Ghost stories

Perhaps you have never been butted by a ghost, but you must have been struck by a number of Wodehousian spectres. Well, here is a chance to indulge in some deliciously spine-chilling ‘spectral analyses’.

Bonus marks for references and other details.

1. (...) he became aware that it was no dream voice that spoke (...); that it proceeded from the shed against which he was leaning; and that what it was saying was not “Get out!” but “Let me out!”

He was both startled and intrigued. For a moment, his mind toyed with the thought of spectres. Then he reflected, and very reasonably, that a ghost that had only to walk a quarter of a mile to find one of the oldest castles in England at its disposal would scarcely waste its time haunting potting-sheds.

Whose voice was it? J. Chichester Clam’s, Sir Roderick Glossop’s, or Lord Tilbury’s?

2. Lord X had rallied from his initial panic. The spirit of revolt began to burn again in his bosom. (...) Perhaps the inherited tendencies of a line of ancestors who, whatever their shortcomings, had at least known how to treat their women folk, came to his aid. Possibly there stood by his side in this crisis ghosts of dead and buried Xs, whispering spectral encouragement in his ear – the ghosts, let us suppose, of that earl who, in the days of the seventh Henry, had stabbed his wife with a dagger to cure her tendency to lecture him at night; or of that other earl who, at a previous date in the annals of the family, had caused two aunts and a sister to be poisoned apparently from a mere whim. At any rate, Lord X produced from some source sufficient courage to talk back.

“Silly nonsense!” he grunted.

Who was this rebellious earl? Lord Emsworth, Lord Hoddesdon, Lord Marshmoreton, or Lord Shortlands?

3. “Y, there’s a ghost under the table.”

“Very good, m’lord.”

“What do you mean, ‘Very good, m’lord’? Don’t stand there saying ‘Very good, m’lord.’ Do something about it, man, do something about it.”

“I beg your lordship’s pardon, but I cannot comprehend just what it is that your lordship desires me to do.”

“Why, shoo it out.”

Who was Y? Beach, Fotheringay, Gascoigne, Spink, or Wrench? For extra credit, name his noble employer too.

4. In all his life he had never left a waiter untipped. (...) Ghosts of by-gone Zs – Zs who had scattered largesse to the multitude in the Middle Ages, Zs who in Regency days had flung landlords purses of gold – seemed to crowd at his elbow, imploring the last of their line not to disgrace the family name. (...)

“I say! (...) You haven’t tipped him!” (...)

A hundred dead Zs shrieked a ghostly shriek and covered their faces with their winding sheets. A stunned waiter clutched his napkin to his breast.

What ancient name does Z stand for?

Round 152 - 23 May 2003

Meadows trim with daisies pied

Let us celebrate the merry month of May and pull the gowans fine. Here are some star appearances of those delightful small flowers, daisies.

As usual, extra credit for references and other details.

1. “‘Every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee star is born in the Milky Way.’ Have you ever thought that, Mr Wooster?”

I never had. Most improbable, I considered, and it didn't seem to me to check up with her statement that the stars were God's daisy chain. I mean, you can't have it both ways.

Who was she?

2. When X receives his envelope (...) on the first of the month, it is too often his practice, in defiance of Mrs X's expressed wishes, to place its contents on the nose of some horse of whose speed and resolution he has heard good reports, and such horses have a nasty habit of pausing half-way down the stretch to pick daisies. And this had happened now.

What name does X stand for?

3. After all, he felt, it would be churlish of him, in the face of this almost supernatural slice of luck, to grumble at the one crumpled rose leaf. Besides, (...) he could (...) grow his moustache again. For there is this about moustaches, as about whiskers – though of these Mr Y, to do him justice, had never been guilty – that, like truth, though crushed to earth, they will rise. A little patience and his moustache would rise on stepping-stones of its dead self to higher things. Yes, when the fields were white with daisies it would return.

Who was ‘he’ (Mr Y)? Blair Eggleston, Percy Pilbeam, Roderick Spode, or Chimp Twist?

4. “(...) if you feel that you don’t like writing that cheque, I’ll ask a friend of mine to try what he can do to persuade you. He’s an all-in wrestler of the name of Z. I used to manage him at one time. He’s retired now (...). But he’s still in wonderful condition. You ought to see him crack Brazil nuts with his fingers. He thinks the world of me and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. Suppose, for instance, somebody had done me down in a business transaction, Z would spring to the task of plucking him limb from limb like some innocent little child doing She-loves-me she-loves-me-not with a daisy. (...)”

Please name the unspeakable speaker. For extra credit name the limb-plucking ex-wrestler (Z) as well.

Round 153 - 2 June 2003

French Leave

A few of Wodehouse's characters speak French "not so badly", like Jerry Shoesmith (aka Zoosmeet) in Frozen Assets, but most are indifferent linguists, aside from a few essential phrases such as Consommé aux Pommes d'Amour, Mignonette de poulet petit Duc, and Suprême de foie gras au champagne. Indeed, Lord Biskerton remarks: "I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected."

Identify the following.

1. Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

Who is about to talk French, and what has driven him to attempt this rash act?

2. "And now, A__, mes gants, mon chapeau, et le whangee de monsieur. I must be popping."

It was such a corking day and I had so much time in hand that near the Sorbonne I stopped my cab, deciding to walk the rest of the way. And I had hardly gone three steps and a half when there on the pavement before me stood old B__ in person. If I had completed the last step I should have rammed him.

"B__!" I cried. "Well, well, well!"

He peered at me in a blinking kind of way, rather like one of his Herefordshire cows prodded unexpectedly while lunching.

"C__!" he gurgled, in a devout sort of tone. "Thank God!" He clutched my arm. "Don't leave me, C__. I'm lost." ...

"Why didn't you ask the way?"

"I can't speak a word of French."

Name the lost soul.

3. He rushed to the telephone and was presently in communication with the concierge.

"Hullo? Yes?" said the concierge. "This is the Hotel Magnifique. Hall porter speaking."

"Dites-moi," said D__. "Esker-vous avez dans votre hôtel un monsieur nommé E__?"

"Yes, sir. Quite correct. There is a Mr E__ staying in the hotel."

"Est-il un oiseau avec beaucoup de ... Oh, hell, what's the French for 'pimples'?"

"The word you are trying to find is bouton," said the concierge. "Yes, sir. Mr. E__ is liberally pimpled."

Identify the pimpled oiseau.

4. He relapsed into a silence, standing with folded arms, staring before him rather like a strong, silent man in a novel when he's been given the bird by a girl and is thinking of looking in at the Rocky Mountains and bumping off a few bears. His manifest pippedness excited my compash, and I ventured a kindly word.

"I don't suppose you know what au pied de la lettre means, F__, but that's how I don't think you ought to take all that stuff G__ was saying just now too much."

He seemed interested.

"What the devil," he asked, "are you talking about?"

Who is the potential bear-hunter?

5. The magnificent form of the head-waiter materialized at their side. H__ gave him a lordly look.

"L'addition," he said haughtily.

I__ drew a reverent breath.

"Just like that!" she said. "And in French!"

"One drops into it, I find. Unconsciously, as it were."

"Do you speak it fluently?"

"Very, what I know of it. Which is just that word 'l'addition' and, of course, 'Oo là là!'"

Who are H and I?

Round 154 - 10 June 2003

Objets d'art

Identify the owners of the objets d'art described in the following passages.

1. ... He was an enthusiastic collector of things which A__, whose tastes lay in the same direction, would have stolen without a twinge of conscience if he could have got the chance ...

A__ had picked up a small china figure of delicate workmanship. It represented a warrior of pre-khaki days advancing with a spear upon an adversary who, judging from the contented expression on the warrior's face, was smaller than himself.

Who owns this small china figure?

2. She rose, and moved restlessly to the mantelpiece. I could see that she was looking for something to break as a relief to her surging emotions – what B__ would have called a palliative – and courteously drew her attention to a terracotta figure of the Infant Samuel at Prayer. She thanked me briefly, and hurled it against the opposite wall.

Who owns – or rather owned – the terracotta figure?

3. "She had a friend, a young sculptress ... Unfortunately this young sculptress was at that time modelling a bust of C__."

D__ was plainly bewildered. He stared at C__, studying his features closely and critically.

"What did C__ want a bust of himself for?"

Identify C and D. For extra credit, explain why the bust is valuable, and what is about to happen to it.

4. When E__ entered, F__ was looking straight in front of her and heaving gently, and G__ had just succeeded in breaking a valuable china figure which he had taken from an occasional table and was trying in a preoccupied manner to balance on the end of a paper-knife.
"H__ says you want to see me, mother," said E__, floating brightly in.
She stood there, looking at the two with shining eyes. Her cheeks were delightfully flushed; and there was about her so radiant an air of sweet, innocent, girlish gaiety that it was all F__ could do to refrain from hurling a bust of Edgar Allan Poe at her head.

Identify the members of this happy family.

Round 155 - 23 June 2003

A Lesson in Tact

Though sometimes mentally negligible, Wodehouse's men are notable for their good manners. Identify the following role models for those who wish to learn tact.

1. "You came to find a daughter, Mr. A__, and you have found a son!"

And he would like to see the man, thought B__, who could have put it more cleverly and pleasantly and tactfully than that.

"What are you talking about?" said A__, recovering breath. "I haven't got a son."

"I will be a son to you! I will be the prop of your declining years..."

"What the devil do you mean, my declining years?" demanded A__ with asperity.

2. "I've made enquiries in the servants' hall. He's a crooner. This is a known fact. He sings Trees. It's sheer nonsense to say you love him." ...

"I do!"

C__ was telling himself that he must be very tactful, very diplomatic.

"But the man's a mess," he said, in pursuance of this policy.

Who is being tactful, and about whom?

3. "It must be wonderful to be as old as you are, Uncle D__."

"Eh?" said D__, starting.

"To feel that there is such a short, short step to the quiet tomb, to the ineffable peace of the grave. To me, life seems to stretch out endlessly, like a long, dusty desert. Twenty-three! That's all I am. Only twenty-three. And all our family live to sixty."

"What do you mean, sixty?" demanded D__, with the warmth of a man who would be that next birthday.

Identify the speakers.

4. "Uncle E__," he said, "your white hairs protect you. You are an old man on the brink of the tomb--"

E__ started.

"What do you mean, on the brink of the tomb?"

"On the brink of the tomb," repeated F__ firmly. "And I am not going to shove you into it by giving you the slosh on the jaw which you have been asking for with every word you have uttered. But I would just like to say this. You are without exception the worst tick and bounder that ever got fatty degeneration of the heart through half a century of gorging food and swilling wine wrenched from the lips of the starving proletariat. You make me sick. You poison the air. Good-bye, Uncle E__," said F__, drawing away rather ostentatiously. "I think we had better terminate this interview, or I may become brusque."

Who is F, who so admirably restrains his temper?

5. G__ thinks he was under the impression that he was speaking in a guarded whisper, but, as a matter of fact, the words boomed through the air as if he had been a costermonger calling attention to his Brussels sprouts.

"H__!"

"Yes, Father?"

"Who's that ugly feller?"

"Hush!"

"What do you mean, hush? ... Must be a lunatic, too. Throws cats at people. ... Half-witted, I'd call him – if that. Besides being the most offensive-looking young toad I've ever seen on these premises. How long's he staying?"

"Till Monday."

"My God! And to-day's only Friday!"

Name G, the subject of this description, and H's father, his genial host.

Round 156 - 1 July 2003

Butterflies and Bees

In honour of the upcoming birthday (in only six months or so) of Muhammad Ali, the chap who floats like a bee and stings like a butterfly – or rather the other way round – we have an insect theme this week.

1. "Any message I can give him if he turns up?

"Yes. You can tell him that I am going to break his neck."

"Break his neck?"

"Yes. Are you deaf? Break his neck."

I nodded pacifically.

"I see. Break his neck. Right. And if he asks why?"

"He knows why. Because he is a butterfly who toys with women's hearts and throws them away like soiled gloves."

"Right ho." I hadn't had a notion that that was what butterflies did. Most interesting.

Name the butterfly whose cervical vertebrae are at risk.

2. He had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck and inconsistent play invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill. He was the sort of player who does the first two holes in one under bogey and then takes an eleven at the third. The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

Name the golfer with the butterfly problem.

3. From the suede shoes on his large, flat feet to the jaunty hat on his pumpkin-shaped head, A__ was correct in every detail. Birds twittered in admiration of his quiet grey suit, bees drew in their breaths sharply as they eyed that faultless shirt, beetles directed one another's attention to the gardenia in his buttonhole.

Who is the vision in grey, and who is responsible for his appearance?

4. She seated herself beside the hive and began to loosen the outside section. Then taking the brood-frame by the projecting ends, she pulled it out and handed it to her companion. She did it as one who plays an ace of trumps.

"Would you mind holding this, Mr. B__?" ...

The surface of the frame was black with what appeared at first sight to be a thick, bubbling fluid of some sort, pouring viscously to and fro as if some hidden fire had been lighted beneath it. Only after a closer inspection was it apparent to the lay eye that this seeming fluid was in reality composed of mass upon mass of bees. They shoved and writhed and muttered and jostled, for all the world like a collection of home-seeking City men trying to secure standing room on the Underground at half-past five in the afternoon.

Who is the beekeeper, and why is she handing the frame to her companion?

Round 157 - 11 July 2003

A six-day bicycle race

A few easy ones to distract you from the antics of Mr Armstrong and his friends on their scenic tour of French mountains ...

1. It was months since Q___ had made a decent pinch, and this sudden outbreak of crime brought out all the best in him. To leap on his machine and begin peddling like a contestant in a six-day bicycle race was with him the work of an instant. He did not even stop to say "Ho", his customary comment on the unusual.

It was not long before he sighted the man wanted by the police. R__ had soon given up the chase, realising the futility of trying to overtake on foot a cyclist who had fifty yards' start. He was standing now in the
middle of the road, his lips moving in a silent soliloquy which, if audible, would have had no chance of passing the censors, even in these free-speaking days.

Who are the three contestants in this unequal race?

2. [...] From the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or whatever it is.

Who is being manoeuvred into venturing into the dark on two wheels? (For a bonus point, describe his previous cycling career.)

3. Think for a moment what would happen. The shot would ring out, and instantly bicycle-policemen would be pursuing this taxi-cab with the purposeful speed of greyhounds trying to win the Waterloo Cup. You would be headed off and stopped. Ha! What is this? X__, the People's Pet, weltering in his gore? Death to the assassin!

Name the People's Pet and the person proposing his assassination.

4. There was only one adjective to describe this push-bike - the adjective blackguardly. It had that leering air, shared by some parrots and the baser variety of cat, of having seen and being jauntily familiar with all the sin of the world. Its handlebars curved up instead of down, it had gaps in its spokes, and its pedals were naked and unashamed. A sans-culotte of a bicycle. The sort of bicycle that snaps at strangers.

Who is the owner of this infernal machine, and who is about to ride twenty miles on it?

Round 158 - 21 July 2003

A Not Uncelebrated Poet

Wodehouse often pokes gentle fun at the late Lord Tennyson, but he quotes him so widely and frequently that there is clearly much respect and affection behind the mockery. Here are a few moments when the great Victorian poet becomes part of the action in his own right:

1. And A___ meanwhile? [...] He has just discovered the extraordinary resemblance, which had not occurred to him as he was climbing up the sheet, between his own position and that of the hero of Tennyson's
Maud, a poem to which he has always been much addicted – and never more so than during the days since he learned the name of the only possible girl. When he has not been playing golf, Tennyson's Maud has been his constant companion.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls
Come hither, the dances are done [...]

Who is A__, and why has he been climbing knotted sheets?

2. "I hear you're not the right Tennyson." [...] "You know what I mean. The Tennyson who wrote books."

B__ eyed C__ frostily. He was now definitely stiff. He might have been back at the Admiralty, rebuking a subordinate for allowing the veiled adventuress to steal the naval plans.

"I was under the impression," he said, an Oxford chill creeping into his voice, "that I was the Tennyson who wrote books. I know of no-one else of my name who does literary work. Of course, there was a not uncelebrated poet called Tennyson, but I presume you did not suppose -"

The time had come, D___ felt, to break the news. "Yes, he did, old boy. That's precisely what he did suppose. [...] He took you for the genuine half-a-league, half-a-league, half-a-league, onward bloke."

No prizes for guessing B__'s surname, but who is C___, who has made something of a literary howler? For a bonus point, which poem is later wrongly attributed to "the right Tennyson"?

3. "Are you fond of Tennyson?"

"I worship him," D__ said reverently. "Those -" he glanced at his cuff - "those 'Idylls of the King!' I do not like to think what an ocean voyage would be if I had not my Tennyson with me."

"We must read him together. He is my favourite poet!"

"We will! There is something about Tennyson..."

"Yes, isn't there! I've felt that myself so often."

"Some poets are whales at epics and all that sort of thing, while others call it a day when they've written something that runs to a couple of verses, but where Tennyson had the bulge was that his long game was as good as his short. He was great off the tee and a marvel with his chip-shots."

Name these twin souls. For another bonus point, what, specifically, do
they have in common with the characters in question 2?

4. The girl stared at him, dropping a slice of bread and butter in her emotion.

"You don't mean to say you read Tennyson, Mr F___?"

"Me?" said F__. "Tennyson?" Read Tennyson? Me read Tennyson? Well well well! Bless my soul! Why, I know him by heart – some of him."

"So do I! 'Break, break, break, on your cold grey stones, oh Sea ..."

"Quite. Or take the 'Lady of Shallot'."

"'I hold it truth with him who sings...'"

"So do I, absolutely. An then again, there's the 'Lady of Shallot'.

Dashed extraordinary that you should like Tennyson, too."

"I think he's wonderful."

"What a lad. That 'Lady of Shallot'. Some spin on the ball there."

"It's so absurd, the way people sneer at him nowadays."

"The silly bounders. Don't know what's good for them."

"He's my favourite poet."

"Mine too. Any bird who could write the 'Lady of Shallot' gets the cigar
or coco-nut, according to choice."

We've probably established which is F___'s favourite Tennyson poem. But which is the poem that gets him into trouble in a big way?

Round 159 - 31 July 2003

Stout Fellow

This week, the eagle-eyed should not need to make any wild surmises: all but one of the questions are based on the same sonnet. As usual, bonus points will be awarded for citing chapter and verse for the excerpts, and for knowing the waist measurements of all conquistadors mentioned.

1. 'A___,' I recollect saying, on returning to the apartment, 'who was that fellow who on looking at something felt like somebody looking at something? I learnt the passage at school, but it has escaped me.'

'I fancy the indivdual you have in mind, sir, is the poet Keats, who compared his emotions on first reading Chapman's Homer to those of stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.'

'The Pacific, eh?'

'Yes, sir. And all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.'

'Of course, it all comes back to me. Well, that's how I felt this afternoon on being introduced to Miss B___. Press the trousers with special care tonight, A___. I am dining with her.'

Who is the lady who has swum into the speaker's ken?

2. There was an awkward pause. Then Mr C__, for whom his fellow Socialist's methods of conversation held no mysteries, interpreted.

'The mustard, D__? Yes, yes. Would you mind passing D__ the mustard, Mr E__?'

'Oh, sorry,' gasped E__, and, reaching out, upset the water-jug into the open jam tart.

Through the black mist which rose before his eyes as he leaped to his feet and stammered apologies came the dispassionate voice of F__ reminding him that mustard was first introduced into Peru by Cortez.

Name the mustard expert and his table companions.

3. [...] Precisely so did H__ and J__ stare with eagle eyes at the second lake hole, and gaze at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a tee in Woodhaven. They had dreamed of such a happening so often and woke to find the vision false, that at first they could not believe that the thing had actually happened.

'I got over!' whispered H__, in an awed voice.

'So did I!' muttered J__.

Name the contestants, and the prize they are competing for. For a bonus point: what other poet is implicitly present in this story?

4. K___ found himself unable to speak. The sight of his employer had stirred him to his depths.

Up till now, he had regarded L___ as the most promising claim that any prospector for ore could hope to stake out, but one glance at the latter's son told him that he had been mistaken. This was the mug of a good man's dreams. For a long instant he stood staring silently at M___ with the same undisguised interest which stout Cortez had once displayed when inspecting the Pacific. It is scarcely exaggerating to say that K___ was feeling as if a new planet had swum into his ken.

Who is K__, who seems to be on the point of travelling into the realms
of gold, and how does he intend to get there?

5. [...] I received an anonymous letter containing the words 'You big stiff, it wasn't Cortez, it was Balboa.' This, I believe, is historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it was Balboa, the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time, and I see no reason why Cortez should not have had a look at it as well.

Which of the above excerpts is Wodehouse referring to in this passage from one of his prefaces?

Round 160 - 13 August 2003

The Noblest Roman of Them All

This quiz is divided into three parts. Well, all right then, three parts and one small Gallic village.

1. So far E__ had found his share of the dialogue delightfully easy. On these lines he would have been prepared to continue it all night. But there was something else besides "Yes, F___" that he must now endeavour to say. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: and that tide, he knew, would never rise higher than at the present moment. He swallowed twice to unlimber his vocal chords.

"F___", he said, and, though his heart was beating fast, his voice was steady, "there is something I would like to take this opportunity of saying. It will come as a surprise to you, but I hope not as an unpleasant surprise. I love your niece, G___, and she loves me, F___. We have loved each other for many weeks and it is my hope that you will give your consent to our marriage. I am not a rich man, F___. In fact, strictly speaking, except for my salary I haven't a bean in the world. [...]"

There was dead silence at the other end of the wire. It seemed as if the revelation of a good man's love had struck F___ dumb. It was only some moments later, after he had said "Hullo!" six times and "I say, are you there?" twice that it was borne in upon E___ that he had wasted two hundred and eighty words of the finest eloquence upon empty space.

What has caused F___ to leave the instrument so precipitately?

2. The sight of his old friend did nothing to alleviate H___'s gloom. His views on congenial society at the moment were exactly opposite to those expressed by Julius Caesar. He did not want men about him who were fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep o'nights. And while J___ was not fat, he had plainly enjoyed an excellent night's rest and was in capital spirits. As he walked in he was smiling as broadly as the K___. And that animal's unceasing joviality had been jarring on H___ ever since he had woken up.

His "What ho", accordingly, lacked spontaneity and heartiness. He was just settling down to breakfast, and had hoped to be left alone with his grief and his kippers. And if solitude were to be denied him, he would have preferred some visitor such as L___. Yond L___ had a lean and hungry look, and that was the sort of thing H___ required this morning. He felt scarcely capable of coping with J___.

Identify the species of the animal K___, and explain why it is upsetting J__.

3. "[...] A__ has been behaving so very oddly this last week or so. I don't mean so much giving me flowers and asking after my rheumatism, but I do think it was strange of him to go swimming in the lake with all his clothes on."

"Did he do that?"

"I saw him from my window."

"According to Shakespeare, Julius Caesar used to swim with all his clothes on."

"But he didn't gather frogs."

"No, you have a point there. One finds it very difficult to see why A___ should have wanted to gather frogs. Puzzled me a good deal, that."

Who is A___ and why has he been acting oddly?

4. On the theory, given to the world by my brother author, William Shakespeare, that it is the lean and hungry men who are dangerous and that the fat, the sleek-headed men and such as sleep o'nights, are harmless, B___ should have been above suspicion. He was infinitely the fattest man in the west-central postal district of London. He was a round ball of a man, who wheezed when he walked upstairs, which was seldom, and shook like a jelly if some tactless friend, wanting to attract his attention, tapped him unexpectedly on the shoulder. But this occurred still less frequently than walking upstairs, because in B___'s circle it was recognized that nothing is a greater breach of ettiquette and worse form than to tap people unexpectedly on the shoulder. That, it was felt, should be left to those who are paid by the Government to do it.

Who is B__, and who is the client about to engage his professional services in a matter of some delicacy?