A Few More Laughs From ` The Small Bachelor' by PG Wodehouse

I have already posted on `The Small Bachelor' , but the laughs in this novel is unlimited. Despite posting in two parts, a third part is fully loaded

http://balu036.blogspot.in/2017/04/my-favourite-book-of-p-g-wodehouse-is.html

http://balu036.blogspot.in/2017/04/time-and-distance-problems-made-fun-of.html

Here is the final instalment but this is just a tip of the iceberg of this funniest novel by PGW

This is the last place you should be proposing to a girl

                `Well, anyway, we walked around for a while, looking at the animals, suddenly he asked me to marry him outside the cage of the Siberian yak’

                `No, sir!’ exclaimed Sigsbee H, with a sudden strange firmness, the indulgent father who for once in his life asserts himself `When you get married, you’ll be married in St Thomas’s like any other nice girl’

                `I mean it was outside the cage of the Siberian yak that he asked me to marry him’

                Why do parents especially mothers of beautiful girls entertain such thoughts about their daughter’s lover?

                George was not vain, and if Molly’s stepmother had been simply content to look at him as if she thought he was something the cat had dragged out of the dustbin, he could have borne up. Her whole attitude betrayed her belief that the cat, on inspecting George, had been disappointed. Seeing what it had got, her manner suggested, it had given him the look of chagrin which cats give when conscious of effort wasted and gone elsewhere to try.

                What a definition of marriage!

                Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies the corpse.

                Can hatred towards an individual be expressed in a better way?

                What on earth was the use of trying to be optimistic about a world which contained people like Hamilton Beamish?

                Why else do they say Love is Blind, it can make the most logical of men go bizarre!!!

                Hamilton Beamish had been listening to these exchanges with a rapidly rising temperature. His heart was pounding feverishly in his bosom. There is no one who become so primitive, when gripped by love, as the man who all his life has dwelt in the cool empyrean of the intellect. For twenty years and more, Hamilton Beamish had supposed that he was above the crude passions of the ordinary man, and when love got him it got him good. And now, standing there and listening to these two, he was conscious of a jealousy so keen that he could no longer keep silent. Hamilton Beamish, the thinker, had ceased to be; and there stood in his place Hamilton Beamish, the descendant of ancestors who had conducted their love affairs with stout clubs and who, on seeing a rival, wasted no time in calm reflection but jumped on him like a ton of bricks and did their best to bit his head off. If you had given him a bearskin and taken away his spectacles, Hamilton Beamish at this moment would have been prehistoric man.

                An individual’s lack of intelligence cannot be said more funnily

                Sigsbee H Waddington, as has perhaps been sufficiently indicated in this narrative, was not a man who could think deeply without getting a headache; but even at the expense of an aching head he had been compelled to do some very deep thinking as he journeyed to New York in the train.

                The Thumb Rule to a Happy Married Life

                `I’m always right’ said Fanny, giving her husband’s cheek a loving pinch `That’s the first thing you’ve to get into your head, now you’re a married man’

                A philosophical thought on morality

                The instinct of self preservation not only sharpens the wits, but at the same time dulls the moral sensibility.

                 An insensitive person cannot be described better

                Deaf persons had always irritated her, for like so many women of an impatient and masterful turn of mind, she was of the opinion that they could hear perfectly well if they took the trouble.

                PGW has a way with explaining the fairer sex’s tyranny….

                She drew away. She was not normally an unkind girl, but the impulse of the female of the species to torture the man it loves is well known. Women maybe a ministering angel  when pain and anguish wring the brow; but, if at other times she sees a chance to prod the loved one and watch him squirm, she hates to miss it.

                … or expressing the superiority of the male.

                The girl eyed him worshipfully. One of the consolations which we men of intellect have is that, when things come to a crisis, what captures the female heart is brains. Women may permit themselves in times of peace to stray after sheiks and look languishingly at lizards whose only claim to admiration is that they cannot go the first three steps of the Charleston; but let matters go wrong; let some peril threaten; and who then is the main kingpin, who the main squeeze? The man with the Eight and a Quarter hat.

                A man cannot be more determined than this…

                A cyclone might shake this man, but not the human eye.

                

My Favourite Novel of P G Wodehouse is `The Small Bachelor'

Olivia Williams once said `PG Wodehouse should be prescribed to treat depression, cheaper, more effective than valium and far, far more addictive’.

                I started reading PG Wodehouse with intent after my second bout of depression in 2010, unaware of Olivia William’s statement, and must say that her statement is as accurate as the law of gravity. I usually highlight interesting portions of any book I read but while reading this particular book, I felt I could highlight the whole book as well.

                The one which I found it most addictive was `The Small Bachelor’ written in late 1920’s, and this is what the Master had to say about this book.

I suppose authors generally have a special affection for those of their books which come out easily. The Small Bachelor was one of the easy ones. I wrote most of it in a punt on a lake at a country house in Norfolk with gentle breezes blowing and ducks quacking and all Nature, as you might say, pitching in to make my task more pleasant.

                I have, in the following few paragraphs, tried to capture the magic of the book which allured me the most

                Here is PGW, taking a possible dig at people of a particular profession staying together

                The Sherdian stands in the heart of New York’s Bohemian and artistic quarter. If you threw a brick from any of its windows, you would be certain to brain some rising young interior decorator, some vorticist sculptor or a writer of revolutionary vers libres. And a very good thing, too.

                The Master’s sarcastic snide at well to do kids pursuing to become artistes

                For George, no longer obliged to earn a living, has given his suppressed desires play by coming to the metropolis and trying his hand at painting. From boyhood up he had always wanted to be an artist, and now he is an artist; and what is more, probably the worst artist who ever put brush to canvas.

                A swipe at the `Do it yourself’ books authors

                I could make a poet out of two sticks and a piece of orange-peel, if they studied my booklet carefully.

                An oddly shaped individual cannot be described better.

                Nature, setting out to make a constable, had had a good deal of material left over which she had not liked to throw away but hardly seemed able to fit neatly into the general scheme. He had large, knobby wrists of a geranium hue, and just that extra four or five inches of neck which disqualify a man for high honours in a beauty competition. His eyes were mild and blue and from certain angles he seemed all Adam’s apple.

                Steam hammer like persona, only Plum could conjure such phrases

                When you met, J Hamilton Beamish, something like a steam-hammer seemed to hit your consciousness and stun it long before he came within speaking distance. In the case of George Finch nothing of this kind happened.

                Explaining predicament was never made to sound so funny.

                One of the drawbacks to the policeman’s life, Mr Finch, is that it is not easy for him to always to do the gentlemanly thing.

                Once bitten, twice shy, explained in the best way possible

                If you had been laid up for a year in hospital as the result of jumping off this roof, what would be the one outdoor sport in which, on emerging, you would be most reluctant to indulge? Jumping off roofs, undoubtedly.

                Has there been a better description of a hen-pecked husband?

                To call him a cipher in the home would be to give a too glowing picture of his importance.

                Can a fat person be described better?

                Public speakers, when Mrs. Waddington was present had the illusion that they were addressing most of the population of the United States.

                Ridiculing hen-pecked husbands at its best

                There is no man so terrible in his spasmodic fury as the hen-pecked husband during his short spasms of revolt. Even Mrs Waddington recognized that, no matter how complete her control normally.  Sigsbee H, when having one of the spells, practically amounted to a rogue elephant. Her policy was to keep out of his way till the fever passed, and then to discipline him severly.

                 Did Kerala get the  title God’s own country from this book

                `You really come from the west?’ he cried.

                `I do’

                `From God’s Own country…’

                PGW has deciphered why some husbands remain hen-pecked

                To assert himself with his wife, to bend her to his will, if I may put it that way, a man needs complete financial independence. It is no use trying to bend your wife to your will when five minutes later you have got to try and wheedle twenty five cents out of her for a cigar.

                Further reflecting the plight of a hen-pecked husband

                Sigsbee H Waddington is one of those men who have only to express a liking for anybody to cause their wives to look on him as something out of the underworld.

                Explaining why some people become misogynists

                Too many times in his career he had admired girls from afar, only to discover, when they spoke, that they had voices like peacocks calling up the rain.

                A useful line for the politicians

                A man’s intellectual perceptions do not stand still. One develops.

                How can a lover tell such a truth to his girl?

                It was as a romantic and penniless artist that George Finch had won this girl’s heart. It would be cruel to reveal the fact that he was rich and the worst artist in New York.

                It’s never easy being a grammar Nazi.

                `I mean, I was sent here with a message from Madame Eulalie, and she turns out to be you’

                `A message? Who from?’

`From whom?’ corrected Hamilton Beamish. Even in the grip of love, a specialist on Pure English remains a specialist on Pure English.

`T hat’s what I said – who from?’

Hamilton Beamish smiled an indulgent smile. These little mistakes could always be corrected later – possibly on the honeymoon.

Time And Distance Problems Made Fun Of By PG Wodehouse In `The Small Bachelor'

Here is PG Wodehouse making fun of time and distance problems  in The Small Bachelor

                `Ah, but you don’t understand’, said Mr. Waddington hastily `When I say that the necklace is in the strong-room, mean that it is there just now. Eventually it will be taken out and placed among the other wedding-presents’

                `This begins to look more like it’

                `I can mention no names, of course…’

                `I don’t expect you to’

                `Then I will simply say that A, to whom the necklace belongs, is shortly about to be married to B’

                `I might have known it. Doing all those bridge problems together, they kind of got fond one another’

                `I have my reasons for thinking that the wedding will take place down at Hempstead on Long Island, where C, A’s stepmother, has her summer house’

                `Why? Why not in New York?’

                `Because’, said Mr Waddington simply ` I expressed a wish that it should take place in New York’

                `What have you go to do with it?’

                `I am D, C’s husband’

                `Oh, the fellow who could fill a tank with water in six hours fifteen minutes while C was filling another in five hour forty-five? Pleased to meet you’