Houses, Manors, Cottages, Castles, Halls etc

This week the questions focus on names of residences. In Parts I and II please provide the name of the home at which the quoted immortal words were spoken for numbers 1-4 and the place name (not a residence) for #5.

Part I

1. "Oh, there you are!" she said, speaking from between pearly teeth.

"And just in time for a drop of the right stuff, it seems," said __A__ genially. "How pleasant a little something is at this hour of the day, is it not, and how much better a firkin of port than the barley water which our good host takes into the drawing-room at nine-thirty each night on the tray of beverages. Thank you," he said, accepting his glass.

2. “My dear _B__, there are a thousand ways of getting around a trifling obstacle like this. _C__ is sleeping in the collection room, is he? Very well, then we simply sit down and think out a good method of eliminating him. A knock-out drop in his bedtime whisky and soda would, of course, be the best method, but I happen to have come here without my knock-out drops. Idiotic of me. It is madness to come to country houses without one's bottle of Mickey Finns. One ought to pack them first thing after one's clean collars."

3. "We were savagely attacked by your dog."

"Not so much attacked," I said, "as given nasty looks. We didn't vouchsafe him time to attack us, deeming it best to get out of his sphere of influence before he could settle down to work. He's been trying to get at us for the last two hours; at least it seems like two hours."

She was quick to defend the dumb chum.

"Well, how can you blame the poor angel? Naturally he thought you were international spies in the pay of Moscow. Prowling about the house at this time of night. I can understand ___ doing it, because he was dropped on the head as a baby, but I'm surprised at you, _C__. Why don't you go to bed?"

4. "You persist in looking on the gloomy side, _D_. A little more of the congratulatory attitude is what I could wish to see in you, laddie. You do not appear to realize that your old friend's foot is at last on the ladder that leads to wealth. Suppose – putting it at the lowest figure – I net four pounds out of this _E__ business. It goes on Caterpillar in the two o'clock selling race at Kempton. Caterpillar wins, the odds being – let us say – ten to one. Stake and winnings go on Bismuth for the Jubilee Cup, again at ten to one. There you have a nice, clean four hundred pounds of capital, ample for a man of clean business sense to build a fortune on."

5. The initial letters of #1-4 above in order spell out where Lord Ickenham would use Joyeuse. Where?

Part II

1. "Nice little place you have here."

"Glad you like it."

"Wants a bit of smartening up though ..."

...

"Perhaps you're right."

"Some comfortable chairs, eh?"

"Fine."

"And a sofa."

"Splendid."

"And perhaps a nice little summer-house for the garden ..."

2. "Put that ladder up," he said in a strained voice.

"Ladder?"

"Yes, ladder."

"There is a ladder on the ground."

"Where?"

"There. No, not there. There. There. Not there, I tell you, there. There. There."

__F_, following these directions, concluded a successful search.

"Right," he said. "Ladder, long, wooden, for purposes of climbing, one. Correct as per memo. Now what?"

3. "_G_, a young man of volcanic passions, met _H__at a dance party at [name of place omitted] in aid of the widows of deceased railway porters and became instantly enamored. And his love was returned. When he encountered _H_ next day in [name of street] and, taking her off to a confectioner's for an ice cream, offered her with it his hand and heart, she accepted them enthusiastically. She said that when they were dancing together the previous night something had seemed to go all over her, and he said he had had exactly the same experience."

"Twin souls, what"

"A most accurate description."

"In fact, so far, so good."

"Precisely. But there was an obstacle, and a very serious one. _G_ was a swimming instructor at the local baths, and _H__ had higher views for his daughter. He forbade the marriage. I am speaking, of course, of the days when fathers did forbid marriages. It was only when _G_ saved him from drowning that he relented and gave the young couple his consent and blessing."

"How did that happen?"

"Perfectly simple. I took H__ for a stroll on the river bank and pushed him in, and _G_ who was waiting in readiness, dived into the water and pulled him out ..."

4. "So you've come at last!" ..."Look here, when you put me into this infernal contrivance just now, what did you do to the dashed thing?"

"Nothing beyond what was indicated in the printed pamphlet accompanying the machine, ___. Following the instructions, I slid Rod A into Groove B, fastening with Catch C-...."

5. The initial letters of #1-4 in order form an abbreviation for the name of Rupert Blenkinsop-Bustard's club. What is his club's name?

Round 402 - 15 July 2009

Clubs

From the ones for which Bertie Wooster offers to put up Lord Pershore's name in New York to the ones the young man gives to a waiter in the opening of "The Clicking of Cuthbert" and many others, various clubs play many important roles in the canon. Identify the ones mentioned in the passages below, or at which the lines are spoken. Clubs are A-E and characters M-Z.

1. It was the hour of the morning snifter, and a little group of Eggs and Beans and Crumpets had assembled in the smoking room of the _A__ Club to do a bit of inhaling. There had been a party of sorts overnight, and the general disposition of the company was towards a restful and somewhat glassy-eyed silence. This was broken at length by _M__.

"Old _N__'s back," he observed.

...

"Back where?"

"Back here."

"I mean, back from what spot?"

"New York"

"I didn't know __N_ had been to New York."

"Well, you can take it from me that he has. Or else how," argued _M__ , "could he have got back?"

2. "One always has to budget for a change in the weather. Still, the thing to do is to keep on being happy while you can."

"Precisely, _O__. Carpe diem, the Roman poet Horace advised. The English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested that we should gather rosebuds while we may. Your elbow is in the butter, _O__."

"Oh, thank you, _P__."

... later at the _B__ club, _O__ says to _P__

"You're pretty gloomy, _P__. Why aren't you gathering rosebuds? The poet Herrick would shake his head."

3. On the previous night, I had given a little dinner at _A__ to _Q__as a friendly send-off ...

"Don't you ever stop drinking? How about when you're asleep?"

I rebutted the slur.

"You wrong me, _R__. Except at times of special revelry, I am exceedingly moderate in my potations ... But last night I gave a small bachelor binge for _Q__.

4. "He's asked me to find him an artist to to paint his portrait, to be presented to the __C__ Club. You get the job."

_S_ blinked, still unenthusiastic.

...

a few pages later there flits into _S_'s mind an insidious line from an old poem of Rudyard Kipling's . 'A woman is only a woman,' it ran, 'but a good cigar is a smoke', and for one awful moment he found himself feeling that Mr Kipling had said a mouthful. Then he remembered _T__'s starlike eyes, her slender figure and the little freckle at the tip of her nose and was strong again. It was with the resolve that however great his sufferings he would retain her love that he alighted at [name of station omitted] and a short time later was meeting the man whose features he was about to record on canvas.

5. "Very good, _P__. We will now suppose that there has recently been some little coolness between this tiger cub and this tigress. For some days, let us say, they have not been on speaking terms. Do you think that that would make any difference to the vim with which the latter would leap to the former's aid?"

"No, _O_."

"Exactly. Here, then, in brief, is my plan, _P__. I am going to draw _U_ aside to a secluded spot and roast _V__ properly."

... in accordance with that plan, _O__ draws _U_ aside and continues the narrative:

You don't want to rush a delicate job like the one I had in hand. And so for a while we spoke of neutral topics. She said that what had kept her so long at the _W_'s was that _X_ had made her stop on and help with the arrangements for their servants' ball tomorrow night, a task which she couldn't very well decline, as all the [house name omitted] domestic staff were to be present. I said that a jolly night's revelry might be just what was needed to cheer _Y_ up and take his mind off things.

...

for some minutes we continued chatting in desultory fashion. Then the conversation petered out. I made a few observations in re the scenic effects, featuring the twilight hush, the peeping stars, and the soft glimmer of the waters of the lake, and she said yes. Something rustled in the bushes in front of us, and I advanced the theory that it was possibly a weasel, and she said it might be. But it was plain that the girl was distraite, and I considered it best to waste no more time.

"Well, old thing," I said, "I've heard all about your little dust-up ... I think you're extremely well out of it. It's a mystery to me how you stood this _V_ so long. Take him for all in all, he ranks very low down among the wines and spirits. A washout, I should describe him as. A frightful oik, and a mass of side to boot. I'd pity the girl who was linked for life to a bargee like_V_."

And I emitted a hard laugh – one of the sneering kind.

"I always thought you were such friends," said _U_.

I let go another hard one, with a bit more top spin on it than the first time:

"Friends? Absolutely not. One was civil, of course, when one met the fellow, but it would be absurd to say one was a friend of his. A club acquaintance, and a mere one at that.

6. "Oh, yes there are dogs' clubs in all the big cities. The top one in New York is __D_ but poor _Z_ could never get into that. You have to have been shown before you're eligible, so of course _Z_ hasn't a hope. [Z's advocate] pulled some wires and got him into _E_. The food is wonderful but it's full of mutts."

...

"A car calls for _Z_ in the morning and he comes home at cocktail-time."

7. There's one striking feature shared by all the above excerpts, in addition to the relation of all to clubs.

Less than .01% of a point for answers such as 'all written by PG Wodehouse' or 'all penned during the 1900s' but quite possibly there is more than one good answer to this and full credit may have to be awarded for creative answers other than the one the QM has in mind. [Hint: minor adjustment of articles and conjunctions could be required]

Round 403 - 24 July 2009

Confined to the Cellar

The cellar theme has been done before but Wodehouse characters are so frequently locked up in cellars and equivalents that it was the work of a moment to find examples that have not previously appeared in this space.

1. _A__ had always been a great reader of novels of suspense, and he had often wondered what had been the emotions of the characters in them who kept getting locked up in cellars under the river by sinister men in homburg hats and raincoats. He knew now how they had felt. True, in his present little nest there was no water dripping from the ceiling, but, as he had suspected, the whole thing was most unpleasant. There was, for instance, the smell, to which the rubber overshoes contributed largely.

Time passed, and as so often happens when a man has been standing for some minutes rigid and motionless, _A__ felt the urge to stretch. He stretched, accordingly, and dislodged from an upper shelf two bottles and the lampshade with the hole in it.

2. A lesser woman than __B_ might well have been nonplussed. But the sudden crisis, threatening a dead-lock at the eleventh hour, found her equal to it. A few moments of thoughtful silence, punctuated by little moans from __C__, and she had found the solution.

"Well, listen," she said, holding up a hand to check _C__, who was asking _D__ if this was nice. "Here's what, then. I'll lock her in the cellar before you start your act. I guess that'll satisfy you?"

"How you going to do that?"

"I can swipe the key. It's hanging on a nail in __E_ 's pantry."

"But how you going to get her to the cellar?"

"Tell her _E__'s inside, raising Cain. That'll get her to come running."

3. "... It appears that the butler at [name of Hall omitted] apprehended a prowler who was lurking in the vicinity of the back door and has locked him in the cellar. _F__ is hoping that _G__ will give him a sharp sentence."

For the second time that night __H__'s monocle had fallen from the parent eye socket. He had not, as we have seen, been sanguine with regard to the possibility of his brother getting through the evening without mishap, but he had not foreseen something like this. This was outstanding, even for __H_.

"___," he said, "this opens up a new line of thought. You speak of a prowler.

"Yes, sir."

"Who was lurking at the _I__ back door and is now in the _I_ cellar."

4. "There is a burglar in the cellar?"

"He was in the cellar. I locked him in."

"Telephone for the police?"

"I did. They came and took him away just before I looked in on you."

"Excellent, _J_. Well done."

"I think I was adequate," said _J_ modestly. "It would have been neater and more dramatically right to have had the police take both men away, but I did not find the other one until I was having a ramble through the house after they had left. He was asleep in the drawing room!"

5. What private investigator had barely started "looking for clues in a cellar one night, and he's hardly collected a couple when – bingo – there's a metallic clang and there he is with the trapdoor shut and someone sniggering nastily on the other side"?

The narrator who recalls it mentions that "like jolly old _K_, I sensed some lurking peril".

Where has he been imprisoned and by the sinister hand of whom?

Round 404 - 2 August 2009

Encores

Human cuckoos popping in and out abound in the canon. Can you identify these individuals who keep making re-appearances, regardless of welcome?

1. "He's a potbellied perisher."

_A__ quivered from head to foot.

"Don't call him a potbellied perisher!"

"Well, what else can you call him?" asked _B__, like Roget trying to collect material for his Thesaurus. "I've studied him closely, and I say he's a potbellied perisher."

"He's a very brilliant man," said _A__, and swept from the room, banging the door behind her.

"His last play ran nine months in London," she added, reopening and rebanging the door.

"And a year in New York," she said, opening the door again and closing it with perhaps the loudest bang of the series.

_B__ was not a patient man. He resented the spectacle of a daughter behaving like a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock. When the door opened once more a moment later, he was all ready with a blistering reproof ...

2. "Turn on that brotherly charm. Coo to her like a cushat dove. Take her up to London for dinner and a theatre from time to time, and when addressing her bear in mind that the voice with the smile wins and that you are not an Oriental potentate dissatisfied with the efficiency of an Ethiopian slave. If I learn from _C__ who will be watching you closely that there has been a marked and substantial improvement, you shall have this letter. Meanwhile, I am going to keep it and hold it over you like the sword of ... who was the chap? ... no, it's gone. Forget my own name next," said _D__, annoyed, and went out, shutting the door behind him.

A moment later, it opened again, and his head appeared.

"Damocles," he said. "Sword of Damocles."

The door closed.

3. "Am I not to have a moment of privacy, _F__?" she asked severely. "I am, I trust, a broadminded woman, but I cannot approve of this idea of communal bedrooms."

_F__ made an effort to be conciliatory.

"I do keep coming in, don't I?" he said."

You do," agreed _M__. "_N__ informed me, on learning that I had been given this room, that it was supposed to be haunted. Had I known it was haunted by you, _F__, I should have packed up and gone to the local inn."

4. Most people found _G__ a stimulating and entertaining companion and were glad of his society, but _H__ goggled at him with concealed loathing. And when one says "concealed," that is perhaps the wrong word ...

There is this to be said for the English country-house party, whatever its drawbacks, which are very numerous – when you have had as much of the gay whirl as you can endure, you can always do a sneak to your bedroom. Two minutes later _H__ was in his. And two minutes after that he found that he had been mistaken in supposing that he was alone at last. There was a knock on the door, the robust and confident knock of one who is sure of his welcome, and a dapper, grey-flannelled form sauntered in.

Anybody who wishes to be clear on _H__'s feelings at this juncture has only to skim through the pages of Masefield's Reynard the Fox. The sense of being a hunted thing was strong upon him. And mingled with it was resentment at the monstrous injustice of this persecution. If a country-house visitor is not safe in his bedroom, one might just as well admit civilization has failed and that the whole fabric of society is tottering.

Agony of spirit made him abrupt.

"Say, you chasing something?" he demanded dangerously.

5. When _J__ and I pitched in on a play, he would do the rough spadework – the writing – and I used to look in on him from time to time and say "How are you getting on?" He would say, "All right," and I would say "Fine," and go off and read Agatha Christie. Giving it the _K__ touch, I used to call it. And so little by little and bit by bit the thing would get done.

Bonus: 95 years ago, on the 3rd of August in 1914, PG Wodehouse met Ethel Rowley in New York. On that same day he accepted the position of Drama Critic for Vanity Fair. Name at least one Wodehouse hero or heroine who in the course of a single day accepted a job and met a person to whom s/he subsequently became engaged. Your QM has three in mind, but most likely there are more.

Round 405 - 10 August 2009

Sniffs

In Big Money, Berry Conway commandeers Anne Moon’s car in an attempt to track down and identify The Sniffer. See how many sniffers you can identify from the descriptions below.

1. Her eyes were stern and cold, and her lips tightly set. A__ had inherited from her father that austere Puritanism which makes the old boy so avoided by the County, and this she was now exuding at every pore.

“So there you are!” he said, still having a stab at the gay and debonair.

“Yes,” said A__.

“I’m here, too,” said B__.

“So I see,” said A__.

“I’m staying with a pal. I thought I’d come here and surprise you.”

“You have,” said A__. She gave a sniff that sounded like a nor’easter ripping the sails of a stricken vessel.

2. “I wonder how C__ will receive me, D__.”

“It will be interesting to observe his reactions, sir.”

“He can’t very well throw me out, I suppose, E__ having invited me?”

“No, sir.”

“On the other hand, he can – and I think he will – look at me over the top of his pince-nez and make rummy sniffing noises.”

3. “He’s to have some bacon and eggs and roast and a potter coffee,” said F__, showing rather a lack of interest in G__’s mother. “And old Lord H__ wants to have a look at it before it’s took him. It all depends what you call beautiful,” said F__. “If you’re going to call anyone beautiful that’s got touched-up hair and eyes like one of those vamps in the pictures, well, all I can say is …”

“That’s enough,” said G__.

Silence reigned in the kitchen, broken only by the sizzling of bacon and the sniffs of a modern girl who did not see eye to eye with her elders on the subject of feminine beauty.

4. “It is a long and sad story, throwing a blinding light on Woman’s treachery and general skulduggery. Do you know what the girl did, J__? No, don’t tell me, I’ll tell you. Throw your mind back to that night when we dropped in on the K__ residence and you climbed all those trees. Do you remember my telling you that she bade me cut out all alcoholic stimulants?”

“Yes, I remember. You did it, didn’t you?”

L__ heaved a heavy sigh.

“I did. I kept my trust faithfully and well. She had a way of sniffing at me suddenly which rendered any other course impossible.”

5. Flowers were always a magnet to M__, and for some happy minutes he pottered from vase to vase, sniffing.

It was after he had sniffed for perhaps the twentieth time that the impression came to him that the room contained a curious echo. It was almost as though, each time he sniffed, some other person sniffed, too. And yet the place was apparently empty. To submit the acoustics to a final test, M__ sniffed once more. But this time the sound that followed was of a more sinister character. It sounded to M__ exactly like a snarl.

6. “Darling,” he said at breakfast, “I’m afraid we shan’t be able to have our game for a week or so. I shall have to be at the office early and late.”

“Oh, what a shame!” said Mrs. N__.

“You will, no doubt, be able to get a game with the pro or somebody. You know how bitterly this disappoints me. I had come to look on our daily round as the bright spot of the day. But business is business.”

“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. O__, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.

Round 406 - 18 August 2009

Snorts

Mr Twist snorted. It is not easy to classify snorts, but this was one which would have been recognised immediately by any expert as the snort despairing, caused by the contemplation of the depths to which human nature can sink.
– Sam in the Suburbs, Chapter 13

Wodehouse's snorters are versatile – Bingo Little snorts like a bugle, Amanda Biffen like a pistol shot, Dahlia Travers like a gas explosion which slays six – but you needn't be an expert at classifying snorts; all you have to do is name the snorters below.

(Note: passage #5 is from the magazine version of a story or novel. The text in the book version is slightly different, but you should be able to recognise it.)

1. ... A__, for all that he realised the imperative need of keeping his presence undetected, found it impossible to repress a startled snort ... Fortunately for his aims and objects, B__ had snorted simultaneously on his own account, and with such abandon that the A__ contribution passed unnoticed. The idea did, indeed, cross C__'s mind that there was a curious echo in the room and set him musing dreamily on acoustics, but that was all.

2. To a man who was good at snorting and to whom snorts came easily, there was only one answer to this sort of thing. D__ snorted, and stumped into the collection room, telling himself that he would go into the matter later on when his nephew seemed more in the mood.

3. "... Is something wrong? Your leg been hurting you again?"

E__ uttered a snort that caused both cats to leap from the bed, and even the dachshund opened one eye in mild astonishment.

4. "I don't follow you, F__. Clarify the script."

"He's going to try to persuade you to terminate my appointment."

"When you say 'terminate my appointment', do you mean give you the bum's rush?"

"Just that. His Machiavellian mind has got the whole thing worked out. He thinks, if you fire me, I haven't a hope of getting another job. He knows I'm rather hard to place."

G__ snorted with such violence that for an instant F__ though that something had gone wrong with the machinery of the car.

5. "Mrs H__!" bellowed J__, in a voice that displaced a flake of plaster from the ceiling. Until tonight he had always been very much afraid of his housekeeper and had both walked and talked softly in her presence. But now he was conscious of a strange new fortitude. His head was singing a little.

Shuffling footsteps made themselves heard.

"Well, what is it now?" asked a querulous voice.

J__ snorted, and another flake of plaster fell from the ceiling.

"I'll tell you what it is now!" he roared. "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."

6. "You can't blame them, really."

A second snort from K__ seemed to indicate that he found it perfectly possible to blame them ...

"Perhaps they think I won't make a good earl?"

"I'm afraid they have got that idea."

K__ snorted for the third time, and this snort eclipsed in violence and volume the previous snorts, establishing a new record for other snorters to shoot at.

Round 407 - 27 August 2009

Sneezes

It appeared to be the practice of the housemaids at the Hotel Hermitage to use the space below the beds as a depository for all the dust which they swept off the carpet, and much of this was insinuating itself into his nose and mouth. The two things which Archie would have liked most to do at that moment were first to kill Miss Silverton – if possible, painfully – and then to spend the remainder of his life sneezing.
– “Rallying Round Percy”, Indiscretions of Archie

Identify the sneezers.

1. A__ had for some time been holding his head under the tap in the kitchen; and he now looked exactly like the body which had been found after several days in the river. The one small point that differentiated him from a corpse was the fact that he was sneezing.

“What are you doing here?” asked B__.

“Achoo!” said A__.

“What?” said B__.

A__, with a nobility which should have earned him promotion, checked another sneeze …

“Have you a cold?”

“No, miss, not a ker-osh-wosh-osh. A woman threw pepper in my face.”

“You ought not to know such women,” said B__ severely.

2. Only when he was about to tie his tie, an act that called for care and concentration, did he become silent. And it was during this period of silence that C__, who had been troubled for some little time with a bit of fluff up his nose, found himself unable to repress a violent sneeze. In the stillness of the room, it rang out like the hissing of a hundred soda-water siphons, and Mr D__ rose six inches into the air and came down trembling in every limb, the tie falling from his nerveless hand.

3. There was no one in the dormitories. The only other room was E__’s … a sneeze from within told of the sufferings of the occupant …

E__ was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling …

“Yes?” he said thickly, and his face disappeared beneath a pocket-handkerchief.

Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of dynamite, together with earthquake shuddering of the bedclothes, told of another sneezing fit.

4. “… Do you mind if I take two or three books of yours about antique furniture? I’ll return them shortly.”

She sneezed sceptically.

“Or pawn them,” she said. “Since when have you been interested in antique furniture?”

“I’m selling it … Last night it occurred to me that if I read a few of your books I’d be able to make my sales talk more convincing. So if you will allow me to take a selection from your library –“

She sneezed again, but this time more amiably.

5. “Miss F__’s out with the dog now, sir.”

“Oh?” said G__.

There was a momentary silence, and then the maid said that that was funny, and G__ asked what was funny.

“There ought to be another gentleman here,” said the maid. “But I don’t see him. Oh, yes,” she proceeded, as H__, who for some little while now had been inhaling fluff in rather large quantities, gave a hearty sneeze, “there he is, behind the sofa.”

Round 408 - 4 September 2009

Snores

There has already been a quiz on snoring (Round 128), but after quizzes on sniffs, snorts, and sneezes, there was no other option, so I have found a few more snorers.

1. I would – possibly – have made some reply, but at this moment an enormous snore proceeded from the arm-chair behind me, and such was my overwrought condition that I leaped like a young ram.

“A__!” cried Miss B__, sighting the chair.

Another snore rumbled through the air, competing with the music of the merry-go-round. Miss B__ advanced and shook A__’s arm.

“I think,” I said, being in the frame of mind when one does say silly things of that sort, “I think he’s asleep.”

“Asleep!” said Miss B__ briefly. Her eye fell on the half-empty glass on the table, and she shuddered austerely.

2. A sort of dull resignation came over C__. It was useless, he saw, to struggle any longer. He was on the point of moving from the door and going back to the cab and embarking on the laborious task of explaining to the driver that he wished to return to the Albany (“But I took you there once, and you didn’t like it,” he could hear the man saying) when from somewhere close at hand there came to his ears a sudden, loud, gurgling noise, rather like that which might have proceeded from a pig suffocating in a vat of glue. It was the sound of someone snoring, He turned, and was aware of an open window at his elbow …

… C_ did not act hastily. Bitter experience was teaching him the caution which Boy Scouts learn in the cradle. For perhaps a quarter of an hour he remained where he was, crouching in his hiding place. Then the snoring rose to a crescendo. It had now become like something out of Wagner …

3. “… I consider it a certainty that the young sap, if apprised, will insist on handing the stuff back, so the view I take is that he must not be apprised. As the phrase is, he must never know. Sealed lips, I say. What do you say?”

D__ did not say anything. He had begun to snore softly, and it became clear to E__ that of all this nicely reasoned speech he had not heard a single word.

4. “Come here, F__,” he said. “Who,” he asked, pointing, “is this?”

F__ peeped through the doorway and perceived, titled back in a swivel chair, a long, lean man of repellent aspect. His large feet rested comfortably on the desk, his head hung sideways and his mouth was open. From this mouth, which was of generous proportions, there came a gurgling snore.

“Who,” repeated G__, “is this gentleman?”

F__ could not help admiring his uncle’s unerring instinct – that amazing intuition which had led him straight to the realisation that if an uninvited stranger was slumbering in his pet chair, the responsibility must of necessity be his nephew F__’s.

5. H___ Hall slept in the sunshine; J__, more prudently, in the shade. He was taking his afternoon siesta in the hammock which was suspended beneath the big cedar on the lawn. Eventually, waking refreshed, he would go down to the lake for a swim, always a pleasant way of passing the time during a heat wave.

His thoughts before he dropped off and began to snore gently with a sound like the sawing of wood in a distant lumber-camp had been of a nature well calculated to encourage peaceful slumber.

Round 409 - 14 September 2009

Labour Day

This past week North Americans celebrated Labour Day, which served as a reminder that, while most of Wodehouse’s workers tend to be domestic servants, writers, artists, lawyers, school masters, clergymen, politicians, clerks and policemen, quite a few people actually get their hands dirty in “blue collar” occupations of various kinds. Indeed, everything from Californian lemon-pickers to Shropshire pig-men to Swiss chimney sweeps can be found in the canon. Here are a few more examples for you to identify.

1. Next door (…) in a cosy little cottage with a wonderful little garden, lived __(A)__, a large, grave, self-sufficing young man, who, by sheer application to work, had become already, though only twenty-five, second gardener at the Hall. Gardening absorbed him. When he was not working at the Hall he was working at home. On the morning following __(B)__’s arrival, it being a Thursday and his day off, he was crouching in a constrained attitude in his garden, every fibre of his being concentrated on the interment of a plump young bulb. Consequently, when a chunk of mud came sailing over the fence, he did not notice it.

A second, however, compelled attention by bursting like a shell on the back of his neck. He looked up, startled. Nobody was in sight. He was puzzled. It could hardly be raining mud.

2. (Not blue-collar workers as such in this example, but their representative)

Even at a distance the Labour leader had had a formidable aspect. Seen close to, he looked even more uninviting. His face had the appearance of having been carved out of granite, and the eye which collided with __(C)__’s as the latter, with an attempt at an ingratiating smile, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table was hard and frosty. Mr __(D)__ gave the impression that he would be a good man to have on your side during a rough-and-tumble fight down on the water-front or at some lumber-camp, but he did not look chummy.

“Hallo-allo-allo!” said __(C)__. (…) “I say, you know! It won’t do, you know! Absolutely no! Not a bit like it! No, no, far from it! Well, how about it? How do we go? What? Yes? No?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Call it off, old thing!”

“Call what off?”

“The festive old strike.”

3. 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.

(…)

“Odd stuff, this,” said __(E)__, sipping. “Probably used for taking stains out of serge suits.”

4. This bloke ___(F)___, on learning what had occurred, flung up his head like a war-horse at the note of a bugle, and announced with flashing eyes, that, until his retirement from business six months before, he himself was an inspector of drains and, what is more, well-known as one of the keenest minds in the profession.

Opening his remarks by relating a striking compliment which had been paid to his acumen and intuition by somebody high up in the drains world in the summer of ‘26, (…) he went on to speak for awhile of drains he had met, of drains which had tried to deceive him, and of the pitiful lack of success which such drains had enjoyed.

5. “Your circumstances seem to have changed. The last I heard of you, you were a sailor on a tramp steamer.”

“And after that a waiter. And after that a movie extra and a rather indifferent pugilist. I was also, for a time, a bouncer in a New York saloon. That was one of my failures. I started gaily out one night to bounce an obstreperous client, and, unfortunately, he bounced me. This seemed to cause the boss to lose confidence in my technique, and shortly afterwards I sailed for England to carve out a new career. Since then I have been doing pretty well.”

Round 410 - 22 September 2009

Like a Beaver

After studying the world’s workers last week, this time we turn our attention to those people (and one Supernatural Being) who emulate that most industrious of creatures, Canada’s national rodent.

1. Until a week or so before he had been deeply in love with another girl – a certain __(A)__. And then, one night at a studio-party, he had met __(B)__ and had instantly discerned in her an infinitely superior object for his passion.

It is this sort of thing that so complicates life for the young man about town. He is too apt to make his choice before walking the whole length of the counter. He bestows a strong man’s love on Girl A. and is just congratulating himself when along comes Girl B. whose very existence he had not suspected, and he finds that he has picked the wrong one, and has to work like a beaver to make the switch.

2. (The silver rays of the refined moon) stole through the open window of the Red Room next door, where there was really something worth looking at – __(C)__, (…) who was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and wishing she had some decent jewellery to wear at the forthcoming County Ball. A lovely girl needs, of course, no jewels but her youth and health and charm, but anybody who had wanted to make __(C)__ understand that would have had to work like a beaver.

3. “This whole business of getting married (…) is a thing you have to look at from every angle. What suddenly struck me like a blow was the reflection that a girl like __(D)__ would have insisted on a fashionable wedding with full choral effects. There would have been a Bishop, possibly two Bishops, and assistant clergy and bridesmaids and choir boys and reporters and photographers and about eleven hundred guests of assorted sexes. And as I tottered up the aisle, these Bishops, these assistant clergy, these bridesmaids, these reporters, these photographers and these guests would have laughed their fat heads off at me, making me feel like a piece of cheese. Add vergers, sextons, beadles, pew-openers, first and second gravediggers and what not, and take into consideration the fact that after the ceremony would have come the reception at the home of the bride, and can you wonder that I felt that I had had a merciful escape? I tottered from that bar (…) ashen to the lips but with my heart singing within me. I realised that the guardian angel of the __(E)__s, instead of being, as I had supposed, asleep at the switch, had in reality been working like a beaver in my interests, saving me from an experience so terrible as to make the imagination boggle.”

4. __(F)__ pondered for a moment. Then his face brightened.

“I think I see the solution. Simple when you give your mind to it. It was Visitors’ Day yesterday and __(G)__ had to work like a beaver all the afternoon showing the mob around the joint. He’s not so young as he was and it took it out of him a lot. When it was over, he was at a low ebb and in need of a restorative. So what happens? He limps off to his pantry, reaches for the port bottle, incautiously overdoes it and becomes as soused as a herring, totally incapable of understanding a word said to him on the phone. The name he mistook for __(H)__ was probably Wilson or Wiggins or Williams, and what Wilson or Wiggins or Williams was saying was that he had got German measles. It’s the only explanation.”

5. “I’m glad you’re back, _(I)_,” he said at length. “I want to have a talk with you. You know, it’s time you were settling down. I’ve been thinking about you while you were in America and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been letting you drift along. Very bad for a young man. You’re getting on. I don’t say you’re senile, but you’re not twenty-one any longer, and at your age I was working like a beaver. You’ve got to remember that life is – dash it! I’ve forgotten it again.” He broke off and puffed vigorously into the speaking-tube. “Miss _(J)_, kindly repeat what you were saying just now about life … Yes, yes, that’s enough!” He put down the instrument. “Yes, life is real, life is earnest,” he said, gazing at _(I)_ seriously, “and the grave is not our goal. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. In fact, it’s time you took your coat off and started work.”