Service with a Smile

"Critics have often commented on the somber gloom which permeates all Wodehouse novels like the smell of muddy shoes in a locker room and ... the Russian spirit of pessimism and hopelessness in them ..."

– Bring on the Girls

This quiz is designed to cheer up those who are depressed from reading too much Wodehouse or Schopenhauer. Identify the smilers.

1. "Odd," he said. "A curious smile, yours, A__. It reminds me a little of the Mona Lisa's. It has the same underlying note of the sardonic and the sinister. It virtually amounts to a leer. Fortunately, my own life is an open book for all to read, so I was not discommoded. But I think it would be better if, for the present, you endeavoured not to smile at invalids or nervous persons."

2. And then, as he reached the window, B__ smiled, and all C__'s fears leaped into being again.

The opinion of B__ regarding this smile was that it was one of those kindly, reassuring smiles – the sort of smile to put the most nervous melancholiac at his ease. To C__ it seemed precisely the kind of maniac grin which he would have expected from such a source.

3. "You've cheered me up more often than you could shake a stick at. And in my line of business you need constant cheering up."

"Why's that?"

"Too much smiling to do. Very lowering to the spirits. I'm an air hostess. And not only lowering to the spirits; extremely wearing on the cheek muscles."

4. He paused and, reaching for his handkerchief, feebly mopped his brow. The dreadful speech was out, and its emergence had left him feeling spent and weak.

"You were?" cried D__.

"I was," said E__ hollowly.

A great change for the better had come over D__. It was as if those words had been a magic formula, filling with sweetness and light one who until that moment had been more like a spectacled thundercloud than anything human. He ceased to lower darkly. His air of being on the point of shooting out forked lightning left him. He even went so far as to smile. And if the smile was a smile that made E__ feel as if his vital organs were being churned up with an egg whip, that was not his fault. He was trying to smile sunnily.

5. A shudder ran through him. I patted him on the shoulder. I understood now.

"She has the most brilliant smile in England," he whispered.

"Come, come!"

"Coy yet roguish, they tell me." ...

"F__, this is morbid."

He was silent for a moment.

"Ah, well," he said, pulling himself together with a visible effort, "I have made my sodium sulphate, and I must lie in it."

Round 242 - 23 August 2005

Laughing Gas

Name the laughers.

1. One followed the mental processes, of course. To him, A__ was a creature of the underworld who stole bags and umbrellas and, what made it worse, didn't even steal them well. No father likes to see his ewe lamb on chummy terms with such a one.

"You don't mean you know this man?" he said.

B__ laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh which was one of the things that had got her so disliked by the better element.

2. ... He was suddenly jerked out of his daydreams by the sound of a huge, reverberating, explosive laugh ...

We left C__, it will be remembered, chuckling softly. And for a few minutes soft chuckles had contented him. But in a book of the nature of D__ the student is sure sooner or later to come upon some high spot, some supreme expression of the writer's art which demands a more emphatic tribute. What C__ was reading now was the story of E__.

"HA ... HOR ... HOO!" he roared.

3. It was a moment fraught with embarrassment, and F__ recognized it as such. His first action was to remove his hand from G__'s hair with a swiftness which he could scarcely have excelled had that hair been as red hot as it looked; his second to utter a careless laugh. Finding, however, that this was coming out more like a death-rattle than the jolly guffaw for which he had intended it, he switched it off in its early stages and a silence fell upon the state-room.

4. All he knew, accordingly, was that his godson, contrary to the most definite instructions, had returned to H__, and he was naturally annoyed. No leader of men likes to hear that his orders have been ignored by a subordinate. His greeting of I__ was brusque.

"I thought I told you to go back to London and leave everything to me," he said.

His manner was stern, but I__ remained unmoved.

"This isn't that."

"What do you mean, this isn't that?"

"It has nothing to do with J__."

"Nothing to do with her?"

"No."

"Then what's it all about? If," said K__, "you've dragged me all the way to L__ on a sweltering summer morning for some trifle ... What are you giggling about?"

I__ corrected his choice of verbs.

"I was not giggling. I was laughing hollowly."

Extra Credit: Who "read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rock-bound coast" (though not, presumably, as a result of reading Nietzsche)?

Extra Extra Credit (this one is REALLY obscure): Name Y, the laugher in the following passage.

“… I wanted to see for myself if things were as bad as the paper said.”

“They’re worse!” cried X__. “Oh, Mrs Y__ – if only there were something one could do!”

“There is,” said Mrs Y__, grimly. “Who’s writing those articles?”

“Why – why – I am,” said X__.

“You!” exclaimed Mrs Y__. She stared at X__. “H’mm!” she said. “And Z__ thought he could twist you around his finger, did he?” She uttered her short, cackling laugh, a sound that, in financial circles, created approximately the same effect as the barking of a fox in a chicken run.

Round 243 - 31 August 2005

Here Be Hippogriffs

Another dumb chums quiz, but with a difference. Several of the creatures that Harry Potter encounters at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry appear, or at least receive mention, in Wodehouse as well. (I am still looking for passages in Wodehouse about flobberworms and Blast-Ended Skrewts.)

1. And I still think that there can be no neater way of putting in a nutshell the outcome of the super-sticky affair of [the names of seven characters follow] – or, as my biographers will probably call it, the A__ Horror.

Even before the events occurred which I am about to relate, the above hamlet had come high up on my list of places to be steered sedulously clear of. I don't know if you have ever seen one of those old maps where they mark a spot with a cross and put "Here be dragons" or "Keep ye eye skinned for hippogriffs", but I have always felt that some such kindly warning might well have been given to pedestrians and traffic with regard to this A__.

Name A, the hamlet that brings the narrator a sea of troubles.

2. A dragon! Fiery withal. Was he absolutely certain that he was capable of handling an argument with a fiery dragon? He would have given much for a little previous experience of this sort of thing. It was too late now, but he wished he had had the forethought to get Merlin to put up a magic prescription for him, rendering him immune to dragon-bites. But did dragons bite? Or did they whack at you with their tails? Or just blow fire? ...

(A few pages later, the knight meditating these thoughts gets an explanation from the damsel he loves as to why he was summoned:)

"My sister Yseult was very beautiful. After the first day Sir Sagramore forgot all about the giant, and seemed to want to do nothing except have Yseult show him how to play cat's cradle. They were married two months later, and my father sent my sister Elaine to Camelot to ask for a knight to protect us against a wild unicorn."

Identify the knight in distress and damsel in these passages.

3. The drawing-room was empty except for his sister B__, who was seated behind the teapot, ready to get into action the instant the call came. She stiffened as he entered and directed at him a stern and accusing glare, like a well-bred basilisk.

"So there you are, C__," she said, coming to the point in the direct way characteristic of sisters all the world over. "C__, what do you mean by putting that beastly D__ in E__'s bedroom?"

Name the basilisk, and explain what C put in E's bedroom.

4. The aunt to whom I alluded was my good and deserving Aunt X__, not to be confused with my Aunt Y__ who eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon. Aunt X__ is as good a sort as ever said "Tally Ho" to a fox, which she frequently did in her younger days when out with the Quorn or Pytchley. If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.

Identify the two werewolves.

Round 244 - 8 September 2005

This week's dumb chums come from Greek mythology. Some of the creatures are absolutely fabulous, others not.

1. Nevertheless, a certain jumpiness still persisted, rendering it beyond his power simply to sit and wait for his agent's return from the front. "You stay here, cocky," A__ had said, and he had fully intended to do so, but the library with its hushed gloom was too much for him. He yearned for the great outdoors where there would not be seven or eight hundred bound volumes of early Victorian sermons eyeing him with silent rebuke. He rose and went down to the hall to get his hat, and was thus enabled to obtain an excellent view of B__, who was coming in at the front door.

One of the less endearing qualities of the Gorgon of Greek mythology was, we are told, her ability to turn into stone anyone who was unlucky enough to catch sight of her, and it seemed to C__ that this unexpected encounter with one who should have been tucking into tea and buttered toast at the vicarage had had a similar effect.

Identify B and C.

2. He read the letter for the third time, and a gentle perspiration began to form on his forehead. This was awful. The presumable jubilation of D__, the penniless ripper of the Savoy, when he should present himself to her a free man, did not enter into the mental picture that was unfolding before him. She was too remote. There was probably a brief space during which Perseus, concentrating his gaze upon the monster, did not see Andromeda; and a knight of the Middle Ages, jousting in the gentleman's singles for a smile from his lady, rarely allowed the thought of that smile to occupy his whole mind at the moment when his boiler-plated antagonist was descending upon him in the wake of a sharp spear.

Name the recipient of this letter. (Hint: Two other mythological creatures receive mention later in the same book: "To clear himself he must mention his suspicions of E__, and also his reasons for those suspicions. And to do that would mean revealing his past. It was Scylla and Charybdis.")

3. "... At least we have this advantage over our spectacled friend, that we know he suspects and he doesn't know we know. I think that with a little resource we may yet win through." He turned to the window and looked out. "Sad," he sighed, "that these idyllic surroundings should have become oppressed with a cloud of sinister menace. One thinks one sees a faun popping about in the undergrowth, and on looking more closely perceives that it is in reality a detective with a notebook. What one fancied was the piping of Pan turns out to be a police-whistle, summoning assistance."

Name the speaker. (Hint: the person he is addressing here is a cinéaste who later alludes to the motion picture "Wed to a Satyr.")

4. What she was drawing to my attention was a large oil painting. A classical picture, I suppose you would have called it. Stout female in the minimum of clothing in conference with a dove.

"Venus?" I said. It's usually a safe bet.

Identify this connoisseur of classical art, and the person who owns this painting.

5. He eyed Mulberry Grove with dislike. He frowned at the trim little house. At the two swans, Egbert and Percy, he glowered. And when from the premises of the Valley Fields Lawn Tennis Club there was borne to his ears the happy yapping of eager flappers, he groaned slightly and winced, like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch.

Identify the modern Prometheus.

Round 245 - 16 September 2005

Hooray for Hollywood

Following the recent convention of the American Wodehouse Society (TWS) in Los Angeles, it seems appropriate to recall four memorable trips to the cinema.

1. “What I desired to say, sir, was this: I attended a performance at the local cinema last night.”

(There then followed a lengthy discussion in which the above speaker – to be henceforth known as (A) – described the plot of the film to his interlocutor.)

“And so matters went on, sir, till came a day when –”

“___(A)___,” I said, fixing him with a dashed unpleasant eye, “what the dickens do you think you’re talking about? Do you suppose that, with this infernal child landed on me and the peace of the home practically shattered into a million bits, I want to hear –”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I would not have mentioned the cinema performance were it not for the fact that it gave me an idea, sir.”

2. In the last analysis, however many highly-salaried stars its cast may contain and however superb and luxurious the settings of its orgy-scenes, the success of a super-film’s appeal to its audience must always depend on what company each unit of that audience is in when he sees it. Start wrong in the vestibule, and entertainment in the true sense of the word is out of the question.

For the picture which the management (…) was now presenting to its patrons Hollywood had done all that Art and Money could effect. Based on Wordsworth’s well-known poem “We Are Seven”, it was entitled “When Passion Lurks”, and offered such notable favourites of the silver screen as Laurette Byng, G Cecil Terwilliger, Baby Bella, Oscar the Wonder-Poodle, and Professor Pond’s Educated Sea-Lions. And yet it left __(B)__ cold.

If only __(C)__ had been at his side, how different it all would have been. As it was, the beauty of the story had no power to soothe him, nor could he get the slightest thrill out of the Babylonian banquet scene which had cost five hundred thousand dollars. From start to finish he sat in a dull apathy: Then, at last, the ordeal over, he stumbled out into daylight and the open air. Like G Cecil Terwilliger at a poignant crisis in the fourth reel, he was as one on whom Life has forced its bitter cup, and who had drained it to the lees.

3. ‘There aren’t many people about at this time of day, as most of the lads play tennis in the morning or go off to Antibes to bathe. On the skyline, however, has just appeared a bird you may have heard of – __(D)__, the motion picture bloke.

‘At least if you haven’t heard of him, you’ve seen lots of his pictures. That thing we went to see my last day in London was one of his, the thing called – well, I forget what it was called but there were gangsters in it and ___(E)___ was the girl who loved the young reporter. (…)’

__(F)__ paused again. Re-reading what he had written, he found himself wondering if it was the goods, after all. Gossipy stuff was all very well, but was it quite wise to dig up the dead past like this? That mention of __(E)___ … on the occasion referred to, he recalled, his open admiration of Miss __(E)__ had caused __(F)__ to look a trifle squiggle-eyed, and it had taken two cups of tea and a plate of fancy cakes at the Ritz to pull her round.

4. “I’m engaged to two girls. (…) And I’m hoping you may have a word of advice to offer on the subject. Otherwise I see a slightly tangled future ahead of me.”

“Two?” said __(G)___, dazed.

“Two,” said __(H)__. “I’ve counted them over and over again, but that’s what the sum keeps working out at. I started, if you remember, with one. So far, so good. A steady, conservative policy. But complications have now arisen. (…) I added young __(I)__ to the strength tonight. (…) Until recently she was engaged to (…) an actor, and some day, if all goes well, I hope to pop over to America, where he performs, and fling a hearty egg at him. The low hound! He chucked her, __(G)___,” said __(H)__, wrestling with rising emotion.

(…) “I thought she seemed a bit under the weather when we were starting off for the pictures. Not at all her bright self, she wasn’t. She was depressed during the six-reel feature-film, and the two-reel Mickey Mouse didn’t get a smile out of her. On our way home she told me all. And, believe me or believe me not, old boy, I hadn’t got more than about half-way through the cheering up process when I suddenly found that we were linked in a close embrace, murmuring soft words of endearment, and two minutes later I discovered with some surprise that we were engaged. That’s life.”

Round 246 - 24 September 2005

Screen-writers we have Known

Unlikely though it may seem from time to time, Hollywood films generally require a good deal of intensive labour from a talented team of screen-writers before the actual filming begins. This, as Wodehouse himself discovered, is a job fraught with peril. We have four screen-writers for you to identify this week.

1. “In the particular studio which had engaged her services, it seems a good deal of latitude is granted to the distinguished authors on the pay-roll. The kindly powers-that-be recognize the existence of the artistic temperament and make allowances for it. If, therefore, my aunt had confined herself to snootering directors, harrying camera-men, and chasing supervisors up trees, nothing would have been said. But there is one thing the artist soul must not do at the Colossal-Superfine, and that is swat the Main Boss with a jewelled hand over the ear-hole. And this, in a moment of emotion due to the fact that he had described some dialogue submitted by her as a lot of boloney that didn’t mean a thing, my aunt had done.”

2. “Then you got a job with [name of studio] and went to Hollywood. Then you got fired.”

“It happens to everybody.”

“Yes, but most people when they get fired don’t ask for a personal interview with the boss of the studio and in the course of conversation throw a richly bound copy of the Saturday Evening Post at his head. (…) So you got yourself blacklisted. Not very balanced behaviour, do you think?”

___(A)___ patted her hand indulgently.

“Women don’t understand these things,” he said. “There comes a time in the life of every man placed in juxtaposition with [name of studio boss] when he is compelled to throw copies of the Saturday Evening Post at his head. It’s why they publish the Saturday Evening Post.”

3. The motion-picture magnate took a quick look at __(B)___ and thrust a paper and a fountain-pen towards him.

“Sign here,” he said.

A receipt for the hat, no doubt, thought __(B)__. He scribbled his name at the bottom of the document and Mr ___(C)___ pressed a bell.
“Miss __(D)__,” he said, addressing his secretary, “what vacant offices have we on the lot?”

“There is Room 40 in the Leper Colony.”

(…)

“Mr __(B)__ will occupy the room, starting from to-day. He has just signed a contract to write dialogue for us.”

(…)

“But I don’t want to write for the pictures,” said ___(B)___.

“You’ve got to write for the pictures,” said Mr. __(C)___. “You’ve signed the contract.” “I want my hat.”

“At the [name of studio],” said Mr ___(C)___ coldly, “our slogan is Co-operation, not Hats.”

4. (Here we have an author, (E), who was actually looking forward to beginning a Hollywood screen-writing career, but whose apparent lack of will-power and self-discipline had raised doubts about the venture in the mind of his fiancée.)

“How old do you have to be before you can marry without (your guardian’s) kayo?”

“Twenty-one.” “How old are you now?”

“Twenty.”

“Well, there you are, then. I knew that if we looked close enough we should find that the sun was still shining. You’ve only got to wait another year, and there you are.”

“Yes, but ___(E)___ leaves for Hollywood next month. I don’t know how you feel about this dream man of mine, but to me, and I have studied his character with loving care, he doesn’t seem to be the sort of person to be allowed to go to Hollywood without a wife at his side to distract his attention from the local fauna. (…) He wouldn’t mean to let me down. I don’t suppose he would even know he was doing it. But one morning I should get an apologetic cable saying he couldn’t quite explain how it had happened, but that he had inadvertently got married last night, and had I anything to suggest.”

5. (And, for a bonus point, a Hollywood question that has absolutely nothing to do with screen-writing. What is the missing link that the following list of names has in common?)

Ursuline Delmaine, Theodora Trix, Uvula Gladwyn, Greta Garbo.

Round 247 - 3 October 2005

What Would Jeeves Say?

Sadly, the screen-writers featured in last week’s quiz are becoming an endangered species in Hollywood these days, what with “reality shows” dominating the television schedules. This week we look at four individuals who might benefit from a session with one of those “make-over” programmes.

Some time ago – about 100 quiz rounds, give or take a year or two – we presented a quiz on ‘What the Well Dressed Man is Wearing’. This week we explore the other end of the fashion spectrum.

1. He was a nice-looking young man, but what was most immediately noticeable about him was his extraordinary shabbiness. Both his shoes were split across the toe; his hands were in the pockets of a stained and weather-beaten pair of blue trousers; and he gazed about him from under the brim of a soft hat which could have been worn without exciting comment by any scarecrow.

So striking was his appearance that two exquisites, emerging from the Savoy Hotel (…), eyed him with pained disapproval as he approached, and then, starting, stared in amazement.

“Good Lord!” said the first exquisite.

“Good Heavens!” said the second.

“See who that is?”

“____(A)____! Used to be in the School House.”

“Captain of football my last year.”

“But, I say, it can’t be! Dressed like that, I mean.”

“It is.”

“Good heavens.”

“Good Lord!”

( …) The fact is it is not easy for a young man of adventurous and inquisitive disposition to remain dapper throughout a voyage on a tramp steamer. The Araminta, which had arrived at Millwall Dock that afternoon, had taken fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and during those fourteen days ___(A)___ had entered rather fully into the many-sided life of the ship. He had spent much time in an oily engine room; he had helped the bos’n with a job of painting; he had accompanied the chief engineer on his rambles through the coal bunkers; and on more than one occasion had endeared himself to languid firemen by taking their shovels and doing a little amateur stoking. One cannot do these things and be foppish.

2. ___(B)___’s costume differed is several important details from that of the ordinary well-groomed man about town. There was nothing of the flâneur about the Bowery boy. His hat was of the soft black felt fashionable on the East Side of New York. It was in poor condition, and looked as if it had been up too late the night before. A black tailcoat, burst at the elbows and stained with mud, was tightly buttoned across his chest, this evidently with the idea of concealing the fact that he wore no shirt – an attempt which was not wholly successful. A pair of grey flannel trousers and boots, out of which two toes peeped coyly, completed the picture.

Even ___(B)___ himself seemed to be aware that there were points in his appearance which would have distressed the editor of the Tailor and Cutter.

‘’Scuse these duds,’ he said. ‘Me man’s bin an’ mislaid de trunk wit me best suit in. Dis is me number two.’

3. He was fond of ___(C)___, and also of ___(D)___; and their happy marriage was a constant source of gratification to him. For ___(E)___ was a sentimentalist. He would have liked to live in a world of ideally united couples, himself ideally united to some charming and affectionate girl. But, as a matter of cold fact, he was a bachelor, and most of the couples he knew were veterans of several divorces. In __(E)__’s circle, therefore, the home-life of ___(C)___ and __(D)__ shone like a good deed in a naughty world. It inspired him. In moments of depression it restored his waning faith in human nature.

Consequently, when __(C)___, having greeted him and slipped into a chair at his side, suddenly produced from his inside pocket the photograph of an extremely pretty girl and asked him to get her a small part in the play which he was financing, he was shocked and disappointed. (…) One of the articles of his faith was that the union of ___(D)__ and ___(C)___ was different from those loose partnerships which were the custom in his world. He had not been conscious of such a poignant feeling that the foundations of the universe were cracked and tottering and that there was no light and sweetness in life since the morning, eighteen months back, when a negligent valet had sent him out into Fifth Avenue with only one spat on.

4. It had been ___(F)___’s intention, on entering the train, to devote the journey to earnest meditation. But, as always happens when one wishes to concentrate and brood during a railway journey, he found himself closeted with a talkative fellow traveller.

The one who interrupted ___(F)___’s thoughts was a flabby, puffy man of middle age, wearing a red waistcoat, brown shoes, a morning coat and a bowler hat. With such a Grade A bounder, even had his mind been at rest, ___(F)___ would have had little in common, and he sat chafing while the prismatic fellow prattled on.

(Recognizing the fact that for those of you who don’t immediately recognize the above extract, there aren’t too many clues to point you in the right direction, I will add that when he reached his destination (F) was shown a photograph of his recent travelling companion, upon which he “started back with a hoarse cry”, causing a girl – let’s call her ___(G)___ – to nod sadly and say, “Yes, that is how he takes most people.”)

Round 248 - 13 October 2005

Happy Wodehouse Day!

This quiz was originally going to be on an entirely different subject – something to continue the Hollywood theme of the last three weeks. But then your Quizmaster glanced at his calendar and noted that October 15 is the 124th birthday of an author not unfamiliar to the visitors to this website, with the result that the original quiz was relegated to the back of the queue and a new quiz on birthday celebrations in the canon was hurriedly thrown together.

1. (Can you identify the speaker and the birthday girl from the following two snippets of conversation?)

BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION: “Don't you want the child to have a little pleasure on her birthday? And she isn't ghastly. She's a dear. She won't be any trouble. All you have to do is take her back to the school afterwards. You can manage that without straining a sinew, can't you?”

AND AFTER THE JOLLIFICATIONS: “___(A)___ is supposed to be in bed. They sent her there just as I was leaving this afternoon. Think of it! On her birthday – right plumb spang in the middle of her birthday – and all for putting sherbet in the ink to make it fizz. (…) She got up and sneaked out when nobody was looking. She had set her heart on getting a square meal. I suppose I really ought to have told you right at the start, but I didn't want to spoil your evening.”

2. “Such a lovely birthday present for you, darling,” said ___(B)___.

Her words got right in amongst ___(C)___. He started as if a whole platoon of faces had suddenly manifested themselves before his eyes. He remembered now that at breakfast somebody had been saying something about it being somebody's birthday, but he had been moody and abstracted and had not thought to inquire into the matter. (…) Remorse shot through him like a red-hot skewer. It seemed incredible to him that preoccupation should have caused him to remain in ignorance of this vital fact.

“Jiminy Christmas!” he cried, aghast. “Is this your birthday? And I haven't got you a present. I must get you a present. Where can I get you a present?”

“Shrewsbury,” said ___(D)___. She was at her best when answering simple, straightforward questions like that.

3. “Oh, sweetie-pie,” for it is thus that she habitually addresses the other half of the sketch, “you haven't forgotten it's ___(E)___'s birthday on the twenty-third? Just think! He'll be one year old.”

“Pretty senile, pretty senile,” said ___(F)___. “Silver threads among the gold, what? We must give him a rattle or something.”

“We can do better than rattles. Shall I tell you the wonderful thing I've thought of?”

(…) And Mrs ___(F)___ said she had decided to start a wee little deposit account for ___(E)___ at the local bank. She was going to pay in ten pounds, and her mother was going to pay in ten pounds, and so was the child's maternal aunt Isabel, and what a lovely surprise it would be for the young buster, when he got older, to find that all unknown his dear ones had been working on his behalf, bumping up his holdings like billy-o. And __(F)___, mellowed by a father's love, got the party spirit and said that if that was the trend affairs were taking, blow him tight if he didn't chip in and add to the kitty his own personal tenner.

4. It was after the installation of Whiskers at the studio that the diminution of Mrs ___(G)___'s visits became really marked. There was something almost approaching a battle over Whiskers, who was an Irish terrier puppy which ____(H)___ had presented to ___(I)___ as a belated birthday present.

Mrs ___(G)___ utterly excommunicated Whiskers. Nothing, she maintained, was so notoriously supercharged with bacilli as a long-haired dog. If this was true, ___(I)___ certainly gave them every chance to get to work upon himself. It was his constant pleasure to clutch Whiskers to him in a vice-like clinch, to bury his face in his shaggy back, and generally to court destruction. Yet the more he clutched, the healthier did he appear to grow, and Mrs ___(G)___'s demand for the dog's banishment was overruled.

5. The great ball in honour of ___(J)___'s coming-of-age was at its height. The reporter of the [name of newspaper], who was present in his official capacity, (…) justly observed in his account of the proceedings next day that the ‘tout ensemble was fairylike’, and described the company as ‘a galaxy of fair women and brave men’. The floor was crowded with all that was best and noblest of the county; so that a half-brick, hurled at any given moment, must infallibly have spilt blue blood. Peers stepped on the toes of knights; honorables bumped into the spines of baronets. Probably the only titled person in the whole of the surrounding country who was not playing his part in the glittering scene was ___(K)___; who (…) had retired to bed with a pipe and a copy of Roses Red and Roses White by Emily Ann Mackintosh (Popgood, Crooly & Co), which he was to discover – after he was between the sheets, and it was too late to repair the error – was not, as he had supposed, a treatise on his favourite hobby, but a novel of stearine sentimentality dealing with the adventures of a pure young English girl and an artist named Claude.

Round 249 - 20 October 2005

William Tell Told Again

Wodehouse's witty version of the well-known Swiss legend was published in November 1904. But the old apple-knocker has made more than one appearance in the Master's works. Please identify his modern-day disciples and their targets in the following excerpts.

1. "Why aren't you at school now?"

"I was bunked last month."

"Really?" said A___, interested. "They gave you the push, did they? What for?"

"Shooting pigs."

"Shooting pigs?"

"With a bow and arrow. One pig, that is to say. B___. He belonged to C___, the headmistress. Do you ever pretend to be people in books?"

"Never. And don't stray from the point at issue. I want to get to the bottom of this thing about the pig."

"I'm not straying from the point at issue. I was playing William Tell."

"The old apple-knocker, you mean?"

"The man who shot an apple off his son's head. I tried to get one of the girls to put the apple on her head, but she wouldn't, so I went down to the pigsty and put it on B___'s. And the silly goop shook it off and started to eat it just as I was shooting, which spoiled my aim and I got him on the left ear. He was rather vexed about it. So was C___. Especially as I was supposed to be in disgrace at the time, because I had set the dormitory on fire the night before."2. "Can't?" D___'s eyebrows rose. "A strange word to hear on the lips of one of our proud family. Did our representative at King Arthur's Round Table say 'Can't' when told off by the front office to go and rescue damsels in distress from two-headed giants? When Henry the Fifth at Harfleur cried 'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead', was he damped by hearing the voice of a E___ in the background saying he didn't think he would be able to manage it? No! The E___ in question, subsequently to do well at the battle of Agincourt, snapped into it with his hair in a braid and was the life and soul of the party. But it may be that you are dubious concerning my ability. Does the old skill still linger, you are asking yourself? You need have no anxiety. Anything William Tell could do I can do better."

3. "Please don't be ridiculous, F___."

"I'm not being half as ridiculous as you are. Saying I shoot people with airguns. Why should I shoot people with airguns? And how do you suppose I could have potted G___ at that distance?"

"What distance?"

"He was standing on the terrace, wasn't he? He specifically stated that he was standing on the terrace. And I was up here. It would take a most expert marksman to pot the fellow at a distance like that. Who do you think I am? One of those chaps who shoot apples off their son's heads?"

4. "Now we're all set," she said. "H___, might I trouble you to step across and pick up that cannon. And while you're there ... you see that little ninctobinkus on the writing-table ..."

She indicated a small woollen rabbit of rather weak-minded aspect which had apparently been designed as a penwiper.

"Put it on top of his head. We may as well have a little demonstration in case any of them are tempted to try any funny business."

H___ laid the object on I___'s hair and backed away.

"Now, then," said J___. "William Tell stuff."

There was a sharp report. The rabbit seemed to explode.

"That'll show you," said J___, simpering slightly.

Round 249 - 1 November 2005

The Girl on the Boat

Wodehouse's characters, like their author, spend a lot of their time crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel. As the assiduous readers will be aware, those voyages often have a stimulating effect on the burgeoning of the divine emotion – love – especially when old mister moon is doing his stuff. In the following excerpts, please identify the girl (and the boy) on the boat.

1. "I was wondering how the dickens you ever managed to get acquainted with this chap. A___ met you when you landed at Southampton, and after a single night in London brought you down here, where you have been ever since. I don't see where you fitted in your billing and cooing."

"Think, B___. Use the bean."

"No, it beats me."

"He was on the boat, chump. C___'s got vision. He realized that the only way for a writer to make a packet nowadays is to muscle in on the American market, so he took time off and dashed over to study it."

[...]

"Heaven knows I'm not the man to counsel prudence and all that sort of thing. The only woman I ever wanted to marry was a music-hall serio who sang songs in pink tights. But –"

"Well?"

"I think I'd watch my step, if I were you, young D___. There are some queer birds knocking around in this world. You can't always go by what fellows say on ocean liners. Many a man who swears eternal devotion on the boat deck undergoes a striking change in his outlook when he hits dry land and gets among the blondes."

"B___, you make me sick."

2. "As a matter of fact, it was like this. Like a fool, I'd bought a second-class ticket."

"What? Our young Rockerbilt Astergould, the boy millionaire, travelling second-class! Why?"

"I had an idea it would be better fun. Everybody's so much more cheery in the second cabin. You get to know people so much quicker. Nine trips out of ten I'd much rather go second."

"And this was the tenth?"

"She was in the first cabin," said E. [...] "I used to stand and smoke against the railing opposite the barber's shop, and she used to walk round the deck."

"And you used to stare at her?"

"I would look in her direction sometimes," corrected E___, with dignity.

[...]

"By the way, I suppose you lost sight of this girl when you landed?"

"Yes."

"Well, there aren't so many girls in the United States. Only twenty million. Or is it forty million? Something small. All you've got to do is to search about a bit. Good night."

3. It was impossible to ascertain whether a blush mantled F___'s cheek, for in its normal state it was ruddier than a cherry, but he unquestionably looked coy. It would not be too much to say that he simpered. He murmured something about Ah, those moonlight nights, and when G___ said Ah, what moonlight nights? explained that he was alluding to the moonlight nights when he and this H___ – a widow of some years standing – had walked together on the boat deck. It was at the conclusion of one of these promenades, he added, that he had asked her to be his wife, and she had replied that the only obstacle standing in the way of the suggested merger was his adipose deposit. She refused, she said, to walk up the aisle with a human hippopotamus.

4. "It was I who brought them together, you know. I wrote telling I___ to come out here on the Atlantic, knowing that J___ was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they would hit it off together. J___ fell for her right away, and she must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged. It happened last Sunday."

"Last Sunday!"

It had seemed to K___ a moment before that he would never again be capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that I___ had broken off her engagement with him!

[...]

"It's a wonderful match for dear old I___ (...) J___'s not only a corking good fellow, but he has thirty million dollars stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings him in a perfectly awful mess of money every year. He's the J___ of the J___ automobiles, you know."