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unearths some literary gems.
From Banner Deadlines, by Joseph Commings:
***He had a voice like a French flute.[I liked the sound of this, but I didn't know what a French flute was. Looking it up, I read that a French (open-hole) flute doesn't sound inherently different from a non-French flute--except in a de facto way, insofar as French flutes tend to be higher-quality flutes.]***Professor Maybrick, the phony spiritualist...was finally caught with his ectoplasm down.[later]"Someone took off his clothes in here," said Konstanz."For what reason? To walk around in these drafts in his ectoplasm?"***She was knitting an afghan and she was so quiet you could hear a stitch drop.***"Duck pin bowling is beyond me."***"The architect has designs on me."***"Yesterday she lured me into her apartment...Too late I realized I'd stepped into a nest of cobras.""She had you meet her relatives?" said Banner, highly amused."No, I mean real cobras."***"I've always wanted to meet you, Senor.""Where'd you hear of me before?" asked Banner suspiciously."This is the first time."***"What the mischief became of Hazzard?"[Ha! "What the mischief" was new to me. But not an original, as "What the mischief are you doing?" has various Google results.]***It reported the murder on X Street with as much passion as there is in a recipe for an upside-down cake.[Upside-down cakes are funny, of course. Which is funnier: Upside-down cake or Baked Alaska?]***"I'm not hanging around to pose for animal crackers."***Bonuses:"uneaten canoes of orange" (i.e., unpeeled orange wedges)"a walking gingersnap""wraprascal" (I'd never heard of this name for a kind of overcoat)Mr. Kermit Gosling[Special bonus: One of the stories in this collection is called "Stairway to Nowhere." Nice to see that the author arrived early (decades ago) to play along with the "doors to nowhere" theme.]
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Mysterious Mr. Badman, by W. F. Harvey:
***Digby watched them go down the High Street arm in arm, like two oddly assorted volumes from the shelves, Daniel Lavender, leather bound, fat and stumpy; Mrs. Lavender, cloth bound, tall and thin.***"Plumbers in our part of the world, you must know, have no use for telephones. News of a burst pipe must be broken to them very gently, usually at second or third hand."***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, by Baroness Orczy:
***“I saw a gentleman at Scotland Yard,” she explained, after a short preamble, “because Miss—er—Lulu Fay came to me at the hotel this very morning....”[From here on, "Miss—er—Lulu Fay" becomes a sort of "Ha! Clifford" (remember him from Rachel Ferguson?), being repeatedly referred to in this way by the narrator.]***The mysterious woman in the big hat was still the chief subject of leading articles in the papers....There were caricatures and picture post-cards in all the shop windows of a gigantic hat covering the whole figure of its wearer, only the feet, and a very long and pointed chin, protruding from beneath the enormous brim.[No illustration for this, but the author has done an excellent job of evoking it, imho.]***There was just one instant of absolute silence, one of those magnetic moments when Fate seems to have dropped the spool on which she was spinning the threads of a life, and is just stooping in order to pick it up.***Bonus: "much behatted" to describe a (different) woman in a large and/or elaborate hat.
And an illustration is attached in the spirit of "Who needs context?"
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unearths some literary gems.
From Vanity Fair, January-June 1920:
***[I think we need to know more about this "code of signals"!]Just below Fourteenth Street George Browne conducted a small chop-house...much frequented by the [theatrical] profession, especially by members of the Union Square and Wallack companies....He played small parts in Wallack's company and had a code of signals by which he was wont to inform patrons in the audience what special dish would be served in his chop-house after the theatre.***Ah, here is Clifford!...No, it's a haddock. Our mistake.***Hansford Wilson was the man who put the Stop and Look in Listen, Lester! [Wodehouse]***Everybody has a friend...who is "more fun than a circus."***[Bonus: Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor (a real illustrator's name)]Notes on some of the attachments:1. "Character Cars": Well, of course I want this to denote custom-designed vehicles for cartoon characters, e.g., Smoky Stover's Foomobile, Fred Flintstone's car, etc.2. "Conversely": My take on this brace of ads: "Use your belt as a tire! Or, Conversely, use your tire as a belt!"3. "pearls": Well, of course you can slip the artificials by us if you distract us with a hat plume as tall as the Eiffel Tower!4. He's made friends with winter, and all outdoors is calling to him. That's why he's reclining on a window ledge looking apprehensively at the wintry outdoors.5. Well, you know what they say: You can lead a person to the best pajamas in the world...but if he's not really tired and he'd rather spend the night perched on his windowsill grinning at the Woolworth Building, you can't make him sleep.6. Note how Wodehouse handled the end of the alphabet.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Life, 1921 [part 1]:
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There seems to be one act too many in the piece, and, if I wanted to be personal, I should say that it is the third. [Benchley]
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It ends by everyone accusing everyone else, without the slightest justice, of being to blame for the whole thing. According to the programme, Mr. Henry Baron is to blame. [ditto]
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It is a translation from the French, which means that people in it are constantly dashing off to catch trains which leave in exactly one hour. [ditto]
***
Of "Princess Virtue" something good might have been said had it been different....The music is nice when it is first sung..., but during the first encore you begin to look at the cupids on the proscenium arch....When as delightfully insane a comedian as Hugh Cameron is available, he should not have to call a gendarme "the left side of an apple pie." [ditto]
***
Mr. Shaun Glenville also had his name in [bold] type on the program. Maybe it was mourning. A great many dead jokes and long-buried comedy tricks were dragged out for his benefit at any rate. [ditto]
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Every one of its characters has been long since so standardized that no matter where on the road the play may be it can always pick up a spare part at the nearest stock-company theatre that will fit exactly. [ditto]
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He is not as young as Leonora, but looks older. In fact, they both look older. [Montague Glass]
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There is not much to recommend "Snow Blind" except the snow, of which there is a great deal. [Robert E. Sherwood]
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Its story has just about the same breadth as a geometrical line, and it takes considerably longer to reach a given point. [ditto]
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He had a habit of talking in fractions.
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[nonexistent book dept.] The Haunted Oyster
[Many more snippets attached. Note that the prescient illustration of a roomful of people who are all on the phone was 1921 conception of life at the future date of 1925!]
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