In imitation of Wodehouse part III

Continued from the previous post

Having secured the presence of an ally I felt much better about Wednesday night. I sauntered home, whistling a tune that I heard at a musical. The sun was shining in the sky, birds were chirping away and life seemed jolly good. Then Life, that dastardly blighter, who was inevitably slipping a quiet brick into a sock behind a corner, hit me amidships with none other than Honoria Glossop, cantering down the lane the opposite way.

I don’t know if you know Honoria, but we were engaged once. She’s one of those hearty, healthy girls with a laugh like the North Wind making its way through a crack in a decaying window frame of an abandoned castle. She loves nothing more than an hour of horse riding in the glen at dawn to watch the sunrise before breakfast followed by a hearty ten-mile trek through the countryside. She also has the unfortunate tendency to thrust thick books of philosophy down one’s throat like a mother bird forcing grubs down the gullet of unwilling offspring. Extricating myself from that engagement took the best of Jeeves. But now here I find her striding down the rather busy pavement like an ice-breaker, with the pedestrians melting before her like snow to a furnace. Before I can dodge into one of the shops, she spotted me. Did I mention she had a strong resemblance to a bloodhound?

‘Bertie!’ she bellowed like a merry tuba and made a bee line for yours truly, causing not a few people to hurriedly deviate from their course.

‘Honoria!’ I’m afraid to say I quavered, though not one to be impolite to ladies I gave her the customary pecks on the cheeks of the ex-betrothed.

‘Fancy bumping into you here.’ She said and slapped me playfully on the shoulder. Or it would have been if she didn’t have such a powerful forehand.

‘Yes, rather. Fancy that! Small world I always say. Ha, ha, ha.’

‘How are you doing these days? Are you busy at all? Of course you’re not! Come keep me company.’ She linked her arm resolutely with mine like the chain forged by Hephaestus that locked Prometheus in the Caucasus before I could fathom an excuse and marched me down the street.

It’s dashed odd walking arm in arm with Honoria. We Woosters run to height a bit in our family, so I’m used to looking down at the delicate fair sex from on high. But Honoria, standing at a full height of six foot or so, not only can look me almost in the eye, but she also has strides like a warhorse at full gallop. Therefore after a couple of blocks my brow was healthily bedewed with sweat.

‘Here we are!’ Honoria exclaimed and abruptly I found myself in a book shop. I don’t know if you are particularly enamoured with books and what not. I’ve always found myself well served by Punch or Flashman. But anything heavier, and I feel a drowning sensation after the first paragraph. The rather dark, dank shop with its rows and rows of overburdened, creaking shelves bearing menacing titles such as A la Recherche du Temps Perdu and Consideration of the History of Metaphysics of Roman Catholicism and its Relation to Modern Episcopalian Policy, Volume IV began to make me feel rather vulnerable. The shop keeper, an elderly man with large spectacles and a halo of white hair, shuffled towards us with a myopic smile.

‘Oh it’s you Miss Glossop! How lovely to see you.’

‘Hello Mr Shaw!’ Honoria bellowed heartily, ‘Looking well!’

‘Oh thank you, I just had a short holiday in the Outer Hebrides.’ Mr Shaw beamed. Personally, I thought even a short visit to the Outer Hebrides would require a holiday upon returning to civilization to recover from the exertions. But each to their own I suppose.

‘Oh marvellous! I was there last summer. We hiked for a fortnight. It was most invigorating!’ Honoria also beamed. A rapport seemed to have formed by this strange affection for the Outer Hebrides. A wave of relieve swept over me once more as I remembered how close I was to marrying this girl. An image of us in the Outer Hebrides, with large hounds and walking sticks sent a chill up my spine.

‘I’m looking for a copy of John Stuart Mill’s On The Subjection of Women.’ Honoria said as she picked up a large tome on an overladen table, sending dust wisping into the air.

‘Ah yes, I think I have a copy somewhere.’ The old gent tottered to a corner and searched near-sightedly whilst making tutting noises. I could tell the search will take him a while and this knowledge did not please Bertram.

Honoria picked up a book laying on a table.

‘Ah, have you read this? It’s Shelley’s In Defence of Poetry. “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration.” A beautiful line, don’t you think Bertie?’

I nodded sagely. Honoria always piffs these sorts of things at you and I’ve learned to just agree and hope she moves onto subjects upon which I can contribute.

‘So!’ Honoria said as she whirled around to face yours truly, ‘What’s the latest development? Still milling about all day with those ghastly friends of yours, stealing policemen’s helmets?’

The story of my failed attempt to purloin the bobby’s headgear has certainly spread far and wide.

‘Oh you know, this and that.’ I muttered unconvincingly as I raked the Wooster brain for some excuse to leg it.

‘Tricked any other girl into being engaged to you?’

‘Not in the least Honoria!’ I drew myself up with dignity, ‘Trick in quite the wrong word. A Wooster does not – ’

‘I’m just teasing you, you silly gander!’ Honoria slapped a pally one on the small of the back, sending me tittering forward a foot or three, missing with some luck trampling on a fat tabby, who, belying its rotundity, nimbly danced out of the way, jumped onto a shelf and hissed like one of Satan’s own. Unfortunately, a gentleman who was quietly reading a large book in the corner wasn’t as sprightly and he caught a considerable portion of Bertram in the shoulder-blade.

‘Ah!’ He exclaimed as he tumbled and the thick tome he was reading dropped with a thud to the floor, sending a plume of dust into the air. They probably picked that up on the Richter scale at the Royal Geographic Society not all that many blocks up the road.

‘Awfully sorry, old chap!’ I helped him back on his feet. ‘My fault entirely.’

‘Not to worry, old boy.’ He decently replied, picking up the volume and fixing his spectacles. He was a well-dressed chap, probably my age and had a pleasant if slightly serious expression. My instinct tells me that he was a Public school boy.

‘Wooster.’ I extended my hand, ‘Oxford.’

‘Eggleston, Blair Eggleston, Cambridge.’ He shook my hand with a serene smile.

I blinked at the name, ‘Are you the Blair Eggleston who writes for Milady’s Boudoir?’

For those of you who are not in the know, my favourite Aunt Dahlia, who is the opposite of her sister, the aforementioned Aunt Agatha, is a proprietor of a women’s newspaper named Milady’s Boudoir. An august publication to which, and I hope this doesn’t count as boasting, I have contributed an article entitled “What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing”. The reason why I mention it is that I distinctly remember an Eggleston, possibly a Blair Eggleston, writing a series on the subject of “The Modern Girl” a couple of years back. Hot stuff it was.

The young man shied like a frightened foal. A slightly hunted look came into his previously tranquil eyes.

‘How do you know?’ he croaked.

‘My Aunt Dahlia, or rather, Mrs Travers, runs the rag. I’m her nephew Bertie Wooster. I thought I recognised that name. I myself have contributed an article.’ I gave Eggleston a comradely nod given between fellow hacks everyday on Fleet Street.

‘Oh I see!’ the chap’s face lit up with an expression approximating relief as he combed his mop of dark hair back into place.

Just as I was about to launch into a friendly banter, I was brushed aside like an innocent beetle who mistook a salad for a bouquet. Honoria loomed over Eggleston, a shortish chap, casting her eminent shadow over the poor man like an avenging angel. Eggleston shied again, this time more violently than before.

‘Are you the Mr. Eggleston who wrote The Thorn of the Rose? And A Loftier Indifference? And The River Ran On?’

Her booming voice becoming boomier as she recited each title and with each annunciation Eggleston shrank backwards until he was pressing himself into the philosophy bookcase, with a real danger of being hit on the head by a large, wobbly leather bound David Hume sitting on top of the case.

‘Ergh…yes?’ he squeaked, staring rather like an aye-aye.

Honoria grabbed the man by the hand with both of her talons and shook it like a cocktail waiter would a gin martini.

‘So nice to meet you!’ She exclaimed, her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, ‘I am a big fan of your novels Mr Eggleston and I would be honoured if you can sign a copy of your book for me. Mr Shaw!’ she yelled the last two words towards the elderly shop keeper who was bent over and slowly going through a disorderly pile of books in search for J.S. Mill, her voice quivering with anxious impatience rather like a type of owl that Jeeves once pointed out when we were out on an evening stroll.

‘Yes Miss Glossop?’ the old man startled upright with surprising alacrity, no doubt shocked to the marrows at the high decibels with which his name was hurtled at him.

‘Give me a book by Mr Eggleston, you must have one here don’t you!’

‘Eggleston?’ Mr Shaw scratched his head. The reputation of the young Blair clearly has not made it into his orbit, which looks like it’s probably entrenched a couple of centuries behind.

‘Blair Eggleston!’ Honoria emphasised through gritted teeth, ‘The Angry Young Author that everybody is talking about!’

‘Oh, yes, I think I have one of his somewhere.’ The old man tottered off again, this time to a different corner of the store, muttering ‘Eggleston, Eggleston’ to himself.

Honoria whirled backed towards Eggleston, who was looking around for a way out. He had looked at me with pleading eyes like a Christian thrown in with a den of lions might have given his Roman friend with whom he grew up together and played marbles in the alleyways and drank milk together while his mother smiled indulgently under an arch covered with vines. My heart bled for the fellow. I returned the look with impotent sympathy. One does not stand between Honoria and her prey. I said that to Jeeves once and he said that some African tribes apply a similar rule to hippopotamuses.

‘Mr Eggleston, do tell me what you are working on now!’

‘Er…’ Eggleston turned a shade pink, ‘I have in fact just finished a manuscript and am taking it to my publisher. It’s called Breathings of Your Heart’ He pointed to a paper parcel tied up with strings sitting on the corner of a table laden with books. ‘I stole the title from Wordsworth.’ He added sheepishly.

Seeing it reminded me of the time when I carried my draft of “What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing” to the publisher, the old establishment of Alcott and Wheaton, though my humble output was only a couple of sheets. You have to take your hat off to a chap who can bang out a goodly pile of manuscript every few months.

‘…!’ Honoria looked at the parcel with the same saucer-like eyes the little goat-herds must have had when faced with the apparition of Mary at Fatima.

‘Goodness!’ Honoria’s voice shook like an aspen, a rare occasion for someone so hearty and robust.

Egglestone gave her a little nervous chuckle, ‘well, I guess I should be on my way.’

Just now the hitherto unhurried Mr Shaw appeared brandishing a volume.

‘Got it Miss Glossop! The Rose in Winter by B. Eggleston. It was mixed in with some Verlaine and Rimbaud.’

I must admit I wasn’t the most attentive chap back at Oxford, hence just managing to scrape through. But those names rang a bell somewhere in the recesses on my mind. I distinctly remember hearing them from the lips of Professor Whittlesham. The father of the apple of Bingo’s eyes, if you cast your mind back, who taught literature at Oxford. Must be some luminaries, I sensed adroitly as I saw Eggleston’s pink face paled at hearing that his output, which I gather by now he is rather abashed about, was caught in a French literary sandwich.

Honoria snatched the volume like a chameleon would a fly. She fumbled in her purse for a fountain pen and thrusted both into Eggleston’s breast. Steadying himself against the rapid series of shocks, Eggleston opened the book to the frontispiece.

‘It was Miss Glossop wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but please make it out to Honoria!’ Honoria warbled. I’ve never seen her quite like this. I knew all that relentless reading would eventually make a girl a bit off her rockers.

Eggleston scribbled a bit in the book and gave it to Honoria, who looked at it like Mary would have looked at the new born Saviour.

‘Thank you Mr Eggleston! This is such a privilege! And I’m very much looking forward to you next novel!’

‘That’s very kind, I’m sure.’ Eggleston was clearly in no mood to prolong this engagement as he subtly edged his way around Honoria. ‘Such a pleasure to meet someone who enjoys one’s work.’

‘Enjoy?’ Honoria clasped Eggleston’s arm with a vice-like grip, ‘I adore your fearless prose! It injects a vigour into the life stream of the feminist movement, like the new Wollstonecraft or J.S. Mill!’

Eggleston’s face, a nice glowing pink after drinking in the praises and thinking himself almost out of the lion’s den, again went pasty at being compared so casually to giants of the literary world. Even I, bottom of the class though I was, know those two names and, not that I dislike the chap, wouldn’t have went nearly that far. I guess having published in the same magazine removes the lustre of being a scribbler. I mean, if you compare Eggleston to Mill and Wollstonecraft, then you are only one slippery step away from comparing yours truly to Wilde or Dickens, and then where would civilization be?

‘Well!’ Eggleston said in a bright, brittle voice, ‘I’d better be off then! The publisher doesn’t like being kept waiting.’

‘May I have your card Mr Eggleston?’ Honoria’s claws refused to disengage and the poor fellow had to fondle in his inner jacket pocket and practically threw a card to the waiting lioness before being allowed to leg it like a greased cheetah.

‘Oh Bertie!’ Honoria swooned after the shrinking silhouette of Eggleston, ‘I adore his books! What luck to have met him!’

‘Seems like a nice chap.’ I chipped in. Not that Honoria was paying me any attention; her eyes were exactly like the eyes of a small girl I once saw who was looking at a kitten asleep in a bed of ducklings at the park.

‘Here’s your Mill Miss Glossop!’ Mr Shaw waddled over, with J.S. Mill’s output in one hand triumphantly like an archaeologist who found King Tut’s sceptre.

Honoria snapped out of her girlish reveries and paid the man. One agreeable side effect of the episode is that she seems to have forgotten about yours truly. With a cursory ‘see you Bertie’, she rushed out of the shop with her books and was out of sight like a triumphant cruiser, no doubt to show off the autographed Eggleston to her fellow Eggleston fanatics. I straightened my tie and dusted off my sleeves and took a deep breath as Liberty cast her gentle glow on Bertram once more.

Just as I was about to leave the establishment, however, there came an ‘oh dear!’ from Mr Shaw. I turned and was confronted by the septuagenarian holding a paper parcel. Eggleston’s manuscript! The fellow left it on the table in his hurry to escape the clutches of H.G!

‘You know the gentleman do you not sir? Would you mind terribly returning it to him? I’m closed tomorrow you see, my nephew Timothy is getting married to his sweetheart Margaret in Watford.’ Mr Shaw’s worried eyes, enlarged by the thick spectacles, peered at me pitifully. 

I would have refused but, in the jolly mood of relief at been left along by Honoria, and having secured Bingo’s support for Wednesday, I was in a helpful mood. And the image of Mr Shaw’s nephew Timothy and his beloved Margaret, betrothed in Watford, possibly in the tranquil Cheslyn Gardens, where I spent an idyllic afternoon of my youth skipping stones and climbing trees with some local boys when my family was there for the wedding of a distant relative, really moved me.

‘Yes, of course, I know Mr Eggleston’s publisher and it’s on my way.’ I said merrily as I scooped up the parcel and bid Mr Shaw a cheerful ‘Cheerio!’ 

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