The Captive Reader

I do love P.G. Wodehouse and his mad array of characters.  Though Psmith will forever remain my favourite, I have a steadfast affection for Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, fifth Earl of Ickenham, known to many a bright young man about town simply as Pongo’s Uncle Fred.  Surely there is no better man to partner you for a bit of light rabble rousing than the indefatigable Lord Ickenham who, despite being about sixty in Uncle Dynamite which I’ve just finished rereading, “…still retained, together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and the fresh, unspoiled mental outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate.”

For your amusement, I give you a delightful exchange between him and his nephew Pongo as they study a photograph of Pongo’s new fiancée, Hermione Bostock.  Uncle Fred is, as always, full of sage advice:

‘Have you ever studied these features?  That chin is a determined chin.  Those eyes flashing eyes.’

‘What’s the matter with flashing eyes?’

‘Dashed unpleasant things to have about a home.  To cope with flashing eyes, you have to be a man of steel and ginger.  Are you a man of steel and ginger?  No.  You’re like me, a gentle coffee-caddie.’

‘A how much?’

‘By a coffee-caddie, I mean a man – and there is no higher type – whose instinct it is to carry his wife’s breakfast up to her room on a tray each morning and bill and coo with her as she wades into it.  And what the coffee-caddie needs is not a female novelist with a firm chin and flashing eyes, but a jolly little soul who, when he bills, will herself bill like billy-o, and who will be right there with bells on when he starts to coo.  The advice I give to every young man starting out to seek a life partner is to find a girl whom he can tickle.  Can you see yourself tickling Hermione Bostock?  She would draw herself to her full height and say “Sir!”’