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).]