One the many hilarious phrases by P.G. Wodehouse that I remember is ``a dignified procession of one'' describing the butler entering a room. It appeared in ``Leave it to Psmith'' which was first published in the UK in 1923. See also PG Wodehouse's creative writing lessons from the Guardian's PG Wodehouse Reading group.
The other day, I read about another novel, ``I live under a black sun'' by Edith Sitwell, in ``Facades:
Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell'' by John George Pearson. There, on page 324, is a quote from ``I live under a black sun'' describing a character, based on her father, as ``pacing around the house like a procession of one person''.
This aroused my curiosity about who used this funny expression first: clearly it was not Edith Sitwell because ``I live under a black sun'' was first published in 1937, well after ``Leave it to Psmith'' (1923).
However, it turns out that the expression is much older: thanks to Project Gutenberg
, it is easy to find an e-book version of ``The Diary of a Goose Girl'' published in 1902 by the author of children's stories Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin where it occurs in the following sentence about a cock:
In short, I dislike him; his swagger, his autocratic strut, his greed, his irritating self-consciousness, his endless parading of himself up and down in a procession of one.
It should be noted that there is also a relatively recent (2000) book with the title ``A Procession of One'' by Evelyn Hood.
I wonder whether Edith Sitwell picked up the phrase from P.G. Wodehouse or from Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, and whether P.G. Wodehouse was inspired by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin. Not that it matters, of the 3 books, ``Leave it to Psmith'' is probably the only one that stood the test of time and is still strongly recommended reading, as are most books by P.G. Wodehouse.
