Puns and Plum

ConversazioniThe Drones Club (all things P.G. Wodehouse)

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Puns and Plum

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1abbottthomas
Modificato: Mar 17, 2011, 11:14 am

I don't think of PGW as a great punner and, although there are plenty of literary quotes, misquotes and allusions around, I can't remember a reference to one of his contemporaries. I have just read Company for Henry, a late work, and on p.169 of my Penguin edition I found the following:

'... The standard of masculine comeliness must have been very low in those days, because there's a portrait of him in the picture gallery and he looks like Nero Wolfe'.

'Stout?'

'Bulging. I'm surprised he ever got any girl to marry him.'

Is this as unusual as it seeme to me, or have I not being paying attention?

2thorold
Mar 17, 2011, 10:20 am

I don't remember many that are as subtle as that, but there are certainly plenty of the old-chestnut variety ("I don't get your drift" "I shall continue snowing"; "Don't you know I love you more than words can tell?" "No, but maybe if you hum a few bars..." etc.). And a bit of random Googling came up with "He was white and shaken, like a dry martini." (from Cocktail time, so also latish).

3wgreview
Gen 5, 2015, 3:44 am

There's one in The Mating Game (1949, p. 96). Bertie is unhappy that Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright has been neglecting his duties as Bertie's (fake) valet, but when Catsmeat explains that he has been wooing Gertrude Winkworth via letters passed back and forth by Jeeves, Bertie realizes:

" You can't press your suit and another fellow's trousers simultaneously."