There is a curious symmetry between the first and last chapters of Wodehouse's A Gentleman of Leisure (The Intrusion of Jimmy in the US). At the beginning of the novel Arthur Mifflin sums up Jimmy Pitt's life thus:
"Jimmy's had a queer life," said Mifflin. "He's been pretty nearly everything in his time. Did you know he was on the stage before he took up newspaper work? Only in touring companies, I believe. He got tired of it, and dropped it. That’s always been his trouble. He wouldn't settle down to anything. He studied Law at the 'Varsity, but he never kept it up. After he left the stage he moved all over the States without a cent, picking up any odd job he could get. He was a waiter once for a couple of days, but they sacked him for breaking plates. Then he got a job in a jeweller's shop. I believe he’s a bit of an expert on jewels. And another time he made a hundred dollars by staying three rounds against Kid Brady, when the Kid was touring the country after he got the championship away from Jimmy Garwin. The Kid was offering a hundred to anyone who could last three rounds with him. Jimmy did it on his head. He was the best amateur of his weight I ever saw. The Kid wanted him to take up scrapping seriously. But Jimmy wouldn't have stuck to anything long enough in those days. He's one of the gipsies of the world. He was never really happy unless he was on the move, and he doesn’t seem to have altered since he came into his money."
"Well, he can afford to keep on the move now," said Raikes. "I wish I——"
"Did you ever hear about Jimmy and——" Mifflin was beginning, when the Odyssey of Jimmy Pitt was interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of Ulysses in person.
(Most of the episodes alluded to will have a bearing of some kind in the course of the novel.) In the final scene Jimmy, having won te girl and reached journey's end, is seeing off Spike Mullins, the red-headed burglar, at Southampton:
"It’s a pity you're so set on going, Spike. Why not change your mind and stop?"
For a moment Spike looked wistful. Then his countenance resumed its woodenness. "Dere ain't no use for me dis side, boss," he said. "New York's de spot. Youse don't want none of me now you’re married."
...
"It seems to me that you're the only one of us who doesn't end happily, Spike. I'm married. McEachern's butted into society so deep that it would take an excavating party with dynamite to get him out of it. Molly—well, Molly's made a bad bargain, but I hope she won't regret it. We're all going some, except you. You're going out on the old trail again—which begins in Third Avenue and ends in Sing Sing. Why tear yourself away, Spike?"
Spike concentrated his gaze on a weedy young emigrant in a blue jersey, who was having his eye examined by the overworked doctor, and seemed to be resenting it.
"Dere's nuttin' doin' dis side, boss," he said at length. "I want to get busy."
"Ulysses Mullins!" said Jimmy, looking at him curiously. "I know the feeling. There's only one cure. I sketched it out for you once, but I doubt if you’ll ever take it. You don't think a lot of women, do you? You're the rugged bachelor."
"Goils——!" began Spike comprehensively, and abandoned the topic without dilating on it further.
So, Jimmy at the outset was compared to Ulysses (Odysseus), the hero whose adventures on land and sea are the subject of Homer's Odyssey. In the Greek poem Odysseus, after the Trojan war is over, spends ten long years returning home, travelling against his will from one part of the Mediterranean to the other; "many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted." In the end he comes back to his home Ithaca and his wife Penelope. Jimmy for his part acquires a wife and settles down presumably to a life of married bliss; no more travellin for him.
At the conclusion of the novel it is Spike who becomes "Ulysses Mullins," unable to stay put in one place. Jimmy warns him that the path he is choosing "ends in Sing Sing," and speaking from experience ("I know the feeling") tells him that the only cure is to find a woman's love. Spike dismisses the idea. He has higher ends in mind: "I'm goin' to sit in at anodder game dis time—politics, boss. A fr'en' of a mug what I knows has gotten a pull. He'll find me a job."
We hear nothing of Jimmy's future in this epilogue, because it is all about Spike. Very appropiately the last image we see is a stray ray of sun filtering through the clouds and falling on the ship, and "it shone on a red head." There is more than a suggestion that here begin the Adventures of Spike, most likely to end, despite Jimmy's warning, in wedding bells. Whether Wodehouse actually intended to write a continuation, or we are only meant to imagine it, is anyone's guess. The fact is that A Gentleman of Leisure ends where it began, with a hero whom wanderlust spurs to be always on the move.
So now he must depart again
and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger,
a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does,
a weather-driven mariner.
* * *
It ought to be mentioned that the association of Ulysses with the overwhelming urge to travel is not at all a Homeric trait. The hero of the Greek epic, very sensibly, is driven by home-sickness, and asks for nothing more than to be allowed to get back to his island and rule his people. The problem is that early on he made an enemy of the sea-god Poseidon, never a wise move when your only way back is by sea.
But Ulysses is the paradigm of the changing hero. Already in Homer we meet contrasting aspects of his character, and as writers over the millenia went back to his figure he became a villain, a politician, a sophist, a Stoic model, a romantic hero, a Christian saint, a Christian sinner, an ordinary 20th century Dubliner, and the list goes on. One could write a whole book about the many incarnations of Ulysses throuhout history, if W. B. Stanford hadn't done it already. From his classic study The Ulysses Theme (2nd. ed., 1963, p. 202) we learn that
no ancient author seems to have portrayed Ulysses as a victim of mere wanderlust: his reasons for leaving Ithaca again were political, religious, or economic, rather than psychological—that is, as far as one can judge from the scanty references that survive. It was Dante who revolutionized the interpretation of Ulysses's final fate by presenting him as a man possessed by an irresistible desire for knowledge and experience of the unknown world. This conception of an outward-bound, home-deserting hero inspired some remarkable modern presentations of Ulysses.
Dante's Ulysses says, in Canto XXVI of the Inferno (transl. J. R. Sibbald):
No softness for my son, nor reverence sad
For my old father, nor the love I owed
Penelope with which to make her glad,
Could quench the ardour that within me glowed
A full experience of the world to gain—
Of human vice and worth. But I abroad
Launched out upon the high and open main
With but one bark and but the little band
Which ne’er deserted me.
But in English letters the epitome of the wandering hero is Tennyson's 1833 poem Ulysses:
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Jimmy Pitt and Spike Mullins belong in this branch of the Ulysses tradition, and if a direct source of inspiration is required Tennyson's poem will always be the safest bet.
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