Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM
Sun Oct 17 13:41:20 UTC 2010


From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>

> Surely Hitchock, like most literate Britons, knew the difference between a
> mongoose and a McGuffin. (Mongooses figure prominently in both Kipling and
> Saki.) This, even more than the footnote, suggests that he'd heard the
> story

If you're thinking of "Sredni Vashtar", the creature in question was
actually, "a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once
smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters."

The first google hit on <saki mongoose> does, however, mistakenly reference
this story: "Talking animals are trouble with a capital T.   If you've never
read Saki's mongoose tale "Sredni Vashtar" you might as well read it now.
... "  (The bloody animal doesn't talk either, though Conradin talks to it
obsessively.)

Both Saki and Kipling were, of course, afflicted by aunts, one of whom
figures in this Saki story.

(If for nothing else, Saki deserves immortality for his final words, uttered
in the dying days of the Great Patriotic War, "Put out that bloody
cigarette."  He had joined up as Other Ranks, suggesting that the class
loyalty expressed in his stories was as ambiguously complex as was
Kipling's.  I always thought of him as a bit like his own Unbearable
Bassington.)

Despite that above caveat, I think Jon's point substantively stands --
unlikely that Hitchcock, given his background, would confuse a mongoose with
a M'Guffin.

Robin

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