foot it's the Vicomte.' And she's send me out here to fetch you in and explain. Outside of that, everything's fine."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Now that the girl had come closer, Mr. Gedge was able to see that, though beautiful, she was not altogether the sort of girl he would have cared to be left alone with for long. There was that about her which would have rendered any male uneasy. In her lustrous eyes he observed a look which he had sometimes detected in those of his wife - the look that spells trouble. If she had come to St. Rocque to meet some member of his own sex, he did not envy that member.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
