The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

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Topical Guide 459

peterleroy.substack.com
A Topical Guide to the Personal History

Topical Guide 459

Mark Dorset

Eric Kraft
Mar 27, 2023
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Topical Guide 459

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pershistitlesmall.jpg

Foreshadowing

Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:

     “Are you ready, Matthew?” calls Belinda from the top of the stairs.
     He takes another swallow of the drink, throws a grin at Leila. “Now I am,” he says. “Shall I close my eyes?”
     “No, no. I want to make an entrance.”
     So it’s clothing, Matthew thinks. A dress, probably, something daring that she wouldn’t ordinarily buy herself. Good. Great. He has often wished she would wear something slinky now and then, and this is the perfect night for it.

Language: Idioms: Tug the (One’s) Forelock

Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:

     The cabdriver, who has been watching for them, gets out of the cab — it would be fair to say that he leaps out of the cab — and comes around to open the door. This has never happened to Matthew before in his life. The driver begins sweeping at the seat with his hand, and saying something in so low a voice that Matthew can’t be quite sure what it is, but it sounds to him like “’Scuse me, ’scuse me. Sorry, sorry. Dirty, dirty.” Matthew and Belinda get into the cab, astonished. They look at each other, raise their eyebrows, struggle to keep themselves from laughing.
     “If he were wearing a cap,” Matthew whispers, “he would have touched it. And if he weren’t bald, he would have tugged his forelock.”

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary:

tug/touch one’s forelock
idiom
British, disapproving
: to be too concerned with pleasing someone whom one thinks is powerful or important

Thomas Nast, Household Edition: Uncaptioned Frontispiece — A Welcoming Sam Weller. Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. Via The Victorian Web.

See also:
Foreshadowing TG 63; TG 84; TG 127; TG 128; TG 140; TG 142; TG 147
Language TG 11; Language: Dialect, Slang, Idiolect, Shibboleths, Jargon TG 137; Language: Slang, Insults, Terms of Abuse TG 140; Slang TG 169; Language and Languages: Learning and Translating TG 393; Language: Idiolect, Private Meanings and References, Code Words TG 373

Pasted Graphic.tiff

In the evening, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

  • You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

  • You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

  • You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.

  • You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

  • At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.

  • You’ll find overviews of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.

The serialization of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy is supported by its readers. I sometimes earn affiliate fees when you click through the affiliate links in a post. EK
The illustration in the banner that opens each episode is from an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions.
www.erickraft.com
www.babbingtonpress.com

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Topical Guide 459

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