Limp Lavender Leather

Plum Lines The quarterly newsletter of The Wodehouse Society Vol. 2 i No. i Spring 2000 LIMP LAVENDER LEATHER By Tony Ring A talk delivered at the Houston convention of The Wodehouse Society, October 1999- Tony’s rendition of the first poem was appallingly —and appropriately—earnest. He kindly supplied, at my request, copies of poems from newspapers almost a century old for reproduction here. The newspapers were, of course, part of Tony’s vast collection of Wodehousiana. — OM Be! ender leather volume which you see before Be! you contains a hundred and fifty o f his po The past is dead, ems, and is a long way from being com Tomorrow is not born. plete. The editor o f the only collection of Be today! his poems so far published, The P a rro t, Today! which emerged from the egg in 1989, made Be with every nerve, an elementary mistake by failing to list the With every fibre, source of any of its twenty-seven offerings. With every drop of your red blood! Wodehouse contrasted writing light verse Be! with the production o f lyrics, another skill Be! which he was to demonstrate with com mendable felicity, mainly in the subsequent These lines, together with a further three decade. He helpfully explained that he pre verses whose secrets Plum Wodehouse did ferred to have a melody around which to cre not reveal, earned Rocky Todd a hundred dollars in 1916 ate his lyric, otherwise he would find himself producing money and enabled him to stay in bed until four o’clock songs with the regular metre and rhythms o f light verse. in the afternoon for a week. They are a none-too-subtle Clearly, to Wodehouse, regular metre and rhyme were commentary on Wodehouse’s view of contemporary fundamental requirements for his type o f verse. I venture poetry as rendered by others, and I shall be referring to to suggest that this was at least in part because his market other examples o f his disdain later. First, I think, we was the popular press, to whose readers the subtlety o f should look at his own verse. blank verse may have been unmarketable. Wodehouse’s own poetry was unashamedly written The inspiration for much of his early poetry was the for money, ninety per cent of it during his apprentice brief news report, rather as it was for his “ Our Man in ship in the first decade o f the twentieth century. He was America” items for Punch in the 1950s and 1960s. His at able to submit light verses on topical matters to daily or tention would be caught by an item or a quotation, and weekly papers and receive a pound or a guinea, manna he would create a verse round it, as I will be demonstrat indeed for one who had recently cast off the shackles o f ing very shortly. But I would like you to notice just how the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. You may not rea relevant many o f the topics about which he wrote seem lise how extensive his output o f verse was: this limp lav today And I hope you will be both amused and pleasandy written in any decade, in any democratic country: surprised by the following medley of extracts taken from the 1904 to 1907 press. First, to get you into the mood, a We are a happy Cabinet, verse which foreshadowed the dislike of Galahad Threep- Secure against attacks; wood for tea, which was written in response to a report All bosom friends with self-same ends, that an eminent medical man had stated that the deterio We stick like so much wax. rated physique o f army recruits was largely due to their Our peaceful life no kind o f strife having drunk too much tea: Has e’er been biown to mar: We are a happy Cabinet, In training up your families We are! We are!! We are!!! Don’t give them any tea. The men who fought at Ramillies O f course it’s true diat some of us Drank beer in infancy; Hold views that scarce agree When Marlborough won at Blenheim, he With diose expressed by all the rest: Led soldiers reared on stout. Still, hang it, Thought IS free. The teapot is an enemy: Besides it’s not exaedy what Avoid its lethal spout. You’d call a hitch or jar. We are a happy Cabinet. He spotted a report that a younger son of an old En We are! We are!! We are!!! glish family had founded an American Debrett to which any citizen could pay £10 and have his pedigree traced: You may suspect from Gussic Fink-Nottle’s reaction (eloping with the cook) when Madeline Bassett sought Fm just a young fellow, you know, to separate him from the flesh of animals slain in anger, A mere impecunious cadet. the approach Wodehouse would have taken to vegetari But my brain is die cutest, anism. And this 1903 verse shows that you would have Most slick and astutest: been right: I’ve founded a Yankee Debrett. [The poem (top o f next column) was printed in The If only the man o f the States Evening News and Evening Maily March I I , 1903.] The price that I ask can afford, I make it my mission To raise his condition AN OLYMPIA NIGHTMARE. To that of a duke or a lord. As through the show at eve we went, A twang I consider no sort of a bar The motorist and I, In a newly-made peer of to-day: His eyes were bright: he waved hie hands: Ho pointed gaily at tho Blands It really don’t matter a bit what you are, Which wo were passing by. If only you’re willing to pay. And oh the technical remarks On clutcheB, switches, plugs, and sparks I Many of you will have heard the story of how in N o I am a plain, rough, rugged man, And frankly do not know vember 1906 he used his entire savings of £450, then a The subtle dillerence between huge amount of money, to buy a motor car from Sey The various parts of the machine, And what makes motors go. mour Hicks, and how after a cursory lesson from the But oh the export's deep lemarks former owner he went out on his first solo drive, toppled O11 carburetters, cranks, and sparks l into a ditch and left the car where it lay. My interest was all assumed, With what emotion did he write these verses which My “ Realty's ! " insincere. Of Greek and other classic loro appeared on the 27th of that same month under the title I have an enviable store, “An Olympia Nightmare,” Olympia being the name of a Rut—I'm no engineer. And oh the deluge of remarks London exhibition centre. [Here’s how die poem looked On tonneaux, second speeds, and sparks. {next column) in The World of November 27,1906.] At last, long last, he said Farewell; In his twenties, even if not in later life, Plum was alert (lie had to meet his wifo). My head ached, and I wished that I to die possibilities for humour involved in politics, and Gould simply creep away and die: offered his ironic thoughts on die unity of the govern I did not value life. And oh my pungent, crisp romarks ment in 1906, when the cabinet was torn by internal dis On clutches, switches, plugs, and sparks I agreements. These lines could, of course, have been P. 0. W0DEI10UHE. 2 Plum Lines Vol. 21 No. 1 Spring 2000 s well as writing for the daily and weekly papers, * * * * Wodehouse was writing for the schoolboy market R eform ed* Ain such magazines as The Captain, and starting to have An rm lnm H rinrfnr w>n<Mm th » t «v>ffatiri*A d iet m \ fo»»I majr bm mnMhlitf Id 4» v illi tfcft contributions, both prose and poetry, accepted in the leerrsse of rrlim. JBntwhiU 4 v«|fliriia, adult mondily magazines such as Pearsons. Neidier should On cnrioQi food* I fed. A tarribln barbaritt one overlook his poetic contributions to Punch. Some of la all I did tnd Mid. My matutinal roeeges his excellent work with a sporting topic, such as cricket On onimeal and on fruit Undo m l iba vrorit of MTifM| or field hockey, can be found in these papers, but I do la fine, a perfect brute. not propose to do more than allude to them here. Tho nbdCklflf dflftl* I did, ftb I They All ran «rith diarnay. It is quite clear that, taking poetry as a broad subject, 'Tho orphan and thn vidov I choated atory day. Wodehouse realised at an early date that he had a Wlthoat a lamp at nightfall wide-ranging target for his brand o f wit in a fictional con 1 ryrtal ni>«r and far: klv *f»aod wan aomrthing frightful text. This emerged in two ways: first in his use o f the When in ray oiotor>oar. established poets and their work as a basis for quotation At Uat, one happy tnorftlog, A medico I knew or, quite often, misquotation. And secondly, in die po Admimaterod a warning. And fava ma roano^J, too. tential for creating funny members o f the cast whose main 11* hnde raa obange itit dint. •* Yon’II find," paid la, " I'a tnra, characteristics were that they were poets.

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