Right Ho, Duckie

Life can be curious in many ways, not least in the adulation of inanimate objects. The archetypal fluffy duckling has inspired countless interpretation in art and manufacturing ~ not least the toy retail industry. It's not known exactly when or where the first modern mass produced duckling was made. Could it have been the United States of America or Great Britain in the 1890s... By the interwar time, novelty ducks were well known enough to feature in print and film. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, universally known as PG Wodehouse was born on 15th October 1881 and died 14th February 1975. His family background was rooted in Norfolk. The Wodehouse motto is simply "Agincourt!" hollered in perpetual rememberance of the clan's involvement in Henry The Fifth's successful dynastic and territorial battle across the channel in France. Much of PG Wodehouse's ingenious witty writing was based, or inspired by Norfolk county characters and settings, such as Blandings Castle. The venerated Jeeves and Wooster yarns pivot around the misadventures of Bertie Wooster, a gentleman of leisure who frequents the deeply ironically named 'Drones Club' in the West End of London. Jeeves is Bertie's unflinching valet and all round fixer of farcical situations which regularly arise. Wodehouse's endearing stories, especially Jeeves and Wooster present a looking glass of human foibles, frightfulness and frolics. In an overwrought era, the light hearted tales are a tonic to those who discover, or even rediscover them. Wodehouse's second novel in the Jeeves and Wooster series 'Right Ho, Jeeves' features a toy duckling in chapter 9. Bertie finds the cheery novelty bird while bathing in a country pile. The duckie is very likely made of rubber or phenolic ~ an earlier form of plastic. ~ "The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram." Right Ho, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse, 1934 🐤 Moulded yellow phenolic duckling with hand painted eyes and bill, 1940 ~1950, stamped MADE IN ENGLAND underneath. * Moulded yellow phenolic duckling with hand painted eyes and bill, 1940 ~1950, stamped MADE IN ENGLAND underneath