"If you don’t kill mother, I will!"

Wodehouse's brief comment on the Broadway production of Leo Tolstoy's lugubrious play The Power of Darkness, between January and March 1920, begins with a quotation from memory:

I once heard a definition of Greek Tragedy as the sort of drama where one character comes to another and says 'If you don't kill mother, I will!' The description fits most Russian peasant plays admirably, and fittingly introduces the Theatre Guild’s new production of Tolstoi's Power of Darkness down at the Garrick. If you want to read a real boost of the little opus, how is this, from Kenneth MacGowan's critique in the Globe?—"Its horror walks by night and fills a theatre with the dread of sin. The bitterest and most horrible picture of debased human nature ever drawn for the stage." How about toddling round and doing a bit of sin-dreading next Monday?

It was just after this that he wrote an often quoted sentence in The Little Warrior ch. 8:

No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.

which is is pretty much what happens to Nikita, the protagonist of The Power, minus the vodka bottle.

The first part of the commentary obviously alludes to one of the best known episodes of Greek tragedy, the plot to murder Clytemnestra by her own children, preserved as luck will have it in works by all three major playwrights: Aeschylus' Choephorae, Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra. In fact, "If you don't kill mother, I will" is Sopocles' version lines 938-1057 in a nutsell, where Electra, convinced that her brother Orestes has died abroad, tries to enlist her sister Chrysothemis' help to do the deed themselves, weak women though they are. Chrysothemis refuses, and Electra decides to do it on her own.

As far as our current ability to search across millions of digitized books, journals, newspapers and every other kind of written record shows, Wodehouse was the first to cause it to be printed. His column appeared in April 1920, but a few American newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune (March 26) had already quoted him:

Tolstoi's "Power of Darkness" reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy—the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, "If you don't kill mother, I will!"

Very likely he expressed this after witnessing a performance, a reporter picked it up, it was repeated in other newspapers, and W. decided to use it in his Vanity Fair column.

Subsequently the epigram circulated either quoting Wodehouse or anonymously, until around the mid-40s it began to appear attached to 20th-Century Fox president Spyros Skouras (1893-1971), who gets the credit in modern quotation collections.

On the other hand, John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) attributes the dictum to Helen Choate Bell (1830-1918) in an unfinished book of Retrospections, cited in John Jay Chapman and His Letters, p. 195:

I recall one of Mrs. Bell's sallies. She had been taken to Cambridge to attend a Greek play, and on being asked about it, replied, "Oh, it was one of those Greek tragedies where one of the characters on the stage says to another, 'If you don't kill mother, I will.'"

This was only published in 1937. H. C. Bell was a wit, very well known and respected in literary circles in Boston towards the end of the 19th century. A graduate prize in American literature is awarded in her honor by Harvard University. A book of reminiscences of her, Mrs. Bell (as she was usually called), was published by her friend Paulina Cony Drown in 1931. It includes many memorable quotations, but not the definition of Greek tragedy.

It is not easy to decide who to put down as the definitive author of the sentence. Mrs. Bell's claim seems to be the strongest: Chapman, after all, speaks from his personal recollections of her. His manuscript of Retrospections was written around 1932, when Chapman's health was already failing, but there is no reason to suppose that his memory was faulty.

Wodehouse disavows authorship of the phrase, and again one ought to take his word for it unless some proof to the contrary is produced. Stylistically there could be no objection, since the contrast between tragic matter and airy expression was his speciality—see his passage from The Little Warrior above. But this kind of argument cuts both ways: he may have heard the definition, liked it and adopted it precisely because it fits so well with his own style.

The real question is, if Wodehouse is indeed quoting, how did the phrase ever reach him? It can only have happened orally. He may have heard it from any of the characters involved in the story so far (Mrs. Bell, Chapman, Skouras), or it may have circulated in literary and cinematic circles, and he could have heard it second- or third-hand.

Skouras' claim cannot be disregarded altogether either, but it seems the weakest of all. It is true that he was already involved in the motion picture industry in 1920, building and buying theaters in partnership with his two brothers, with whom he had moved to the United States from Greece in 1910. But the lateness of the date militates against it, and the fact that the association of the epigram with his name occurred after he rose to the summit of fame as president of Fox is suspicious, since fame can easily act as a magnet for such things. Also, it's not as if he had used it in an interview, or it was even recounted in a personal anecdote (as fas as I know), but it always appears in vague attributions and later in never-to-be-relied-on collections of sayings.

The Small Bachelor: a variorum edition

The Small Bachelor (variorum edition) (PDF, 1,365 KB)

This is the second project of its kind that I've completed. The presentation to Leave It to Psmith should serve for this new one too.

In a way this was both simpler and harder than LItP. It is true that this novel didn't undergo the major changes that made it neccessary to resort to parallel texts. At the same time, the number of minor differences between main versions is much larger, and so is the count of changes introduced by later British editions. This results in an apparatus of 840+ entries vs. 500+ in LItP.

Speaking of LItP, I recently made some corrections and enhancements, and replaced the published PDF file.

I hope to finish at least one more of these editions before the end of the year. At present, Tales of St. Austin's and The Little Warrior are the main candidates, as most of the preliminary work is already done.

Cachinnagenic or cachinnogenic

There is this funny word cachinnogenic that Wodehouse used in America, I Like You p. 161:

[...] it used to be obligatory to laugh whenever anyone on the television screen mentioned Brooklyn. If there was one credo rooted in the minds of the citizenry it was that the word Brooklyn was cachinnogenic. And now there has been a shift in the party line, and today you have to laugh at Texas.
Nobody knows why. It is just an order that has come down from the men higher up. It is perfectly permissible under the new rules to keep a straight face when somebody speaks of Oshkosh, Kalamazoo or the Gowanus Canal [...]

But the Punch article from which this chapter is adapted ("This Happy Breed of Men", June 1, 1955) reads cachinnagenic instead.

Of the two, cachinnogenic is more correct from a linguistic point of view, since the word is composed of Latin cachinnus "a laugh, esp. of a loud or boisterous kind, guffaw" and the suffix -genic, which makes the whole mean "productive of (loud) laughter". But there is no reason for a Latin noun of the second declension to produce compounds in -a-: for that you need to have with a noun that ends in a, like mediagenic "attractive as a subject for reporting by news media".

Now, cachinnagenic is interesting because it leads (via a Google search) to Wodehouse's probable source for the Punch piece. This was an article titled "Analysis of the Boffolo Texensis" by Stanley Walker in the New York Times, March 12, 1955. Walker writes:

Texas has become the most cachinnagenic (chew on that one a while, you microcephalic Yankee hyenas) of the American states, clearly outdistancing Arkansas. The belly laugh at the expense of the Lone Star State (boffolo texensis) has made the customers with a low titillation point forget Gowanus, Walla Walla, Bridgeport, Oshkosh and Kalamazoo.

(A captivating essay about Walker and his native Texas is "Stanley Walker: The Retread Texan" by Jay Milner available here.) Both the argument and the examples given (as well as the dates) point to a derivation between the two. Wodehouse seems to have taken the word from Walker with a, and somewhere along the process of preparing the text for the book either he or his editor corrected a to o.

The story of the word and its correct application to American toponymy didn't end there. In Variety, Jan 9, 1957 one sees an ongoing discussion as to whether Texas had really dethroned Brooklyn.

It is likely that Wodehouse knew about Walker or even met him, although the only shred of evidence of any contact between the two I've found so far is the following mention in a letter to W. Townend (December 1934 in Performing Flea, or September in Author! Author!):

Then I had a cable from the Herald Tribune which said, "Happy about Lord Havershot"—that was the name of the hero of the novelette—from which I inferred that it was all right. But I do hate these ambiguous cables. I mean, the editor might quite easily have written "Not happy" and the French postal officials might have cut out the word "Not" as not seeming to them important. Finally, however, a letter arrived, just about the time I heard the news of the success of the show, saying that they liked the story.

Walker was still editor of the New York HT during this period, so he was probably Wodehouse's correspondent.

Be that as it may, the next time you want to describe Gussie Fink-Nottle's prize-giving scene as "productive of (loud) laughter", you need no longer hesitate between the two spellings.

"Trixie" and "Cocktail Time"

The annotations to P. G. Wodehouse's Cocktail Time (1958) point out that a mysterious character, Mr. Lucas-Gore, a member of the Demosthenes Club, can be found in The Author of "Trixie", a 1924 novel by William Caine, in very much the same role as in Wodehouse's story—a club bore mentioned in passing who tells anecdotes concerning Henry James. So in Cocktail Time ch. 25 we read:

Members who could sit without flinching through Sir Roderick Glossop’s stories about his patients or old Mr. Lucas-Gore's anecdotes of Henry James, paled beneath their tan when Howard Saxby senior started to tell the tale.

Two years later, Wodehouse introduced him again in Ice in the Bedroom ch. 14, still going on about H. James:

At lunch at his club, the Demosthenes, he had been cornered by old Mr. Lucas-Gore, whose conversation was always a bleating melange of anecdotes about Henry James, an author in whom the solicitor's interest had never been anything but tepid.

Caine's novel was unavaliable at the time, but since then it has entered the public domain in the US, and so can be read online at the Internet Archive. There we learn that in chapter I.3 the protagonist, while enjoying a cigar and a glass of cognac at his club, is struck with an idea:

The idea now pleased rather than amused him. He dismissed it (for old Mr. Lucas-Gore had started out upon an anecdote concerning Henry James, the point of which escaped him just as he got there), and it sank quietly into his subconscious mind.

This ought to be enough to show the filiation between the two passages. But the similarity goes deeper than that, because the story of The Author of "Trixie" is essentially the same as that of Cocktail Time. In Caine's novel, an Archdeacon (Samson Roach), an expert on Lactantius and author of a booklet of spirituality, has written a novel unsuitable for his position, so he has his prospective son-in-law (Bisham Dunkle, an unsuccessful modern poet) pose as the author. The novel is a success, money comes rolling in, and the latter part of the novel deals with the litigations around the authorship, as the Archdeacon regrets his decision. In Wodehouse's version, Sir Raymond Bastable, a respectable barrister, writes a successful novel under a pseudonym, but acknowledging it would ruin his political aspirations, so he gets his nephew Cosmo Wisdom to take responsibility for it. Sir Raymond too changes his mind later.

The Author begins: "'Every man and woman,' said the bishop of Pontefract, 'has one novel in them.'" This is the same phrase we find in chapter 2 of Cocktail: "Every man, they say, has one novel in him." The first conversation takes place at the Athenaeum—a real London club with which the annotator of Cocktail has identified the fictitious Demosthenes Club to which Sir Raymond belongs and where we hear of Mr. Lucas-Gore.

There is a dialogue between the two halves of the Archdeacon's personality that alludes to the Baconian theory when the idea is first proposed:

He suggested to the Pastor of Souls the adoption of an alias. The Pastor shook his head. He gravely misdoubted the security of an alias. To adopt an alias is to set every busybody to the work of discovering whom it conceals; and sooner or later the truth is ferreted out. And this particular truth must, simply, not be ferreted out.

Anonymity, then? How about anonymity?

No, thought the Pastor; anonymity wouldn't do either. Anonymity was just as dangerous as pseudonymity. Equally calculated to set the busybodies going.

"Why, then," said the Artist, "I'll tell you what."

"What?" inquired the Pastor of Souls.

"Do," said the Artist, "as Bacon did. Get a Shakespeare. Publish 'Trixie' under the name of some other man, someone who can actually be pointed out as the author, someone whose photograph can be published in the magazines, someone who can be interviewed and run after."

Compare chapter 3 of Cocktail:

If there is one thing the popular press of today is, it is nosey. It tracks down, it ferrets out. Richard Blunt becomes front page news, and it is not long before it is asking itself who is this Richard Blunt? It wants photographs of him smoking a pipe or being kind to the dog and interviews with him telling the world what his favourite breakfast cereal is and what he thinks of the modern girl.

and ch. 4:

Lord Ickenham was silent for some moments. From the frown of concentration on his forehead he appeared to be exercising that ingenious brain of his.

"Yes," he said, "they do find things out. I suppose that's what worried Bacon."

"Bacon?"

"And made him, according to the Baconians, get hold of Shakespeare and slip him a little something to say he had written the plays. After knocking off a couple of them, he got cold feet. 'Come, come, Francis,' he said to himself, 'this won't do at all. Let it become known that you go in for this sort of thing, and they'll be looking around for another Chancellor of the Exchequer before you can say What-ho. You must find some needy young fellow who for a consideration will consent to take the rap.' And he went out and fixed it up with Shakespeare."

* * *

But these similarities end very soon. First of all, The Author is a short novel (about 32,000 words), with a much simpler plot than Cocktail (twice as long). The Archdeacon, his daughter Chloë and Dunkle are practically the only characters. "Trixie" is first written out of curiosity, as Roach just wanted to test if he too "had a novel in him." His book is not immoral like Sir Raymond's, but hopelessly sappy: "The reviewers either damned the book for a preposterous lump of false and sentimental twaddle or praised it for a notable masterpiece of pathetic and elevating sincerity" (ch. V.2); Dunkle's sensitivity as a modern poet is the main obstacle to being known as its author, as his literary friends would have expected something rather more indecent out of him ("Obscenely wholesome," they call "Trixie"); his price is Chloë's hand. Parallel plots and subplots are entirely absent: there are no counterparts to Uncle Fred and Pongo Twistleton, Johnny Pearce and Bunny, Albert Peasemarch and Phoebe, the Carlisles or Howard Saxby.

The tone is also different. While both are comic novels, The Author is mostly satirical, bitterly so at times. The characters don't degrade morally as the novel progresses only because they were not too noble to begin with. Chloë's lack of filial piety is at times shocking, but then again Roach didn't really deserve better. The resolution only provides happy endings of sorts for the petty aspirations of the characters.

* * *

Unlike the fictional "Trixie," The Author was not a success. It received indifferent reviews and never got a reprint. Apparently it was also edited by Tauchnitz for the European market, but at that time every other new novel was.

It is light and very easy to read. I did it in one sitting (no more than three hours, and I was taking notes) and enjoyed it, but I wouldn't call it good overall. The plot struck me as clumsily constructed; the characters' motivations are shallow and their changes of mind feel forced. I'm not a literary critic and I may have missed its merits, but in that case so did the public at the time it appeared.

Which is not to say that it doesn't have some quality passages that can make you smile or chuckle, like the time the unscrupulous poet declares "I would commit any crime to get Chloë, short of marrying her on an insufficient income," or "Oh! cursed gold! And now to get some more of it."

Caine clearly used the novel as a vehicle for his reflections on the literary life. (In fact, the disclaimer at the beginning takes the form: "The people in this story are all purely imaginary, with the exception of one of the members of the Committee of Authors, who is intended to be a caricature of myself.") These make up (for me at least) the best bits, like:

The prizes of the fiction market are substantial, but at their biggest they look very small potatoes beside those which are to be gained elsewhere. If you want to acquire money in impressive quantities, don't waste your time making something that people can read; make something that they can eat or smoke or chew or wear or dance to or wash with or apply externally or take three times a day after meals.

Wodehouse readers will enjoy the welter of terms of endearment between Dunkle and Chloë, which any of W.'s characters could be proud of. He calls her old plum, old jug, old cork, old geyser, old knob, old chip, old pill, old stub, old root, old tick, old scream, old stitch, old stunt, old hoot, old tub and old germ. She calls him old lobster and old tuft.

* * *

Apart from modern digitalization projects and search engines, there is one factor that has kept the memory of The Author alive at all. It is mentioned in passing in Vladimir Nabokov's first English novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), and students of the Russian-American writer have been wondering for decades what caused him to put this obscurest of books in the following company:

Hamlet, La morte d’Arthur, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, South Wind, The Lady with the Dog, Madame Bovary, The Invisible Man, Le Temps Retrouvé, Anglo-Persian Dictionary, The Author of Trixie, Alice in Wonderland, About Buying a Horse, Ulysses, King Lear...

Here's an interesting essay by M. S. Strickland (if I understood correctly, it will eventually become a chapter in a book about Nabokov) that develops the question fully. Half way through it draws a comparison between The Author and The Inimitable Jeeves, with Wodehouse getting the loser's end. Cocktail Time and its obvious link with The Author are not mentioned—understandably, as the writer is clearly not a fan of Plum and cannot be asked to spot a similarity with one of his less known novels, written more than 30 years after Caine's. Strickland keeps a very useful list of book he has read since 1992, and Wodehouse is c. for his a. Caine, on the other hand, has 32 entries since 2022, although several of them are actually rereads.

To Nabokov's influence must be also attributed the fact that last year the first translation ever of The Author appeared: Qui a écrit Trixie?, by Hervé Lavergne with a preface by Olivier Barrot. The legend Dans la bibliothèque de Vladimir Nabokov on the cover speaks for itself.

* * *

Finally, there remains the question of how the obvious dependence between the two novels can be explained and evaluated. Wodehouse may have read Caine's book when it was published and jotted down an interesting plot idea which had to wait 34 years to come to fruition; or he may have come across a copy of The Author in 1958 or a little before. The fact that the Lucas-Gore part is reproduced so closely, along with some scattered coincidences of vocabulary (like "ferret out" above), makes me think that he must have had the book at hand or fresh in his memory while writing Cocktail.

But it is the presence of Lucas-Gore that seems most significant to me. He is completely irrelevant to either plot, and exists only to create the right kind of atmosphere at the Athenaeum/Demosthenes. It can hardly be regarded as a normal literary reference of the type W.'s readers are familiar with (Shakespeare, Coleridge, Tennyson, Kipling and a long etcetera) because if anything was certain in 1958 it is that nobody could be reasonably expected to catch it. He could also have modified the names of Lucas-Gore and James, and then probably not even we with our 21th century tools would ever have spotted it.

Precisely because Lucas-Gore was so unnecessary I tend to believe that Wodehouse allowed him to stay on purpose, as who would say: "Yes, I lifted the basic plot from a long-forgotten novel, and in case you unlikely reader were wondering if the similarity is mere coincidence, I left Caine's signature in there for you to confirm your base suspicions. Congratulations, now enjoy the prize for the petty endeavors of the literary critic."

Leave It to Psmith: a variorum edition

Leave It to Psmith (variorum edition) (PDF, 1,618 KB)

Hopefully this is only the first of several similar projects: an edition of a Wodehouse book that has already entered the public domain in the US, recording all the differences between the various versions of its text: magazines, UK and US books, and later editions. To do this I've used the fist edition of UK book as base text, and added footnotes with all the variants observed in other versions. (In one case in this particular book one section was so heavily rewritten that it was more practical to print the text in two columns.)

Although all the footnotes are presented at the same level, the differences they contain are really of two kinds. On the one hand, differences between its serialization in magazines prior to the publication of the novel in book form, and between the UK and US book, very often represent authorial decisions: additions and deletions, choices of vocabulary and other changes made by Wodehouse to accomodate the text to its intended audience; or they may mark stages in the composition, as he found ways to improve the narrative or detected errors (such as lack of continuity). Sometimes these can be attributed to his editors, and at this distance in time it may be impossible to find out which was the case.

Differences in later editions (particularly British), on the other hand, may at times have been due to Wodehouse when they were published during his lifetime, but more often are either conscious decisions made by editors, or mere errors that are unavoidably introduced during a resetting of the text. They tend to be perpetuated in successive editions, since each new one is usually based not on the first (and theoretically best) but on the latest. In this case, the variorum edition may be useful to determine at what point each change entered the history of the text and whether it should be maintained in an ideal edition.

This edition presents the bare differences, without attempting to explain the reasons behind each change. This is best done in a running commentary, which already exists in the Annotations published at Madame Eulalie's Rare Plums, where the most significant of the differences described here are discussed from a literary and editorial perspective.

A short introduction provides full details of the texts and conventions used, plus additional resources and bibliography. In the text, I've tried to distinguish between the actual text and the editorial intervention using dark red for the latter.

This is not a reading text. The page is perhaps too large, and the footnotes are somewhat intrusive. I like to think of it as a scholar's text, that could be useful as a tool for studying its composition and history. If you just want to enjoy the novel, nothing beats a traditional printed book.

This edition has been prepared using Google Docs. GDocs is very limited in terms of the formatting possibilities it offers, and I'm not too happy about some of the issues resulting from these limitations, such as the fact that footnote callouts can be separated at the end of a line. Better results could be obtained with other word processors like MS Word, but they all have shortcomings when used for this kind of work. Ideally should be done using a critical text editing software, with numbered lines and a proper critical apparatus, but I don't have one at present. So rather than converting it to a better word processor I'll wait until I can have continued access to a professional tool.

I don't suppose for a moment that this variorum edition is perfect or complete. I'm quite confident about the analysis of the four main texts, but there are 500+ footnotes recording differences, and it is very easy for errors to creep in when you're dealing with such a large amont of data. I would also like to analyze the later editions better, and include others that are not available to me now, and to establish the dependence between book editions (now only tentatively done n the introduction). So I will probably update this file in the future, changing the date given at the end of the introduction.

Conscription

From Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1918:

Infantry

"ENGLAND is carrying conscription too far," said P. G. Wodehouse, the English humorist now living in New York. "She's calling on the men of 50 and 52. 

"Why, at a Craydon tribunal the other day, the chairman said that men of 55 were just in their prime. At this rate we'll soon be too young at 40!"

He is speaking of the Military Service Tribunals where men of military age could apply for exemption from conscription; and the Military Act of April 1918 that extended the eligibility age to 17-51 (18-41 in the original 1916 Act).

What Robert Montgomery learned from PGW

Another short anecdote, taken from the Suffolk News-Herald for August 8, 1931, now concerning American actor and director Robert Montgomery (1904-1981):

ROBERT MONTGOMERY TAUGHT HOW TO DROP H's BY P. G. WODEHOUSE

Robert Montgomery learned how to drop his H's from no less an authority than P. G. Wodehouse for his role of the English butler in "The Man in Possession," his new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture which will open Monday at the Chadwick Theatre.

Wodehouse, who supplied additional dialogue for the picturization of the H. M. Harwood stage farce, counseled Montgomery on the art of slicing the H's off his words on which they belong and taking them on where they have no business.

"That's the secret of English dialect," the noted British humorist told Montgomery. "Do anything backwards and you are sure to get a laugh."

Use of such Piccadilly outbursts as "Pip-Pip!", "Right Ho!", "Cherrio!" and "Chin-chin!" were suggested by Wodehouse to add emphasis to definite declarations.

"They add—well-er—they sound so bally—that is to say—well, bally— if you know what I mean!" advised Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and other inimitable English fiction characters.

Sam Wood directed the new Montgomery picture with Charlotte Greenwood heading the supporting cast which includes Irene Purcell, C. Aubrey Smith, Beryl Mercer, Reginald Owen and Alan Mowbray.

Montgomery is seen as a young Englishman who poses as a butler for the attractive but penniless young widow who is trying to entangle his brother into a marriage for his money. All sorts of complications arise. In the end he marries the widow himself of course.

Wodehouse later mentioned him in 1935 as "Bob Montgomery" (The Luck of the Bodkins), and the next year Montgomery played James Crocker in a new adaptation of Piccadilly Jim by the MGM.

The Man in Possession (1931)

Wodehouse and the Anti-Tobacco League

A short anecdote about P. G. Wodehouse and the Anti-Tobacco League circulated between 1920 and 1921 among local American newspapers. This is the text as published in the Chico Record (California) on September 9, 1920:

THE MODERN WIFE

P. G. Wodehouse, the novelist and wit, was talking about the Anti-Tobacco League.

"They have taken our wine away from us," he said, "and they threaten to take away our tobacco. The modern woman, however, will balk them there.

"An anti-tobacco friend talked so eloquently at the house of a friend of mine the other day that a young municipal reformer rose and said solemnly:

"'My wife gave me a box of a hundred magnificent Egyptian cigarettes last night. I smoked one of them, but I now see so clearly the evils of cigarette smoking that I am going to go straight home and throw the rest in the fire.'

"The reformer's young wife then rose in her turn.

"'I'll go home with him,' she said, and she added, smiling brightly on the assembled guests:

"'My intention is to rescue the ninety and nine.'"

A very similar version appeared in the Arizona Republican on January 10, 1921, with minor changes including "beer" for "wine" and "block" for "balk". Probably there were others.

I have no idea where this originated, or whether the anecdote is genuine. For what it's worth, I haven't found it anywhere else without Wodehouse's name attached.

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)
• "¡Galantería!" (="Compromised!" (1931), Mundo Argentino, August 19 1931)
• "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 and Mundo Argentino is a Drones story. 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". "¡Galantería!" also has two illustrations from Cosmopolitan. "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 from 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.

An explicit quotation from Payn appears in Wodehouse's article "London Street Names", in The Globe (September 19, 1902):

The late James Payn, to whom London stood in much the same relation as a flower stands to the botanist, and who wrote in his own genial and inimitable style upon almost every feature of the metropolis, did not pass over the question of how London streets got their names, a question which must have puzzled many. "Who is it," he says, in his essay entitled, "Double Glo'ster," "that stands godfather to the streets of London? Who is it that, in so many cases, in answer to the solemn question, 'Name this street?' pronounces, 'Glo'ster, Glo'ster.' I suppose it is some assemblage, whose heads, being laid together, are said to constitute a board. A Board of Works, is it? Good. Then all I have to say with respect to that august body is this: that it is not a Board of Works of the Imagination. Its total want of originality in nomenclature is most remarkable."

The article was first published in Chambers's Journal on March 15, 1862, but Wodehouse is quoting from the revised version in either People, Places and Things (Beeton 1865) or the new edition Humorous Stories About People, Places and Things (Chapman and Hall 1876). The comment in the first sentence on Payn and his style denotes familiarity and appreciation.

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 W. himself 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

Aurelia Cammarleigh's Aunt's Sources

In P. G. Wodehouse's story "The Reverend Wooing of Archibald," first published in Strand in August 1928 and collected in Mr. Mulliner Speaking (1929), Aurelia Cammarleigh's aunt, an enthusiast of the Baconian theory, corners Archibald Mulliner "to tell him all about the remarkable discovery which had been made by applying the Plain Cipher to Milton's well-known Epitaph on Shakespeare":

"As in the Plays and Sonnets," said the aunt, "we substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals."
"We do what?"
"Substitute the name equivalents of the figure totals."
"The which?"
"The figure totals."
"All right," said Archibald. "Let it go. I daresay you know best."
The aunt inflated her lungs.
"These figure totals," she said, "are always taken out in the Plain Cipher, A equalling one to Z equals twenty-four. The names are counted in the same way. A capital letter with the figures indicates an occasional variation in the Name Count. For instance, A equals twenty-seven, B twenty-eight, until K equals ten is reached, when K, instead of ten, becomes one, and T instead of nineteen, is one, and R or Reverse, and so on, until A equals twenty-four is reached. The short or single Digit is not used here. Reading the Epitaph in the light of this Cipher, it becomes: 'What need Verulam for Shakespeare? Francis Bacon England's King be hid under a W. Shakespeare? William Shakespeare. Fame, what needst Francis Tudor, King of England? Francis. Francis W. Shakespeare. For Francis thy William Shakespeare hath England's King took W. Shakespeare. Then thou our W. Shakespeare Francis Tudor bereaving Francis Bacon Francis Tudor such a tomb William Shakespeare.'"

This sounds like drivel to us just as much as it did to many of the aunt's contemporaries, but not to all: because it is based on an actual article published in Baconiana, the journal of the Bacon Society, one of whose stated objects is "to encourage the general study of the evidence in favour of [Francis Bacon's] authorship of the plays commonly ascribed to Shakspere, and to investigate his connection with other works of the period." The July 1927 issue, available at the Internet Archive, contains "To prove you a cypher" by one Charles W. Hopper, and a simple comparison of the following passages shows that the aunt's tirade was extracted from it, with many sentences preserved verbatim:

To test this cypher, everything should be numeralised in the well-known simple, or Plain cypher: A=1, B=2, etc., remembering that the Elizabethan alphabet had only 24 letters, as i and j, u and v, were of the same type. Then the names, given by a word or phrase, should be substituted. As most of us know, Bacon is 33, Francis 67, William 74, Shakespeare 103; and it is surprising what a number of useful words count either 103, or 100, Francis Bacon. The complication, not a puzzling one, is that the names where long phrases are used to give a name, (and it was perhaps thought wise not to make the cipher too obvious) occasionally go back into one of the three variations. These are known as the K (see Bacon’s reference to Kay cyphers) which gives each letter a double figure value, i.e., A=27, B=28, until K, 10, is reached: the Short (rarely used) or single digit, i.e., after J, 9, K starts again as 1, and T (19) as 1: or the Reverse, which is the Plain cypher reversed: Z=1, etc., until A, 24, is reached. [pp. 75-76]

The hidden reading appears to be as follows:
"AN EPITAPH,
FRANCIS TUDOR, KING OF ENGLAND.
What need Verulam for William Shakespeare? Francis Bacon England’s King, be hid under a W. Shakespeare? Dear Shakespeare of fame, what needst Francis Tudor King of England of thy name? Francis Bacon, Francis Tudor King of England, hast built thy W. Shakespeare monument. For, Francis England's King, thy William Shakespeare, Lord Saint Alban, hath from the leaves of Englands King, William Shakespeare took. Then thou Francis Tudor bereaving: Francis Bacon King of England: Francis the First of England. Francis Tudor, such a tomb, William Shakespeare!" [p. 77]

Aurelia's aunt, in sum, is up to date in her studies.

We never learn her name in the story, but it is tempting to search for a real life model. One candidate who presents herself is Miss Alicia A. Leith, a long-time contributor to the journal, and Vice-President of the Society in 1927. In fact, in 1941 Miss Leith was living in Park Street, just like the aunt:

(Baconiana, July 1941, p. 257)

except that this is Park Street in Taunton, not London.

But I don't think it is sensible to posit a connection: that kind of clue-hunting is best left to the Baconians. I just took her name at random from those mentioned in the July 1927 issue, and on searching around was struck by the coincidence of one of her addresses being "Park Lane." But Alicia Amy Leith (1852-1945) was a very estimable lady, who was already editing books and magazines when Wodehouse was still in the poached egg stage, and presenting her as a dotty old aunt would have been both uncharitable and disrespectful of him. Her first publication known to me, The Birthday Book of Flower and Song (1877), already shows her as an accomplished compiler and illustrator. She went on to edit Every Girl's Magazine (1878-1887) and Atalanta (1888), and later became involved with the Baconian movement until the end of her days. Her London address, mentioned both in 1906 and after her death in 1945, was No. 10 Clorane Gardens, Hampstead, London, N.W.3.

Photograph of Alicia Amy Leith,
Baconiana, April 1945,
accompanying her obituary

Corney Grain and the Poached Egg

Corney Grain (1844-1895), a succcessful British entertainer and songwriter of the Victorian era, has suffered the fate that is to be expected from someone of his profession and time—viz. to pass out of all recollection, since his untimely death occurred too early for his performances to be recorded. Practically all he left behind is a handful of musical scores, a book of reminiscences and a number of mentions in the press of the time. And even his printed music is not representative of the whole range of his art, since most of his compositions appear to have been inseparable from his sketches, and were certainly meant to be sung by himself and nobody else. But as someone has already had the good sense to blog about him, I don't need to extend myself here. The main sources on Grain today are his own reminiscences, those of David Williamson (The German Reeds and Corney Grain) and the material in the Corney Grain archive at the University of Rochester. The Strand Magazine for November 1891 also has an interesting series of portraits.

But one celebrated joke of his at least survived, although it has come to be inextricably associated with P. G. Wodehouse. It is the comparison of a newly born baby with a poached egg, and especially the aversion of (male) characters to hold them and (worst of all) kiss them.

The evidence that it originated in Grain's sketches is scanty but conclusive. James Payn in the historical column "Our Note Book" (Illustrated London News, December 17, 1887) wrote:

A lady at Birmingham has got into trouble for using her baby as a missile weapon. It has been descanted upon as an unparalleled proceeding, as though no woman had ever "thrown her baby" at anyone before. Upon consideration, however, this will be admitted to be not an uncommon practice. The sex, indeed, are given to throw—or "cast up," as it is less gracefully termed—their relatives at other people. Who that has married a widow has not had her first husband thrown at him again and again? I have a distinct lection—as one of the best of boys—of having been thrown by my mother many times at my brothers and sisters. Mr. Corney Grain, speaking delicately of the dangers of handling a baby, compared it with a poached egg. To throw eggs at people is common enough; but poached eggs?—— I have only heard of the Birmingham incident fragmentarily. I wonder what really happened not only to the baby, but to its opponent!

And a literary critic in The King of Illustrated Papers for October 5, 1901 p. 463 wrote:

The picture of "The Baby" reminds one of Corney Grain's polite but firm refusal when invited to kiss one: "My dear madam, I would rather kiss a poached egg."

Since these two are the earliest occurrences I have found of the equation baby = poached egg, it seems safe to attribute it to Grain. These two writers very likely heard it at one of his performances. Soon after the simile starts appearing without its creator's name, showing that it had become common currency.

Wodehouse picked it up as early as his Globe days. The following list of examples is not exhaustive, but is meant to illustrate how it remained his favorite baby simile until the very end:

• 1908 To say that a baby is like his father is now held by Law to constitute a defamatory slander, as suggesting that the latter resembles a badly-done poached egg. (The Globe, June 10)
• 1920 To the vapid and irreflective observer he was not much to look at in the early stages of his career, having a dough-like face almost entirely devoid of nose, a lack-luster eye, and the general appearance of a poached egg. (The Coming of Bill, Book I ch. 9)
• 1922 The Sage cast a meditative eye upon the infant. Except to the eye of love, it looked like a skinned poached egg. ("The Rough Stuff", in The Clicking of Cuthbert)
• 1925 And when they saw that smile even babies in their perambulators stopped looking like peevish poached eggs and became almost human. (Sam the Sudden, ch. 12 § 4)
• 1956 In due season their union was blessed, and Old Nick, already weakened by the sight of the revolting poached-egg-like little object tucked under his bride’s right arm, was further shattered by the news that he was going to have to call it Jefferson. (French Leave, ch. 3)
• 1966 "But after all you are my brother's son whom I frequently dandled on my knee as a baby, and a subhuman baby you were if ever I saw one, though I suppose you were to be pitied rather than censured if you looked like a cross between a poached egg and a ventriloquist's dummy." ("Jeeves and the Greasy Bird", in Plum Pie)
• 1974 "Do you remember me telling you that when you were a babe and suckling and looking, I may add in passing, like a badly poached egg, you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter, and if I hadn't jerked it out in time, you would have choked to death?" (Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, ch. 10)