Piccadilly Jim, the play. 1.—Introduction. Writing and production

Introduction

At some point between 1917 and 1919 Wodehouse and Bolton collaborated on a theatrical adaptation of Piccadilly Jim for American audiences. This novel had been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post between September and November 1916 and published in the U.S. in February 1917. The play was produced in the second half of 1919 by Stuart Walker, starring Gregory Kelly as Jimmy Crocker. It was not a success: after a summer season in Indianapolis it went on tour visiting several cities across the United States but never made it to Broadway.

So far it has not been possible to trace a copy of the script. Wodehouse and Bolton seldom referred to it, and current scholarship (with one exception) has largely ignored it.

Here I will attempt to collect and organize all the information about the play, its production history, plot and dialogue as can be gleaned from news items, reviews, advertisements, some of the actors' (auto)biographical material, and other miscellaneous sources.

Since I will be quoting much of this material in full, it is best to split this study into several posts, each dealing with a separate aspect. This first installment will be an account of the production, with what little is known of the conception and writing process, production company involved, cast and performance dates. The second will be concerned with its reception as reflected in contemporary reviews and eventual cancellation. Then a few extracts from the leading actress' memoirs will hopefully shed some light on what some of the participants thought of the whole enterprise. An overview of the afterlife of the play will make up the next part. The last two posts will refer to the play itself: first I will present a tentative reconstruction of the plot, with such scraps of dialogue as are quoted in the sources; and finally I will compare the reconstructed plot not only with the original Piccadilly Jim but with two other novels: The Little Nugget (1913) and Leave It to Psmith (1923).

It is this comparison that points to the most surprising conclusions, which can be anticipated here since they justify the effort put into this reconstruction. Indeed, the play combines elements from the two earlier novels centered more or less in Ogden Ford, which is not unexpected. But it is also possible to detect a number of original points not found in either that were later picked up in the 1923 Blandings Castle story, such as the characters of Mrs. Clarkson and Cootes, the episode of the crook's revolver, the impersonation of a vers libre poet and above all the iconic line "Across the pale parabola of joy." The latter part of the last section will be devoted to an analysis of the composition of Leave It to Psmith in the light of these findings, and the interpretation of some oddities in its plot, namely the roles of Eileen Peavey and Miss Simmons (Susan).

I am grateful to Neil Midkiff and Ananth Kaitharam for their support, both in the form of encouragement and feedback and providing material I could not have accessed without their assistance, and without which this article would have been finished in half could not have been written.

First news of the play

The exception mentioned above is Tony Ring, Second Row, Grand Circle (2012), pp. 351-2. Ring collected several of the items that will be discussed here and in fact I am indebted to him for some I would probably have neglected otherwise, but I won't summarize his findings at this point since I prefer to expound them in chronological order, filling in the gaps in the history of the production.

The first notice that there was any idea of writing an adaptation of PJ comes as early as mid-1917. A note in the New York Times for June 21, 1917, p. 11, titled "Managers Brave the War.—Elliot, Comstock & Gest Are to Produce Seven New Plays" informs us that a prospectus issued by this theatrical firm had announced this ambitious programme:

a musical version of David Belasco's drama, "Sweet Kitty Bellairs," made by P. G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, and Rudolf Friml. It will be called "Kitty Darlin'," and Alice Neilson will be the prima donna. The piece will reach Broadway about Oct. 1. Another is a musical comedy version of George Ade's comedy, "The College Widow," by Mr. Wodehouse and Mr. Bolton, with music by Jerome Kern. It will be produced at the Longacre Aug. 6 with a cast that will include Oscar Shaw, Robert Pitkin, George Graham, Dan Collyer, Carl Randall, Georgia O'Ramey, and Anna Orr. About Labour Day "Chu Chin Chow," the Oriental fantaisie current at His Majesty's, London, will be presented at the Manhattan Opera House.
Other plays scheduled for production are a Russian drama, entitled "The People's King," two plays by George V. Hobart, one a sequel to "Experience," the other, "What Twenty Years Will Do," and a dramatization by Mr. Wodehouse and Mr. Bolton of the former's story, "Piccadilly Jim," "The Wanderer," four "Oh, Boy!" companies, two "Experience," and two "Very Good Eddie" companies will be sent on tour.

As can be seen, Wodehouse and Bolton have a strong presence in their plans. The choice of Piccadilly Jim is hardly surprising, being at that point Wodehouse's latest success.

These paragraphs, however, do not imply that any writing had already taken place, but only that some kind of contract or at least a verbal arrangement had been made to write the play. In Theatre Magazine (September 1917, p. 122) the production was announced for "The New Season 1917-1918," but since it didn't come to fruition until 1919 there may not have been a script by then either. The same magazine in its December 1917 issue, p. 368 had an article on the W&B duo "A Team of Playwrights Extraordinary" with the following passage that still promised PJ for that season:

The activities of the remarkable pair of male Cinderellas are represented during the season of 1917-1918 with "Miss 1917," "The Riviera Girl," "Kitty Darlin'," in which we shall see Alice Nielsen's return from grand opera to comic, "The Girl from Ciro's," "Piccadilly Jim," a dramatization of Mr. Wodehouse's novel of that title, a play, still unnamed, for the Dolly Sisters, "Leave It to Jane," "The Living Safe," an adaptation of the French play "Madame and Her Godson," and a new play for the Princess that will be ready for the little playhouse when "Oh, Boy," its million-dollar tenant, has folded its glittering tent and Arab-like, stolen away.

A little earlier, in the November issue of Vanity Fair (p. 47), Wodehouse had published an article "Dishing Up Fiction in Play Form.—A Crime That Should be Prevented by Law," decrying the habit of turning every new novel into a play, and asking the Legislature to take a hand in the matter, but making an exception of PJ:

That is what the American Drama needs, to give it a new lease of life. I would make a few exceptions, of course. I would permit, for instance, such dramatizations as that of "Piccadilly Jim"—not only because it is impossible for such a story to have too wide a vogue, but principally because the author, a thoroughly worthy fellow, happens to be furnishing a new apartment at a moment when there is an insistent demand on the part of his family for a new car.

Once again, it is impossible to conclude from this tongue-in-cheek reference that any progress had been made on the script, but it does show that the adaptation was present in his mind.

Production and early performances

There is a long gap between the end of 1917 and mid-1919 during which we find absolutely no mention of the play in the press or any other source. Then suddenly, in August of that year, it is announced (e.g. in Variety, August 8, p. 58) at the Murat theater in Indianapolis, where the Stuart Walker Co. had established itself for the summer season. It ran for a week, starting on August 25, before the company went on the road.

The cast during the Indianapolis performances was:

Gregory Kelly: Jimmy Crocker
Ruth Gordon: Ann Chester
Edgar Stehli: Mr. Bingley-Crocker
Beulah Bondy: Mrs. Bingley-Crocker
Aldrich Bowker: Peter Pett (inventor uncle)
Elizabeth Patterson: Mrs. Peter Pett
George Somnes: Alan Cootes
Florence Murphy: Futuristic art fan
Robert McGroarty: ?, prologue
Lael Davis: ?
James P. Webber: ?
Ben Lyon: ?
Helen Robbins: ?
Agnes Horton: ?
Orlo Hallsey: ?

Most of this cast didn't go on tour; I have underlined the names common to this and the next list, which can be regarded as the main roles with the exception of A. Bowker (whose replacement will be discussed later on in R. Gordon's memoirs). Unfortunately the notices don't specify what role some of these actors played. V. B. Fowler wrote about these performances in Variety, September 5, p. 37:

The Bolton-Wodehouse humor is more than sparkling—most of it is brilliant. Delicious new slang will give the show some invaluable advertising when it is staged in earnest.
The plot runs smoothly. The play is without technical faults. The characters range from the quaintly serious to the flippantly ridiculous. There is a dash of melodrama [...]
The cast showed fears for the piece on the opening night, which were entirely unjustified. They strengthened during the week so that equal praise should be bestowed on [list of actors].

The tour took place during the whole of December and was to land on Broadway for New Year. From notices and adverts, its itinerary can be reconstructed thus:

- Wilkes-Barre (PA), Dec 1 to 3, Grand Opera House
- Wilmington (DE), Dec 4 to 6*, Playhouse
- Atlantic City (NJ), Dec 8 to 13, Globe
- New Haven (CT), Dec 15 to 17, Shubert
- Hartford (CT), Dec 19 to 21, Parsons’
- Washington (DC), Dec 22 to 27, Shubert-Garrick
* Including a benefit matinée performance on December 5 for the Actors’ Fund of America. See Delmarvia Star, November 30, p. 15.

Ad in the Delmarvia Star, November 30, 1919, p. 14
announcing the Wilmington performances.

Ad in the Washington Times, December 21, 1919, p. 23.

The cast during the tour, or at least for the last week in Washington, was:

Gregory Kelly: Jimmy Crocker
Ruth Gordon: Ann Chester
Edgar Stehli: Mr. Bingley-Crocker
Beulah Bondy: Mrs. Bingley-Crocker
William Sampson: Peter Pett
Elizabeth Patterson: Mrs. Peter Pett
Burford Hampden: Ogden Ford
James Kearney: Bayliss
Clare Weldon: Mrs. Clarkson
Frank Conno: J. Worsely Ford
Grace Hayle: Mrs. J. Worsely Ford
Graham Velsey: Dave Mitchell
Ruth Copley: Mrs. Barnes
Dora Matthews: Miss Pegrim
Catherine Proctor: Susan Trimble
Fred Tiden: Alan Cootes
Agnes Gildea: Katie

Such are the more or less hard facts I have been able to collect concerning the production. The next post, then, will be devoted to the reception of the play during this tour and its demise.

Next sections:
2.—Reception
3.—Ruth Gordon's memoirs. Afterlife
4.—Reconstruction of the plot

The Hunting of the Borneo Wire-Snake

In chapter 7 of Wodehouse's The Girl on the Boat Eustace Hignett relates his first meeting with Jane Hubbard, the famous big-game hunter:

She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart.

The second sentence (not present in the US version of the novel, Three Men and a Maid) is baffling: while everyone knows what hippopotami and mangoes are, the "Borneo wire-snake" cannot be found in any zoology book, and there is very little in the context to go by and give the name to some other species. All we know is that it is probably venomous, or else its bite wouldn't require special treatment.

A little digging uncovers Wodehouse's probably literary source. In Edgar Wallace’s 1913 novel Grey Timothy ch. 18 we read:

Brian politely declined an invitation to visit the reptile house in the basement, though the old man promised him something very rare in the shape of a new variety of wire snake from Borneo.

Wodehouses's and Wallace's appreciation for each other's stories is well documented, among other things, in the fact that each dedicated books to the other.

The snake, however, doesn't play a role or get another mention in Grey Timothy, so the hunt needs to proceed elsewhere. The Internet Archive provides the next clue, in the works of James Dyer Ball (1847-1919) born and raised in Canton, China to an American missionary and his Scottish wife, and author of a number of books which contributed significantly to a better understanding of Chinese culture in the West. One of these, perhaps the most successful, was Things Chinese; or, Notes connected with China (1892), a sort of encyclopedia of Chinese topics, drawn from the author's personal experience as well as his extensive reading: The first entries: Abacus, Abatement, Aboriginal Tribes, Acupuncture give an idea of the scope of the work. In the fourth edition (1903), pp. 630-1 we read under the entry for Snakes:

The Gardins is a snake not often seen; but it is found in Hongkong and elsewhere in the Kwongtung Province. It is said by the Chinese to be the most deadly of all snakes, no cure being possible for its bite. It is even found on the housetops, or roofs, rather. Its name in Chinese is t'eet seen she [t'ieh hsien shê], or iron-wire snake; it is generally black in colour; but is also seen of a sort of rusty brown shade, is about 7 or 8 inches in length, and of the size of a thick piece of iron wire.

Here we have, then, an "iron wire snake", except that this is not its English name but a literal translation of the Chinese name 鐵線蛇 (apparently this would be tiě xiàn shé in modern transliteration). It is venomous, even fatally so, matching the one for whose bite Jane Hubbard has a countermeasure, while Wallace is not explicit on the subject. The main problem, of course, is that Dyer Ball found it in Hong-Kong, 2,400 km from Borneo, not to mention the sea in between. If we concede this gross inexactitude on his part, we may venture the hypothesis that Wallace took the name directly or indirectly from Dyer Ball, attached a different location to it, and Wodehouse in turn borrowed the new species as "Borneo wire-snake". For the name Gardins I haven't been able to find an explanation yet.

Because the fact remains that Dyer Ball's book wasn't just the most popular text to have brought the name "wire snake" to English-speaking countries: so far it is the only non-specialized contemporary source found. The next occurrence online repositories have to offer is the China Medical Missionary Journal for October 1901, pp. 303-4, with a somewhat graphic report from a cautious correspondent:

Dr. H. N. Kinnear, of Foochow, writes as follows:—
Iron Wire Snakes.
"I am curious to know what experience other workers in China have had with what our Foochow people call the 'Iron Wire Snake.'
A year ago there came to our clinic a boy of nineteen, who reported that when he was eight years' old he was playing out of doors, probably wearing no clothing, when one of these little snakes wrapped itself around his penis at about the middle. It was impossible to get it off for some hours and the resulting ulceration had left a deep sulcus of cicatricial tissue entirely surrounding the organ and interrupting the urethra. The urethra was of full calibre on both sides of the fistula. He came to us because he was about to marry and wished the imperfection removed, but left again before anything was done for him.
My students fully credited the story of the snake, and told me that they sometimes fasten themselves upon the fingers of men working in gardens, strangulating them until they slough off, that they have also been known to strangulate the tails of cattle in the same way. The popular belief seems to be that it is almost impossible to remove them when once wrapped around a part.
The snake is about six inches long, shaped much like a common earth worm, has about the same diameter, a trifle smaller perhaps and darker in color. Have seen a specimen, but have not done any experimenting with my own fingers for the sake of science. Am willing to gain a knowledge of the subject at second hand if any one is ready to impart it."

This is presumably from Fuzhou, quite a different region of coastal China; and it is certainly a different species, not venomous but dangerous in its own peculiar way. We may assume that by "what our Foochow people people call the 'Iron Wire Snake'" is the same 鐵線蛇 as in Dyer Ball's account, but the conclusion will be that a common name was applied to unrelated species in different regions.

Coming now to modern sources, several online Chinese zoological guides apply the name both to the collared reed snake (Calamaria pavimentata), and to the brahminy blind snake (Indotyphlops braminus), very different between them, which supports our last conclusion. None of these is venomous, so the identity of Dyer Ball's specimen remains a mystery, but the description in the medical journal suggests the I. braminus. The last extract I have to quote confirms this. Geoffrey Herklots in The Hong Kong Countryside (1959), pp. 111-2 contributes this anecdote which shows that the tradition about the dangers of handling this dumb chum was hadn't died out:

IRON WIRE SNAKE
After an interval of more than six and a half years my wife, children and I once again lived together in a house with a garden. A first consequence was the inevitable blister at the base of the third finger of the left hand the result of a soft hand in contact with the hard handle of a spade. A piece of ground was dug, which in the month of March was as hard as a tennis court, but it yielded some interesting specimens in the form of iron wire snakes. The first one was claimed by my small daughter and transferred to a cigarette tin together with some earth and a worm. There was a small hole at the top of the tin and through this hole the snake escaped during the night but another took its place and it was carried in triumph to school and exhibited.
This primitive and degenerate snake, Typhlops braminus resembles a short piece of highly polished iron wire hence the common local name of  t'it sin she, iron wire snake. Unlike a piece of wire it is extremely agile. It is the only local snake whose tail ends in a sharp point. When the snake desires to burrow into the earth it inserts the tip of its tail in the ground, thus providing anchorage, and using the tail as a lever moves its body backwards or forwards as desired. Its food consists of soft-bodied insects and worms. It possesses eyes but they are largely hidden by scales and so the snake is practically blind. This small reptile, three or four inches in length does not lay eggs as do many snakes, but brings forth its young alive. It is of course perfectly harmless to man but many Chinese believe that if it twines around a finger it will not release its hold until the finger has dropped off, but the Chinese, like the British, have many curious beliefs about snakes. Many people regard snakes as slimy creatures whereas they are never slimy, their skin stroked in the right direction being as pleasant to touch as silk. Rubbed the wrong way it is rough to the touch except when the snake is a burrower like this species which, like the mole, may be stroked in any direction without rubbing against the grain. The number of these snakes I dug up in this small patch of ground surprised me—four in sixteen square yards. If it was a representative piece of Hong Kong the number per square mile of the Island would reach astronomical figures.

———

This is as far as our hunting for the Borneo wire-snake has taken us. It may be that there are other missing links to be unearthed, but the main takeaway is that the language barrier still makes writing about things Chinese as much a matter of uneducated guesswork for the 21st century internet-based researcher as for the 20th century novelist.