Caviare

Let's welcome 2009 with a – for economical reasons strictly virtual – round of caviare. Happy New Year!

1. "But – but – do you mean to say, then, that the shares are – are really worth something?"

"Only millions, that's all. Merely millions. It's a pity you didn't buy some. This caviare," said A___, champing meditatively, "is good. That's what it is, B___ – good. I think I'll have another slice."

It is difficult to arrest the progress of a millionaire who is starting off in the direction of caviare, but B___, with a frenzied clutch at the other's coat-sleeve, succeeded in doing so for a brief instant.

"When did you hear this?"

"Just as I was starting out this morning."

"Do you think anybody else knows about it?"

"Everybody down-town, I should say."

"But, listen," said B___ urgently. "Say, listen!" He clung to the caviare-maddened man's sleeve with a desperate grip. "What I am getting at is, I know a guy – nothing to do with business – who has a block of that stock. Do you think there's any chance of him not having heard about this?"

2. "You're sure you're not hard up, C___?"

"Not a bit. Busts are quite brisk. It's odd, when you think how hideous most people are, that so many of them should want to hand their faces down to posterity."

"You wouldn't deceive me?"

"No, honestly. I'm opulent."

"Then why did you send me that SOS? What is the very urgent matter you wanted to see me about, with the 'very' underlined?"

C___ was silent for a moment, but only because she was eating caviare. It did not often come her way.

3. D___ was an extraordinarily good-looking youth, slender of build and rather fragile of appearance, with wistful expressive eyes which somehow seemed to emphasize and underline his fragility. Women thought him delicate, and often told him to sit quiet while they rubbed his forehead with eau-de-Cologne. E___ thought he needed feeding up, and had been doing it for months with caviar and truite bleue and minced chicken and pêche Melba at the more expensive class of restaurant. But though he must have absorbed very nearly his weight in these delicacies, he went on looking wistful and fragile.

4. "We were married a week later at the Little Church Around The Corner, and very happy we were, too, till he got that apoplectic stroke and passed on. You couldn't keep the poor angel off the lobster Newburg and caviare, and of course the brandy helped quite a good deal."

5. "Did we drink anything?"

"Not a thing. Well, just a bottle or two of champagne, and liqueurs ... brandy, chartreuse, benedictine, curaçao, crème de menthe, kummel and so forth ... and of course, whisky. But nothing more. It was practically a teetotal evening. No, what did the trick was that charcoal. As you are probably aware, the stuff they sell you as caviare in this country isn't caviare. It's whitefish roe, and they colour it with powdered charcoal. Well, you can't sit up half the night eating powdered charcoal without paying the penalty."

"Quite," said F___. "Well, I think our best plan will be to remain perfectly quiet with our eyes closed, and presently I will send us a little sedative."

"Have a nut," suggested the parrot.

"No nuts, of course," said F___.

Round 382 - 15 January 2009

Here Comes the Chief

When Wodehouse heroes, staying on the territory of the United States of America, are full to the brim with the milk of human kindness as a result of having found the blue bird, they tend to pat small boys on the head and ask them if they mean to be President one day. Now that the White House is preparing for its new tenant, let us take a look at some of the other ways in which America's top job pops up in the Canon.

1. "But A___ is just the type I need for that part. He's simply got to be himself."

"It's pretty tough on me, B___, old man. C___ sent this blighter over with a letter of introduction to me, and she will hold me responsible."

"She'll cut you out of her will?"

"It isn't a question of money. But – of course, you've never met C___, so it's rather hard to explain. But she's a sort of human vampire-bat, and she'll make things most fearfully unpleasant for me when I go back to England. She's the kind of woman who comes and rags you before breakfast, don't you know."

"Well, don't go back to England, then. Stick here and become President."

2. "You don't remember me. You wouldn't, of course. It's a long time since we met. Your son D___ brought me to E___ [name of stately home] for the summer holidays once, when we were boys together. F___ is the name."

"F___?"

"I mentioned that on the phone this morning, if you remember, but nothing seemed to stir. Nice running into one another like this. How is D___?"

"He's all right. F___? Out in Kenya, growing coffee and all that. F___?" said G [...]. "Why, you're the chap who is in love with my daughter H___."

The young man bowed.

"I could wish no neater description of myself," he said. "It cuts out all superfluities and gets right down to essentials. One of these days I shall be President of the United States, but I am quite content to live in history as the chap who was in love with your daughter H___."

3. "You're always going off in your car, sometimes for a week at a stretch. For all I know, you may have been spending your time festooned with hussies."

"I wouldn't so much look at a hussy if you brought her to me on a plate with watercress round her."

"I don't believe you."

"And it was you, if my memory serves me right," said J___, "who some two and a half seconds ago were shooting off your head about the necessity for absolute trust between us. Women!" said J___. "Women! My God, what a sex!"

On this difficult situation K___ entered, bearing a glass on a salver.

"Your whisky and soda, m'lord," he said, much as a President of the United States might have said to a deserving citizen "Take this Congressional medal."

4. "Fire you?" he said, wrestling with feelings. "Why, you're the only person in the world as it is at present constituted on whom I can rely for sympathy and understanding. Who else have I to tell my troubles to? Don't think I'm forgetting the signal services the L___ half-portion has rendered me. I'm not. That Bavarian cream. And last night she brought me the leg of a chicken and a piece of apple pie. But I can't talk to her. She oozes silently into my room like oil, delivers the nourishment and is off again as if she had a train to catch. You're different. You stay put, and you listen. Fire you? I wouldn't fire you if the President of the United States and his entire Cabinet fell on their knees and begged me to."

5. My children, if you fail to shine or triumph in your special line; if, let us say, your hopes are bent on some day being President, and folks ignore your proper worth, and say you've not a chance on earth – Cheer up! For in these stirring days Fame may be won in many ways. Consider, when your spirits fall, the case of M___.

Round 383 - 25 January 2009

Knives-and-Boots Boys

One of the charming features of the world of Wodehouse is that its maker has given an irreplaceable role to all his creatures great and small, from the loftiest Duke right down to the lowliest boy who cleans the knives and boots. (I almost said "right down to the gawd-help-us-est interior decorator", but we have to draw the line somewhere; this quiz deals with different representatives of mankind, not with the lower forms of pond life.) Please identify the following excerpts involving b. who clean k. and b.

1. "I want my letter!"

"Then you'll have to crawl under the bed, because that's where it's fallen," said A___ with the smugness of a member of Parliament making a debating point. "The breeze through the window caught it. You'll get pretty dusty, because it's somewhere right at the back."

B___ bit her lip. It hurt her a little, but it was better than biting A___.

"I will ring for C___."

"What's the good of that? C___ can't crawl under beds."

"He will send the boy who cleans the knives and boots."

"All right, let the child come. But I'm not going to tip him," said A___, and on this sordid note the conversation ended.

2. His plans were all neatly shaped. It was his intention to make straight for the D___. Arrived there, a swift dash would take him through the lobby and up the stairs to his room, where no fewer than seven pairs of trousers awaited his choice. And as the lobby was usually deserted except for the growing boy who cleaned the knives and boots, a lad who could be relied on merely to give a cheery guffaw and then dismiss the matter from his mind, he anticipated no further trouble.

3. As he passed through the portal of the E___, he was whistling cheerily. Not the slightest presentiment came to him that he would find the affairs of F___ in anything but apple-pie order. By this time the foundations of a beautiful friendship between F___ and the guv'nor should have been securely laid. "Call me Uncle G___," he could hear the guv'nor saying.

It was accordingly with a crushing bolt-from-the-blueness that the information which he received at the reception desk descended upon him. He had to clutch at a passing knives-and-boots boy to support himself.

4. "If you arst me," he said, throwing out the suggestion for what is was worth, "she was expecting the arrival of her accomplice. This is the work of a gang."

He would have done better to remain in modest obscurity. Compelled by his official status to accept meekly the recriminations of landed proprietors who were also members of the bench of magistrates, H___ could be very terrible when dealing with knives and boots boys, and he had been wanting some form of relief for his feeling ever since J___ had called him an ass, a fool, an idiot and an imbecile. To advance and seize K___ by the left ear was with him the work of an instant, to lead him to the door and speed him on his way with a swift kick the work of another. A thud and a yelp, and K___ had ceased to have a seat at the conference table.

Extra credit: what is the name of the knives-and-boots boy who lends his bicycle to another character in one of the stories and/or novels quoted above?

Round 384 - 2 February 2009

Hot-Water Bottles

As most, if not all, of our entrants live in the northern hemisphere, a cosy quiz about hot-water bottles seemed just what the doctor ordered in this winter season.

1. "How many times have I told you always to put a hot-water bottle in my bed? You've forgotten it again, you old cloth-head!"

A___ peered up, astounded and militant.

"B___, I am not accustomed –"

"Shut up!" thundered B___. "What I want from you is less back-chat and more hot-water bottles. Bring it up at once, or I leave tomorrow. Let me endeavour to get it into your concrete skull that you aren't the only person letting rooms in this village. Any more lip and I walk straight round the corner, where I'll be appreciated. Hot-water bottle ho! And look slippy about it."

2. A faint hope began to stir that this might not be the hand of doom falling, after all. I proceeded to C___'s room, and found that she had taken to her bed, beside which D___ was standing. The clothes which had been lying on the bed had been put away, and so had the boots with their sinister contents. Where they had been put, I did not know, but it seemed pretty evident that the worst had not yet happened, and this so bucked me up that I became rather breezy.

"Well, well, well," I said, tripping in, rubbing my hands and smiling a sympathetic smile. "And how are we, how are we, ha, ha?"

Something squashy hit me in the face. The patient had thrown a hot-water bottle at me.

3. And so powerfully had the shock of this fearful revelation affected his mind that his only coherent thought was a desire to follow E___ up to the balcony, tear him limb from limb, and scatter the fragments on to the tables below.

F___ was the first to find speech. She spoke quickly, stormily.

"I can't understand you, G___. You never used to be such a jellyfish. You did have a mind of your own once. But now ... I believe it's living at H___ all the time that has done it. You've got lazy and flabby. It's turned you into a vegetable. You just loaf about and go on and on, year after year, having your three fat meals a day and your comfortable rooms and your hot-water bottle at night ..."

4. "Do you know what they did, J___?"

"No, sir."

"They took a long stick, J___, and – follow me closely here – they tied a darning-needle to the end of it. Then at dead of night, it appears, they sneaked privily into the party of the second part's cubicle and shoved the needle through the bedclothes and punctured her hot-water bottle. Girls are much subtler in these matters than boys, J___."

5. In the dining-room of K___ [name of house, followed by postal address], L___ came on the notice while skimming the paper preparatory to the morning dash for London on the 8.45. He was finding some difficulty in reading, owing to the activities of the Old Retainer, who had a habit of drifting in and out of the room during breakfast, issuing the while a sort of running bulletin of matters of local interest.

M___ was plump and comfortable. She gazed at L___ with stolid affection, like a cow inspecting a turnip. To her, he was still the infant he had been when they had first met. Her manner towards him was always that of wise Age assisting helpless Youth through a perplexing world. She omitted no word or act that might smooth the path for him and shield him against life's myriad dangers. In winter, she thrust unwanted hot-water bottles into his bed.

Round 385 - 10 February 2009

Seventh Annual Valentine’s Day Quiz

I think it is only fitting to perpetuate the Valentine’s Day quizzes considering the importance of love (and marriage) in the works of Wodehouse, and also that he died on St Valentine’s Day 34 years ago.

1. This time A______ was wholly appreciative. Women notoriously admire a dasher. B_____ rose in her estimation. She had never suspected it before, but the man had the authentic fire within him. What matter, she felt, if the moustache droops, if only the soul can soar?

“’At-a-boy!” she said.

“’At, as you very justly remark, a boy,” agreed C_____. “Then I take it that of the two methods you prefer the second?”

“Of course.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Right-ho,” said C______. “I thought I’d ask.”

And without further preamble he swooped on her in a masterful, B____-like manner, picked her up with the gay abandon of a stevedore handling a sack of wheat, and kissed her.

He kissed her a good deal. This was what he had been wanting to do for weeks, and, now that the opportunity had presented itself, he did not skimp. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her hair, her chin and the tip of her nose.

“Oh, A_____!” said C______.

She disengaged herself breathlessly.

“Oh, C______ !” said A_____.

The words were simple, but they conveyed their meaning without ambiguity. And, if there had been anything obscure about them, her shining eyes would have acted as interpreters.

...

“Do you love me?” asked C______.

“Of course I do.”

2. D_____ turned to E______, who during this brief business interview had been drinking him in with round and astonished eyes.

“E______!“ said D_____.

„D_____!“ said E______.

“You darling,“ said E______; “I love you, I love you, I …”

(a couple of pages later)

And taking advantage of the fact that this delightful station was full of people who were kissing one another, he bent over with no more words and kissed E______. And the kiss seemed like nothing so much as the formal affixing of a signature to a document whose pleasant terms had long since been agreed upon and settled. It was so entirely simple, so perfectly natural and in order. And somehow it seemed to put matters on such a sound and satisfactory footing that for the first time since she had come to him out of this whirl of restless humanity he found himself able to talk coherently and conversationally.

3. ‘I’m fond of money – I don’t deny it – but…’

‘Isn’t everybody?’

‘What?’

‘Fond of money.’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Have mine,’ said Mr F_______.

He strode to the telephone, unhooked the receiver, and barked into it to cover a certain not unnatural confusion. If his cheeks had not been made of the most durable leather, they would have been blushing. What he had said was not what he had been intending to say. He had planned something on tenderer and more romantic lines. Still, that was the way it had come out. The proposition had been placed on the agenda, and let it lay, was Mr F______’s view.

...

‘Well?’ said F_______, replacing the receiver and turning.

‘You go with it, I suppose?’ said G______.

Mr F________ nodded curtly.

‘There is that objection,’ he said.

G______ smiled.

‘I don’t consider it an objection.’

4. ‘Oh, H_____, you are a pompous old ass, aren’t you? “Pray laugh if you wish to”! … H_____! ‘

‘Well?’

‘Do you really mean that you would stay on in England if I promised to marry you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And offend your rich uncle for life and get cut off with a dollar or whatever they cut nephews off with in America?’

‘Yes.’

I_______ reached up at H_____’s head and gave his hair a little proprietorial tug.

‘Well why don’t you H______?’ she said softly.

It seemed to H_____ that in some strange way his powers of breathing had become temporarily suspended. A curious dry feeling had invaded his throat. He could hear his heart thumping.

‘What?’ he croaked huskily.

‘I said why – do – you – not, H______?’ whispered I_____, punctuating the words with little tugs.

H______ found himself on the other side of the fence. How he had got there he did not know. Presumably he had scrambled over. A much abraded shin bone was to show him later that this theory as the correct one, but at the moment bruised shins had no meaning for him. He stood churning the mould of the flower bed on which he had alighted, staring at the indistinct whiteness which was I______.

5. “This opens up a new line of thought,” said J_______ at length. “Our Miss J_______ appears to have got the wires crossed.” She looked at him meditatively. ”It’s funny. K_______ seemed so convinced about the way you felt.”

L_____’s collar tightened up another half-inch, but he managed to get his vocal cords working.

“He was quite right about the way I felt.”

“You mean … really?”

“Yes.”

“You mean you’re … fond of me? “

“Yes.”

“But, L______!”

“Damn it, are you blind?” cried L______, savage from shame and the agony of harrowed feelings, not to mention a collar which appeared to have been made for a man half his size. “Can’t you see? Don’t you know I’ve always loved you? Yes, even when you were a kid.”

“But, L_______, L_______, L_______!” Distress was making J______’s silver voice almost squeaky. “You can’t have done. I was a horrible kid. I did nothing but bully you from morning till night.”

“I liked it.”

“But how can you want me to marry you? We know each other too well. I’ve always looked on you as a sort of brother.”

Round 386 - 21 February 2009

Slow trains

Although trains have already been a theme they will have to do again. This time neither the Cornish Riviera Express nor the observation car of a trans-continental train, but the less glamorous trains – taking their time.

1. On the little branch line which starts at A______ and conveys passengers to B_____, C_____, D______ and other small and somnolent hamlets of the South of England the early afternoon train had just begun its leisurely journey.

It was a train whose patrons, sturdy sons of the soil who did not intend to let a railway company trouser more of their money than they could help, had for the most part purchased third-class tickets. But a first-class compartment had been provided for the rich and thriftless, and to-day it had two occupants, a large youth of open and ingenuous countenance, much sun-burned, and a tall slim, distinguished-looking man some thirty years his senior with a jaunty grey moustache and a bright and enterprising eye, whose air was that of one who has lived to the full every minute of an enjoyable life and intends to go on doing so till further notice. His hat was on the side of his head, and he bore his cigar like a banner.

2. It was nearly an hour after the two forty-five had arrived at its destination that a slower and shabbier train crawled in and deposited E______ on the platform of the little station of F_____. The festivities connected with his cousin G_____’s wedding and the intricacies of a railway journey across the breadth of England had combined to prevent an earlier return.

He was tired, but happy. The glow of sentiment which warms young men in love when they watch other people getting married still lingered.

3. But on the woman opposite the effect of the untoward occurrence was still more marked. With a single piercing shriek, she rose from her seat straight into the air like a rocketing pheasant; and, having clutched the communication-cord, fell back again. Impressive as her previous leap had been, she excelled it now by several inches. I do not know what the existing record for the Sitting High-Jump is, but she undoubtedly lowered it, and if H_____ had been a member of the Olympic Games Selection Committee, he would have signed this woman up immediately.

It is a curious thing that, in spite of the railway companies’ sporting willingness to let their patrons have a tug at the extremely moderate price of five pounds a go, very few people have ever either pulled a communication-cord or seen one pulled. There is, thus, a widespread ignorance as to what precisely happens on such occasions.

4. This J_____ to whom I allude was crouching in the interior of a bush not far from the french windows of what, unless the architect had got the place all cockeyed, was the dining-room. He had run up from K_______ on the 2.54 milk train.

I say ‘run’, but perhaps ‘sauntered’ would be more the mot juste. When milk moves from spot to spot, it takes its time, and it was not until very near zero hour that I had sneaked in through the gates and got into position one. By the time I had wedged myself into my bush, the sun was high up in the sky, as L_____’s M_____ would have said and I found myself musing as I have so often had occasion to do, on the callous way in which nature refuses to chip in and do its bit when the human heart is in the soup.

5. “I went back to N_____’s flat to look up the trains to O_____. Are you aware, P______, that this place has the rottenest train service in England? After the five-sixteen, which I’d missed, there isn’t anything till nine-twenty. And, what with having all this on my mind and getting a bit of dinner and not keeping a proper eye on the clock, I missed that too. In the end I had to take the three a.m. milk train. I won’t attempt to describe to you what a hell of a journey it was, but I got to O_____ at last, and, racing like a hare, rushed to Q____’s house. I had a sort of idea I might intercept the postman and get him to give me my letter back.”

“He wouldn’t have done that.”

Extra credit: Coming from Hertfordshire which train would one take to arrive in London at 6.45 a.m.

Round 387 - 2 March 2009

Scandinavia

Being Scandinavian (Dane born in Sweden) your Quizmaster was tempted to use Scandinavia as a theme. And there are in fact a number of references to Scandinavia in the work of Wodehouse.

1. A______ , the eminent Dane, measured time by means of altitudes, quadrants, azimuths, cross-staves, armillary spheres and parallactic rules, and the general opinion in Denmark was that he had got the thing down cold. And then in 1863 came B_____ with his Die Zeitbestimmung Vermittelst Des Tragbaren Durchgangsinstruments Im Vertical e Des Polarsterns – a best seller in its day, subsequently made into a musical by Rogers and Hammerstein, who called it North Atlantic, a much better marquee title – and proved that A______, by mistaking an azimuth for an armillary sphere one night after the annual dinner of the alumni of Copenhagen University, had got his calculations all wrong, throwing the whole thing back into the melting pot.

2. The important thing is that , in his thirty-first year, after six seasons of untiring effort, C______ went in for a championship, and won it.

C_______, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.

I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see clearly before me the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging me to tell it to the King of Denmark, others insisting that I produce my Eskimos. Nevertheless I do not shrink. I state once more that in his thirty-first year C______ went in for a golf championship and won it.

3. It was at this moment that D______, one of the thriftiest souls who ever came out of Sweden, perceived that the chance of a lifetime had arrived for adding substantially to his little savings. By profession he was one of those men who eke out a precarious livelihood by rowing dreamily about the water-front in skiffs. He was doing so now: and, as he sat meditatively in his skiff, having done his best to give the liner a good send off by paddling round her in circles, the pleading face of a twenty-dollar bill peered up at him. D_____ was not the man to resist the appeal. He uttered a sharp bark of ecstasy, pressed his bowler hat firmly upon his brow, and dived in. A moment later he had risen to the surface, and was gathering up money with both hands.

He was still busy with this congenial task when a tremendous splash at his side sent him under again: and, rising for a second time, he observed with not a little chagrin that he had been joined by a young man in a blue flannel suit with an invisible stripe.

“Svensk!” exclaimed D_____, or whatever it is that natives of Sweden exclaim in moments of justifiable annoyance.

4. ‘No, at our country residence at E_____. It upset me considerably, and I gave my notice. I was not sorry to do so, for I had found my colleagues at the F_____ home most uncongenial.’

‘What was wrong with them?’

‘Several of them were Swedes, and the rest Irish.’

‘You don’t like Swedes?’

‘I disapprove of them.’

’Why?’

‘Their heads are too square.’

‘And you disapprove of the Irish?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they are Irish.’

To F______, some of whose best friends were Swedish and Irish, it occurred as a passing thought that his companion, however gifted at buttling, must have been a difficult man to fit in socially.

5. “G (title of poem)_____
By H_________
(Copyrights in all languages, including the Scandinavian)

(The dramatic, musical comedy, and motion picture rights of this Threnody are strictly reserved. Applications for these should be made to the author.)”

“What is a Threnody?” asked J_____.

“This is,” said H_____.

He cleared his throat again and resumed.

“Black branches,
like a corpse’s withered hands,
Waving against the blacker sky:
Chill winds, Bitter like the tang of half-remembered sins;”.

Extra credit: Name at least four persons who do Swedish exercises (one doing them in the nude), and one who “leaves these excesses to the Swedes”.

Round 388 - 10 March 2009

France

Going south from Scandinavia one reaches France which hasn’t, as far as I can see, been a theme yet despite its importance to Wodehouse.

1. At Roville there are several institutions provided by the municipality for the purpose of enabling visitors temporarily to kill thought. Chief among these is the Casino Municipale, where, for a price, the sorrowful may obtain oblivion by means of the ingenious game of boule. Disappointed lovers at Roville take to boule as in other places they might take to drink.

2. A______, pushing her way through the crowds, had arrived at the Public Amusement Gardens. She found them much changed, so much changed, indeed, that their best friend would scarcely have known them. Normally, they are quiet and decorous, these Public Amusement Gardens, even to the point of dullness. Children walk in them with their nurses. Circumspect lovers whisper in them. Old gentlemen sit in them, reading the Figaro or B______. Their whole aspect lulls the observer to a stodgy calm: and hearing their name, you cannot help feeling that C______ must be easily amused.

3. With the coming of January, it was D______’s practice to leave England and go to the South of France, where there was sunshine and crisp dry turf. He pursued his usual custom this year. With his suit-case and his ninety-four clubs he went off to E_______, staying as he always did at the Hotel Superbe, where they knew him, and treated with an amiable tolerance his habit of practising chip-shots in his bedroom. On the first evening, after breaking a statue of the Infant Samuel in Prayer, he dressed and went down to dinner. And the first thing he saw was Her.

4. He turned, annoyed.

‘Well? Que est-il maintenant? Que voulez-vous?’

It was no idle desire for conversation that had brought the waiter to his side. He was holding a blue envelope.

‘Ah,’ said F______, understanding. ‘Une telegramme pour moi, eh? Tout droit. Donnez le ici.’

To open a French telegram is always a matter of some little time. It is stuck together in unexpected places. During the moments while his fingers were occupied, F_______ chatted pleasantly to his companion about the weather, featuring le soleil and the beauty of le ciel. G_______, he felt, would have wished this.

5. “At your service,” said a voice, and turning I saw what I thought for a moment was General De Gaulle. Then I realised that he was some inches shorter than the General and had a yard or so less nose. But not even General De Gaulle could have looked sterner and more intimidating. “Sergeant H_______ of the Monaco police force,” he said. I have come to see a Mr I______, who I understand is a member of your entourage.”

6. The bistro they found in the next street was of the humble zinc-counter-and-imitation-marble-tables type and rather fuller than he could have wished of taxi-drivers and men who looked as if they were taking a coffee break after a spell of work in the sewers, but to J_____ it seemed an abode of luxury, what Kubla Khan would have called a stately pleasure dome. As he seated himself in a chair even harder than the one provided for his clients by the Sergeant, a thrill of gratitude to the founder of the feast set him tingling.

How few girls he mused, would have been so hospitable to one who, after all, was a comparative stranger.

Round 389 - 17 March 2009

Coincidences

“Are you Major Brabazon-Plank, the explorer?”

“I am.”

“So am I,” said the gentleman, evidently rather impressed by the odd coincidence.

– Uncle Dynamite, Chapter 11

Coincidences are all very well – in her novels Leila Yorke went in for them rather largely – but there is a limit.

– Ice in the Bedroom, Chapter 7

By a strange coincidence, not only are the above passages about coincidences, so is this week’s quiz.

1. “Why, I was forgetting that you were a writer of detective stories. You ought to be able to solve this mystery in a moment. Ask yourself, what would A__ have done?”

“I can answer that. A__ would have waited helplessly for some coincidence to happen to help him out.”

“Had he no methods?”

“He was full of methods. But they never led him anywhere without the coincidence.”

2. '“Listen,” said B__, a good deal worked up. “If my niece Myrtle can’t play Chopin’s Funeral march in forty-eight seconds, I hope this house will be struck by lightning this very minute.” And by what I have always thought rather an odd coincidence, it was.'

3. …They now split a bottle. The influence of his share on C__ was mellowing enough to make him confidential.

“I’ve just had a hell of a row with my fiancée,” he said.

“I’ve just had a hell of a row with my fiancée,” said D__, struck by the coincidence.

“She told me I ought to putt off the right foot.”

4. “What happened?”

“E__ tried to shake the stuffing out of him.”

“You poor precious lambkin,” said F__, addressing G__, not me. “Gosh, I wish I had him here for a minute. I’d teach him!”

And by what I have always thought an odd coincidence her wish was granted. A crashing sound like that made by a herd of hippopotami going through the reeds on a riverbank and I beheld E__ approaching …

5. “The point is, how much?”

H__ considered.

“A girl of that class,” he said, at length, “would have very limited ideas about money. Three hundred pounds would seem a fortune to her. In fact, I think I might be able to settle with her for two hundred and fifty.”

“Odd,” said J__, struck by the coincidence. “That was the sum my potty nephew was asking me for this afternoon.”

6. “We might all lunch together,” said K__. “My appointment is not till four.”

“I should love it,” said L__. “My appointment is at four, too.”

“So is mine,” said M__.

“What a coincidence!” said L__, trying to speak brightly.

“Yes,” said M__. He may have been trying to speak brightly, too; but if so, he failed. L__ was too young to have seen Salvini in Othello, but, had she witnessed that great tragedian’s performance, she could not have failed to be struck by the resemblance between his manner in the pillow scene and M__’s now.

Round 390 - 30 March 2009

Mixed Vegetables

1. "...He was dangling a potato on a string in front of her nose and jerking it away when she snapped at it."

...

"A potato?" he said, knitting his brow.

"A large potato."

"On a string?"

"Yes, on a string."

"And the boy jerked it away?"

"Repeatedly. It must have distressed A__ greatly, She is passionately fond of potatoes."

2. "Have you ever seen B__ dealing with a bowl of soup? It's not unlike the Scotch Express going through a tunnel. Have you ever seen C__ eat asparagus?"

"No."

"Revolting. It alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word."

3. "The spinach here," said D__, who after finishing his milk and quaffing deeply from his medicine bottle had begun to pick at the vegetable mentioned, "is exceptionally good. It is one of the few things I know I can digest. Asparagus, on the other hand, I regret to say, is sheer poison to me, while as for peas –"

E__ shot him a look which, if it had been directed at some erring minor editor of E__ House, would have reduced that unfortunate to a spot of grease.

4. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so.

All he had to shower was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater, erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry. Why not flowers-fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? ... Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes and things.

5. "And I'd been counting on getting my three thousand quid from him," said F__ brokenly, still gazing at the rabbit, but now as if seeking its sympathy.

He received none from that quarter, rabbits being notoriously indifferent to human suffering – lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, that is all that ever matters to them – but he got plenty from G__.

(A few pages later:)

F__ hurried into the house. G__ returned to his rabbits, who were feeling that it was about time.

"Rock of ages, cleft for me," he sang.

The rabbits winced a little. They disapproved of the modern craze for music with meals.

Still, the lettuce was good, they felt philosophically. A rabbit learns to take through with the smooth.

Bonus point: Name J, the radish:

"We have here," said H__, illustrating by means of a knife, a radish and a piece of bread, "one pig, one sister, and one __." ...

"But I think," said H__, helping himself to the radish that had been doing duty as J__, "that I have got the solution."