A UTHORS & CRITICS New P.G. Wodehouse Material
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A UTHORS & CRITICS New P.G. Wodehouse Material Letters & Notebooks of his Apprentice Years—By RICHARD USBORNE G. WODHHOUSE'S The and made him love her, she sends him back to the girl whose Man Upstairs, a col- photograph is on his mantlepiece: the girl he had left behind P lection of his earliest him in Worcestershire, Alice Halliday. (An Eve Halliday, no post-public-school short stories, relation, is the heroine of Leave It To Psmith, 1923.) Sob, was published by Methuen sob. in January 1914. The last Rutherford Maxwell has the cheapest possible accom-, story in the book, "In Al- modation in Alcala, a ground-floor "hall-bedroom." Else- cala", first appeared in The where, up a few floors, Peggy shares a room, cheap, but not London Magazine in Decem- so cheap as Rutherford Maxwell's, with another girl from the ber 1911. Neither that story, theatre. For "Alcala" read the Hotel Earle in Greenwich nor the book, was ever pub- Village, where Wodehouse stayed whenever he was in New lished in America, though York between 1909 and 1913. "Rutherford Maxwell" is most of the remaining 18 fiction for Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. The latter looked stories had appeared in American magazines, and many of good in print on the covers of magazines and under the titles them in The Strand magazine in England. Most of the of his stories on the inside pages. But it was slimmed to P. G. stories had been written when Wodehouse was living in New Wodehouse when the editorial fashion changed, and it York on the cheap and teaching himself to write, when remained at that. It was Plum to his friends, Plummie to his necessary, in American idioms. family. In "In Alcala" Peggy very soon says that Rutherford "In Alcala" is a remarkable literary relic. It is sentimental Maxwell won't do in America. "Gee! That's going some, isn't or, as we might say today, soppy. Never, as a later rule, did it? Wants amputation, a name like that. ." So she calls him Wodehouse use sentimentality except to mock it (e.g. George. Madeline Bassett; e.g. "Honeysuckle Cottage"). "In Alcala" There is no record of young (well, 27 in 1908) bachelor is basically autobiographical. Its hero, Rutherford Maxwell, a Wodehouse having an amorous encounter with an American young Englishman on the staff of the New Asiatic Bank in chorus-girl. Between the Wars, and a happily married man, New York, is trying in the evenings to write himself out of yes, perhaps. Wodehouse's great friend and collaborator in servitude and poverty. "When I'm in the 20-cents-a-word the theatre, Guy Bolton, was a fount of stories, probable and class, I'll write only once a month—the rest travelling", he improbable, which he told excellently in conversation, less boasts to Peggy Norton. She is the heroine of "In Alcala", a excellently in print. Bolton had a story, which he called charming American chorus-girl, who speaks a racy and "Plum's Wild Oat", and published in a New York magazine. attractive New York patois which, accurate or not, was In the 1920s, the days of their pecunious glory as a musical- certainly daring for a young English author trying to sell to comedy team—book, dialogue and lyrics—he and Wode- American editors. And the story is unique in the Wodehouse house were travelling round America with a Number 2 canon in that the heroine has been, and apparently still is, the company of one of their Broadway shows: a week here and a mistress of a man she doesn't love, a star actor. She rejects week there, and a long train journey on Sundays through the Rutherford Maxwell's ardent proposal of marriage. He has night to where they opened on Monday. The company would just written, with her occasional help, a play which, with the reserve two or more whole coaches, and there was apt to be, said star actor in it, has had a wonderful first night reception in spite of Prohibition, a festive party on the move for all on on Broadway. And on his way home in a taxi-cab (a "car" the Sunday evening. Double-decker aisles of sleeping-berths, would have meant a street-car) from the subsequent supper curtained off, men and women mixed, formed a section of party, he had "showered kisses on Peggy's upturned face" (a each coach, their aisles leading to the seating accommodation cliche that Wodehouse plays for laughs in many later books). and dining-cars. One late Sunday evening the party, making a No, although Peggy, wearing a picture hat, sitting on his great deal of noise, was romping through the sleeping-car, writing-table and ruffling or smoothing his hair, has loved him and Plum's bald head looked out from the curtains of an 60 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Authors & Critics 61 upper berth, saying "Hush! She's asleep!'" "A charming girl Love Among the Chickens; and Wodehouse, at least for in the chorus, it was", said Bolton. But, being a gentleman, he Bradshaw, acquired the nickname "Chickens") and A couldn't remember her name. Gentleman of Leisure. I heard Bolton tell this story with two different endings. In The Letters Lot was sold to Dr Ronald Levine, a the first. Plum's dear wife Ethel found a jeweller's receipt for gynaecologist and collector in Johannesburg. The Notebooks a diamond bracelet in one of Plum's pockets and extracted a went to Edward Cazalet. Cazalet's mother was a daughter, confession from him. In the other (which I prefer) Ethel met from a previous marriage, of Wodehouse's wife Ethel. him and the party at Grand Central Station at the end of the Wodehouse adopted Leonora and changed her surname to tour, and he kissed her on the cheek instead of the lips. With Wodehouse. Ethel Wodehouse (Lady Wodehouse) died in typical feminine second sight she said, "Plummie. you've October last on Long Island, where they had had a house been having an affaire]" And silly Plummie, who meant to since 1955. She was just short of her hundredth birthday, due say, "Don't be absurd, Ethel!", said, "Who told you?" for 22nd May 1985. Edward Cazalet has been building a Wodehouse Archive at his home in Sussex—first editions, letters, manuscripts, photographs, and other memorabilia. I IIAVL GONE INTO some detail of what was known, and what The Sotheby hammer prices in dollars for those lots might have been added by Empsonian inference from one of represented respectively a fat and a very fat four figures in the early short stories, of a period (1906-15) of P. G. sterling. Both Edward Cazalet and Ronald Levine have Wodehouse's young life not otherwise much documented. If kindly supplied me with photocopies of what they bought, he was writing home to his mother, his letters to her have not and I am grateful to them for allowing me to quote from this survived. He was writing fairly often to his school friend, material. would-be artist, would-be writer, Bill Townend, but those letters, from the period 1899 to 1920, had not survived and Performing Flea, the book they published in 1953, was The Letters concocted from Wodehouse's letters from 1920 to 1952 . ODFHOUSF.'S FIRST LETTF.RS to Leslie Bradshaw, in with many cuts, additions, and editings. He had given up his 1910, address him as "Dear Bradshaw" and are straight-from-school job at the Hong Kong and Shanghai W signed, "Yours ever P. G. Wodehouse." They are Bank in London years ago. His English public-school novels still on surname terms two years later. Then Wodehouse took and short stories could be put behind him. Though Mike to signing himself, "Yours ever PGW ('Chickens')." By Jackson and Psmith were still to emerge from his typewriter, September 1912 "Bradshaw" had become "Brad", and there was no market in America for stories about cricket and "Chickens" lasted to the end of the correspondence in footer, schoolroom rags, study frowsts with tea and sausages January 1915. Wodehouse's novel Psmith in the City is and no girls in sight anywhere. Not bad stuff, that, he thought dedicated to Bradshaw. Bradshaw's novel The Right Sort is later, but apprentice work, bringing in guineas while he was dedicated "To P. G. Wodehouse, the right sort." There was a getting a toe-hold on his craft. In New York he had sold, or pen-portrait of Wodehouse by Bradshaw in The Captain of an agent had sold for him, two short stories in a single day to March 1909. magazines for prices that made what English magazines paid Bradshaw was himself trying to get established as a writer, him look paltry. He was going to write for dollars now, and so specialising in public-school stories for the same English much the better if he could sell the stuff for guineas as well. market in which Wodehouse had made a name and was to make a bigger name when Mike Jackson and Psmith met at Sedleigh (Mike having been removed from Wrykyn, Psmith from Eton). Bradshaw had offered Wodehouse help in selling ow SOMI-: NI:W LIGHT is thrown on Wodehouse's life, his boys' books in America, but Wodehouse wanted none of thinking, and writing in his New York years before that. In a letter dated simply "Tuesday", probably written in N World War I. and on the early months of his the autumn of 1909, he said to Bradshaw: marriage, in New York, to English Ethel.