March Gleanings

Rather more PG Wodehouse content in March as I have been helping prepare back numbers of Wooster Sauce for publication on the Society’s website.

Von Halle on 23rd February 2021 to Vicky (née Falconer) and Hugo, a daughter, Triptych Alabama Bliss, sister to Hieronymus and Dionysus. (Births, The Times)

The various tribes of Britons possessed valour without conduct, and the love of freedom without the spirit of union. They took up arms with savage fierceness, they laid them down, or turned them against each other with wild inconstancy; and while they fought singly, they were successively subdued. (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon)

In 1930 a total of 7,305 people were killed on the roads in Great Britain, compared with 1,782 in 2018, with a far higher volume of road traffic. (Footnote in Chips Channon’s Diaries)

“… one morning at seven-forty-five, that being the ghastly sort of hour they shoot you off the liner in New York. He was given the respectful raspberry by Jeeves, and told to try again about three hours later …”Translated into French as: “Il se présenta un beau matin à sept heures quarantine-cinq est l’affreux genre d’heure on vous débarque du bateau à New York. Jeeves lui donna respectueusement un jus de framboise et lui dit de revenir à peu prés trois heures plus tard”. (Spotted by Jay Weiss, Wooster Sauce, March 2006)

John Mortimer describes walking with his father in Switzerland when he was ten years old, which would have been in 1933, before his father went blind. “When my father told me the adventures of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster he would stand on the mountain path, dabbing at his streaming eyes and almost choking with laughter. I enjoyed these stories so much that it was my ambition to become a butler when I grew up.” (Clinging to the Wreckage, John Mortimer)

There can’t have been an RSPCA

In Panama, on that auspicious day

When Cortez, quite the stoutest of his men,

Stood silent upon a Peke – in Darien. (Punch, spotted by Oliver Wise in Wooster Sauce, December 1998)

Lord Jesus Christ, who created, redeemed, and preordained me to be this that I am, you know what you wish to do with me; do with me in accordance with your will, with mercy. Amen. (A Prayer of King Henry VI)

Two clues from The Daily Telegraph Quick Crossword, 15th November 1999. 1 Across: Antoine, French painter (1684 – 1721). 8 Across: ideal valet. The top line of the completed grid reads Watteau Jeeves. (Wooster Sauce, March 2000)

I regret that I am unable to be with you. However, I send my best wishes and, as Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright once said – “may you all have a binge to stagger humanity”.  (HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s message to the PGW Society, 1999)

We all have our own ways of getting through these dark days … Human contact and a handy corkscrew are crucial. (Spectator Wine, Jonathan Ray)