Stealthy contact

    She heard: "007? M speaking." And she giggled, drawing around her the loose silk ties of her bed jacket. "Our telephones may be tapped, so we will conduct this converation entirely in Swahili. Get," Simon's voice said, "on a slow boat to China. A Lithuanian deckhand will molest you at exactly four-thirty-three P.M."    

    Linette said: "You don't think we really are being trapped, do you?"

    "We? You and I? What importance do we have? Two young lovers having breakfast together a mile away from one another. You are having breakfast, aren't you? Or do you always sound as if you're chewing something before you put in your store teeth?"

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

Cozy accommodations

"Well?"

"We have our hiding place."

"What is it?"

"Broom closet."

"Big enough for two?"

"A bit of a squeeze," he admitted.

"How long will we - "

"Now, look, lady, at the height of the season, what can you expect? Everything else is all filled."

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

Like an old woman

     It was not true, Bonnet thought, that a man could turn gray overnight. Nor that he could age twenty years in a day. Age perhaps was only a question of optimism. He forced a simulation of a smile as he entered the apartment. If it were a question of expression, he might at least try to put on the sort of forced gaiety that was common to aging, wrinkled, defeated women. Though they still looked aged, these transparent masks at least raised their own spirits and gave them an illusion of deceiving others.

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

Yousuf Karsh

     In case you never heard of him, Yousuf Karsh was perhaps the greatest portrait photographer of the 20th Century. Over twenty of his photos appeared on the cover of Life magazine. And even if you never heard of Karsh, unless you have lived on a desert island, you have seen his 1941 photograph of Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister's legendary scowl was because Karsh had just stepped forward and removed Churchill's cigar from his mouth. As much as any other, this picture became the symbol of British determination during World War II.

The madness of collectors

     "When he said he'd go through the back door for the Cellini, he probably meant the girl. It would be amusing if he should be stuck with the girl."

    "Stuck with her?"

    "Yes, marry her to inherit the statue. Why not? I know stranger stories. Why, a client of mine once bought an entire chateau just for the fireplace screen in an upstairs bedroom. That's the sort of mentality we're up against in my business."

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

Charles Boyer trivia

     First off, Boyer never actually said, "Come with me to the casbah," in the movie Algiers. It was used in the trailer, and in endless parodies of the movie.

    He was married for 44 years to British actress Pat Patterson, until her death. He committed suicide two days after her death.

    His only child, son Michael Charles, committed suicide by playing Russian roulette after separating from his girlfriend.

    Although nominated four times for Best Actor, Boyer never won the Oscar.

Flea market methods

     Leland, with that athletic stride of someone who does twenty push-ups each morning and avoids starchy foods, on reaching the Van Gogh, started rocking back an forth on his heels, appraising the painting with what seemed to Bonnet a mask of indifference. Smart as a fox, Bonnet thought to himself. He will not tip his hand. He glances at it as though politely, with no interest in it whatever. It's the oldest flea-market trick in the world.

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

Cowardly burglar

     "What's that?" he asked, turning apprehensively.

    "Only iodine."

    "Will it hurt?"

    Linette met his eyes with a very pointed glance of her own. "Burglars are brave."

    "I told you I'm not a regular burglar," he complained. "I only burgle when I'm hungry."

    "Do you always dress in dinner clothes when you go out to burgle?"

    "Of course," he said as if it were a self-evident rule. "I'm a society burglar. Ouch." He leaped into the air at the touch of the iodine, though Linette had applied it ever so gently. "And," he added, pulling down his sleeve, "I certainly don't expect people to shoot at me."

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

A weird-looking guy

     For professional reasons he had cultivated the manners of a dandy, blessed as he was with the bland good looks of a window-dresser's dummy: smooth and waxy complexion, straight silver-gray hair, a  black hairline of a mustache, and perfectly vacant dark eyes that seemed to stare at the world through a blank, hard shield of glass.

(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)

The Ameches

     In my youth, I remember vividly one television program called International Showtime. Each week it would feature a different circus. The host was Don Ameche. Decades later, when my wife and I became big fans of old movies, we got more acquainted with Ameche's career as an actor, which spanned 58 years, and included an Oscar late in his career. He was married for 54 years to Honore Prendergast, who bore him six children.

Don's younger brother was Jim, who was about seven years his junior. He also acted, although his career was more heavily weighted toward radio. Jim also had six children.

A cousin of the acting Ameches was Alan "The Horse" Ameche, who won the Heiman Trophy in college and went on to play six seasons in the NFL.

Her Honor the Mayor

 Beverly Garland was a busy television actress from 1949 to 2005, perhaps best known for her role on the My Three Sons sitcom. Like several other actors and actresses, she served as an Honorary Mayor of a California city, in her case North Hollywood. For 39 years, she had the somewhat unwieldly real-life designation of Mrs. Filmore Crank.

Quite a noise!

     What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of potpouri, I don't know; but that was that Bingo's Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways. It seemed to me for a moment as if the whole world had dissolved into a kind of cataract of glass and china. A few years ago, when I legged it to America to elude my Aunt Agatha, who was out with her hatchet, I remember going to Niagara and listening to the Falls. They made much the same sort of row, but not so loud.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Bad memory is the secret

     "Change of scene is the thing. I heard of a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him, 'Come back, Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply, suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname, so never answered at all, and lived happily ever after."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Brainy girls, dull boys

     "It is a known scientific fact that there is a particular style of female that does seem strangely attracted to the sort of fellow I am."

    "Very true, sir."

    "I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."

    "It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir."

    "Very possibly. Anyway, it has happened to me over and over again. It was what happened in the case of Honoria Glossop. She was notoriously one of the brainiest women of her year at Girton, and she just gathered me in like a bull pup swallowing a piece of steak."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Cheerful family

     "No doubt you remember my mother?" said Professor Pringle mournfully, indicating Exhibit A.

    "Oh-ah!" I said, achieving a bit of a beam.

    "And my aunt," sighed the prof, as if things were getting worse and worse.

    "Well, well, well!" I said, shooting another beam in the direction of Exhibit B.

    "They were saying only this morning that they remembered you," groaned the prof, abanoning all hope.

    There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It's rough being poor

     As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not her favorite limey

     "I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"

    I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And she did it in a way that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had had to meet an Englishman I was the one she'd have chosen last."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Groucho's wives

     Famous comedian Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was from 1947 to 1961 the host of the game show "You Bet Your Life." For most of the time it ran on both radio and television. The personna which Groucho cultivated on the air was that of a lecherous "dirty old man" type. Evidently that may not have been too far from reality.

    Groucho was married three times. His first wife was a chorus girl. He was 29 at the time, and she was 19. His second wife was 21 when they married, and he was 54. At the time of his third marriage, he was 64 and the bride was 24.

One of those looks

     She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aung Agatha, back in England, has looked at me in exactly the same way many a tie, and it nevr fails to make my spine curl.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The easy life

     He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortaions to young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes, American editors fight for the stuff.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

NOT a brain surgeon

     I could guess what the old boy was thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring, for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gents' underwear.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Mr. Basketball

     Almost forgotten in today's media saturation is the first mega-star of the NBA. George Mikan would be scoffed at today when athletic 7-footers abound on every corner, but he revolutionized the game of basketball and made the big man relevant. True basketball fans know who he was, but since his playing career ended about the time I was born, there is not much film footage of his playing.

    Mikan was born in Joliet, Illinois to a Croatian father and a Lithuanian mother. As a boy, he shattered one of his knees so badly that he was kept in bed for a year and a half. When he entered DePaul University, he was an awkward 6-10 boy who wore thick glasses because of his near-sightedness. Legendary coach Ray Meyer taught Mikan to shoot hook shots with either hand - long before Lew Alcindor did it.

    Mikan married his girlfriend in 1947, and they remained together for 58 years until his death. They had six children. Mikan was what he appeared to be - a "gentle giant" who was tough and relentless on the court, but friendly and amicable in private life. He suffered from diabetes, and in his later years his right leg was amputated below the knee.

    Shaquille O'Neal paid for Mikan's funeral, saying, "Without Number 99 (Mikan), there is no me."

Good dog!

     "Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"

    "The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."

    I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a lot of good in him.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rollo's nose

     "Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watch-dog."

    "I don't want a watch-dog to keep me out of my rooms."

    "No, sir."

    "Well, what am I to do?"

    "No doubt in time the animal will learn to disciminate, sir. He will learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."

    "What do you mean - my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all right."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She was a broad Broad

     She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not jute, please

      Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and work his way up. And what Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom of a jute business, instinct told him that it was something too beastly for words.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Hard to get started

    It wasn't long before I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in the stuff in houses up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly around Washington Square - artists and writers and so forth. Brainy coves.

    Corky, the bird I am about to treat of was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but as a matter of fact his score up to date had been nil. You see, the catch about portrait-painting - I've looked into the thing a bit - is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult, not to say tough, for the ambitious youngster.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Those music halls were rough places

     "I have never had such a shock in my life. The book is an outrage. It is impossible. It is horrible!

    "But, dash it, the family weren't so bad as all that."

    "It is not a history of the family at all. Your uncle has written his reminiscences! He calls them 'Recollections of a Long Life.'"

    I began to understand. As I say, Uncle Willoughby had been somewhat on the tabasco side as a young man, and it began to look as if he might have turned out somethign pretty fruity if he had started recollecting his long life.

     "If half of what he has written is true," said Florence, "your uncle's youth must have been perfectly appalling. The moment we began to read, he plunged straight into a most scandalous story of how he and my father were thrown out of a music-hall in 1887!"

    "Why?"

    "I decline to tell you why."

    It must have been something pretty bad. It took a lot to make them cuck people out of music-halls in 1887.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

"Tight" is the appropriate term

     "Corky, old horse, I have in my time extracted various sums of money from various people, and some of them have given cheerfully of theri abundance and others have unbelted in a manner that you might call wry. But never in the whole of my career have I beheld a fellow human being cough up in quite the spirit that his bloke Joe the Lawyer did. He was a short-necked man, and there was one moment when I thought his blood-pressure was going to be too much for him. He turned a rather vivid shade of maroon, and his lips trembled as if he were praying. But in the end he dipped into the satchel and counted out the money."

(from "The Level Business Head," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Soft-hearted boxer

     The Battler was a heavweight pugilist whom Ukridge had dug up from somewhere and managed intermittently over a period of a year or so. In which enterprise he had been considerably hampered by the other's unfortunate temperatment. A peerless scrapper, this Billson, with muscles strong as iron bands, but of the very maximum boneheadedness. An eccentric soul. He had a habit of developing a sentimental pity for his opponent toward the middle of the second round, or else he would get religion on the eve of battle and refuse to enter the ring. It complicated things a good deal for his manager.

(from "The Come-back of Battling Billson," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Pretty good buy

     Patrick stopped at the newsstand for cigarettes and the late papers. I bought a book, a great collection of world masterpieces for twenty-five cents. Not that I expected to read it, but I never feel entirely equipped without a book, particularly when it's everything ever written for only two bits.

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

She went too far

     In that particular studio which had engaged her services, it seems a good deal of latitude is granted to the distinguished authors on the pay-roll. The kindly powers-that-be recognize the existence of the artist temperment and make allowances for it. If, therefore, my aunt had confined herself to snootering directions, harrying camera-men, and chasing supervisors up trees, nothing would have been said. But there is one thing the artist soul must not do at the Colossal-Superfine, and that is swat the Main Boss with a jewelled hand over the ear-hole.

    And this, in a moment of emotion due to the fact that he had described some dialogue submitted by her as a lot of baloney that didn't mean a thing, my Aunt Julia had done.

(from "Ukridge and the Home From Home," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not very responsive

     He looked cynical again. "Did you question Moran yourself?"

    Patrick's nod was full of gloom.

    "I tried. It's like talking at a lump of dough."

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

No accounting for tastes

     As he mentioned his name, his tone seemed to take on a sort of respectful affection. One of he mysteries of my life is why this godlike man, while treating me, who pay my rent regularly, with a distant hauteur, as if I were something very young and callow in baggy trousers whom he had just caught eating the entree with a fish-knife, should positively fawn on Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, who is - as has been for years - a recognized blot on Society.

(from "Ukridge and the Home from Home," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Tough neighborhood

     I don't suppose you are familiar with Bottleton East, except by name. It is a prett tough sort of neighbourhood, rather like Limehouse only with fewer mysterious Chinamen. The houses are small and grey, cats abound, and anyone who has a bit of old paper or a piece of orange peel throws it on the pavement.

(from "The Masked Troubadour," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Creepy

     The air was colder and clearer, but all the same, the dim-out made the night peculiar. We walked very slowly. I slipped my hand through Patrick's arm and said I would never get over the feeling you had in a dim-out that somebody was creeping up behind with the idea of socking you in the back of the head. He grinned, but as he lit our cigarettes he quietly looked behind us.

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

I don't know that I would like this description

 "Mr. Carrington, who reminded me of a biscuit with a Boston accent, wore a dinner coat."

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

Heavy eyebrows

     I lifted eyebrows. Stealing her own technique, I did it as though they weighed tons and made lifting a chore.

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

Of Moustaches

     "Where, I've often asked myself, are the great sweeping moustaches of our boyhood? I've got a photograph of my grandfather as a young man in the album at home, and he's just a pair of eyes staring over a sort of quickset hedge."

(from "Buried Treasure," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Concerning noses

I never notice noses unless they are wrong for a face, and his wasn't.

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

The dead can't answer

     "I told Mother I was going to stand up this afternoon when the police came back to ask questions and tell the truth about Anna, but Mother says it isn't fair to say unpleasant things about the dead. The dead can't answer back, she says."

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

Phoney New York

     "New York is the kind of place where everybody tries to act like the best people because nobody knows if they are or aren't."

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

Stickler for the truth

     Patrick grinned and said lightly, "I suspect Goldberg takes anything he does very seriously. A mere patrolman who corrects you for addressing him as a sergeant is bound to be a very honest man."

(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

Pork pie hat

     In her novel, The Pink Umbrella, Frances Crane makes reference to a "porkpie hat." I was not familiar with that style, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia: The first hat to be called a pork pie was a hat worn primarily by British and American women from around 1830 through to about 1865. It consisted of a small round hat with a narrow curled-up brim, a low flat or slightly domed crown with a crease running around the inside top edge, and usually with a ribbon or hatband fastened around the shoulder where the crown joined the brim. It was often worn with a small feather or two attached to a bow on one side of the hat. Such hats might be made of any number of materials (straw, felt, cotton canvas covered in silk, etc.). What caused them to be called "pork pies" was the shape and crease of the crown and the narrowness of the brim (sometimes called a "stingy brim" in reference to its brevity).

Spring in the city

 "The air was warmish, tender, faintly vailed with thin haze, and full of the somewhat depraved smells which in the cities pass as springlike." (from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)

I thought that was an interesting description of springtime in New York by the author of the Pat and Jean Abbott series of mysteries.

If only revenge!

     The mists cleared away, and he saw Dolly. Her face was wearing the smug expression of a female juvenile delinquent who has just played a successful practical joke on another member of her age group, and her sunny smile, which Soapy admired so much, seemed to gash him like a knife. Not for the first time he was wishing that, if it could be done without incurring any unpleasant after-effects for himself, he could introduce a pinch of some little-known Asiatic poison into this woman's morning cup of coffee or stab her in several vital spots with a dagger of Oriental design. A vision rose before his eyes of Mrs. Thomas G. Molloy sinking for the third time in some lake or mere and himself, with a sneer, throwing her an anvil.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Better to stay away from coppers

     His departure left Dolly a prey to mixed emotions. As a man she liked George and found him an entertaining companion, but she could not forget that for all his suavity and the sparkle of his conversation he represented the awful majesty of the Law and, were he to learn of her activities in the Prosser home, would have no hesitation in piling on the back of her neck and whistling for stern-faced colleagues to come and fasten the gyves to her wrists. Better, then, that they should part. His going had deprived her of the pleasure of listening to his views on this and that and wondering how he could talk the way he did without having a potato in his mouth, but she had also lost the unpleasant feeling that centipedes were crawling up and down her spine which always affected her when hobnobbing with the gendarmerie.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Here's a hair tonic for you!

 "Scalpo, the lotion that lends a lustre"

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The kind of publisher I need

     "Pure slush, but it was taken by Popgood and Grooly, and didn't do too badly, and they sent the sheets over to Singleton Brothers in New York, who turn out books like sausages and don't care how bad they are, so long as they run to eighty thousand words."

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Conversing with geese

     "Did I ever tell you about my married life, Sally?"

    "No, never. I knew you had been married, of course."

    "You'd have liked Joe. Everybody did. I loved him. His trouble was, he was so weak. Just a rabbit who couldn't say 'Boo' to a goose."

    Sally knew that the number of rabbits capable of saying "Boo" to geese was very limited, but she did not point this out.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Sort of unsettling, what?

     Soapy marshalled his thoughts. He had finished that second martini now, and was feeling calmer. The knowledge that seven miles separated him from Leila York had done much to restore his composure. And he was reminding himself, as Dolly had reminded him yesterday, that you can't win 'em all. It was a comforting reflection. He was not entirely his old hearty self as he began his story, but he had shaken off that dizzy feeling which comes to the man who pays a social call and suddenly finds his hostess jabbing a shot-gun into his diaphragm.

(from Ice In the  Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A difficult simile

     "Is he still running that private-eye racet of his?" The question surprised Mr. Molloy.

    "Why, of course he is, sweetie. Why wouldn't he be? It's only a month since you've been away."

    "Well, a month seems a long time for Chimp Twist to stay out of the coop. How's he doing?"

    "He didn't say, but I guess he doesn't bother much about clients. The J. Sheringham Adair private Investigation Agency's just a front."

    Dolly laughed bitterly.

    "J. Sheringham Adair! What a name to call himself."

    "Had to call himself something."

    "Well, why not Heels Incorporated or Doublecrossers Limited or sump'n? I tell you, Soapy, whever I think of that undersized boll weevil, I go hot all over, clear down to the soles of my shoes."

    "Oh, Chimp's not so bad."

    "Not so bad as what?"

    Mr. Molloy, though trying to be tolerant, found this question difficult to answer. He changed the subject.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

What a dish!

     Dolly Molloy unquestionably took the eye. She was a spectacular blonde of the type that is always getting murdered in its step-ins in mystery stories. Her hair was golden, her eyes hazel, her lips and cheeks aflame with colour, and she carried herself with a challenging jautiness. Wolf-whistling is of course prohibited in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, but quite a few of the visiting maharajahs looked as if they would have liked to, and it was plain that only by the exercise of the most iron self-restraint that the Texas millionaires were holding themselves in. You could see their lips puckering.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How lawyers have fun

     "Oh, he was a regular devil in those days. And look at him now. All dried up like a kippered herring and wouldn't kiss Helen of Troy if you brought her to him asleep in a chair with a spring of mistletoe suspended over her. That's what comes of being a solicitor, it saps the vital juices. Johnny doesn't even embezzle his clients' money, which I should have thought was about the only fun a solicitor can get out of life."

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Colorful description of a broken heart

     She knew that she had done the sensible thing, but that did not prevent her feeling that her heart was being torn in small pieces by a platoon of muscular wild cats, than which few experiences are less agreeable.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Got a date

     "You got any idea what this is all about?" Arnold snapped. "This isn't just a toy, you know."

    "We're submerging," Jim said cheerfully. "We're going down around five hundred feet. Then we'll find a passage and get out of it into Todahe Bay. There we'll find the Copenhagen loaded with Submarines, and we'll shoot her one in the pants - I hope."

    "You hope!" Arnold said sarcastically. "You mean, I hope! And if something happens and you're wrong?"

    "We'll wash out," Jim said simply and shrugged.

    "Yeah?" William said. "That's oay for you, but I've got a date with a girl in Makassar."

(from "Well of the Unholy Light," by Louis L'Amour)

Orlop deck

     In his short story, "East of Gorontalo," Louis L'Amour mentions an "orlop deck." Not knowing what that was, I looked it up. It is "the lowest deck in a ship (except for very old ships). It is the deck or part of a deck where the cables are stowed, usually below the water line." 

Might be good for a touch

     Conversations were in progress in the smoking room of the Drones with a view to maing up a party to go and see the Wrestling Championship at the Albert Hall, and a Bean suggested that Oofy Prosser be invited to join the expedition. Oofy, he put it to the meeting, had more pimples than the man of taste liked to be seen about with and was perhaps the nearest approach to a piece of cheese which the human race had so far produced, but he possessed one outstanding merit which went far to counter-balance these defects - viz., a stupendous bank acount, and it was quite conceivable that, if handled right, he might loosen up and stand supper after the performance.

(from "Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Her man

     All through Reginald's deeply moving performance she had sat breathless, her mind in a whirl and her soul stirred to her very depths. With each low note that he pulled from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew that he was, if one may coin a phrase, the only onion in the stew and that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere, particularly as the wife of a man with large ears and no chin, who looked as if he were about to start in the two-thirty race at Kempton Park.

(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The heart, but not the head

    Reginald was not a quickwitted man, but, reading btween the lines, he seemed to sense what she was trying to say.

    "This sounds like the raspberry."

    "It is."

    "You mean all is over?"

    "I do."

    "You are casting me aside like a . . . what are those things people cast aside?"

    "'Worn-out glove' is, I presume, the expression for which you were groping?"

    "Do you know," said Reginald, struck by a thought, "I always give mine to the Salvation Army. However, that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that you have broken my bally heart."

    "A girl with less self-control," said Amanda, switching her tennis racquet, "would have broken your bally head."

(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I take it he is not popular?

     "When you know him really well you will realize that you are up against something quite exceptional. Take a wart hog, add a few slugs and some of those things you see under flat stones, sprinkle liberally with pimples, and you will have something which, while of course less loathsome than Alexander Prosser, will give you the general idea."

(from "The Word in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just plain fishy

    Purkiss looked at him fishily. Nature havign made it impossible or him to look at anyone otherwise, he being a man with a face like a halibut.

    "Story?"

    Bingo explained the circumstances. He said that he was the author of "Tibby's Wonderful Adventure" in the current issue, and Purkiss Oh-yes-ed and said he had read it with considrable interest, and Bingo oh-thanks-ed and simpered coyly, and then there was a rather long silence.

    "Well, how about the emolument?" said Bingo at length, getting down to the res.

    Purkiss started. The fishy glitter in his eye became intensified. He looked like a halibut which has just been asked by another halibut to lend it a couple of quid till next Wednesday.

(from "TheWord in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse) 

Keeping aunts in line

     It would be idle to pretend that, as I made my way down the stairs, I was my usual debonair self. The feet cold, and if there had been any sudden noises, I would have started at them. My meditations on Aunt Dahlia, who had let me in for this horror in the night, were rather markedly lacking in a nephew's love. Indeed, it is not too much to say that every step I took deepened my conviction that what the aged relative needed was a swift kick in the pants.

(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Spoils dinner

     "Suppose you were a great musician. Would you like to have to listen to a cheap, vulgar tune - the same tune - day after day? Or suppose that every time you went to lunch at the Drones you had to sit opposite someone who looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Would you enjoy that? Of couse you wouldn't. You'd be sick as mud."

    I saw her point. Many a time at the Drones I have had to sit opposite Oofy Prosser, and it has always taken the edge off a usually keen appetite.

(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Sure shot

     Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall. I couldn't help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It's not the easist thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I've tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He defined "greedy"

     We said earlier that he did not need the cash, but it was we who said it, not Oofy. His views on the matter were sharply divergent. Whenever there was cash around, he wanted to get it. It was well said of him at the Drones taht despite his revolting wealth he would always willingly walk ten miles in tight boots to pick up twopence. Many put the figure even lower.

(from "The Fat of the Land," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Revolting slush

     But though, with the desk between us, I could not see these two, I could hear them, and most unpleasant it was. I have known Chuffy, as I say, practically from childhood, and in the course of the years I have seen him in a variety of differing circumstances and in many moods. And I never would have believed him capable of the revolting slush which now proceeded from his lips at the rate of about two hundred and fifty words to the minute. When I tell you that the observation, "There, there, little girl" was the only one I can bring myself to quote, you will be able to gather something of the ordeal to which I was subjected. And, to make matters worse, on an empty stomach, mind you.

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Oh, that more women had this attitude!

     "That is why I say that, no matter if father does tear the roof off, I am not going to marry that poor, persecuted lamb. Why should I? I've nothing against him."

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

One word, much meaning

     By this time a shrews bloke like this Stoker wa sbound to have guessed that his were the brains behind my escape, and it seemed not unlikely that he would make some tenative move towards scattering these brains on the hearthrug. His voice, when he spoke, undoubtedly indicated that some such idea was floating in his mind. It was harsh and roopy, and though all that he actually said by way of a start was "Ah!" a determined man can get a lot of meaning into an "Ah!"

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Really, really hungry

     Speaking for myself, I have, as a rule, to be more or less lured to the feast. I mean to say, I don't as a general thing become what you might call breakfast-conscious till I've had my morning tea and rather thought things over a bit. And I can give no better indication of the extraordinary change which had come over my viewpoint now than by mentioning that there was a young fowl of sorts not far away engaged in getting outside a large, pink worm, and I could willingly have joined it at the fine board. In fact, I would have taken pot luck at this juncture with a buzzard.

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Concerning Sir Roderick Glossop

     You know how it is. You go along for years looking on a fellow as a blister and a menace to the public weal, and then one day you suddenly hear of some decent thing he's done and it makes you feel there mut be good in the chap, after all. It was so in the matter of this Glossop. I had suffered much at his hands since first our paths had crossed. In the human Zoo which Fate has caused to centre about Bertram Wooster, he had always ranked high up among the more vicious specimens - man good judges indeed, indeed, considering that he even competed for the  blue ribbon with that great scourge of modern times, my Aunt Agatha. But now, reviewing his recent conduct, I must admit that i found myself definitely softening towards him.

    Nobody, I reasoned who could slosh young Seabury like that could be altogether bad. There must be fine metal somewhere among the dross.

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a nice surprise

     But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while halfway through "The Vision of Salome," steps on a tin tack.

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Hearts of gold have nothing to do with it

    "You sound annoyed. And I can't see why. I should have thought you would have been only too glad of the chance of helping me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold I hear so much about."

    "The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Heaps of people have hearts of gold and yet would be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms in the small hours. What you don't seem to realize, what you and this Jeeves of yours have omitted to take into your calculations, is that I have a reputation to keep up, and unspotted name to maintain in its pristing purity. This cannot be done by entertaining girls who come in, in the middle of the night, without so much as a by-your-leave and coolly pinch your heliotrope pyjamas . . ."

    "You didn't expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?" 

(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The heir to the "Dark and Stormy Night"

     The author of the famous (infamous) novel beginning, "It was a dark and stormy night" was Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton. His son, Robert, was made 1st Earl of Lytton. The current holder of the title is John Peter Michael Scawen Lytton, 5th Earl of Lytton, 18th Baron Wentworth. Lord Lytton is a descendent of the famous poet Lord Byron.

A new one to me

     "This has certainly put the butter on the spinach. I feel a new man."

    This expression is from the Wodehouse novel, Thank You, Jeeves, published in 1934. It was not familiar to me. It obviously is intended to be positive. It supposedly means getting an extra source of income to help ends meet. I don't know that I would want to try it from a dietary standpoint, but it would be nice from a financial viewpoint.

Moira Lister trivia

Moira Lister was an actress who appeared in a couple of the old movies that we have, including The Limping Man. She was South African. There were a few interesting details about her life.

First, she was married for about 38 years to Jacques Gachassin-Lafitte, Viscount of Orthez. Her husband was a hero of the Rif War and owned a champagne vineyard.

In 1946, she went on a date with Neville Heath, a former South African Air Force Captain who months later murdered two women and was hanged.

The cats probably appreciated him

     The more he mused on L. P. Green, the more remote seemed the prospect of any girl betrothed to him deciding to do the sensible thing and detach herself from him. True, only a handful of the six hundred and forty-three pupils at the ancient foundation at which he had been educated had excelled L. P. Green as stinkers, but girls are sadly apt not to allow themselves to be influenced by a man's moral shortcomings. The outer crust rather than the soul within is what appeals to them, and it was futile to pretend that the outer crust of L. P. Green was not exceptional. And all he, Bill Hardy, had to pit against it was an honest heart and a certain rude skill at getting cats down from trees.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just be patient, this too shall pass

     "Engaged to someone else, yes," he conceded. "But only to Lionel Green." And when Bill said that he didn't see what the name of the man she was going to marry mattered, the salient fact being that she was going to marry him, he replied that that, on the contrary, was the whole nub and gist, because it was out of the question that any girl, however much she might in a moment of temporary insanity have got betrothed to him, would think seriously of marrying Lionel Green. The madness was bound to pass, leaving her once more in circulation.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just kiss her!

     In her bedroom Kelly lit the last cigarette of the day and gave herself up to meditation. She was thinking how much she loved Henry and wishing, for her woman's instinct toldher that he felt the same for her as she did for him, that he could bring himself to adopt the forthright methods of the late Theodore Stickney. She had spoken to Jane of Theodore kissing her like a ton of bricks, and it was precisely thus that he would have liked Henry to kiss her. His failure to do so, she supposed, was due to his being English. An Englishman, she thought bitterly, would have to have a signed permit from a girl before he felt justified in kissing her.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Apt description of true love

     The purchase of the chocolate bars completed, they came out into the street.

    "Well," said Jane, and she was so plainly about the add the word 'Goodbye' that Bill hastened to interrupt her. This conversation had confirmed him in the opinion that a single moment spent without her at his side would be a moment wasted.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Blotted what?

     "So we got engaged. The family put up a considerable beef when it was announced, of course, and I don't blame them, because I wasn't everybody's dream girl and they thought Theodore was blotting the what's that thing you blot?"

    "The escutcheon?"

    "Is that it? Escutcheon sounds to me like some kind of fish."

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not in this club, you don't!

     Everything about this club of Lionel's depressed Jane, and not least the ordeal to which visitors were subjected immediately on entering. They found themselves in a vast hall liberally provided with repellent-looking statues and presided over by a porter who might have been the model for any one of them. To him they have their names and the name of their host, and the porter, plainly not believing their story for a moment but deciding that it would be amusing to lure them on beore exposing their pretensions, dispatched a page in quest of the member they asked for, confident that he would return with the information that the gentleman had nevr heard of them in his life. And that, he seemed to be saying, would teach them not to come here trying to borrow money.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Helene Whitney's connections

     Actress Helene Whitney was active in films from 1939 to 1948. She had some impressive connections in her non-Hollywood life. For instance, on her mother's side she was a grandniece and cousin twice removed of Alexander Graham Bell. Her father was a first cousin once removed of President Teddy Roosevelt. She was married for three years to Richard Reynolds, heir to the aluminum and tobacco fortunes.

Avoid him if possible

     "Then be on the alert. Have a care that he doesn't get called to the telephone at the end of the meal, leaving you stuck with the bill. Your best policy, of course, would be to sever relations over the after-luncheon coffee. Yes, that's the thing to do. Tell him you've been giving it some thought during his absence, and it's all off."

"Won't that offend him?"

"On the contrary. He'll applaud your good sense. He knows perfectly well what a hound and Tishbite he is. People have been telling him for years. I was at school with L. P. Green and I have a fund of stories about him, all stressing his unfitness for human consumption. He has absolutely nothing to recommend him as a biological specimen."

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She trusted him

Long ago there was a lady left money with me. She has never returned and when I tried the name she gave me and the place, nothing was known, but someday, needing it, she will seek me out. She will find lands she owns and a house here and there, and each year I study the money and judge what must be done with it, for she was a woman who trusted at least one man and shall not regret it.

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour) 

He acts his nature

     "Each of us does what he must do. I may kill the wolf who kills my sheep, but I understand him, too If the wolf must die that my sheep may live, so be it. But I ned not hate the wolf for what it is his nature to be."

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Eliminate the competition

     "Like all the Irish," he said, amused, "you talk easily, and always with the right words." He scowled. "Chantry, I know not the name. Should there not be a Mac or an O before it?"

    "I had another name once," I said, "but put it aside long since I discovered," I spoke wryly, "that those of my name did not live long. When a land is taken and the people remain unconquered it is considered wise to eliminate all those about who an uprising might gather."

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Strive to be useful

     I directed the loading of supplies, food, extra canvas, and I watched the storage of powder and shot. In every way I attempted to make myself useful. Clifford might wish for bold men, but useful men were just as necessary.

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Persistence

     "My old master, George Bishop, used to say that writing was not only talent, but it was character, the character of the writer. Many are called, he would say, but few are chosen, and it is character that chooses them. In the last analysis it is persistence that matters."

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Wild-sounding language

     An old woman appeared from the bracken as though rising from it, and I saw for the first time a path there. She spoke to Fergus and her Gaelic held a wild, strange sound unlike any I'd heard, but pleasant to the ear. It set me to thinking of the bagpipes sounding across the moors.

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Paddy's pig

     "Lad, lad! D'y' think I ken not your Gaelic? You're Irish as Paddy's pig, and so am I, but there's those who would have my heart if the chance offered."

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour. I like that expressions, "Irish as Paddy's pig.")

The old breed

     What had become, I wondered, of the old breed? Of the Pizarros, of the Ponce de Leons, the Balboas and the Alvarados? They were hard, fierce men, many of them survivors of the Moorish wars. Bloody men in a bloody time, but in their own way they had been ruthlessly efficient. Nothing had stopped them.

    These people before me were the latecomers, the courtiers, the politicians, skilled at intrigue and the use of family and political connections, who had outwitted the conquistadores at court, robbing them of the fruits of their hard-won battles and taking the profits for themselves. But the lions had made the kill, and the vultures now ate the meat.

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

An honest man

     "Captain, to be an honest man is not easy, but I fear that that is what I am. It is an affliction of mine that tries me sorely. Yet . . . what can a man do? I want only what is mine, and not to trade upon the happiness or unhappiness of others."

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Irish class

     I have never been one to weep, nor to bewail my fortunes, which God knows have been ill enough, and I cannot find it in me to don the mantle of Job. Perhaps it is that I am Irish. We Irish wear the cloak of adversity with style.

(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)

Strange names

 There are some names which are fairly common, or have been in the past, which are just almost never heard in the United States. For example: Cuthbert, Argyle, Percival. How often do you hear those?

Franklin who?

     You probably never heard of him. Franklin Farnum was a character actor who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1950s. He holds the distinction of having appeared in more films that won Academy Awards for Best Picture than any other acture. Probably the most memorable of them was Going My Way, which starred Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald.

Talking it out thoroughly

     Though a very few hours spent in the hard labour or incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Sounds like a snoozer

     The events of the evening were not very remarkable. The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who ahd real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none t all; and the performers themselves were as usual, in their own estimation, and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in England.

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Just show me the money

     His manners, to them, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him.

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Fancy, but useless

     But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every tooth-pick case in the shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face of strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of fashion.

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)