Musical Education

It's true that the appreciation of classical music doesn't rate very high in the list of attributes of the average member of the Drones Club. One recalls, for example, that scene the Jeeves and Wooster script-writers interpolated into an episode when they promoted Cora Bellinger from an opera student to a full-fledged diva so Tuppy could take a box at Covent Garden and invite an assortment of Drones to hear the adored object in action. According to Tuppy, Cora was appearing in a performance of “(slight pause) The Barber of (another slight pause) Figaro”, to which Barmy asked “Is that the one with the pyramids?” and Bertie answered, “Sounds like it, judging by the title.”

But your Quizmaster has still managed to scrape together enough classical music examples from the canon to fill up a quiz category. Have at it! Presto agitato, and all that!

1. “I do hope you won't get slack while I'm away. I want you to keep on going to concerts and picture galleries.”

__(A)__ quivered devoutly.

“Let 'em try to keep me out! That's all I say. Just let 'em try it.”

“They are doing you so much good.”

“You bet they are. I can feel the old soul swelling like a poisoned pup.”

“Yascha Prysky is giving a recital at Queen's Hall to-morrow.”

“Atta Yascha!”

(…)

The train had given itself a shake and was now beginning to slide along the platform. (…) __(A)__ removed his hat and waved it lovingly.

“And go and get your hair cut,” screamed __(B)__. “You look like a chrysanthemum.”

2. “Nine earls out of ten,” said __(C)__, confidently, as one who knew the breed, “wouldn't be able to tell Brahms from Irving Berlin, and wouldn't want to. Seventy per cent of them never attended a lecture in their lives. Eighty-five couldn't make a speech if you paid them. And, to cap it all, there are at least one or two who can't ride.”

3. My attention was drawn to the spots on my chest when I was in my bath, singing, if I remember rightly, the “Toreador Song” from the opera Carmen. They were pink in colour, rather like the first faint flush of dawn, and I viewed them with concern. I am not a fussy man, but I do object to being freckled like a pard, (…), a pard, I take it, being something on the order of one of those dogs beginning with d.

4. __(D)__ lay on the settee in her boudoir with her shoes off – her habit when at rest. She was doing a crossword puzzle. Through the open window at her side, the cool evening air poured in, refreshing to a brain which had become a little heated as it sought to discover the identity of an Italian composer in nine letters beginning with p. She had just regretfully rejected Irving Berlin because, despite his other merits, too numerous to mention here, he had twelve letters, began with an i, and was not an Italian composer when there was a sound outside like a mighty rushing wind and __(E)__ came bursting in.

(…Over the next several pages, D, with only half a mind on her conversation with E, continued to tackle the crossword puzzle, considering and then rejecting Puccini – “Tut! Only seven letters”, Garibaldi and Mussolini, before leaving E alone in the room …)

He picked up the paper and scanned the crossword puzzle which his __(D)__ had been trying to solve (…) and bringing to the problem the full force of his intellect, he took the pencil and in a firm hand wrote down the word ’Pagliacci’.
Each helping each, was the way __(E)__ looked at it.

5. For a bonus point, can you identify the Wodehouse characters who alerted a household to the presence of burglars in the night by bursting into an a capella rendition of the 'A che le morte' duet from Verdi’s Il Trovatore? In fairness, it should be added that the two artistes are both minor characters, whose appearances in the canon were limited to brief supporting roles in two scenes of one book.

6. And, for another bonus point, which Metropolitan Opera artist – a real singer and not a fictional character this time – claimed when he was a student at the gymnasium to have written a musical comedy containing “a bum scene and very phoney”? A master linguist interpreted this to be a “Bomb scene. Very funny.”

Round 312 - 28 April 2007

Foot in Mouth Disease

Saying the wrong thing to the wrong people at the wrong time is something we’ve probably all done from time to time. Can you identify the following foot-in-mouthers?

1. __(A)__ had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.

“When I heard that you and Mr __(B)__ was starting one of those places, I said to the fireman, ‘I give it two months,’ I said. And it was six weeks, wasn’t it, sir?”

“Seven.”

“Six or seven. Immaterial which. Point is I’m usually pretty right. I said to the fireman ‘It takes brains to run a night-club,’ I said. ‘Brains and a certain what-shall-I-say.’ Won me half-a-dollar, that did.”

2. “What the dickens are you grinning about?”

“Not grinning. Just smiling slightly. I was conjuring up a sort of vision, if you know what I mean, of you as seen through __(C)__’s eyes. Fat in the middle and thin on the top. Rather funny.”

“You think it funny, do you?”

“Not a bit.”

“You’d better not.”

“Quite.”

3. __(D)__ screamed excitedly.

“You don’t mean you and __(E)__ are engaged?”

“That’s right.”

(…)

“I’m delighted. I wouldn’t have thought __(E)__ had so much sense.”

“No,” agreed __(F)__ in his tactful way. “One raises the eyebrows in astonishment. __(E)__, as I remember it, was always more of a lad for the buxom, voluptuous type. Many a passionate romance have I seen him through with females who looked like a cross between pantomime Fairy Queens and all-in wrestlers. There was a girl in the Hippodrome chorus –”

He broke off these reminiscences, so fraught with interest to a fiancée, in order to say ‘Ouch!’ __(D)__ had kicked him shrewdly on the ankle.

4. __(G)__ considered the point. “Miss __(H)__ is a poetess, and she waylaid me the other morning (…) and asked me if I didn’t think that it was fairies’ tear-drops that made the dew. Did you ever hear such dashed nonsense?”

“Evidently an aggravated case. Is Miss __(H)__ staying at [G’s country house]?”

“My dear fellow, you couldn’t shift her with blasting-powder. Really this craze of (…) filling the house with these infernal literary people is getting on my nerves. I can’t stand these poets and what-not. Never could.”

“We must remember, however,” said __(I)__ gravely, “that poets are also God’s creatures.”

5. “I couldn’t sleep, so I – er – I thought I would pop down and see if I could find something to read, don’t you know?”

“Oh, you want a book?”

“That’s right. That’s absolutely it. A book. You’ve put it in a nutshell.”

“I will show you to the library.”

(…) Ushering ___(J)__ into the library, she switched on the light and made her way without hesitation to the third shelf from the top nearest the fireplace. Selecting one from a row of brightly covered volumes, she offered it to him.

(…) __(J)__ eyed it dubiously.

“Oh, I say,” he protested. “I don’t know, you know. This is one of that chap ___(K)___.”

“Well?” said __(L)__, frostily.

“He writes the most frightful bilge, I mean. Don’t you think so?”

Round 313 - 7 May 2007

Mothers' Day

"She gazed at me in a foul, motherly way." – Bertie Wooster, "Without the Option"

All the world loves a mother, provided she isn't wielding a native dagger. Just in time for Mother's Day (May 13) in the US (though late for the UK, which celebrated Mothering Day in March), this week's quiz is devoted to mothers. Identify the following passages (names and/or book or story titles).

1. "What's the date?"

"The twelfth of May, sir."

"And your first name?"

"A__, sir."

"A sweet name."

"So my mother felt, sir."

"Can you think of your mother at a moment when you are gouging a stranger, scarcely an acquaintance, for two hundred of the best and brightest?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ponder well, A__. She is looking down on you from heaven –"

"She lives in East Dulwich, sir."

"Well, from East Dulwich, then. It makes no difference to my argument. She is looking down on you from East Dulwich ..."

2. As nice and respectable a bunch of mothers, B__ says, as he had ever struck ... But it was amazing what a difference a mere fifty yards of the high road made to these Mothers. No sooner were they out of sight of the Vicarage than they began to effervesce to an almost unbelievable extent. The first intimation B__ had that the binge was going to run on lines other than those which he had anticipated was when a very stout Mother in a pink bonnet and a dress covered with bugles suddenly picked off a passing cyclist with a well-directed tomato, causing him to skid into a ditch. Upon which, all sixteen Mothers laughed like fiends in hell, and it was plain that they considered that the proceedings had now been formally opened.

3. ... The mothers all applauded, and the babies all yelled, and then he was conducted along the line, with all the mothers glaring at him in an intimidating way, as much as to warn him that if he dared to give the prize to anybody else's offspring he had jolly well better look out for himself ...

He kept his head, however. This was the first time he had ever been let in for anything of this nature, but a sort of instinct told him to adopt the policy followed by all experienced judges at these affairs – viz. to ignore the babies absolutely and concentrate entirely on the mothers. So many points for ferocity of demeanour, that is to say, and so many for the possibility of knife concealed in stocking, and so on and so forth ...

There were, it seemed, to be three prizes, and about the first one there could be no question at all. It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.

4. C__ gave him some cake. Having ruined his life, it was, she felt, the least she could do. In a spasm of belated maternal love she also slipped him a jam-sandwich. But how trivial and useless these things seemed now.

"D__!" she cried, suddenly.

"What?"

"Come here."

"Why?"

"Let mother show you how to hold that mashie."

"What's a mashie?"

5. ... Round the corner of the building was walking E__. His bearing was erect, even jaunty, and he carried the baby in his arms. Pausing for an instant to allow the busily-clicking cameras to focus him, he advanced towards the stupefied mother and thrust the child into her arms.

"That's that," he said carelessly, dusting his fingers. "No, no, please," he went on. "A mere nothing."

For the mother was kneeling before him, endeavouring to kiss his hand. It was not only maternal love that prompted the action. That morning she had signed up her child at seventy-five dollars a week for the forthcoming picture, "Tiny Fingers," and all through these long, anxious minutes it had seemed as though the contract must be a total loss.

Extra credit: Complete the following sentence, and name the mother who speaks it:

"Does mother's little chickabiddy want _____?"

(a) a kiss; (b) ice cream; (c) other (please specify: _______________)

Round 314 - 15 May 2007

Hospitality

"I won't have Baxter throwing flower-pots at my guests," he said firmly; for Lord Emsworth, though occasionally a little vague, was keenly alive to the ancient traditions of his family regarding hospitality.

– Leave It to Psmith, Chapter 8

The code of hospitality, like other Wodehousian codes, is rigid, but a few hosts bend it a little, as did the Earl of Blotsam in the reign of Edward the Confessor, who murdered all his guests, "subsequently cutting their heads off and – in rather loud taste – sticking them on spikes along the outer battlements".

Name the hosts (or hostesses) and their guests.

1. "I couldn't risk having A__ find it in my room."

"You preferred to have him find it in mine?"

"But how can he? He can't come searching your room."

"He can't, eh?"

"Of course not. You're his guest."

"And you suppose that will cause him to hold his hand? ... I think you are attributing to the old poison germ a niceness of feeling and a respect for the laws of hospitality which nothing in his record suggests that he possesses."

2. He raged with a sense of intolerable injury. Was it not enough that this porous plaster of a young man should adhere to him on shore? Must he even pursue him out into the waste of waters and come fooling about and pawing at him when he was enjoying the best swim he had had that summer? In all their long and honourable history no member of his ancient family had ever so far forgotten the sacred obligations of hospitality as to plug a guest in the eye. But then they had never had a guest like this. With a sharp, impassioned snort, B__ extracted his right hand from the foam, clenched it, drew it back and let it go.

3. ... He sat up with an anguished start. He had just remembered that his adversary in that combat had been a young man brightly dressed as a C__, and as the only celebrant at the festivities so costumed had been D__, the battler consequently must have been he. E__ was not as his most nimble-witted this afternoon, but he could reason out a simple thing like that.

He was appalled. D__ was due to arrive at F__ [name of place] today for an indeterminate visit, and the problem of what is the correct attitude for a host to adopt towards a guest of honour whom on the previous night he has earnestly endeavoured to throttle was more than he could solve.

4. A girl capable of laughing like a hyena at her betrothed in the circumstances in which G__ had laughed like a hyena at him was not, he reasoned, worthy of a good man's devotion. If this was the sort of girl she was, let her link her lot with that of H__. If her spiritual mate was a fellow who could outrage all the sacred laws of hospitality by fastening roller-skates to his guests' feet and then shouting "Fire!" in their ears, let her have him.

5. I hadn't read any of those etiquette books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two at carryings-on of this description. The chapter on Hints To Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning them that it wasn't the done things to invite people to the home and having got them settled in to pinch their J__s. [Note: J is an object, not a part of the anatomy]

"But, good Lord!" I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it, shocked to the core.

"Now what?"

"The man is under your roof."

"Did you expect him to be on it?"

"He has eaten your salt."

"Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor probably forbids it."

Round 315 - 23 May 2007

Hospitality (Part II)

It is always disconcerting for a young man to learn that he is enjoying the hospitality of a woman who is anxious to strangle him with her bare hands.

– Money in the Bank, Chapter 8

Last week we dealt with hosts' attitudes towards the laws of hospitality. This week, we give the guests' point of view. Again, identify the hosts (or hostesses) and guests.

1. A__ ... did not like the thought of the woman he loved being subjected to all this goo. For a moment he toyed with the idea of striding up and breaking B__'s spine in three places, but once more found his aspirations blocked by the code. He had eaten B__'s meat and drunk B__'s drink ... both excellent, especially the roast duck ... and that made the feller immune to assault. For when a feller has accepted a feller's hospitality, a feller can't go about breaking the feller's spine, no matter what the feller may have done. The code is rigid on that point.

2. "He had lots to say about you. He kept urging me –"

"To kiss me goodbye and tie a can to me?"

"Precisely. I'll say this for him, that he didn't really start in on you till we'd finished lunch, if you can call it lunch ... He said you were a worthless waster and a lot of other things. Made my blood boil. "C__," I said, "you have maligned a splendid young man whom I love like a son. Go into the silence, C__, I'm not speaking to you. I wouldn't speak to you if your shirt was on fire. I regard you as a louse of the first water, and I hope that on your way back to West Dulwich you get run over by an omnibus."

"Magnificent!"

"I could have put it stronger, but the man was my host. One has to be civil."

3. On the lawn, only a few yards from where he sat, a light was flickering to and fro. Some creature of the night had invaded the privacy of D__ [name of house] with an electric torch.

When you are a man's guest, even if that man is one for whom you feel no great affection, you cannot ignore the presence in his garden of prowlers. His bread and salt have placed you under an obligation.

4. "But what have you got against good-looking men?"

"I mistrust them."

"Including me?"

"Including you." ...

E__ breathed a little stertorously.

"I suppose it would be a breach of hospitality if I socked my hostess's sister in the eye?"

5. F__ raised his eyebrows.

"Are you insinuating that I am not G__?"

"I am."

"I see. You accuse me of assuming another man's identity, do you, of abusing H__'s hospitality by entering her house under false pretences? You deliberately assert that I am a fraud and impostor?"

"I do."

"And how right you are, my dear fellow!" said F__. "How right you are."

Identify the man guilty of pre-Internet identity theft.

Round 316 - 31 May 2007

Works of a Moment

"I had often wondered how those Johnnies in books did it – I mean the fellows with whom it was the work of a moment to do about a dozen things that ought to have taken them about ten minutes."

– Bertie Wooster, "Jeeves Takes Charge"

This quiz should be the work of a moment. Or, of course, possibly not. Identify the fast workers.

1. "Is the Devil in?"

It was a simple question, capable of being answered with a Yes or a No, but it seemed to take A__ aback somewhat.

"Is – who?"

"The Devil, sir."

A__ seemed to explode like a paper bag ... To run B__ down the steps and up the drive, kicking him about every other yard, was with A__ the work of a moment.

2. An imperious urge swept over him to take one look at her, and he made no attempt to resist it. To mount the rail was with him, as the phrase goes, the work of an instant; to slip, overbalance, catch his foot on the rail and fall face downward in the mud the work of another instant.

3. An art-critic who makes a habit of going round the studios of Chelsea and speaking his mind to men who are finishing their Academy pictures gets into the way of thinking swiftly. Otherwise, he would not quite too exquisitely live through a single visit. To cast a glance at the door and note that it was closed and that his host was between him and it was with C__ the work of a moment; to dart behind the easel the work of another.

4. Now, it has been well said that with nervous, highly-strung men like D__, a sudden call upon their manhood is often enough to revolutionize their whole character. Psychologists have frequently commented on this. We are too ready, they say, to dismiss as cowards those who merely require the stimulus of the desperate emergency to bring out all their latent heroism. The crisis comes, and the craven turns magically into the paladin.

With D__, however, this was not the case. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who knew him would have scoffed at the idea of him interfering with an escaped gorilla to save the life of a child, and they would have been right. To tiptoe backwards, holding his breath, was with D__ the work of a moment.

5. And for a space no more words were spoken. This was due principally to the behaviour of the Sealyham. It had taken E__ a moment or two to get the hang of things. At first sniff that wedding dress of F__'s had had a strange and misleading smell. But now recognition had come, and he was giving a spirited imitation of six Sealyhams enclosed in a single limousine. To leap up, lick F__'s face, leap back, kick G__ in the eye, leap up again, knock H__'s hat off, and plunge, panting stertorously, towards F__ once more was with him the work of a moment.

Extra Credit: It shows to what an extent happenings in and about G__ had affected my mental processes that she had been gone at least ten minutes before the thought of H__ floated into my mind, and I wished I had been able to give her a word of warning. That zealous employee of I__ had been instructed to see to it that no callers were admitted to the presence, and I saw no reason to suppose that he would fail in his duty when the old ancestor showed up. He would not use physical violence – indeed, with a woman of her physique, he would be unwise to attempt it – but it would be the work of an instant with him not to ask her to step this way ...

Round 317 - 10 June 2007

Of teeth and the dentists who maintain them

In Summer Moonshine the process server Mr Bulpitt is put in an awkward dental situation after a confrontation not unusual in his profession:

"What did occasion him concern was the fact that his teeth had strayed from their moorings. Lacking them, he felt like Samson after his hair had been shorn. A man may rise on stepping stones of punched snoots to higher things, but he is lost without his bridgework."

Identify these dentists, dental patients, and otherwise proprietors of teeth.

1. And next day I was in the dentist's waiting-room, about to keep my tryst with _A_, the man behind the forceps.

[...]

There I was ... sitting in an arm-chair, and across the room in another arm-chair, turning the pages of the National Geographic Magazine, was a kid of the Little Lord Fauntleroy type. His left cheek, like mine, was bulging ...

2. "Impractical in many ways ... _B_ never failed to visit his dentist every six months, and on the morning on which my story opens he had just seated himself in the empty waiting-room and was turning the pages of a three-months-old copy of the Tatler when the door opened and there entered a girl at the sight of whom – or who, if our friend here prefers it – something seemed to explode on the left side of his chest like a bomb."

3. Alas, any hope he may have had that familiarity would breed contempt died as their eyes met. Those well-gnashed teeth, that hideous shagginess (a little reminiscent of a stockbroker motoring to Brighton in a fur coat) filled him with all the old familiar qualms.

4. "I say, _C_, do you think I might go up to town with you this afternoon?"

"What!"

"Fact is, I ought to see my dentist. Haven't been to him for a deuce of a time."

"I cannot see the necessity for you to visit a London dentist. There is an excellent man in [place name omitted], and you know I have the strongest objection to your going to London."

"Well, you see, this fellow understands my snappers. Always been to him, I mean to say. Anybody who knows anything about these things will tell you greatest mistake to go buzzing about to different dentists."

Already _C_'s attention was wandering back to the waiting _X_.

"Oh, very well, very well."

"Thanks awfully, _C_."

"But on one thing I insist, _Y_. I cannot have you loafing about London all day ...

5. _D_ saw that nothing was to be gained by pursuing this line of thought. _E_ was plainly in no mood for abstract discussion of the modern girl. Even at this distance he could hear him gnashing his teeth. Unless it was an electric drill working in the street. He changed the subject.

"I wonder if I could speak to _F_?"

"Stop wondering."

"I can't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I've shipped her off to her aunt in Edinburgh with strict instructions to stay there till she's got some sense into her fat little head."

6. "Genius!" murmured _G__ "Genius! Well, _H__, you have won me over. Who, as you say, am I to pit myself against the decrees of Fate? I will write to _D_ tonight and inform him of my consent to his marriage."

[...]

"I'll pop down and send them up. Cheerio, and thanks very much. _D__ will be most awfully bucked."

I shot out and went downstairs. _D_ and __J_ were sitting on a couple of chairs like patients in a dentist's waiting-room.

"Well?" said _D_ eagerly.

"All over except the hand-clasping," I replied, slapping the old crumpet on the back.

Extra Credit: What simple method of grouping places D, H, Y and the owner of the well-gnashed teeth in #3 in one category, and the narrator of #1 and the person Y is anxious to meet in London in the other? Hint: the ex-fiancé to the niece of the aforementioned Sam Bulpitt would fall in the former. Sam Bulpitt himself belongs in neither.

Round 318 - 20 June 2007

A Heavy Downpour

Wodehouse wrote in 1949: "I returned this morning from Niagara Falls, where I crossed to the Canadian side, spent a couple of nights and came back into the USA on the quota, thus stabilizing my position and avoiding having to get renewals of my visitor's visa." Niagara Falls evidently impressed him. Identify the following allusions.

1. "Dashed good of you, _A_. Very white. Very feudal."

"Not at all, sir. Shall I step across and explain the position of affairs to _B_ and hand him the book?"

I mused. The more I examined his suggestion, the better I liked it. When you are slated to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, the idea of getting a kindly friend to take your place is always an attractive one; the only thing that restrains you, as a rule, from making the switch being the thought that it is a bit tough on the kindly f. But in the present case this objection did not apply. On this night of nights _B_ could get away with anything.

2. Left alone with _C_ and scanning her with a critical eye, _D_ found a difficulty in detecting those glamorous qualities in her which appeared to make so strong an appeal to _E_. He willingly conceded that if attacked by a mad bull or a gang of youths with switch knives and brass knucks, he would be happy to have her at his side, for the muscles of her brawny arms were obviously strong as iron bands, if not stronger; but as an arouser of the softer emotions he could not see her with a spyglass. He was thinking, indeed, as so many men have thought on meeting their friends' loved ones, that given the choice between linking his lot with hers and going over Niagara Falls in a barrel he would greatly prefer the latter form of unpleasantness.

However, being aware that _E_ held other views, he was prepared to do all that was within his power to further his interests ...

3. __F__ had plunged into a perfect Niagara of speech the moment the car entered the park. In a high tenor voice, and with wide, excited gestures, he pointed out to _G__ oaks with a history and rhodedendrons with a past: his conversation as they drew near the castle and came in sight of the flower-beds taking on an almost lyrical note and becoming a sort of anthem of gladness, through which, like some theme in the minor, ran a series of opprobrious observations on the subject of _H_.

4. Anyone ignorant of the difference between a pessimist and an optimist would have been able to pick up a useful pointer or two by scanning the faces of this nephew and this uncle. The passage of time had done nothing to relieve _J_'s apprehensions regarding the expedition on which he was about to embark, and his mobile features indicated clearly the concern with which he was viewing the future. As always, when fate had linked his movements with those of the head of the family, he was feeling like a man floating over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

5. "Well, if that's how you feel," he said, "why don't you go and tackle him?"

"All right," said _K_. "I will."

_L_ stared. His question had been intended in a purely satirical spirit, and her literal acceptance of it stunned him. For an instant compunction gripped him. She seemed so young, so frail to go up against one who even on his good mornings resembled something out of the Book of Revelations.

Then there swept over him the thought of what a lot of unpleasantness this would save him. If somebody had to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel how much more agreeable if it were not he.

Bonus point opportunities

Identify the sources of the following. Just the identity of Frances/Niagara is worth one-eighth of one point.

1. "I thought her name was Frances."

"No, Niagara."

"What a peculiar name."

"A gush of sentiment on the part of her parents. They spent the honeymoon at Niagara Falls."

"Ah, yes, I have heard of Niagara Falls. People go over them in barrels, do they not? Now there's a thing I would not care to do myself. Most uncomfortable, I should imagine, though no doubt one would get used to it in time."

and for an additional one-quarter point: What is Niagara's relationship to _H_?

2. "Many a man who has spent years wondering why on earth he ever linked his lot with a woman whom he has disliked from the moment they entered the Niagara Falls Hotel and a gang of boys and girls who seemed to grow more repulsive every day gratefully revises his views as he scans Schedule C. His wife may be a nuisance about the home, but she enables him to split the income. And the children. As the father looks at their hideous faces and reflects that he is entitled to knock off a nice little sum per gargoyle, the austerity of his demeanor softens and he pats them on the head and talks vaguely about ice cream for supper."

Round 319 - 28 June 2007

More landmarks west of the Atlantic O.

"See everything? Niagara Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old Grand Canyon, and what-not?" inquired Bertie Wooster of Lady Malvern in "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest".

We covered The Falls last week. Here are some more references and analogies to American sites and sights.

1. "I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact that you are at a loss to explain to _A_ why you are in New York instead of in Colorado?"

_B_ rocked like a jelly in a high wind.

"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"

"I chanced to meet _A_'s butler before we left England. He informed me that he happened to overhear _A_ speaking to you on the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."

2. "I feel that now. But it doesn't alter the fact that my life is ruined. I have become a woman-hater. It's an infernal nuisance, because practically all the poetry I have ever written rather went out of its way to boost women, and now I'll have to start all over again and approach the subject from another angle. Women! When I think how mother behaved and how _Z_ treated me I wonder there isn't a law against them. 'What mighty ills have not been done by Woman! Who was it betrayed the Capitol!'"

"In Washington?" said _X_, puzzled. He had heard nothing of this. But then he generally confined his reading of the papers to the sporting page.

"In Rome, you ass! Ancient Rome."

"Oh, as long ago as that?"

3. _C_ was reticent about his private affairs. Of her own she had concealed nothing from him. In the long afternoons when business was slack and there was the opportunity of exchanging confidences, she had revealed the whole _Y_ Story – the childhood in the small Illinois town, the leisurely passage through high school, the lucky break when _D_ , doing the square thing by his goddaughter, had put her through secretarial college, the graduation from same, the various jobs, some good, some not so good, and finally the coming to Hollywood because she had always wanted to see what it was like there. And almost all she knew of _C_ was that he had a good appetite and a freckle on his nose. It irritated her constantly.

4. "Haven't you ever heard of _E_'s? Shows you've not been in America. _E_'s have branches in every small town throughout the Middle West. They supply the local yokels with everything, including _F_s. I should estimate that the _F_s sold annually by _E_'s, if placed end to end, would reach from the rock-bound coast of Maine to the Everglades of Florida. Possibly further."

"And _G_ is really _E_ in disguise? When I meet him and say, "Hullo there, _G_," will he tear off his whiskers and shout 'April Fool! I'm _E_'?"

5. It would, he was convinced, remain forever photographically lined on the tablets of his memory when yesterday had faded from its page, just as the eruption of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Park lingers always in the memory of the tourist who sees it.

"I am glad to have given satisfaction, _H_," he said, remembering a good line taught him by _J_'s _K_ at the time when he was being coached for the high office he held. And, thinking of _J_, he felt how right the clear-seeing peer had been in urging him to spare no effort that would lead to a rapprochement between _L_ and himself.

6. "I'm _M_, perhaps you can tell me –"

"You're not_M_?"

"I am."

"Of_N_?"

"I am. And perhaps you can tell me –"

It has already been hinted that _M_ was not a feast for the eye and would have had to taper off quite a good deal before entering for a beauty contest with any confidence of success. Nevertheless, _O_ was gazing on him as he might have gazed on some noble work of Nature like the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

"This is a great pleasure, _M_. I heard you were on board and was hoping that we should meet."

"Thank you. But perhaps you can tell me what in the world _P_ is doing on this boat."

[...]

"It's a sort of _F_," said M, groping."

...

"It's the _F_ supreme."

For a bonus point: What do X, C and the speaker in #5 have in common? [It has nothing whatever to do with landmarks. Or America. Or F's]

Round 320 - 7 July 2007

Real Nicholls-and-Jackson Stuff

To celebrate the start of the 94th Tour de France this week let's focus on bicycles and bicycling. Identify the cyclists below.

1. And so matters stood till just after lunch on Tuesday afternoon, when, as I was strolling up and down in front of the house with a cigarette, _A_ and _B_ came bursting up the drive on bicycles, dripping with momentous news.

"_C_," said _A_, deeply agitated, "unless we take immediate action and do a bit of quick thinking, we're in the cart."

"What's the matter?"

"_D_'s the matter," said _B_ morosely. "The _E_ starter."

"We never even considered him," said _A_. "Somehow or other, he got overlooked. It's always the way. _F_ overlooked him. We all overlooked him."

2. "No guest of my inviting would last a minute in the dear old place. _G_ would get a grip on his trouser seat and he would find himself flung out on his ear before he had finished unpacking. No, what you do is go to _H_, take a room at _I_ and lie in wait. _J_ is always bicycling to _H_ to change library books and so on. You're on the watch, and you spring out at her from behind a lamppost and go into your sales talk. Girls like being sprung out at. They take it as a compliment. At your age I was always springing out at girls I'd had some disagreement with, and it never failed to lead to a peaceful settlement."

"But suppose she doesn't bicycle to _H_?"

3. ... the menacing way in which he hopped on his bicycle and pedalled off spoke louder than words. I don't think I have ever seen anyone pedal with a more sinister touch to the ankle work.

I was still looking after him, feeling a little weak, when from the opposite or _K_ direction there came the ting of another bicycle bell and, I perceived _L_ approaching. As perfect an instance of one damn thing after another as I have ever experienced.

In sharp contradistinction to those of _M_, her eyes were shining with a welcoming light. She hopped off as she reached the car, and flashed a bright smile at me.

"Oh, here you are, _C_. I have just been putting a few flowers in _K_ for you."

I thanked her, but with a sinking heart. I hadn't liked that smile, and I didn't like the idea of her sweating about strewing flowers in my path.

4. ... out of Forty-fifth Street there trickled a weary-looking golf-ball, followed in the order named by _N_, resolute but giving a trifle at the knees, and _O_ on a bicycle.

The latter, on whose face and limbs the mud had dried, made an arresting spectacle.

"What are you playing?" I inquired.

"Eleven hundred," said _N_. "We got into a casual dog."

"A casual dog?"

5. _P_ was always the soul of courtesy. You had only to shout "Hoy!" at him from a bicycle to have him drop everything and give you his immediate attention.

"Ah, _Q_," he said. "You crave an audience?"

_R_ dismounted, and stood for a space bent over the handle-bars, puffing. His sharp ride, taken at a moment when he was loaded down above the Plimsoll mark with eggs, bread, tea and kippered herrings, had left him short of breath. _P_, in his considerate way, begged him to take his time.

Presently the puffing ceased, and _Q_ spoke.

"Ho!" he said.

"Ho to you," replied _P_ civilly. "Have a cigar?"

For a bonus point: who put in an order for a tandem bicycle and managed to end up with a free clockwork toy?