Past Life
Before Spode inherited the title of Earl of Sidcup from his uncle, he made a living as the "founder and proprietor of the emporium in Bond Street known as Eulalie Soeurs", a famed designer of ladies' lingerie.
Out of embarrassment, Spode had long attempted to keep his ownership of the business a secret, though Jeeves discovered the fact in the Junior Ganymede Club's official Book, where one of Spode's former valets had inscribed it.
In The Code of the Woosters, this discovery allowed Bertie to threaten Spode with public embarrassment and prevent the threatened "jellying process." As Bertie says, "You can't be a successful Dictator and design women's underclothing. One or the other. Not both." Indeed, whenever Spode sees Bertie after the point where Bertie mentions the name "Eulalie," Spode instantly becomes meek and acquiescing.
Bertie plans to use the same stratagem in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit to prevent Spode – who is an expert on jewellery – from revealing that Aunt Dahlia's pearl necklace is in fact a fake (she pawned the real one to raise money for her magazine, Milady's Boudoir). Before he attempts the blackmail, however, Spode dashes his hopes by telling Bertie that he has sold Eulalie Soeurs. It is left up to Aunt Dahlia to save the day by actually coshing Spode herself.
After elevating his Spode character to the peerage, Wodehouse often used Bertie’s failure to remember Spode’s new status, and subsequent incredulity when reminded of it, to great comic effect. A notable comic occasion is when Bertie, having carelessly knocked a vase of flowers onto Madeline Bassett (whose shriek causes Spode to intervene), addresses Spode as "Lord Spodecup".
Read more about this topic: Roderick Spode
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The goal in raising one’s child is to enable him, first, to discover who he wants to be, and then to become a person who can be satisfied with himself and his way of life. Eventually he ought to be able to do in his life whatever seems important, desirable, and worthwhile to him to do; to develop relations with other people that are constructive, satisfying, mutually enriching; and to bear up well under the stresses and hardships he will unavoidably encounter during his life.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)