What sort of girl is she?

     "The whole thing," he said, "is one of those unfortunate misunderstandings. When they made me scratch, my first move was to thank Miss Flack warmly for all she had done for me."

    "Naturally."

    "I let myself go rather."

    "You would, of course."

    "Then, feeling that after all the trouble she had taken to raise me to the heights she was entitled to be let in on the inside story, I told her my reason for being so anxious to get down to scratch was that I loved a scratch girl and wanted to be worthy of her. Upon which, chuckling like a train going through a tunnel, she gave me a slap on the back which nearly drove my spine through the front of my pullover and said she had guessed it from the very start, from the moment when she first saw me dogging her footsteps with that look of dumb devotion in my eyes. You could have knocked me down with a putter."

    "She then said she would marry you?"

    "Yes, and what could I do? A girl," said Harold Pickering fretfully, "who can't distinguish between the way a man looks when he's admiring a chip shot thirty feet from the green and the way he looks when he's in love ought not to be allowed at large."

    There seemed nothing to say. The idea of suggesting that he should break off the engagement presented itself to me, but I dismissed it. Women are divided broadly into two classes - those who, when jilted, merely drop a silent tear and those who take a niblick from their bag and chase the faithless swain across the country with it.

(from "Scratch Man," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a literary giant

 "I kissed William, shook him by the hand, tied a wet towel around his head, gave him pencil and paper and locked him up in the morning-room with lots of hot coffee. When I asked him just now how he was making out, he said that he had had no inspiration so far but would keep on swinging. His voice sounded very hollow. I can picture the poor darling's agony. The only thing he has ever written before in his life was a stiff letter to the Greens Committee beefing about the new bunker on the fifth, and that took him four days and left him as limp as a rag."

(from "Rodney Has a Relapse," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The world's rudest kid

 "Why, of course!" she cried, clasping her hands in a sort of ecstasy. "I ought to have thought of it myself. People may say what they like about my sweet Braid, but they can't deny that he is the rudest child this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I'll send him to you the moment he clocks in."

    Braid Bates at that time was a young plug-ugly of some nine summers, in appearance a miniature edition of William and in soul and temperament a combination of Dead End Kid and army mule; a freckled, hard-boiled character with a sardonic eye and a mouth which, when not occupied in eating, had a cynical twist to it. He spoke little as a general thing, but when he did speak seldom failed to find a chink in the armour. The impact of such a personality on little Timothy must, I felt, be tremendous, and I was confident that we could not have placed the child in better hands.

(from "Rodney Has a Relapse," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not the right sort of woman

        A girl who has loved, even if mistakenly, can never be indifferent to the fortunes of the man whom she once regarded as the lode star of her life. She kept wondering how he was making out, and hoped that his vacation was not spoiled by a broken heart.

    The first time she saw him, accordingly, she should have been relieved and pleased. He was escorting Cora McGuffy Spottsworth along the boardwalk, and it was abundantly obvious even from a casual glance that if his heart had ever been broken, there had been some adroit work done in the repair shop. Clark Gable could have improved his technique by watching the way he bent over Cora McGuffey Spottsworth and stroked her slender arm. He also, while bending and stroking, whispered into her shell-like ear, and you could see that what he was saying was good stuff. His whole attitude was that of a man who, recognizing that he was on a good thing, was determined to push it along.

    But Agnes Flack was not relieved and pleased; she was disturbed and concerned. She was perhaps a hard judge, but Cora McGuffy Spottsworth looked to her like the sort of woman who goes about stealing the plans of forts - or, at the best, leaning back negligently on a settee and saying, "Prince, my fan." The impression Agnes formed was of something that might be all right stepping out of a pie at a bachelor party, but not the type you could take home to meet mother.

(from "Feet of Clay," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Close, but lacking a few qualifications

     "Naturally, she compares you to your disadvantage with such a man as 'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi."

    Ernest Plinlimmon's eyes widened and his mouth fell open, causing him to look exactly like a fish I once caught off Brighton pier.

    "Such a man as - what was that name again?"

    "'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi. He was the chief, if I remember rightly, of the Lesser 'Mgowpi. I gather that his personality made a deep impression upon Miss Fitch, and that, but for the fact that he was as black as the ace of spades and aready had twenty-seven wives and a hundred pares, something might have come of it. At any rate, she as good as told me the other day that what she was looking for someone who, while possessing the engaging spiritual qualities of this chief, was rather blonder and a bachelor."

(from "There's Always Golf," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Golf by brute force

     Poskitt, the d'Artagnan of the links, was a man who brought to the tee the tactics which in his youth had won him such fame as a hammer thrower. His plan was to clench his teeth, shut his eyes, whirl the club around his head and bring it down with sickening violence in the general direction of the sphere. Usually, the only result would be a ball topped along the ground or - as had been known to happen when he used his niblick - cut in half. But there would come times when by some mysterious dispensation of Providence he managed to connect, in which event the gallery would be stunned by the spectacle of a three-hundred-yarder down the middle. The whole thing, as he himself recognized, was a clean, sporting venture. He just let go and hoped for the best.

(from "The Letter of the Law," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a woman to mess around with

 Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for being ill at ease in the presence of the opposite sex, these two had. They were both eighteen-handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly and dynamically scratch. Her physique was an asset to her, especially in the long game. She stood about five feet ten in her stockings, and had shoulders and forearms which would have excited the envious admiration of one of those muscular women on the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow six brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by marriage to pile themselves on her collarbone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn chord and the audience hurries out to the bar. Her eye resembled the eye of one of the more imperious queens of history; and when she laughed, strong men clutched at their temples to keep the tops of their heads from breaking loose.

(from "Those In Peril on the Tee," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Happy ending

     William brooded for a while. He was not a quick thinker.

    "Well, look here," he said at length, "this is the point. This is the nub of the thing. This is where I want you to follow me very closely. Have you asked Anastatia to marry you?"

    "Marry me?" Rodney gazed at him, shocked. "Have I asked her to marry me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in the semi-final of last year's Ladis' Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a vers-libre poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would not dare to ask her to marry me."

    Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter. "You poor chump!" she cried. "Is that what has been the matter all this time? I couldn't make out what the trouble was. Why, I'm crazy about you. I'll marry you any time you give the word."

    Rodney reeled. "What!"

    "Of course I will."

    "Anastatia!"

    "Rodney!" He folded her in his arms.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing to be afraid of

     The studio was one of those dim, over-ornamented rooms which appeal to men like Rodney Spelvin. Heavy curtains hung in front o the windows. One corner was cut off by a high-backed Chesterfield. At the far end was an alcove, curtained like the windows. Once Jane had admired this studio, but now it made her shiver. It seemed to her one of those nests in which, as the sub-title of Tried in the Furnace had said, only eggs of evil were hatched. She paced the thick carpet restlessly, and suddenly there came to her the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

    Jane stopped, every muscle tense. The moment had arrived. She faced the door, tight-lipped. It comforted her a little in this crisis to reflect that Rodney was not one of those massive Ethel M. Dell libertines who might make things unpleasant for an intruder. He was only a welter-weight egg of evil; and, if he tried to start anything, a girl of her physique would have little or no difficulty in knocking the stuffing out of him.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[Ethel M. Dell was a writer of popular British romance novels.]

Better to be prepared

 "Do not let us speak of it," he said, registering pain. It was quite easy for him to do this. All there was to it was tightening the lips and drawing up the left eyebrow. He had practiced it in front of his mirror, for a fellow never knew when it might not come in useful.

(from "Jane Gets Off the Fairway," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

After all these years!

     "Rodney!" gasped Jane.

    It was a difficult moment for Rodney Spelvin. Five years had passed since he had last seen Jane, and in those five years so many delightful creatures had made a fuss of him that the memory of the girl to whom he had once been engaged for a few weeks had become a little blurred. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had forgotten Jane altogether. The fact that she had addressed him by his first name seemed to argue that they must have met at some time somewhere; but, though he strained his brain, absolutely nothing stirred.

    The situation was one that might have embarrassed another man, but Rodney Spelvin was a quick thinker. He saw at a glance that Jane was an extremely pretty girl, and it was his guiding rule in life never to let anything like that get past him. So he clasped her hand warmly, allowed an expression of amazed delight to sweep over his face, and gazed tensely into her eyes.

    "You!" he murmured, playing it safe. "You, little one!"

    Jane stood five feet seven in her stockings and had a forearm like the village blacksmith's, but she liked being called "little one."

    "How strange that we should meet like this!" she said, blushing brightly.

    "After all these years," said Rodney Spelvin, taking a chance. It would be a nuisance if it turned out that they had met at a studio-party the day before yesterday, but something seemed to tell him that she dated back a goodish way. Besides, even if they had met the day before yesterday, he could get out of it by saying that the hours had seemed like years. For you cannot stymie these modern poets.

(from "Jane Gets Off the Fairway," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Come on, Bill, get with it!

 And it did not appear likely that anything would weaken Jane's regard. They had much in common, for she was a calm, slow-moving person, too. They had a mutual devotion to golf, and played together every day; and the fact that their handicaps were practically level formed a strong bond. Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband is too markedly superior to his wife at golf; this leading him, when she starts criticizing his relations, to say bitter and unforgivable things about her mashie-shots. Nothing of this kind could happen with William and Jane. They would build their life on a solid foundation of sympathy and understanding. The years would find them consoling and encouraging each other, happy married lovers. If, that is to say, William ever got round to proposing.

(from "Rodney Fails To Qualify," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Love is but a tepid emotion

 His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could he sneak away from home? And sneak he must for tomorrow and the day after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not be there. He must be there. He had done ninety-six, and the next best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and, highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four-handicap man who sees himself within reach of a cup.

(from "Keeping In with Vosper," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The origins of Absolutism

     "To lose one's temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. 'Whatever may befall thee,' says that great man in his 'Meditations,' 'it is preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.' I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his scorecard. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that."

(from "Ordeal by Golf," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Simple - just kill George

     "By the way," I said, looking round, "where is your fiance?"

    "I have no fiance," she said, in a dull, hard voice.

    "You have broken off the engagement?"

    "Not exactly. And yet - well, I suppose it amounts to that."

    "I don't quite understand."

    "Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I rather think I've killed George."

    "Killed him, eh?"

    It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had taken a woman's intuition to see it.

    "I killed him with my niblick," said Celia.

    I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a niblick shot.

(from "The Salvation of George Mackintosh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She doesn't like golf?!

     "Peter, old man, that girl aid golf bored her pallid. She said she thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You don't seem revolted," said James.

    "I am revolted, but not surprised. You see, she said the same thing to me only a few minutes before."

    "She did!"

    "It amounted to the same thing. I had just been telling her how I did the lake-hole today in two, and she said that in her opinion golf was a game for children with water on the brain who weren't athletic enough to play Animal Grab."

    The two men shivered in sympathy.

    "There must be insanity in the family," said James at last.

    "That," said Peter, "is the charitable explanation.

(from "A Woman Is Only a Woman," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Concerning knitting

 No masculine eye can reckon up purls and plains and estimate the size of chest which the garment is destined to cover. Moreover, with amateur knitters there much always be allowed a margin for involuntary error. There were many cases during the war where our girls sent sweaters to their sweethearts which would have induced strangulation in their young brothers. The amateur sweater of those days was, in fact, practically tantamount to German propaganda.

(from "A Woman is Only a Woman," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Wagering on love

 So little was known of the form of the two men, neither having figured as principal in a love-affair before, that even money was the best you could get, and the market was sluggish. I think my own flutter of twelve golf balls, taken up by Percival Brown, was the most substantial of any of the wagers. I selected James as the winner. Why, I can hardly say, unless that he had an aunt who contributed occasional stories to the "Women's Sphere." These thing sometimes weigh with a girl. On the other hand, George Lucas, who had half-a-dozen of ginger-ale on Peter, based his calculations on the fact that James wore knickerbockers on the links, and that no girl could possibly love a man with calves like that. In short, you see, we really had nothing to go on.

(from "A Woman Is Only a Woman," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing he can be proud of

    "Where you headed for, son?"

    "Riley McClean shrugged. "This is as good a place as any. I'm hunting a job."

    "What do you do?"

    "Most anything. It don't make no difference."

    Now when a man says that he can do most anything, it is a safe bet he can do nothing, or at least that he can do nothing well. If a man has a trade, he is proud of it and says so, and usually he will do a passing job of anything else he tackled.

(from "The One for the Mohave Kid," by Louis L'Amour)

Enough to make a preacher cuss

 Invariably, in the course of a man's struggle with a collar button it would slip from his fingers and roll into the most inaccessible place in the room. It was never possible to simply stoop down and pick up a collar button. One always had to get down on one's knees and reach under whatever piece of furniture was nearby and feel around for the missing object. It has been reliably reported that even ministers of the gospel used unseemly language on such occasions.

(from "McQueen of the Tumbling K," by Louis L'Amour)

She had already proposed

     He placed his hat carefully on the hook and sat down. He was suddenly tired. He ran his fingers through his crisp, dark hair. "Me?" he blinked his eyes and reached for the coffeepot. "I am going to shave and take a bath. Then I'm going to sleep for twenty hours about, and then I'm going to throw the leather on my horse and hit the trail."

    "I told you over there," Carol said quietly, "that I didn't want you to go."

    "Uh-uh. If I don't go now," he looked at her somberly, "I'd never want to go again."

    "Then don't go," she said.

    He didn't.

(from "The Man from Battle Flat," by Louis L'Amour)

Carpetbag courts

 In his short story, "Keep Travelin', Rider," Louis L'Amour refers to carpetbag courts, which were, of course, the legal system set up in the south after the War Between the States. We can assume that true justice for southerners was a vain hope in those days. One can only imagine what it was like living in the old south in those days.

A policeman's lot

 "I know you'll understand that in a case like this we have to fuss about and try to get as complete a picture as possible of the days, sometimes even the weeks and months, before the event. It generally turns out that ninety-nine percent of the information is quite useless and then everybody thinks how needlessly inquisitive and impertinent the police are. Sometimes, however, there is an apparently irrelevant detail that leads, perhaps by accident, to the truth."

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

The hard part of being a cop

 Alleyn decided to press home what might or might not be an advantage and so did so with distaste. He had been in the police service for over twenty years. Under slow pressure his outward habit had toughened, but, like an ice cube that under warmth will yield its surface but retain its inward form, so his personality had kept its pattern intact. When an investigation led him, as this did, to take action that was distasteful to him, he imposed a discipline upon himself and went forward. It was a kind of abstinence, however, that prompted him to do so.

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

Murder? Not likely

     "Ah. The baronet, now," Fox went on, "he's sweet on her as anyone could see. Would you think it was a strong enough attraction to incite either of them to violence?"

    "I should think he was going through the silly season most men of his type experience. I must say I can't see him raising an amatory passion to the power of homicide in any woman. You never know of course. I should think she must find life in Swevenings pretty dim."

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

P. C. Gripper

 "Sergeants Bailey and Thompson and P. C. Gripper made sympathetic noises."

We find this expression in Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh. The abbreviation "P. C." stands for Police Constable, which is the lowest rank in the British police hierarchy.

Overly fastidious

     "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)

The evil eye

 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)

Not wholly spiritual

     "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)

He botched it again

     "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)

Sir Pelham

 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:

1. Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE);
2. Knight Commander or Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE or DBE);
3. Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE);
4. Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE); and
5. Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE).

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."

I'll be glad when you're gone, you rascal, you

     "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)

There is something about Earls

 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)

The problem with over-population

     "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)

    

Watch those stockbrokers!

     "You'll hardly believe this, but soon after that he turned up at Totleigh Towers, Sir Watkyn's house in Gloucestershire."

    "Incredible!'

    "I thought you'd think so."

    "Disguised, of course? A wig? A false beard? His cheeks stained with walnut juice?"

    "No, he came quite openly, invited by my future wife. She has a sort of sentimental pity for him. I think she hopes to reform him."

    "Girls will be girls."

    "Yes, but I wish they wouldn't."

    "Did you rebuke your future wife?"

    "I wasn't in a position to then."

    "Probably a wise thing, anyway. I once rebuked the girl I wanted to marry, and she went off and teamed up with a stockbroker."

(from Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Defending the family honor

     There was something in the unhappy man's tone as he spoke, something so crushed and forlorn, that John could not but melt a little. He paused at the door. I crossed his mind that he might possibly be able to cheer him up.

    "Uncle Lester," he said, "hod did you get on with Sergeant-Major Flannery at Healthward Ho?" 

    Mr. Carmody winced. Unpleasant memories seemed to be troubling him.

    "Just before I left," said John, "I blacked his eye and we fell downstairs together."

    "Downstairs?"

    "Right down the entire flight. He thumped his head against an oak chest."

    On Mr. Carmody's drawn face there hovered for an instant a faint flickering smile.

    "I thought you'd be pleased," said John.

(from Money For Nothing," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Felony and fat

 It has been laid down by an acute thinker that there is a subtle connection between felony and fat. Almost all embezzlers, for instance, says this authority, are fat men. Whether this is or is not true, the fact remains that the sensational criminality of the suggestion just made to him awoke no horror in Mr. Carmody's ample bosom. He was startled, as any man might be who had this sort of idea sprung suddenly on him in his own garden, but he was not shocked. A youth and middle age spent on the London Stock Exchange had left Lester Carmody singularly broad-minded. He had to a remarkable degree that spacious charity which allows a man to look indulgently on any financial project, however, fishy, provided he can see a bit in it for himself.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Ah, for the days when churls were churls

 The lot of the English landed proprietor, felt Mr. Carmody, is not what it used to be in the good old times. When the first Carmody settled in Rudge he had found little to view with alarm. those were the days when churls were churls, and a scurvy knave was quite content to work twelve hours a day, Saturdays included, in return for a little black bread and an occasional nod of approval from his overlord. But in this twentieth century England's peasantry has degenerated. Modern sons of the soil expect coddling. Their roofs leak, and you have to mend them; their walls fall down and you have to build them up; their lanes develop holes and you have to restore the surface, and all this runs into money. The way things were shaping, felt Mr. Carmody, in a few years a landlord would be expected to pay for the repairs of his tenants' wireless sets.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I don't need to know about your BVDs

     Some years before the date of the events narrated in this story, at the time when there was all that trouble between the aristocratic householders of Riverside Row and the humbler dwellers in Budd Street (arising, if you remember, from the practice of the later of washing their more intimate articles of underclothing and hanging them to dry in back-gardens into which their exclusive neighbors were compelled to gaze every time they looked out of the window), the vicar of the parish, the  Rev. Alistair Pond-Pond, always a happy phrase-maker, wound up his address at the annual village sports of Rudge with an impressive appeal to the good feeling of those concerned.

    "We must not," said the Rev. Alistair, "consider ourselves as belonging to this section of Rudge-in-the-Vale or to that section of Rudge-in-the-Vale. Let us get together. Let us recollect that we are all fellow-members of one united community. Rudge must be looked on as a whole. And what a whole it is!"

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Society boxers?

 "Have you noticed," said Hugo, touching on a matter to which he had given some thought, "a rather odd thing about boxers these days? A few years ago you never heard of one that wasn't Beefy this or Porky that or Young Cat's-meat or something. But now they're all Claudes and Harolds and Cuthberts. And when you consider that the heavyweight champion of the world is actually named Eugene it makes you think a bit."

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[By way of context, this book was first published in 1928, when the heavyweight champ was Gene Tunney. Tunney's birth name was actually James Joseph Tunney. In 1928, he married wealthy socialite Mary "Polly" Lauder. One of Tunney's sons because a U. S. Representative and Senator from California, and one became a lawyer and district attorney, so his life was somewhat different from that of most boxers of the era.]

A grip like a gorilla

     "My father left me a few thousand, you see, but most injudiciously made Uncle Lester my trustee, and I'm not allowed to get at the capital without the old blighter's consent. And now a pal of mine in London has written offering me a half share in a new night club which he's starting if I will put up five hundred pounds."

    "I see."

    "And what I ask myself," said Hugo, "is, will Uncle Lester part? That's what I ask myself.'

    "From what I've seen of Mr. Carmody, I shouldn't say that parting was the thing he does best."

    "He's got absolutely no gift for it whatever," said Hugo gloomily.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Perhape one too many?

    "Oh, hallo, Aunt Daphne," he said. "Where are you off to?"

    "I am going to bed. I have a headache. Why are you so late, Esmond?"

    "Well, if you ask me," said Esmond cheerily, "I'd say it was because I didn't arrive sooner."

    "Colonel and Mrs. Kegley-Bassington were most surprised. They could not understand why you were not here."

    Esmond uttered a ringing laugh. "Then they must be the most priceless fatheads," he said. "You'd think a child would have realized that the solution was that I was somewhere else."

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

    

It doesn't take a brain surgeon

 Police constables are not built for speed. Where you catch them at their best is standing on street corners saying, "Pass along there." But, as I was stressing a moment ago, Augustus Fink-Nottle, in addition to being a flat racer of marked ability, was also a fathead, and now, when he had victory in his grasp, the fatheaded streak in him came uppermost. There was a tree standing at the roadside and, suddenly swerving off the course, he made for it and hoisted himself into its branches. And what he supposed that was going to get him, only his diseased mind knew. Ernest Dobbs may not have been one of Hampshire's brightest thinkers, but he was smart enough to stand under a tree.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Frogs?!

     I goggled. "Doing what?"

    "Strewing frogs. In Constable Dobbs's boudoir. The Vicar suggested it."

    "The Vicar?"

    "I mean it was he who gave Corky the idea. She had been brooding a lot, poor girl, on Dobbs's high-handed behaviour in connection with her dog, and last night the Vicar happened to speak of Pharaoh and all those Plagues he got when he wouldn't let the Children of Israel go. You probably recall the incident? His words started a train of thought. It occurred to Corky that if Dobbs were visited by a Plague of Frogs, it might quite possibly change his heart and make him let Sam Goldwyn go. So she asked me to look in at his cottage and attend to the matter. She said it would please her and be good for Dobbs and would only take a few minutes of my time. She felt that the Plague of Lice might be even more effective, but she is a practical, clear-thinking girl and realized that lice are had to come by, whereas you can find frogs in any hedgerow."

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

    

Short, but sturdy

 The sleepless guardian of the peace of King's Deverill was one of those chunky, nobbly officers. It was as though Nature, setting out to assemble him, had said to herself, "I will not skimp." Nor had she done so, except possibly in the matter of height. I believe that in order to become a member of the Force you have to stand five feet nine inches in your socks, and Ernest Dobbs can only just have got his nose under the wire. But this slight perpendicular shortage had the effect of rendering his bulk all the more impressive. He was plainly a man who, had he felt disposed, could have understudied the village blacksmith and no questions asked, for it could be seen at a glance that the muscles of his brawny arms were strong as iron bands.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Step aside, brother

 "H'm!" he said. "This will want a little management."

"Yes," I concurred.

"It calls for sophisticated handling. We shall have to think this over."

"I've been thinking it over for hours."

"Yes, but you've got one of those cheap substitute brains which are never any good. It will be different when a man like me starts giving it the cream of his intellect."

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

There are poets, and then there are poets

 It would not have surprised you to learn that Esmond Haddock was the author of sonnet sequences of a fruity and emotional nature which had made him the toast of Bloomsbury, for his air was that of a man who could rhyme "love" and "dove" as well as the next chap. Nor would you have been astonished if informed that he had recently felled an ox with a single blow. You would simply have felt what an ass the ox must have been to get into an argument with a fellow with a chest like that.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just call me Bertie

       "Let Madeline Bassett become hep to what has occurred and there can be but one result. Gussie will get the bum's rush, and the bowed figure you will see shambling down the aisle at her side, while the customers reach for their hats and the organ plays 'The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden' will be that of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster."

    "I didn't know your name was Wilberforce."

    I explained that except in moments of great emotion one hushed it up.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It tends not to promote romance

There had been moments when it had been touch and go, notably on the occasion when Gussie got lit up like a candelabra and in that condition presented the prizes to the young scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. She had scratched his nomination then, though subsequently relenting, and it could not but be that she could scratch it again, should she discover that the man on whom she looked as a purer, loftier spirit than other men had received an exemplary sentence for wading in the Trafalgar Square fountain. Nothing puts an idealistic girl off a fellow more than the news that he is doing fourteen days in the jug.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Perhaps a standing ovation?

 This came under the head of tidings of great joy. Too often at these binges the Brass Hats in charge tell you off to render the "Yoeman's Wedding Song," which for some reason always arouse the worst passions of the tough eggs who stand behind the back row. But no rustic standees have ever been known not to eat a knockabout cross-talk act. There is something about the spectacle of Performer A sloshing Performer B over the head with an umbrella and Performer B prodding Performer A in the midriff with a similar blunt instrument that seems to speak to their depths. Wearing a green beard and given adequate assistance by my supporting cast, I could confidently anticipate that I should have the clientele rolling in the aisles.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Happy days again

 Even as his lips parted, there was a noise like a rising pheasant from the outskirts, and some solid object left the ranks and hurled itself on Constable Dobbs's chest. Closer inspection showed this to be Queenie. She was clinging to the representative of the Law like a poultice, and from the fact that she was saying, "Oh, Ernie!'" and bedewing his uniform with happy tears I deduced, being pretty shrewd, that what she was trying to convey was that all was forgiven and forgotten and that she was expecting the prompt return of the ring, the letters, and the china ornament with "A Present From Blackpool" on it. And as it did not escape my notice that he, on his side, was covering her upturned face with burning kisses and saying, "Oh, Queenie!" I gathered that Tortured Souls Preferred had taken another upward trend and that one could chalk up to the slate two more sundered hearts reunited in the springtime.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

In short, he is a brat

 This Thos is one of those tough, hardboiled striplings, a sort of juvenile James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson. He has carroty hair and a cynical expression, and his manner is supercilious. You would think that anyone conscious of having a mother like my Aunt Agatha and knowing it could be proved against him, would be crushed and apologetic, but this is not the case. He swanks about the place as if he'd bought it, and in conversation with a cousin lacks tact and is apt to verge on the personal.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Entirely too cheerful

 Though howling hurricanes and driving rainstorms would have been a more suitable accompaniment to the run of the action, the morning - or morn, if you prefer to string along with Aunt Charlotte - was bright and fair. My nervous system was seriously disordered, and one of God's less likeable creatures with about a hundred and fourteen legs had crawled down the back of my neck and was doing its daily dozen on the sensitive skin, but did Nature care? Not a hoot. The sky continued blue, and the fatheaded sun which I have mentioned shone smilingly throughout.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The next Baby Ruth

 "Always," he sighed, when John Quincy finished, "I have unlimited yearning for travel." He paused to watch another car draw up before the hotel. "But it are unavailable. I am policeman on small remuneration. In my youth, rambling on evening hillside or by moonly ocean, I dream of more lofty position. Not so now. But that other American citizen, my eldest son, he are dreaming, too. Maybe for him dreams eventuate. Perhaps he become second Baby Ruth, home run emperor, applause of thousands making him deaf. Who knows it?"

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

A bullet doesn't need to have courage

 "He's a friend of Captain Hallet's. Dick Kaohla.

"What do you mean he's a friend of mine?" flared Hallet.

"Well, you certainly treated him pretty tenderly the other night."

I knew what I was doing," said Hallet grouchily. 

"I hope you did. But if he puts a bullet in me some lovely evening, I'm going to be pretty annoyed with you."

"Oh, you're in no danger," Hallet answered. "Only a coward writes anonymous letters."

"Yes, and only a coward shoots from ambush. But that isn't saying he can't take a good aim."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Ah, that Hawaiian moonlight!

     The moon, of course, was shining. The cocoa-palms turned their heads away at the suggestion of the trades. The warm waters of Waikiki murmured nearby. John Quincy Winterslip, from Boston and immune, drew the girl to him and kissed her. Not a cousinly kiss, either - but why should it have been? She wasn't his cousin.

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Not impossible

     "But the man's a gentleman," John Quincy cried. "A captain in the British Admiralty. What you suggest is impossible."

    Chan shook his head. "Impossible in Rear Bay at Boston," he said, "but here at moonly crossroads of Pacific, not so much so. Twenty-five years of my life are consumed in Hawaii, and I have many times been witness when the impossible roused itself and occurred."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Wrong school colors

     Greene shook hands cordially. "I've been wanting to meet you, sir," he said. "I know your city rather well. Spent three years at your Harvard Law School."

    "Really?" replied John Quincy with enthusiasm.

    "Yes. I went there after I got through at New Haven. I'm a Yale man, you know."

    "Oh," remarked John Quincy, without any enthusiasm at all. But Greene seemed a pleasant fellow, despite his choice of college.

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

It's kind of old

    "You recognize that, don't you?" he asked.

    "Why - yes - it's - I -"

    "Just stick to the truth," said John Quincy, not unkindly. "It's an old piece of jewelry that Mr. Winterslip gave you, I believe."

    "Well - "

    "You've been seen wearing it, you know."

    "Yes, he did give it to me," she admitted. "The only present I ever got from him. I guess from the look of it Mrs. Noah wore it on the Ark. Kinda pretty, though."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

You get used to it

     "What, in heaven's name, do you do out here?"

    "Oh, you'll become accustomed to it shortly," Miss Minerva answered. "At first, you just sit and think. After a time, you just sit."

(from A House Without a Key," by Earl Derr Biggers)

Let's work together

     Miss Minerva faced Chan. "The person who did this must be apprehended," she said firmly.

    "He looked at her sleepily. "What is to be, will be," he replied in a high, sing-song voice.

    "I know - that's your Confucius," she snapped. "But it's a do-nothing doctrine, and I don't approve of it."

    A faint smile flickered over Chan's face. "Do not fear, he said. "The fates are busy, and man may do much to assist. I promise you there will be no do-nothing here." He came closer. "Humbly asking pardon to mention it. I detect in your eyes slight flame of hostility. Quench it, if you will be so kind. Friendly cooperation are essential between us." Despite his girth, he managed a deep bow. "Wishing you good morning," he added, and followed Hallet.

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

The tell-tale watch

     Suddenly Miss Minerva realized the situation. The wearer of the watch had forgotten the tell-tale numerals on his wrist, he thought himself hidden in the dark. He was waiting for her to go on through the room. If she made no sound, gave no sign of alarm, she might be safe. Once beyond that bamboo curtain leading into the hall, she could rouse the household.

    She was a woman of great will power, but it took all she had to move serenely on her way. She shut her lips tightly and accomplished it, veering a bit from that circle of light that menaced her, looking back at it over her shoulder as she went. After what seemed an eternity the bamboo curtain received her, she was through it, she was on the stairs. But it seemed to her that never again would she be able to look at a watch or a clock and find that the hour was anything save twenty minutes past one!

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Adept

 We hardly ever think of it as such, but "adept" can be a noun. Its meaning is "a highly-trained individual," and is synonymous with "expert." I found it used in this sense in the Earl Derr Biggers novel, The House Without a Key."

"Roger proved an adept at making the most of one's time in San Francisco."

He's a rock!

     "I - I'm wondering, Minerva," he began slowly. "Tell me again about that nephew of yours."

    She was surprised, but hid it. "John Quincy?" she said. "He's just the usual thing, for Boston. Conventional. His whole life has been planned for him, from the cradle to the grave. So far he's walked the line. The inevitable preparatory school, Harvard, the proper clubs, the family banking house - even gone and got himself engaged to the very girl his mother would have picked for him. There have been times when I hoped he might kick over - the war - but no, he came back and got meekly into the old rut."

    "Then he's reliable - steady?"

    Miss Minerva smiled. "Dan, compared with that boy, Gibraltar wobbles occasionally."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Pure bred Boston

 Miss Minerva nodded. "You never met him, did you, Dan? Well, you will, shortly. And he certainly won't approve of you."

"Why not?" Dan Winterslip bristled.

"Because he's proper. He's a dear boy, but oh, so proper. This journey is going to be a great cross for him. He'll start disapproving as soon as he passes Albany, and think of the long weary miles of disapproval he'll have to endure after that."

"Oh, I don't know. He's a Winterslip, isn't he?"

"He is. But the gypsy strain missed him completely. He's all Puritan."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Not looking for trouble

 Matt turned, gave a quick glance around the room and went out, looking neither to right nor left. Only a fool goes looking for trouble, and his life had brought him more than enough, and knowing how to recognize possible trouble meant knowing how to avoid it. Even to meet the glance of some men was an invitation to trouble, for to them it was a challenge to which they must respond.

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Not a good place for a young woman

    He studied her for a moment. "How old are you, Madge?"

    "Nineteen - going on forty. Nobody looks out for a girl alone, Matt. She looks out for herself, and you know what kind of a world it is."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

   

Not an Absoluter

 Matt Coburn did not believe that it was when his time came that he would die. With the harsh realism that was typical of him, he believed he would cash in his chips whenever he became careless.

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Sydney Ducks

 In his novel, The Empty Land, Louis L'Amour makes reference to the Sydney Ducks. According to Wikipedia:

The Sydney Ducks was the name given to a gang of criminal immigrants from Australia in San Francisco, during the mid-19th century. Because many of these criminals came from the well-known British penal colonies in Australia, and were known to commit arson, they were blamed for an 1849 fire that devastated the heart of San Francisco, as well as the rampant crime in the city at the time.

The Sydney Ducks were criminals who operated as a gang, in a community that also included sailors, longshoremen, teamsters, wheelwrights, shipwrights, bartenders, saloon keepers, washerwomen, domestic servants, and dressmakers. The largest proportion (44%) were born in Ireland and migrated during the Great Irish Famine, first to Australia as laborers and then to California as part of the Gold Rush.

The criminality of the Sydney Ducks was the catalyst for the formation of the first Committee of Vigilance of 1851. The vigilantes usurped political power from the corrupt or incompetent officials in the city, conducted secret trials, lynchings, and deportations, which effectively decimated the Sydney Ducks. The area where the Sydney Ducks clustered at the base of Telegraph Hill was originally known as "Sydney-Town," but by the 1860s was called exclusively by its better-known name, the Barbary Coast.

Give us men who can think!

     "Fife, I want a city council of responsible men," Felton said. "Will you join us?"

    "It ain't fitten, son. I want to stand clear to call names and tell you when you're wrong. But if you're right, I will say that, too."

    He studied the type through his steel-rimmed glasses, then looked at Felton over them. There's a mighty lot about grammar that I don't know, and a lot of book learnin' I'll never have, but I know what I figure to be honest, and I'll say it."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

A man to trust

 "You'll get no marshal. Not when they hear that Big Thompson and Peggoty Gorman are in town. They eat marshals for breakfast," Cohan said.

"They should be ordered out of town."

"Don't try it, Dick. I know you're game, but you're not that good and you're not that fast."

"And Coburn is?"

"If any man is."

"He'd be another Thompson, then."

"Not Matt Coburn," Buckwalter said. "I'd stake my life on him. In fact," he said wryly, "I already have. Several times."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'amour)

Velocipede

 The years rob us of our boyish accomplishments. There had been a time, back in the distant past, when Sebastian Beach had yielded to none as a performer on the velocipede - once, indeed, actually emerging victorious in the choir boys' handicap at a village sports meeting, open to all whose voices had not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany. But those days were gone forever. (from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A velocipede is a "human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels." In Beach's youth it probably would have been the variety with a large front wheel.

Least favorite surprise

 It is not easy to state offhand what is the last thing a young man starting out in life would wish to find on the premises of the furnished villa ready for immediate occupancy which he had just begun to occupy. Bugs? Perhaps. Cockroaches? Possibly. Maybe defective drains. One cannot say. But a large black pig in the kitchen would unquestionably come quite high up on the list.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Enough is enough

     At nine o'clock on the following night Beach, seated in his pantry, was endeavouring with the aid of a glass of port to still the turmoil which recent events at Blandings Castle had engendered in his soul, and not making much of a go of it. Port, usually an unfailing specific, seemed for once to have lost its magic.

    Beach was no weakling, but he had begun to feel that too much was being asked of one who, though always desiring of giving satisfaction, liked to draw the line somewhere. A butler who has been compelled to introduce his niece into his employer's home under a false name and on top of that to remove a stolen pig from a gamekeeper's cottage in a west wood and convey it cross country to the detached villa Sunnybrae on the Shrewsnbury Road is a butler who feels that enough is sufficient. There were dark circles under Beach's eyes and he found himself starting at sudden noises.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Why bother?

 "There you have Clarence in a nutshell," he said. "There is a school of thought that holds that he got that way from being dropped on his head when a baby. I maintain that when you have a baby like Clarence, you don't need to drop it on its head. You just let Nature take its course and it develops automatically into the sort of man who says 'right' when he means 'left.'"

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A good deal too much Baronet

 Strolling through the jungles of Brazil, the traveller sometimes sees a barefoot native halt with a look of horror, his body rigid except for a faint vibration of the toes. He has seen a scorpion in his path. It was with such a look of horror that Gloria gazed at the photograph of Sir Gregory Parsloe. Very imprudently, he had had himself taken side face and, eyeing those chins, she winced and caught her breath sharply. She took another look, and her mind was made up. She had thought it could be done, but she saw now that it could not be done. There are shots which are on the board, and shots which are not. It might be that some day some girl, veiled in white, would stand at the altar rails beside this vast expanse of Baronet while the organ played "The Voice That Breathed o'er Eden" but that girl would not be G. Salt.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A unique sympathy card

     "Did I ever tell you the story of Clarence and the Arkwright wedding?"

    "I don't think so."

    "Odd It happened about the time I was a regular client of yours at the Criterion and I told it to everybody else. I wonder why I discriminated against you. The Arkwrights lived out Bridgnorth way, and their daughter Amelia was getting married, so Clarence tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind him to send the bride's mother a telegram on the happy day."

    "And he forgot?"

    "Oh, no, he sent it. 'My heartfelt congratulations to you on this joyous occasion,' he said."

    "Well, wasn't that all right?"

    "It was fine. Couldn't have been improved upon. Only the trouble was that in one of his distrait moments he sent it, not to Mrs. Arkwright but to another friend of his, a Mrs. Cartwright, and her husband had happened to die that morning. Diabetes. Very sad. We were all very sorry about it, but no doubt the telegram cheered her up."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

But a baa-lamb?

 Seeing the object of Penny's affections at closed range, he found himself favourably impressed. For an author, Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked. His face, while never likely to launch a thousand ships, was not at all a bad sort of face, and Gally could readily picture it casting a spell in a dim light on a boat deck. Looking at him, he found it easy to understand why Penny should have described him as a baa-lamb. From a cursory inspection he seemed well entitled to membership in that limited class.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A life well misspent

     "Thank you, dear," she said. "I call that very nice of you. You don't look so bad yourself," she added, with that touch of surprise which always came into the voices of those who, meeting Gally after a lapse of years, found him so bright and rosy.

    This man's fitness was one of the eternal mysteries. Speaking of him, a historian of Blandings Castle had once written: "A thoroughly misspent life had left the Hon. Galahad Threepwood in what appeared to be perfect, even exuberantly perfect physical condition. How a man who ought to have had the liver of the century could look as he did was a constant source of perplexity to his associates. It seemed incredible that anyone who had had such an extraordinarily good time all his life should, in the evening of that life, be so superbly robust."

    Striking words, but well justified. Instead of the blot on a proud family which his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his siter Dora and all his other sisters considered him, he might have been a youngish teetotaller who had subsisted from boyhood on yogurt yeast, wheat germ, and blackstrap molasses. He himself attributed his health to steady smoking, plenty of alcohol, and his lifelong belief that it was bad form to go to bed before three in the morning.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She made quite an impression

     "Well, well, well!" he said, gazing at her with undisguised admiration. "Do you know you positively don't look a dashed day older, Maudie? It's amazing."

    And indeed the years had dealt lightly with the erstwhile Maudie Montrose. A little more matronly, perhaps, than the girl with the hourglass figure who had played the Saint Bernard dog to the thirsty wayfarers at the old  Criterion, she still made a distinct impression on the eye, and the landlord of the Emsworth Arms, his growing son Percy, and the half dozen Shropshire lads who were popping up the establishment's outer wall had stamped her with the seal of their popeyed approval. Her entrance had been in the nature of a social triumph.

    "It's astounding," said Gally. "One gasps. Put you in a bathing suit, add you to the line of contestants at any seaside beauty competition, and you would still have the judges whooping and blowing kisses and asking you if you were doing anything next Saturday night."

    It was the sort of tribute a thousand mellowed clients had paid her across the bar in the old days, and Maudie, who had simpered indulgently then, simpered indulgently now.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Reason enough to love her

 For Gloria Salt he felt that gentle affection which men feel for women who could have married them and didn't.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

When your partner gets out of line

 "We were playing in the mixed doubles, and I admit that I may have been slightly off my game, but that was no reason why, after we had dropped the first set, he should have started barging into my half of the court, taking my shots for me as if I were some elderly aunt with arthritis in both legs who had learned tennis in the previous week at a correspondence school."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

That's the end of THAT engagement!

     "If Orlo Vosper in his formative years had been thoroughly kicked twice a day, Sundays included, he might not have grown up the overbearing louse he has become."

    "Would you call him an overbearing louse?"

    "I did. To his face."

    "When was this?"

    "On the tennis court at Eastbourne, and again when entering the club house. I'd have done it in the dressing-room, too, only he wasn't there. They separate the sexes. Of all the overbearing lice that ever overbore, I told him, you are the undisputed champion, and I gave him back his ring."

    "Oh, you were engaged?"

    "Don't rub it in. We all make mistakes."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

    

Love at sea

     "Well, I don't know quite what to say. You have rather stunned your greyhaired old friend. You really love this chap?"

    "Haven't you been listening?

    "But you can't have known him for more than about four days."

    "So what?"

    "Well, I was just thinking . . . Heaven knows I'm not the man to counsel prudence and all that sort of thing. The only woman I ever wanted to marry was a music-hall serio who sang songs in pink tights. But -"

    "Well?"

    "I think I'd watch my step, if I were you, young Penny. There are some queer birds knocking around in this world. You can't always go by what fellows say on ocean liners. Many a man who swears eternal devotion on the boat deck undergoes a striking change in his outlook when he hits dry land and gets among the blondes."

    "Gally, you make me sick."

    "I'm sorry. I just thought I'd mention it. Facts of life and all that sort of thing."

    "If I found Jerry was like that, I'd give him the air in a second, though it would break my heart into a million quivering pieces. We Donaldsons have our pride."

    "You betcher."

    "But he isn't. He's a baa-lamb. And you can't say a baa-lamb isn't a nice thing to have around the house."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The wrong girl for a pig man

     "For mark this, Clarence, and mark it well. The girl who carelessly dismisses Empress of Blandings as a piggy-wiggy today is a girl who may quite easily forget to give her lunch tomorrow. Whatever induced you, my dear fellow, to entrust a job that calls for the executive qualities of a Pierpont Morgan to the popeyed daughter of a rural vicar?"

    Lord Emsworth did not actually wring his hands, but he came very near to it.

    "It was not my doing," he protested. "Connie insisted on my engaging her. She is some sort of a protegee of Connie's. Related to someone she wanted to oblige, or something like that. Blame Connie for the whole terrible situation."

    "Connie!" said Gally. "The more I see of this joint, the more clearly do I realize that what Blandings Castle needs, to make it an earthly Paradise, is fewer and better Connies. Sisters are a mistake, Clarence. You should have set your face firmly against them at the outset."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It doesn't help his career

There was a silence. He sat tapping his finger with the pen. I, if memory serves me correctly, straightened my tie. I was deeply concerned. The thought of poor old Stinker being bunged into the Bastille was enough to disturb anyone with a kindly interest in his career and prospects. Nothing retards a curate's advancement in his chosen profession more surely than a spell in the jug.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A no nonsense pooch

     I was standing there, hoping for the best, when my meditations were broken in upon by an odd, gargling sort of noise, something like static and something like distant thunder, and to cut a long story short this proved to proceed from the larynx of the dog Bartholomew.

    He was standing on the bed, stropping his front paws on the coverlet, and so easy was it to read the message in his eyes that we acted like two minds with but a single thought. At the exact moment when I soared like an eagle onto the chest of drawers, Jeeves was skimming like a swallow onto the top of the cupboard. The animal hopped from the bed and, advancing into the middle of the room, took a seat, breathing through the nose with a curious whistling sound and looking at us from under his eyebrows like a Scottish elder rebuking sin from the pulpit.

    And there for a while the matter rested.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just keep cool

 The whole situation recalled irresistibly to my mind something that had happened to me once up at Oxford, when the heart was young. It was during Eights Week, and I was sauntering on the river bank with a girl named something that has slipped my mind, when there was a sound of barking and a large, hefty dog came galloping up, full of beans and buck and obviously intent on mayhem. And I was just commending my soul to God and feeling that this was where the old flannel trousers got about thirty bobs' worth of value bitten out of them, when the girl, waiting till she saw the whites of its eyes, with extraordinary presence of mind suddenly opened a coloured Japanese umbrella in the animal's face. Upon which, it did three back somersaults and retired into private life.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Per Wikipedia, Eights Week, also known as Summer Eights, is a four-day regatta of bumps races which constitutes the University of Oxford's main intercollegiate rowing event of the year. The regatta takes place in May of each year, from the Wednesday to the Saturday of the fifth week of Trinity Term. Men's and women's eights compete in separate divisions for their colleges.

Only from a distance

 "You will understand," I said, "that I am implying nothing derogatory to your cousin Madeline when I say that the idea of being united to her in the bonds of holy wedlock is one that freezes the gizzard. The fact is in no way to her discredit. I should feel just the same about marrying many of the world's noblest women. There are certain females whom one respects, admires, reveres, but only from a distance. If they show any signs of attempting to come closer, one is prepared to fight them off with a blackjack. It is to this group that your cousin Madeline belongs. A charming girl, and the ideal mate for Augustus Fink-Nottle, but ants in the pants to Bertram."

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Large-size curate

     I had watched Harold Pinker through the formative years of his life, and I knew him for what he was - a large, lumbering, Newfoundland puppy of a chap - full of zeal, yes - always doing his best, true; but never quite able to make the grade; a man, in short, who if there was a chance of bungling an enterprise and landing himself in the soup, would snatch at it. At the idea of him being turned on to perform the extraordinarily delicate task of swiping Constable Oates's helmet, the blood froze. He hadn't a chance of getting away with it.

    I thought of Stinker, the youth. Built rather on the lines of Roderick Spode, he had played Rugby football not only for his university but also for England, and at the art of hurling an opponent into a mud puddle and jumping on his neck with cleated boots he had few, if any, superiors. If I had wanted someone to help me out with a mad bull, he would have been my first choice. If by some mischance I had found myself trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine, there was nobody I would rather have seen coming down the chimney than the Rev. Haarold Pinker.

    But mere thews and sinews did not qualify a man to pinch policemen's helmets. You need finesse.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No difference that could tell

     "Every day I find myself discovering some new facet of his extraordinary character. For instance . . . You have seen him quite lately, have you not?"

    "Oh, rather. I gave him a dinner at the Drones only the night before last."

    "I wonder if you noticed any difference in him?"

    I threw my mind back to the binge in question. As far as I could recollect, Gussie had been the same fish-faced freak I had always known."

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

AA for flowerpot throwers

 "If I were you," said Psmith, "and I offer the suggestion in the most cordial spirit of goodwill, I would use every effort to prevent this passion for flinging flower-pots from growing upon me. I know you will say that you can take it or leave it alone; that just one more pot won't hurt you; but can you stop at one? Isn't it just that first insidious flower-pot that does all the mischief? Be a man, Comrade Baxter!" He laid his hand appealingly on the secretary's shoulder. "The next time the craving comes on you, fight it. Fight it! Are you, the heir of the ages, going to become a slave to a habit? Tush! You know and I know that there is better stuff in you than that. Use your will-power, man, use your will-power."

(from Leave  It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Sprained his brain

     He put on his glasses and hopped out of bed and trotted to the window. And it was while he was on his way there that memory stirred in him, as some minutes ago it had stirred in the Efficient Baxter. He recalled that odd episode of a few days back, when that delightful girl, Miss What's-her-name, had informed him that his secretary had been throwing flower-pots at that poet fellow, McTodd. He had been annoyed, he remembered, that Baxter should so far have forgotten himself. Now, he found himself more frightened than annoyed. Just as every dog is permitted one bite without having its sanity questioned, so, if you consider it in a broad-minded way, may every man be allowed to throw one flower-pot. But let the thing become a habit, and we look askance.

    This strange hobby of his appeared to be growing on Baxter like a drug, and Lord Emsworth did not like it at all. He had never before suspected his secretary of an unbalanced mind, but now he mused, as he tiptoed cautiously to the window, that the Baxter sort of man, the energetic, restless type, was just the kind that does go off his head. Just some such calamity as this, his lordship felt, he might have foreseen. Day in, day out, Rupert Baxter had been exercising his brain ever since he had come to the castle - and now he had gone and sprained it. Lord Emsworth peeped timidly out from behind a curtain.

    His worst fears were realized. It was Baxter, sure enough; and a towsled, wild-eyed Baxter incredibly clad in lemon-coloured pyjamas.

(from Leave It To Psmith,  by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

WHY did I wear these pyjamas?

 To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. His was a fiery and an arrogant soul, ad he seethed in furious rebellion against the intolerable position into which Fate had manoeuvred him. He even went so far as to give the front door a petulant kick.

Finding, however, that this hurt his toes and accomplished no useful end, he addressed himself to the task of ascertaining whether there was any way of getting in - short of banging the knocker and rousing the house, a line of action which did not commend itself to him. He made a practice of avoiding as far as possible the ribald type of young man of which the castle was now full, and he had no desire to meet them at this hour in his present costume.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)