P.G.Wodehouse - 2

(Continued)

From ‘Carry On Jeeves’

It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away (p.18)

I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft boiled eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all over the place dodging waiters, managers and chuckers-out, just when you want to sit still and digest (p.60)

Mrs. Pringle’s aspect was that of one who had had bad news round about the year 1900 and never really got over it (p.165)

“No doubt you will remember my mother?” said Professor Pringle mournfully indicating exhibit A.

“Oh. Ah!” I said, achieving a bit of a beam.

“And my aunt,” sighed the professor as if things were getting worse and worse.

“Well, well, well!” I said, shooting another beam in the direction of Exhibit B (p.166)

“I remember Oliver,” said Exhibit A. She heaved a sigh. “He was such a pretty child. What a pity! What a pity!”

Tactful, of course and calculated to put the guest completely at his ease (p. 166)

From ‘Very Good! Jeeves’

I was back at the flat so quick that I nearly met myself coming out (p.106)

From ‘Piccadilly Jim’

‘In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’

‘Do what?’

‘Not strike lambs’ (p.165)

A plot is only as strong as it weakest link (p.203)

From ‘The Girl in Blue’

Except for the Gadarene swine, famous through the ages for their prowess at the short sprint, no group is quicker off the mark than a jury at long last released from bondage (p.14)

He looked, as always as if he had been carved from some durable form of wood by someone who was taking a correspondence course in sculpture and had just reached his third lesson (p.71)

From ‘Spring Fever’

“Women are like that”

“No, they aren’t. Unless they are, of course,” he added, for he was a man who could look at things from every angle.

From ‘Author! Author!’

I met a woman the other day and she said, “I don’t like your books. Why don’t you write about real things?”

“Such as?” I asked

“Well, my life, for instance.”

“Tell me all about your life,” I said.

And she mused for a while and came up with the hot news that when in Singapore during the war she had gone around with a tin helmet on her head. I tried to explain to her that this would be terrific for-say-the first 20,000 words, but that after that one would be stuck. And all she did was say “Well, I still think you ought to write about real things.” (p.184)

From ‘Joy in the Morning’

The first sight of Boko reveals to the beholder an object with a face like that of an intellectual parrot. Furthermore, as in the case with so many of the younger literati, he dresses like a tramp cyclist, affecting turtleneck sweaters and grey flannel bags with a patch on the knee and conveying a sort of general suggestion of having been left out in the rain overnight in an ash can (p.46-47)

From ‘Aunts aren’t Gentlemen’

“I’ve got spots on my chest.”

“Spots? That’s bad. How many?”

I said I had not actually tken a census but there were quite a few (p.18)

Aunt Agatha……..is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon. Aunt Dahlia is as good a sort as ever said “Tally Ho” to a fox, which she frequently did in her younger days….If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know (p.20)

From ‘The Old Reliable’

Her voice was a very powerful contralto….she was apt to use it as if she were chatting with a slightly deaf acquaintance in China (p.16)

He looks much more like a lobster than most lobsters do (p.61)

From ‘Company for Henry’

“What made you propose to her?”

“He always does, he tells me,”…..”when he cant think of anything to say. It keeps the conversation going.” (p.140)

From ‘Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit’

Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young (p.1)

….his tendency, when moved, to make a sound like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp (p.17)

From ‘Summer Moonshine’

‘And I’m pretty sure the name was Busby. Unless,’ said Tubby, who liked to leave a margin for error, ‘it was something else. (p.11)

…..enormously rich inspite of the inroads made on his income by the platoon of ex-wives to whom he was paying alimony. For, like so many substantial citizens of his native country, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag (p.20)

……But why, did you want 500 pounds?

‘Who doesn’t?’ said Sir Buckstone, rather reasonably. (p.22)

‘Well then, be at the second milestone on the Walsingford road at 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be waiting there. And when you come, make a noise like a linnet’

……….He took counsel of Pollen………

‘Say Pollen, do you know anything about birds?’….linnets……what sort of noise they make?’……………

Yes sir. The rough song of a linnet is “Tolic-gow-gow, tolic-joey fair, tolic-hickey-gee, tolic-equay-quake, tuc-tuc-whizzie, tuc-ruc-joey, equay-quake-a-weet, tuc-tuc-wheet”

“It is?”

Tubby stood for a moment in thought.

‘Oh, hell!,’ he said. ‘I’ll whistle’ (p.145-146)

From ‘French Leave’

…..Ouch!” said Henry changing the subject and explained that a bee had stung him.

This seemed to Jo a frivolous side issue (p.10)

“I’ve never been more delighted in my life,” said Mrs.Pegler. She kissed Freddie, who had been afraid of this but told himself with the splendid Carpenter fortitude that at such a time one has to take the rough with the smooth (p.136)

From ‘Something Fishy’

George, sixth Viscount Uffenham, was a man built on generous lines. It was as though nature had originally intended to make two viscounts, but had decided halfway through to use all the material at one go and get the thing over with (p.21)

A momentary urge to bang her uncle on the head with the coffee pot came and passed. It is at such moments that breeding tells (p.67)

……….that lifelong habit of his of proposing marriage to girls whenever the conversation seemed to be flagging a bit and a feller felt he had to say something (p.71)

It had sometimes happened to Bill, when indulging in his hobby of amateur boxing to place the point of his jaw in a spot where his opponent was simultaneously placing his fist and the result had always been a curious illusion that the top of his head had parted abruptly from its moorings (p.113)

………How soon can one get married?

“Like a flash, I believe, if yet get a special license.”

“I’ll get two, to be on the safe side”

“I would. Cant go wrong, if yer have a spare” (p.147)

From ‘Something Fresh’

………beggars approached the task of trying to persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the difference. It was one of those happy mornings (p.9)

…….There was one small window, covered with grime. It was one of those windows which you see only in laywers offices. Possibly, some reckless Mainprice or hairbrained Boole had opened it, in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815 and had been instantly expelled from the firm. Since then no one had dared to tamper with it (p.68)

………the sixth and final shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship’s maternal grandmother in the face and improved it out of all knowledge (p.149)

From ‘Money in the Bank’

………….she found its occupant seated at the table, playing chess with himself. From the contented expression on his face, he appeared to be winning (p.27)

……….and I find that I could put the whole of dashed human race into a pit half a mile wide by half a mile deep.

…….’No don’t,’ said Anne. ‘Think how squashy it would be for the ones at the bottom.’

‘True,’ admitted Lord Uffenham, after consideration. ‘Yerss. Yerss. I see what you mean. Still, its an interesting thought’ (p.44)

……….It was the look which had caused her to be known in native bearer and half caste trader circles as ‘Mgobo-Mgumbi’, which may be loosely translated as She on Whom It is Unsafe to Try Any Oompus-Boompus. (p.63)

……’I love you,’ said Jeff.

‘That’s the way to talk,’ said Anne

‘I shall never love anyone but you.’

‘Better and better.’

‘Did you know that ants run faster in warm weather?’

‘No, really? Faster than what?’

‘Faster than other ants in cold weather.’

‘You wouldn’t fool me?’

‘Certainly not. I had it from your uncle in person. It appears that they spring like billy-o in the dog days. I know you would be glad to hear that. And I was nearly forgetting to mention it, I love you ’ (p.237)

From ‘A Damsel in Distress’

……..Thrips thrive on the underside of rose leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow; and Lord Marshmoreton’s views on these things were so rigid that he would have poured whale-oil solution on his grandmother if he had found her on the underside of one of his rose leaves sucking its juice (p.9)

From ‘Galahad At Blandings’

Quite a good party, avant garde playwrights and other local fauna dotted around, busy with their bohemian revels (p.5)

The policeman was a long, stringy policeman who flowed out of his uniform at odd spots. His face was gnarled, his wrists knobbly and of a geranium hue and he had those three or four extra inches of neck which disqualify a man for high honours in a beauty competition (p.9)

Nature had not given Veronica Wedge more than about as much brain as would fit comfortably into an aspirin bottle, feeling no doubt that it was better not to overdo the thing (p.23)

………looked like a cook – in her softer moods a cook well satisfied with her latest soufflé; when stirred to anger a cook about to give notice; but always a cook of strong character (p.23)

He did not look the sort of young man from whom one would have expected stories about kittens called Pinky-Poo or indeed about kittens whose godparents had been less fanciful in their choice of names, for his appearance was distinctly on the rugged side. (p.27)

‘He writes from the Athenaeum Club.’

‘That morgue?’ said Gally, who did not think highly of the Athenaeum. There was not a bishop or a Cabinet Minister there who he would have taken to the old Pelican and introduced to Plug Basham and Buffy Struggles. He might be wronging the institution, but he doubted if it contained on its membership list a single sportsman capable of throwing soft boiled eggs at an electric fan or smashing the piano on a Saturday night (p.85)

Of the broad general principle of hitting the police force in the eye he had always thoroughly approved. You could not, in his opinion, do it too much and too often (p.87)

A gurgling sound like the wind going out of the childrens toy known as the dying duck showed how deeply he had been moved (p.130)

They’re soul mates. She has about as much brain as a retarded billiards ball, and he approximately the same (p.156)

…….but you often find these fellows with tough exteriors, strangely sensitive. It was the same with Plug Basham that time Puffy Benger and I put the pig in his bedroom.’

‘Why did you do that, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘To cheer the poor chap up. For several days he had been brooding on something, I forget what, and Puffy and I talked it over and decided that something must be done to take him out of himself. He needs fresh interests, I said to Tuffy. So we coated a pig liberally with phosphorous and left it at his bedside at about two in the morning. We then beat the gong. The results were excellent. It roused him from his despondency in a flash and gave him all the fresh interests he could do with. But the point I’m making is that it was years after that before he could see a pig without a shudder’ (p.167)