P G Wodehouse was born 143 years ago today. So many wonderful sentences. Here’s one: “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”
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Surely a contender for greatest humour-density in the English language
The cat stamped into the room.
Aunt Agatha whipped her lorgnette out of its holster.
Aunt calling to aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primeval swamp.
Plum is endlessly refreshing.
and
‘I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.’
'Did he?' said Eggy. 'I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.'
My own: Whodehouse has turned so many phrases, the English language is at risk of reading right to left.
And
"And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need."
'Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the table.'
Sure enough
"One false step, and he'll swoop on me like the—who was it who came down like a wolf on the fold?"
"The Assyrian, sir."
*your fellow man
This is going to cost me.
"Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying:
1/2
Uncle Fred in the Springtime