Quiz Among the Chickens

If you were brave enough not to duck out of the previous round, you will probably not chicken out of this week's ... (With due apologies for the "fowl" puns!)

1. "They had some people to dinner, and there was chicken, and A___ gave all the giblets to the guests, and her husband bounded out of his seat with a wild cry, and, shouting, 'You know I love those things better than anything in the world!' rushed from the house, never to return!"

"Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been A___."

"A___ told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return, six times since they were married."

"May I mention – in passing – " said B___, "that I do not like chicken giblets?"

2. "You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every day of the week, and you sell the egg, say, seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen costs nothing. Profit practically –"

"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a substantial business man."

"Old C___ rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.

3. "I wonder," said D___, striking while the iron was hot, "if I could interest you in a good dog biscuit?"

The blonde at the wheel weighed the question.

"Not me," she said. "I never touch 'em."

"Nor me," said a blonde at the back. "Doctor's orders."

"And if you're thinking of making a quick sale to E___ here," said the blonde beside the driver, kissing the Pekinese on the tip of its nose, a feat of daring at which D___ marvelled, "he only eats chicken."

4. "The first and foremost memo every farmer has to stick in his Notebook is this – there's nothing half so touchy as a chicken is. Remember, then, that every hen, young, middle-aged or hoary'll Be frightfully hurt if your manner's curt or in any way dictatorial."

5. There were, as he had suspected, chickens attached to the castle. They lived in a little world of noise and smells at the back of the stables. Bearing an iron pot full of poisonous-looking mash, and accompanied by F___, he had felt, for perhaps a minute and a half, like a successful general. It is difficult to be romantic when you are laden with chicken-feed in an unwieldy iron pot, but he had resolved that that portion of the proceedings should be brief – the birds should dine that evening on the quick-lunch principle – then to the more fitting surroundings of the rose-garden. There was plenty of time before the hour of the sounding of the dressing-gong. Perhaps even a row on the lake –

"What-ho!" said a voice.

Behind them, with a propitiatory smile on his face, stood G___.

"My uncle told me I should find you out here. What have you got there, H___? Is this what you feed them on? I say, you know, queer coves, hens! I wouldn't touch the stuff for a fortune. What? Looks to me poisonous."

Round 432 - 19 April 2010

Back to the Country

Two weeks ago, we saw Freddie Mullet and Fanny Welch discussing their future farm in The Small Bachelor. Here are some more excerpts from the Wodehouse canon where people are dreaming of their own little place in some rural spot.

1. "To start with, we are so much alike, we have the same tastes –"

"Have we?"

"Most certainly. To take a single instance, we both dislike A___. Then there is your love, which I share, for a life in the country. The birds, the breeze, the trees, the bees – you love them and so do I. It is my one ambition to amass enough money to enable me to buy a farm and settle down. You would like that."

"You seem to know a lot about me."

"I have my information from your uncle."

2. "Come, come," said B___ kindly, as the yells of the personnel died away, "no need to be upset about it. It won't affect you dear old souls. You will go on living here, if you call it living, just as you have always done. All that'll happen is that you will be short one B___. I propose to accompany my wife to Hollywood. And when she's through with her contract there, we shall set up a shack in some rural spot and grow pigs and cows and things."

3. If there was one thing calculated to appeal to his Uncle C___, to induce in his Uncle C___ a really melting mood, it was the announcement that somebody desired to return to the Land. He loved to hear of people returning to the Land. How, then, would this be? Go to the old boy, state that one had seen the light and was in complete agreement with him that England's future depended on checking the Drift to the Towns, and then ask for a good fat slice of capital with which to start a farm.

The project of starting a farm was one which was bound to ... Half a minute. Another idea on the way. Yes, here it came, and it was a pippin. Not merely just an ordinary farm, but a pig-farm!

4. "D___'s just been offered a wonderful opportunity. A sort of farm place in Lincolnshire. You know. Cows and things. Just what he would like and just what he would do awfully well. And we only need three thousand pounds to get it ... But I'm afraid nothing will come of it."

"Because of Aunt E___, you mean?"

"Yes."

5. "I got away with a necklace, two rings, a pendant, and a sun-boist. You won't see me around these parts no more. Me, back to the old country. Going to get me a farm, that's what I'm going to do. It's the only life – the farmer's. Eggs, milk, chickens ... and brew your own applejack."

Round 433 - 27 April 2010

Parliament

Next week the British electorate is going to elect a new Parliament. A number of Wodehouse characters have wanted to get into Parliament or were already Members. Who were they?

1. ‘How’s the election coming along?’

‘All right.’

‘Kissed any babies lately?’

‘Ah!’ he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that I had touched an exposed nerve. ‘What blighters babies are, A_______, dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to win the election.’

‘But why do you want to win the election? I had thought you wouldn’t have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,’ I said, for I knew the society there was very mixed. ‘What made you commit this rash act?’

2. “I should like to go into Parliament. And, if I did that, I should practically have to marry, I mean, I should have to have a man to look after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can’t imagine anything jollier than that. When I came back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whisky and soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things he had been doing during the day ... Why, it would be ideal!”

3. “That’s right. B_____’s birthday, and C_____ and I were the guests. It all comes back to me. I wanted D____ to roll along and join the festivities – he’s never met C_____ – but he gave it a miss. Quite right! A chap in his position has responsibilities. Member of Parliament and all that. Besides,” said E____ earnestly, driving home the point with a wave of his spoon, “ he’s engaged to be married. You must remember that, F_____!”

4. G___, of H___, seventh J___ of his line, was one of those men who start their lives well, skid for a while, and then slide back on to the straight and narrow path and stay there. That is to say, he had been up to the age of twenty a blameless boy and from the age of thirty-one, when he had succeeded to the title, a practically blameless J____. So much so that now, in his fifty-second year, he was on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist Committee as their accredited candidate for the forthcoming by-election in the K______ Parliamentary Division of L_____.

5. He had started almost literally with nothing. By carefully excluding from his mind every thought except that of making money, he had risen in the world with a gruesome persistence which nothing could check. At the age of fifty-one he was chairman of M______, a Member of Parliament, silent as a wax figure, but a great comfort to the party by virtue of liberal contributions to its funds, and a knight.

6. No foreign foe’s insidious hate
Our country shall o’erwhelm
So long as England’s ship of state
Has N______ at the helm.

Whether I was technically correct in describing as guiding the ship of state a man who would probably spend his entire Parliamentary career in total silence, voting meekly as the Whip directed, I had not stopped to enquire. All I knew was that it sounded well, and I wanted to hear it. In addition to which, there was the opportunity, never likely to occur again, of seeing P___ make an ass of himself before a large audience.

Round 434 - 10 May 2010

Finance

The financial crisis is not yet over, and it is clear that it is not an Act of God, like waterspouts and typhoons, but caused by persons whose consciences, had they had consciences, should be sore as sunburned necks.

1. After which a Mr A___ had led him up to a vast ledger, in which he was to inscribe the addresses of all out-going letters. These letters he would then stamp, and subsequently take in bundles to the post office. Once a week he would be required to buy stamps. “If I were one of those Napoleons of Finance,” wrote B___, “I should cook the accounts, I suppose, and embezzle stamps to an incredible amount.”

2. For C______, like so many men who have taken to the game in middle age, after a youth spent in the pursuit of commerce, was no half-hearted enthusiast. Although he still occasionally descended on Wall Street in order to pry the small investor loose from another couple of million, what he really lived for now was golf and his collection.

... (several pages later) ...

Dully, C____ looked around to see how D_____ was getting on. And then suddenly, as he found that D___ was completely invisible behind the belt of bushes through which he had just passed, a voice seemed to whisper to him, “Why not?”

C___, remember had spent thirty years in Wall Street.

3. In his early days, when he was building up his fortune, Mr E____ had frequently done things to his competitors in Wall Street which would not have been tolerated in the purer atmosphere of a lumber-camp, and, if he was going to be remorseful about anything, he might well have started by being remorseful about that.

4. He was startled, as any man might be who had this sort of idea sprung suddenly upon him in his own garden, but he was not shocked. A youth and middle age spent on the London Stock Exchange had left F____ singularly broadminded. He had to a remarkable degree that spacious charity which allows a man to look indulgently on any financial project, however fishy, provided he can see a bit in it for himself.

5. "Yes, but all kidding aside," said Mr G___ amiably, "listen. Now that we’re partners, you and me, here’s something we got to make our minds up about. How do you feel about the shareholders? What I mean, what’s your reaction to the idea of the shareholders getting money that we could both of us use quite nicely ourselves?"

6. H___ looked unhappy, but said nothing. This matter of Mr J_____ had been touched upon by K___ in previous conversations, and it was a subject for which he had little liking. Experience had taught him that none of the arguments which seemed so conclusive to him – to wit, that the financier had on two occasions only just escaped imprisonment for fraud, and what was worse, made a noise when he drank soup, like water running out of a bathtub – had the least effect upon her.

Round 435 - 19 May 2010

Ugly Americans

The other day I read about the book The Ugly American and it gave me an idea for a theme that has nothing to do with the book. There are in the Wodehouse oeuvre a number of Americans who are ugly, in a purely physical sense. It is by no means my intention to offend our American contestants, quizmasters and quizmistresses, and anyway my own looks are nothing to write home about.

1. Mrs A_____ bowed stiffly. She was thinking how hopelessly American Mr B____ was; how baggy his clothes looked; what absurdly shaped shoes he wore; how appalling his hat was; how little hair he had; and how deplorably he lacked all those graces of repose, culture, physical beauty, refinement, dignity and mental alertness which raise men above the level of the common cockroach.

2. ... and in due course C___ appeared. One says ‘appeared’, but the word would not have satisfied Gustave Flaubert. He would have suggested some such alternative as ‘loomed up’ or ‘came waddling along’ as being more exact, for the author of D___ and E____ was one of the fattest men that ever broke a try-your-weight machine. He looked as if he had been eating nothing but starchy foods since early boyhood, and it saddened F___ to think of all this wonderful material going to waste.

3. Public speakers, when Mrs G___ was present, had the illusion that they were addressing most of the population of the United States. And when she went to Carlsbad or Aix-les-Bains to take the waters, the authorities huddled together nervously and wondered if there would be enough to go around.

Her growing bulk was a perpetual sorrow – one of the many – to her husband.

4. The yellow glow which flooded the room disclosed a short, stocky youth of obviously Bowery extraction. A shock of vivid red hair was the first thing about him that caught the eye. A poet would have described it as Titian. Its proprietor’s friends and acquaintances probably called it “carrots”. Looking up at H___ from under this wealth of crimson was a not unpleasing face. It was not handsome certainly, but there were suggestions of a latent good-humour. The nose had been broken at one period of its career, and one of the ears was undeniably of the cauliflower type; but these are little accidents which may happen to any high-spirited young gentleman.

5. J___ was tall and thin. He had small bright eyes and a sharply curving nose. He looked more like a parrot than most parrots do. It gave strangers a momentary shock of surprise when they saw J___ in restaurants, eating roast beef. They had the feeling he would have preferred sunflower seeds.

6. Mr K___ came in as she spoke, an enormous mass of a man with a squashed nose and ears like the handles of a Greek vase. He had been in once before, as a matter of fact, but Mrs K____ had sent him out again to go and put a collar on.

Round 436 - 28 May 2010

Ugly Britons

Not only Americans can be ugly. I have found more than 40 ugly British citizens in the works of Wodehouse. Here is a small selection:

1. ... he noticed A___, looking like Clemenceau on one of his bad mornings, B____, looking like a horse, and their nephew C___, looking large and vermillion.

2. Not having attended the performance of a pantomime since fairly early boyhood, I had forgotten how substantial Fairy Queens were, and the sight of D____ was like a blow from a blunt instrument. A glance was enough to tell me why the dramatic critic of the Leeds Evening Chronicle had called her buxom. She stood about five feet nine in her short French vamps and bulged in every direction. Also the flashing eyes and the gleaming teeth.

3. That was how an impartial Scotland Yard would be compelled to describe him, if ever he got lost. “Missing. A great, ugly, red-faced copper with big feet and a broken nose”.

4. The new-comer was a stout man with a complexion that matched the wall-paper. He was puffing slightly, as if he had found the stairs trying. He had broad slab-like features; and his face was split in the middle by a walrus moustache. Somewhere and in some place, E____ was convinced, he had seen this man before.

5. F___ proved to be very much the sort of niece you would have expected a man like G___ to have. In features and expression she resembled a dead codfish on a slab. She wore steel-rimmed spectacles, topping them off with ginger hair and adenoids. But H____ wasn’t looking for a Venus de Milo or a Helen of Troy.

6. He made no move as I came in, for he was asleep; and I can best convey the instantaneous impression I got of his formidable physique by saying that I had no desire to wake him. The sofa was a small one, and he overflowed it in every direction. He had a broken nose, and his jaw was the jaw of a Wild West motion-picture star registering Determination. One hand was under his head; the other, hanging down to the floor, looked like a strayed ham congealed into stone.

Round 437 - 9 June 2010

Links

Not the golf kind.

"For the school, gentlemen, our dear old school, occupies a place in our hearts – a place in our hearts – in the hearts of all of us – in all our hearts – in our hearts, gentlemen – which nothing else can fill. It forms, if I may put it that way, Mr President and gentlemen – forms – forms – forms a link that links the generations. Whether we are fifty years old or thirty or twenty, we are nonetheless all of us contemporaries. And why? Because gentlemen, we are all – er –linked by that link."
– Willoughby Braddock, speech at the Old Boys' dinner in Sam the Sudden

This week you're asked to provide the link that links the characters in the sets below. For example, given: Sam Shotter, Mike Jackson and Dick Trevor you would immediately recognize that all attended Wrykyn.

1. Otis Painter; Bertram Wooster; Lord Tilbury

2. Freddie Threepwood; Reginald, third Earl of Havershot; Bertram Wooster; Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett

3. Mrs Crocker's butler, Bayliss; Lady Dora Garland's butler, Riggs; Adrian Mulliner

4. Grayce Llewellyn; Alfred Mulliner; Frances Hammond

5. Bertram Wooster; Horace Pendlebury-Davenport; Blandings' butler, Beach

6. Jeeves; The Duke of Dustable; Ginger and Bruce's Uncle Donald

Round 438 - 23 June 2010

Ducks Redux

A few weeks ago we had a number of references to fowls. Here are some further ducks for identification.

1. I don’t know if you happen to take Old Doctor Gordon’s Bile Magnesia, which when the liver is disordered gives instant relief, acting like magic and imparting an inward glow? I don’t myself, my personal liver being always more or less in mid-season form, but I’ve seen the advertisements. They show the sufferer before and after taking, in the first case with drawn face and hollow eyes and the general look of one shortly about to hand in his dinner pail, in the second all beans and buck and what the French call bien être. Well, what I’m driving at is that my amazing story had exactly the same effect on _A__ as the daily dose for adults … He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, and while I don’t suppose he actually put on several pounds in weight as the tale proceeded, one got the distinct illusion that he was swelling like one of those rubber ducks which you fill with air before inserting them in the bath tub.

2. "You want to buy," said __B__every time he shut a front-door behind them. "Not rent. Buy. Then, if you don't want to live here, you can always rent in the summer."

It seemed incredible to _C_ that the summer would ever come. Winter held [locality omitted] in its grip. For the first time in her life she was tasting real loneliness. She wandered over the snow-patched fields down to the frozen bay, and found the intense stillness, punctuated only by the occasional distant gunshot of some optimist trying for duck, oppressive rather than restful. She looked on the weird beauty of the ice-bound marshes which glittered red and green and blue in the sun with unseeing eyes; for her isolation was giving her time to think, and thought was a torment.

3. '_F_, sit down!'

__F__choked. 'I always knew, _E_, that you were as mad as a coot.'

'As a what?' whispered his lordship.

'Coot,' said _G_ curtly. 'Sort of duck.' He turned to the defendant again.

Bonus Points

A. By whose duck pond was a preliminary conference held on the subj. of the theft of a portrait?

B. Who after failing with chickens proposes to start a duck farm and what was his dubious strategy to make it profitable?

Round 439 - 2 July 2010

Ducks Redux Redux

Let us continue to consider the duck. This time some who have finished with just going on being ducks and ended up on dinner tables. And one reference to one who had never been a duck at all, just masquerades as one. Please identify the speaker, who is not a rabbit, in #1, the speakers in #2-3 and the dyspepsia sufferer in #4.

1. "I ordered something which he told me was duck, and it turned out to be what they called mock duck. consisting almost entirely of nuts. Nuts to you, _A_, I ought to have said, only I was too polite. And the only alternative those carrots and that bran pudding."

2. "Did you notice him at dinner?"

"To which aspect of his demeanour during the meal does _B_ allude?"

"I was thinking of the sinister way he tucked into the roast duck. He flung himself on it like a tiger on its prey. He gave me the impression of a man withour ruth or pity."

"Unquestionably a gentleman lacking in the softer emotions, _B_."

3. "... I'm going to pass the broker chap off to him as a friend of _C_'s. It was _C_'s idea. He says he can talk him into it, and I'll bet he can. He once talked me into putting three hundred pounds into a play of his."

[a few paragraphs later the person to whom this plan was explained expresses doubts about it on the grounds of duck for dinner]

"From where I sit it looks like a washout. We're having duck for dinner."

_D_ found her cryptic. "Duck?"

"With peas. Suppose this guy takes his knife to them. How would that square with being a friend of _C_'s? Wouldn't _E_ raise his eyebrows and start wondering? If you're going to pass him off as anything, I'd make him vice-president in charge of cleaning the knives and boots."

4. The fact that he had been expecting these pangs did nothing to mitigate them. Indeed, it added to the physical anguish a spiritual remorse which was almost as unpleasant. A whole medical college of doctors had told _F_ to avoid roast duck, and as a rule he was strong enough to do so. But last night the craving had been too much for him. He had wallowed madly and recklessly in roast duck, tucking into the stuffing like a farm-hand. To-day had come the inevitable retribution. And on top of that _G_ was calling him on the telephone.

For a Bonus Point: An actress impresses a new admirer with what a sensible and charming girl she is by demonstrating her ability to distinguish between lobster Newburg and canvas-back duck, among other talents. Who is she?

Round 440 - 9 July 2010

A Round on Football

As the World Cup final in South Africa approaches, it seems appropriate to consider some of the references to football in the canon. Please identify the speakers and team(s) below.

1."Football," said _A_ thoughtfully, "football. By no means a scaly idea. I rather fancy, _B_, that you have whanged the nail on the head. Is he strong on any particular team? I mean, have you ever heard him, in the intervals of business worries, stamping on his desk and yelling, 'Buck up Cottagers!' or 'Lay 'em out, Pensioners!' or anything like that? One moment." _A_ held up his hand. "I will get my Sherlock Holmes system to work. What was the other team in the modern gladiatorial contest at which you saw _C_?"

"_D_"

"And _C_, I should say, was a _D_ man."

2. At heart he was afraid of women, and in the entire list of the women of whom he had been afraid, he could not find one who had terrified him so much as _E_.

Other women – notably _F_, now happily helping to direct the destinies of _G_ – had frightened him by their individuality. _E_ frightened him both by her individuality and the atmosphere of aristocratic exclusiveness which she conveyed. He had no idea whatever of what was the proper procedure for a man engaged to the daughter of an earl. Daughters of earls had been to him till now mere names in the society columns of the morning paper. The very rules of the game were beyond him. He felt like a confirmed Association footballer suddenly called upon to play in an International Rugby match.

3. "And what happened then?" asked _H_, breathlessly.

He had raised himself on one elbow in his bed. His eyes shone excitedly from a face which was almost the exact shape of an Association football; for he had reached the stage of mumps when the patient begins to swell as though somebody were inflating him with a bicycle-pump.

"Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went away!" said _J_.

4. "In working on a prospect my first move is always to find out what he's interested in, so I can endear myself to him by bringing the subject up. PP Wilks of Wilks Brothers [of place name omitted], for instance, from whom I obtained a substantial order, is a staunch supporter of _D_. My spies informed me of this and I attribute my success entirely to my shrewdness in asking around until I had all the facts relevant to _D_'s recent performance at my fingertips and was able to discuss them intelligently. By the time we parted we were like ham and eggs. He patted me on the back and showered cigars on me. "

"_K_" won't do that."

"No pat?"

"No shower. He's a big wheel in the Anti-Tobacco League"