"I wouldn't mention the boy if I were you. He was in the Foreign Service and blotted his copybook as I dare say you know. It was quite a tragedy. It's never mentioned."
"Is it not? What sort of a man was Colonel Carterette?"
"Pig-headed, quixotic fellow. Obstinate as a mule. One of those pathetically conscientious people who aim so high they get a permanent crick in their conscience."
(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood oranges and Brussels sprouts. I saw the ancestor stiffen, and I knew she was about to go into her grande dame act. This relative, though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn in a flash into a carbon copy of a duchess of the old school reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so remarkable is that she doesn't have to use a lorgnette, just does it all with the power of the human eye. I think girls in her day used to learn the trick at their finishing schools.
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"He stands it, aged relative, because he loves her, and you wouldn't be far wrong in saying that love conquers all. I know what you mean, of course. It suprises you that a fellow of his thews and sinews should curl up in a ball when she looks squiggle-eyed at him and receive her strictures, if that's the word I want, with the meekness of a spaniel rebuked for bringing a decaying bone into the drawing room. What you overlook is the fact that in the matter of finely chiseled profile, willowy figure and platinum-blonde hair she is well up among the top ten, and these things weigh with a man like Ginger. You and I, regarding Florence coolly, pencil her in as too bossy for hyman consumption, but he gets a different slant. It's the old business of what Jeeves calls the psychology of the individual.
"Very possibly the seeds of rebellion start to seethe within him when she speaks her mind, but he catches sight of her sideways or gets a glimpse of her hair, assuming for purposes of argument that she isn't wearing hat, or notices once again that she has as many curves as a scenic railway, and he feels that it's worth putting up with a spot of mind-speaking in order to make her his own. His love, you see, is not wholly spiritual. There's a bit of the carnal mixed up in it."
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"It was the Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Town Hall. A vitally important occasion, and he made the feeblest speech i have ever heard. A child with water on the brain could have done better. Even you could have done better."
Well, I suppose placing me on a level of efficiency with a water-on-the-brain child was quite a stately compliment coming from Florence, so I didn't go further into the matter, and she carried on, puffs of flame emerging from both nostrils.
"Er, er, er!"
"I beg your pardon."
"He kept saying Er, Er, er, er. I could have thrown a coffee spoon at him."
Here, of course, was my chance to work in the old gag about to err being human, but it didn't seem to me the moment. Instead, I said, "He was probably nervous."
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
You may have noticed that when I give the references on this blog for any quotes from the inimitable comedic writer, P. G. Wodehouse, I call him "Sir Pelham." His full name was Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (pronounced WOOD-house). The nickname used by family and close friends was "Plum," which I suspect was a contraction of Pelham.
Wodehouse was knighted in the 1975 New Year's Honours List, just a month before he died on February 14th. He and actor Charlie Chaplin were knighted in the same ceremony.
Wodehouse and Chaplin were both given the rank of K. B. E., or Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
The five classes of appointment to the order are, from highest grade to lowest grade:
The senior two ranks of Knight or Dame Grand Cross and Knight or Dame Commander entitle their members to use the titles Sir for men and Dame for women before their forenames, except with honorary awards.
Curiously, Bob Hope was made an honorary Knight Commander, but as far as I have been able to find, was never called "Sir." Wodehouse and Chaplin, although they spent large portions of their lives in the United States, were naturally born British subjects, and so were entitled to be called "Sir." Since Hope was born near London, it is not clear why he was never called "Sir."
"Oh, Bertie, how nice to see you again. How are you?"
"I'm fine. How are you?"
"I'm fine."
"That's fine. How's your father?"
"He's fine."
I was sorry to hear this. My relations with Sir Watkyn Bassett were such that a more welcome piece of news would have been that he had contracted bubonic plague and wasn't expected to recover.
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
When she had been betrothed to Gussie Fink-Nottle, the peril of her making a switch had always been present, Gussie being the sort of spectacled newt-collecting freak a girl might at any moment get second thoughts about, but there was something so reassuring in her being engaged to Spode. Because, whatever you might think of him, you couldn't get away from it that he was the seventh Earl of Sidcup, and no girl who has managed to hook a seventh Earl with a castle in Shropshire and an income of twenty thousand pounds per annum is lightly going to change her mind about him.
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Whoever told you about population explosions?"
"Jeeves. They are rather a favorite subject of his. He says if something isn't done pretty soon - "
"I'll bet he said, If steps are not taken shortly through the proper channels."
"He did, as a matter of fact. He said, If steps are not taken shortly through the proper channels, half the world will soon be standing on the other half's shoulders."
"All right if you're one of the top layer."
"Yes, there's that, of course."
"Though even then it would be uncomfortable. Tricky sort of balancing act."
"True."
"And difficult to go for a stroll if you wanted to stretch the legs. And one wouldn't get much hunting."
"Not much."
(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
