June 2008
If you have any suggestions for content, or information that might help, please e-mail Reggie.
Most months, kind correspondents provide answers to one or more of my questions on the Can You Help page. These might take a little while to filter through to the main pages, so I am putting them here for a little while.
| Wanted | Solution |
| 'I remember reading a story ... about a burglar who burgled a house and the owner caught him and ... made him take all his clothes off and then showed him politely out of the front door.' | This could well be The Burglar's Story by W. S. Gilbert which was published in the only collection of his short stories in 1890 Foggarty's Fairy and Other Tales after an earlier (1883) magazine appearance. Wodehouse was a great reader of Gilbert when young. |
| 'Like Death in the poem, it knocked on the doors of highest and lowest alike.' | Probably an allusion to Horace's Odes, 1.4.13-14. The exact meaning depends on the translation and while the following is a popular one, PG would have read the original: Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regumque turris. Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the cottages of the poor and the palaces of kings. |
| Thomas tap-cinders | Tap cinders appear to be a product of (and used in) the iron-making process and used, with other cinders, as a type of fertilizer or soil conditioner (which fits the story). Presumably 'Thomas' was a trade name (real or invented). |
| Chez Jimmy | Opened in 1938 at 4 rue Huyghens in the 14ème of Paris under its proper name of Jimmy's [which is why I couldn't find it before]. It continued through the 1940's at least and featured two orchestras, one of which was a jazz band which often included the famous guitarist Django Reinhardt. |
| 'Well, of course, the thing was an absolute fliver, as I ought to have guessed it would be.' | This is complicated. Flivver, in obsolete US theatre slang from the 1920s and earlier, means a failed production, what we now might call a 'turkey'. The meaning 'failure' makes sense in context and PG could easily have encountered the word during his time writing for the US stage. Unfortunately, the original is 'fliver' so we have to assume it's an error by PG or the publisher for 'flivver'. |
| 'Pleasure is pleasure, and biz is biz, and kep' in a sepyrit jug.' | From a piece by Barry Pain in the Pall Mall Magazine, April 1906. (Found as a snippet only so I still need the title of the piece, please.) |
| 'Farewell, Evelina, fairest of your sex.' | Probably a reference to Evelina: The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Frances 'Fanny' Burney (1778), in which Evelina is described as loveliest of thy sex and most charming of thy sex, both close enough for PG to mis-remember. Evelina is not a common name and the book is a 'classic'. |
| 'The jovial hunting type. Lady Di. Bluff goodwill.' | Probably Lady Diana Sartoris, known as Lady Di, from the melodrama The Whip by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton. First produced at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London, in 1909 where it ran for nearly 400 performances, despite featuring a horse race on stage with real horses! Lady Di was the deputy of the Beverly (fox) hunt. It was also performed on tour, opened in New York in 1912, toured the US for many years and was made into a film in 1917 and 1928. There's a good chance PG saw at least one of these. |
Major changes only
May 2008
New pages
April 2008
March 2008