wiki-illiam #107: q12

[dubdobdee]

Unmask:

i: Rosa
I've seen SB's tentative answer to this, but it has vanished! Sean can you repost it (SB via googlebooks)
ii: Aymer
Aymer is VALLANCE in Free Fishers (SB via googlebooks)
iii: Reinmar
Reinmar is DR CHRISTOPH in "The Loathly Opposite", a story in The Runagates Club (SB via googlebooks)
iv: Clarence Donne
The Graf OTTO VON SCHWABING, Richard Hannay's foe in various John Buchan novels, was an officer of the Imperial Guard and German spy notorious good with disguise: in Mr Standfast he poses as a Kansan journalist called Clarence Donne (RB via google)
v: Alexander Thomson
SANDY ARBUTHNOT uses this name in The Three Hostages (BBP, google)
vi: Captain Theophilus Digby
In Buchan's The 39 Steps, A freelance spy called Franklin P. Scudder calls on Hannay to ask for help, but is murdered -- the corpse is given the name Digby for reasons I can't recall (PJ)
vii: Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson is ALASTAIR MACLEAN in Midwinter (SB via googlebooks)
viii: James Smith
James Smith is VALDEMAR HARALDSEN in The Island of Sheep
(SB via googlebooks)
ix: Newsom
In The House of the Four Winds, Newsom the chauffeur is really PRINCE JOHN (DDD via googlebooks)
x: Tuke
In Power-house, Tuke is really ROUTH (DDD via googlebooks)

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(apologies: have had slightly busy couple of days, and ditto today: will try and catch up on strikeouts/answers -- and post ketchup -- 2moro)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

v: byebyepride to thread!

[petra jane (from livejournal.com)]

Digby is a corpse in Buchanan's 39 Steps.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

And Dan Dare's right hand man.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I think there's a standing rule in this quiz that if it could possibly be related to John Buchan, it is :)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

The only Tuke I can think of is the painter of impressionist homoerotic young men, and I can't see how he might be unmasked....

[petra jane (from livejournal.com)]

Was 'Tuke' a nom de...er, brush?

In The 39 Steps, the corpse of Captain Digby is mistaken for a man called Scudder, so I'm assuming that 'unmask' means 'reveal the true/secret identity of', Scooby Doo style.

[petra jane (from livejournal.com)]

...in which case James Smith must be LL Cool J (I went to all this effort to memorise pop stars' real names for pub quizzes and I'll be damned if I don't get to use them! Someone ask me abt Bob Zimmerman and James Osterman, quick!)

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Is googlism allowed yet? If so, then this (http://bit.ly/y236m5) reveals both the answer to iv and the theme.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Fine to google now I think -- the next question is up! and plus we've done quite poorly on this one so far. Is it real names of characters w/pseudonyms in the novels of Buchan? Or do we just have two Buchans solved and no others. (There is a Prior Aymer in Ivanhoe but I don't think he's in disguise, though several other people are in that book.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

x: "I thanked him and rang off. That was settled, anyhow. Tuke's real name was Routh, and it was Tuke who had gone to Bokhara"

Power-house, John Buchan, p41, via googlebooks

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ix: "It was Newsom the chauffeur, transfigured beyond belief. He had become a younger man,. for exertion had coloured his pallid skin, his whiskers had disappeared, and his touzled hair had lost its touch of grey (...) 'You saved my life,' she cried. 'The shot was meant for me. You are a hero. Oh, tell me your name.' He turned took her hand, bent over it and kissed it. 'I am Prince John, ' he said, 'and I think you are going to be kind enough to help me to a throne."

The House of the Four Winds, John Buchan, p134, via googlebooks

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

v) Google unmasks me as a disguise worn by Sandy Arbuthnot in The Three Hostages! I'm honoured.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

viii is VALDEMAR HARALDSEN in The Island of Sheep.

"Then she broke to me what I should never have suspected, that there was another guest in the Rose and Crown ... Name of Smith, Mr James Smith"

"I remember trying to imagine what kind of fellow I should meet, and to reconstruct a younger version of old Haraldsen.
I got one of the shocks of my life when he appeared. For it was the man Smith, whom Peter John and I had met in the Rose and Crown at Hanham"

"So at twenty-six there was Valdemar Haraldsen"

Google Books.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

vii is ALASTAIR MACLEAN in Midwinter

"Andrew Watson they call me. A merchant of Newcastle"
"You have nothing to fear among the moor-men of the Seven Towns. Take your ease, Alistair Maclean, among friends
The traveller, thus unexpectedly unveiled, could find no words for his astonishment"

Google books.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

iii) Is DR CHRISTOPH in "The Loathly Opposite", a story in The Runagates Club.

"Dr. Christoph had gone as medical officer in November '14 to the Ypres Salient with a Saxon regiment, and had spent the winter there. In '15 he had been in Champagne, and in the early months of '16 at Verdun, till he was invalided with rheumatic fever."

"I assumed that this home duty was medical, until he said something about getting rusty in his professional work. Then it appeared that it had been some job connected with Intelligence. 'I am reputed to have a little talent for mathematics,' he said. 'No. I am no mathematical scholar, but, if you understand me, I have a certain mathematical aptitude. My mind has always moved happily among numbers. Therefore I was set to construct and to interpret cyphers, a strange interlude in the noise of war. I sat in a little room and excluded the world, and for a little I was happy.'"

"I had a sudden inspiration.

"I took a sheet of note-paper from the stand, scribbled the word Reinmar on it, and shoved it towards him."

"But it was I who got the big surprise. He stopped thunderstruck, as soon as his eye caught the word, blushed scarlet over every inch of face and bald forehead, seemed to have difficulty in swallowing, and then gasped. 'How did you know?'"

Google Books and
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301381h.html#c06

[sbp.livejournal.com]

ii Aymer is VALLANCE in Free Fishers

"The other was the man I had known at Bruges as Aymer and whose name in London had been Vallance."

Google books

[sbp.livejournal.com]

i) is probably JO(HN) LELAND JUNIOR (or just John Leland)

The phrase "Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum" appears in Buchan's The Blanket Of The Dark:

" "One of the blind eyes and dumb mouths that have Oxford for their stepmother. I have forgot what Oxford is like ... Is the hand that leads you up Parnassus that of old John Leland? Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum--it is so long since I heard it I have lost the jingle."

The History And Antiquities Of The University Of Oxford by Anthony Wood says:

"this verse [as above] was made upon him, which with some alteration was fastned upon Jo. Leland Junior ... it runs thus:
Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland flos fatuorum"

So it was a slightly altered version.

Google books and
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301411h.html

[sbp.livejournal.com]

i) is probably JO(HN) LELAND JUNIOR (or just John Leland)

The phrase "Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum" appears in Buchan's The Blanket Of The Dark:

" "One of the blind eyes and dumb mouths that have Oxford for their stepmother. I have forgot what Oxford is like ... Is the hand that leads you up Parnassus that of old John Leland? Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland grammaticorum--it is so long since I heard it I have lost the jingle."

The History And Antiquities Of The University Of Oxford by Anthony Wood says:

"this verse [as above] was made upon him, which with some alteration was fastned upon Jo. Leland Junior ... it runs thus:
Ut rosa flos florum sic Leland flos fatuorum"

So it was a slightly altered version.

Google books and
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301411h.html