Часть 2
Перечень цитат
The Head of Kay's (1905)
1. Ch.4. Anything modern was taboo, unless it were the work of Gotsuchakoff, Thingummyowsky, or some other eminent foreigner.
Not George Washington (1907)
2. Ch.18. Tell you what it was just like. Reminded me of it even at the time: that picture of Napoleon coming back from Moscow. The Reverend was Napoleon, and we were the generals; and if there were three humpier men walking the streets of London at that moment I should have liked to have seen them.
The Swoop (1909)
3. Part 1. Ch.3. It seemed that while Germany was landing in Essex, a strong force of Russians, under the Grand Duke Vodkakoff, had occupied Yarmouth...
Part 1. Ch.7. ...It was obvious that the superior forces of the Germans and Russians gave them, if they did but combine, the key to the situation. The decision they arrived at was, as set forth above, as follows. After the fashion of the moment, the Russian and German generals decided to draw the Colour Line. That meant that the troops of China, Somaliland, Bollygolla, as well as Raisuli and the Young Turks, were ruled out. They would be given a week in which to leave the country.
4. Part 1. Ch.7. Grand Duke Vodkakoff, from the Russian lines, replied in his smooth, cynical, Russian way: 'You appear anxious, my dear prince, to scratch the other entrants. May I beg you to remember what happens when you scratch a Russian?'
5. Part 1. Ch.7. Vodkakoff carelessly flicked the ash off his cigarette.
'So I hear,' he said slowly. 'But in Shropshire, they tell me, they are having trouble with the mangel-wurzels.'
The prince frowned at this typical piece of shifty Russian diplomacy... ...he said with that half-Oriental charm which he knew so well how to exhibit on occasion.
6. Part 2. Ch.2. General Vodkakoff received his visitor civilly, but at first without enthusiasm. There were, it seemed, objections to his becoming an artiste. Would he have to wear a properly bald head and sing songs about wanting people to see his girl? He didn't think he could. He had only sung once in his life, and that was twenty years ago at a bump-supper at Moscow University. And even then, he confided to Mr. Quhayne, it had taken a decanter and a-half of neat vodka to bring him up to the scratch...
'I understand,' he said, 'it is etiquette for music-hall artists in their spare time to eat -er- fried fish with their fingers. Must I do that? I doubt if I could manage it.' Mr Quhayne once more became the human semaphore. 'S'elp me! Of course you needn't! All the leading pros, eat it with a spoon.'
7. Part 2. Ch.5. Nor were the invaders satisfied and happy. The late English summer had set in with all its usual severity, and the Cossacks, reared in the kindlier climate of Siberia, were feeling it terribly. Colds were the rule rather than the exception in the Russian lines.
8. Part 2. Ch.6. ... the Grand Duke strolled to the basin and began to remove his make-up. He favoured, when on the stage, a touch of the Raven Gipsy No. 3 grease-paint. It added a picturesque swarthiness to his appearance, and made him look more like what he felt to be the popular ideal of a Russian general.
9. Part 2. Ch.7. The Grand Duke Vodkakoff was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. He was no lobster, no flat-fish. He did it now - swift, secret, deadly - a typical Muscovite. By midnight his staff had their orders.
10. Part 2. Ch.7. Price of entrance to the gallery and pit was served out at daybreak to the Eighth and Fifteenth Cossacks of the Don, those fierce, semi-civilised fighting-machines who know no fear.
...'In the stalls I noted a solid body of Russian officers. These soldiers from the Steppes. These bearded men. These Russians. They sat silent and watchful. They applauded little. The programme left them cold...'
Mike (1909)
11. Ch.25. 'The boot. The swift and sudden boot. I shall be sorry to part with you, but I'm afraid it's a case of 'Au revoir, my little Hyacinth.' We shall meet at Philippi. This is my Moscow. To-morrow I shall go out into the night with one long, choking sob'. [words of Wyatt to Mike].
12. Ch.31. Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812, and said, 'So you're back from Moscow, eh?'
The Intrusion of Jimmy (1910)
13. Ch.9. A dispute seemed to be in progress as they entered.
'You don't wish you was in Russher,' said a voice.
'Yus, I do wish I wos in Russher,' retorted a shriveled mummy of a cabman, who was blowing patiently at a saucerful of coffee.
'Why do you wish you was in Russher?' asked the interlocutor, introducing a Massa Bones and Massa Johnsing touch into the dialogue.
'Because yer can wade over yer knees in bla-a-a-ad there,' said the mummy.
'In wot?'
'In bla-a-ad - ruddy bla-a-ad! That's why I wish I wos in Russher.'
'Cheery cove that,' said Lord Dreever. 'I say, can you give us some coffee?'
'I might try Russia instead of Japan,' said Jimmy, meditatively.
The Little Nugget (1913)
14. Ch.14(I). Sam appeared again in a gap in the trees, walking slowly and pensively, as one retreating from his Moscow.
Something Fresh (1915)
15. Ch.2(1). Freddie, chafing at captivity, had mooned about them [park and gardens of Blandings] with an air of crushed gloom which would have caused comment in Siberia.
16. Ch.3(6). 'Aline, my pet, it's no good arguing. You might just well argue with a wolf on the trail of a fat Russian peasant...'
Uneasy Money (1916)
17. Ch.6. 'She [=Miss Leonard] does Greek dances - at least, I suppose they're Greek. They all are nowadays, unless they're Russian. She's an English peeress.'
Piccadilly Jim (1917)
18. Ch.9. It was a fascinating feature of Mrs. Pett's at-homes and one which assisted that mental broadening process already alluded to that one never knew, when listening to a discussion on the sincerity of Oscar Wilde, whether it would not suddenly change in the middle of a sentence to an argument on the inner meaning of the Russian Ballet.
Helping Freddie (1911) [from My Man Jeeves (1919)]
19. Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
A Damsel in Distress (1919)
20. Ch.21. 'This foolery of titles and aristocracy. Silly fetish-worship! One man's as good as another...'
'This is the spirit of '76!' said George approvingly.
'Regular I.W.W. stuff,' agreed Billie. 'Shake hands the President of the Bolsheviki!'
The Little Warrior (1920) = Jill the Reckless (1921)
21. Ch.2(2). It has perhaps been sufficiently indicated by the remarks of Parker, the valet, that the little dinner at Freddie Rooke's had not been an unqualified success. Searching the records for an adequately gloomy parallel to the taxi-cab journey to the theatre which followed it, one can only think of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. And yet even that was probably not conducted in dead silence. There must have been moments when Murat got off a good thing or Ney said something worth hearing about the weather.
22. Ch.8(1). Surveying Freddie, as he droops on his spine in the yielding leather, one is conscious of one's limitations as a writer. Gloom like his calls for the pen of a master. Zola could have tackled it nicely. Gorky might have made a stab at it. Dostoievsky would have handled it with relish. But for oneself the thing is too vast.
23. Ch.8(1). No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.
Love among the Chickens (1921)
24. [1906 year edition]. Ch.10. It would be interesting to know to what extent the work of authors is influenced by their private affairs. If life is flowing smoothly for them, are the novels they write in that period of content coloured with optimism? And if things are running cross-wise, do they work off the resultant gloom on their faithful public? If, for instance, Mr W W Jacobs had toothache, would he write like Mr Hall Caine? If Maxim Gorky were invited to lunch by the Czar, would he sit down and dash off a trifle in the vein of Mr Dooley?
25. Ch.6. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his wife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg.
26. Ch.10. It would be interesting to know to what extent the work of authors is influenced by their private affairs. If life is flowing smoothly, are the novels they write in that period of content coloured with optimism? And if things are running crosswise, do they work off the resultant gloom on their faithful public? .... If Maxim Gorky were invited to lunch by Trotsky, to meet Lenin, would he sit down and dash off a trifle in the vein of Stephen Leacock?
27. Ch.23. The dark moments of optimistic minds are sacred, and I would no more have ventured to break in on Ukridge's thoughts at that moment than, if I had been a general in the Grand Army, I would have opened conversation with Napoleon during the retreat from Moscow.
Indiscretions of Archie (1921)
28. Ch.7. 'I remember reading in some journal or other that she [=Mme Brudowska] has a pet snake, given her by some Russian prince or other, what?' ...I [=Sherriff] bought Peter [=snake] myself... 'I believe she's practically kidded herself into believing that Russian prince story'.
29. Ch.23. 'Mother's Knee', it will be remembered, went through the world like a pestilence. Scots elders hummed it on their way to kirk; cannibals crooned it to their offspring in the jungles of Borneo; it was a best-seller among the Bolshevists.
Three Men and a Maid (1922) = The Girl on the Boat (1922)
30. Ch.2. Sam regarded him blankly. He had not seen him for some years, but, going by his recollections of him at the University, he had expected something cheerier than this. In fact, he had rather been relying on Eustace to be the life and soul of the party. The man sitting on the bag before him could hardly have filled that role at a gathering of Russian novelists.
31. Ch.16(5). It was not Bream who spoke but a strange voice - a sepulchral voice, the sort of voice someone would have used in one of Edgar Allen Poe's cheerful little tales if he had been buried alive and were speaking from the family vault. Coming suddenly out of the night it affected Bream painfully. He uttered a sharp exclamation and gave a bound which, if he had been a Russian dancer, would probably have caused the management to raise his salary. He was in no frame of mind to bear up under sudden sepulchral voices.
The Clicking Of Cuthbert (1921) [from The Clicking Of Cuthbert (1922)]
32. The critics say that he is more Russian than any other young English writer.'
'And is that good?'
'Of course it's good.'
'I should have thought the wheeze would be to be more English than any other young English writer.'
'Nonsense! Who wants an English writer to be English? You've got to be Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success. The mantle of the great Russians has descended on Mr. Devine.'
'From what I've heard of Russians, I should hate to have that happen to me.'
'There is no danger of that,' said Adeline scornfully.
33. This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian novelist, and, owing to the fact of his being in the country on a lecturing tour at the moment, there had been something of a boom in his works. The Wood Hills Literary Society had been studying them for weeks, and never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide... But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must have cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of the internecine strife which was proceeding so briskly in Russia. Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out.
34. 'Competent critics have said that my work closely resembles that of the great Russian Masters.'
'Your psychology is so deep.'
'Yes, yes.'
'And your atmosphere.'
'Quite.'
Cuthbert in a perfect agony of spirit prepared to withdraw from this love-feast. The sun was shining brightly, but the world was black to him. Birds sang in the tree-tops, but he did not hear them. He might have been a moujik for all the pleasure he found in life.
35. His first glance at the novelist surprised Cuthbert. Doubtless with the best motives, Vladimir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become almost entirely concealed behind a dense zareba of hair, but his eyes were visible through the undergrowth, and it seemed to Cuthbert that there was an expression in them not unlike that of a cat in a strange backyard surrounded by small boys. The man looked forlorn and hopeless, and Cuthbert wondered whether he had had bad news from home.
This was not the case. The latest news which Vladimir Brusiloff had had from Russia had been particularly cheering. Three of his principal creditors had perished in the last massacre of the bourgeoisie, and a man whom he owed for five years for a samovar and a pair of overshoes had fled the country, and had not been heard of since. It was not bad news from home that was depressing Vladimir. What was wrong with him was the fact that this was the eighty-second suburban literary reception he had been compelled to attend since he had landed in the country on his lecturing tour, and he was sick to death of it. When his agent had first suggested the trip, he had signed on the dotted line without an instant's hesitation. Worked out in roubles, the fees offered had seemed just about right. But now, as he peered through the brushwood at the faces round him, and realized that eight out of ten of those present had manuscripts of some sort concealed on their persons, and were only waiting for an opportunity to whip them out and start reading, he wished that he had stayed at his quiet home in Nijni-Novgorod, where the worst thing that could happen to a fellow was a brace of bombs coming in through the window and mixing themselves up with his breakfast egg.
36. 'The critics,' said Mr. Devine, 'have been kind enough to say that my poor efforts contain a good deal of the Russian spirit. I owe much to the great Russians. I have been greatly influenced by Sovietski.'
37. 'No novelists any good except me. Sovietski - yah! Nastikoff - bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.'
38. There was a rush and swirl, as the effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment eyeing him excitedly, then, stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get his guard up.
39. 'Let me tell you one vairy funny story about putting. It was one day I play at Nijni-Novgorod with the pro. against Lenin and Trotsky, and Trotsky had a two-inch putt for the hole. But, just as he addresses the ball, someone in the crowd he tries to assassinate Lenin with a rewolwer - you know that is our great national sport, trying to assassinate Lenin with rewolwers - and the bang puts Trotsky off his stroke and he goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is rather shaken, you understand, he misses again himself, and we win the hole and match and I clean up three hundred and ninety-six thousand roubles, or fifteen shillings in your money. Some gameovitch! And now let me tell you one other vairy funny story...'
The Adventures of Sally (1922)
40. Ch.6(4). 'And then I [=Fillmore Nicholas] bought Russian Roubles for the fall, and they rose. So that went wrong.'
Comrade Bingo (1923) [from The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)]
41. He thinks I'm [=Bingo Little] a Bolshevist of sorts who has to go about disguised because of the police.
Bill the Conqueror (1924)
42. Ch.5(4). Yet now, if she could believe the evidence of her ears, Drama was stalking abroad in the night as nakedly as in the more vivacious portions of Moscow.
Ukridge's Dog College (1923) [from Ukridge (1924)]
43. As I [=James Corcoran] was just giving a final bang at the moment, I entered the house in a manner reminiscent of one of the Ballet Russe practising a new and difficult step.
Ukridge's Accident Syndicate (1923) [from Ukridge (1924)]
44. It was one of this grim, ironical, hopeless, grey, despairful situation which the Russian novelists love to write about... The Debut of Battling Billson (1923) [from Ukridge (1924)]
45. The light glimmed on his pince-nez and get a gruesome pallor to his set face. It was Ukridge retreating from Moscow.
Without the Option (1925) [from Carry On, Jeeves (1925)]
46. 'The case of the prisoner Leon Trotzki - which,' he said, giving Sippy the eye again, I am strongly inclined to think an assumed and fictitious name - is more serious. Keeping in with Vosper (1926) [from The Heart of a Goof(1926)]
47. For fully a minute, it seemed to him, Mrs Fisher fiddled and pawed at the ball; while Bradbury, realizing that there are eighteen tees on a course and that this Russian Ballet stuff was consequently going to happen at least seventeen times more, quivered in agony and clenched his hands till the knuckles stood out white under the strain.
48. 'Was I!' he cried. 'You bet your Russian boots I was!... You bet your diamond tiara I won a cup.' Chester Forget Himself (1923) [from The Heart of a Goof (1926)]
49. From childhood up Felicia Blakeney had lived in an atmosphere of highbrowism, and the type of husband she had always seen in her daydreams was the man who was simple and straightforward and earthy and did not know whether Artbashiekeff was a suburb of Moscow or a new kind of Russian drink.
The Magic Plus Fours (1922) [from The Heart of a Goof (1926)]
50. Miss Dix, I present a select committee of my fellow-members, and I have come to ask you on their behalf to use the influence of a good woman to induce Wally to destroy those Plus Fours of his, which we all consider nothing short of Bolshevik propaganda and a menace to the public weal.
Rodney Fails to Qualify (1924) [from The Heart of a Goof (1926)]
51. The sound of a high tenor voice, talking rapidly and entertainingly on the subject of modern Russian thought, now intruded itself on the peace of the night.
Jane Gets off the Fairway (1924) [from The Heart of a Goof (1926)]
52. The rest of the place consisted of a room with a large skylight, handsomely furnished with cushions and samovars, where Jane gave parties to the intelligentsia.
The Purification of Rodney Spelvin (1925) [from The Heart of a Goof (1926)]
53. Also, they began to avoid one another in the house. Jane would sit in the drawing-room, while William retired down the passage to his den. In short, if you had added a couple of ikons and a photograph of Trotsky, you would have had a mise en scene which would have fitted a Russian novel like the paper on the wall.
The Small Bachelor (1927)
54. Ch.1(3). I saw her first lunching at Plaza with a woman who looked like Catherine Of Russia. Her mother, no doubts.
Ch.1(4). A woman who looks like Catherine of Russia.
Ch.2(1). Mrs. Sligsbee H. Waddington was a strong woman. In fact, so commanding was her physique that a stranger might have supposed her to be one in the technical, or circus, sense. She was not tall, but she had bulged so generously in every possible direction that, when seen for the first time, she gave the expression of enormous size.
Came the Dawn (1927) [from Meet Mr. Mulliner (1927)]
55. With all his worldly prospects swept away and a large bruise on his person which made it uncomfortable for him to assume a sitting posture, you might have supposed that the return of Lancelot Mulliner from Putney would have resembled that of the late Napoleon from Moscow.
Money For Nothing (1928)
56. Ch.4(1). She [=Pat Wyvern] was no Cleopatra, no Catherine of Russia - just a slim, slight girl with a tip-tilted nose.
57. Ch.7(3). His [Hugo's] eyelids, like those of the Mona Lisa, were a little bit wear. He looked like the hero of a Russian novel debating the advisablility of murdering a few near relations before hanging himself in the barn.
58. Ch.7(3). 'In the old good days I could have done Hamlet's Soliloque, and the hall would have rung with hearty cheers. It's just this modern lawlessness and Bolshevism'...
'Well, we buzzed along as well as we could, and we had just gotto that bit about digesting the venom of your spleen though it do split you, when the, when the proletariat suddenly started bunging vegetables'...
'It was simply this bally Bolshevism one reads so much about.'
'You think these men were in the pay of Moscow?'
'I shouldn't wonder'.
Summer Lightning (1929)
59. Ch.2(2). Mac had admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about Winter Sports at Moscow.
60. Ch.8. Let's hope this girl of Johnnie Schoonmaker's will cheer us up. If she's anything like her father, she ought to be a nice, lively girl. But I suppose, when she arrives, it'll turn out that she's in mourning for a great-aunt or brooding over the situation in Russia or something.
61. Ch.12(2). He [=Hugo Carmody] was feeling as he had not felt since the the evening some years ago when, boxing for his University in the light-weight division, he had incautiously placed the point of his jaw in the exact spot at the moment occupied by his opponent's right fist. When you have done this or - equally - when you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.
The Man who Gave Up Smoking (1929) [from Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)]
62. With a soft sigh as might have proceeded from loving father on the Steppes of Russia when compelled, in order to ensure his own safety, to throw his children out of the back of the sleigh to the pursuing wolf-pack, he [=Ignatius Mulliner] took the pipe from his mouth, collected his other pipes, his tobaccoand his cigars...
63. I nearly got Cyprian with a dagger, but he was too quick for me. If he fails as a critic, there is always a future for him as a Russian dancer.
The Story of Cedric (1929) [from Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)]
64. And now there ran riot in his soul something that was little short of Red Republikanism.
Drones, he considered them, and - it might be severe, but he stuck to it - mere popinjays. Yes, mere thriftless popinjays. It so happenend that he had never actually seen a popinjay, but he was convinced bysome strange instinct that this was what the typical aristocrat of his native country resembled.
'How long?' groaned Cedric. 'How long?'
He yearned for the day when the clean flame of Freedom, blazing from Moscow, should scorch these wasterels to a crisp, starting with Lady Chloe Downblotton and then taking the others in order of predecence.
The Spot of Art (1930) [from Very Good, Jeeves (1930)]
65. 'Mr Slingsby practising Russian dances', I explained. 'I rather think he has fractured an assortment of limbs. Better go in and see'.
Jeeves and the Kid Clementina (1930) [from Very Good, Jeeves (1930)]
66. The hell-hound of the Law gave a sort of yelp, rather kind a wolf that sees its Russian peasant getting away.
A Prince for Hire (1931)
67. Ch.2. He [=Benjamin Scobell] had, fearfully and reluctantly, let some of it [his money] slip into Soviet Russia; he didn't approve of the Bolshevists, but he liked the high returns they were willing to allow foreign capital - for a while - to enjoy, and he had an idea that he could outsmart the Bolshevists when it was time to withdraw.
68. Ch.9. And in the New York, in this day and age, Smith knew, a man with money and without scruples could come rather nearer to having his own way than a Russian czar before Petrograd became Leningrad.
Big Money (1931)
69. Ch.6(2). 'The way you City clurks get youselves up nowadays,' he [=a man in a cloth cap] said with evident disapproval,' 's enough to make a man sick. They wouldn't 'ave none of that in Moscow. No, nor in Leningrad.. The Burjoisy, that's what you are, for all your top-'ats. Do you know what would happen in Moscow - as it might be Stayling - would come along and 'e'd look at that 'at and 'e'd say 'What are you doing, you Burjoise, swanking around in a 'at like that?', and he'd ...'
...for his companion was only too obviously a man who entertained a strong dislike for City clerks. This became sickenly manifest when he began to speak with a sort of gloating note in his voice of knocking their heads off and stamping them into the mud, even if - or, perhaps, even more strongly because - they went swanking about in grey top-hats. That, as far Lord Hoddesdon was able to follow his remarks, was, it appeared, the way Stayling would have behaved in Moscow, and what was enough for Stayling was, the cloth-capped man frankly admitted, good enough for him.
70. Ch.7(1). It is not pleasant, when one is face to face with one's soul, to see a lot of fatheads enjoying themselves. Berry had achieved by this time a frame of mind which would have qualified him to walk straight into a Tchechov play and no questions asked...
If I were You (1931)
71. Ch.3. A butler of spirit does not like to be worsted by a snip of a boy, and there was was not much change, he realized sadly, to be got out of young Syd. Young Sid had a way of twisting your remarks and making them recoil on you like boomerangs. The result, the butler presumed, of spending half his time arguing with his Bolshie friends.
Doctor Sally (1932)
72. Ch.3. Lots of the world's most wonderful women would be out of place in Woollam Chersey. Queen Elisabeth - Catherine of Russia - Cleopatra - dozens of them.
Hot Water (1932)
73. Ch.7. 'Well, Father [=Senator Opal] did tell me his valets never stayed with him more than a week or so, but he said he thought it must be due to this Bolshevist spirit that you see springing up on all sides.
The Story of Webster (1932) [from Mulliner Nights (1933)]
74. ...and he replied to his nephew's communication with a vibrant letter in which he emphasized the grievous pain it gave him to think that one of his flesh and blood should delibarately be embarking on a career which must inevitably lead sooner or later to the painting of Russian princesses lying on divans in the semi-nude with their arms round tame jaguars.
The Knightly Quest of Mervyn (1931) [from Mulliner Nights (1933)]
75. As he surveyed the passing populace, he suddenly realized, he tells me, what these Bolshevist blokes were driving at. They had spotted - as he spotted now - that what was wrong with the world was that all the cash seemed to be centred in the wrong hands and needed a lot of broad-minded redistribution... If Stalin had come along at that moment, Mervyn would have shaken him by the hand.
The Voice from the Past (1931) [from Mulliner Nights (1933)]
76. The colonel's subjects were sheep (in sickness and in health), manure, wheat, mangold-wurzels, huntin', shootin', and fishin': while Sacheverell was at his best on Proust, the Russian Ballet, Japanese prints, and the Influence of James Joyce on the younger Bloomsbury novelists.
Best Seller (1930) [from Mulliner Nights (1933)]
77. '...He has seats for the first night of Tchekov's "Six Corpses in Search of an Undertaker"'.
78. Jno Henderson Banks was now in control of Evangeline's affairs. This outstanding blot on the public weal was a sort of charlotte russe with tortoiseshell-rimmed eye-glasses and a cooing, reverential manner towards his female clients.
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
79. Ch.11. He was looking like a wolf on the steppes of Russia which has seen its peasant shin up a high tree.
80. Ch.11. ...the only cook that has ever been discovered capable of pushing food into him [=Uncle Tom] without starting something like Old Home Week in Moscow under the third button is this uniquely gifted Anatole.
81. Ch.22. What is Brinkley Court? A respectable English country house or a crimson dancing school? One might as well be living in the middle of the Russian Ballet.
Thank You, Jeeves (1934)
82. Ch.13. Like a sheep wandering back to the fold, this blighted Bolshevik [=Brinkley] had rolled home, twenty-four hours late, plainly stewed to the gills.
83. Ch.13. All the householder awoke in me. I forgot that it was injudiciousl of me to allow myself to be seen. All I could think of was that this bally Five-Year-Planner was smashing up the Wooster home.
84. Ch.16. The occupant of the Dower House was nomere gardener. It was Moscow's Pride, the unspeakable Breinkley,..
85. Ch.22. 'Retain him in my employment? After what has occurred? After finishing first by the shortest of heads in the race with him and his carving knife? I do not intend, Jeeves. Stalin, yes. Al Capone, certainly...'
Company for Gertrude (1928) [from Blandings Castle (1935)]
86. [Reverend Rupert Bingham says] 'But how can I ingratiate myself with your father?'
[Freddie Threepwood says] 'Perfectly easy. Cluster round him. Hang over on his every word. Interest yourself in his pursuits. Do him little services. Help him out of chairs... Why, great Scott, I'd undertake to ingratiate myself with Stalin if I gave my mind to it...'
Monkey Business (1932) [from Blandings Castle (1935)]
87. I have a tender heart [said Mr Mulliner], and I dislike to dwell on the spectacle of human being groaning under the iron heel of Fate. Such morbid gloating, I consider, is better left to the Russians.
The Nodder (1933) [from Blandings Castle (1935)]
88. And the sight of Mabel Potter, recalling to him those dreams of happiness which he had once dared to dream and which now could never come to fulfilment, plunged him still deeper into the despondency. If he had been a character in a Russian novel, he would have gone and hanged himself in the barn.
The Juice of an Orange (1933) [from Blandings Castle (1935)]
89. Wilmot stared. His manner resembled that of a wolf on the steppes of Russia who, expecting a peasant, is fobbed off with wafer biscuit.
Castaways (1933) [from Blandings Castle (1935)]
90. The effect on the President of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation of their request that they be allowed to resign was stupendous. If they had been Cossacks looking in at the office to start a pogrom, he could not have been more moved.
The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)
91. Ch.13. And then, quite suddenly on the second morning, just as the first shy deck stewards were beginning to steal out with soup and the fluting cry of the shuffleboard addicts was making itself heard in the drowsy stillness, the skies turned from blue to grey, the horizon became dark with unwholesome-looking clouds, and the wind, veering to the north, blew with a gradually increasing force till presently it was howling through the rigging with a shrill melancholy wail and causing the R.M.S. Atlantic to behave more like a Russian dancer than a respectable ship. Ivor Llewellyn, prone in his bunk and holding on to the woodwork, was able to count no fewer than five occasions when the vessel lowered Nijinsky's record for leaping on the air and twiddling the feet before descending.
Tried in the furnace (1935) [from Young Men in Spats (1936)]
92. They would insist on singing this thing about 'Give yourself a pat on the back', and, apart from the fact that Barmy considered that something on the lines of the Volga Boat-Song would have been far more fitting, it was a tune it was pretty hard to keep time to.
Archibald and The Masses (1935) [from Young Men in Spats (1936)]
93. 'I [=Meadows, the valet] have been a member of the League for the Dawn of Freedom for many years, sir. Our objects, as the name implies, is to hasten the coming revolution.'
'Like in Russia, do you mean?'
'Yeas, sir.'
'Massacres and all that?'
94. I don't think a chap ought to be dancing at a time when the fundamental distribution of whatever-it-is so dashed what-d'you-call-it. You don't find Stalin dancing.
95. These [Archibald's meditations], as you may readily imagine, were not of the kindiest... Stalin, could he have been aware of them, would have pursued his lips. For they were definitely hostile to the Masses.
Uncle Fred Flits By (1935) [from Young Men in Spats (1936)]
96. 'And you?' said Lord Ickenham to the woman Connie, who was looking like a female Napoleon at Moscow.
The Code of the Mulliners (1935) [from Young Men in Spats (1936)]
97. Here he [=Archibald Mulliner] was, adored - one might say fawned upon - by this lovely girl [=Aurelia Cammarleigh], and simple decency made it impossible that he should marry her. And if you could tie that, even in Russian novel, he would like to know how.
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
98. Ch.4. I'm fed up with this police persecution. One might as well be in Russia.
99. Ch.8. The first thing that impressed itself upon one on seeing Stiffy, was that she was not in her customary buoyant spirits. Stiffy as a rule, is a girl who moves jauntily from spot to spot - youthful elasticity is, I believe, the expression - but she entered now with a slow and dragging step like a Volga boatman.
Summer Moonshine (1938)
100. Ch.6. He [=Adrian Peake] jumped with a lissom grace, floating down to her side like something out of the Russian ballet.
101. Ch.14. The barking of James and John [=the spaniels], who had never seen a man sitting on a roof before and suspected a Red plot, diverted his [=Sam Bulpitt's] attention.
102. Ch.19. There had been a patrician hauteur in her [=Jane Abbott's] voice which made him [=the driver of the charabanc, called the Weasel] wish that Stalin could have been there to give her a piece of his mind..
'Think you're everybody,' proceeded the Weasel, in Stalin's absence doing his best to handle the affair with spirit, but a little conscious that the latter would have said something snappier than that.
Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)
103. Ch.12. '...Say what you will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I'll bet Trotsky couldn't hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night.'
104. Ch.14. Ricky Gilpin's heart seemed to leap straight up into the air twiddling its feet, like a Russian dancer. He had sometimes wondered how fellows in the electric chair when the autorities turned on the juice. Now he knew.
Quick Service (1940)
105. Ch.10. In the aspect of the two men [=Mr Duff and Mr Steptoe], as they shambled through the French windows, there was a crushed defeatism which would have reminded Napoleon, had he present, of the old days at Moscow.
Full Moon (1947)
106. Ch.7(5). He [=Tipton Plimsoll] made his way with faltering footsteps to the sittingroom of the Garden Suite and, drawing the flask from his pocket, placed on the table with something of the sad resignation of a Russian peasant regretfully throwing his infant son to a pursuing wolf pack.
Joy in the Morning (1947)
107. Ch.3. I could still recall l some of the things he had said about my stomach, which - rightly or wrongly - he considered that I was sticking out. It would seem that when you are a Volga boatman, you aren't supposed to stick your stomach out.
108. Ch.7. I am always stiff in my manner with elderly gentlemen who snort like foghorns when I appear and glare at me as if I were somebody from Moscow distributing Red propaganda.
Uncle Dynamite (1948)
109. Ch.1. 'As neat a vanishing act as I ever witnessed,' said Lord Ickenham cordially. 'It was like a performing seal going after a slice of fish. You've done this sort of thing before, Bill Oakshott. No? You amaze me. I would have sworn that you had had years of practice on race trains. Well you certainly baffled them. I don't think I have ever seen a Silver Band so nonplussed. It was as though a bevy of expectant wolves had overtaken a sleigh and find no Russian peasant aboard, than which I can imagine nothing more sickening. For the wolves, of course.'
110. Ch.8. It seemed to Pongo, though it was difficult for him to hear distinctly, for his heart, in addition to giving its impersonation of Nijinsky, was now making a noise like a motor-cycle, that the head of the family was humming lightheartedly.
111. Ch.10. In earlier portions of this chronicle reference was made to the emotions of wolves which overtake sleighs and find no Russian peasant aboard and of tigers deprived of their Indian coolie just as they are sitting down to lunch.
Spring Fever (1948)
112. Ch.4. Lady Adela Topping, some fifteen years younger than her husband, was tall and handsome and built rather on the lines of Catherine of Russia, whom she resembled also in force of character and that imperiousness of outlook which makes a woman disinclined to stand any nonsense.
113. Ch.9. She was looking even more like Catherine of Russia than usual, and it is pretty generally agreed that Catherine of Russia despite many excellent qualities, was not everybody's girl.
114. Ch.16. 'Earls!' he [=Augustus Robb] said disparagingly, and it was plain that, by some process not easily understandable, the creme de menthe had turned this once staunch supporter of England's aristocracy into a republican with strong leanings towards the extreme left. 'Earls aren't everything. They make me sick.'
... 'Earls are all right, Augustus,' said Mike, trying to check the drift to Moscow.
115. Ch.17. '...It seemed to me, thinking quick, that the only way of solving the am-parce was to sacrifice Shorty. Like Russian peasants with their children, you know, when they are pursued by wolves and it becomes imperative to lighten the sledge.'
The Mating Season (1949)
116. Ch.2. Yet now, as I say, he [=Catsmeat Pirbright] was low-spirited. It stuck out a mile. His brow was sicklied o'er with pale cast of thought and his air that of a man who, if he haid said 'Hullo, girls', would have said it like someone in a Russian drama announcing that Grandpapa had hanged himself in the barn.
117. Ch.6.-He [=Esmond Haddock] refilled his glass, and I [=Bertie Wooster] think that as he did so he must have noticed the tense, set expression on my face, rather like that of a starving wolf giving a Russian peasant the once-over, for he started, as if realizing that he had been remiss.
118. Ch. 9. [Gussie said] 'Here's another bit of incoherent raving. "My sister's in the ballet." "You say your sister's in the ballet?" "Yes, begorrah, my sister's in the ballet." "What does your sister do in the ballet?" "She comes rushing in, and then she goes rushing out." "What does she have to rush like that for?" "Faith and begob, because it's a Rushin' ballet."
Ch 22. 'You say your sister's in the ballet?' said Catsmeat with a catch in his voice. 'Yes, begorrah, my sister's in the ballet. What does your sister do in the ballet?' he went on. Taking a look at Gertrude Winkworth and quivering in agony. 'She comes rushin' in and she goes rushin' out. What does she have to rush like that for?' asked Catsmeat with a stifled sob. 'Faith and begob, because it's a Rushin' ballet.'
119. Ch.10. The mice in my interior had now got up an informal dance and were buck-and-winging all over the place like a bunch of Nijinskys.
120. Ch.22. At first, I [=Bertie Wooster] couldn't think what the thing reminded me of. Then I got it. At the time when I was engaged to Florence Craye and she was trying to jack up my soul, one of the methods she employed to this end was to make me on Sunday nights to see Russian plays; the sort of things where the old home is being sold up and people stand around saying how sad it all is. If I had to make criticism of Catsmeat and Gussie, I should say that they got too much of the Russian spirit into their work.
Excelsior (1950) [from Nothing Serious (1950)]
121. Until this moment, Horace had been going through the motions with something of the weary moodiness of a Volga boatman, his face drown, his manner listless. But now he had become a different man. As he advanced to the ninth tee, his eyes gleamed, his ears wiggled and his lips were set. He looked like a Volga boatman who has just learned that Stalin has purged his employer.
The Old, Reliable (1951)
122. Ch.2. 'It really is extraordinary,' he [=Joe Davenport] said, 'this way you've got of saying no every time I offer you a good man's love. No... No... No... You might be Molotov...'
123. Ch.3. '...Doom, desolation and despair. Well see you in the breadline,' said Bill [=Bill Shannon], and moved ponderously to the door, a female Napoleon retreating from Moscow.
Pigs Have Wings (1952)
124. Ch.1(5). Lord Emsworth was approaching, on his face that dying duck look which was so often there in times of stress. Something, it was plain to him [=Galahad Threepwood], had occurred to upset poor old Clarence.... Poor old Clarence was patently all of a doodah... 'Strike me pink, Clarence', he exclaimed, 'you look like something out of a Russian novel. What's on your mind? And what have you dine with Parsloe? Did you murder him, and are you worried because you don't know how to get rid of the body?'
Barmy in Wonderland (1952)
125. Ch.18. Dinty consulted her notebook.
'There have been two or three telepone calls. One was from someone who wanted to buy the play for London. I told him you were problably going to do it in London yourself.'
'Of course I am. And in Paris and Berlin and Moscow' [said Barmy]
'You can't do it in Moscow'.
Ring for Jeeves (1953)
126. Ch.9. [Bill Rowcester cried pasionately] 'Everytime we took a dip, the water was alive with exiled Grand Dukes and stiff with dowagers of the most rigid respectability.'
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)
127. Ch.3. Even when we [= Bertie Wooster and Florence Craye] were merely affianced, I recalled, this woman had dashed the mystery thriller from my hand, instructing me to read instead a perfectly frightful thing by a bird called Tolstoy. French Leave (1956)
128. Ch.8(1). The Ritz grillroom did a Nijinsky leap before Jeff's eyes.
Something Fishy (1957)
129. Ch.4. 'Good God! You put a private eye on him?' [said Mortimer Bayliss]
'It was the simplest method of keeping myself au courant with his affairs.' [said Keggs]
'God bless you Keggs! You ought to be the head of the secret police in Moscow.'
'I doubt if I would care for residence in Russia, sir. The climate...'
130. Ch.12. The Field-Marshal, stiffening and drawing himself up to his full height of approximately six feet eleven inches, informed Lord Uffenham that he invariably voted the Labour ticket - wishing, he explained, to save the land he loved from the domination of a lot of blinking Fascists, and Lord Uffenham sais the Field-Marshall ought to lose no time in having his head examined, because anybody with an ounce more sense than a child with water on the brain knew that those Labour blisters were nothing but a bunc of bally Bolsheviks. And the political argument that ensued - with Lord Uffenham accusing the Field-Marshal of being in the pay of Moscow...
131. Ch.23. [Keggs said] '...When Mr. Bunyan made her acquaintance, she was playing a small role in a translation from the Russian.'
[Lord Uffenham said] 'Oh, my God! An aunt of mine once made me take her to one of those. Lot of gosh-awful bounders standing around saying how sad it all was and wondering if Ivan was going to hang himself in the barn. Don't tell me that Roscoe Bunyan, a free agent, goes to see plays translated from the Russian.'
Cocktail Time (1958)
132. Ch.9. [Lord Ickenham said] 'And how you belted the stuffing out of it! It was like hearing the Siberian wolf-hound in full cry after a Siberian wolf. I remember thinking at the time how odd it is that small men nearly always have loud, deep voices...'
133. Ch.13. Even a high-up confidence artist has to expect disappointments and setbacks, of course, from time to time, but he never learns to enjoy them. In the manner of Gordon Carlisle as half an hour later he entered the presence of his wife Gertie there still lingered a suggestion of Napoleon returning from Moscow.
134. Ch.14. 'He was in the Foreign Office.He married my mother's second cousin Alice.'
'And went off his onion?'
'He had to be certified. He thought he was Stalin's nephew.'
'He wasn't of course?'
'No, but it made it very awkward for everybody. He was always sending secret offical papers over to Russia.'
Big Business (1952) [from A Few Quick Ones (1959)]
135. 'Did you see what hit you?'[Amanda Biffen said]
'No, I didn't.' [Police Constable Popjoy said]
'It was that Russian Sputnik thing you've probably read about in the papers.'
'Coo!'
'Coo is correct. They raise a nasty bump, these Sputniks, do they not?...'
Jeeves in the Offing (1960)
136. Ch.4. To give you an instance, a couple of days ago he took her to Birmingham to see the repertory company's performance of Chekov's Seagull, because he thought it would be educational. I'd like to catch anyone trying to make me see Chekov's Seagull, but Phyllis just bowed her head and said, 'Yes, Daddy.'...
...I [=Bertie Wooster] knew Chekov's Seagull. My Aunt Agatha had once made me take her son Thos to a performance of it at the Old Vic, and what with the strain of trying to follow the cockeyed goings-on of characters called Zarietchnaya and Medvienko* and having to be constantly on the alert to prevent Thos making a sneak for the great open spaces, my suffering had been intense.
*[in Chekov's original - Medvedenko]
137. Ch.9. 'There is none like him, none', said Kipper, moistening the lips with the tip of the tongue and looking like a wolf that has just spotted its Russian peasant.
Ice in the Bedroom (1961)
138. Ch.4. She [=Leila Yorke] was a large, hearty-looking woman in the early forties, built up on the lines of Catherine of Russia...
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)
139. Ch.6. 'Sombre, that's the word I was trying to think of. The atmosphere was sombre. The whole binge might have been a scene from one of those Russian plays my Aunt Agatha sometimes makes me take her son Thos to at the Old Vic in order to improve his mind, which, as is widely known, can do with all the improvement that's coming to it.
140. Ch.8. I bumped into a human body, the last thing I had expected to encounter en route, and for an instant ... well, I won't say that everything was black already, but I was considerably perturbed. My heart did one of those spectacular leaps Nijinsky used to do in the Russian Ballet, and I was conscious of a fervent wish that I could have been elsewhere.
141. Ch.9. 'Well, how can you blame the poor angel [=Bartholomew]? Naturally he thought you were international spies in the pay of Moscow. Prowling about the house at this time of night...' [Stephanie Byng said]
Frozen Assets (1964)
142. Ch.6(3). He [=Biff Christopher] was beginning to feel that he was in the secret service and would shortly have to be prepared to find himself addressed as X-1503. 'Who is this man, you were saying [Percy Pilbeam said]. Murphy, as he calls himself, though his real name is problably something ending in ski or vitch, poses as a freelance journalist, one of those fellows who drift about Fleet Street picking up jobs, but we know that he's an agent of a certain unfriendly power-'
'Which shall be nameless?' [Biff Christopher said]
'No names, no pack drill.'
'I'll bet it's Russia.'
143. Ch.8(2). 'Guy who calls himself Murphy, though it's widely known at Scotland Yard that his real name's Ivanovitch or Molotov or something. Nice fellow. Collect stamps.' [Edmund Biffen ('Biff') Christopher said]
144. Ch.9(1). [Percy Pilbeam said] '...Did you manage to find out anything from that man?'
Biff was frank and manly about it. He descended to no subterfuges and evasions.
'Not a thing. I warned you I mightn't be able to. I did my best to draw him out. I worked the conversation artound to Russia and said it must be most unpleasant there in the winter months when your nose turns blue and comes apart in your hands. He said Yes, he supposed it must be verydisagreeable. I then asked him what Kruscheff was really like, and he said he had not met him. He said he had never been in Russia.'
145. Ch.9(1). 'Only that he can mop the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner. His powers of suction are almost unbelievable. Even at Bleeck's in New York I've never seen anything to equal them, and Bleeck's, in case you don't know, is where the gentlemen of the American press go for their refreshment. I suppose in Russia they train these secret agents specially to acquire resistance to spirits and liquors.'
Galahad at Blandings (1965)
146. Ch.5(2). With a reflex action which would have interested Doctor Pavlov his fist shot out and there was a chunky sound as it impinged on the constable's eye with all the weight of his [=Sam Bagshott's] muscular body behind it.
147. Ch.10(1). 'Do you remember Clarice Burbank?' [Tipton Plimsoll said]
'Was she the Russian ballet one?' [Sandy Callander said]
'No that was Marcia Ferris.'
Bingo Bans the Bomb (1965) [from Plum Pie (1966)]
148. Scarcely had his [Bingo's] eyes rested on the page she [=Mrs. Little] had indicated when all was made clear to him and the offices of Wee Tots did one of those entrechats which Nijinsky used to do in Russian Ballet.
Sleepy Time (1966) [from Plum Pie (1966)]
149. ...the red corpuscles of which the booklet had spoken coursed through his [=Cyril Grooly] body like students rioting in Saigon, Moscow, Cairo, Panama and other centers.
150. Tell her [=Agnes Flack] I'm [=Cyril Grooly] a Communist spy and my name's really Golinsky.
Company For Henry (1967)
151. Ch.7(4). When he [=Bill Hardy] did so, there was that in his demeanour which he would have reminded students of history of Napoleon after his experiences in Moscow.
152. Ch.12(3). No said Henry [Paradene] with the firmness of the Russian representative at the United Nations issuing his hundred and eleventh veto, a thousand times no...
Do Butlers Burgle Banks? (1968)
153. Ch.6(1). 'That's what I thought when he told me, but apparently at Lloyd's you can [Mike Bond said]. Lloyd's will insure you against anything. Uncle Hugo gave me half a dozen instances - the owners of a picture house who took out a policy to cover members of the audience dying for fright during the premiere of a horror film; a Sydney department store which insured itself against death among its customers if a Russian satellite should fall on the store; a Paris perfumer who insured against losing his sense of smell; and there were several more.'
A Pelican at Blandings (1969)
154. Ch.7(3). Abandoning the shoe, it [=the cat] applied its head to Lord Emsworth's dressing gown with a quick thrusting movement, and Lord Emsworth, filled with much the same emotions as has gripped him in his boyhood when a playful schoolmate, creeping up behind him in the street, had tooted the motor horn in his immediate rear, executed one of those sideways leaps which Nijinsky used to be so good at his prime.
The Girl in Blue (1970)
155. Ch.2(2). 'Are you an artist?' [Jane Hunnicutt said]
'Sort of, Cartoons mostly.' [Jerry West said]
'Well, that's better than painting Russian princesses lying in the nude on tiger skins.'
Ch.6(1). 'I would like to meet your [=Jane Hunnigutt's] aunt. Interesting woman.' [Jerry said]
'She wouldn't like to meet you. You're an artist.' [Jane said]
'Ah, yes. All those Russian princesses. She strikes me as a bit on the austere side. Why do you go back to her?'
156. Ch.11(3). Once again Jerry's heart executed a Nijinsky leap. He was finding Crispin hard to focus, and was obliged to blink several times before he could see him steadily and see him whole. His uncle seemed to be flickering like something in an early silent picture.
157. Ch.12(1). To be obliged to retreat in disorder from a stricken battlefield always tends to lower the spirits. Napoleon, who had this experience at Moscow, made no secret of the fact that he did not enjoy it, and Jerry, going through the same sort of thing at Mellingham Hall, Mellingham-in-the-Vale, was defenitively not at his perkiest.
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
158. Ch.8. I suppose if you had asked Napoleon how he had managed to get out of Moscow, he would have been a bit vague about it, and it was the same with me.
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972)
159. Ch.6(1). At the moment when we start allotting space to the sort of thing Chekhov would have liked. Gertrude was in the room she called her den, saying good-bye to a finely built young man in heather tweeds. He was of rather gloomy aspect...
160. Ch.7(2). It was as he prepared to help Sandy mount the wall that Monty became aware of footsteps approaching from the direction of the kitchen, and his heart gave a leap of the kind that used to excite such universal applause when Nijinsky did them in the Russian ballet.
161. Ch.11(1) It really seemed as though he would be reduced to twiddling his fingers as recommended by the late Count Tolstoy as an alternative to smoking...
Bachelors Anonymous (1973)
162. Ch.10. Mr Llewellyn paused. Mr Trout had begun to float about the room like something out of Swan Lake, and Mr Llewellyn disapproved of this.
Aunts aren't Gentlemen (1974)
163. Ch.2. 'He [=policeman] told her to stop shouting. She [=Vanessa Cook] said this was a free country and she was entitled to shout as much as she pleased. He said not if she was shouting the sort of things she was shouting, and she called him a Cossack and socked him. Then he arrested her, and I socked him'. [Orlo Porter said]
164. Ch.5. I could see how this must have rankled. I do not keep pigs myself, but if I did I should strongly resent not being allowed to give them a change of air and scenery without getting permission from a board of magistrates. Are we in Russia?
165. Ch.7. Being a Communist, he [=Orlo Porter] was probably on palsy-walsy terms with half of the big shots at the Kremlin, and the more of the bourgeoisie he disembowelled, the better they would be pleased. 'A young man with the right stuff in him, this Comrade Porter. Got nice ideas,' they would say when reading about the late Wooster. 'We must keep an eye on him with a view to further advancement'.
166. Ch.8. Of course he may have been brooding because he had just heard that a pal of his in Moscow had been liquidated that morning, or he had murdered a capitalist and couldn't think of a way of getting rid of the body...
167. Ch.10. 'You must give that up when we are married. Smoking is just a habit. Tolstoy,' she said, mentioning someone I had not met, 'says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers'.
My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I knew, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified.
168. Ch.14. 'The trouble is that she is greatly under the influence of a pal of hers called Tolstoy... I've never met him, but he seems to have the most extraordinary ideas. You won't believe this, Jeeves, but he says that no one needs to smoke, as equal pleasure can be obtained by twirling the fingers. The man must be an ass... Do you know any thing about this fellow Tolstoy? You ever heard of him?'
'Oh, yes, sir. He was a very famous Russian novelist.'
'Russian, eh? Well, there you are. And a novelist? He didn't write By Order Of The Czar, did he?'
'I believe not, sir.'
'I thought he might have under another name. You say 'was'. Is he no longer with us?'
'No, sir. He died some years ago.'
'Good for him. Twirl your fingers! Too absurd.'
169. Ch.15. 'Trash,' she said. 'It really is time you began reading something worth wile. I don't expect you to start with Turgenev and Dostoevski,' she said, evidently alluding to a couple of Russian exiles she had met in London who did a bit of writing on the side...
170. Ch.17. I remember once when I was faced with the task of defying my Aunt Agatha and stoutly refusing to put up her son Thos at my flat for his mid-term holiday from his school and take him ... to a play at the Old Vic by a bloke of the name Chekhov...
171. Ch.17. I had never talked things over with a Communist before, and it came as something of a shock to find that he wasn't so fond of the hard-up proletariat as I had supposed. I thought of advising him not to let the boys at the Kremlin hear him expressing such views, but decided that it was none of my business.
172. You're The Top [from London production of Anything Goes (PGW's changes to the Cole Porter's lyric)]
You are the top. You are the Russian Salad.