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:
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The child to be concerned about is the one who is actively unhappy, [in school].... In the long run, a child’s emotional development has a far greater impact on his life than his school performance or the curriculum’s richness, so it is wise to do everything possible to change a situation in which a child is suffering excessively.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)