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)

Pongo's little brother

The plot of P. G. Wodehouse's story "Doing Father a Bit of Good" (Strand Magazine, June 1920, later collected as chapters X-XI of Indiscretions of Archie) revolves around the fate of Pongo, a china figure of the Ming dynasty property of Mr. Brewster, representing "a warrior of pre-khaki days advancing with a spear upon some adversary who, judging from the contented expression on the warrior's face, was smaller than himself."

Parker, the valet whom Mr. Brewster has fired for wearing his shirts, tells Archie Moffam that he can do his ex-employer a bit of good by acquiring the companion piece for Pongo, without which such antiques have little value.

At the auction, the figure "was undoubtedly the companion-figure to the redoubtable Pongo. The two were identical. Even from where he sat Archie could detect on the features of the figure on the pedestal the same expression of insufferable complacency which had alienated his sympathies from the original Pongo." Archie, Bill Brewster and Professor Binstead, all instigated by Parker, bid against each other until the figure sells for an exorbitant sum. In the end the figure turns out to be Pongo himself, stolen by Parker.

Now, the truth is that chinese figures of the Mind dynasty often do come in pairs. However, they are never identical but complementary. Archie's first intuition that Pongo's adversary must be someone smaller was well founded. It might have been another warrior in a defensive stance, or cowering. What it could hardly be is another warrior in exactly the same attitude. Below are some examples from online auctions. Notice that the balance within each pair is given by their gestures, accessories or the role/gender of each figure.

It is understandable that young men of volatile minds like Archie and Bill are not aware of this and fall for Parker's trick. It is less understandable in the case of Professor Binstead, who is introduced as a connoisseur in antiques and yet fails to see the imposture at the auction, and also Mr. Brewster the collector, who receives the figure and is preparing to place it next to Pongo before discovering the theft.

Choice of pronouns in The Small Bachelor

The different versions of the text of P. G. Wodehouse's novel The Small Bachelor present an interesting variation in the choice of pronouns to agree with an indefinite antecedent. In chapter V § 2 of the first version published—Liberty (US), October 23, 1926—we read:

Anybody, suddenly questioned as to why one disliked a slug or a snake or a black-beetle, might find it difficult on the spur of the moment to analyze and dissect one's prejudice.

In the corresponding part of the UK serialization (New Magazine, January 1927) as well as the first American edition (George H. Doran 1927) we have:

Anybody, suddenly questioned as to why they disliked a slug or a snake or a black-beetle, might find it difficult on the spur of the moment to analyse and dissect their prejudice.

Finally, the first UK edition (Methuen 1927) has:

Anybody, suddenly questioned as to why he disliked a slug or a snake or a black-beetle, might find it difficult on the spur of the moment to analyse and dissect his prejudice.

Clearly this is an example different editors following different house rules (or personal preferences) regarding the proper usage of pronouns with an indefinite reference ("anybody")—a debate that already existed in 1926, although centered at that time more on the grammatical than the political correctness of the various options.

Wodehouse's own preference appears to be reflected in the Methuen edition, at least if we can go by what he wrote much later:

The criminal classes, though easing up a little in their operations, have become distressingly slipshod in their speech. The other day there were two hold-ups, one at the Pennsylvania station, the other in a bar. Both bandits said "This is a stick-up!" and then one of them went on "Everybody keep their seats." The other bandit said "Everybody put their hands up." Watch it, boys, watch it. Not "their." "Everybody keep his seat. Everybody put his hands up." If you have to rob people, well and good, no doubt you need the money. But do be grammatical about it. Get your Fowler and make of it a constant companion.

"America Day by Day", Punch, April 18, 1956, page 460.

H. W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (which had just been published when The Small Bachelor was written) of course agrees. Here is what the first edition said on the subject (pp. 391-2 s.v. NUMBER):

11. Pronouns & possessives after each, every, anyone, no-one, one, &c. Everyone without further delay gave themselves up to rejoicing./But, as anybody can see for themselves, the quotation of the actually relevant portion of the argument in our columns would have destroyed . . . Each & the rest are all singular; that is undisputed; in a perfect language there would exist pronouns & possessives that were of as doubtful gender as they & yet were, like them, singular; i.e., it would have words meaning him-or-her, himself-or-herself, his-or-her. But, just as French lacks our power of distinguishing (without additional words) between his, her, & its, so we lack the French power of saying in one word his-or-her. There are three makeshifts:—A, as anybody can see for himself or herself; B, as anybody can see for themselves; & C, as anybody can see for himself. No-one who can help it chooses A; it is correct, & is sometimes necessary, but it is so clumsy as to be ridiculous except when explicitness is urgent, & it usually sounds like a bit of pedantic humour. B is the popular solution; it sets the literary man's teeth on edge, & he exerts himself to give the same meaning in some entirely different way if he is not prepared, as he usually is, to risk C; but it should be recorded that the OED, which quotes examples under every, they, & themselves, refrains from any word of condemnation. C is here recommended. It involves the convention that where the matter of sex is not conspicuous or important he & his shall be allowed to represent a person instead of a man, or say a man (homo) instead of a man (vir). Whether that, with A in the background for especial exactitudes, & paraphrase always possible in dubious cases, is an arrogant demand on the part of male England, everyone must decide for himself (or for himself or herself, or for themselves). Have the patrons of B made up their minds yet between Everyone was blowing their noses & Everyone were blowing their noses?

(Burchfield's New Fowler (1996) is much more permissive: see p. 779 s.v. they, their, them. One suspects that many of the changes Burchfield introduced in his edition wouldn't have been to Wodehouse's liking.)

Another probable instance of editorial intervention in TSB appears in ch. IV § 1: the Liberty version reads "one of those men who have only to express a liking for anybody to cause their wives to look on that person as something out of the Underworld", where every other version has "him".

Tracing every instance in the Wodehouse canon would be extremely difficult, and of questionable utility, since it is impossible to tell when a particular phrase has been touched up by an editor anyway. However, we can take one common construction like "anybody/anyone etc. in his/their etc. senses", which is relatively easy to find with a good search engine.

• Clowes could not understand how any person in his senses could of his own free will make an intimate friend of Ruthven. [The narrator in The Gold Bat, ch. II.]
• "Nobody in their senses would." [Lord Emsworth in Full Moon, ch. I.]
• "And that she does look like an angel no one in his senses would deny." [Mike Cardinal in Spring Fever, ch. V.]
• Kate said that nobody in her senses would have made such a suggestion. [The narrator in French Leave, ch. I.]
• "I doubt if anyone in his senses would give more than a pound or two for it." [Howard Saxby senior in Cocktail Time, ch. XXI.]

None of these shows the variety between versions of each text that we saw in The Small Bachelor. We have three cases of his, one of their, and unusually one of her which is surely dictated by the gender of the subject of the sentence: even though this is reported (indirect) speech, it is obvious that Kate said "Nobody in her senses…" From this one could draw the conclusion that Wodehouse, consciously or not, knew that the choice of pronouns tends to be influenced by the speaker's own gender and by the context in which the phrase is used. But this is a linguistic matter into which we won't go now.

Last year there was a lot of fuss about the new sanitized editions of Wodehouse published by Penguin Random House, which had been purged of "words that we regard as unacceptable to present-day readers." One wonders whether the effort to conform to political correctness extended to these far less noticeable matters too. The problem as one sees it is one of practicality: searching for individual objectionable words and replacing them is easy, but finding all instances of a grammatical construction that may adopt practically any form takes time. The editor may even be forced to read the book.

[Incidentally, the use of one for I in the previous paragraphs was also strongly condemned by Fowler: "The false first-personal pronoun one is a new invention of the self-conscious journalist, & its suppression before it can develop further is very desirable," pp. 402-3 s.v. ONE. Wodehouse used it numerous times, generally for comedic effect: "One has one's code" (Laughing Gas, ch. X).]

A "lost" Peter Pan reference in Wodehouse

Chapter 8 of The White Feather (first published in The Captain, November 1905) opens thus:

What a go is life!
Let us examine the case of Jackson, of Dexter's. O'Hara, who had left Dexter's at the end of the summer term, had once complained to Clowes of the manner in which his house-master treated him, and Clowes had remarked in his melancholy way that it was nothing less than a breach of the law that Dexter should persist in leading a fellow a dog's life without a dog licence for him.
That was precisely how Jackson felt on the subject.

The first exclamation comes in fact from Barrie's play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, premiered at the Duke of York's Theatre (London) on 27 December, 1904. It does not appear however in the published version of the script (1928), or in the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy: it is only found in the original 1903-4 script (currently at the Lilly Library, University of Indiana) and/or copies of the 1904 prompt script. It can be read in A. H. Alton's annotated edition (Peter Pan, Broadview 2011), where she notes that a page that was later crossed out contains some dialogue in which the pirate Starkey "reveals his poetic soul". It includes the following exchange (p. 257):

STARKEY. There I lie—oh what a lesson—struck down by some careless shaft—like a gentlemanly eagle in mid air. And for what end? My russet homespun Smee. I grope vainly seeking for the meaning of this thing but ever it evades my grasp. Oh, mystery of mysteries, Smee, what a go is life.
SMEE. But always interesting.
STARKEY. Profoundly interesting even when most a puzzle.

That some form of this dialogue was actually used in the London performances is shown by the above quotation, and confirmed by a mention in The Outlook, April 8, 1905, p. 476: "With the buccaneer in Peter Pan he says 'What a go is life!'". However, since most incarnations of the play known today omit the phrase, the reference in TWF is extremely hard to pick up.

One adaptation of the play that does include it is J. Caird and T. Nunn, Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. A Fantasy in Five Acts (Dramatists Play Service 1993). The authors say: "We have used the 1928 play script as a basis for the present edition, but have also drawn from Barrie's 'Notes for a Fairy Play,' 1903; the original script of PETER PAN entitled ANON — A PLAY, 1903; the prompt script of the first production in 1904; the American version of 1905; the novel of 1911; and the film scenario which he wrote for Paramount in 1920" (pp. 7-8). In Act Five, Scene 1 (pp. 105-6) this version reads:

(Enter Smee, who watches the redskins as they disappear from view, and Starkey, who is following them, laden with papooses.)
SMEE. You, Starkey.
STARKEY. It's me, Smee.
SMEE. I thought you were drowned.
STARKEY. No, Smee, I was captured by the redskins. The squaws make me carry all their babies.
SMEE. It's a come-down for a pirate.
STARKEY. I shall become vulgar.
SMEE. Never. Oh, surely, never.
STARKEY. What a go is life.
SMEE. But always interesting.

References to Peter Pan are few and far between in the Wodehouse canon. The only other ones I am aware of are:

• Not George Washington, Part Two ch. 23: "She [Eva] had decided to go to the ball as Peter Pan."
• Mike, ch. 31: "There was something pleasant and homely about Mr. Outwood. In appearance he reminded Mike of Smee in 'Peter Pan.' He had the same eyebrows and pince-nez and the same motherly look."
• The Little Warrior, ch. XII § 1: "It was like being in Peter Pan's house in the tree-tops." [Also in the title of ch. XXVII "In Peter Pan's House" in Grand Magazine (under the British title Jill the Reckless), but it is not clear whether the chapter divisions and titles in that serialization are Wodehouse's own choice or the editor's.]

"not enough room to swing a cat"

The Phrase Finder observes that the popular theory that the cat in this expression is not actually a mammal of the Felidae family but the multi-tailed whip called a cat o' nine tails, and so comes from naval slang, appealing as it is, has little documentary support, since the first attestation of the phrase occurs in Richard Kephale's Medela Pestilentiae (1665): "They had not space enough (according to the vulgar saying) to swing a Cat in" (the parenthesis clearly indicating that the phrase was already in use); while the first mention of the cat o' nine tails is in William Congreve's Love for Love (1695): "If you should give such language at sea, you'd have a cat-o'-nine-tails laid cross your shoulders." Both examples are probably taken from the earliest attestations given in the OED, under swing (7a) and cat-o'-nine-tails.

Another interesting instance is recorded by M. P. Tilley in The Proverbs of England:

C603a A CONSCIENCE wide enough to swing a cat in
1666 TOR. Prov. Phr., s.v. Ciapelletto, p. 38: A large conscience, as one would say, that one might swing a cat in't. Ibid., s.v. Conscientia, p. 44: The English say, to have a wide conscience, as one may swing a cat in't.

This points to Giovanni Torriano's Piazza Universale di Proverbi Italiani:, or, A Common Place of Italian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1666; copy at IA). However, this is not from Piazza Universale but from Torriano's The Second Alphabet consisting of Proverbial Phrases (1662; IA copy; excellent online edition at EEBO). Tiller's confusion is understandable, if one considers that Torriano seems to have published at least four different collections of Italian proverbs. Be that as it may, the entries in question read:

Ciapelletto, the proper name of a man. *Far la confessione di Ser Ciapelletto, i. e. quella di coloro che dicono i peccati veniali, e ritengono i mortali, to make Sir Ciapelletto's confession, viz. the confession of such as confess venial petty sins, and suppress mortal sins. *Haver la conscientia di Ser Ciapelletto, i. e. la conscientia molta larga, to have Sir Ciapelletto's conscience, viz. a large conscience, as one would say, that one might swing a cat in't; The French say, large comme la manche d'un Cordelier, as wide as a Capucin Fryers sleeve.

Conscientia, conscience. Haver la conscienza dov' hanno la croce i corbelli, i. e. in fondo, to have the conscience where baskets have their cross, viz. in the bottom. Haver la conscienza un poco tonda, i. e. d'uno che non hà per peccati certe cose, che pur son peccati, to have ones conscience somewhat round, viz. not to allow certain actions for sins, which notwithstanding are sins; the English say, to have a wide conscience, as one may swing a cat in't. Haver la conscienza cauterizzata, to have a sear'd conscience. *Pigliar cose da far rizzar la conscienza, i. e. pigliar cose che spingano alla concupiscenza, et alla lussuria, to take things for to erect the conscience, viz. to eat, or drink provocatives unto concupiscence, or lust; conscienza there being taken as gingling with concupiscenza.

This pushes back the earliest example of "swing" a few years (1662), again with the suggestion that it was already commonplace.

But it is really possible to find it three decades before that, in The Lavves [=Law's] Resolvtions of Womens Rights: or, The Lavves Provision for Woemen (1632; Google copy; again online edition at EEBO). This compilation is notable in law history for being the first publication of its kind. As one writer points out,

The book was presented as specifically intended for women, and topics covered included women's inheritances as well as legal issues related to marriage and divorce. Though by no means a protofeminist text, the Lawes Resolutions did recognise the particular difficulties of being a woman controlled by a law she had no say in. […] Although women could not be involved in the making of laws, this text reflects the recognition, by men as well as women, that they were still affected by the laws that were instituted and had a right, and a desire, to know to what regulations they were beholden. (Z. Jackson, "An Early Legal Handbook for Women")

Book II Section 61 "Of what things Dower is not granted" (p. 100) establishes that a dowager may choose for her habitation some tenement within the manor-house;

And where there is none such to choose, shee shall haue one clapped vp for her in aliqua platea competenti de communi bosco: as long and broad as the third part of her husbands chiefe house: A cottage of clay and splints set close in a corner of a cold Common, which is but a rewmaticke Lodge to welcome Suitors to. But how if the Common and all things bee so inclosed that there is not roome to swing a Cat in, women are not put in Rogum with their Husbands any where but in the Indies, and I thinke that custome is left there also by this time.

This irruption of the popular phrase in the legalese of the time is striking, but it still makes the connection with naval slang unlikely.

For what it's worth, the cat o' nine tails can be found in a number of sources from the 1670s, a couple of decades earlier than the OED's first example; still not enough to have any impact on the elucidation of the phrase's origin:

First he'l have the wretches stript
And by the common hangman whipt,
With Cat a nine tails, until blood
Shall run down sides in purple flood,
And then they shall be packing sentTo be on scurvy gibbet pent,
Thus they shall be us'd worse than dogs,
Hang'd, drawn and cut abroad like hogs,
And quarters shall be stuck 'pon hooks
To be devour'd by pies and rooks.

(Cataplus: or, Aeneas his Descent to Hell, 1672).

Her Girdle only fit for murder
Like Twist of the Franciscan Order:
A certain knottie Cat-a-nine-tails
With which she ferks the poor souls entrails.

(John Phillips, Maronides or Virgil Travesty, 1673)

In the afternoon one Martin Juy a stripling, servant to Captain Thomas Cammock was whipt naked at the Cap-stern, with a Cat with Nine tails, for filching 9 great Lemmons out of the Chirurgeons Cabbin, which he eat rinds and all in less than an hours time.

(John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New-England, 1674)

(The first two are parodies of Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, and it is probable that one depends on the other.)