Bertie Wooster on the mischief-making talents of a certain redhead

Aunt Dahlia, describing this young blister as a one-girl beauty chorus, had called her shots perfectly correctly.  Her outer crust was indeed of a nature to cause those beholding it to rock back on their heels with a startled whistle.  But while equipped with eyes like twin stars, hair ruddier than the cherry, oomph, espieglerie and all the fixings, B. Wickham had also the disposition and general outlook on life of a ticking bomb.  In her society you always had the feeling that something was likely to go off at any moment with a pop.  You never knew what she was going to do next or into what murky depths of soup she would carelessly plunge you.

…In a word, Roberta, daughter of the late Sir Cuthbert and Lady Wickham of Skeldings Hall, Herts, was pure dynamite and better kept at a distance by all those who aimed at leading the peaceful life.

---from How Right You Are, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

ah, bertie. such a scamp. an observant scamp, with a flair for nutshell, spot on descriptions of character, but a scamp, nonetheless.

[muddy]

I've always wondered if there is something genetically inherent in a redhead to be like this, or whether it's a habit ingrained from a lifetime of people just expecting that one will pop off at any given moment. One tends to try to rise to the expectations of those around you, how disappointing for them, really, if one didn't give them what they were so clearly looking for.

I can't tell you how many places I have appeared over the years where people were instantly terrorized of me and all I had done was say hello. They hadn't even witnessed me going off on someone else, but somehow, they were positive I would be doing it any second now, and for probably no discernible reason whatsoever!

Personally I find this sort of prejudice rather hurtful to my weak and tender fee-fees. sniff

[muddy]

Minstrel Hussain Boy,
I have to agree with you about Bertie. So delightfully amiable, yet so deserving of a good smack.

[Linkmeister]

A scamp? Perhaps, but one of his aunts used an even more descriptive phrase: "Bertie! You foul blot on the landscape!"

[Linkmeister]

Ah. Courtesy of B&N's excerpting capability: from Chapter One of the very book Lance cites, here's the exact quotation I was thinking of. Aunt Dahlia, responding to Bertie's greeting: "And a rousing toodle-oo to you, you young blot on the landscape"

[MaryRC]

And Aunt Dahlia was the one who was fond of him! I don't think she would ever call Bertie "foul", though. That was more Aunt Agatha's style.