No matter how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works. No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour or passion, like to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Good morning, sir," said Jeeves. "Mr. Fink-Nottle is not feeling well."
Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make low, bubbling noise, and I could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a newly-engaged man taking it on the chin quite so completely as this.
Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.
"Goodbye, Bertie," he said, rising. I seemed to spot an error.
"You mean 'Hullo,' don't you?"
"No, I don't. I mean goodbye. I'm off."
"Off where?
"To the kitchen garden. To drown myself."
"Don't be an ass."
"I'm not an ass . . . Am I an ass, Jeeves?"
"Possibly a little injudicious, sir."
"Drowning myself, you mean?
"Yes, sir."
"You think, on the whole, not drown myself?"
"I should not advocate it, sir."
"Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond. I might have known that some hideous disaster would s trike this house like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started trying to be clever."
Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram might be considered to have made something of a floater.
"I am sorry."
"What's the good of being sorry?"
"I acted for what I deemed the best."
"Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape with a mere flesh wound."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him sell, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been the bloke under the ether.
The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the preliminary pour parlers and be deep in an informal discussion of honeymoon plans, was very pleasant to me.
Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was - stars and rabbits and all that, I mean - you might say that a sober sadness would have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the depths in Gussie, so that was that.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset."
"The sunset?"
"Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset."
"But what can I say about the sunset?"
"Well, Jeeves got off a good one the other day. I met him siring the dog in the park one evening, and he said, 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.' You might use that."
"What sort of landscape?"
"Glimmering. G for 'gastritis,' L for 'lizard' - "
"Oh, glimmering? Yes, that's not bad. Glimmering landscape, solemn stillness. . . . Yes, I call that pretty good."
"You could then say that you have often thought that the stars are God's daisy chain."
"But I haven't."
"I dare say not. But she has. Hand her that one, and I don't see how she can help feeling that you are a twin soul."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
After I had been splashing about in the porcelain for a bit, composure began to return. I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at soap and water. I don't say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.
The spiritual anguish induced by that tactless speech had become noticeably lessened.
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchambr much more the old merry Bertram.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner truck me as febrile, "lay of, lay off! For pity's sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that."
"Nothing of the kind."
"It's the sort of thing you would do."
"My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you."
"No thanks."
"I say to myself - "
"But not to me."
"Do listen for a second."
"I won't."
"Right ho, then. I am dumb."
"And have been from a child."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I'll tell you, Bertie. Up till now, when these subsidies were required, I have always been able to come to Tom in the gay, confident spirit of the only child touching an indulgent father for chocolate cream. But he's just had a demand from the income tax people for an additional fifty-eight pounds, one and threepence, and all he's been talking about since I got back has been ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic legislation and what will become of us all."
I could readily believe it. This Tom has a peculiarity I've noticed in other very oofy men. Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out a squawk you can hear at Land's End. He has the stuff in gobs, but he hates giving it up.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Gussie," I said, smiling paternally, "it was a lucky day for you when Bertram Wooster interested himself in your affairs. As I foresaw from the start, I can fix everything. This afternoon you shall go to Brinkley Court, as an honored guest."
He quivered like a mousse. I suppose it must be rather a thrilling experience for the novice to watch me taking hold.
"But Bertie, you don't mean you know these Traverses?"
"They are my Aunt Dahlia."
"My gosh!"
"You see now," I pointed out, "how lucky you were to get me behind you. You go to Jeeves, and what does he do? He dresses you up in scarlet tights and one of the foulest false beards of my experience, and sends you off to fancy-dress balls. Result, agony of spirit and no progress. I then take over and put you on the right lines. Could Jeeves have got you into Brinkley Court? Not a chance. Aunt Dahlia isn't his aunt. I merely mention thee things."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I have had occasion, I fancy, to speak before now of these pick-me-ups of Jeeves's and their effect on a fellow who is hanging to life by a thread on the morning after. What they consist of, I couldn't tell you. He says some kind of sauce, the yolk of a raw egg and a dash of pepper, but nothing will convince me that the thing doesn't go much deeper than that. Be that as it may, however, the results of swallowing one are amazing.
For perhaps the split part of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathlessly. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.
Bonfires burst out in all parts of the frame. The abdomen becomes heavily charged with molten lava. A great wind seems to blow through the world, and the subject is aware of something resembling a steam hammer striking the back of the head. During this phase, the ears ring loudly, the eyeballs rotate and there is a tingling about the brow.
And then, just as you are feeling that you ought to ring up your lawyer and see that your affairs are in order before it is too late, the whole situation seems to clarify. The wind drops. The ears cease to ring. Birds twitter. Brass bands start playing. The sun comes up over the horizon with a jerk.
And a moment later all you are conscious of is a great peace.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Peham Wodehouse)
"Laura Pyke," said young Bingo with intense bitterness, "is a food crank, curse her. She says we all eat too much and eat it too quickly and, anyway, ought not to be eating it at all but living on parsnips and similar muck. And Rosie, instead of telling the woman not to be a fathead, gazes at her in wide-eyed admiration. taking it in through the pores. The result is that the cuisine of this house has been shot to pieces, and I am starving on my feet. Well, when I tell you that it's weeks since a beefsteak pudding raised its head in the home, you'll understand what I mean."
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
[I have been living with food cranks all my life, but I never knew the term to apply to them. I had always called them "health food nuts."]
I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.
Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn't do. Take the females who were mixed up in this present business. Aung Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle. Aunt Agatha's closest friend, Miss Mapleton, of whom I can only say that one the single occasion on which I had met her she had struck me as just the sort of person who would be Aunt Agatha's closest friend. Bobbie Wickham, a girl who went about the place letting the pure in heart in for the sort of thing I was doing now. And Bobbie Wickham's cousin Clementina, who, instead of sticking sedulously to her studied and learning to be a good wife and mother, spent the springtime of her life filling inkpots with sherbet - What a crew! What a crew!
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I don't know if you have ever had the experience of starting off on a binge filled with a sort of glow of exhilaration, if that's the word I want, and then, without a moment's warning, having it disappear as if somebody had pressed a switch. That is what happened to me at this juncture and a most unpleasant feeling it was - rather like when you take one of those express elevators in New York at the top of the building and discover, on reaching the twenty-seventh floor, that you have carelessly left all your insides up on the thirty-second, and it's too late now to stop and fetch them back.
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I have an idea I've told you about this Bobbie Wickham. She was the red-haired girl who let me down so disgracefully in the sinister affair of Tuppy Glossop and the hot-water bottle, that Christmas when I went to stay at Skeldings Hall, her mother's place in Hertfordshire. Her mother is Lady Wickham, who writes novels which, I believe, command a ready sale among those who like their literature pretty sloppy. A formidable old bird, rather like my Aunt Agatha in appearance. Bobbie does not resemble her, being constructed more on the lines of Clara Bow [see below]. She greeted me cordially as I entered - in fact, so cordially that I saw Jeeves pause at the door before biffing off to mix the cocktails and shoot me the sort of grave, warning look a wise old father might pass out to the effervescent son on seeing him going fairly strong with the local vamp. I nodded back, as much as to say "Chilled Steel!" and he oozed out, leaving me to play the sparkling host.
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I'm bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution. From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing places when the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motive.
I don't know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wise heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge of how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn't please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the bet, and the moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy's shirtfront I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I came here, Bertie, because it was the only thing I could do. At the last moment before she sailed to America, Rosie decided that I had better stay behind and look after the Peke. She left me a couple of hundred quid to see me through till her return. This sum, judiciously expended over the period of her absence, would have been enough to keep Peke and self in moderate affluence. But you know how it is."
"How what is?"
"When someone comes slinking up to you in the club and tells you that some cripple of a horse can't help winning even if it develops lumbago and the botts ten yards from the starting post. I tell you, I regarded the thing as a cautious and conservative investment."
"You mean you planked the entire capital on a horse?"
Bingo laughed bitterly. "If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn't shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race. It came in last, putting me in a dashed delicate position."
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Don't speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon him. Mr. Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.
Hard words, of course, from one's own flesh and blood, but well in keeping with past form.
"You will endeavour, therefore, while you are here not to display yourself in the role of a vapid and frivolous wastrel. In the first place, you will give up smoking during your visit."
"Oh, I say!"
"Mr. Filmer is president of the Anti-Tobacco League. Nor will you drink alcoholic stimulants."
"Oh, dash it!"
"And you will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the bar, the billiards-room, and the stage-door. Mr. Filmer will judge you largely by your conversation." I rose to a point of order.
"Yes, but why have I got to make an impression on this - on Mr. Filmer?"
"Because," said the old relative, giving me the eye, "I particularly wish it."
Not, perhaps, a notably snappy come-back as come-backs go; but it was enough to show me that that was more or less that; and I beetled out with an aching heart.
(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Has it ever occurred to you, Bertie," she said, "that your Uncle George may be psychic?" She seemed to be changing the subject.
"Psychic?"
"Do you think it is possible that he could see things not visible to the normal eye?"
I thought it was dashed possible, if not probable. I don't know if you've ever met my Uncle George. He's a festive old egg who wanders from club to club continually having a couple with other festive old eggs. When he heaves in sight, waiters brace themselves up and the wine-steward toys with his corkscrew. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The five-ten was late as usual, and everybody was dressing for dinner when I arrived at the Hall. It was only by getting into my evening things in record time ana taking the stairs to the dining-room in a couple of bounds that I managed to dead-heat with the soup. I slid into the vacant chair, and found that I was sitting next to old Wickhammersley's youngest daughter, Cynthia.
"Oh, hallo, old thing," I said.
Great pals we've always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard here speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.
(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I then perceived hat the stout stripling had trickled into the room after Jeeves. He was standing near the door looking at Cyril as if his worst fears had been realized. There was a bit of a silence. The child remained there, drinking Cyril in for about half a minute; then he gave his verdict.
"Fish-face!"
"Eh? What?" said Cyril. The child, who had evidently been taught at his mother's knee to speak the truth, made his meaning a trifle clearer.
"You've a face like a fish!"
He spoke as if Cyril was more to be pitied than censured, which I am bound to say I thought rather decent and broad-minded of him. I don't mind admitting that, whenever I looked at Cyril's face, I always had a feeling that he couldn't have got that way without its being mostly his own fault. I found myself warming to this child. Absolutely, don't you know. I liked his conversation.
(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
