In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit flagged, I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
A corn chandler was a corn merchant. The earliest use dates back to the late 1600s.
The grammar school at Market Snodsbury had, I understand, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tenative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.
In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and langourous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
[This passage brings to mind so vividly many scenes of yesteryear. There is no sensory experience quite like that of being trapped in close quarters with a group of seventh grade boys who have been playing outside on a warm day. Ah, the "scent of Young England," or any other place, for that matter.]
Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I've tried to reason with Aung Dehlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) to burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.
"Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy," I said gently.
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night's rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck's appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.
"Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse," I said, concerned, "you're looking pretty blue around the rims."
(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
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)
