Round 1 - 21 April 1999

1. Which of Mr Mulliner's relations was a photographer? Answer: his cousin Clarence Mulliner, from "The Romance of a Bulb-squeezer" in "Meet Mr Mulliner".

2. Which of Lord Emsworth's sisters was mistaken for the cook?  Answer (easy for those of you who have been listening to "Full Moon" on Radio 4 on Tuesdays) is Lady Hermione Wedge; "Full Moon" chapter 6 Section 4.

3. What name did Gussie adopt  in New York? George Wilson. This was meant to be hard; our brilliant entry asked the good question "Which Gussie do you mean?". This quizmaster did not answer, on principle, but the answer is Gussie Mannering-Phipps, from "Extricating Young Gussie" in the book "The Man with Two Left Feet". He calls himself George Wilson because he says, "I don't know what it is about America, but the broad fact is that it's not a place where you can call yourself Augustus Mannering-Phipps."

Round 2 - 30 April 1999

Who said:

1.  "Some slight friction threatening in the Balkans, sir."
The inimitable Jeeves said this, after bringing in the good old cup of tea to Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum" from "The Inimitable Jeeves" (chapter 1, and indeed page 1 of the Herbert Jenkins and Penguin editions). It might perhaps have been said by any master of understatement at any time since about 1999 BC, when the pre-literate Caucasians left the Caucasus for the Balkans to thrash the Thracians. In 1914, to keep the pot on the boil, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to a chunk of Balkans, was shot by a Bosnian in Serbia, using a revolver that Lord Emsworth had given him to clean and then forgot about (see the Epilogue to "Reminiscences of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood", edited by Norman Murphy.) On the later occasion of the quiz question, Jeeves's "news" might have been about the Greco-Turkish war (1920-1922). This war ended, as far as such wars ever end, with a massive ethnic cleansing. Turks were shipped out of Greece into Turkey and Greeks out of Turkey into Greece. PGW and History both repeat themselves, but with new twists among the echoes.

2. "Why, damme, if there's any justice in the world, if there's a spark of decency and good feeling in your bally bosoms, I should think you would let me in free for suggesting the idea."
This is Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge, our favourite scoundrel, in "Ukridge's Accident Syndicate" from the book "Ukridge".

3. "From ledger to ledger they hurry me, to stifle my regret, and when they win a smile from me they think that I forget."
Psmith says this in "Psmith in the City", chapter 14, "Mr Waller appears in a New Light". Psmith is listless because Mike Jackson has been moved on to another department. He is adapting a song by Thomas Haynes Bayly, "Oh! No! We Never Mention Her", which in part went:

From sport to sport they hurry me to banish my regret,
And when they win a smile from me, they think that I regret.

Round 3 - 7 May 1999

Who wore:

1. Bertie Wooster's heliotrope pyjamas (or pajamas) with the old gold stripe, without permission, three months after breaking off her engagement to him?
Pauline Stoker in Thank You, Jeeves, at the end of Chapter six, appropriately entitled "Complications Set In".

2. Tights of rich black, surmounted by a leopard's skin; tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles; and towering above his head, a head-dress of ostrich feathers?
Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, in Uncle Fred in the Springtime chapter 4. He went to the all-night fancy-dress Bohemian Ball at the Albert Hall. He told Pongo Twistleton he was going as a Boy Scout, but changed his mind when Polly Pott, who accompanied him, said it would be fun if he went as a Zulu warrior.  Her father, Mustard Pott, next morning locked him in the Drones Club telephone booth before anyone had seen him. M. P. then held the Clothes Stakes. This was a way in which any Drones present, dripping as usual with sporting blood, could lose money to M. P. by betting on what Horace might be wearing.

3. One tennis shoe and one carpet slipper?
The cab driver in "The Story of Cedric" from Mr Mulliner Speaking; because he suffered from corns. Cedric, in the cab, was wearing yellow shoes with morning-clothes, for reasons too complex to go into now, which would upset anybody at the height of the season, and thought he would buy the cab-driver's boots. But though the cab-driver was willing to sell the tennis shoe and carpet slipper at ten bob the pair, if you could call them a pair, they were not the answer Cedric was
looking for.

Round 4 - 14 May 1999

Questions of time

1. At what time on Friday, July 1, did Freddie Threepwood stipulate that somebody wearing a pink chrysanthemum should meet him in the lobby of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel,?
At noon, twelve sharp. "Leave it to Psmith", chapter 6 ("Lord Emsworth meets a Poet"), section 1. As Freddie didn't know what the somebody (Psmith, as it turned out) looked like, nor what a chrysanthemum looked like, nor how much Psmith prattled on, and hadn't allowed for the fact that he had promised to catch the twelve-fifty from Paddington, the meeting ended in undignified haste.

2. For how long was somebody sent to prison as he was due to visit friends of his aunt for three weeks?
Thirty days without the option of a fine, in "Without the Option", from "Carry On Jeeves".  "Somebody" was Sippy, or Sipperley, as in the immortal lines a few pages later:
"Jeeves, Mr Souperley is in the Sip".
"Sir?"
"I mean, Mr Sipperley is in the soup".

3. Who suggested that the millennium should be indefinitely put back until there was a rule against husbands and wives playing golf together?
The Oldest Member, on the first page of "Keeping in with Vosper" from "The Heart of a Goof". It is the only mention of the millennium I can remember, but ought to be more widely known. But I think clubs still allow married couples to play together, and the millennium presses on regardless.

Round 5 - 23 May 1999

Bees, not Drones
Not all the characters who enlivened the Wodehouse scene were fed by the ravens or loafed on their legacies.  Who was:

1.  An official at the Foreign Office?
We said at the end of the questions "Bonus points for giving the (or a) book and chapter or short story in which each occurs."
The Foreign Office official is George Tupper. He appears in many Ukridge stories, and we counted as complete as well as correct entries which specified one short story in which he is mentioned, and the book in which that story comes. He first appears in "Ukridge's Dog College" from the book Ukridge.

2.  An average-adjuster?
Ernest Faraday Plinlimmon, in "There's Always Golf" from Lord Emsworth and Others. "I am told by those in a position to know" [said the Oldest Member] "that he adjusts a beautiful average". Two of our experts admitted they were not quite sure what an average-adjuster was, and got a long explanation.  So in future, if you don't want to know, don't ask.

3. A Process Server?
Sam Bulpitt, from Summer Moonshine. As "Sam" he comes early on; he is called a "process server" in chapter 10. (The technical term is "plasterer".)

Round 6 - 1 June 1999

Imposters like Mice
Many of the Master's characters move under assumed names, for romantic or nefarious reasons, or, as with Lord Ickenham, because they don't think it quite sporting to use their own.

Who passed himself off as

1. Augustus Whipple.
This was Samuel Galahad Bagshott, in Galahad at Blandings, or in its American title The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood.. He comes on stage in chapter 3 and turns impostor in chapter 8, section 3. Or at least he has the impostor's mask thrust on him, quite unnecessarily, by Gally Threepwood, just after Emsworth had invited him to stay as long as he liked, under any name he chose, even his own.

2. The Curate of Chipley-in-the-Glen.
Soapy Sid, presumably Sidney Hemmingway, from The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves in the USA version). He appears in chapter 3, "Aunt Agatha Speaks Her Mind". He is exposed and unmasked by Jeeves as a thief and pickpocket in the next chapter, "Pearls mean Tears". In The Jeeves Omnibus and World of Jeeves the story, with interesting variations at the climax, is told entirely under the title "Aunt Agatha Takes the Count". One of the rare and refreshing times when Aunt Agatha looks foolish.

3. Thomas G Gunn.
This is another "Soapy", Soapy Molloy, dealer in mythical oil stock, husband of Dolly, née Gunn, another pickpocket (when she isn't being a shoplifter). They appear in Sam the Sudden, or in the USA Sam in the Suburbs, their first appearance of many together in the annals of Wodehousian petty crime. In chapter 13, "Introducing a Syndicate", two days after the Molloys are married, suspicion has already come between them, and Dolly goes rather desperately to Chimp Twist for advice. By chapter 15 Soapy is pretending to be Dolly's father, taking her maiden name "Gunn" for the purpose, and both call at "Mon Repos" pretending to be prospective purchasers.

Round 7 - 10 June 1999

Author, Author
The Master created several characters who were themselves littérateurs. Who wrote:

1. thrillers, and lived for a time in Sunnybrae?
Jerry Vail (Pigs Have Wings; first appearing in chapter 3 and moving into Sunnybrae in chapter 9). He was convinced that there he would write his masterpiece, about the criminal Lavender Joe.  However, the house was apparently haunted by noises that would have caused the Committee of the Society of Psychical Research to say "Lord-love-a-duck", and Jerry was beset by unwelcome visitors including policemen, pigmen, and pigs. So the Lavender Joe story was, as far as we can tell, never written.

2. under the pen name of George Masterman?
Lady Wickham (from "the Awful Gladness Of The Mater" in Mr Mulliner Speaking). Dudley Finch told her that the chap George Masterman wrote "the most frightful bilge", unaware that "George Masterman" was her own pen name.  This sort of thing happened all the time to those who became enamoured of Bobbie Wickham.

3. stories of pure love under the pen name of Alicia Seymour?
Freddie Oaker (Thank You, Jeeves, chapter 3, "Re-enter the Dead Past"). Bertie Wooster tells us about his Rosie-M.-Banks-style literary activities. Freddie was a member of the Drones Club, and we found this evidence of the catholicity of the Drones' membership rather heartening.

Round 8 - 18 June 1999

The Upper Crust At Work.
"Nowadays, the House of Lords is practically empty except in the evenings and on bank holidays" -  from Ring For Jeeves. Well, not quite, perhaps, but certainly the nobility and gentry toil at times. Which member of the privileged class:

1. Became for an afternoon in America a salesman of richly bound Encyclopaedias of sport?
Lord Emsworth, in "Birth Of a Salesman" from Nothing Serious.
The ninth earl is miffed at being treated as a back number by his son Freddie, a salesman of dog biscuits. He establishes his own selling reputation by securing an order for a gross of richly bound encyclopaedias of sport from a timber wolf anxious that his absent wife should not hear about the blondes festooned round his sports car.

2. Became the country copper of Steeple Bumpleigh?
D'Arcy (Stilton) Cheesewright  in Joy In The Morning (end of chapter 7) appears as a copper, one of the recent "graduates" of the Police College at Hendon. After being engaged to the haughty Lady Florence Craye, he escapes to the glamorous novelist Daphne Dolores Morehead.

3. Insisted on being employed as a butler in his own house?
George Viscount Uffenham in "Money In The Bank" (chapter 6), has a clause in the lease of his mansion obliging the lessor to employ him as Cakebread the butler. He can then (though this is not in the lease) look for the money he has hidden in the house and forgotten where.

Round 9 - 29 June 1999

An extraordinary number of the denizens of the pages of Wodehouse characters find themselves straying from the straight and narrow. In fact, it would not be an understatement to say that many of them leap from the s. and n. with a whoop and a holler. Below are three examples of wrong-doing of the darkest order. Identify the malefactors, and the punishments, if known. Bonus for book and/or chapter.

1. Who achieved notoriety as the Kensington Garden Flower-Picker?
Lord Emsworth, in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" in Blandings Castle (1922). There is good stuff in Angus McAllister. Although he has left the employ of Lord E. due to a dispute, he still identifies him to the policeman who has cobbled our Clarence: "Aye," he said. "Yon's Lorrud Emsworruth!" And Lord E. is let go without a stain on his character (but probably several on his suit). McAllister gets his job back, of course.

2. Who filled a rival's dog with steak-and-onions just before a rat-killing contest?
Sir Gregory Parsloe. We have only Gally's word for this, of course, but why would Gally lie? Then again, why not?

This tale comes up several times in the Blandings Castle canon, (Pigs Have Wings, Chapter 2, for example) and the result is, that although Sir Gregory never faces the majesty of the law for this dark deed, he is doomed forever to be suspected of other crimes, including pig-nobbling. We reap what we sow.

Interestingly, for a story by a man who claimed he "couldn't read" Dickens, there is a strong whiff of "The Pickwick Papers" in this tale. Compare Mr. Alfred Jingle's Pickwickian dog story in Chapter 2 of that saga to Galahad's from chapter 3 of Summer Lightning:

Jingle: "Ah! You should keep dogs - fine animals - sagacious creatures - dog of my own once - Pointer - surprising instinct - out shooting one day - entering enclosure - whistled - dog stopped - whistled again - Ponto - no go; stock still - called him - Ponto, Ponto - wouldn't move - dog transfixed - staring at a board - looked up, saw an inscription - 'Gamekeeper has orders to shoot all dogs found in this enclosure' - wouldn't pass it - wonderful dog - valuable dog that - very."

Gally: "Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days - they've pulled it down now - and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the bar. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe's Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I'm dashed if he didn't just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him ... called him ... Towser, Towser ... No good ... Fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn't prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog's breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That's the sort of man young Parsloe is."

3. Who was very properly nicked for driving without a license, reckless driving, speeding, improper turns, going thru seven red lights and refusing to stop when ordered to by a policeman?
This is an exceedingly unfair question, because the incident does not occur in a Wodehouse novel or short story. It is, in fact an anecdote which appeared in a series that Wodehouse did for Punch entitled "Our Man in America." It involves one George Clemens, who appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, NY, before Justice of the Peace Otis G. (not J.) Pike. Clemens' explanation for his behavior: "It wasn't really my fault, your honor," he said. "I was drunk at the time."

Your Quizmaster likes this tale for two reasons: one because it appears in the volume Plum Pie right after a story featuring the QM's alter ago, Jas Waterbury, and two because the QM grew up on Long Island and met Justice (later Congressman) Pike on several occasions.

Round 10 - 8 July 1999

1. The Theosophist is Bertie Wooster's un-named cousin, in "The Artistic Career of Corky" from Carry On, Jeeves. Bertie has just compared Jeeves, in his ability to materialize instantly, to  "...one of those weird birds in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie."

We are indebted to Ben Molony, who gets full points for reminding us that Mrs. Horace Hignett, in Chapter One of The Girl On The Boat, is described as "the world-famous writer on Theosophy". We also gave points for Kristine Fowler's answer of "Plum's brother Armine", who was, in fact, very prominent in the Theosophy world, particularly in middle-age, when, according to Plum, he had put on enormous weight. Could pie have been involved?

We regret that we cannot accept the answer "Madeline Bassett". Although she does disapprove of Gussie's partaking of the flesh of animals slain in anger, her interest in stars and bunnies seems to make her more of a Pantheist than anything else. She'd probably be a Moonie today.

2. The Atheist is Constable Ernest Dobbs of The Mating Season. In Chapter Three, Corky Pirbright, niece of the local vicar, says of him, "He annoys Uncle Sidney by popping out at him from side streets and making offensive cracks about Jonah and the Whale."

The more devout among you will rejoice to know that Dobbs sees the light in Chapter 26.

3. Ann Moon, in Big Money, announces her conversion to Predestination when Berry Conway, the man of her dreams, keeps popping into her life unexpectedly.

We had to disagree with John Fletcher, who feels that the sentence "There's a divinity that shapes our ends," from "Bill the Bloodhound" in The Man With Two Left Feet qualifies. There is no character in the story who professes a belief in the statement, and we won't hold the narrator to what is, after all, merely a narrative device. We are in accord with Ben Molony, that Sam Shotter's remark to Kay, "I feel as if we had been destined for each other from the beginning of time", in Sam The Sudden, qualifies. However, we respectfully disagree with Madhur Tiwary. Cora McGuffy Spottsworth, in "Feet of Clay", from Nothing Serious, seems to us more interested in Reincarnation than Predestination.