Extricating Young Gussie by P.G. Woodehouse.
Title: Extricating Young Gussie.
Author: P.G. Woodehouse.
Genre: Fiction, literature, short story, humour, satire.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: September 18, 1915.
Summary: The story is the first appearance of two of his most popular characters, the ingenious valet Jeeves and his master Bertie Wooster, though the two don't yet meet. Aunt Agatha drags Bertie out of bed "in the small hours [around] half past eleven". She is most distressed that her nephew, and Bertie's cousin Gussie Mannering-Phipps "has lost his head over a creature", a chorus-girl in New York that he may marry, so she demands that Bertie head over there and stop him.
My rating: 8/10.
♥ I was feeling like a badly wrapped brown-paper parcel. I'm never at my best in the early morning. I said so.
“Early morning! I had breakfast three hours ago, and have been walking in the park ever since, trying to compose my thoughts.”
If I ever breakfasted at half past eight I should walk on the Embankment, trying to end it all in a watery grave.
♥ “I play a lot of auction.”
“And as you say, idiotic gambling in low dens. If you require another reason, you are going because I ask you as a personal favour.”
What she meant was that, if I refused, she would exert the full bent of her natural genius to make life a Hades for me. She held me with her glittering eye. I have never met anyone who can give a better imitation of the Ancient Mariner.
♥ It's a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don't find it. If you don't give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.
♥ “...This is September the first, vaudeville's opening day. The early fall,” said Gussie, who is a bit of a poet in his way, “is vaudeville's springtime. All over the country, as August wanes, sparkling comediennes burst into bloom, the sap stirs in the veins of tramp cyclists, and last year's contortionists, waking from their summer sleep, tie themselves tentatively into knots.”
♥ He got through the song somehow and limped off amidst roars of silence from the audience.