Round 11 - 16 July 1999

1. Who once remained between the sheets for 24 hours, and what was the apparel-related reason?
That would be Ukridge, in "Ukridge's Accident Syndicate" from Ukridge (aka "He Rather Enjoyed It"):

"I've been in bed," said Freddie,"for over a fortnight."

The statement incurred Ukridge's stern disapproval. That great man made a practice of never arising before noon, and on one occasion, when a carelessly thrown match had burned a hole in his only pair of trousers, had gone so far as to remain between the sheets for forty-eight hours; but sloth on so majestic a scale as this shocked him. Although why he couldn't wander the streets clad only in his mackintosh and ginger-beer wire spectacles, one doesn't know. Some antiquated laws concerning acts against the common weal, one supposes.

2. Who gave his trousers away in the High Street, during what atmospheric conditions, and why?
Ezekiel Wellbeloved, grandfather of eminent pig man George Cyril, took off his trousers one snowy afternoon in the High Street, and gave them away to a passer-by, saying that he wouldn't be needing them any longer, as the end of the world was coming a five-thirty sharp. This interesting anecdote is straight from the lips of the Hon. Gally, (Pigs Have Wings, Chapter Ten) and I for one believe him. This is no colorful story about a Pink 'Un or a Pelican, and wouldn't end up in his Reminiscences. It's merely a bit of local color, and therefore rings true. Besides, Ezekiel's son, Orlando, was also an eccentric. He - but we never do learn more about that blot on the Wellbeloved escutcheon, as Gally is interrupted before completing the tale.

3. Who was divested of his leg-apparel during what should have been a solemn, religious festivity?
The Brittany resort of St. Rocque is normally staid and peaceful - until the festival of St. Rocque in late July. "Who St. Rocque was and what he did to win canonization few ... have the slightest idea, but that does not prevent their celebrating his Festival with a whole-hearted gusto which for twenty-four hours makes the place a perfect hell."

In Chapter Four of French Leave, millionaire Freddie Carpenter is forced to lurk in the dunes, trouser-less, "Because a bunch of drunks tore them off me. I was strolling along, minding my own business and not interfering with anyone, and they ganged up on me."

Only in Wodehouse could a man find himself semi-clad during a festival on the coast of France, and be indignant about it. "Chacun a son gout" about sums it up.

Round 12 - 25 July 1999

1. Very imaginative projections of the future of La Briggs. Sue Marra Byham believes that it was her typewriting bureau that inspired Lord Peter Wimsey, "as all of Lavender's typists were agreeable to moonlighting as detectives, or occasionally, gun molls..." John Fletcher projects a more tragic future for the Briggs beazel - after
a nifty blackmailing career financed by the Duke of Dunstable, she marries Baxter, buys him a knighthood, and is poisoned by him. That someone would murder her, we can believe, but we feel that if the thing was to be done at all, it was undoubtedly a niblick shot ...

2. Sue Marra Byham sees Psmith as the Captain of Industry that he professes to abhor. Having inherited his uncle's fish business, he then met a fellow selling dog biscuits (could this be his old pal Freddie Threepwood, now running Donaldson's Dog Joy upon the unfortunate demise of his father-in-law?) and makes a packet selling tasty, fishy biscuits for cats. "Psmith and his wife adopted fifty elegant cats" (Byham writes) "and publicized their Psalmon and Katfish biscuits by bringing several of the purring family with them whenever they went to Cannes, the Rivera, the Ritz..." Myes, possibly. I don't quite see Psmith as a cat person, though. But I do like the Psalmon - nice touch, that. John Fletcher believes that Psmith used his natural conversational talents ("Don't talk so much!" says Freddie Threepwood plaintively) to become a successful radio interviewer, with his own show, "Cosy Moments". Fletcher claims that "he was known to embarrass modern poets by asking them what this or that went, but generally he made his interviewees feel terrific." This is ripe stuff, provided we keep it in mind that this is a British radio programme. In America, we have strict policies against having poets on talk shows, and it is against FCC regulations to make your guests feel terrific.

3. Sue Byham believes that Baxter married Honoria Glossop, and they opened a school. The contemplation of this Dotheboys Hall, polluted, inevitably, one feels, by Master Roderick Glossop Baxter, a supercilious boy with pimples disliked by all, who once ate a Psalmon biscuit on a dare, is too awful to contemplate. John Fletcher finishes up the scenario he began in Question One by surmising that Baxter, having been imprisoned for 15 years fir the murder of his wife, the Lady La Briggs Baxter, was released and went mad and was put in the loony bin. Yes, but was he ever really guilty, o Fletcher? Or was he set up for the murder by Alaric "Plots Have I Laid" Gilpin, Duke of Dunstable? Was Pilbeam the real culprit, ever in the Duke's employ? And wasn't it a simple matter for the Duke to blackmail Sir Roderick Glossop into certifying Baxter as suitable for Colney Hatch, where Baxter remains to this day, wearing lemon-coloured pajamas and singing "Loch Lomond".

Round 13 - 3 August 1999

The multiple-choice questions are each intended to shine a small beam of light on one of the Master's pleasures or habits.

1. The first human gorilla comes in the agreeable and almost Psmith-like form of Cyril Waddesley-Davenport, who dresses up as a monkey in the Mulliner story Monkey Business from Blandings Castle & Elsewhere. He is much too couth for the quotation. Then there are explorers and big-game hunters like Major Brabazon Plank in Uncle Dynamite, Major Plank in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and perhaps the most beautifully drawn of the type, Captain Brabazon Biggar in Ring for Jeeves. Their overlapping names, similar military rank and similar attempts to import the Code of the Explorer into the home country, suggest that Wodehouse had the same original in mind, perhaps from the fiction of the time, and "sent it up". They are neither couth nor intelligent, but they are harmless and even useful members of society. Finally there is Sir Roderick Spode, the least couth of all, and the most dangerous, to whom the quotation refers, from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves at the end of chapter 13.

"Couth" is a back-formation from "uncouth". It is like "gruntled" which is a really new Wodehouse word. You can find both "couth" and "gruntled" in a big dictionary, but PG made "gruntled" mean the opposite of "disgruntled" which the dictionary had not, whereas the dictionary "couth" has always been the opposite of "uncouth". As Wodehouse uses them they are complimentary, lovable qualities. Let us try to become couth and gruntled, and if that is too difficult at least let us use the words.

2. Many characters are couth, gruntled, and "boomps-a-daisy", but peers can combine this with sharp practice verging on the illegal, as the extract hinted. Perhaps the right to be tried in their own House explains this. That right has been abolished, and the House itself is under threat; but the self-confidence of the nobility will still go a long way. Of the three peers on offer, Uffenham's eccentricity does not amount to sharp practice, but both Rowcester and Ickenham have brushes with the law. Perhaps if young Rowcester had Ickenham's maturity he too would have been more "boomps-a-daisy". Ickenham is so described in Uncle Dynamite, chapter 6 section 1.

3. The third question shows us PGW laughing at ugly buildings. His descriptions of Walsingford Hall in Summer Moonshine} (". . . the celebrated eyesore in all its revolting hideousness", chapter 2) and Wallingford Street, West Kensington (can the similarity of names be a coincidence?) in Leave it to Psmith, chapter 2, Enter Psmith. (". . . sensitive young impressionists from the artists' colony up Holland Park way may sometimes be seen stumbling through it with hands over their eyes, muttering between clenched teeth 'How long? How long?' ") are grim indeed. But the quotation given about bricks recovering from an attack of jaundice applied to Peacehaven from Big Money, chapter 5.

Round 14 - 15 August 1999

1. After thieves had helped themselves to raspberry jam, who made the pun "Ah, then you will be able to catch them red-handed"?
This was in "Young Men in Spats", from the ever-popular "Uncle Fred Flits By", top of the Wodehouse anthology poll for favourite Wodehouse short stories. So it's
hardly surprising that everyone got the right answer, Uncle Fred, otherwise known as Lord Ickenham.

2. Who said "Do you mean to tell me . . . that when you said a 'mille' what you meant was a meal?"
Those whose French is school-based, rather than fluent, pronounce the French for 1000 just like the English 'meal'. This is the crux of another story from "Young Men in Spats", "Noblesse Oblige". I thought it might be a mistake having two questions from the same book, but I doubt it. One new entrant only competed because he had just finished reading it. He guessed the third answer, but there was not so lucky.

3. Who said "She could not help herself. Or, rather, she could not refrain from helping herself"?
The first "help" means something like "control" and the second means "steal". This is what the Oldest Member says in "A Mixed Threesome" from "The Clicking of Cuthbert". The alternatives were Psmith and Sam Shotter, who each got two votes from the guessers. Nobody got the source. Only one of the five entrants got it right, Anne Bianchi, who got the other two questions right too, so she is the winner of this round.

Round 15 - 23 August 1999

1. At the end of five minutes, X was mildly surprised to find himself in possession of a smoking-cap, three boxes of poker-chips, some polo sticks, a fishing-rod, a concertina, a ukelele, and a bowl of goldfish.
This is Osbert Mulliner in "The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner" from Mr Mulliner Speaking.

2. So saying, Y produced from his trousers pocket a pencil, a ball of string, a piece of indiarubber, threepence in bronze, the necklace, a packet of chewing gum, two buttons, and a small cough lozenge, and placed them on the table. He picked up the pencil, the ball of string, the piece of indiarubber, the threepence, the chewing gum, the buttons, and the lozenge, and returned then to his store.
This is Peasemarch, on the penultimate page (Chapter 24 in the UK edition, Chapter 28 in the USA edition) of The Luck of the Bodkins.

3. "She came down to the school one Saturday and stood us a feed. Coffee, doughnuts, raspberry vinegar, two kinds of jam, two kinds of cake, ice cream, and sausages and mashed potatoes," said Z, in whose memory the episode had never ceased to be green.
This is Berry Conway, in Chapter 1 section 2 of Big Money. 

Round 16 - 31 August 1999

X and Y fell down different stairs:

1. Was X Rupert Baxter, Tuppy Glossop or Algernon Martyn?
2. Was Y Boko Fittleworth, Marmaduke Chuffnell, or Brabazon Plank?

1. This was Rupert Baxter, in Leave it to Psmith, chapter 11 ("Almost Entirely About Flowerpots") section 2, falling down the Blandings Castle stairs. He had done it before in Something Fresh (Something New), chapter 8 section 4. The Law of Gravity was not his ally, except when he escaped detection by jumping out of a Blandings Castle window in Summer Lightning (Fish Preferred), chapter 10 section 2.

2. Marmaduke Chuffnell, known as "Chuffy", fell down these stairs. He should have known better about making a wide, passionate gesture in this old-world cottage ("Seaview Cottage") as it was his own property.  It happened in Thank You Jeeves near the end of chapter 9 ("Lovers' Meetings"). Boko Fittleworth and Major Brabazon Plank appeared in the other two novels where Bertie took a country cottage (called "Wee Nooke" both times); in Joy in the Morning and Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (or The Cat-Nappers), respectively. But for some reason they don't seem to have fallen down the stairs.

Z was buzzed by bugs.

3. Was Z Rufus Bennett, Freddie Bullivant, or Roderick Glossop?
This playground for insects was Rufus Bennett, in The Girl on the Boat (Three Men and a Maid), chapter 10 ("Trouble at Windles") section 2. Freddie Bullivant had sadly similar difficulty in "Fixing it for Freddie" from Carry on Jeeves: "he became quite a popular pet with the mosquitoes. They would hang round waiting for him to come out, and would give a miss to perfectly good strollers just so as to be in good condition for him."  Sir Roderick Glossop was "a popular pet" not with insects but with mice, small dogs, monkeys, parrots, and a dangerous lunatic in Thank You Jeeves, chapter 16.

Round 17 - 8 September 1999

A HUMOROUS STORY
      Two men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a brewer's van.  And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately. The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was Nicholls and which Jackson.  So they collected as much as they could, and called it Nixon.

Jeeves to Wooster in Right Ho, Jeeves. Jeeves told the tale as Bertie was about to embark on a nine-mile cycle ride in the rain.

Round 18 - 17 September 1999

1. Lady Ann Worblington from Something Fresh or Something New.

2. Lady Florence Moresby from Sunset at Blandings.

3. Lady Dianne Phipps from Sunset at Blandings, who stands alone as the only likeable nice one of the lot.

These were three of Lord Emsworth's sisters and they each appeared in only one book. There were ten of them: Lady Constance Keeble Schoonmaker, Lady Julia Fish, Lady Hermione Wedge (answer to a question asked earlier, she looks like a cook), Lady Ann Warblington, Lady Charlotte Threepwood, Lady Georgiana, Lady Dora Garland, Lady Jane, Lady Dianne Phipps and Lady Florence Moresby.

Round 19 - 25 September 1999

1. The Luck of the Bodkins.

2. The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace.

3. Death at the Excelsior.

Round 20 - 2 October 1999

1. Blandings Castle; P G Wodehouse.

2. The Code of the Woosters; Alexander Cockburn.

3. Sam the Sudden; P G Wodehouse.