"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.