Pugsy's Homeric narrative

In chapter II of P. G. Wodehouse's novel Psmith, Journalist (1909, also reworked as chapter XIII of the American version of The Prince and Betty, 1912) Pugsy Maloney, the office-boy, tells Billy Windsor how he rescued a cat:

"I wasn't hoitin' her," he said, without emotion. "Dere was two fellers in de street sickin' a dawg on to her. An' I comes up an' says, 'G'wan! What do youse t'ink you're doin', fussin' de poor dumb animal?' An' one of de guys, he says, 'G'wan! Who do youse t'ink youse is?' An' I says, 'I'm de guy what's goin' to swat youse one on de coco if youse don't quit fussin' de poor dumb animal.' So wit dat he makes a break at swattin' me one, but I swats him one, an' I swats de odder feller one, an' den I swats dem bote some more, an' I gets de kitty, an' I brings her in here, cos I t'inks maybe youse'll look after her."
And having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.

This is not the first or the last time that Wodehouse calls a fight "Homeric", especially short, informal and chaotic scuffles that contrast with the dignified combats present everywhere in the Iliad. What makes this one in particular a "Homeric narrative" is how closely it follows its epic models in structure.

Homer's warriors meet on the field as individuals fighting duels that have nothing of the anonymity and collective action that we may associate with actual warfare. They fight each other in isolation, oblivious to the battle raging around them; and they take all the time of the world to bandy words. They also follow a pattern. A typical encounter includes some or even all of these steps, depending on the level of detail in which the scene is narrated:

• The heroes introduce themselves;
• each states what he intends to do to the other;
• they fight;
• the winner boasts of his victory, and
• walks away with the spoils (tha other's arms).

A neat example is provided by the duel between Achilles and Asteropaeus in book XXI, lines 139-204:

Meanwhile the son of Peleus bearing his far-shadowing spear leapt, eager to slay him, upon Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon, that was begotten of wide-flowing Axius and Periboea, eldest of the daughters of Acessamenus; for with her lay the deep-eddying River. Upon him rushed Achilles, and Asteropaeus stood forth from the river to face him, holding two spears; and courage was set in his heart by Xanthus, being wroth because of the youths slain in battle, of whom Achilles was making havoc along the stream and had no pity. But when they were come near, as they advanced one against the other, then first unto Asteropaeus spake swift-footed, goodly Achilles: "Who among men art thou, and from whence, that thou darest come forth against me? Unhappy are they whose children face my might."
Then spake unto him the glorious son of Pelegon: "Great-souled son of Peleus, wherefore enquirest thou of my lineage? I come from deep-soiled Paeonia, a land afar, leading the Paeonians with their long spears, and this is now my eleventh morn, since I came to Ilios. But my lineage is from wide-flowing Axius—Axius, the water whereof flows the fairest over the face of the earth—who begat Pelegon famed for his spear, and he, men say, was my father. Now let us do battle, glorious Achilles."
So spake he threatening, but goodly Achilles raised on high the spear of Pelian ash; howbeit the warrior Asteropaeus hurled with both spears at once, for he was one that could use both hands alike. With the one spear he smote the shield, but it brake not through, for the gold stayed it, the gift of the god; and with the other he smote the right forearm of Achilles a grazing blow, and the black blood gushed forth; but the spear-point passed above him and fixed itself in the earth, fain to glut itself with flesh. Then Achilles in his turn hurled at Asteropaeus his straight-flying spear of ash, eager to slay him, but missed the man and struck the high bank, and up to half its length he fixed in the bank the spear of ash. But the son of Peleus, drawing his sharp sword from beside his thigh, leapt upon him furiously, and the other availed not to draw in his stout hand the ashen spear of Achilles forth from out the bank. Thrice he made it quiver in his eagerness to draw it, and thrice he gave up his effort; but the fourth time his heart was fain to bend and break the ashen spear of the son of Aeacus; howbeit ere that might be Achilles drew nigh and robbed him of life with his sword. In the belly he smote him beside the navel, and forth upon the ground gushed all his bowels, and darkness enfolded his eyes as he lay gasping. And Achilles leapt upon his breast and despoiled him of his arms, and exulted saying: "Lie as thou art! Hard is it to strive with the children of the mighty son of Cronos, albeit for one begotten of a River. Thou verily declarest that thy birth is from the wide-flowing River, whereas I avow me to be of the lineage of great Zeus. The father that begat me is one that is lord among the many Myrmidons, even Peleus, son of Aeacus; and Aeacus was begotten of Zeus. Wherefore as Zeus is mightier than rivers that murmur seaward, so mightier too is the seed of Zeus than the seed of a river. For lo, hard beside thee is a great River, if so be he can avail thee aught; but it may not be that one should fight with Zeus the son of Cronos. With him doth not even king Achelous vie, nor the great might of deep-flowing Ocean, from whom all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and deep wells; howbeit even he hath fear of the lightning of great Zeus, and his dread thunder, whenso it crasheth from heaven."
He spake, and drew forth from the bank his spear of bronze, and left Asteropaeus where he was, when he had robbed him of his life, lying in the sands; and the dark water wetted him. With him then the eels and fishes dealt, plucking and tearing the fat about his kidneys.

(Transl. A. T. Murray, Loeb 1924.)

Other well-known examples of verbal dueling in the Iliad include Tlepolemus and Sarpedon (V.627ff), Aeneas and Achilles (XX.178ff) and the final confrontation between Hector and Achilles (XX.428ff and XXII.246ff). 

Except for the boasting after the deed, there is little difference between Pugsy's narrative and Homer's. (Some minor idiosyncracies of language may be put down to the translator rather than the poet.) Wodehouse's publisher must have been relieved to learn that the Iliad had long been out of copyright.

Another instance where Wodehouse speaks of the "Homeric" quality of the exchanges that precede battle is the account of Master Waffle's imitation of two cats fighting in a back-yard, in Something Fresh (1915) chapter V:

Young Master Waffles, who had devoted considerable study to his subject, had conceived the combat of his imaginary cats in a broad, almost a Homeric vein. The unpleasantness opened with a low gurgling sound, answered by another a shade louder and possibly a little more querulous. A momentary silence was followed by a long-drawn note like rising wind, cut off abruptly and succeeded by a grumbling mutter. The response to this was a couple of sharp howls. Both parties to the contest then indulged in a discontented whining, growing louder and louder till the air was full of electric menace. And then, after another sharp silence, came War, noisy and overwhelming. Standing at Master Waffles' side, you could follow almost every movement of that intricate fray, and mark how now one, now the other of the battlers gained a short-lived advantage. It was a great fight. Shrewd blows were taken and given, and in the eye of the imagination you could see the air thick with flying fur. Louder and louder grew the din, and then, at its height, it ceased in one crescendo of tumult, and all was still save for a faint, angry moaning.

Verbal dueling is not the only Homeric trait that Wodehouse happily adopted for his own fights. The ancient Greek model is followed, often explicitly, in other aspects such as divine intervention or the treatment of the fallen hero's body, in a way that reminds the reader of Fielding's continued parodic appropriation of the epic in Tom Jones. Hopefully these will be be the subject of another post in the future.

A family row with a Victorian background

In chapter X of Wodehouse's 1933 novel Heavy Weather the Hon. Galahad Threepwood and Lady Julia Fish discuss the romance between Lady Julia's son Ronnie and Sue Brown, daughter of an old flame of Gally's. As often happens with these siblings, they go at each other tooth and claw:

"You have been taking a lot of trouble to ruin this girl's happiness these last few days, and now you are getting official intimation that you haven't succeeded. They are all right, those two. Sweethearts still is the term."
The Hon. Galahad spread his coat-tails to the invisible blaze and resumed.
"The other thing I came to say is that there must be no more of this nonsense. If you have objections to young Ronnie marrying Sue, don't mention them to him. It worries him and makes him moody, and that worries Sue and makes her unhappy, and that worries me and spoils my day. You understand?"
Lady Julia was shaken, but she had not lost her spirit.
"I'm afraid you must make up your mind to having your days spoiled, Galahad."
"You don’t mean that even after this you intend to keep making a pest of yourself?"
"You put these things so badly. What you are trying to say, I imagine is, do I still intend to give my child a mother's advice? Certainly I do. A boy’s best friend is his mother, don't you sometimes think? Ronnie, handicapped by being virtually half-witted, may not have seen fit to take my advice as yet; but if in the old days you ever had a moment to spare from your life-work of being thrown out of shady night-clubs and were able to look in at the Adelphi Theatre, you may remember the expression 'A time will come!'"

The "term" quoted by Galahad, Sweethearts Still, is the title of a song of their youth by Arthur J. Greenish (1883). While it is true that Greenish didn't coin the phrase, the spike in occurrences of the phrase after that date shows that was the song that popularized it. The first verse goes:

Sweethearts still as in our youth,
Resting on each other's truth;
Darling let me take the hand,
Dearest still in all the land;
Care must choose its greatest ill,
Since we twain are sweethearts still.

Many compositions during the following decades use the phrase for this theme of the continuation of romance in old age: it is found in several poems (e.g. 1883, 1890, 1893), or this 1916 etching by W. Dendy Sadler:

Wodehouse, in contrast, normally applies it to young couples reconciled after a crisis, as here, in Piccadilly Jim ch. XXVI, Summer Lightning ch. I §4, etc.

Lady Julia (perhaps knowingly) replies with another Victorian song title, A Boy's Best Friend is His Mother. There were at least two of these. The first (1883), by Harry Miller and J. P. Skelly, begins:

While plodding on our way, the toilsome road of life,
How few the friends that daily there we meet!
Not many will stand by in trouble and in strife,
With counsel and affection ever sweet!
But there is one whose smile will ever on us beam
Whose love is dearer far than any other!
And wherever we may turn this lesson we will hear,
A boy's best friend is his Mother.

The second (1884), by Ben Williams:

I've been thinking of late, of the time that's pass'd away,
Of friends in whom I could confide;
Of my dear old mother's knee which around I used to play;
How I miss'd her sweet face when she died!
How well her I loved no one can tell;
Like her I could never love another!
It always gave her joy to kiss her darling boy
A boy's best friend is his mother!

The line is also used in Piccadilly Jim, "The Man Who Married a Hotel", Sam in the Suburbs and "The Man Who Gave Up Smoking" (and will be familiar to many people from a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film Psycho.)

Finally, Lady Julia herself provides the source of her last threat, "A time will come": the melodrama of the 19th century, one of whose main venues was the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand. This does not belong to one drama in particular, but is a stock phrase that characterized the villain of the piece, as we learn from a number of references:

A few years ago the villain used to be blessed with a hopeful and philosophical temperament, which enabled him to bear up under these constantly recurring disappointments and reverses. It was "no matter," he would say. Crushed for the moment though he might be, his buoyant heart never lost courage. He had a simple, childlike faith in Providence. "A time will come," he would remark, and this idea consoled him. (J. K. Jerome, “The Villain”, in Stage-Land, 1889)

Most of them are reduced to muttering, like the villain in the old melodrama, "a time will come." (G. K. Chesterton, "My Six Conversions. II: When the World Turned Back", in The Well and the Shallows, 1935)

Melodrama villain, from Stage-Land,
ill. by J. B. Partridge.

Other occurrences of the phrase in Wodehouse include his stories "Business Begins" and "An Affair of Boats"; compare also "mark my words, a time may come, and then . . ." in The Little Warrior.

So, the argument between these two representatives of a bygone era is dotted with memories of their salad days. What is ironic is that Lady Julia, by using the phrase and mentioning its context, unwittingly places herself in the role of the villain of the novel.

"Pick up the Henries"

An extremely rare bit of slang can be found in chapter XIII §4 of Wodehouse's novel Leave It to Psmith (Feb-Mar 1923):

Miss Peavey breathed heavily. Her strong hands clenched and unclenched. Between her parted lips her teeth showed in a thin white line. Suddenly she swallowed quickly, as if draining a glass of unpalatable medicine.
"Well," she said in a low, even voice, "that seems to be about all. Guess we'll be going. Come along, Ed, pick up the Henries."
"Coming, Liz," replied Mr. Cootes humbly.
They passed together into the night.

This is the only attestation found so far of "Henries" used in this sense. From the context, the notes at Madame Eulalie deduce that it means "feet". There is a strong association with the common phrase "pick up your feet" meaning something like "get moving, hurry up" or sometimes "go away." Here are some early 20th century examples picked at random:

1901 "The first we heard of our new teachers was the cry: "Go up these stairs and then turn to your left. Pick up your feet!'"
1915 "You'd better pick up your feet and go home and join the army."
1917 "Off! Get you gone!—Pick up your feet!"
1922 And she told her two boys, 'Pick up your feet now and run. Go to the grass, go to the new green grass. Go to the young frogs and ask them why they are shooting songs up into the sky this early spring day. Pick up your feet now and run.'

And a few from Wodehouse himself:

1920 "Get a move on, Willie! Pick up your feet!"
1948 "pick up your feet and streak for your dug-out like a flash"
1961 "Pick up your feet, kid, and go and tell him what you really think of him"; "pick up your feet and get going"

Besides, the rhyming slang "dogs" for "feet" (= "dogs' meat") appears also in Leave It to Psmith ch. X §1, in exactly the same construction: "you'll pick up your dogs and run round as quick as you can make it." Another occurrence of "dogs" very close in time is found in the story "The Heart of a Goof" (Sep 1923): "He gazed down the fairway, shifted his feet, waggled, gazed down the fairway again, shifted the dogs once more, and waggled afresh."

However, it is difficult to find a rhyming slang path that will lead from "feet" to "Henries". An alternative explanation, pointing to "shoes" rather than "feet", is suggested by the variation "pick up the (old) waukeesis" that we find in The Little Warrior (1920) and Love Among the Chickens (1921)—"Waukeezi" being a brand of shoes popular during the first half of the 20th century.

Could "Henries" have been another shoe brand? No; or at least, there doesn't seem to have existed any "Henry" or "Henries" shoes as widely advertised as "Waukeezi" that could give birth to the association. The trail would peter out there, if Wodehouse himself didn't come to our rescue with the missing link. In 1930 he and Ian Hay adapted the novel for the stage, and the dialogue quoted above became:

MISS PEAVEY. I guess I'd better. (To COOTES.) Come on you! It's back to the boats for us.
COOTES (incredulously). Us?
MISS PEAVEY. Sure!
COOTES. Liz—you ain't through with me?
MISS PEAVEY. Through with you? I ain't got a hope!
COOTES. You're still going to marry me?
MISS PEAVEY. I've gotta marry you. What would become of you if I didn't—you poor oil-can? Pick up the Henry Fords! (Taking COOTES'S arm and turning on PSMITH.) You big bully,—scaring my little ducksie wucksie! (To COOTES). Oh, come on! C'mon!

"Henry Ford", of course, is not a shoe brand but the name of a well-known business magnate. But now a connection with "shoes", if not easy, is at least possible, because what we still call Oxford shoes were very much in fashion in the 1920s for both men and women, as we learn from this History of Oxford shoes; and they were sometimes referred to as "Oxfords" or "Ford shoes", witness these advertisements:

"Ford Shoes or Oxfords" (1904)

"your Oxfords" (1908)

With this in mind, an evolution “Pick up the Oxfords > the Fords > the Henry Fords > the Henries” seems reasonable, as Henry Ford’s name had been in everybody's mouth since the early 1910s. It was still so in 1930, and the allusion would have been equally intelligible (or inintelligible) then, but maybe Wodehouse on second thoughts decided that "the Henries" was too obscure—in Psmith's words, "perhaps I did put a bit of top-spin on that one"—and restored the full name for the 1930 play.

As we said at the beginning, this is the only instance found so far of "the Henries" or even of "the Henry Fords". It may well be that it was Wodehouse's own creation and not in common use. Until new evidence is produced this seems a safe assumption, but in these days of continuous digitization one never knows what new specimens of lost slang may turn up.

Judson Coker with his handkerchief up his sleeve

Judson Coker was the master-mind behind the Fifth Avenue Silks, who used to assemble on Sunday mornings and parade up Fifth Avenue in silk pyjamas, silk socks, silk hats, and silk umbrellas in case it rained. He is also a fictional character in P. G. Wodehouse's novel Bill the Conqueror (1924).

In chapter II.2 he boasts to Roberts the butler of his other accomplishments:

"I've done a good deal of that sort of thing. I went up in an aeroplane once, scattering dollar-bills over the city. I'm surprised you've not heard of me."
"We live very much out of the great world down here, sir."
"I suppose you do," said Judson, cheered by this solution. "Yes, I guess that must be it. Quite likely you might not have heard of me if that's so. But you can take it from me that I've done a lot of things in my time. Clever things, you know, that made people talk. If it hadn't been for me I don't suppose the custom of wearing the handkerchief up the sleeve would ever have been known in America."

The origin of this last detail of fashion in the 20s is curious and not too well documented, but it can be reconstructed from a string of quotations across the decades, starting in the middle of the Victorian era.

The custom started as a necessity for soldiers, since the traditional red coats of the British army had no pockets:

Sir Robert Carden: Do you usually carry your pocket handkerchief up your sleeve?—The prosecutor: That is where soldiers generally carry their handkerchiefs when they have them, as they have no pockets for them.

(York Herald, September 8, 1877)

"Though, by the 20th century, the red coat was abandoned for practical duties in favour of khaki by all British Empire military units, it continues to be used for ceremonial full dress and mess dress uniforms" (Wikipedia); and so at the turn of the century we read that:

Although the familiar red coats of soldiers have been shown to be unfit for active service, and are consequently suitable for home wear only, they are still being issued with the side pockets stitched up, and their wearers are forbidden to open and use them under certain pains and penalties. A soldier usually carries his pocket handkerchief up his sleeve, and other pockets less conveniently placed than side pockets of his coat have to be used for his pipe and other necessities.

(Derby Daily Telegraph, July 9 1900)

Thus the habit became a mark of military deportment and distinction of the soldier at home. From them it was soon adoped by young men about town who wished to give themselves military airs:

[The members of the Bachelors' Club] are all immaculate in dress; speak slowly, so that no tittle of their conversation shall pass away; and every one of them wears his handkerchief up his sleeve and his heart on it.

(The Sketch, November 27, 1901)

It is with some a distinguishing mark of a well-educated lady, just as with the same class a man is a true gentleman if he keeps his handkerchief up his sleeve.

(Highland News, April 14, 1906)

Billy thinks he's fit to run the whole Army now [...] and now he always walks with a Guardsman swagger, and wears his handkerchief up his sleeve and salutes instead of taking his hat off, and that sort of thing.

(Truth, December 4, 1907)

The average young-man-about-town—an individual, that is to say, whom you recognise at a glance to be 'a gentleman because he wears his handkerchief up his sleeve'

(Pall Mall Gazette, August 23, 1912)

When exported to America (by Judson Coker, as we have seen), the fashion became the sign of the foreign nobleman:

A gentleman who had all the earmarks of a foreign nobleman about him, including the whiskers and the handkerchief up the sleeve [...]

(Lima News (Ohio), September 19, 1913)

Come the Great War, the situation was reversed, because the knut was now forced to become a real soldier, with the added advantage that he had already mastered the soldierly manner:

If the fellow who is used to wearing goloshes, and underwear of that description, or carrying his handkerchief up his sleeve, or a monicle in his eye, is just as ready to don the uniform of a private, it only goes to show that the Johnnie or Knut, just as you are pleased to call him, is not such a useless and unpatriotic person as you might be inclined to suppose.

(Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 6, 1915)

Finally, in the 20s the origin of the fashion was still remembered mockingly:

'Don't wear the handkerchief up the sleeve,' says our mentor; 'we are no longer at war.'

(Daily Herald, November 10, 1926)

Which takes us neatly to Judson's time. How the fashion evolved after that and at what point it was abandoned (if ever) I cannot say.

Letters to the New York Tribune by Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse occasionally wrote letters to the New York Tribune. They are short and circumstantial, but it may be as well to put them together here, with some context.

The first is a brief disclaimer printed in F. P. Adams' famous column "The Conning Tower" on August 28, 1917:

Those verses of Freckles's have provoked many communications. "When Guy Bolton and I were writing 'The Riviera Girl' months and months ago," writes Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, "I turned off a little bijou entitled 'Let's Build a Little Bungalow in Quogue.' I wish you would tell Freckles this, as I don't want to be thought to have lifted his idea. Quogue is a much superior location for a bungalow than is Bablyon, there being no jellyfish."

The poem in question by "Freckles" [pseudonym of publicist Howard Dietz] had been published on August 22 bore the title "Babylon Ballad". It begins:

I've a bungalow in Babylon on Great South Bay,
With a living room, a laving room, and kitchen,
And the windows screened to keep the great mosquito fleet away,
(A squadron which the Lengthy Isle is rich in.)
The air is more than open, and the winds blow free,
And the moon o' nights is wan and pale and dreamy,
And my door is on the latch, because I never use a key,
So you hardly have to knock to come to see me.

Compare the refrain of Wodehouse's lyrics:

Let's build a little bungalow in Quogue,
In Yaphank, or in Hicksville or Patchogue,
Where we can sniff the scented breeze
And pluck tomatoes from the trees,
Where there is room to exercise the dog.
How pleasant it will be through life to jog
With Bill the bull and Hildebrand the hog;
Each morn we'll waken from our doze
When Reginald, the rooster, crows
Down in our little bungalow in Quogue.

* * *

The second is a clarification concerning the Balboa/Cortez confusion in his story "A Woman is Only a Woman", published on October 27, 1919:

"About this Balboa business," writes P. G. Wodehouse. "A few months ago I wrote a story for 'The Saturday Evening Post,' in which I described a golfer who had just laid his ball dead, gazing at the pill like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared at the Pacific. Two days later I received a copy of the magazine, with these words inscribed on the first page of my story: 'It was Balboa, you big stiff.' But why shouldn't Cortez have stared at the Pacific, too? The Pacific was surely open for being stared at about that time. Anyway, don't weaken on stout Cortez. If he was good enough for Keats he's good enough for us. I can't see Balboa in the thing at all."

Wodehouse used this paragraph (slightly abridged) a few years later in the foreword to The Clicking of Cuthbert.

* * *

The third, printed on January 22, 1920 again in "The Conning Tower", is much better known, since it was unearthed in 2011 and discussed e.g. in The Telegraph for July 17. It is a comment on a boxing article published a few days before in Grantland Rice's column "The Sportlight":

Grantland, Priceless Old Bean, Is Off in Florida, But He Shall Ever So Well Be Spoken To, We Mean to Say

My Dear Old Soul:

I hate to bother you and all that sort of thing, but if you've a spare moment I wish you'd toddle down the passage and speak to Grantland Rice. I mean to say, all that stuff he wrote in yesterday's jolly old issue about chappies being "chopped into pink ribbons" and the blighter with the "red grin that bubbled gore." What I mean is, he doesn't seem to realize that we lads who take in The Tribune read it at breakfast, and, believe me, dear lod son, when Jeeves, my man, slipped a couple of fried eggs in front of me just at what you might call the psychological moment, it was a near thing, laddie, a very near thing. Jolly Old Rice, I've n doubt, is one of those healthy, hearty fellows who skip out of bed like two-year-olds and feel perfectly topping before breakfast, but in my case—well, you know how it is. I'm never much of a lad until after the morning meal. And, when it comes to having to breakfast on red grins and bubbling gore, well, I mean to say, what! I mean, you know what I mean, I mean!

Well, that's all. Cheerio and all that sort of rot! Good-bye-ee!

BERTIE WOOSTER.
(per pro P. G. Wodehouse, Secy.)

(Here are some of the phrases in Rice's article that revolted Bertram: "The kid was chopped to pink ribbons the next eight rounds, but he finished on his feet still swinging away. He could take it." "And he was still taking with a red grin that bubbled gore when the bell rang." "Facing Nelson, Young Corbett in the sixth or seventh round after punishing the Battler, let a punch fly that landed over Nelson's heart, breaking one of his ribs. It floored the Dane with a noisy thud." "He took it in such vast and copious quantities that he was blind and reeling at the finish, a gory ghost still weaving and pawing in the general direction of his antagonist, beaten and battered to a ghastly pulp, but still on his feet and still trying when the referee decided to stop the bout.")

It is not absolutely certain whether this is genuine Wodehouse or the work of an early admirer. The main argument against authenticity is that the style is overdone, cramming into a few lines every Wooster-like mannerism the writer could think of. In favor of it is the unlikelihood that Wodehouse would allow his name and his fictional character to be used freely like this. Note that "per pro P. G. Wodehouse, Sec[retar]y." appears to indicate that the letter was actually sent under his name.

The two first letters copied above, on the other hand, show that he had already engaged in correspondence with the Tribune, and more specifically with Adams' column. This may lend force to the argument for authenticity, but of course is not conclusive.

Early Spanish translations of Wodehouse in magazines

The bulk of the existing Spanish translations of P. G. Wodehouse was done in the period 1942-1950 by the industry of the prominent publisher Josep Janés, who produced no less than 46 titles (by 16 different translators; in his rather short career he accumulated around 1,600 editions to his name). After that only a few items have been erratically added to the list, with many of his later books, and some of the earlier as well, still untranslated.

Before the 40s, only three translations had appeared:

• El simpático haragán (= Bill the Conqueror, tr. by Victor Lletjet, Iberia 1926)
• Las genialidades de Sam (= Sam the Sudden, tr. by G. López Hipkiss, HYMSA 1935)
• El pescador en la red (= Bill the Conqueror again, tr. by Guillermo Labarca H., Letras, Santiago de Chile, 1938)

All are valuable collectors' items today. McIlvaine in her Comprehensive Bibliography and Checklist only mentions the second.

However, a number of stories had been published in magazines since the early 20s, one of them at least predating the first book. These are the ones known to me, all from South American periodicals:

• "La 'chance' del boxeador Billson" (= "The Return of Battling Billson" (1823), Caras y Caretas, September 15, 1923)
• "El colegio de Ukridge para perros" (= "Ukridge's Dog College" (1923), Caras y Caretas, March 15, 1924)
• "Una Voz del Pasado" (= "The Voice from the Past" (1931), Aconcagua, February 1932)
• "El Cuco" (= "The Nodder" (1933), Aconcagua, March 1933)
• "El Héroe y el Gorila" (= "Monkey Business" (1932), Aconcagua, June 1933)
• "Socorriendo a Dora" (= "First Aid for Dora" (1923), Caras y Caretas, December 17, 1938)
• "La aventura del perro" (= "Episode of the Dog McIntosh" (1929), Mundo Uruguayo, January 25, 1940)

As can be seen, Caras y Caretas (Buenos Aires) specialized in Ukridge stories and Aconcagua (Buenos Aires) in Mulliner stories, while Mundo Uruguayo (Montevideo) is the only Jeeves & Wooster item. All the translations until 1933 were published shortly after the first appearance of their originals in American or British magazines and were clearly taken directly from them rather than from the books.

In fact, while all have illustrations, the first two Caras stories just reproduce most of those in Cosmopolitan, while the late Ukridge translation "Dora" has one color illustration by "Faber". "Una Voz" and "Cuco" reproduce some from American Magazine ("Una Voz" has one apparently original drawing), while "El Héroe" uses those of Strand. Finally, "La aventura" has one original drawing by "Kike". All the illustrations taken from other magazines are uncredited.

All the translation are equally uncredited, except for "Dora" which is signed "L. C." This one is heavily abridged from its original. Of the rest, I have noticed that "El Héroe" simplifies the typical Mulliner introduction at the Angler's Rest to a couple of short paragraphs.

This list was compiled from copies available at various online repositories of digitized periodicals, but these are far from complete. It is very likely that other translations existed, waiting to be dug out.

From "Socorriendo a Dora" in Caras y Caretas

From "La aventura del perro" in Mundo Uruguayo

A few echoes of James Payn in Wodehouse

James Payn (1830-1898) is as forgotten today as he was popular in the last third of the 19th century. His Wikipedia article provides a good summary of his career so I don't need to repeat it here.

Or we can turn to Charteris of Merevale's (eponymous hero of this blog) for an even more succinct account:

"Have you ever tried anything of James Payn's?"
"I’ve read 'Terminations,' or something," said Tony doubtfully, "but he's so obscure."
"Don't," said Charteris sadly, "please don't. 'Terminations' is by one Henry James, and there is a substantial difference between him and James Payn. Anyhow, if you want a short biography of James Payn, he wrote a hundred books, and they're all simply ripping, and Adamson has got a good many of them, and I'm going to borrow a couple—any two will do—and you're going to read them.”

P. G. Wodehouse, "The Manoeuvres of Charteris,"
in Tales of Saint Austin's (1903)

Charteris' reckoning is more or less correct. Payn has some 72 book titles to his name, but since many of these were 2- or 3-volume novels or collections the count may go well above 140 volumes in total. His estimation of quality and quantity, on the other hand, is strangely prophetic of Wodehouse's own literary career, still 70 years ahead of him.

Going through Payn's output is a Gargantuan task which I don't claim to have completed—though I'm working on it. But even a brief acquaintance with some of his more popular books is enough to collect instances of the early Wodehouse getting inspiration from the Victorian novelist, to the point that it seems likely that Charteris' enthusiasm is in some way a reflection of Wodehouse's own appreciation, at least in his formative years.

The most striking example is the name Gotsuchakoff that we find in The Head of Kay's (1904-5) ch. 4: "Anything modern was taboo, unless it were the work of Gotsuchakoff, Thingummyowsky, or some other eminent foreigner." Payn had come up with the name in his novel The Family Scapegrace, first serialized in Chambers's Journal in 1861. Curiously enough, there he is not a comical character but the villain of a drama. Many years later James regretted calling "such a sombre and serious individual by so ludicrous a name" ("My First Book", in The Idler, July 1892). Wodehouse used it also in the "By the Way" column in The Globe. Gotsuchakoff is perhaps a forerunner of the much better known Russian novelist Nastikoff mentioned in "The Clicking of Cuthbert" (1921).

Another likely echo is the name of Charteris' "unofficial and highly personal" school magazine The Glow Worm, featured in several stories: The Pothunters (1902), "The Babe and the Dragon" (1902), "The Manoeuvres" (1903), "Pillingshot's Paper" (1911). It reflects the title of one of Payn's most successful collection of short stories, Glow-Worm Tales (1887).

[There also existed at least two journals of this title in the 1860s: one devoted to spiritism (vol. 1, vol. 2); and another to literary and general items, very difficult to find anything about since apparently there are no volumes online and hardly any reference in online library catalogues (see A. W. à Beckett ch. 4). Both disappeared long before Wodehouse’s time and most likely never came to his notice.]

The preface to Tales of St. Austin's states the sources of its contents, and adds that "The story entitled 'A Shocking Affair' appears in print for the first time. 'This was one of our failures.'" As B. Green in P. G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography notes (p. 19), this refers to the fact that that story had been rejected by the magazine editors to whom it had been offered, a circumstance with which Wodehouse as a free-lance writer was sadly familiar and which he satirized in "An Unfinished Collection" (Punch, 1902).

"This was one of our failures" is a quotation Payn, Gleams of Memory; with some reflections (1894) pp. 178-9, where he comments on the fortunes of his play The Substitute, which had failed on the stage:

What was rather singular, I rewrote it as a story, which was popular enough, when half a dozen persons wrote to me to ask permission, on account of its dramatic character, to adapt it for the stage, where it had already run for six weeks (at the Court Theatre, but with a scratch company and in the off season) without attracting the least attention. As Mr. Brummell’s valet observed of his master’s neckcloths, ‘this was one of our failures.’

[The story in question is "An Aunt by Marriage", first published in Belgravia (November 1876) and collected in High Spirits vol. I (1879).] Payn refers in turn to a well-known anecdote concerning G. B. "Beau" Brummell, "the king of the dandies," told thus by "Captain Jesse" in The Life of George Brummell, vol. I (1844) p. 61:

Brummell was one of the first who revived and improved the taste for dress; and his great innovation was effected upon neckcloths: they were then worn without stiffening of any kind, and bagged out in front, rucking up to the chin in a roll; to remedy this obvious awkwardness and inconvenience, he used to have his slightly starched; and a reasoning mind must allow, that there is not much to object to in this reform.
He did not, however, like the dandies, test their fitness for use, by trying if he could raise three parts of their length by one corner without their bending; yet it appears, that if the cravat was not properly tied at the first effort, or inspiring impulse, it was always rejected: his valet was coming down stairs one day with a quantity of tumbled neckcloths under his arm, and being interrogated on the subject, solemnly replied, “Oh, they are our failures.” Practice like this of course made him perfect; and his tie soon became a model that was imitated, but never equalled.

One phrase that Wodehouse incorporated into his arsenal is "vapid and irreflective". As Neil Midkiff observes in his notes to The Head of Kay's, "Thomas De Quincey commented on a volume of poems by James Payn in 1853, saying that it 'contains thoughts of great beauty, too likely to escape the vapid and irreflective reader,' and this phrase was quoted in advertisements for the book by Payn’s publisher. ... Payn told (in "Some Literary Recollections" in the Cornhill Magazine, 1884) how his fellow students at Trinity applied the epithet to Payn himself." Payn used it repeatedly, in "The Gentle Reader" (Chambers's, 1858), The Bateman Household (Chambers's, 1860), "Amateur Criticism" (Chambers's, 1860), and "The Critic on the Hearth" (Appleton’s, 1879). Wodehouse would speak of "the vapid and irreflective reader" in The Head of Kay's (1905) ch. 20 and Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972) ch. 4, but also of the "v. and i. oberver" in The Coming of Bill (1919) part I ch. 9, Laughing Gas (1936) ch. 12, and The Code of the Woosters (1938) ch. 3, "v. and i. guffin" in "The Knightly Quest of Mervyn" (1931), "v. and i. nitwit" in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954) ch. 13, "v and i. males" in Money for Nothing (1928) ch. 5, "v. and i. chump" in "The Inferiority complex of Old Sippy" (1926), and at least half a dozen others.

The list of possible echoes goes on, some more probable than others. There may be more links to be traced, if only one takes the time to delve into Payn's interminable list of books. The title of the novel The White Feather (1905-6), for example, could have been inspired by "The White Feather", a story first published in Chambers's in 1856 and collected in Stories and Sketches (1857): both deal with a protagonist who struggles to recover his honor after a shameful display of cowardice. But the connection is not a necessary one, as both authors could have drawn independently from the custom of giving white feathers to males who refused to join the army in times of war.

It will be noticed that all these instances are extremely early, none later than 1905-6 if we except the perdurable phrase "vapid and irreflective." It is perfectly possible that Wodehouse fell out of love with Payn, who after all (as he would have been the first to admit) was not a literary figure of importance. It is also true that Payn's type of humor, which often leans toward social satire, is not the one he cultivated; to say nothing of his more sensational and melodramatic novels. At any rate, Wodehouse must have realized that his vanishing from the scene made allusions to Payn's work irrelevant or pointless. It is worth noting that, although Payn's humorous stories and sketches were celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic for four decades, Wodehouse didn't include him in his 1934 anthology A Century of Humour, which contains stories by far more obscure writers.

The Windsor Magazine, March 1897