British English question: What does it mean to call someone a "trap"?

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

There’s a scene in Brideshead Revisited, where, IIRC, some of the characters are itemizing a number of wedding presents, and there comes a snatch of dialog more or less as follows:

@paraphrased from Brideshead Revisited

"I thought Bertha Van Holt was safe for a good present. What do you think she gave? A 15-shilling book token.

"Bertha Van Holt is a well-known trap.

Evidently from the context it means a cheapskate, but what puzzles me is that I’ve never encountered the expression anywhere else. Was it something that was only used for a few years among a very limited class of people? Is it an example of what the author calls “Pont Street slang?”

[seosamh]

Sorry, chief: I’ve lived in the Smoke almost all my life (so far) and never heard the word used in that way. Pont Street is slap bang in Belgravia, half way along Sloane Street, and therefore incredibly posh. I suspect that, if it existed at all, it was only used by toffs.

I’d have thought that fifteen bob in them days was quite a lot of dosh…

[Cunctator]

I agree with seosamh. I’d have thought that 15 shillings was quite a generous gift in the 1930s.

I’ve always assumed that the passage in question was more of a comment on Bertha van Holt’s lack of imagination in choosing the christening gift: no particular care or consideration; just monetary value.

[Punoqllads]

Could this be rhyming slang? Trap -> trap door -> bore. A boring person.

[Bytegeist]

It’s short for “Venus fly trap”. So it’s being suggested here that Mrs. Van Holt has a chamber half-filled with sticky fluid, lined with barbs, with which she captures and digests passing house flies.

The rich: they’re not like you and me.

[ouryL]

trollop, misheard?

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@ouryL

trollop, misheard?

I’m sure not. Besides, it wouldn’t make much sense in the context.

[Kimstu]

More context from the book (a husband and wife are conversing):

“I don’t believe you read my letters,” she said that night at last,
late, after a dinner party and some hours at a cabaret, we found ourselves
alone in our hotel bedroom.

 "Some  went astray. I  remember  distinctly  your telling  me that  the

daffodils in the orchard were a dream, that the nurserymaid was a jewel,
that the Regency four-poster was a find, but frankly I do not remember
hearing that your new baby was called Caroline. Why did you call it that?"

 "After Charles, of course."

 "Ah!"

 "I made Bertha  Van Halt godmother.  I thought she was safe for a  good

present. What do you think she gave?"

 "Bertha Van Halt is a well-known trap. What?"

 "A fifteen-shilling book token. Now that Johnjohn has a companion -- "

 "Who?"

 "Your son, darling. You haven't forgotten him, too?"

 "For Christ's sake," I said, "why do you call him that?"

 "It's the name  he invented for himself. Don't you think it  sweet? Now

that Johnjohn has a companion I think we’d better not have any more for some
time, don’t you?"

[Sevastopol]

It just means she is capricious.

[stringy]

With the extended context, it sounds to me like Bertha is a trap for people who think she’s “safe for a good present” - you’d think she’d buy something good, but she rarely does.

[Cunctator]

For any other *Brideshead * questions, there’s a useful online companion here.

[Meurglys]

As if in a trap, her money can’t easily be wrestled free… tight-fisted.

[BarnOwl]

Think of it as “tramp” pronounced by someone with a stuffy nose.

[AskNott]

@Punoqllads

Could this be rhyming slang? Trap -> trap door -> bore. A boring person.

Y’know, there’s another insult that rhymes with door… :rolleyes: