unearths some literary gems.
From Vanity Fair, July-August 1917:
Some notes on the attachments:
1. I realize we're probably looking edge-on at a hat whose brim encircles the entire head (sombrero-style)...but the impression of antlers is hard for me to avoid, especially if I think of hat antlers as one-upping all those hats with rabbitlike "ears" sticking up.
2. I'm sure she gets this all the time! It turns out the hyphen properly goes between "Evans" and "Burrows," not between "Burrows" and "Fontaine." If it's any consolation to her, though, Wikipedia tells us that her birthplace is, in our time, a ghost town. (RLG?)
3. I'm enclosing the cartoon tableau because (a) I love the stylized "group reaction"; (b) some of the hats seem actually to express the emotions of the astonished group members; and (c) the character in the foreground is apparently so tipsy that his jacket is slipping over the edge of the frame.
4. Needless to say, PGW's words about his theatrical collaborator Bolton have a very familiar ring for us Wodehouse enthusiasts, because Bertie Wooster talks this way about Jeeves. But I find no evidence that the Bertie/Jeeves versions of these assertions occurred prior to a story first published in 1924 (where the phrasing seen here is replicated verbatim)--and so it seems that PGW used these words about his friend *before* repurposing them for Jeeves.
