Ionicus and the Art of Wodehouse
Ionicus was the pen name of illustrator Joshua Armitage, whose work featured in Punch, and almost 400 books, in the course of a long career. He is perhaps best known as the illustrator of 58 Penguin paperback editions of P.G. Wodehouse’s work. Although Ionicus and Wodehouse never met, his drawings show a genuine affinity for the Wodehouse material.
The excellent ‘Ionicus and the Art of Wodehouse’ blog delves into the Ionicus Wodehouse editions in more detail. The most recent piece looks at the covers of ‘Eggs, Beans and Crumpets’ and ‘Cocktail Time’ – both are classics. If you are particularly partial to the Ionicus editions (like me) it’s a blog I heartily recommend reading.
HP
Ionicus cover image for Cocktail Time (via Ionicus and the Art of Wodehouse)
Do Not Hate In The Plural
An excellent piece from Nourishncherish, who is always sound on Wodehouse.
Enjoy!
HP
I was reading a short story by P.G.Wodehouse on the train. These are the times when I most mistaken for a lunatic. My seat shudders with unconcealed mirth. I giggle, laugh and sometimes wipe away tears of laughter, while the world is going about the stern business of earning a living. He is one of my favorite authors, and after every few books that makes me mope around the world pondering on the wretchedness and seriousness of life, I turn to a P.G.W book to remind myself that tomfoolery is a virtue to be exalted and celebrated. His turn of phrase, his romping joy, is enough to set me straight.
When I read his autobiography ‘Over Seventy’ a few years ago, I could see that the septuagenarian viewed his own life pretty much the same way he came across in his writing: Sunny and delightful. In his own words, he…
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Writing under the influence of Wodehouse: A Blindefellows Chronicle by Auriel Roe
P.G. Wodehouse offers us so much as readers, but he’s an inspiration for writers too. I asked Auriel Roe, author of A Blindfellows Chronicle, about Wodehouse’s influence on her writing.
Author & artist, Auriel Roe
How did you discover Wodehouse? Probably the Richard Briers and Michael Hordern radio version of Jeeves and Wooster. Dickens always intended his work to be read aloud and Wodehouse has just the right rhythms for this too, so that led me to read Wodehouse. Coming from a background in drama, I could tell instantly that Wodehouse’s characters and scenarios were theatrical.
Do you have a favourite Wodehouse novel or story? Probably Right Ho, Jeeves as it contains that supreme episode of the humour of embarrassment that Wodehouse does so well with Fink-Nottle presiding over a school prize giving ceremony. I’ve sat through a number of similar cringe-making efforts at these end-of-year offerings, one in which the guest speaker hadn’t prepared a speech and intoned “You’re all so lucky” probably about every thirty seconds; (she was quite famous too and we suspected she’d been at the juice).
Which character from Wodehouse’s world would you most like to be (or most identity with) and why ? I’m torn between wanting to be Wooster who takes such delight in the simple things in life such as a cooked breakfast and Jeeves who has a solution to every mishap, however unlikely it is to succeed.
How long have you been writing? In a proper sense, for the last two years, but it fits around a full time job, which is an asset to a writer as being in solitude for me would mean no ideas, and no little jottings in the writer’s notebook when you overhear something quirky or witness something bizarre. Writing for me all happened by accident a couple of summers ago when I had a peculiar little notion that swelled into a novel… What if a man in his sixties suddenly has his first crush? This became my novel A Blindefellows Chronicle which has recently been published.
How has Wodehouse influenced your work? I think my main character Sedgewick is something of a Jeeves/Wooster hybrid actually – Sedgewick is an awkward chap who often finds outlandish solutions to the predicaments that arise. Like Wooster, Sedgewick avoids romantic entanglements, and is most downhearted when a possible marriage looms. My novel is composite, the same set of characters in thirteen chronological stories, a structure Wodehouse favoured, each chapter/story able to stand alone.
Some people claim Wodehouse’s writing is too much a product ‘of his time ‘ to appeal to a modern audience. What do you think Wodehouse has to offer the 21st Century reader? Wodehouse continues to make people laugh so perhaps this humour contributes to making it timeless, but perhaps it’s only a brand of humour that the British have a feel for. Having said that, Wodehouse has never gone out of vogue in India; it’s sold next to the best sellers in airports and there was outrage when it was dramatized into Hindi. For years, the actor Martin Jarvis has held packed houses mesmerized with his readings of Wodehouse, which demonstrates an enduring appeal. As for what Wodehouse offers us today well, there’s just not enough comic literary fiction today. Comedy is not often written skilfully and Wodehouse is an example of how to do it which I’ve learned from.
I’m passionate about supporting writers who’ve been influenced by Wodehouse — please tell me about your book. Regarding style, I feel like I’ve written the novel I always wanted to read, which pays homage to my favourite writing… Wodehouse, Wind in the Willows, Cold Comfort Farm to name a few. Regarding content, I am a head of art and I wanted to base my story in a school which is probably what I know best. My first job was in a somewhat archaic boarding school so little aspects of those years have been used, albeit manipulated to almost unrecognisable proportions. Here’s the blurb to pop it into a nutshell…
“It was midday on 31 August and the new History master had arrived at Blindefellows, former charity school for poor, blind boys, now a second division private school for anyone who could pay.”– Thus commences the unlikely friendship between Sedgewick, the naive newcomer, and the rumbustious, Japes, Master of Physics, his worldly-wise mentor.
A Blindefellows Chronicle follows the adventures of a handful of unmarried faculty at an obscure West Country boarding school in a series of interlinked tales characterized by absurd, chortle-out-loud humour, punctuated by moments of unexpected poignancy.
Thanks Auriel and best of luck with your book. I’m looking forward to reading it
HP
P.G. Wodehouse: A Broadway Centenary — by Tony Ring
The name Tony Ring is familiar to many P.G. Wodehouse enthusiasts — it pops up often and in an surprising variety of places: from journal articles and forewords of new editions, to theatre programmes. Tony’s books on Wodehouse’s life and work line many of our shelves, and his sparkling presence has enlivened Wodehouse society events around the world. It is an honour and a pleasure to add Plumtopia to his long list of appearances.
Another Centenary to Celebrate
The Sunday Times Magazine for 9 April this year included a four-page article saluting Andrew Lloyd Webber’s extraordinary achievement in having four shows in performance simultaneously on Broadway, though two of them are revivals. It suggests he shares this record with Rodgers and Hammerstein, and states that it hasn’t been done for 60 years.
Well, Rodgers, like Lloyd Webber, was a composer. Hammerstein was a lyricist. The paper overlooked Lloyd Webber’s one-time lyricist Tim Rice, who wrote this in his Introduction to the booklet contained in the 2001 CD The Land Where the Good Songs Go:
I am, I hope, a fairly modest cove, but I must admit I felt fairly gruntled when, in 2000, I could briefly brag about having my lyrics on Broadway in no less than four shows at the same time [including one revival]. Surely this must be a record, I reckoned – certainly for a British lyricist.
So the errors the Sunday Times made are stacking up. First, as they refer to Hammerstein as one of the previous record-holders, they clearly mean to include lyricists. Therefore, Lloyd Webber’s achievement, though amazing, also only equals that of Tim Rice. And when earlier this year his fourth show opened, it was only 17 years since Tim Rice’s achievement, not 60.
But that is not all. Tim Rice went on to add in his remarks that he had mentioned his achievement only because of its relevance to the CD – which was full of songs by one of his literary heroes, P G Wodehouse.
For in 1917 the mighty Plum, lyricist and British to boot, had five shows running simultaneously on Broadway. That achievement reaches its Centenary on November 7, this year.
It is only fair to admit that some of the shows were far less successful than the typical Lloyd Webber and Rice offerings, and that in one in particular he was not the only lyricist. Nevertheless, it is an achievement which should not be overlooked.
In all, Wodehouse contributed lyrics to 25 musicals in one or both of the UK and the USA, and the changes in style and approach which he and Jerome Kern in particular brought to the format of musical comedies smoothed the way for the next major revolution, with the production of such shows as Show Boat. Along with Guy Bolton, who was generally responsible for the first drafts at least of the libretti, they introduced the idea of simpler plots relating to subjects more in keeping with the experience of theatre-goers.
Playbill from a 2010 production
Whereas one of their earliest efforts, Miss Springtime, paid lip-service to the earlier traditions of comic opera, the setting for their first 1917 hit, Have a Heart, was the life of a salesgirl in a retail clothing store. This was followed by Oh, Boy!, which encompassed a modern take on romance, with newlyweds, misunderstandings and a lecherous old judge; and Leave It To Jane, based around American football.Wodehouse absorbed this policy in future collaborations with other composers – the 1926 show Oh, Kay!, written with the Gershwins, had the theme of bootlegging during the prohibition era; while Anything Goes, Cole Porter’s 1934 perpetually popular show, featured escaped criminals. Porter, who had written the lyrics for all the songs in the Broadway production, invited Wodehouse to anglicise a couple of them for London, and he pulled no punches in satirising the greed of certain classes even in times of economic difficulty.
Do the following examples sound like Wodehouse? They were.
The Duke who owns a moated castle
Takes lodgers and makes a parcel
Because he knows
Anything goesIt’s grab and smash today
We want cash today
Get rich quick today
That’s the trick today
And the Great today
Don’t hesitate today
But keep right on their toesAnd lend their names, if paid to do it
To anyone’s soap or suet
Or baby clo’s
Anything goes
If you enjoy Wodehouse but have not heard – knowingly – any of his lyrics (the one EVERYBODY has heard without realising it is Bill, originally written for Oh, Lady! Lady!! in 1918, dropped from that show but added, with a little tweaking by Oscar Hammerstein II, to Show Boat in 1926, where it has resided ever since), I recommend that you try to get one of the three CD’s, each with a variety of his lyrics, recorded since 2000.
They are:
The Land Where the Good Songs Go
Singers: Hal Cazalet, Sylvia McNair, Lara Cazalet; Pianist: Steven Blier
2001 Harbinger Records HCD 1901
In Our Little Paradise
Singer: Maria Jette; Pianist: Dan Chouinard
2011 Woleseley Recordings
The Siren’s Song
Singer: Maria Jette; Pianist: Dan Chouinard
2004 Woleseley Recordings
For a relatively modern recording of a complete show, try Sitting Pretty (1926), recorded on a double CD in 1990 under the direction of John McGlinn. It was published by New World Records (80387-2).
But let your mind wander a little further. You may not have been aware that Wodehouse was quite such an important lyricist. Perhaps you have not realised that he was an accomplished playwright, as well. He never reached quite the same prominence as with his other activities but, while mentioning impressive achievements, we should not overlook that in December 1928 he had three new plays on the West End stage simultaneously – and that is something not many of even our greatest playwrights can boast.
Perhaps you could suggest some names of those who have matched this achievement – either on the West End or on Broadway?
Tony Ring
April 2017
The romances of Bingo Little: Charlotte Corday Rowbotham (by Ken Clevenger)
‘L’Assassinat de Marat’: The artist Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry’s impression of Charlotte Corday murdering Jean-Paul Marat in his bath.
‘Oh, Great Scott!’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re in love again.’
He seemed aggrieved.
‘What do you mean– again?’
‘Well, to my certain knowledge you’ve been in love with at least half a dozen girls since the spring, and it’s only July now. There was that waitress and Honoria Glossop and–‘
‘Oh, tush! Not to say pish! Those girls? Mere passing fancies. This is the real thing.’
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘On top of a bus. Her name is Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. ‘
‘My God!’
‘It’s not her fault, poor child. Her father had her christened that because he’s all for the Revolution, and it seems that the original Charlotte Corday used to go about stabbing oppressors in their baths, which entitles her to consideration and respect. You must meet old Rowbotham, Bertie. A delightful chap. Wants to massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane, and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy. Well, nothing could be fairer than that, what?’
from ‘Comrade Bingo’ (The Inimitable Jeeves)
Bingo Little’s third documented love affair is one of the most interesting chapters in his romantic adventures. The warm-hearted Bingo, as we’ve established in previous instalments (see: Honoria Glossop and a waitress named Mabel), has the capacity to love all womankind without prejudice, making him one of Wodehouse’s most endearing characters. The story is also an example of Wodehouse at the top of his form, making it a ‘must read’ for fans.
But that’s enough from me. Now it’s over to Ken Clevenger for more …
The romance of Bingo Little and Charlotte Corday Rowbotham
An appreciation by Ken Clevenger
While I remain convinced that Lord Emsworth and Gladys are the ultimate, or at least penultimate to Bertie and Jeeves, great lovers in Wodehouse, I think these highly charged political times call for some reconsideration.
Hence this appreciation of a new set of contenders: that ever-in-the-ring lover, Bingo Little (at least before he married the celebrated female novelist, Rosie M. Banks) and Mlle. Charlotte Corday Rowbotham, in ‘Comrade Bingo’.
I suppose, given the vagaries of modern education, a bit of background on this femme fatale, Charlotte, is due for some readers. She murdered a man in his bath as a means to advance a more moderate agenda in the course of the French Revolution in 1793. Not Bingo’s girlfriend, I mean her historical name-sake. Our Charlotte took rather a different view of life and revolution. She was, indeed, a Herald of the Red Dawn.
Bingo’s perhaps requited passion leads him to speak feelingly for the Masses at Hyde Park Corner in a false beard and to utter a public denunciation of his uncle, Lord Bittlesham. Readers of Wodehouse may know him better as “old Mortimer Little” of “Little’s Liniment (It Limbers Up the Legs).” He was a plutocrat before Pluto was down-sized. And the fellow who married Miss Watson, his cook, who was formerly engaged to Jeeves. This released Jeeves to pursue Mabel, a waitress in a “tea-and-bun shop” near the Ritz in the Metrop. Yes, the very same Mabel whom Bingo had loved to distraction, before Jeeves intervened in the Springtime, albeit without first revealing his inherent conflict of interest.
So, all straight so far? A) Bingo, who loves B) Charlotte, who would massacre C) Mortimer, uncle of A, who married D) Miss Watson. Naturally in a Wodehouse love story there are also wheels within wheels and here Comrade Butt, who “looks like a haddock with lung-trouble”, plays the primary cog.
Bingo’s love for Charlotte (“Billowy curves. Well-nourished perhaps expresses it best.” Plus “a heart of gold” and “a tooth of gold” withal) is as boundless as, well, Charlotte. His need, however, is for the wherewithal with which to finally engage her affections, and its acquisition stumps Bingo (“Work? said young Bingo, surprised. What, me?”).
However, if love fails to conquer all, it unfailingly assays the attempt. But radical political rhetoric, as is so often the case, especially when mixed with personal vituperation and discrediting revelations of a personal nature, produces public violence and the inevitable reactionary police response.
But here, in Wodehouse, in this romance, the kibosh was triggered by the hand of Jeeves, who knew (“Good Lord, Jeeves! Is there anything you don’t know?”) that Bingo and Charlotte were not meant to be. Scion of the upper-crust, nephew to a Lord, educated with Bertie in English public schools (they would have learned of Charlotte Corday), Bingo was set apart by Fate from Charlotte’s love and her vision of blood running in the gutters of Park Lane.
But nonetheless it was a grand passion, and held forth for a season, and only expired with the Ocean Breeze, which blew Charlotte out of Bingo’s life. What memories linger? (For the answer to that, please read ‘The Metropolitan Touch’).
Ken Clevenger
More Great Wodehouse Romances: Mrs Spottsworth and Captain Biggar (by Ashok Bhatia)
Plumtopia’s annual celebration of the romances of P.G. Wodehouse (to mark the anniversary of the author’s death on St Valentine’s day 1975) would not be complete without a contribution from Mr Ashok Bhatia. One of the things I particularly enjoy about Mr Bhatia’s musings on the subject is his choice of ‘seasoned’ couples, well beyond the first blooms of youth. For nobody in Wodehouse’s world is too old, too irascible, or too wide of girth, to find love. And that’s just as it should be.
Ashok Bhatia’s latest instalment delves into the romantic adventures of the widow Mrs Rosalinda Banks Bessemer Spottsworth and big game hunter Captain Cuthbert Gervase Brabazon-Biggar (from Ring for Jeeves).
You can read it here: Of Mrs. Spottsworth and the Biggar Code of White Men | ashokbhatia
Enjoy!
Money in the Bank (review by John Lagrue)
John Lagrue’s timely review of P.G. Wodehouse’s Money in the Bank (1942) touches on another great Wodehouse romance –that of Anne Benedick and Jeff Miller.
John also proposes Anne Benedick as Wodehouse’s finest heroine. It’s a proposal worth taking seriously from a Wodehouse lover of John’s calibre. I certainly recall Anne being a good egg, but I’ve never ranked her among my own favourites. Have I missed something? It has been a while since I’ve read Money in the Bank, but it’s one of Wodehouse’s hidden gem and I look forward to re-reading and pondering John’s suggestion.
As I said in my post last year announcing this project of reading a book a week for a year, some of the books involved would be ones I’d read before. Money In the Bank by PG Wodehouse is such a volume. Wodehouse is probably best known for the Jeeves and Wooster stories and the […]
A note on the Psmith-Halliday romance by K.V.K. Murthy
This February’s Great Wodehouse romances series continues with another guest author, K.V.K. Murthy, known to Facebook friends as James Joyce. His piece takes us on a walk through romantic literary history with Psmith and Eve Halliday (Leave it to Psmith).
A note on the Psmith-Halliday romance
by K.V.K. Murthy
The question of favourites is mostly subjective, and Wodehouse’s vast canvas of miniature romances doubtless provides for each taste. The Gussie-Bassett, Tuppy-Angela, Bingo-Banks and others too numerous to mention are all miniatures :a concatenation (to use Jeeves’ word) of comical situation, Edwardian silly-assness and a bit of fat-headedness thrown in for seasoning. They are the staple of drawing-room one-act plays of a certain generation, given occasional revivals in schools to round off the Annual Day shindig. Barring minor changes in detail, they are all more or less cast from the same block. Wodehouse’s success with that block – or formula – lay in the plasticity of his language: in anybody else’s hands it would have spelt tedium, a tiresomely unfunny business.
But the Psmith-Halliday romance stands out, a class apart, with little in common with the other country-house capers. To begin with, this is not a miniature sketch: it is an epic, a work conceived on classical lines working on classical allusions (‘the fruit of an expensive education,’ as Psmith himself would say). If the whole comedy of errors is Bardic, Psmith’s first encounter with Eve, and his first act of devotion is pleasingly (and appropriately) Elizabethan: Eve’s hat, the rain, the hastily produced umbrella are nothing if not throwbacks to Sir Walter Raleigh’s famous act with his cloak for his Queen(Psmith indeed mentions this parallel to the unfortunate Walderwick).
Psmith’s courting is a stately progress, like a gavotte or apas-de-deux – matched perfectly by a languid stateliness of Wodehousian idiom absent from the miniature romances, which again underscores the Master’s fine ear for symphonic form (the book can actually be visualised as a symphony in four movements: a brief adagio, followed by an allegro ma non troppo, a longish andante, and a final presto).
If the romance begins on an Elizabethan note, it also seems to advance through epochs. In his initial moves to Eve, Psmith’s demeanour has faint courtly echoes of Andrew Marvell, although without the fatalistic overtones (in a bizarre coincidence there is even a Cynthia in one of his poems) – and with this we have stepped quietly and seamlessly into the Restoration. But we don’t linger long here.
Soon, Psmith and Eve decant us, seamlessly again, and charmingly – into the Regency. It doesn’t require too overwrought an imagination to see Psmith as a latter-day Beau Brummell – his fastidious appearance alone would have earned a hat doff from that laced and cravated dandy, to say nothing of his manner of speech- and Eve as a fine Belgravia belle (even if her origins in the book, though genteel, are decidedly not West End).
Whether Wodehouse saw these associations, much less intended them to be seen is a moot point. In any case it is only critics who look for them and find them, as this one did. And I’m sure the Master wouldn’t complain. But there is one other aspect which sets the Psmith-Halliday chronicle apart from all the others: its is a complete novel in the classical sense, in the elegant Jane Austen mould, a perfect marriage of form and content.
JJ
Mostly Sally (The Adventures of Sally)
Sally stopped and drew a deep breath. Ginger Kemp did not reply for a moment. He seemed greatly impressed.
“When you talk quick,” he said at length, in a serious meditative voice, “your nose sort of goes all squiggly. Ripping, it looks!”
Sally uttered an indignant cry.
“Do you mean to say you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying,” she demanded.
“Oh, rather! Oh, by Jove, yes.”
“Well, what did I say?”
“You… er… And your eyes sort of shine, too.”
“Never mind my eyes. What did I say?”
“You told me,” said Ginger, on reflection, “to get a job.”
“Well, yes. I put it much better than that, but that’s what it amounted to, I suppose…”
The Adventures of Sally (1921; US Title Mostly Sally)
Today’s post concludes Jon Brierley’s look at The Adventures of Sally –you can catch up from the beginning here. I am incredibly grateful to Jon for taking on this commission for Plumtopia and doing such a sterling job of it. Here’s hoping that bookstores are soon filled with his novels, and we can smugly tell our friends we ‘discovered’ him first. Please do take a peep at his blog (he is also looking for beta-readers if you can spare some of your time for the cause).
The Adventures of Sally
A Romance (continued…)
Nobody ever accused P. G. Wodehouse of being a feminist*, but it strikes me that Sally Nicholas is quite a liberated and modern (for 1921) young woman – no doormat, she. Single, footloose and unchaperoned, she engages freely and on equal terms with all the menfolk she encounters, giving every bit as good as she gets and always (except for when kicked into the slough of despond by the shenanigans of Foster and Fillmore) standing up for herself and on her own two feet, taking no guff from anybody. Wodehouse has been accused of writing in an Edwardian timewarp, but Sally (and the whole book generally) is very clearly a woman of the 1920s, revelling in the newly won post-war freedom for women to work, travel and express themselves independently. Carmyle disapproves of this, but Carmyle is, as Ginger so rightly observes, a blighter.
One wonders if, perhaps, Sally owes something to Wodehouse’s wife of sixty-one years, Ethel. Ethel is described as ‘gregarious, decisive and well organised’, which is Sally to the letter. Furthermore, Ethel is said to have taken the ‘shy and impractical’ Plum and arranged his life for him, which again is a thing Sally does (or tries to do) with everyone she meets.
If Sally was, at least in part, a portrait of Ethel, one hopes Mrs. Wodehouse took it as the great compliment it undoubtedly was. Sally is an engaging and sympathetic heroine, fun to be with and admirable in every respect. If the book is a little more serious than most Wodehouse novels, and correspondingly less funny than the bulk of his output, perhaps, just perhaps, it was because the protagonist was a little closer to Wodehouse than usual – and as we have seen, the story incorporated a number of elements from Wodehouse’s real life. Plum himself, of course, was very far from being a chump, so there isn’t much of him in Ginger, I don’t think, but nevertheless the personal connections between the story and the author, while speculative, are, I feel, attractive. Seen in this light, what seems a fairly insubstantial work at first glance becomes more interesting, and perhaps worthy of a higher rank in the Wodehouse canon.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I’d like to think I’m not.
Jon Brierley
*Postscript from Honoria Plum
Readers may be surprised to learn Wodehouse has been accused of being a feminist. ‘P.G. Wodehouse, Feminist’ was the title of Elin Woodger Murphy’s memorably convincing talk at the 2015 Seattle convention of The Wodehouse Society (US). Elin in turn, took her title from an excellent 2005 article by Marilee Scott. And I have argued in support of Wodehouse’s feminist credentials myself (try Wodehouse’s women: in the eye of the beholder).
HP
When Ginger met Sally
Today’s post continues the Great Wodehouse Romances series, exploring The Adventures of Sally , courtesy of guest author Jon Brierley. If you missed the first instalment, you can catch up here.
The Adventures of Sally
A Romance (continued…)
All caught up? Spiffing. Let us consider our principals. Here comes Sally now – if we take up an unobtrusive position behind a newspaper we shall be able to observe her closely. Sally Nicholas is a young, cheerful, intelligent, attractive and sparky all-American girl of twenty-one, and feeling especially cheerful just now as she has just had a substantial inheritance. She will be able to wave farewell to the rather down at heel environs of Mrs. Meecher’s boarding house and get her own apartment, and with even more relief wave farewell to her dispiriting job as a taxi dancer at the Flower Garden dance hall.
Ah, I see a hand up. You doubtless wish to know what a taxi dancer is. No, it is not someone who dances in or on cabs, but a person employed by a dance hall to act as a partner to patrons of the hall who have neglected to bring a partner of their own. Mr. Wodehouse is at pains to tell us how nice an establishment the Flower Garden is, but I am sorry to have to relate that in real life such dance halls were usually covers for speakeasies – this being the reason why the patrons often didn’t take a partner, as they were principally there to neck the booze rather than dance. Furthermore, young ladies who acted as taxi dancers were often, um, well, let’s just say they didn’t make all their money from dancing.
But no such taint attaches itself to Sally; she is entirely clean and wholesome, and if she has a fault it is that she is too gallant. Sally is a naturally kind person, disposed to be friendly and helpful to everyone, and now that she has the wherewithal she is keen to spread a little happiness as she goes by. She is by no means an ingénue, however; she is capable and level-headed, and adept at managing the lives of those around her, when she gets the chance.
Alas, the ones best placed to benefit from her largesse and her management are the two men currently in her life, and neither of them really deserve it. Firstly, there is her older brother Fillmore; that’s him, lurking about over there, the portly chap with a rather self-satisfied expression. Fillmore is not an idiot, but he will get carried away. He can take a perfectly sound idea and build so many castles in the air on it that the thing collapses under its own weight. As, indeed, does Fillmore himself; when in funds, his food consumption increases prodigiously, and he is apt to wax not only fat but pompous. Sally encourages him to take up with the simple, but good-hearted, bit-part actress Gladys Winch, in the hopes she will provide a steadying influence on him. As she points out;
“And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.”
The other man in Sally’s life is her fiancé, Gerald Foster, a playwright. Observe him carefully; he’s very good-looking, isn’t he? And I trust we all know that a handsome chap in a Wodehouse novel will, almost certainly, turn out to be a frightful rotter. Perspicacious Plumtopians will have also universally acknowledged the truth that whoever a Wodehouse protagonist is initially engaged to is hardly ever the spouse they end up with.
Which brings us to the two other men who will complicate Sally’s life during the course of this book. They are both English (as, indeed, is Gerald Foster) … our Sally seems to be irresistibly attractive to Englishmen. One wonders if Wodehouse was thinking of the fashion, prevalent in his youth, of hard-up members of the aristocracy making a bee-line for the nearest American heiress. The first son of Albion to consider goes by the name of Bruce Carmyle.
Mr. Carmyle (one could never call him Bruce) is stiff, and forever standing upon his dignity. Almost the first time we see him he is being haughty, not to say rude, with the waiter on a train. This is always a sign of somebody far too self-important for their own good, a fact Sally at once recognises. In consequence, despite being disposed to be friendly to one and all, she does not much like Mr. Carmyle. Alas, much to Sally’s chagrin, he likes her, and is prepared to go to some lengths to show it. It’s never quite clear why he feels like this, apart from Sally being exceedingly pretty; one feels that a stuffed shirt like Mr. Carmyle would want somebody altogether more meek and submissive as a love-interest.
Our third and final runner in the Sally Stakes is a cousin of the above, a red-head, and (of course) a chump. Lancelot Kemp doesn’t really follow the usual Wodehouse naming conventions; he really ought to be called Bill, or Jim, but he makes up for his dubious forename by being rather unimaginatively known as Ginger. He is of a type well-known to Wodehouse readers; athletic, kind-hearted, tongue-tied and not overly blessed with grey matter. His conversation is punctuated by interjections such as ‘I say,’ and ‘You know,’ and I’m not at all certain he doesn’t let fly a ‘What Ho!’ or two.
In life so far, Ginger has not been a success, and the Family (including Mr. Carmyle) despair of him. He had to forgo going up to Oxford due to a shortfall in the family finances, and every position the Family have found for him he has made a muff of, usually by speaking his mind to entirely the wrong person.
Ginger does have some talents, though – we first see him breaking up a dog-fight, very efficiently. This counts as a sort of Chekhov’s Pug, as it is as a dog breeder and trainer that he finally manages to shine. And, yes, it is Ginger who eventually wins Sally’s hand. But whilst he realises at once that Sally is his True Soul-mate, it takes Sally the whole book to come to the same conclusion. There wouldn’t be much of a story if she had been quicker off the mark, of course, but besides the exigencies of Plot and Narrative Convention it is interesting to examine the reasons why she eventually sees Ginger as her true life’s partner.
When Sally and Ginger first meet in Roville-sur-Mer, Ginger gets ‘friend-zoned’ (to use the modern parlance). Sally sees him not as a possible romantic interest but as a project, although her attempts to find him a steady job are no more successful than those of his Family. What eventually gets him out of the friend-zone and into Sally’s arms is the contrast between his behaviour toward Sally, and that of Messrs. Foster and Carmyle. Ginger is loyal, and faithful, willingly humps furniture around her new flat, and lends a sympathetic ear to her woes, but above all he is not pushy. He does not force his attentions on Sally (although he does pinch a photograph of her to moon over in private).
Carmyle, by contrast, is pushy, assertive, and inclined to treat Sally as his by divine right. He does not help Sally, or listen kindly to her troubles, and he certainly doesn’t lower himself to humping furniture about. Gerald Foster, meanwhile, is disloyal. He deserts Sally and marries actress Elsa Doland, and what is even more caddish, doesn’t even tell Sally – she finds out at second hand, after the fact. It is Ginger who conveys the news, and his tactful behaviour after discovering he has dropped a bombshell (he had no idea Sally was engaged to Gerald) earns him several Brownie points.
Ginger’s gentlemanly mien is further highlighted by the antics of brother Fillmore, who (despite the steadying hand of Gladys Winch) manages to lose all Sally’s money pursuing wild theatrical dreams. What little she has left she uses to fund Ginger (who does not know she has lost her fortune) in his dog breeding scheme. Dashed twice against the rocks of fate by unreliable men, Sally returns despondently to her old job in the dance hall, where she is sought out by the importunate and over-assertive Carmyle. Sally is at such a low ebb by this point that she dully accepts his proposal of marriage, believing it to be the only option left open to her.
But no sooner has she done so than Ginger suddenly hoves into view again. His kennels have proved to be a success, and, on finding out that Sally has used the last of her money to set him up, and now having the means to support her himself (always an important point for any male romantic lead in Wodehouse) he declares his love. The scales finally fall from Sally’s eyes (this is the habitual fate of scales in the last reel of a Wodehouse novel … he must have used up several snakes’ worth). But she believes it to be too late – she has already promised herself to Carmyle.
All seems lost, but then Gerald Foster, having been off-stage for most of the story, re-appears. The bounder had, it seems, only married Elsa Doland to further his play-writing career, and she had only married him to enhance her acting career. When neither career prospers, the shaky marriage breaks up. Foster now surfaces back at his flat, across the hall from Sally’s, full of self-pity and bootleg whisky.
I digress here to wax a little about one of the lesser perils of being a writer, even an amateur writer like your humble scribe. It does spoil your reading rather. One can’t just lie back and enjoy a good yarn; your inner editor is forever twitching aside the curtain that conceals the author, and poking at the machinery behind the scenes. This matter of Foster’s flat is just such a bit of business that makes the editor-writer long to reach into the book and correct things. The in-story (or Watsonian) reason given for Foster having a flat so conveniently close to Sally’s is that Elsa Doland, being a great friend of Sally, wanted to be as close to her as possible. This is a weak attempt to paper over an otherwise astonishing co-incidence, and isn’t convincing at all. Elsa Doland spends hardly any on-screen time with Sally, and is never actually seen at said flat. The real (or Doylist) reason, of course, is so that Wodehouse could get Foster on the spot for the penultimate scene in the book. It would be interesting to know if the weaksauce Watsonian excuse was actually present in the original serial episode in Collier’s, or whether it was a retcon when the story was worked up into a novel.
But as I said, I digress. We now return to our scheduled deconstruction.
Foster, drunk and maudlin, takes to smashing up his flat. Sally, despite feeling nothing but contempt for him, is habitually helpful to those in need and decides to clear up the mess. While she does this, she packs him off to her own flat, as she cannot stand the sight of him. Befuddled by drink, Foster goes to sleep there, and this sets up the final denouement. The following morning, Carmyle turns up at his fiancée’s flat, encounters a newly awoken Foster there, and jumps to the wrong conclusion. He had only discovered that Sally was working as a dancer (after proposing to her) the night before, and the idea that Sally might not be respectable enough for the Family has been eating away at him. The pompous ass. The compromising presence of Gerald Foster confirms these suspicions, and relieved to have an out, he promptly takes it.
Sally, suddenly freed, at once gets on the phone to Ginger. Ginger doesn’t care what his Family thinks, or whether Sally is ‘respectable’ or not. Ginger may be a chump, but in Wodehouse, chumps often come out on top.
Cut to final scene, a year later, somewhere out in the boondocks of Long Island. Sally and Ginger are ensconced in (presumably) wedded bliss, running an increasingly successful dog breeding and training business. Ginger is still a chump, but it doesn’t matter, because:
Sally got up and ruffled his red hair.
A Wodehouse hero can get no greater compliment from a girl than to have his hair ruffled.
Up next: Jon Brierley’s third and final instalment on The Adventures of Sally.
