Keeping it from Harold

by

P.G. Wodehouse

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Harold Bramble Character Analysis

Harold Bramble is a precocious ten-year-old boy whom his parents call “a model of goodness and intelligence.” He has won prizes for his spelling and dictation as well as his Sunday school lessons, and he spends his afternoons memorizing poetry and Scripture verses. His father Bill considers Harold “a little gentleman” and believes the boy “would die of shame” if he knew his father boxed for a living. Luckily for Bill, Harold is a “self-centred child” who doesn’t question his parents’ fiction that Bill is a salesman. However, Bill is proven wrong in believing that Harold would “die of the disgrace” at having a professional boxer for a father. In fact, the boy shocks his parents by declaring that he has “made a study” of the sport since a young age and is betting on his father as “Young Porky” to win his upcoming bout with Jimmy Murphy. If anything, Harold is dying for Bill to give him a signed picture so that he can impress all his friends and shed the nickname “Goggles.”

Harold Bramble Quotes in Keeping it from Harold

The Keeping it from Harold quotes below are all either spoken by Harold Bramble or refer to Harold Bramble. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Morality and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
).
Keeping it from Harold Quotes

He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.

“‘Be good, sweet maid,’” he began, with the toneless rapidity affected by youths of his age when reciting poetry, “‘and let who will be clever’—clever, oh yes—‘do noble things, not dream them’—dream them, oh yes—‘dream them all day long; and so make life, death, and that vast f’rever, one’—oh yes—‘one grand, sweet song.’”

Related Characters: Harold Bramble (speaker), Jane Bramble
Related Symbols: Glass/Goggles
Explanation and Analysis:

And then Harold had come into his life, and changed him into a furtive practiser of shady deeds. Before, he had gone about the world with a match-box full of press-notices, which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances. Now, he quailed at the sight of his name in print, so thoroughly had he become imbued with the necessity of keeping it from Harold.

Related Characters: Bill Bramble (speaker), Harold Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“He’s seen the error of his ways,” cried Percy, the resilient. “That’s what he’s gone and done. At the eleventh hour it has been vouchsafed to me to snatch the brand from the burning. Oh! I have waited for this joyful moment. I have watched for it. I—”

Related Characters: Major Percy Stokes (speaker), Harold Bramble, Jane Bramble, Bill Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“Goodness knows I’ve never liked your profession, Bill, but there is this to be said for it, that it’s earned you good money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any duke ever had, I’m sure. And you know yourself you said that the five hundred pounds you were going to get if you beat this Murphy, and even if you lost it would be a hundred and twenty, was going to be a blessing, because it would let us finish him off proper and give him a better start in life than you or me ever had.”

Related Characters: Jane Bramble (speaker), Harold Bramble, Bill Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“There’s a fellow at our school who goes about swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Bombardier Wells’s autograph. Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it to me. That’s what makes me so jolly sick. How long do you suppose they’d go on calling me ‘Goggles’ if they knew that you were my father?”

Related Characters: Harold Bramble (speaker), Bill Bramble
Related Symbols: Glass/Goggles
Explanation and Analysis:
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Keeping it from Harold PDF

Harold Bramble Quotes in Keeping it from Harold

The Keeping it from Harold quotes below are all either spoken by Harold Bramble or refer to Harold Bramble. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Morality and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
).
Keeping it from Harold Quotes

He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.

“‘Be good, sweet maid,’” he began, with the toneless rapidity affected by youths of his age when reciting poetry, “‘and let who will be clever’—clever, oh yes—‘do noble things, not dream them’—dream them, oh yes—‘dream them all day long; and so make life, death, and that vast f’rever, one’—oh yes—‘one grand, sweet song.’”

Related Characters: Harold Bramble (speaker), Jane Bramble
Related Symbols: Glass/Goggles
Explanation and Analysis:

And then Harold had come into his life, and changed him into a furtive practiser of shady deeds. Before, he had gone about the world with a match-box full of press-notices, which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances. Now, he quailed at the sight of his name in print, so thoroughly had he become imbued with the necessity of keeping it from Harold.

Related Characters: Bill Bramble (speaker), Harold Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“He’s seen the error of his ways,” cried Percy, the resilient. “That’s what he’s gone and done. At the eleventh hour it has been vouchsafed to me to snatch the brand from the burning. Oh! I have waited for this joyful moment. I have watched for it. I—”

Related Characters: Major Percy Stokes (speaker), Harold Bramble, Jane Bramble, Bill Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“Goodness knows I’ve never liked your profession, Bill, but there is this to be said for it, that it’s earned you good money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any duke ever had, I’m sure. And you know yourself you said that the five hundred pounds you were going to get if you beat this Murphy, and even if you lost it would be a hundred and twenty, was going to be a blessing, because it would let us finish him off proper and give him a better start in life than you or me ever had.”

Related Characters: Jane Bramble (speaker), Harold Bramble, Bill Bramble
Explanation and Analysis:

“There’s a fellow at our school who goes about swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Bombardier Wells’s autograph. Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it to me. That’s what makes me so jolly sick. How long do you suppose they’d go on calling me ‘Goggles’ if they knew that you were my father?”

Related Characters: Harold Bramble (speaker), Bill Bramble
Related Symbols: Glass/Goggles
Explanation and Analysis: