A reference to the killing of Sisera, leader of a Gentile army that had just been defeated by Barak's Israelite forces. Sisera, poor chump, fled the battlefield and sought refuge in the house of Heber:
miss-in-balk: Shamin Mohamed (aka Pongo) kindly supplied the following: "In billiards, the area at the head of the table (the side opposite the 'spot', where you would rack the balls if you were playing pool) is called the baulk. If you are playing with your cue ball in hand, you play from the baulk, and you are not permitted to play a ball that is in baulk. You give that ball the miss-in-baulk."
hart: a male deer (especially red deer) especially over five years old, when the crown antler begins to appear.
Chapter 2
mens sana in corpore whatnot
Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.
— Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis; 55-130 AD) Roman satirist, Satires, X
seigneur: a feudal lord, lord of a manor, especially in France or French Canada.
'...Sir Watkyn Bassett, CBE ... May all his hens get the staggers.'
staggers: giddiness, also any of various kinds of disease causing horses, sheep, etc, to stagger.
grass staggers or stomach staggers: an acute indigestion.
For this ruthless relative has one all-powerful weapon which she holds constantly over my head like the sword of — who was the chap? — Jeeves would know — and by means of which she can always bend me to her will — viz. the threat that if I don't kick in she will bar me from her board and wipe Anatole's cooking from my lips.
The chap was Damocles, a flatterer of Dionysius, absolute ruler of Syracuse, Italy, during the 5th century BC. Damocles was taught the insecurity of the happiness he so envied by being invited to a sumptuous banquet at which he was forced to sit beneath a sword that was suspended over his head by a single hair. Damocles was afraid to stir, and the banquet was a tantalising torment to him.
'If I had my life to live again, Jeeves, I would start it as an orphan without any aunts. Don't they put aunts in Turkey in sacks and drop them in the Bosphorus?'
'Odalisques, sir, I understand. Not aunts.'
An unfortunate mistake by Bertie. An odalisque is a female slave in a harem.
Bosphorus: a strait between south-eastern Europe and south-western Asia, connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and separating Turkey in Asia from Turkey in Europe. Swift currents make navigation — and, presumably, escaping from sacks — rather difficult.
'That is the problem which is torturing me, Jeeves. I can't make up my mind. You remember the fellow you've mentioned to me once or twice, who let something wait upon something? You know who I mean — the cat chap.'
'Macbeth, sir, a character in a play of that name by the late William Shakespeare. He was described as letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would", like the poor cat i' th' adage.'
It was the scheming Lady M. who described Macbeth in this way. She saw his refusal to murder Duncan, King of Scotland, as proof that he had let fear get the better of his desire for the crown. Similarly, the cat in the adage wanted to catch a fish but was afraid of getting its paws wet. The wimp.
'...old Bassett is firmly convinced that I am a combination of Raffles and a pea-and-thimble man...'
Raffles, the hero, or anti-hero, of a series of tales by E W Hornung (1866-1921), was a gentleman burglar. With his elegant lifestyle, public school education and social standing Raffles did not have to steal; yet he made frequent and successful sorties from his rooms in Albany, off Piccadilly, to relieve the rich of their wealth, occasionally varying his modus operandi by robbing guests at country house parties to which he had been invited.
pea-and-thimble man: It's over to James Nicola for this one: "I think 'pea-and-thimble man' refers to one of the conmen who would stand in the street pushing a dried pea around on a tray, concealing it under one of three thimbles, then rearranging the thimbles and challenging others to guess where the pea was. Despite their habit of winning, they were regarded as well down among the very lowest echelons of the criminal classes, and so would provide a good contrast with Raffles."
'...Miss Stephanie Byng ... Smallish girl of about the tonnage of Jessie Matthews...'
Jessie Matthews (1907-81) was a much loved singer and actress, who appeared in many stage and film productions. Born in Soho, she became Britain's first international movie star, her heyday being the 1920s and 30s. Her tonnage was agreeably low.
Jessie Matthews Home Page
Having ... fetched up at the front door, we were informed by the butler that this was indeed the lair of Sir Watkyn Bassett.
'Childe Roland to the dark tower came, sir,' said Jeeves as we alighted, though what he meant I hadn't an earthly.
He meant whatever Robert Browning meant by his unsettling poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. But that's as mysterious to me as Jeeves's allusion was to Bertie. The poem tells the story of a nobleman who journeys through barren, nightmarish country to face the ultimate horror within the Dark Tower. Precisely what that horror is we never learn, for the poem ends with the hero's arrival at the tower gate, whereupon he takes something called a slug-horn, puts it to his lips and bellows — wait for it — "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." Odd. Very odd indeed.
More
[Update! Many thanks to Richard Vine for the following.]
cf also...
Burd Ellen
The story involves four siblings, three boys and a girl. The girl, Burd Ellen, is kidnapped by the King of Fairy after walking widershins around a church to retrieve a lost ball. The eldest brother seeks the advice of Merlin and goes in search of his lost sister. He never returns. The middle brother does the same and also vanishes. Finally the youngest, Childe Rowland, gains permission from his mother to try as well. Merlin tells him that in order to succeed he must do two things, he must cut off the head of every person he meets from the time he enters the land of Fairy until he finds Burd Ellen and he must not eat or drink anything while in the boundaries of the Fairy Kingdom. Childe Rowland ventures forth, meeting a horseherd, cowherd and henwife, asking each for
directions and then killing them. He finally arrives at a large hill and the Fairy King's Dark Tower. He gains entry and battles and overcomes the King of Fairy. The terms of his surrender are to release all four children. He does this and everyone lives happily ever after.
The Song of Roland
This epic poem (the only remaining complete epic written in French) tells the story of the nephew of Charlemagne and how, while fighting in Spain, he and the entire rear guard of Charlemagne's army were wiped out because Roland's stepfather, Ganelon, was a traitor and sold out his own people to the Saracen so Roland would be killed. Roland himself is partly to blame as well because he failed to blow his horn and call reinforcements.
King Lear Act III, Scene iv 180-183
Edgar (disguised as the madman Tom O'Bedlam) says "Child Rowland to the Dark Tower came, / His
word was still 'Fie, foh, and fum, / I smell the blood of a British man'." (This may refer to the ballad Burd Ellen - see above.)
Chapter 3
Throughout this — well, dash it, this absolute Trial of Mary Dugan
Adapted from Bayard Veiller's Broadway play and released in 1929, The Trial of Mary Dugan was one of the earliest talking pictures. In the dock was a woman accused of knifing her lover to death. Hailed by the critics, the movie was a key moment in the career of its star, Norma Shearer, who was in the process of making a successful transition from the world of silent films.
Plot summary at The Internet Movie Database
Arcady: a district in Greece whose people were traditionally idealised as having a simple rural lifestyle, with much music and dancing. Similar conditions prevail in modern Glastonbury.
Like ambassador finding veiled woman snooping round safe containing secret treaty.
Presumably a reference to Mata Hari – a Dutch courtesan, who, according to conventional wisdom, achieved a sort of glamorous notoriety as a spy during World War I. But her reputation was recently debunked when it was revealed that she was, in reality, a tragi-comic figure who supplied neither the Germans nor the French with information of any significance.
Mata Hari in the Encyclopedia of Espionage
'...you know how it is when you're a host — you have all sorts of things to divert your attention ... keeping an eye on the waiters, trying to make the conversation general, heading Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright off from giving his imitation of Beatrice Lillie...'
Beatrice Lillie (1898-1989): a British comedienne born in Canada. She won an international reputation for sophisticated wit in revues, radio and television shows, and films.
Filmography at IMDB
I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. 'A sensitive plant, what?'
'Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.'
'Oh, am I?'
sensitive plant: a plant, especially Mimosa pudica, that shows more than usual irritability when touched or shaken, by movements of leaves, etc; a person who is easily upset.
A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant, 1820
More
'Did you bring that book I asked you to?'
'Awfully sorry. I forgot.'
'Well, of all the muddle-headed asses that ever stepped, you certainly are the worst. Others abide our question, thou art free.'
The first and last lines are spoken to Bertie by Augustus Fink-Nottle; and the final sentence is from Matthew Arnold's poem Shakespeare. Bertie's behaviour, according to Gussie, is simply beyond human understanding.
'...Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts...'
Spode is a parody of Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, a remarkably flexible British politician who entered the House of Commons in 1918 and was in Parliament until 1931, serving successively as a Conservative, an Independent, and a member of the Labour party. In 1932 he founded the British Union of Fascists, also known as the Blackshirts.
I couldn't have been a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.
Sherlock Holmes would pull off such impressive feats of deduction on a regular basis. See, for example, A Case of Identity.
'...I imagine that the dear girl must have hauled up her slacks about me in a way that led him to suppose that what he was getting was a sort of cross between Robert Taylor and Einstein...'
Probably Robert Taylor the film star, but quite possibly some other Robert Taylor (though almost certainly not this Robert Taylor).
'...And then out of the night that covered me, black as the pit from pole to pole, there shone a tiny gleam of hope...'
An allusion to Invictus by William Ernest Henley.
Chapter 4
I remember Jeeves saying to me once, apropos of how you can never tell what the weather's going to do, that full many a glorious morning had he seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye and then run into a rather nasty afternoon.
A concise paraphrase of a rather pointless Shakespearean sonnet.
Sonnet 33
'...What is the first thing you do, when you find a girl with a fly in her eye?'
I uttered an exclamash.
'Reach for your handkerchief!'
'Exactly ... And if there is a small, brown leather-covered notebook alongside the handkerchief —'
'It shoots out —'
'And falls to earth —'
'— you know not where.'
The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a work that's surprisingly well known, considering it was dashed off in half an hour just after breakfast.
'It biteth like a serpent.'
Gussie is talking about Stephanie Byng's dog. But the warning also applies to drink:
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
— Proverbs 23:31-35
The shades of evening were beginning to fall pretty freely by now ...
Dusk does funny things to a poet. Just ask William Wordsworth.
the whole situation resembled some great moment in a Greek tragedy, where somebody is stepping high, wide and handsome, quite unconscious that all the while Nemesis is at his heels
Nemesis: (a) ancient Greek goddess of vengeance; (b) Stephanie Byng's dog.
In 1937 High, Wide and Handsome was the title of a movie starring Irene Dunne, with music by Jerome Kern. Kern also collaborated with Plum on several pre-war Broadway musicals. I'm not sure whether the movie was the origin of the phrase.
[Update! Sept 2003. Thanks to Peter Binkley for the following.]
Here's a source for the phrase "high, wide and handsome": "Promotional slogans entered a new era in the 1940s and 1950s as the average American's rising income and an upsurge in the use of automobiles for leisure travel resulted in an increasing number of people visiting Montana. One of the most resonant Montana epithets — 'Montana: High, Wide and Handsome' — first came into use during this time. The phrase graced the cover of a Montana Highway Department publicity brochure in 1940, three years prior to the publication of Joseph Kinsey Howard's treatise by the same name. Its original source is unknown, although evidence points to C. B. Glasscock, who stated that 'Life in Butte was high, wide, and occasionally handsome' in War of the Copper Kings published in 1935. Both this lovely phrase and the Treasure State, which appeared on every Montana license plate made between 1950 and 1966, remained relevant throughout the 1950s, a golden period for the Hollywood Western and an era that glorified the mountains and open spaces of places like Montana.'
It seems to me that Glasscock, in the quotation, is having fun with a familiar phrase rather than making up a new one, so I suspect there is some earlier source. And sure enough, the online Oxford English Dictionary has this under "high":
j. high, wide, and handsome (and similar phrases), in a carefree manner, in good style (see also quot. 1971). orig. U.S.
1907 S. E. WHITE Arizona Nights 35 Tim could talk high, wide, and handsome when he set out to. 1932 'SPINDRIFT' Yankee Slang 21 High, wide and handsome, in good or great style. Common shout at a rodeo: 'Ride him, Cowboy, high, wide and handsome.' 1939 WODEHOUSE Uncle Fred in Springtime iii. 50 He has a nasty way of lugging Pongo out into the open and..proceeding to step high, wide and plentiful. 1958 L. VAN DER POST Lost World of Kalahari (1961) vii. 155 The day was riding high, wide and handsome into the deeps of the incredible blue sky. 1971 J. WAINWRIGHT Last Buccaneer II. 234 The cops 'll be high, wide and helpless. They won't know what in hell's hit 'em.
So it is cowboy slang, and would probably have been recognizable to Wodehouse's readers from cowboy books and movies.
macédoine: a mixture of (usually diced) vegetables or fruit in syrup or jelly; a mixture or medley.
She ... addressed herself to the man, who had now begun to emerge from the ditch like Venus rising from the foam.
Until I looked into it, I had always assumed that the birth of Venus (or Aphrodite, as the Greeks knew her) was a more or less serene affair, rather as depicted by Botticelli in the famous painting. What a fool I was.
The story of the birth of Venus (not for the squeamish).
she made what I believe is known as a moue ... Is it moue? .. Shoving out the lips, I mean, and drawing them quickly back again.
Spot on, Bertie. A moue is a grimace of discontent, a pout.
He's a Justice of the Peace now. He holds a sort of Star Chamber court in the library.
Justice of the Peace: someone commissioned to perform minor judicial and other functions within a specified locality.
Star Chamber: a court (abolished 1641) with a civil and criminal jurisdiction, which met in the old council chamber at Westminster and was empowered to act without a jury and to use torture.
And there's Uncle Watkyn at the desk, looking like Judge Jeffreys ...
George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys of Wem (1648-1689): an English judge under Kings Charles II and James II. He was known as the Hanging Judge for his brutal conduct of criminal trials, including those of a group of men charged in a rebellion against James II, in which Jeffreys acted with such ruthless disregard for legal procedure that they became known as the Bloody Assizes.
'... I said to myself: "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!" For months I had been trying to think of a way to get back at this man Oates, and you had showed it to me.'
The babe and/or suckling that Stiffy refers to is Bertie, who inadvertently gave her the idea that someone should steal Constable Oates's helmet.
Psalms 8
But mere thews and sinews do not qualify a man to pinch policemen's helmets.
A tricky one, this. The word thews appears several times in Shakespeare and Byron, and thews and sinews appears in William Kendall's On the Paroo, but I'm at a loss when it comes to mere thews and sinews. ###
thews: trait; manner; moral quality; bodily quality, muscle or strength.
adamant: (noun) a name applied by the ancients to various hard substances, eg steel; an imaginary rock with fabulous properties; (adjective) unyielding.
gizzard: a muscular stomach, especially the second stomach of a bird. To stick in someone's gizzard: to be more than someone can accept or tolerate.
I read her purpose, and shuddered.
This is the moment when Bertie finally realises that Stiffy is blackmailing him.
The phrase "read her purpose" has a biblical ring to it, but the only source I can find is The Education of Israel by Ellen White, one of the founders of the church of the Seventh Day Adventists: "In all, God desired His people to read His purpose for the human soul. It was the same purpose long afterward set forth by the apostle Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit". ### p78