Leave It to Psmith quotes

At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.

It was a lovely morning and the air was fragrant with gentle summer scents. Yet in his lordship’s pale blue eyes there was a look of melancholy. His brow was furrowed, his mouth peevish.

It was a lovely morning and the air was fragrant with gentle summer scents. Yet in his lordship’s pale blue eyes there was a look of melancholy. His brow was furrowed, his mouth peevish.

And this was all the more strange in that he was normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be.

A writer, describing Blandings Castle in a magazine article, had once said: “Tiny mosses have grown in the cavities of the stones, until, viewed near at hand, the place seems shaggy with vegetation.” It would not have been a bad description of the proprietor.

A writer, describing Blandings Castle in a magazine article, had once said: “Tiny mosses have grown in the cavities of the stones, until, viewed near at hand, the place seems shaggy with vegetation.” It would not have been a bad description of the proprietor.

Fifty-odd years of serene and unruffled placidity had given Lord Emsworth a curiously moss-covered look.

Very few things had the power to disturb him. Even his younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, could only do it occasionally.

He was keenly aware of the sunshine that poured down on his gardens, and was yearning to pop out and potter among the flowers he loved.

But no man, pop he never so wisely, can hope to potter with any good result if the world is a mere blur.

The door behind him opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one.

But no man, pop he never so wisely, can hope to potter with any good result if the world is a mere blur.

The door behind him opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one.

“Who’s that?” inquired Lord Emsworth, spinning on his axis.

The contrast between Lord Emsworth and the newcomer, as they stood there, was striking, almost dramatic. Lord Emsworth was so acutely spectacle-less; Rupert Baxter, his secretary, so pronouncedly spectacled. It was his spectacles that struck you first as you saw the man.

They gleamed efficiently at you.

If you had a guilty conscience, they pierced you through and through; and even if your conscience was one hundred percent pure you could not ignore them. “Here,” you said to yourself, “is an efficient young man in spectacles.”

Baxter was getting above himself, throwing his weight about, making himself a confounded nuisance. He wished he could get rid of the man. But where could he find an adequate successor? That was the trouble.

With all his drawbacks, Baxter was efficient.

Nevertheless, for a moment Lord Emsworth toyed with the pleasant dream of dismissing him.

The Efficient Baxter bowed. But, though gratified, he was not overwhelmed by the tribute.

The same thought had often occurred to him independently.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, “I have one or two things to attend to …”

for it involved a matter of finance, and in matters of finance Mr. Keeble was no longer a free agent. He and Lady Constance had a mutual banking account, and it was she who supervised the spending of it.

This was an arrangement, subsequently regretted by Mr. Keeble, which had been come to in the early days of the honeymoon, when men are apt to do foolish things.

Mr. Keeble coughed. Not the sharp, efficient cough which we have heard Rupert Baxter uttering in the library, but a feeble, strangled thing like the bleat of a diffident sheep.

Keenly alive to this prejudice of hers, Mr. Keeble stopped after making his announcement, and had to rattle his keys in his pocket in order to acquire the necessary courage to continue.

He was not looking at his wife, but he knew just how forbidding her expression must be.

This task of his was no easy, congenial task for a pleasant summer morning.

He paused, and stole a glance at his wife. It was as he had feared. She had congealed. Like some spell, the name Jackson had apparently turned her to marble.

It was like the Pygmalion and Galatea business working the wrong way round.

She was presumably breathing, but there was no sign of it.

“Nonsense!

If you are going to believe all the gossip you hear about people, nobody would be safe.

He was a delightful young man and he would have made Phyllis perfectly happy. Instead of marrying him, she chose to go off with this—Jackson.” Lady Constance’s voice quivered. Greater scorn could hardly have been packed into two syllables.

“Why,” demanded Mr. Keeble, now somewhat recovered, “do you want a thousand pounds?”

“Well, who doesn’t, if it comes to that?” said Freddie.

“But I don’t mind telling you my special reason for wanting it at just this moment, if you’ll swear to keep it under your hat as far as the guv’nor is concerned.”

Freddie looked puzzled.

His was no lightning brain.

“Can’t quite work that out,” he confessed. “Do you mean you will tell him or you won’t?”

“Between ourselves, I dropped about five hundred of the best. And I just want to ask you one simple question. Why did I drop it?”

“Because you were an infernal young ass.”

“Well, yes,” agreed Freddie, having considered the point, “you might put it that way, of course. But why was I an ass?”

“Well, yes,” agreed Freddie, having considered the point, “you might put it that way, of course. But why was I an ass?”

“Good God!” exclaimed the exasperated Mr. Keeble. “Am I a psychoanalyst?”

“I mean to say, if you come right down to it, I lost all that stuff simply because I was on the wrong side of the fence. It’s a mug’s game betting on horses.

That’s law. I found that out from a movie I saw in town.”

The Hon. Freddie was a great student of the movies. He could tell a super-film from a super-super-film at a glance, and what he did not know about erring wives and licentious clubmen could have been written in a subtitle.

“Are you insane?” growled Mr. Keeble.

“Don’t say ‘may,’ ” cried Freddie buoyantly. “The word is ‘will.’ Bally will! What ho!”

Exhilaration is a heady drug; but, like other drugs, it has the disadvantage that its stimulating effects seldom last for very long.

For perhaps ten minutes after his uncle had left him, Freddie Threepwood lay back in his chair in a sort of ecstasy. He felt strong, vigorous, alert.

And yet he hated the idea of meekly allowing that two thousand pounds to escape from his clutch …

A young man’s crossroads.

The agony of spirit into which these meditations cast him had brought him up with a bound from the comfortable depths of his armchair and had set him prowling restlessly about the room.

“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith.

But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced.

Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith.

Yes, I fancy we have not missed a lot. … By the way, I don’t think much of the new home. True, I only saw it from the outside, but … no, I don’t think much of it.”

“And who,” said Psmith, “am I to taunt my boyhood friend with his honest poverty? Especially as I myself am standing on the very brink of destitution.”

“I in person. That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.”

“And who,” said Psmith, “am I to taunt my boyhood friend with his honest poverty? Especially as I myself am standing on the very brink of destitution.”

“I in person. That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.”

“But I thought your uncle gave you rather a good salary.”

“Pretty hard to get a job these days,” said Mike doubtfully.

“Not if you have something superlatively good to offer.”

“What have you got to offer?”

“I’m awfully ashamed about that, Eve. I suppose I treated Rollo awfully badly.”

“Never mind. A man with a name like that was made for suffering.”

“I never really cared for him. He had horrid swimmy eyes …”

Eve looked at her sympathetically. All her life she herself had been joyously impecunious, but it had never seemed to matter. She was strong and adventurous, and revelled in the perpetual excitement of trying to make both ends meet.

But Phyllis was one of those sweet porcelain girls whom the roughnesses of life bruise instead of stimulating.

She needed comfort and pleasant surroundings. Eve looked morosely at the china dog, which leered back at her with an insufferable good-fellowship.

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.”

“But won’t he be awfully angry when he finds out it has gone?”

I can speak with particular knowledge of Miss Halliday, for I was for many years an assistant mistress at Wayland House, where she was at school. She is a charming, warmhearted, impulsive girl. … But you will hardly want to hear all this.”

“On the contrary,” said Psmith, “I could listen for hours. You have stumbled upon my favourite subject.”

Miss Clarkson eyed him a little doubtfully, and decided that it would be best to reintroduce the business theme.

“How old are your children, sir?” she asked.

“I fear,” said Psmith, “you are peeping into Volume Two. This romance has only just started.”

“I am afraid,” said Miss Clarkson, now completely fogged, “I do not quite understand. What exactly are you looking for?”

“But you must excuse me if I remark that this application of yours strikes me as most extraordinary.”

“Why? I am young, active, and extremely broke.”

Psmith squinted, not without complacency, down a faultlessly fitting waistcoat, and flicked another speck of dust off his sleeve.

“You find me natty? Well, well, perhaps you are right, perhaps you are right. But consider, Miss Clarkson. If one expects to find employment in these days of strenuous competition, one must be neatly and decently clad. Employers look askance at a baggy trouser-leg.

A zippy waistcoat is more to them than an honest heart.

This beautiful crease was obtained with the aid of the mattress upon which I tossed feverishly last night in my attic room.”

“You are in the fish trade?” squeaked Miss Clarkson, with an amazed glance at the knife-like crease in his trousers.

“These are not my working clothes,” said Psmith, following and interpreting her glance.

“Yes, owing to a financial upheaval in my branch of the family, I was until this morning at the beck and call of an uncle who unfortunately happens to be a Mackerel Monarch or a Sardine Sultan, or whatever these merchant princes are called who …

“I don’t know that I can say that, Mr. Psmith.”

“The p is silent, as in pshrimp,” he reminded her.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, pausing at the door, “there is one other thing before I go. While I was waiting for you to be disengaged, I chanced on an instalment of a serial story in The Girl’s Pet for January, 1919.

It was much more the sort of thing for which he had been hoping. Although his closest friend, Mike Jackson, was a young man of complete ordinariness, Psmith’s tastes when he sought companionship lay as a rule in the direction of the bizarre.

He preferred his humanity eccentric.

And “the writer,” to judge him by this specimen of his correspondence, appeared to be eccentric enough for the most exacting taste.

A young man of sporting appearance had been standing beside him for the last five minutes, and ever and anon this young man had glanced with some impatience at his watch. He was plainly waiting for someone, so Psmith tried the formula on him.

“There will be rain,” said Psmith, “in Northumberland tomorrow.”

The young man looked at him, not without interest, certainly, but without that gleam of intelligence in his eye which Psmith had hoped to see.

“I wish I could have stood you a drink,” said the other wistfully.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been,’ ” sighed Psmith.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the jovial one, inspired. “Lend me a fiver, my dear old boy. That’s the best way out of the difficulty. I can send it round to your hotel or wherever you are this evening when I get home.”

A sweet, sad smile played over Psmith’s face.

“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.

“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”

“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.

“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”

Resignation displaced joviality in the other’s countenance.

“It is my costume that is causing these doubts in your mind. This is the second time this morning that such a misunderstanding has occurred. Have no misgivings. These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”

“As broke as the Ten Commandments.”

“I’m hanged if I can believe it.”

“It’s so dashed difficult to know how to begin the thing. I mean, it’s all a bit complicated till you get the hang of it. … Look here, you said in your advertisement that you had no objection to crime.”

“Within reason⁠—and if undetected⁠—I see no objection to two-pennorth of crime.”

“Well, look here … look here … Well, look here,” said Freddie, “will you steal my aunt’s diamond necklace?”

“Steal your aunt’s necklace?” he said indulgently.

“You do not think she might consider it a liberty from one to whom she has never been introduced?”

What Freddie might have replied to this pertinent question will never be known, for at this moment, looking nervously at his watch for the twentieth time, he observed that the hands had passed the half-hour and were well on their way to twenty-five minutes to …

Psmith shook his head sadly.

These clashings of human temperament were very lamentable. They disturbed the after-luncheon repose of the man of sensibility.

He ordered coffee, and endeavoured to forget the painful scene by thinking of Eve Halliday.

“Most decidedly,” said Psmith.

“Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life.”

Lord Emsworth looked at him a little perplexedly, and wondered if he had caught the last remark correctly. But his mind had never been designed for the purpose of dwelling closely on problems for any length of time, and he let it go.

“I was once offered a princely sum,” went on Psmith, now floating happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, “to write a ballad for the Fishmonger’s Gazette entitled, ‘Herbert the Turbot.’ But I was firm. I declined.”

“One has one’s self-respect,” said Psmith.

“Oh, decidedly,” said Lord Emsworth.

“My dear fellow, you couldn’t shift her with blasting-powder. Really this craze of my sister Constance for filling the house with these infernal literary people is getting on my nerves. I can’t stand these poets and whatnot. Never could.”

“We must always remember, however,” said Psmith gravely, “that poets are also God’s creatures.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed his lordship, aghast. “I had forgotten that you were one. What will you think of me, my dear fellow! But, of course, as I said a moment ago, you are different.

“Constance tried to make me read the things, but I couldn’t. I fell asleep over them.”

“I hope you rested well.”

“I—er—the fact is, I suppose they were beyond me. I couldn’t see any sense in the things.”

Psmith waved his hand deprecatingly.

“My dear Comrade Threepwood, let us not become sordid on this glad occasion. As far as I am concerned, there will be no charge.”

“What! But look here …”

“I will accompany you, if I may,” said Psmith.

“I have always held,” said Psmith, “that there is no finer tonic than a good look at a lobelia immediately after breakfast. Doctors, I believe, recommend it.”

“Oh, I say,” said Freddie hastily, as he reached the door, “can I have a couple of words with you a bit later on?”

“I’ve been in love with her for months. But she won’t look at me.”

“That, of course,” agreed Psmith, “must be a disadvantage. Yes, I should imagine that that would stick the gaff into the course of true love to no small extent.”

“I mean, won’t take me seriously, and all that. Laughs at me, don’t you know, when I propose. What would you do?”

“I mean, won’t take me seriously, and all that. Laughs at me, don’t you know, when I propose. What would you do?”

“I should stop proposing,” said Psmith, having given the matter thought.

“Tut, tut!” said Psmith severely. “And, in case the expression is new to you, what I mean is ‘Pooh, pooh!’ Just say to yourself, ‘From now on I will not start proposing until after lunch.’

“I think you’re terribly conceited.”

“Not at all,” said Psmith. “Conceited? No, no. Success has not spoiled me.”

“Have you had any success?”

“It is always thus,” he said. “Passing through this life, we meet a fellow-mortal, chat awhile, and part; and the last thing we think of doing is to ask him in a manly and direct way what his label is.

There is something oddly furtive and shamefaced in one’s attitude towards people’s names. It is as if we shrank from probing some hideous secret.

We say to ourselves ‘This pleasant stranger may be a Snooks or a Buggins. Better not inquire.’ But in my case …”

“True, there has been no actual decree, but we are separated beyond hope of reunion.” He saw the distress in Eve’s eyes and hurried on. “There are things,” he said, “which it is impossible for a man to overlook, however broad-minded he may be.

Love, Miss Halliday, is a delicate plant. It needs tending, nursing, assiduous fostering.

This cannot be done by throwing the breakfast bacon at a husband’s head.”

I think that with a little resource and ingenuity we may yet win through.” He turned to the window and looked out. “Sad,” he sighed, “that these idyllic surroundings should have become oppressed with a cloud of sinister menace.

One thinks one sees a faun popping about in the undergrowth, and on looking more closely perceives that it is in reality a detective with a notebook.

What one fancied was the piping of Pan turns out to be a police-whistle, summoning assistance. Still, we must bear these things without wincing. They are our cross.

“Nor do I.

It is on these communities of taste that lifelong attachments are built.

Sit down and let us exchange confidences on the subject of Baxter.”

But this was not all. In addition to the sadness of frustrated hope, he was also experiencing the anguish of troubled memories.

Not only was the Present torturing him, but the Past had come to life and jumped out and bitten him.

A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and this was what Edward Cootes was doing now. It is at moments like this that a man needs a woman’s tender care, and Mr.

Ah, Liz,” said Mr. Cootes with feeling, “you can take it from me that I’ve had no luck since you left me. Regular hoodoo there’s been on me.

If I’d walked under a ladder on a Friday to smash a mirror over the dome of a black cat I couldn’t have had it tougher.

”

“Well, wouldn’t that jar you!” he demanded of circumambient space. “Of all the lucky ones! getting into the place like that, with the band playing and a red carpet laid down for you to walk on!

Gee, if you fell down a well, Liz, you’d come up with the bucket.

You’re a human horseshoe, that’s what you are. Say, listen. Lemme-tell-ya-sumf’n. Do you know what I’ve been doing this afternoon? Only trying to edge into the dam’ place myself and getting the air two minutes after I was past the front door.”

Mr. Cootes so far forgot himself in his agony of spirit as to expectorate disgustedly at a passing frog. And even in this trivial enterprise failure dogged him.

He missed the frog, which withdrew into the grass with a cold look of disapproval.

“Me?” said Mr. Cootes. “I thought I’d got it smooth.

“

You did not stop me at the pistol’s point merely to watch you go through your Swedish exercises?

” he said.

“

Every stomach has a silver lining.

”

However, all things come to an end.

Even the weariest river winds somewhere to the sea.

With a moving period, the butler finally concluded his narrative.

When I am surrounded by my fellows, inspiration slackens and dies. You know how it is when there are people about. Just as you are starting in to write a nifty, someone comes and sits down on the desk and begins talking about himself.

Every time you get going nicely, in barges some alien influence and the Muse goes blooey.

You see what I mean?”

She was alone.

It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone⁠—if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck.

Not one of the horde of visitors who had arrived overnight for the County Ball had shown any disposition whatever to court Miss Peavey’s society.

Bad luck was what he attributed it to, thereby giving the object of his affections less credit than was her due for a masterly policy of evasion.

He sidled up, looking like a well-dressed sheep.

“Yes. I’m going to Market Blandings. Isn’t it a lovely afternoon? I suppose you are busy all the time now that the house is full? Goodbye,” said Eve.

The afternoon sun seemed to Eve to be shining a little less brightly as they started down the drive.

She was a kindhearted girl, and it irked her to have to be continually acting as a black frost in Freddie’s garden of dreams.

There appeared, however, to be but two ways out of the thing: either she must accept him or he must stop proposing.

“I merely say ‘Think it over.’ It is nothing to cause you mental distress. Other men love you. Freddie Threepwood loves you. Just add me to the list. That is all I ask. Muse on me from time to time.

Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them.

Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would an olive. Consider, also, how little you actually have against me. What, indeed, does it amount to, when you come to examine it narrowly?

But in all its career it can seldom have looked more of a fortress to anyone than it did now to the Efficient Baxter.

One of the disadvantages of being a man of action, impervious to the softer emotions, is that in moments of trial the beauties of Nature are powerless to soothe the anguished heart.

Had Baxter been of a dreamy and poetic temperament he might now have been drawing all sorts of balm from the loveliness of his surroundings. The air was full of the scent of growing things;

but the outstanding point on which his mind focused itself was the fact that the man had had the right idea. This was no time for pebbles. Pebbles were feeble and inadequate.

With one voice the birds, the breezes, the grasshoppers, the whole chorus of Nature waking to another day seemed to shout to him, “Say it with flowerpots!”

The ability to sleep soundly and deeply is the prerogative, as has been pointed out earlier in this straightforward narrative of the simple home-life of the English upper classes, of those who do not think quickly.

I know you will say that you can take it or leave it alone; that just one more pot won’t hurt you; but can you stop at one?

Isn’t it just that first insidious flowerpot that does all the mischief?

Be a man, Comrade Baxter!” He laid his hand appealingly on the secretary’s shoulder. “The next time the craving comes on you, fight it. Fight it! Are you, the heir of the ages, going to become a slave to a habit? Tush!

I am like that.

My friends have frequently told me that when once I start talking it requires something in the nature of a cataclysm to stop me.

But, of course, there are drawbacks to everything, and last night’s rannygazoo perhaps shook your nervous system to some extent?”

Come, Miss Halliday. A weird and repellent female,” he said to Eve as they drew out of hearing, “created for some purpose which I cannot fathom.

Everything in this world, I like to think, is placed there for some useful end: but why the authorities unleashed Miss Peavey on us is beyond me.

It is not too much to say that she gives me a pain in the gizzard.”

Eve went in. The single sitting-room of the cottage certainly bore out the promise of the exterior. It contained a table with a red cloth, a chair, three stuffed birds in a glass case on the wall, and a small horsehair sofa.

A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.

Eve gave a little shiver of distaste.

As she walked on the terrace, to which she had fled in quest of solitude, her teeth were set and her blue eyes glowed belligerently. As Miss Peavey would have put it in one of her colloquial moods, she was mad clear through.

For Eve was a girl of spirit, and there is nothing your girl of spirit so keenly resents as being made a fool of, whether it be by Fate or by a fellow human creature.

Eve was in the uncomfortable position of having had this indignity put upon her by both. But, while as far as Fate was concerned she merely smouldered rebelliously, her animosity towards Psmith was vivid in the extreme.

If he had asked for a necklace and been given a dead bat, he was surely more to be pitied than censured. Yet Eve, eyeing his grimy face, would have given very much to have been able to scream loudly and throw something at him.

The fact was, the Hon. Freddie belonged to that unfortunate type of humanity which automatically gets blamed for everything in moments of stress.

“Well, the bally thing isn’t here,” said Freddie. He spoke thickly, as a man will whose mouth is covered with soot.

For the first time in the proceedings a spirit of disaffection seemed to manifest itself in the bosom of her assistant. Up till this moment Freddie had taken his orders placidly and executed them with promptness and civility.

Even when the first shower of soot had driven him choking from the fireplace, his manly spirit had not been crushed; he had merely uttered a startled “Oh, I say!” and returned gallantly to the attack.

But now he obviously hesitated.

For, impervious as she might be to the intimidation of beetles, her armour still contained a chink. She was terribly afraid of rats. And even when the rays of the lamp disclosed no scuttling horrors, she still lingered for a moment before descending.

You never knew with rats. They pretended not to be there just to lure you on, and then came out and whizzed about your ankles.

However, the memory of her scorn for Freddie’s pusillanimity forced her on, and she went down.

but a rough theory which would account for Freddie’s presence in his home-from-home he had been able to work out. He groped in vain for one which would explain Eve.

Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking.

He began at once.

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. There’s not much sense in pretending now, is there? What is your name?”

“Psmith. The p is silent.”

“Well, Mr. Smith, I imagine you understand why I am here?”

“You will be if you stick around a while.”

“A thousand congratulations to Comrade Cootes. Not quite so many to you, possibly, but fully that number of good wishes.”

He moved towards the poetess with extended hand. “I am thinking of getting married myself shortly.”

And one of these days, perhaps, when I too am married, you and Comrade Cootes will come and visit us in our little home. You will receive a hearty, unaffected welcome.

You must not be offended if, just before you say goodbye, we count the spoons.

”

“Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been Mrs. McTodd.”

“Cynthia told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return, six times since they were married.”

“May I mention—in passing—” said Psmith, “that I do not like chicken giblets?”