Bertie,
I enclose my comments below. I have kept my promise of being kind.
Love,
Stiffy
Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia, popular in the idle rich circles of England as Lady Dahlia Travers was preoccupied with a slump in the sales of her magazine Milady’s Boudoir. Bertie’s self-proclaimed ‘article of some magnificence’ on fashion named ‘What the well-dressed gentleman is wearing’ was not enough to revive sales. No one except Bertie was surprised.
Meanwhile Aunt Dahlia wondered if a distinct lack of glamour was hurting the sales of her Milady’s Boudoir magazine.
Inspiration stuck. It is not known whether it was in the bathtub or under a tree.
She had glamour available at her disposal. Baroness Pauline Stoker, wife of Baron Marmaduke ‘Chuffy’ Chuffnell, and a regular guest of Aunt Dahlia and Lord Tom Travers at Brinkley’s Court was persuaded to pose for a cover. Sales increased. The follow up was the masterstroke. She persuaded Lady Roberta Wickham, to pose for a cover picture. It would feature her reading the previous edition with Baroness Pauline on the cover picture. An overdose of glamour in successive editions!
Triumph followed.
Aunt Dahlia knew it when she spied on Sir Roderick Glossop quietly examining the cover whilst taking tea on the Brinkley lawns. The great psychiatrist afterwards maintained that he had merely been admiring the typography. Nobody, not even Jeeves, appeared persuaded.
Her daughter, Lady Angela Travers, considered the issue perfectly respectable until she observed Tuppy Glossop lingering over the cover for what she described as “an unconscionable amount of time.” A cushion travelled rapidly across the lawn and made excellent contact with his head. Tuppy has since maintained that he was only appreciating the quality of the printing.
It appears that men become remarkably interested in typography whenever Aunt Dahlia publishes one of these editions.
One copy mysteriously found its way into the Department of Classical Literature at T_______ College. The professors declared that it had been retained purely for scholarly comparison with the artistic traditions of antiquity. Several undergraduates were observed conducting unusually thorough comparative studies.
Pongo later informed me that one excitable young Duke proposed that Lady Roberta Wickham should immediately be appointed to the Foreign Office. His reasoning was that any lady capable of causing this degree of distraction without leaving her drawing room possessed diplomatic talents that simply could not be ignored. The proposal was discussed in Whitehall before luncheon and quietly withdrawn after representations were received from the wives of several senior diplomats.
Well, that is Bobbie for you.
I confess that I am less interested in the magazine sales than in the confessions which must surely have trebled throughout Market Snodsbury and elsewhere during the following week.
Aunt Dahlia has tried many methods of increasing circulation. None has ever rivalled the simple expedient of allowing gentlemen to imagine themselves connoisseurs of typography.
P.S. Aunt Dahlia commissioned another photograph after spending an afternoon reading Mary Wollstonecraft. Having examined the result over tea with Viscountess R________, the two ladies concluded that London already had sufficient matters of national importance to contend with. It was their considered opinion that publication of the photograph would have reduced the productive capacity of England for at least a month and might well have spread to one or two neighbouring nations.
I have seen the photograph. Speaking as a woman, I can only report that their fears were not unreasonable.
Aunt Dahlia therefore abandoned the idea of placing it upon the cover of Milady’s Boudoir. Instead, she posted the photograph to Bertie with instructions that he keep it somewhere safe.
I understand Jeeves immediately transferred it from Bertie’s possession to the household safe. Experience has taught him that there are some objects which even Mr. Wooster ought not to leave lying about.
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