Are we now more ignorant than Bertie Wooster? Orwell, in his essay defending P.G. Wodehouse, noted that when ‘he describes somebody as heaving “the kind of sigh that Prometheus might have heaved when the vulture dropped in for its lunch”, he is assuming that his readers will know something of Greek mythology’.
Orwell characterised such references as deriving from a ‘traditional education’. I’ve been looking at the Ukridge novel, Love Among the Chickens (revised 1921), with the help of the indefatigable Trevor Mordue’s internet source notes. Bertie had, of course, as a boy won the Scripture Knowledge prize, and, even though his biblical references are not recherché, few of the friends I’ve tried can place them.
Love Among the Chickens has three to the First Book of Samuel: ‘son of Belial’ (ii 12), ‘the Lord has delivered’ (xiv 12), and a mention of the friendship of David and Jonathan (xviii 1–4).
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