Plum’s Country-House Olympics (I)

To remain in the spirit of the Athens summer games, we start a series of four quizzes devoted to some of the most favourite domestic sports in the canon. This week: hiding in cupboards. Please identify the following hiders.

1. "It’s the most loathsome evening there ever was. Do you know what’s happened, A___? B___’s been fired."

"Eh?"

"Given the gate. Driven into the snow. C___ says if he isn’t out of the place first thing tomorrow morning –"

"What?"

"– she’ll set the dogs on him."

A___’s monocle, leaping from the parent eye socket, flashed in the moonlight. He drew it in like an angler gaffing a fish, and having replaced it stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I’m telling you."

"But it doesn’t make sense. What’s C___ got against B___?"

"She didn’t like it when she found him in her closet."

"In her what?"

"Well, cupboard, then, if you prefer it. The cupboard in her bedroom."

2. D___ sat down on the bed, and I thought for a moment that he was going to be in the mode by burying his face in his hands. However, he merely brushed a dead spider from his brow.

"Have you locked the door, E___?"

"Yes, sir."

"Because you can never tell that that gastly F___ may not take it into his head to come –"

The word "back" froze on his lips. He hadn’t got any further than a b-ish sound, when the handle of the door began to twist and rattle. He sprang from the bed, and for an instant stood looking exactly like a picture G___ has in her dining room – The Stag at Bay - Landseer. Then he made a dive for the cupboard and was inside it before one really got on to it that he had started leaping. I have seen fellows late for the 9.15 move less nippily.

3. "Good morning, H___."

"Good morning, sir."

"I expect I gave you a start, H___?"

"I must confess to a momentary sensation of surprise, sir. I had supposed that you were in the United States of Northern America."

"It’s a long story," said I___, "but the nub of it is that I must see J___ immediately. Is she in her room?"

"I cannot speak from first-hand observation, sir, but I am inclined to fancy that her ladyship has not yet descended. Would you desire me to announce you, sir?"

"No, thanks. I’ll find my way up."

So up I___ buzzed, and presently he was sitting on J___’s bed, gazing into her eyes and holding her little hand in his. The exact words of their conversation I___ did not reveal to me, but no doubt he opened with a brief explanation of his presence and then they spoke of things which young lovers do speak about when they get together for a chat after long separation. At any rate, he tells me that they were more or less absorbed when the door handle rattled. He had just time to make a leap for a convenient cupboard as old K___ came in. There was a moment when the eyes of the two men met. And then I___ was in the cupboard among J___’s summer frocks.

4. It was some small comfort to L___ – and at the moment he needed what comfort he could get, however small – to find that there was plenty of space in the cupboard. And what was even better, seeing that he had had no time to close the door, it was generously filled with coats, overcoats, raincoats, and trousers. M___ was evidently a man who believed in taking an extensive wardrobe with him on country-house visits; and, while he deplored the dandyism which this implied, L___ would not have had it otherwise. Nestling in the undergrowth, he peered out between a raincoat and a pair of golfing knickerbockers. A strange silence had fallen, and he was curious to know what his host was doing with himself.

At first he could not sight him; but, shifting slightly to the left, he brought him into focus, and discovered that in the interval that had passed M___ had removed nearly all his clothes and was now standing before the open window, doing exercises.

Extra credit. Who is the owner of the cupboard described in the following fragment?

The cupboard contained an old rain-coat, two hats, a rusty golf-club, six croquet balls, a pamphlet on stock-breeding, three umbrellas, a copy of the Parish Magazine for the preceding November, a shoe, a mouse, and a smell of apples, but no suitcase.

Round 202 - 8 September 2004

Plum’s Country-House Olympics (II)

This week’s domestic sport is window-gazing. To put it in a nutshell, with one of the characters quoted below: "There is no healthier pursuit. Keeps you out in the open and fills your lungs with fresh air. Harley Street physicians recommend it." Can you name the following gazers?

1. His lordship’s opinion of his guest’s mental deficiencies was strengthened late that night when, hearing footsteps on the terrace, he poked his head out and found him standing beneath his window, blowing kisses at it.

At the sight of his host he appeared somewhat confused.

"Lovely evening," he said, with his usual hyenaesque laugh. "I – er – thought ... or, rather ... that is to say ... Ha, ha, ha!"

"Is anything the matter?"

"No, no! No! No, thanks, no! No! No, no! I – er – ho, ho, ho! – just came out for a stroll, ha, ha!"

2. "How do you explain?"

"Explain?"

"Your being there to raise alarms and be fawned on."

"Perfectly simple. My love for you is the talk of A___. What more natural than that I should have come to stand beneath your window, gazing up at it?"

"I see! And then you heard a noise –"

"A curious noise that sounded like the splintering of glass. And I popped round the house to investigate, and there was a bounder smashing the scullery window."

"Of course!"

"I knew you would see it."

"Then everything depends on B___."

"Everything."

"You don’t think he’ll object?"

"I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. You’ll hurt his feelings. You don’t realise the sort of fellow B___ is. His nerve is like chilled steel, and when it is a question of helping a pal, he sticks to nothing."

3. It was a human figure – that of C___, who had carried out his intention of walking to the castle and gazing up at D___’s window. The fact that he had no means of knowing which of these many windows was hers in no way deterred him. He was planning to gaze up at them all and so make sure. And, as a matter of fact, he had made an extraordinarily accurate shot. Her room was next door to E___’s, the one with the balcony.

4. An ardent swain who is left alone in the silent night in the garden of the aunt of the girl he loves does not say to himself "Ho, hum. Well, better call it a day, I suppose" and go home to bed. He backs away from the house and stands gazing reverently at all the windows, taking them in rotation. F___ was doing this, and had just shifted his eye from the top left second window to the top left third window, when a voice spoke behind him, causing him to break the European record for the standing high jump.

"Ah, F___, old friend, said G___, for the voice was his, "I thought I should find you here. Gazing at her window, eh? Very natural. In my courting days I used to do a lot of window-gazing. There is no healthier pursuit. Keeps you out in the open and fills your lungs with fresh air. Harley Street physicians recommend it. But is window-gazing enough? That is what we must ask ourselves. I say no. You need a better approach. In this matter of wooing, everything, I contend, turns on getting the right approach, and this, my dear G___, you have not yet got."

Round 203 - 20 September 2004

Plum’s Country-House Olympics (III)

This week’s country-house sport requires a great deal more dexterity than window gazing. Climbing up or down water-pipes – depending on whether you are entering or leaving the premises and the front door being out of the question for various reasons – is not everybody’s cup of tea. Please name the following athletes.

1. Unaware of the exact nature of what was being said about him by the parents of the girl he loved, but suspecting that his case might have come upon the agenda paper after his withdrawal, A___ had tottered up the stairs to his room. While not in tip-top form, he found himself enjoying the novel sensation of being separated for a while from members of the human race, a race for which the events of the night had caused him to acquire a rather marked distaste. "Alone at last," he was saying to himself, as he opened the door.

A moment later he saw that he had been too optimistic. Seated on the bed was B___, enjoying a mild cigar, and in the armchair, clad in a flowered dressing-gown, a girl at the sight of whom his heart, already, as we have seen, on several occasions to-night compelled to rival the feverish mobility of a one-armed paperhanger with the hives, executed a leap and a bound surpassing all previous efforts by a wide margin.

"Ah, A___," said B___. "Come along in. Here’s C___. We climbed up the water pipe."

2. Next morning we visited sixty-three more Cambridge colleges, and after lunch I said I was going to my room to lie down. After staying there for half an hour to give the coast time to clear, I shoved a book and smoking materials in my pocket, and climbing out of a window, shinned down a convenient water-pipe into the garden. My objective was the summer-house, where it seemed to me that a man might put in a quiet hour or so without interruption.

3. "There’s this white-haired bird pulling a gun on me and telling me to close the door gently and walk to the window. Well, cheese! If I don’t do like he says, I see it’s a case of writing my own tombstone. You can’t do nothing when a guy’s sticking the heat on you. That gun looks like it’s due to go off if there’s any funny business. So I walk to the window. And the next thing I know, I’m sitting outside of it, and the guy’s closing the shutters. And after a while out breaks the snoring again, and I see he’s in for the night and I’m out for the night. And after about three thousand years it begins to get daylight, and a couple of centuries after that you come up, and after you’re gone I see that pipe and slide down it. And I want to tell you," said D___, "that I wouldn’t have my worst enemy slide down no pipes. If even one of those johndarms was planning to slide down a pipe, I’d take him by the arm and say, ‘Come away, brother. You wouldn’t like it’."

4. "Oh, E___," he said, speaking faintly, "I think I had better not come and hobnob with F___ tonight. I have a strange all-overish feeling, accompanied by floating spots before the eyes, and it may be catching. Explain the circumstances to him, give him my best and say I shall hope to see him tomorrow. I, meanwhile, will be popping straight up to bed and turning in."

Well, of course, E___ wanted to phone G___ and summon medical aid and all that, but he managed to head her off and they eventually settled for a basin of gruel and a hot-water bottle. When these had been delivered at the bedside, H___ said, still speaking faintly, that he didn’t want to be disturbed again as his aim was to get a refreshing sleep.

After that everything was pretty smooth. At about ten-thirty he got up, hopped out of the window, eased himself down the water-pipe, was fortunate enough after waiting at the garden gate to grab a passing taxi, and precisely at eleven-fifteen he alighted at the door of Mario’s.

Extra credit: what is the name of the house (it is not a country-house, by the way) equipped with the water-pipe described in the following fragment?

Memory had not played him false. There, nestling in the ivy, was the pipe up and down which he had been wont to climb, when, a pie-faced lad in the summer of ‘86, he had broken out of this house in order to take nocturnal swims in the river.

Round 204 - 28 September 2004

Plum’s Country-House Olympics (IV)

In contrast with our previous instalments, this week’s final domestic sport cannot be practised individually. It requires the collaboration of at least one partner, preferably equipped with clearly defined billowy portions. Kindly identify both the givers and the receivers of the following kicks in the pants.

1. For my subtle appeal to the young blister’s cupidity had not failed to achieve its end. Already, he was down on all fours, and if I had posed him with my own hands I could not have obtained better results. His bulging shorts seemed to smile up at me in a sort of inviting, welcoming way.

As A___ had rightly said, there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. I drew back the leg, and let him have it just where the pants were tightest.

It was a superb effort. Considering that I hadn’t kicked anyone since the distant days of school, you might have thought that the machinery would have got rusty. But no. All the old skill still lingered. My timing was perfect, and so was my follow through. He disappeared into the bush, travelling as if out of a gun ...

2. "Except for about a couple of hundred a year, the only money B___ had in the world was his salary as secretary to old C___. And then he lost even that meagre pittance. One morning, happening to stroll into the yew alley at the ancestral seat and finding the young couple locked in a close embrace, the aged parent unlimbered his right leg and kicked B___ eleven feet, two inches – a record for the midland counties."

3. Ever since that regrettable scene he had been wishing that he could work off the stored-up venom on somebody, and, by Jove, Heaven had sent this knocker-slamming inebriate.

To run D___ down the steps and up the drive, kicking him about every other yard, was with E___ the work of a moment. They passed my little clump of bushes at about forty m.p.h., and rolled away into the distance. And after a while I heard footsteps and the sound of someone whistling as if a bit of a load had been removed from his soul, and E___ came legging it back.

4. "F___," he said gently.

"‘Ullo?"

"Doing anything at the moment?"

"No."

"Then just turn around, will you?"

"Why?"

"Never mind why. I ask this as a favour. Turn around, and bend over a little."

"Like this?"

"That’s exactly right. There!" said G___, and kicked the inviting target with a vigour and crispness of follow-through which would have caused even H___ to nod approvingly.

"Hoy!" cried F___.

He had drawn himself to his full height, and would probably have spoken further, but at this moment I___ came in, carrying a bowl of warm water and a plate with a piece of steak on it.

Round 205 - 6 October 2004

Telegrams

1. Five minutes later, accompanied by the six Pekingese and bearing about him a pound of my tobacco, three pairs of my socks, and the remains of a bottle of whiskey, A__ departed in a taxi-cab for Charing Cross Station to begin his life-work.

Perhaps six weeks passed, six quiet A__less weeks, and then one morning I received an agitated telegram. Indeed, it was not so much a telegram as a cry of anguish. In every word of it there breathed the tortured spirit of a great man who has battled in vain against overwhelming odds. It was the sort of telegram which Job might have sent after a lengthy session with Bildad the Shuhite:

"Come here immediately, laddie. Life and death matter, old horse. Desperate situation. Don't fail me."

Who is the modern Job?

2. The telegram over which he sat brooding with wrinkled forehead was just the sort of telegram an Enquiry Agent ought to have been delighted to receive, being thoroughly cryptic and consequently a pleasing challenge to his astuteness as a detective, but B__, in his ten minutes' acquaintance with it, had come to dislike it heartily. He preferred his telegrams easier.

It ran as follows:

Be sure send best man investigate big robbery.

It was unsigned.

Name the sender and the recipient of this telegram, and identify what was stolen in this robbery.

3. At the moment when the drowsy summer stillness was ripped into a million quivering fragments, C__ had been reading for the third time a telegram which had just been brought to her on a silver salver by D__, the butler. ... It ran as follows:

ARRIVING TEA TIME WITH LANDLADY

When E__ composed telegrams in railway stations two minutes before his train was due to leave, his handwriting, never at the best of times copperplate, always degenerated into something which would have interested a Professor of Hieroglyphics. The operator at Paddington, after a puzzled scrutiny, had substituted on his own responsibility "Arriving" for "Ariosto" and "tea time" for what appeared to be "totem" but the concluding word had beaten him completely. It had seemed to him a choice between "lingfear", "leprosy" and "landlady". He had discarded the first because there is no such word as "lingfear"; the second because, though not a medical expert, he was pretty sure that E__ had not got leprosy; and had fallen back on the third. He hoped that it would convey some meaning at the other end.

He had been too optimistic.

Again, name the sender of the cryptic telegram. What is the final word supposed to be?

4. And then – bing – just as I was saying to myself that this was the life, along came all those telegrams.

The first to arrive reached me at my residence just as I was lighting the after-breakfast cigarette, and I eyed it with something of the nervous discomfort of one confronted with a ticking bomb. Telegrams have so often been the heralds or harbingers or whatever they're called of sharp crises in my affairs that I have come to look on them askance, wondering if something is going to pop out of the envelope and bite me in the leg ...

This was the substance of the communication:

F__, you worm, your early presence desired. Drop everything and come here pronto, prepared for lengthy visit. Urgently need you to buck up a blighter with whiskers. Love. G__.

I brooded over this for the rest of the morning, and on my way to lunch at the Drones shot off my answer, a brief request for more light:

Did you say whiskers or whiskey? Love. F__.

Who is the blighter with w.?

Extra Credit: Who sent the following telegram?

"Come at once. All lost. Ruin stares face. Love and kisses. H__."

Extra Extra Credit: Who played the part of Jorkins in the following?

(Enter JORKINS, carrying telegram on salver.)

JORKINS. A telegram, m'lady.

(Exit JORKINS.)

Round 206 - 14 October 2004

Most small boys in Wodehouse's stories are repulsive, but those with golden curls are in a league of their own. To quote Bertie Wooster in "The Love That Purifies": "I've never been able to bear with fortitude anything in the shape of a kid with golden curls. Confronted with one, I feel the urge to step on him or drop things on him from a height."

Identify the golden-haired children (or ex-golden-haired children) in the first three passages, and the alleged rescuer of same in the fourth.

1. I mean to say, life's difficult enough as it is. You don't want to aggravate the general complexity of things by getting changed into a kid with knickerbockers and golden curls. A nice thing it was going to be if this state of affairs proved to be permanent. Bim, obviously, would go any chance I might have had of leading A__ to the altar. A girl in her position wasn't going to walk up the aisle with a kid in knickerbockers.

What, too, would the fellows at the Drones say if I were to saunter in with golden curls all over me? They wouldn't have it at any price. The Drones is what I would call a pretty broad-minded club, but they simply wouldn't have it.

2. "Well, looking back, I can see that I must have been a very unpleasant child ... My only redeeming point was the way I worshipped you!"

"What!"

"Oh, yes. You probably didn't know it at the time. for I had a curious way of expressing my adoration. But you remain the brightest memory of a chequered youth."

B__ searched his face with grave eyes, then shook her head again.

"Nothing stirs?" asked the man sympathetically.

"It's too maddening! Why does one forget things?" She reflected. "You're not Bobby Morrison?"

"I am not. What is more, I never was!"

B__ dived into the past once more and emerged with another possibility.

"Or – Charlie – Charlie what was it? – Charlie Field?"

"You wound me! Have you forgotten that Charlie Field wore velvet Lord Fauntleroy suits and long golden curls? My past is not smirched with anything like that."

3. "What a gruesome mess you must have been at three," said C__ meditatively. "You were bad enough at fourteen. At three you must have made strong men shudder."

"On the contrary. D__ has often told me –"

"Who's D__?"

"D__. My old retainer.

"I see. The one who gets worried about your woolies. I thought for the moment you were introducing a new sex motive."

"D__ has often told me that I looked like a little angel in my velvet suit. I had long golden curls –"

"This is loathsome," said C__ austerely.

4. "If E__ won't write to this girl, you must write to her yourself."

"But she doesn't want to hear from me. She wants to hear from E__."

"And so she will, bless her heart. E__ has sprained his wrist, so had to dictate the letter to you."

"E__ hasn't sprained his wrist."

"Pardon me. He gave it a nasty wrench while stopping a runaway horse and at great personal risk saving a little child from a hideous death. A golden-haired child, if you will allow yourself to be guided by me, with blue eyes, pink cheeks and a lisp. I think a lisp is good box-office?"

Who is E?

Extra Credit: In the preface to a reprint of one of his novels, Wodehouse claims that an editor gave him the following advice regarding one of the characters: "... Be sure to make the kid sympathetic and touching, you know the sort of thing – blue eyes, golden hair and all that ..."

Name the character whom Wodehouse, inspired by this, created.

Round 207 - 22 October 2004

Horses

As we know, horses spend most of their time endangering golden-haired children. But this week, we shall examine other facets of their characters, if facets are the things that characters have.

1. "The cat was a stray which appeared one morning in the stable yard, and A__ took an instant fancy to it. This, I understand, is not unusual with highly bred horses, though more often it is a goat or a sheep which engages their affection."

This was quite new stuff to me. First I'd ever heard of it.

"Goat?" I said.

"Yes, sir."

"Or a sheep?"

"Yes, sir."

"You mean love at first sight?"

"One might so describe it, sir."

"What asses horses are, B__."

"Certainly their mentality is open to criticism, sir."

No points for identifying the two speakers; to receive credit, name the horse (A).

2. "But what's she doing there?"

"She is obliged to remain in those bushes, because she has nothing on."

"Nothing on? No particular engagements, you mean?"

"I mean no clothes. The horse kicked hers into the river."

C__ blinked. He could make nothing of this.

"A horse kicked the clothes off her?"

"It didn't kick them off me," said the voice. "They were lying on the bank in a neat bundle. Miss Maitland always taught us to be neat with our clothes. You see, I was playing Lady Godiva, as you advised me to."

Name C and the modern Godiva.

3. "How much did you drop?"

"Drop?"

"On Ocean Breeze."

"I did not bet on Ocean Breeze."

"What! You owned the favourite for the Cup, and didn't back it!"

"I never bet on horse-racing. It is against my principles. I am told the animal failed to win the contest."

"Failed to win! Why, he was so far behind that he nearly came in first in the next race."

Identify the two speakers.

4. "... He once chased me over a measured mile, showing great accuracy with the hunting crop. At a moment, too, when, being half-way through my first cigar, I was in urgent need of quiet and repose. To my mind, a man capable of that would be capable of anything. Well, if it wasn't blackmail, what was the problem?"

"His lordship finds himself in a somewhat difficult position, sir."

"What's biting him?" ...

"The matter is highly confidential, sir. It should not be allowed to go further."

"Wild horses shall not drag it from me. Not that I suppose they'll try."

Who is his lordship?

Extra Credit: He shied like a startled horse, knocked over another table, tottered to a chair, knocked that over, picked it up and sat down, burying his face in his hands. "If the Infants' Bible class should hear of this!" he said, shuddering strongly.

Name the startled-horse imitator.

Round 208 - 1 November 2004

Horsewhips

"I want my heavy cane, the one with the carved ivory handle. Or a horsewhip would do."
– Sir Mortimer Prenderby, "Good-bye to All Cats"

"If we weren't in a public place, I would horsewhip you. If I had a horsewhip."
– The Whiskered Bozo, "Bramley Is So Bracing"

"Go over to the Hall and bring me my horsewhip with the ivory handle."
– Lord Worplesdon, Joy in the Morning

Behind him, toying with a horse-whip, stood Murgatroyd, the butler.
– "A Slice of life"

In Wodehouse's England, horsewhips are as indispensable an implement as umbrellas. Name the following prospective horsewhippers and horsewhippees.

1. "Did you ever hear of a Captain Walkinshaw? ... He trifled with the affections of my niece Hester. I horsewhipped him on the steps of the Drones Club. Is the name Blenkinsop-Bustard familiar to you?"

"No."

"Rupert Blenkinsop-Bustard trifled with the affections of my niece Gertrude. He was one of the Somersetshire Blenkinsop-Bustards. Wore a fair mustache and kept pigeons. I horsewhipped him on the steps of the Junior Bird-Fanciers. By the way, Mr. A__, what is your club?"

"The United Jade-Collectors," quavered A__.

"Has it steps?"

"I – I believe so."

"Good. Good." A dreamy look came into the General's eyes.

2. "Girls don't turn a man down just because he has regular features."

"This one does."

"But you know I love you."

"Do I?"

"You ought to by this time. You're the only girl in the world, as far as I'm concerned."

"Not according to B__. He was most explicit on the point. Dozens of them, he told me, night after night, each lovelier than the last and all of them squealing 'Oh, C__, darling!'"

"Curse B__! The sort of man who ought to be horse-whipped on the steps of his club."

"The only trouble is that if you horse-whipped B__ on the steps of his club, he would horse-whip you on the steps of yours."

"I know. That's the catch. It's all wrong that fellows who talk the way B__ does should be constructed so large and muscular."

3. "Well, when D__ came out just now, he was all of a doodah, and he had this week's Thursday Review in his hand. Came by the afternoon post, I suppose. I think he had been reading E__'s comment on his book." ...

"Oh, you know about that thing E__ wrote?"

"Yes, he showed it to me one day when we were having lunch together."

"Very mordant, I gathered from what he told me. But I don't see why that should make D__ bound up to London."

"I suppose he wants to ask the editor who wrote the thing, so that he can horsewhip him on the steps of his club."

4. "You know him?" said F__, surprised.

G__ chuckled reminiscently.

"I know his name. I wrote an article about him once, when I was editing a paper called H__. Number One of the Thriftless Aristocrats series. The snappiest thing I ever did in my life. They tell me he called twice at the office with a horsewhip, wanting to see me."

F__ exhibited concern.

"You have met him, then?"

"I have not. You are probably not familiar with the inner workings of a paper like H__, F__, but I may tell you that it is foreign to the editorial policy ever to meet visitors who call with horsewhips."

5. "I__," he said, "bring me my horsewhip."

Down in the forest of pimples on the butler's face something stirred. It was a look of guilt.

"It's gorn," he mumbled ... "I was cracking it in the stable yard, and it cracked. So I took it to the mender's."

J__ pointed an awful finger at the door.

"Get out, you foul blot," he said. "I'll talk to you later." Seating himself at his desk, as he always did when he wished to think, he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "I'll have to borrow young K__'s," he said at length, clicking his tongue in obvious annoyance. "Infernally awkward, calling on a fellow you're going to horsewhip and having to ask him for the loan of his horsewhip to do it with. Still, there it is," said J__ philosophically. "That's how it goes."

He was a man who could always adjust himself to circumstances.

Round 209 - 9 November 2004

Politics

From time to time various learned experts opine that the Wodehouse canon completely ignored the "real world" – that the subject of contemporary politics, for example, is c. by its a. in the Wodehouse World. Pure mashed potatoes, of course! The creation of the would-be fascist dictator Roderick Spode in 1938's The Code of the Woosters and the constant mocking of the American prohibition laws in novels like Hot Water and The Small Bachelor and stories like "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom" provide just two examples of Wodehouse's treatment of contemporary politics. And at the height of the Watergate scandal, when the editors of Playboy magazine were looking for an appropriately pithy comment on the headlines of the day, they turned to Wodehouse and quoted Jeeves's cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson which, in their view, seemed to sum the whole thing up nicely in one paragraph. Several other examples are provided for you to identify in this week's quiz.

1. ____(A)____ swayed like a sapling in the breeze.

"Ten million? Ten million? Did you say you had ten million dollars?"

"Between nine and ten, I suppose. Not more. You must remember," said Mr ___(B)____, with a touch of apology, "that conditions have changed very much in America of late. We have been through a tough time, a mighty tough time. Many of my friends have been harder hit than I have. But things are coming back. Yes, sir, they're coming right back. I am a firm believer in President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Under the New Deal, the American dog is beginning to eat more biscuits."

2. "You mean you own a place like this, a bally palace if ever I saw one, and can't write a cheque for three thousand pounds?"

___(C)____ undertook the burden of explanation.

"A house such as __(name of house)__, in these days is not an asset, sir, it is a liability. I fear that your long residence in the East has rendered you not quite abreast of the changed conditions prevailing in your native land. Socialistic legislation has sadly depleted the resources of England's hereditary aristocracy. We are living now in what is known as the Welfare State, which means – broadly – that everybody is completely destitute."

3. (Here, in passages published almost half a century apart, we have two sets of young couples – although, not wanting to mislead you, neither set is a "couple" in the romantic sense of the word, if you see what I mean – about to be arrested by two unidentified policemen who held remarkably similar views about political demonstrations.)

"What's all this?" A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space. (...)

Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech.

"She 'it him!"

The policeman looked at ___(D)___. He was an officer of many years' experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for good clothes which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. ___(D)___ was well dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon ___(D)___, red-handed as it were with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.

(And, after (D) and her innocent male companion were pinched not because she was a Suffragette but because she looked like she might be one, many years later came the following incident ...)

Seizing __(E)__ by the wrist she drew him with her to the ground, causing sixteen taxicabs, three omnibuses and eleven private cars to halt in their tracks, their drivers what-the-helling in no uncertain terms.

(...) His [the approaching police constable's] aspect was intimidating to the last degree. His height __(E)___ estimated at about eight feet seven, and his mood was plainly not sunny.

Nor was this a thing to occasion surprise. For weeks he had been straining the muscles of his back lifting debutantes off London's roadways, and the routine had long since begun to afflict him with ennui. His hearty dislike of debutantes was equalled only by his distaste for their escorts. So now without even saying "Ho" or "What's all this?" he attached himself to the persons of ___(E)___ and Miss ___(F)___ and led them from the scene.

4. "Aha!" said ___(G)___ genially. "Historic picture. `Doctor Cook discovers the North Pole.' (...) and is instantly handed a gumdrop by his faithful Esquimaux."

As he spoke he brought the stick down on the knuckles which disfigured the edges of the trap. The intruder uttered a howl and dropped out of sight. In the room below there were whisperings and mutterings, growing gradually louder till something resembling coherent conversation came to ___(G)___'s ears as he knelt by the trap making meditative billiard-shots with the stick at a small pebble.

"Aw, g'wan! Don't be a quitter!"

"Who's a quitter?"

"Youse is a quitter. Get on top de roof. He can't hoit youse."

"De guy's gotten a big stick."

___(G)___ nodded appreciatively.

"I and Roosevelt," he murmured.

5. For a bonus point, what do British Tory war-time cabinet minister Alfred Duff Cooper and early Soviet firebrand Leon Trotzky have in common?

Round 210 - 17 November 2004

Promotion and Advertising

Politicians and manufacturers of patented breakfast cereals have at least one thing in common – they need plenty of advertising and promotion to sell their wares to the public. We're looking for the products being promoted in the following advertising campaigns.

1. "The method which I advocate is what, I believe, the advertisers call Direct Suggestion, sir, consisting as it does of driving an idea home by constant repetition. You may have had experience of the system?"

"You mean they keep on telling you that some soap or other is the best, and after a bit you come under the influence and charge round the corner and buy a cake?"

"Exactly, sir. The same method was the basis of all the most valuable propaganda during the world war. I see no reason why it should not be adopted to bring about the desired result with regard to the subject's views on class distinctions."

2. (We're looking here for the lyricist of the following election song and the identity of the candidate, __(A)__.)

With the exception of a single music-hall song ("Mother, She's Pinching My Leg" tried out by Tom Sims, the Koy Komic, at the Peebles Hippodrome, and discarded, in response to a popular appeal, after one performance) no written words of mine had ever passed human lips. Naturally, it gave me a certain thrill to imagine the enlightened electorate (...) – at any rate, the right-thinking portion of it – bellowing in its thousands those noble lines:

"No foreign foe's insidious hate, / Our country shall o'erwhelm / So long as England's ship of state / Has ___(A, two syllables)___ at the helm."

Whether I was technically correct in describing as guiding the ship of state a man who would probably spend his entire Parliamentary career in total silence, voting meekly as the Whip directed, I had not stopped to enquire.

3. In an absent way he clutched the nearest daily paper, which happened to be the Morning Globe, and returned to his chair in the hope of quieting his nerves with a perusal of the racing intelligence. (...) The next moment, instead of passing directly, as was his usual practice, to the last page, which was devoted to sport, he was gazing with a strange dry feeling in his throat at a certain advertisement on page one.

It was a well-displayed advertisement, and one that had caught the eye of many other readers of the paper that morning. It was worded to attract attention, and it had achieved its object. But where others who read it had merely smiled and marvelled idly how anybody could spend good money putting nonsense like this in the paper, to ___(B)___ its import was wholly serious. It read to him like the Real Thing. His motion-picture-trained mind accepted this advertisement at its face-value.

(contents of advertisement snipped)

___(B)___ laid the paper down with a deep intake of breath. He picked it up again, and read the advertisement a second time. Yes, it sounded good. More, it had something of the quality of a direct answer to a prayer. Very vividly now ___(B)___ realized that what he had been wishing for was a partner to share the perils of this enterprise which he had so rashly undertaken. In fact, not so much to share them as to take them off his shoulders altogether. (...) Two minutes later, ___(B)___ was at the writing-desk, scribbling a letter. From time to time he glanced furtively over his shoulder at the door. But the house was still. No footsteps came to interrupt him at his task.

4. (What does "Mens Sana in Corpore Sano", the author of the following letter to the editor of The Times, have in common with "Moderation in all Things" and "Vigilant", who wrote similar testimonials to the editors of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, respectively?)

Sir,

In connection with the recent correspondence in your columns on the Strain of Modern Life, I wonder if any of your readers are aware that there exists in the county of Worcestershire an establishment expressly designed to correct this strain. At ___(name of establishment)___, under the auspices of the well-known American physician and physical culture expert, Doctor ___(C)___, it is possible for those who have allowed the demands of modern life to tax their physique too greatly to recuperate in ideal surroundings and by means of early hours, wholesome exercise, and Spartan fare to build up once more their debilitated tissues.

It is the boast of Doctor ___(C)___ that he makes New Men for Old.

I am, sir,

Yrs. etc.,

Mens Sana in Corpore Sano