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unearths some literary gems.
From Death of Anton, by Alan Melville:
***
Dodo the clown... is lying on top of his bed and turning over the pages of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Not reading, merely turning the pages.... [He] has been looking for a suitable place to begin reading the book ever since he bought it, but up to now has failed to find one.
***
Brother Robert had a perplexing habit of beginning a letter as though he were resuming a conversation which had been interrupted for a moment. He started in the middle, and ended in the same place.
***
"A novelist?"
"I've been talking to you for five minutes, and I haven't yet mentioned one of my masterpieces. Therefore I cannot be a novelist. Try again."
***
"You know that on Monday night the only people who matter are the newspaper critics, and so you play to their level."
"Up to it?" said Mr. Minto.
"Down to it."
***
At a certain chord from the band (or, more likely, at an uncertain chord, for the new trombone player had not yet accustomed himself to fitting in his blowing with the rapid succession of acts in the ring below him)....
***
The bangers arrived, heaped high on two enormous ashets. Claire had not believed there were so many sausages in captivitiy, and said so. Mr. Carey made a bad joke about missing links, and laughed for a long time at it.
***
No one should ever attempt to build a dam, however small, in a pale grey suit with a chalk stripe. Mr. Minto used, apart from bad language, mud and bricks and stones and divots.
***
[Double What-Not dept.]
At a rough guess, two hundred and fifty china ornaments were busily gathering dust on a number of shelves, cupboards, mantelpieces, whatnots, and what not around the room.
***
[Reminiscent of Anthropomorphized Weighing Machines in a Sitting Room dept.?]
There was a great deal of furniture, mainly upholstered in green plush, as well as a bird-cage (empty) which stood in the middle of the room, like a policeman directing traffic on point duty.
***
"The man thinks of nothing but his blooming vacuums. I hope he doesn't dream about them. It would be very awkward if he started giving me demonstrations in bed."
[I'm pretty sure this 1936 novel isn't intentionally referencing special "massage" attachments...]
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, by Gilbert Adair:
***
Even the grandfather clock stopped ticking--or else tick-tocked on tiptoe.
***
It was the sort of sound that, in their stage directions, playwrights tend to convey as "ahem" and you could actually hear the two syllables "a" and "hem" in Chitty's cough.
***
"It was she who solved the identical-twin fratricide in Faber or Faber, am I right?"
[N.B. The real-life book, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, is published by Faber & Faber. And, for good measure, the owner of the country house is named ffolkes, echoing the lowercase double-f of the F&F logo.]
***
"He said 'Dahling!' all the time, to all of us indiscriminately.... I chanced to catch him brushing away a fly that had settled on the rim of his cocktail glass and I actually heard him say, 'Buzz off, dahling!'"
***
"When he burbled on incessantly about the finest this and the greatest that, you felt you were being sprayed by the spittle of exclamation marks."
***
"To say that he drawled isn't the half of it. His whole body drawled."
***
"Gentry... opined that The Green Hat was 'remembered only for having been forgotten.'"
***
"Certainly," she answered, a tiny smoke-ring drifting over her head like a halo in search of a saint.
***
[Literary Whatstheirnames dept.]
"He was a beast... with his T.S. this and his D.H. that...."
***
"Molnar--the Hungarian playwright, you know, entrancing man, as witty as a barrel of monkeys."
***
"Clem... is someone utterly incapable of losing his temper. Indeed, according to Cynthia, he's so absent-minded his temper is just about the only thing he never does manage to lose."
***
Evelyn Mount, meanwhile, was wearing... shoes so sensible, as they say, you felt like consulting them on whether you should cash in your shares in Amalgamated Copper.
***
"Cora has had no fewer than three husbands. It is three, isn't it, Cora darling?"
"Four, darling, if you count the Count."
"I never count the Count."
***
"One was The Vamp of the Pampas. Ooh, was that hot stuff!"
"Language, Addie, language! This isn't Paris, you know."
***
"It was called No Murder in the Title...."
***
Dolly stuck her forefinger in the dead centre of her brow as though to indicate, for everyone's benefit, the exact location of her hunch.
***
He even, nobody quite knew how, contrived to slam doors open.
***
"Cora could tell her stories to the back of the Clapham omnibus and never know the difference."
***
["Fictitious novel titles that postcurse JC-E titles" dept.]
The Proof of the Pudding
***
It was almost as though she had spoken in italics, almost as though they could feel the hairs stand up on the napes of their necks, almost as though those hairs, too, were in italics.
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unearths some literary gems.
From All Roads to Sospel, by George Bellairs:
[At first I wrote I mistakenly wrote "Sospol." In other words, I mis-spel-led it!]
***
Both of them eagerly said they did, the small man vociferously; the large one by vigorously shaking head up and down as though trying to cast it from him.
***
'He's known locally as "Andy Know-all," not because of his education, but because he terminates almost every sentence with "you know."' [Technically, wouldn't that make everyone else the "know-alls"?]
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unearths some literary gems.
Fom Made Up to Kill, by Kelley Roos:
***
[(Presumably) Fictitious Theatrical Productions dept.]
Four years ago she had snagged the ingenue lead in a play called Gibbon's Glade.
***
The man who stood there seemed to me the tallest man I'd ever seen. His parents, I thought inanely, must have been Basil Rathbone and a skyscraper.
***
[Personified Punctuation dept. The character being alluded to here is a nosy elevator operator.]
Fortunately the day operator was on and not Jinx, the human interrogation point.
***
[One- (and Two-) Upping Clichés dept. (Also "Toast Is Funny" dept.)]
He came in looking as though he'd just eaten a flock of canaries. On toast.
***
“Philip Ashley couldn’t have stolen a scene from a snowdrift.”
***
Immediately Jeff gave me the high sign, so high it almost went completely over my head.
***
Bonus: An extraneous intra-library slip of paper within this inter-library-loaned book bears the intriguing legend ***,S.
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unearths some literary gems.
From With a Bare Bodkin, by Cyril Hare:
***
"There are moments when I feel that 'nothing' is the most beautiful word in the language."
[This is only accidentally related, given the 20th-century source above; but I recently read an analysis of lost double entendres in Shakespeare--lost because of pronunciation changes since the Bard's time. The one I recall related to "nothing" having been pronounced the same as "no thing," which in turn could refer to female anatomy. So here we can juxtapose the "divine monosyllable" with the "most beautiful word in the language."]
***
Damn Phillips! Damn Edelman! Damn the Control and everything connected with it, including the Blenkinsop file!
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unearths some literary gems.
From Thirteen Guests, by J. Jefferson Farjeon:
***
Usually he was rather good at conversation, but now he could not even talk of cabbages and kings without putting his foot in it.
***
She always closed her eyes in company when she thought, so that the company would know she was thinking. Sometimes she cheated, and opened her eyes without having thought at all.
***
"I have written a detective novel," replied Bultin. "Also, the notice of it."
[I note that this precurses our namesake Jeremy Hillary Boob of Yellow Submarine, who says he is writing a book and simultaneously reviewing it. (Also sock-puppet Amazon reviewers.)]
***
A figure darted towards Kendall, like a ghost that had suddenly materialised out of a shadow and had urgent business to do before dissolving back into ethereal form.
***
It was Bultin who discovered--or who expedited the discovery of--the little glass tube in the hat's leather lining. This discovery will probably cause his own size in hats to increase.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black Coat, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
***
[Dubious Testimonials dept.]
"The trouble with George," Tim said critically, "is that he has no sense of humor...."
"You leave George alone," Lily pouted. "He can laugh like a hyena when he doesn't have all this on his mind."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Death in the Quadrangle, by Eilís Dillon:
***
"There's terrible changes here, sir, enough to make the old [college] President, God be good to him, turn in his grave."
Daly doubted the truth of this, remembering how hard it had been to induce the late President to turn in his chair, even while he was alive.
***
He was in his early forties, of medium height with nondescript, mouse-coloured hair, rather thin, and a parchment complexion which gave him an unreal appearance, like a bad stained-glass window.
***
[I Resemble That Remark dept.]
"How did you get him talking about the President?" asked Mike, fearing that Daly was about to embark on his favourite game of repeating his own witticisms.
***
[Nonsense Interruptus dept.]
She started to say:
"Nonsense!"
Then suddenly she closed her mouth tight and covered it with her hand.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black Goatee, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
[If you want more "screwball mysteries" in your life, I might recommend this one. It could be shelved comfortably next to Alice Tilton--providing, of course, one wasn't using an alphabetical or spine-color system. (:v> Incidentally, I was mulling over the distinction between "screwball" and "zany"--my impression being, in the film-comedy world, that they are two quite different animals, the former involving hapless protagonists whom circumstances force into a comically undignified antics, and the latter involving protagonists for whom antics are "normal" behavior. So, though Tilton has been described as "screwball," I might suggest that she's sort of halfway between the two. While her characters certainly aren't intrinsically zany on the order of the Marx Brothers or Wheeler and Woolsey, it doesn't take much to prompt them into silly behavior, and they don't lose much sleep over looking silly. And I would say that this Little-Little novel is along similar lines, with the additional similarity that the various slightly kooky characters have all known each other forever or, even when they haven't, behave as if they have.]
***
"Well, I know a man--" Ed began, but wasn't able to get anywhere in telling about his man, because everyone else knew a man, also, and couldn't be bothered hearing about Ed's.
***
"What did he say?"
"Nothing. And he said it very well, too."
***
[Goat Getting: The Extended Metaphor Version]
"He wanted to get your goat, and he walked off with it under his arm."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Tragedy at Law, by Cyril Hare:
***
It was his Court whisper, something quite different from any tone normally used by him--or indeed by anyone else.
***
[Unusual Threesomes dept.]
Pettigrew got into bed with a furrowed brow and a very wrinkled nose.
***
"So far as--so far as his particular grievance is concerned, if you follow me, my lord."
From Barber's expression it was plain that he followed him perfectly, and that he did not greatly enjoy the journey.
***
"It appeals to some temperaments, and Sally, as you are no doubt aware, has several."
***
Ranging from querulous protest through bitter sarcasm to straightforward abuse, the [guest book] entries made an interesting contribution to the literature of ill temper.
***
He gave a gasp of dismay when Greene opened the door of his room and with mute eloquence displayed what lay beyond.
***
"By the end of the evening I should not be surprised if I were verging on the blotto, in a quite gentlemanly way, of course, but definitely verging."
"But..." said Derek.
"I know what you are going to say. As a purist, not to say an idealist, you object that a verge cannot be definite."
***
It is somewhat difficult to disregard with lofty chivalry a blot on the family scutcheon unless you can see the blot.
***
Hilda caught Derek's eye and gave him what is generally described as a meaning look. Derek had no difficulty in recognizing it as such, but unfortunately he was not able to determine for himself exactly what it meant.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Restless Redhead, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
"Pretty Polly. Watch it now. Here's your cracker," the parrot interpolated.
[The parrot *interpolated*! (N.B. I think the "bonus" near-Tom Swifty of Polly inter-pol-ating was unintended. Also of note: The presence of the parrot is *not* used as a plot device, i.e., the parrot doesn't repeat any compromising bit of a secret conversation at a crucial juncture. It's a purely recreational parrot!)]
***
From An Oxford Tragedy, by J. C. Masterman:
***
You must see it all through my eyes, or rather--to be more exact--through my spectacles.
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unearths some literary gems.
From One False Move, by Kelley Roos:
***
He was sandpapering it, having a wonderful time. I had never been especially interested in sandpapering per se, but Gramps made me want to try my hand at it.
[There must be YouTube channels for people who get a sensual frisson from sandpapering.]
***
Arch put on his half-lens reading spectacles and perused the letter. It seemed to take hours; I had never seen a letter so perused.
***
If she could project the sincerity she was exuding now from a stage, she would be another Sarah Bernhardt, another Eleonora* Duse. Well, another Doris Day.
[*Thinking this name would normally be spelled like "Eleanor" with an "a" appended, I wondered if "Eleonora" was a typo. But, no, there really is a lion in there.]
***
My mind was not on counting money. I might have been counting chickens before they were hatched. Or my blessings, although at the moment I could have finished that up in a hurry.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Pleasure Cruise Mystery, by Robin Forsythe:
***
"And I deduce--it's not often I condescend to deduce--that the one that belonged to Maureen was the cinnamon and white diamond affair."
***
"She may have used ordinary saliva [as an invisible ink]...."
"By Jove, fancy getting one's information straight from the mare's mouth so to speak. The process explains the phrase 'spitting it out' and makes x's a fair approximation to kisses."
[That "By Jove" speech--apart from the "by Jove" itself--reads to me like it's straight out of the Conley - Caws-Elwitt correspondence!]
***
"She reminds me of a hansom cab. I can't explain why, Algernon."
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unearths some literary gems.
From the Leonidas Witherall radio shows:
***
"Keep your beard out of this." [Used more than once.]
***
"That's quite a character reference."
"Well, Mr. Witherall's quite a character."
***
"I just took Dalton Chancery Prince Igor IV over to his pen."
"Dalton Chancery Prince Igor IV? Pen name of a writer?"
"It's my prize bull!"
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unearths some literary gems.
***
And if you can operate the motor quite independently of any code, why, then Robert's your mother's brother, and you have an easy way in.
***
Four hundred and twenty dollars. Given my predicament, it wasn't to be sniffed at.... Alongside the notes was a bottle of perfume, which I suppose was to be sniffed at.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Lonely Heiress, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
[Rhetorical inflation resisted]
"Mr. Mason... You can count on my loyalty one hundred percent. One thousand percent!"
"One hundred is enough."
[I wonder what she's going to do with the other 900 percent now. "Great, then I can still go and be loyal to nine more people!" (:v>]
***
[Gender-Specific Goat-Getting dept.]
"But what gets my nanny goat is to have him go traipsing around after this brunette and pulling the line that he's merely following his lawyer's advice."
***
[Flapping dept.]
The hot air billowed the bathrobe into flapping motion.
***
"Are you reading my mind?" Mason asked.
She said, "I'm two paragraphs ahead of you."
***
[Surprise Appearance of the Ice Follies in the Denouement dept.]
"Della, I think this calls for a celebration. The Ice Follies are here this week. Get four of the best seats available...."
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unearths some literary gems.
More from The Sunny Side, by A. A. Milne:
***
"Do think, Samuel," I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you could be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside the rooms. And then... when your friends at the club ask if you've had any luck at the tables, you just say coldly, 'What tables?'"
"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "Quae mensae?"
***
Of course in my review I said all the usual things. I said that Mr. Blank's attitude to life was "subjective rather than objective" … and a little lower down that it was "objective rather than subjective." I pointed out that in his treatment of the major theme he was a neo-romanticist, but I suggested that, on the other hand, he had nothing to learn from the Russians—or the Russians had nothing to learn from him; I forget which.
***
"My dear," I said, "I have been asked to deliver a lecture."
"Whatever on?" asked Celia.
"Anything I like. The last person lectured on 'The Minor Satellites of Jupiter,' and the one who comes after me is doing 'The Architecture of the Byzantine Period,' so I can take something in between."
***
HOLDING THE LEMON
For this trick you want a lemon and a pack of ordinary playing-cards. Cutting the lemon in two, you hand half to one member of your audience and half to another, asking them to hold the halves up in full view of the company. Then, taking the pack of cards in your own hands, you offer it to a third member of the party, requesting him to select a card and examine it carefully. When he has done this he puts it back in the pack, and you seize this opportunity to look hurriedly at the face of it, discovering (let us say) that it is the five of spades. Once more you shuffle the pack; and then, going through the cards one by one, you will have no difficulty in locating the five of spades, which you will hold up to the company with the words "I think this is your card, sir"—whereupon the audience will testify by its surprise and appreciation that you have guessed correctly.
It will be noticed that, strictly speaking, the lemon is not a necessary adjunct of this trick; but the employment of it certainly adds an air of mystery to the initial stages of the illusion, and this air of mystery is, after all, the chief stock-in-trade of the successful conjurer.
***
[Ending with a Cauliflower dept., As-an-Insult division]
"Cauliflower!" shrieked Gaspard Volauvent across the little table in the estaminet. His face bristled with rage.
"Serpent!" replied Jacques Rissole, bristling with equal dexterity.
***
I also recommend these two pieces:
"The Way Down" (a quasi-precursor to this JC-E piece: http://www.salticid.com/jce/secondpost.html)
"The Arrival of Blackman's Warbler" (a precursor to the Elwitt family "Bird-ictionary")
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13441/pg13441-images.html
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Sunny Side, by A. A. Milne:
***
My publisher wants me to apologize for—"introduce" was the kindly word he used—this collection of articles and verses from Punch. [...] Really it is very difficult, you know. I wrote these things for a number of years, and—well, here they are. But just to say "Here they are" is to be too informal for my publisher.
***
The good view came, and then another and another, and they merged together and became one long, moving panorama of beauty. We stood in the corridor and drank it in … and at intervals we said "Oh-h!" and "Oh, I say!" and "Oh, I say, really!" And there was one particular spot I wish I could remember where, so that it might be marked by a suitable tablet—at the sight of which Simpson was overheard to say, "Mon Dieu!" for (probably) the first time in his life.
***
"That does it," I said to Myra. "We're really here. And look, there's a lemon tree. Give me the oranges and lemons, and you can have all the palms and the cactuses and the olives."
"Like polar bears in the arctic regions," said Myra.
I thought for a moment. Superficially there is very little resemblance between an orange and a polar bear.
"Like polar bears," I said hopefully.
"I mean," luckily she went on, "polar bears do it for you in the polar regions. You really know you're there then. Give me the polar bears, I always say, and you can keep the seals and the walruses and the penguins. It's the hallmark."
"Right. I knew you meant something. In London," I went on, "it is raining. Looking out of my window I see a lamp-post (not in flower) beneath a low, grey sky. Here we see oranges against a blue sky a million miles deep. What a blend! Myra, let's go to a fancy-dress ball when we get back. You go as an orange and I'll go as a very blue, blue sky, and you shall lean against me."
"And we'll dance the tangerine," said Myra.
***
[As Advertised]
She looked up from her book and waved her hand. "Mentone on the left, Monte Carlo on the right," she said, and returned to her book again. Simpson had mentioned the situation so many times that it had become a catch-phrase with us.
***
"It's quite all right," said Simpson cheerfully. "I said we'd be six."
"But six in a letter is much smaller than six of us like this."
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black-Headed Pins, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
***
[Zeugma dept.]
Amy continued to complain in a high voice and her panties.
***
His chin was strong and showed no signs, as yet, of repeating itself.
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unearths some literary gems.
More from Quick Curtain, by Alan Melville:
***
It is suprising how much amusement can be got out of the simple things of life. A statuette broken and placed together the wrong way is a fairly good example....
"It's a very good thing our backsides are at the backside, isn't it?" said Mr. Wilson, junr.
***
"I'll bet a thousand pounds to the bottom button of my waistcoat that it was Gwen Astle who did the writing."
"The bottom button of your waistcoat," said Derek, "is missing. You've lost the bet."
***
"A gentleman to see the master," said Martha.
"What's his name?" asked Mr. Wilson.
"Gent called Jenkinson, sir."
"Jenkinson?"
"That's what he said, sir," said Martha, standing her ground firmly.
***
Miss Prune [one of those prim character types whose speech is rendered complete with its "flet vowels"] sent telegram (i) on its first hop towards Mr. Wilson in London with an uneasy feeling that she was conniving at something that wasn't altogether naice.
[Btw, this is in the course of an amusing series of hectoring telegrams back and forth; and I note that this book was published the same year as Right Ho, Jeeves!--which may well have been Wodehouse's first use of the telegram business. So possibly a case of Great Minds Thinking Alike, rather than a minor author taking a cue from Plum.]
***
[A fictitious play with a genericized place name!]
"We signed on with a touring company of a musical comedy--I forget the name... The Girl from Somewhere-or-other."
***
[And speaking of unintended compliments...]
"Mr...."
"Hopkinson," said Derek.
"Oh, Hopkinson? It looked like Hepplewaite in the register."
"Thank you," said Derek.
***
[Oath Aunts dept. (A great-aunt, no less!)]
"Mrs. Wright my Great-aunt Maggie," said Derek.
***
[While spelling "Nebuchadnezzar" (for a telegram, of course).]
"Two z's," said Derek patiently. "One for zebra. And then another one, just like the first, for Zam-buk."
[I had to look that up! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zam-Buk]
***
P. C. Root and P. C. Lightfoot had nodded their heads vigorously at each of Mr. Wilson's "understands," with the result that their helmets were now seriously impeding their vision.
***
"Wilson speaking from Craile....Craile.... C-r-a--oh, it doesn't matter--Wilson speaking from Llandudno...."
***
Mr. Amethyst... often thought it would be a good thing if Mr. Douglas would hold the [aftershow] party in public and keep the actual production in camera.
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