T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
I don't have some great message or pearls of wisdom to impart this time - I just thought I'd cheer you all up with a good story!
And let's face it, with the state of politics and business in general, we bloody well need cheering up!
After the war, my mother, once an Austrian baroness, was reduced to living in a council flat and serving at the local petrol station. As a result, she became obsessed with status and money, largely because we had neither! So I grew up, surrounded by grinding poverty, money worries and family heirlooms that looked remarkably out of place in a coal-fired council flat in Wandsworth.
Occasionally, we were invited to visit branches of my father's family that had not fallen on hard times and this was a real eye-opener for me. Especially the regular visits to one uncle who lived in a real mansion in Scotland.
It was straight out of PG Wodehouse. The whole bit. Servants, grounds, huge house, butler, cook, you name it and they had it. Every time I read a story about Bertie Wooster or the Earl of Emsworth, I picture my uncle and aunt. When I read of butlers serving drinks in the afternoon and cooks working in large kitchens with several wood-fired stoves, I can say that I was there. When I think of Cyril Wellbeloved, the pig-man with no roof to his mouth (in the story ‘Pig-Hooye!’) I can honestly say that I have met that man, or rather his Scottish counterpart, Eric!
Critics of the stories of PG Wodehouse are often to be heard, claiming that his stories are far fetched. No country gentleman is as woolly as the Earl of Emsworth, no aunt as ghastly as Aunt Agatha, no American as vulgar and brash as Donaldson of ‘Donaldson’s Dog-Joy.’ Trust me, I have met them all and, I hasten to add, in my most formative years - if anything, PG's world was but a pale reflection of the real thing!
I met an Earl up there that drove around Scotland in his Austin A35 with a large pig lying on the back seat. He had two sons, one of whom converted to Islam and called himself Mustaffa Abdul; the other put on a floral dress and told the world that he is now The Prophet Uma.
I have even met Baxter, the Efficient One! More than once, come to think of it!
But back to my story - PG Wodehouse describes (in his book ‘Over Seventy - a letter to JP Winkler’) that he once saw a butler almost laugh when PG’s trousers rode up over his shirt whilst trying to sup soup. In Wodehouse’s stories, butlers never laugh, but merely raise an eyebrow or twitch the corner of a lip very, very slightly.
Butlers it seems are subject to a strict code. They may twinkle an eye or two, but only slightly. Rather like those gentlemen that stand guard at the entrance to hotels, wearing the uniform of an admiral in the Romanian Navy, laughing is against 'The Code'.
But in the story I am about to tell you, I once, when just a lad of some nine or ten Summers, saw a butler reduced to tears of laughter.
My Aunt Ruth was visiting from New York and all the family was summoned to meet her at my uncle’s place in Scotland and stay for the weekend. Ruth was a small fat woman who wore dresses that were several sizes too small for her. She didn’t talk so much as scream at the top of her voice and in as harsh a New York accent as you could possibly imagine. Aunt Ruth hounded her husband Louis to death and then erected a huge mausoleum in his honour.
Her husband made a fortune, importing ‘herbs’ from his original home in Sicily and that whole side of the family was exclusively populated by swarthy, thick-set men with Italian-New York accents. They were all called Louis and had wives that screamed. Occasionally, I got to meet these men, referred to as Uncle Louis, Uncle Louis, or Uncle Louis, when they visited Britain on business.
“You’re a good kid!” said one Uncle Louis and thick fingers covered in gold rings and scars would push silly money into my hands, to be rescued later by my father.
“I think we’d better keep that for your education in the future.” he said and I knew he meant food and rent.
Aunt Ruth had come up to Scotland by train and immediately complained that the trains were too small and too slow. She complained about the currency. “How come there ain’t ten shillings in a pound?” she screamed.
“I tried getting a drink at a drug store and they refused to serve me!” she bellowed. “Can someone explain to me what a dime is over here? How many dimes and quarters are there in a pound?” she said in a voice that loosened the ivory handles on the family silver.
Dinner was a formal arrangement with the butler directing two serving girls, neatly turned out in black and white uniforms. The cook was the butler’s wife and she did us all proud with a magnificent meal, which had Aunt Ruth screaming for the recipe, as she dribbled her food down the front of her dress.
“I want to make this for the neighbours. They’ll love it. I make them jars of compotes, but they’ll love this soup!” and I had visions of neighbours, hiding behind their curtains, living in fear of Aunt Ruth and her compotes.
Aunt Ruth had taken a liking to the family dog, a black Pekinese called Mitsy-Moo with a red bow on its head. During the meal, some time before the venison and sour cream sauce, with roast potatoes and mixed vegetables, but after the fish, she put the dog on her lap and covered it with the edge of the table cloth, where it seemed to settle down to an intermittent meal of dribblings as Aunt Ruth failed to coordinate eating and screaming.
Meals went as meals must, from soup to nuts. After a couple of hours, the nose-bags were removed and my other aunt stood up to indicate the end of dinner. The gentlemen were invited to the library for cigars and whiskey, the ladies to the drawing room for sherry and it was suggested that I help cook in the kitchen, which was the signal for me to shoot off to kid around with the serving girls and drink mugs of steaming cocoa.
Aunt Ruth stood up and my other aunt looked at Ruth, went white in the face and said “Oh my God!”
Over her lap, there where there should have been a dress, was a huge hole where the dog had eaten it away. We were looking at stained yellowing knickers, framed by sprouting black and grey pubic hairs and yellowing suspender straps.
Aunt Ruth shrieked like a banshee wailer that's just stepped on a tin-tack.
By the time I got to the kitchen, the butler was sitting at the table, a glass of malt in his hand and tears of laughter pouring down his cheeks.
“I’ll nay see something as funny as that, as long as I live!”
And let's face it, with the state of politics and business in general, we bloody well need cheering up!
After the war, my mother, once an Austrian baroness, was reduced to living in a council flat and serving at the local petrol station. As a result, she became obsessed with status and money, largely because we had neither! So I grew up, surrounded by grinding poverty, money worries and family heirlooms that looked remarkably out of place in a coal-fired council flat in Wandsworth.
Occasionally, we were invited to visit branches of my father's family that had not fallen on hard times and this was a real eye-opener for me. Especially the regular visits to one uncle who lived in a real mansion in Scotland.
It was straight out of PG Wodehouse. The whole bit. Servants, grounds, huge house, butler, cook, you name it and they had it. Every time I read a story about Bertie Wooster or the Earl of Emsworth, I picture my uncle and aunt. When I read of butlers serving drinks in the afternoon and cooks working in large kitchens with several wood-fired stoves, I can say that I was there. When I think of Cyril Wellbeloved, the pig-man with no roof to his mouth (in the story ‘Pig-Hooye!’) I can honestly say that I have met that man, or rather his Scottish counterpart, Eric!
Critics of the stories of PG Wodehouse are often to be heard, claiming that his stories are far fetched. No country gentleman is as woolly as the Earl of Emsworth, no aunt as ghastly as Aunt Agatha, no American as vulgar and brash as Donaldson of ‘Donaldson’s Dog-Joy.’ Trust me, I have met them all and, I hasten to add, in my most formative years - if anything, PG's world was but a pale reflection of the real thing!
I met an Earl up there that drove around Scotland in his Austin A35 with a large pig lying on the back seat. He had two sons, one of whom converted to Islam and called himself Mustaffa Abdul; the other put on a floral dress and told the world that he is now The Prophet Uma.
I have even met Baxter, the Efficient One! More than once, come to think of it!
But back to my story - PG Wodehouse describes (in his book ‘Over Seventy - a letter to JP Winkler’) that he once saw a butler almost laugh when PG’s trousers rode up over his shirt whilst trying to sup soup. In Wodehouse’s stories, butlers never laugh, but merely raise an eyebrow or twitch the corner of a lip very, very slightly.
Butlers it seems are subject to a strict code. They may twinkle an eye or two, but only slightly. Rather like those gentlemen that stand guard at the entrance to hotels, wearing the uniform of an admiral in the Romanian Navy, laughing is against 'The Code'.
But in the story I am about to tell you, I once, when just a lad of some nine or ten Summers, saw a butler reduced to tears of laughter.
My Aunt Ruth was visiting from New York and all the family was summoned to meet her at my uncle’s place in Scotland and stay for the weekend. Ruth was a small fat woman who wore dresses that were several sizes too small for her. She didn’t talk so much as scream at the top of her voice and in as harsh a New York accent as you could possibly imagine. Aunt Ruth hounded her husband Louis to death and then erected a huge mausoleum in his honour.
Her husband made a fortune, importing ‘herbs’ from his original home in Sicily and that whole side of the family was exclusively populated by swarthy, thick-set men with Italian-New York accents. They were all called Louis and had wives that screamed. Occasionally, I got to meet these men, referred to as Uncle Louis, Uncle Louis, or Uncle Louis, when they visited Britain on business.
“You’re a good kid!” said one Uncle Louis and thick fingers covered in gold rings and scars would push silly money into my hands, to be rescued later by my father.
“I think we’d better keep that for your education in the future.” he said and I knew he meant food and rent.
Aunt Ruth had come up to Scotland by train and immediately complained that the trains were too small and too slow. She complained about the currency. “How come there ain’t ten shillings in a pound?” she screamed.
“I tried getting a drink at a drug store and they refused to serve me!” she bellowed. “Can someone explain to me what a dime is over here? How many dimes and quarters are there in a pound?” she said in a voice that loosened the ivory handles on the family silver.
Dinner was a formal arrangement with the butler directing two serving girls, neatly turned out in black and white uniforms. The cook was the butler’s wife and she did us all proud with a magnificent meal, which had Aunt Ruth screaming for the recipe, as she dribbled her food down the front of her dress.
“I want to make this for the neighbours. They’ll love it. I make them jars of compotes, but they’ll love this soup!” and I had visions of neighbours, hiding behind their curtains, living in fear of Aunt Ruth and her compotes.
Aunt Ruth had taken a liking to the family dog, a black Pekinese called Mitsy-Moo with a red bow on its head. During the meal, some time before the venison and sour cream sauce, with roast potatoes and mixed vegetables, but after the fish, she put the dog on her lap and covered it with the edge of the table cloth, where it seemed to settle down to an intermittent meal of dribblings as Aunt Ruth failed to coordinate eating and screaming.
Meals went as meals must, from soup to nuts. After a couple of hours, the nose-bags were removed and my other aunt stood up to indicate the end of dinner. The gentlemen were invited to the library for cigars and whiskey, the ladies to the drawing room for sherry and it was suggested that I help cook in the kitchen, which was the signal for me to shoot off to kid around with the serving girls and drink mugs of steaming cocoa.
Aunt Ruth stood up and my other aunt looked at Ruth, went white in the face and said “Oh my God!”
Over her lap, there where there should have been a dress, was a huge hole where the dog had eaten it away. We were looking at stained yellowing knickers, framed by sprouting black and grey pubic hairs and yellowing suspender straps.
Aunt Ruth shrieked like a banshee wailer that's just stepped on a tin-tack.
By the time I got to the kitchen, the butler was sitting at the table, a glass of malt in his hand and tears of laughter pouring down his cheeks.
“I’ll nay see something as funny as that, as long as I live!”
