Windowpanes on alert
From Mr Michael Grosvenor Myer Sir: Gerald Warner (Sight of fashion', 17 May) is in error in saying that Bertram Wooster's eyeglass (or monocle) 'eludes detection in the text'. In the story 'The Spot of Art' in Very Good, Jeeves (1930), Bertie is horrified to find that his portrait has been used to advertise Slingsby's Soup: 'There I sat absolutely slavering through a monocle about six inches in circumference at a plateful of soup.'
I was surprised to find no reference to Lord Peter Wimsey in the article, or to the delightful piece of other-rank slang (quoted in Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore, for example) whereby an eyeglass-wearing officer was known as 'a windowpane'.
I'm a windowpane myself: perhaps Mr Warner would let me know when he founds his Cyclops Club.
Michael Grosvenor Myer Hadden ham, Cambridge
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