Country Life

With spring on the jolly old horizon, the time seems ripe for a change of pace and a refreshing week in the country. Heaping lung-fulls of fresh air, home-brewed ale and the quiet life (providing, of course, that you avoid School Treats and the society of the fifth Earl of Ickenham) are the order of the day. Can you identify the following bucolic settings and provide the usual sources? To avoid confusion, A, B and C are the names of towns while X, Y, and Z are the names of people.

1. (Two descriptions of the same place from two different books)

1a The village of ___(A)____ is one of those sleepy hamlets which modern progress has failed to touch, except by the addition of a railroad station and a room over the grocer's shop where moving-pictures are on view on Tuesdays and Fridays. The church is Norman, and the intelligence of the majority of the inhabitants palaeozoic. To alight at ___(A)___ Station in the dusk of a rather chilly Spring day, when the south-west wind had shifted to due east, and the thrifty inhabitants have not yet lit their windows, is to be smitten with the feeling that one is at the edge of the world with no friends near.

1b The little town of ____(A)____ was a peaceful sight as it slept in the sun ... ___(X)____ became conscious of a certain tranquillity as she entered the old grey High Street, which was the centre of the place's life and thought. ___(A)___ had a comforting air of having been exactly the same for centuries. Troubles might vex the generations it housed, but they did not worry that lichened church with its sturdy, four-square tower, nor those red-roofed shops, nor the age-old inns whose second stories bulged so comfortably out over the pavements ... There was about the High Street of ___(A)____ a suggestion of a slumbering cathedral close. Nothing was modern in it except the moving-picture house – and even that called itself the Electric Theatre, and was ivy-coloured and surmounted by stone gables.

On second thoughts, that statement is too sweeping. There was one other modern building in the High Street – Jno. Banks, Hairdresser, to wit, and ___(X)___ was just coming abreast of Mr. Banks's emporium now.

2. ___(B)___, like so many of our rural hamlets, is not at its best and brightest on a Sunday. When you have walked down the main street and looked at the Jubilee Watering-Trough, there is nothing much to do except go home and then come out again and walk down the main street once more and take another look at the Jubilee Watering-Trough.

3. "I was just admiring your place," he said.

"Its appearance is the best part of it," said ____(Y)____. "It is a deceptive place. The bay looks beautiful, but you can't bathe in it because of the jellyfish. The woods are lovely, but you daren't go near them because of the ticks ... They jump on you and suck your blood," said ___(Y)____, carelessly. "And the nights are gorgeous, but you have to stay indoors after dusk because of the mosquitoes."

She paused to mark the effect of these horrors on her visitor. "And then, of course," she went on, as he showed no signs of flying to the house to pack his bag and catch the next train, "the bees are always stinging you. I hope you are not afraid of bees, Mr ___(Z)___?"

4. And as for the chance of securing anything in the nature of a costume in ___(C)___, that, it seemed to us, could be ruled out altogether. At the beginning of this chronicle, I gave a brief description of this hamlet, showing it to be rich in honeysuckle-covered cottages and apple-cheeked villagers, but that let it out. It had only one shop, that so ably conducted by Mrs Greenlees opposite the Jubilee watering-trough: and this, after it had supplied you with string, pink sweets, sides of bacon, tinned goods and Old Moore's Almanac, was a spent force.

Round 182 - 18 March 2004

Pat and Mike and Friends

We're all familiar with Pat and Mike, the two Irishmen last seen walking down Broadway, hitting each other on the head with umbrellas while exclaiming "Faith and begob!" Now, with another Saint Patrick's Day celebration safely behind us and our green neck-ties put in storage for another year, the time would appear to be ripe for a Quiz on some of the other natives of the Emerald Isle who make appearances in the canon.

1. In Groome Street in those days there had been a dance-hall, named the Shamrock and presided over by one ___(A)___, an Irishman and a friend of ___(B)___'s. At the Shamrock nightly dances were given and well attended by the youth of the neighbourhood at ten cents a head. All might have been well, had it not been for certain other youths of the neighbourhood who did not dance and so had to seek other means of getting rid of their surplus energy. It was the practice of these light-hearted sportsmen to pay their ten cents for admittance, and once in, to make hay. And this habit, Mr. ____(A)____ found, was having a marked effect on his earnings ... In this crisis the proprietor thought of his friend ___(B)___. ___(B)___ at that time had a solid reputation as a man of his hands. It is true that, as his detractors pointed out, he had killed no one – a defect which he had subsequently corrected, but his admirers based his claim to respect on his many meritorious performances with fists and with the black-jack.

2. (It's too late to substitute something else for this question now, but your Quiz-Master has just discovered that the first paragraph of the following excerpt appears in the British, but NOT the American first edition of this book. The second paragraph appears in both versions.)

He ... finally fell in with a friendly policeman, who, observing the young man's physique, which even then was impressive, suggested that he should join the Force. The policeman, whose name was O'Flaherty, having talked the matter over with two other policemen whose names were O'Rourke and Muldoon, strongly recommended that he should change his name to something Irish, the better to equip him for his new profession. Accordingly, ___(C)___ ceased to be and Patrolman ___(D)___ was born.

In his search for wealth he had been content to abide his time. He did not want the trifling sum which every New York policeman acquires. His object was something bigger, and he was prepared to wait for it. He knew that small beginnings were an annoying but unavoidable preliminary to all great fortunes. Probably Captain Kidd had started in a small way. Certainly Mr Rockefeller had. He was content to follow in the footsteps of the masters.

3. ___(E)___, it may be remembered, had started out to search through New York for a policeman named Gallagher: and New York had given him of its abundance. It had provided for Mr ___(E)___'s inspection a perfect wealth of Gallaghers: but, owing to the fact that what he really wished to meet was not a Gallagher but (a or an) ___(F)___, nothing in the nature of solid success had rewarded his efforts. He had seen tall Gallaghers and small Gallaghers, thin Gallaghers and stout Gallaghers, a cross-eyed Gallagher, a pimpled Gallagher, a Gallagher with red hair, a Gallagher with a broken nose, two Gallaghers who looked like bad dreams, and a final supreme Gallagher who looked like nothing on earth. But he had not found the man to whom he had sold the stock of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of Hollywood, Cal.

4. (Can you identify the short-tempered professor and his tactless companions in the following extract?)

We were strolling in the garden, when some demon urged ___(G)___, apropos of the professor's mention of Dublin, to start upon the Irish question ... ___(G)___ probably knew less about the Irish question than any male adult in the kingdom, but he had boomed forth some very positive opinions of his own on the subject before I could get near enough to him to whisper a warning. When I did, I suppose I must have whispered louder than I had intended, for the professor heard me, and my words acted as the match to the powder.

"He's touchy about Ireland, is he?" he thundered. "Drop it, is it? And why? Why, sir? I'm one of the best tempered men that ever came from
Dublin, let me tell you, and I will not stay here to be insulted by the insinuation that I cannot discuss Ireland as calmly as any one in this company or out of it. Touchy about Ireland, is it? ... And let me tell you, Mr ___(G)___, that I consider your opinions poisonous. Poisonous, sir. And you know nothing whatever about the subject, sir. Every word you say betrays your profound ignorance. I don't wish to see you or to speak to you again. Understand that, sir. Our acquaintance began to-day, and it will cease to-day. Good-night to you, sir."

Round 183 - 26 March 2004

Insolence and Insubordination

We all remember the time Elsie Bean touched off what amounted to a revolt in the Ashenden Manor servants' hall by calling her employer an "overbearing dishpot". Elsie's refreshing candour is by no means unique amongst Wodehousean employees, both on the domestic staff and in commerce, although it is doubtful that "refreshing" is the precise adjective their employers would use to describe the candour.

Your task this week is to identify the outspoken employee and the unfortunate employer on the receiving end of the outbursts in the following examples.

1. "All right? Nom d'un nom d'un nom! The hell you say it's all right? Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one plays larks against me on my windows. I enjoy larks on my windows worse as any. It is very little all right. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer is this house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted."

2. "___(A)___," said ___(B)___, "would you care to be torn limb from limb?"

Mr. ___(A)___ had begun to feel alarmed. He had never heard of a staff artist assaulting his employer, but everything has to have a beginning and ___(B)___, he knew, had an original mind and would not allow himself to be deterred by mere lack of precedent.

"Because I'll tell you how you can work it. By going into that room and saying what you were intending to say. That girl in there is the most wonderful girl in the world, and if you think that I shall just stand saying `Yes, sir' and `No, sir' while you tick me off in her presence you are mistaken, ___(A)___, grievously mistaken. If you so much as shove your nose inside that door till you're sent for, I'll break your spine in eight places. You'll think you're back at the osteopath's."

3. "Would any of you like to hear me recite `The Bells', by Edgar Allan Poe?" she asked.

"No!" said Mr. ____(C)____.

"No!" said Mr. ____(D)____.

"No!" said Mr. ____(E)____. "We have no desire to hear you recite `The Bells', Miss ___(F)___."

The girl's eyes flashed haughtily.

"Miss ___(G)___," she corrected. "And just for that you'll get `The Charge of the Light Brigade', and like it."

4. (In this question we have an angry employer, an insubordinate cook and an unfortunate butler who, after the cook's outspoken candour, was left alone to face his master's wrath.)

"Don't say 'Yus?', you pie-faced little excrescence," he thundered. "Say 'Yes, sir?', and say it in a respectful and soldierly manner, coming smartly to attention with the thumbs on the seam of the trousers. ___(X)___, that lunch you had the temerity to serve up today was an insult to me and a disgrace to anyone daring to call herself a cook, and I have sent for you to inform you that if there is any more of this spirit of slackness and laissez faire on your part ...."

___(Y)___ paused. The "I'll tell your mother", with which he had been about to conclude his sentence, seemed to him to lack a certain something. "You'll hear of it," he said and, feeling that even this was not as good as he could have wished, infused such vigour and venom into his description of underdone chicken, watery brussels sprouts and potatoes that you couldn't get a fork into that a weaker girl might well have wilted.

But the ___(X)___s were made of tough stuff. They did not quail in the hour of peril. The child met his eye with iron resolution, and came back strongly.

"Hitler!" she said, putting out her tongue.

"Did you call me Hitler?"

"Yus, I did."

"Well, don't do it again," said ___(Y)___ sternly. "You may go, ___(X)____."

___(X)___ went, with her nose in the air ...

A proud man is never left unruffled when worsted in a verbal duel with a cook, especially a cook aged fifteen with pigtails, and in ___(Y)___'s manner as he turned on his butler there was more than a suggestion of a rogue elephant at the height of its fever. For some minutes he spoke well and forcefully, with particular reference to the other's habit of chewing his sweet ration while waiting at table, and when a length he was permitted to follow ___(X)___ to the lower regions in which they had their being, (the butler), if not actually shaking in every limb, was at any rate subdued enough to omit to utter his customary 'Whoops!' when tripping over the rug.

Round 184 - 5 April 2004

There's No Place Like Home

This week's Quiz is dedicated to the memory of Anne Bianchi of Houston, Texas, a former Quizmistress and frequent entrant, who passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. We'll all miss her good cheer and her many contributions to the Quiz.

Who can resist a visit to the delightful surroundings of Blandings Castle or Brinkley Court? Even Totleigh Towers, where every prospect pleases and only man is vile, and Bumpleigh Hall, which map-makers are urged to mark with a cross accompanied by the legend "Here be dragons" or "Keep ye eye skinned for hippogriffs", are pleasing to the eye. But there are more than a few regrettable examples of the architectural art scattered through the canon.

Can you identify the residents of the following monstrosities?

1. The residence of Mr __(A)__, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive, New York, is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or while enjoying ten cents' worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus, it jumps out and bites at you. Architects confronted with it reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the lay observer has a sense of shock. The place resembles in almost equal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and a Chinese pagoda. Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the complacent animals that guard New York's public library. It is a house that it is impossible to overlook; and it was probably for this reason that Mrs __(A)__ insisted on her husband's buying it, for she was a woman who liked to be noticed.

2. Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks ... What ___(B)___ was now looking at, accordingly, was a vast edifice constructed of glazed red brick, in some respects resembling a French château, but, on the whole, perhaps, having more of the appearance of one of those model dwellings in which a certain number of working-class families are assured of a certain number of cubic feet of air. It had a huge leaden roof, tapering to a point and topped by a weathervane, and from one side of it, like some unpleasant growth, there protruded a large conservatory. There was also a dome and some minarets.

3. A lover of the old and quaint would have admired [name of building], dating as it did from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The only feeling it gave Mr ____(C)____ was that its architect must have been cock-eyed. Mouldering stone with spiky turrets stuck on all over it was not his idea of a house. And, while its interior had been modernized, or what these French called modernized – electric light and two bathrooms – it was not at all what he had been accustomed to in Glendale, California.

4. Externally, [name of house] was one of those gloomy, sombre country-houses which seem to exist only for the purpose of having horrid crimes committed in them. Even in his brief visit to the grounds, ___(D)___ had noticed fully half a dozen places which seemed incomplete without a cross indicating the spot where the body was found by the police. It was the sort of house where ravens croak in the front garden just before the death of the heir, and shrieks ring out from behind barred windows in the night.

Nor was its interior more cheerful. And, as for the personnel of the domestic staff, that was less exhilarating than anything else about the place. It consisted of an aged cook who, as she bent over her cauldrons, looked like something out of a travelling company of "Macbeth", touring the smaller towns of the North, and ___(E)___, the butler, a huge, sinister man with a cast in one eye and an evil light in the other.

Round 185 - 13 April 2004

All Singing! All Dancing! All Wodehouse! (Part I)

In addition to Bertram Wooster, who has been known to sing hunting songs standing on chairs and comic songs while riding on bicycles (in the nude), several vocalists display their gifts in the pages of Wodehouse, including Edwin Plummer, who sings duets with stable dogs, and the boy scout in The Swoop, who can imitate "a tarantula singing to its young". Identify the singers in the following passages (and, if possible, the novels or stories from which the passages come).

1. "Sing it," said the specialist.

"S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s?" said A__, puzzled.

The specialist explained. He was a kindly man with moth-eaten whiskers and an eye like a meditative cod-fish.

"Many people," he said, "who are unable to articulate clearly in ordinary speech find themselves lucid and bell-like when the burst into song."

It seemed a good idea to A__. He thought for a moment; then threw his head back, shut his eyes, and let it go in a musical baritone.

"I love a lassie, a bonny, bonny lassie," sang A__. "She's as pure as the lily in the dell."

"No doubt," said the specialist, wincing a little.

"She's as sweet as the heather, the bonny purple heather – Susan, my Worcestershire bluebell." ...

"Quite," said the specialist, hurriedly. He had a sensitive ear. "Quite, quite."

"If you knew Susie like I know Susie," A__ was beginning, but the other stopped him.

"Quite. Exactly. I shouldn't wonder. And now," said the specialist, "what precisely is the trouble? No," he said hastily, as A__ inflated his lungs, "don't sing it. Write the particulars on this piece of paper."

2. At half-past two, B__ left to go to a singing lesson. C__ trotted after her to the door, bleating and frisking a goodish bit, and then came back and looked at me in a goofy sort of way.

"Well, D__?"

"Well, what?"

"I mean, isn't she?"

"Oh, rather," I said, humouring the poor fish.

"Wonderful eyes?"

"Oh, rather."

"Wonderful figure?"

"Oh, quite."

"Wonderful voice?"

Here I was able to intone the response with a little more heartiness. B__, at C__'s request, had sung us a few songs before digging in at the trough, and nobody could have denied that her pipes were in great shape. Plaster was still falling from the ceiling.

3. The second door along the passage was the bathroom which served that part of the house, and as he came abreast of it there proceeded from within the sound of a voice raised in song. It was easily identifiable as that of the man he was seeking. On the previous morning, he had heard E__ singing in the rhododendron walk, and it was not an experience one could forget. He halted, and placing his lips to the keyhole, said:

"Oh ... er ..."

The only response which greeted this effort was the sound of splashing and a renewed burst of song. F__, with some vague idea of not allowing himself to be overheard by the man in the wardrobe a floor below, had pitched his voice in an almost inaudible whisper. He was aware of this, but nevertheless found himself annoyed. He did not approve of hired investigators breaking into song. An old-fashioned man, with rigid views upon these things, there seemed to him something improper and disrespectful about such a procedure. You engage a detective, he felt, to detect, not to behave like a canary.

4. How few girls, he mused, would have been so hospitable to one who, after all, was a comparative stranger. But then that was what had appealed to him about G__ during their ocean crossing – her warmth, her kindness, her angelic sympathy. How tenderly she had comforted him when he had told her about his being slung out of that correspondent job. How tactful she had been when a wild shot of his had lost them the shuffleboard semi-finals. And that time when the purser had roped him in to sing at the ship's concert. He had been in a highly nervous state at the prospect, and she had put heart into him. "It won't be so bad," she had said, though there she had been mistaken, for his performance had been ghastly even by ship's concert standards.

(Hint on #4: This singer sings again later in the book, forming a trio with two other men, one of whom has "a pleasing and distinctive singing voice, not unlike that of a buzzard suffering from laryngitis".)

Extra credit: To receive credit, you must identify both the singer and the book from which the following passage comes.

Something stirred in H__. His memory might be poor where recent events were concerned, but it was excellent about things that had happened thirty years ago, especially if these were of no importance whatsoever.

"Bless my soul," he said, "that reminds me of a song in a musical comedy I__ took me to when we were young men. About the Grenadier Guards guarding the Banks of England at night. How did it go?

"If you've money or plate in the bank," sang H__ in a reedy tenor like an escape of gas, "we're the principal parties to thank. Our regiment sends you a squad that defends you from anarchists greedy and lank."

Round 186 - 21 April 2004

All Singing! All Dancing! All Wodehouse! (Part II)

This week's theme is Dancers in Distress.

1. Every drop of blood in his body cried to him "Dance!" He could resist no longer.

"Shall we?" he said.

A__ should not have danced. He was an estimable young man, honest, amiable, with high ideals. He had played an excellent game of football at the university; his golf handicap was plus two; and he was no mean performer with the gloves. But we all of us have our limitations, and A__ had his. He was not a good dancer. He was energetic, but he required more elbow room than the ordinary dancing floor provides. As a dancer, in fact, he closely resembled a Newfoundland puppy trying to run across a field.

It takes a good deal to daunt the New York dancing man, but the invasion of the floor by A__ and B__ undoubtedly caused a profound and even painful sensation. Linked together they formed a living projectile which might well have intimdated the bravest. C__ was their first victim. They caught him in mid-step – one of those fancy steps which he was just beginning to exhume from the cobwebbed recesses of his memory – and swept him away.

Identify A and B, the anti-Astaire-and-Rogers.

2. Every Saturday night we have a dance at the club-house, at which all the younger set assembles. D__ was there, escorted by E__, their differences having apparently been smoothed over, and for a while all seems to have gone well. E__ was an awkward and clumsy dancer, but the girl's love enabled her to endure the way in which he jumped on and off her feet. When the music stopped, she started straightening out her toes without the slightest doubt in her mind that he was a king among men.

And then suddenly he turned to her with a kindly smile.

"I'd like to give you a bit of advice," he said. "What's wrong with your dancing is that you give a sort of jump at the turn, like a trout leaping at a fly. Now, the way to cure this is very simple. Try to imagine that the ceiling is very low and made of very thin glass, and that your head just touches it and you mustn't break it. You've dropped your engagement ring," he said, as something small and hard struck him on the side of the face.

"No, I haven't," said D__. "I threw it at you."

Name the kindly bestower of advice and his strangely ungrateful dancing partner.

3. Being of a literary turn of mind and also economical, F__'s first step towards his new ambition was to buy a fifty-cent book entitled "The A B C of Modern Dancing", by "Tango". It would, he felt – not without reason – be simpler and less expensive if he should learn the steps by the aid of this treatise than by the more customary method of taking lessons. But quite early in the proceedings he was faced by complications. In the first place, it was his intention to keep what he was doing a secret from G__, in order to be able to give her a pleasant surprise on her birthday, which would be coming in a few weeks. In the second place, "The A B C of Modern Dancing" proved on investigation far more complex than its title suggested.

These two facts were the ruin of the literary method, for, while it was possible to study the text and the plates at the bank, the home was the only place in which he could attempt to put the instructions into practice. You cannot move the right foot along dotted line A B and bring the left foot round curve C D in a paying-cashier's cage in a bank, nor, if you are at all sensitive to public opinion, on the pavement going home.

Name this student of the dance.

4. "When I was about five," resumed H__, removing his cigarette from the holder and inserting another, "I attended my first dancing-school. I'm a bit shaky on some of the incidents of the days when I was trailing clouds of glory, but I do remember that dancing-school. At great trouble and expense I was taught to throw up a rubber ball with my left hand and catch it with my right, keeping the small of the back rigid and generally behaving in a graceful and attractive manner. It doesn't sound a likely sort of thing to learn at a dancing-school, but I swear to you that's what the curriculum was ... But what good does it do me now? Absolutely none. Long before I got a chance of exhibiting my accomplishment in public and having beautiful women fawn on me for my skill, the Society of Amalgamated Professors of the Dance decided that the Rubber-Ball Glide, or whatever it was called, was out of date."

Name this student of the dance.

Extra credit: Which Wodehouse character dances (according to his fiancée) like a dromedary with the staggers?

Round 187 - 29 April 2004

Dancing Mad

More dancing this week, but of a specialised kind. Identify the would-be dancers in the following passages and the people whose remains they would like to use as a dancing floor.

1. It was the sort of sigh which a kind-hearted man would have given on peeping into a padded cell in which some old friend was confined, and A__ resented it with all the force of an imperious nature. He had not ceased to wonder what, if anything, could be done about it when the refreshments arrived, carried by B__ the footman. B__ placed them gently on the table, shot a swift glance of respectful commiseration at the patient, and passed away.

The sigh had cut A__ like a knife. The look stabbed him like a dagger. For a moment he thought of calling the man back and asking him what the devil he meant by staring at him like that, but wiser counsels prevailed. He contented himself with draining a glass of whisky-and-soda and swallowing two sandwiches.

This done, he felt a little – not much, but a little – better. Before, he would gladly have murdered C__ and B__ and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.

2. "Could you lend me a tenner, D__, old man?"

"No, I couldn't."

"It would save my life."

"There," said D__, "you have put your finger on the insuperable objection to the scheme. I see no percentage in your being alive. I wish you were a corpse, preferably a mangled one. I should like to dance on your remains."

E__ was surprised.

"Dance on my remains?"

"All over them."

E__ drew himself up. He had his pride.

"Oh?" he said. "Well, in that case, tinkerty-tonk."

3. "What are you, a reporter?"

"No, just a friend."

E__ had never heard the howl of a timber wolf which had stubbed its toe on a rock while hurrying through a Canadian forest, but he thought it must closely resemble the sound that nearly cracked his ear drum.

"A friend, eh? You are, are you? No doubt one of the friends who have led the ivory-skulled little moron astray and started her off on this escutcheon-blotting. I'd like to skin the lot of you with a blunt knife and dance on your remains. Bounders with beards! You have a beard, of course?"

4. "Are you busy at the moment, Mr. F__?"

"No."

"Good," said G__. "Because I want to break your neck ... Or, rather," said G__, correcting his previous statement, "tear you limb from limb."

"Why?" asked F__, who liked to go into things.

"You know why," said G__, moving eastward as his vis-à-vis moved westwards. "Because you steal girls' hearts behind people's backs, like a snake."

F__, who happened to know something about snakes, might have challenged this description of their habits, but he was afforded no opportunity of doing so ...

"You are proposing to tear me limb from limb, are you?"

"And also to dance on the fragments."

Extra Credit: This passage appears in the UK edition, but not the US edition, of a Wodehouse book. Again, identify the man who wants to dance and his prospective victim.

"... I was compelled to go home and change into these damned things."

"You look lovely."

"I know I look lovely, but I can't breathe."

"Do you want to?"

"Certainly I want to. And I'll tell you another thing I want" – here H__ gritted his teeth and there came into his eye a cold, purposeful gleam – "and that is some day, somewhere, to meet that 'Here, my good man' fellow again and deal with him faithfully. The idea I have in mind is to cut him into small pieces with a rusty knife."

"Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil?"

"Yes," said H__, weighing the suggestion and evidently approving of it. "Having first sprinkled him with boiling oil, I shall then dance on his remains."

Round 188 - 7 May 2004

Men with Two Left Feet

When Wodehouse's men are not tripping over rugs (Stanwood Cobbold's "habit when he entered rooms"), they are tripping over cats, their own feet, or whatever is handy. Identify the following.

1. The effect the apparition had on me was to make me start violently, and we all know what happens when you start violently while holding a full cup of tea. The contents of mine flew through the air and came to rest on the trousers of A__, moistening them to no little extent ...

"I can see you have not changed since you were with me at B__," he said in an extremely nasty voice, dabbing at the trousers with a handkerchief. "Bungling C__ we used to call him," he went on, addressing his remarks to D__ and evidently trying to enlist her sympathy. "He could not perform the simplest action such as holding a cup without spreading ruin and disaster on all sides. It was an axiom at B__ that if there was a chair in any room in which he happened to be, C__ would trip over it. The child," said A__, "is the father of the man."

Name the recipient of the tea, and explain what startled the narrator into starting violently.

2. "Sh!" said E__, though he had not spoken, and before they set out she had a word of advice on strategy and tactics to impart.

"Now listen, F__," she said. "We want to conduct this operation with a minimum of sound effects. Your impulse, I know, will be to trip over your feet and fall downstairs with a noise like the delivery of a ton of coal, but resist it. Play the scene quietly. Okay? Right. Then let's go."

Nothing marred the success of the expedition from the outset. True, F__ tripped over his feet as anticipated ...

Identify the tripper and his companion.

3. On the first landing a hand was placed on his in the darkness and the girl's voice whispered in his ear.

"We are just outside father's study," he heard her say. "We must be as quiet as mice."

"As what?" said G__.

"Mice."

"Oh, rather," said G__, and immediately bumped into what appeared to be a pedestal of some sort.

These pedestals usually have vases on top of them, and it was revealed to G__ a moment later that this one was no exception. There was a noise like ten simultaneous dinner-services coming apart in the hands of ten simultaneous parlour-maids ...

Who is the bumper?

4. But the change in him, I soon perceived, was purely superficial. The manner in which he now tripped over a rug and cannoned into an occasional table, upsetting it with all the old thoroughness, showed me that at heart he still remained the same galumphing man with two left feet, who had always been constitutionally incapable of walking through the Great Gobi desert without knocking something over.

Name this adversary of occasional tables.

Round 189 - 17 May 2004

Mighty Singers in the Bath-Tub

We all know that Bertram W Wooster tends to accompany the soaping of a meditative foot with the rendering of "Sonny Boy", a song only to be attempted by a few of the elect in the privacy of the bathroom. But he is not the only bath-tub artist in the canon. Can you identify the following bathing bards?

1. "You realise the position? She has returned you to store. No ruddy wedding bells for you."

"Quite."

"Good. You will be leaving here fairly soon, I take it?"

"Almost at once."

"Good," said A___, and sprang on his bicycle as if it had been a mettlesome charger.

Nor did I linger. I did the distance from the gate to the kitchen in about three seconds flat. From the window of the bathroom, as I passed, there came the voice of B___ as he sluiced the frame. He was singing some gay air. A sea chanty, probably, which he had learned from C___ or one of the captains in his employment.

2. "Sorry. He must have his shower. When a man’s been exercising and has got himself into a perfect lather of sweat ..."

"Keep it clean," said D___ coldly. "There is no need to stress the physical side. Oh, very well, then, I suppose I shall have to trust to tact and charm of manner. But I wish to goodness I hadn’t got to spring business matters on him on top of what seems to have been a slightly hectic morning."

He shot his cuffs, pulled down his waistcoat, and walked with a resolute step out of the room. He was about to try to get into the ribs of a man who for a lifetime had been saving up to be a miser and who, even apart from this trait in his character, held the subversive view that the less money young men had the better for them. D___ was a gay optimist, cheerful of soul and a mighty singer in the bath-tub, but he could not feel very sanguine.

3. "It’s his love life, E___. It’s come a stinker."

"He doesn’t know his luck."

A spasm of pain passed over F___’s face, as if he had been a curate compelled to listen to blasphemy from his vicar. Pursuing his policy of being diplomatic, he said nothing on the subject but in between two dance steps asked if E___ happened to know the name of the girl to whom G___ had given his heart.

"Sure," said E___. "She interviewed me for her paper. It’s H___. Did you ever hear a song of Cole Porter’s - ‘Mister and Mrs H___’?"

"No."

"Good song. I often sing it in my bath."

"Indeed? I would like to hear it."

"You must drop in some morning. About half-past nine would be the best time. Bring a raincoat, as I splash about a good deal. It’s one of those songs that need putting over with gestures."

4. Hear him now as he toils. He has a long garden implement in his hand, and he is sending up the death-rate in slug circles with a devastating rapidity.

"Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay;

Ta-ra-ra BOOM-"

And the boom is a death-knell. As it rings softly out on the pleasant spring air, another slug has made the Great Change.

It is peculiar, this gaiety. It gives one to think Others have noticed it. His lordship’s valet amongst them.

"I give you my honest word, I___," says the valet, awed, "this very morning I ‘eard the old devil a-singing in ‘is bath! Chirupping away like a blooming linnet!"

Round 190 - 25 May 2004

Breaking the Fast

Much has been written about the suspension of disbelief required for relaxed reading of Plum’s writings. But not even the most spiritual Wodehouse character would be prepared to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Before the morning cuppa, and the subsequent eggs, bacon, kippers, and what not, no form of human life is possible. Please identify the four chaps who are partaking of, respectively, a kingsize, a Trappist, an Anglo-European and a suspiciously revised breakfast.

1. "Did you know that these magistrates were expert comedians?"

"No, sir. The fact had not been drawn to my attention."

"Think of Groucho Marx and you will get the idea. One gag after another, and all at my expense. I was just the straight man, and I found the experience most unpleasant, particularly as I had had no breakfast that any conscientious gourmet could call breakfast. Have you ever passed the night in chokey, A___?"

"No, sir. I have been fortunate in that respect."

"It renders the appetite unusually keen. So rally round, if you don’t mind, and busy yourself with the skillet. We have eggs on the premises, I presume?"

"Yes, sir."

"I shall need about fifty, fried, with perhaps the same number of pounds of bacon. Toast, also. Four loaves will probably be sufficient, but stand by to weigh in more if necessary. And don’t forget the coffee – say sixteen pots."

"Very good, sir."

2. At half past seven precisely the door opened again and B___ reappeared, followed by a butler bearing on a silver salver a glass of water and a small slice of bread. Pride urged C___ to reject the refreshment, but hunger overcame pride. He swallowed the bread which the butler offered him in small bits in a spoon, and drank the water.

"At what hour would the gentleman desire breakfast, sir?" asked the butler.

"Now," said C___, for his appetite, always healthy, seemed to have been sharpened by the trials which he had undergone.

"Let us say nine o’clock," suggested B___. "Put aside another slice of that bread, D___. And no doubt C___ would enjoy a glass of this excellent water."

3. It was with the utmost consternation that E___ charged into the hotel. He finally succeeded in running his quarry to earth in the main dining-room, where F___, peckish after his night in the open, was restoring himself with a bite of breakfast.

The Continental breakfast, as a rule, consists of a pot of what the French smilingly call coffee, three smallish dabs of butter, a roll shaped like a roll, and another roll shaped like a horseshoe. F___ had introduced some variations of his own invention. He had just finished an omelette fines herbes, a double order of ham and eggs, and a small sirloin steak, and as E___ burst into the room he looked up at him questioningly with his mouth full of toast and marmalade.

4. Returning from the task of climbing the ladder and handing in the revised breakfast at G___’s window, he encountered his employer in the hall.

"Oh, H___," said I___.

"Sir?"

"The – er – the violent case. Has he had breakfast?"

"He was eatin’ it quite hearty when I left him not five minutes ago, sir."

I___ paused.

"Did he drink his coffee?" he asked carelessly.

"Yes, sir," replied H___ in a smart and respectful manner.

"Oh! I see. Thank you."

"Thank you, sir," said H___.