Piccadilly Jim, the play. 2.—Reception

Previous sections:
1.—Introduction. Writing and production

Reception

The reviews of Piccadilly Jim were mostly positive at first, but toward the end of December there is a clear decline, which can be illustrated by a few extracts in chronological order:

"Piccadilly Jim," a character that won the admiration of all who read the story when it appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, was presented on the stage last night at the Grand Opera House for the first time. "Jim" proved as popular a stage hero as he did in the book, and judging from the manner in which the play was received "Piccadilly" is destined to enjoy a long and successful career. The play is a mixture of fun and thrills and is most enjoyable. It is packed with laughs and last night's audience seemed to enjoy it to the fullest extent. Although last night's performance was the first on any stage, the production moved with such smoothness that it was impossible to tell it was a premiere. [...]
It has all the earmarks of a real winner, and will undoubtedly capture Broadway when it finally lands there for a run. The company is far above the average seen this season.

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, December 2, p. 19

(Note that this review ignores the Indianapolis summer season.)

* * *

As Piccadilly Jim, Mr. Kelly exceeds all speed limits for laughs for the authors have broken their own records in the matter of comic ingenuity. And Mr. Walker has gathered a brilliant company to portray the unusual character tangled in their web of blythe humor. Ruth Gordon plays the demure Anne Chester. Burford Hampden as the complacent prize of the kidnappers, Willian Sampson as the patient inventor, Catherine Proctor as the lady detective, Elizabeth Patterson as the cultured Mrs. Pett, Fred Tiden as the nervy burglar, Frank Connor, Grace Hayle, Beulah Bondy, Clare Weldon, Agnes Gildea, Graham Volsey, Dora Matthews, Edgar Stehli, and Ruth Copley make up the imposing cast.

The Meriden Daily Journal, December 13, p. 7

* * *

"Piccadilly Jim," a comedy made in part from a short story by P. G. Wodehouse by that worthy and industrious young man, himself and his favorite accomplice, Guy Bolton, was seen at Parsons's Theater last evening and proved to be a pleasing bit of amusement without at all ruining Mr. William Shakespeare's claim to immortality as a dramatist. Messrs. Bolton and Wodehouse are as considerate as they are prosperous; they are content to have their hands in most of the books of musical plays of the present age and to dash off a comedy here and there; they are willing to achieve fortune and such little things but they simply will not shove good old William Aforesaid Shakespeare off the map. It wouldn't be cricket don't you know, to treat a dear dead Johnny so.
But though not obtaining greatness in the composition and construction of "Piccadilly Jim" the authors have given people who go to see their work excellent reasons for frequent smiles and not a few good laughs; and they have given some clever players some neat opportunities. There was no riotous applause from the audience last evening but there certainly was appreciation for the wit of many of the lines and the brightness of some of the situations. [...]
The story is thin but the telling is bright and the acting of those principally concerned is excellent.

Hartford Courant, December 19, p. 10

* * *

"Piccadilly Jim," the comedy by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, presented at the Shubert-Garrick this week, is enjoyable. The fair-sized audience last night felt that way about it, and so expressed itself. Gregory Kelly brings a unique personality to the title role, his remarkable manipulation of the one syllable "Yes" in a long scene with Miss Ruth Gordon and the comedy brought out by his enunciation of that word being a characteristic example of the actor's understanding of humor-provoking diction.

The Washington Evening Star, December 23, p. 25

* * *

"PICCADILLY JIM" may not be another "Seventeen" for Gregory Kelly; but "Piccadilly Jim" is, notwithstanding, a thoroughly entertaining comedy. There's a plenty of laughable-at dialogue, there's a bit of melodrama that thrills, there's a sweet little love story, and there are liberal sprinklings of pure farce that draw continuous chuckles.
No, it's not a record-breaking masterpiece, but it's a mighty delightful way of passing a couple of hours or so—this "Piccadilly Jim" of P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. [...]
It's all very amusing. And fairly well cast, although one gets the impression that the thing is too new to let the actors get the full value of their parts. But in a short time this will have worn off, and the comedy will be even better than it was last night, when it made a goodly house chuckle continually and roar occasionally.

The Washington Times, December 23, p. 10

* * *

Almost a new category of drama is needed in which to classify "Piccadilly Jim." Its origins are more obvious: popular magazine fiction plus the earlier influence of Mr. George M. Cohan were its inspiration. And it is amusing in effect, albeit this effect is of a somewhat obvious kind. It is neither as deep as a well, nor, fortunately, as broad as a barn-door. In fact, on the latter score, it is without a single word of offense. That alone stamps it as a novelty among present-day farce-comedies. But it is also a bit of a comedy of manners and contains, likewise, more than a hint of that five-year old antique the crook-play with its turns and tricks. Added to all this are aphoristic lines enough to furnish forth a winter's tale to be told around the corner grocery stove. In short, it is an amusing example of opportunism in dramatic technique, the story constantly taking such new tones and directions as the wit of the authors could devise to keep it going. And it does go—as far, apparently, as it was meant to. [...]
In two or three instances certain rôles have been miscast. Odgen, for example, is a precocious child, but the illusion is not heightened by having this part played by an actor with a blue chin and maturity of facial expressions. Time will probably correct many of these details, among which crudity of make-up, in more than one case, unquestionably needs attention. Even with these blemishes, however, the laughter of the first-night audience gave sure indication that "Piccadilly Jim" will be a popular success.

The Christian Science Monitor, December 23, p. 16

* * *

At the Garrick, Gregory Kelly is holding forth in P. G. Wodehouse's "Piccadilly Jim"—a play that offers fair enough entertainment, but one which rather disappointed the critics, who expected a vast deal of fine stuff from the combination of Wodehouse and Guy Bolton.

Earle Dorsey for the Washington Herald, December 25, p. 5

* * *

Stuart Walker's "Piccadilly Jim" at the Shubert-Garrick received rather good notices and was a mighty clever little comedy, with a last act that turned into an old time thriller. The cast was excellent and after the piece is brightened just a little, it being played in a quiet key throughout that rather tired, it ought to be a fair contender for successful honors in New York.

Hardie Meakin for Variety, January 2, 1920, p. 71

* * *

This last prophecy was not fulfilled. By the time the last notice was published Walker had already decided to cancel the play. The last performance had been on December 27 in Washington.

In the next post, Ruth Gordon's reminiscences will give an idea of what the general atmosphere within the company was really like during the rehearsals and tour.

Next sections:
3.—Ruth Gordon's memoirs. Afterlife
4.—Reconstruction of the plot
5.—The play and the novels. Conclusion

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
5.—The play and the novels. Conclusion

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.

A Gentleman of Leisure: a variorum edition

 A Gentleman of Leisure (variorum edition, PDF)

This is the third project of its kind I've completed. It is out of schedule: the next one was supposed to be The Little Warrior (UK Jill the Reckless), but a flurry of activity at Madame Eulalie around the 1910 book editions of A Gentleman of Leisure (US The Intrusion of Jimmy) made it more practical to concentrate on this one while it was still fresh in the mind.

The preparation of each of these texts has its own challenges, and forces the editor to make decisions that require some kind of justification. In the case of AGoL, the choice of the base text took some thinking. For other texts the first UK edition seemed a natural choice, as it clearly was in itself an evolution on previous versions, and also was more or less the established text for all subsequent editions, barring minor corrections or editorial deviations. AGoL, on the other hand, underwent at a relatively early stage a substantial revision between the first UK edition (Alston Rivers, 1910) and the 1921 Jenkins text, which would become the standard for the novel's later history. This alone would seem to mark it as the author's "definitive" version, and to justify giving it priority. But things are not so simple, since the Jenkins edition has some significant deletions from the previous version, and one always has misgivings about relegating genuine Wodehouse text to the footnotes. In the end, after much hesitation, the Jenkins text came on top.

The apparatus is longer than that of the two previous variorums, and this is due mostly to the British editors removing many of the peculiarities of Spike Mullins' speech. Again I was in doubt whether it was really worth it to record every time an' and fer in the American edition was changed to and and for. In the end I decided to keep them, on the principle that it will be easier to remove them later if I ever change my policy in this regard, and also that drawing the line between what is worth noting and what isn't is not so simple. As a result, the number of footnotes soared to over a thousand—or t'ousand, as Spike would say.

Side note: since I hope to keep adding to the number of variorum editions, I've created a separate page with a general presentation of the project, a list of finished documents and (eventually) ancillary material. This will be permanently available as a link in the nagivation bar at the left of the blog.

George Morrow's "Sports" Series

Wodehouse's "forgotten sports" gag spans 46 years:

• Forgotten Sports of the Past—Splitting the Straw. (The Little Warrior ch. 14, 1920)
• Forgotten Sports of the Past—Number Three, Meeting the Mater. ("Something Squishy", 1924)
• Forgotten sport of the past—Waving the Tortoise. (Sam the Sudden ch. 24, 1925)
• Cruel Sports of the Past—Beating the Steak. (Spring Fever ch. 17, 1948)
• Forgotten sports of the past. Squaring the housemaid. (Uncle Dynamite ch. 9, 1948)
• Forgotten Sports of the Past—Getting The Scenario. ("Genesis of a Novel", 1966)

All these are a reference to the equally long-lived "Sports" series of cartoons by George Morrow (1869-1955), published in Punch since at least 1910 as variations of "Cruel/Forgotten Sports of the Past". These generally had the structure "X-ing the Y", Y often being the name of an animal, and involved a pun.

Morrow has a fairly complete Wikipedia page. See also his obituary in Punch, January 26, 1955, and his entry in the Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists. Add to the bibliography George Morrow, His Book (1920) available online; and see a collection of cartoons at the Punch website.

Below are all the examples I could find of "Sports" in Punch, ranging 30 years. Click each image to expand. Possibly there are others, but they are not so easy to locate in online repositories like the Internet Archive or HathiTrust. A complete index to the magazine for the 20th century might reveal more items that I missed (like the May 4, 1910 item—thanks to Neil M. for bringing that one to my attention).

Wodehouse also recalled two of these in "Falconry: Who Needs It?", published in Playboy in November 1956:

READING A BOOK not long ago about popular sports of the past, I was interested to note how few of them have succeeded in keeping their grip on the public taste. They had their day and vanished never to be heard of again. I suppose about the only one that has survived into our modern age is haberdashery. You still find dashing the haber going on. But what of knurr and spell? Or boxing the compass? Or mocking the turtle? (A cruel sport, this last. The players stood in front of their turtles and made wisecracks about their faces, and the competitor who was the first to get his turtle good and sore won the chukker.)

March 23, 1910

April 27, 1910

May 4, 1910

May 11, 1910

July 20, 1910

February 21, 1912

June 27, 1917

February 18, 1925

May 18, 1931

June 15, 1932

March 20, 1940

The Boy: What Will He Become?

In chapter II of his more or less autobiographical book Over Seventy (1957) Wodehouse comments on the financial vicissitudes of his household during his formative years, which cast a shadow of doubt over his chances of getting a university education:

The result was that during my schooldays my future was always uncertain. The Boy: What Will He Become? was a question that received a different answer almost daily.

At least twice in his novels Wodehouse put the same question in the lips of two of his heroes. The first is Psmith:

"Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?"
"The last, for choice," said Mike, "but I've only just arrived, so I don't know."
"The boy—what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?"
"Yes! Why, are you new?"

The Lost Lambs, ch. III (1908; Mike, ch. XXXII)

The second is Jimmy Crocker:

"The boy, what will he become?" he said. He turned the pages. "How about an Auditor? What do you think of that?"
"Do you think you could audit?"
"That I could not say till I had tried. I might turn out to be very good at it. How about an Adjuster?"

Piccadilly Jim, ch. VIII (1917)

R. McCrum adopted the phrase as the title of chapter 2 of Wodehouse: A Life, devoted to the years 1894-1900. It is especially appropriate because, while not so familiar today, or even when Over Seventy was published, it was firmly engraved in everyone's minds during the Victorian years to which Wodehouse applied it. In this post I will attempt to reconstruct its origin and history up to the end of the 19th century.

* * *

The story begins with an article titled "The Influence of Morality or Immorality on the Countenance," published on April 17, 1852 in The Popular Educator (Vol. I No. 3). It was illustrated with a double sequence of successive stages in the life of a child, one showing how he would grow up if he received a proper education, and the other what happened if he didn't, in answer to the fundamental question "What will he become?":

(According to the article, the drawing was taken "from a popular French publication," which I haven't been able to trace. A farbourg, a footnote tells us, is a low suburb of a city, such as Paris.)

The article took a stance in the millennia-old nature-nurture debate, which boils down to whether one's character is determined by birth or by education. In this case it took the form of an opposition between two 19th century disciplines demoted today to the rank of pseudosciences: phrenology, which predicted mental traits from the shape of a person's skull, and physiognomy, which assessed a person's character from their appearance: "without depreciating the facts on which it is professedly based, we confess that we have a more profound faith in the doctrine of physiognomy." The two series of drawings clearly depict the same child in two very different possible futures, always with the same cranial structure from the phrenologist's viewpoint, but revealing to the physiognomist the impact of environment on his development:

Carefully examine the above engraving. Look at the head and face of the child represented in the first figure. Who can divine what that young intelligence will become in the future of his life? Is there anything in his features to indicate that he will act a conspicuous part on the great wide stage of this world? Or is he to sink in the scale of intelligent being, till he takes on the mere animal nature, or what is still worse, till he become the very personification of vice and sin? Even in the outlines of the infant countenance there may be the index of the future man. These outlines will become more marked and definite in the boy amid the studies and pursuits of the school. The period of boyhood is one of wondrous development; and if this were but carefully watched, the foundation might in many cases be laid for the erection of a true manly nobility; and that undermined, on which moral evil would otherwise rear her temple of darkness and impurity. Look at the eye, nose, and mouth of the boy as he is at school, or as he is located in one of the faubourgs of Paris, and who does not perceive, from the very contour of the countenance, that his destiny will very much depend on the influences by which he may be surrounded?

This was in line with the ideals and goals of John Cassell, founder of the Cassell & Co. publishing house which produced The Popular Educator: "He was a social reformer who recognised the importance of education in improving the life of the working class, and whose many publications, both magazines and books, brought learning and culture to the masses" (Wikipedia). The Educator was essentially an encyclopedia in weekly installments. The number that included our article contained lessons in Latin, Arithmetic, Botany, English Grammar, French, Physiology and Biography.

The Educator was an editorial success, and when it started to be reissued in the 1860s the engraving was redrawn and used in advertisements and posters. The caption accompanying the first drawing became "The Child—What will he become" and the rest varied slightly. Note that the French context was removed:

Ad in Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, May 17, 1862

Ad in The Literary World, September 22, 1876

From S. Nowell-Smith, The House of Cassell, 1848-1958, p. 62 we learn that these posters were the work of a publicity manager called J. H. Puttock, and that new drawing was by Fred Barnard.

At some point it crossed the Atlantic. In Ballou's Monthly Magazine for April 1979 we find an article "Various Phases of Life" that is mostly copied from the Educator. The source is not credited: Ballou's is one of the many American periodicals that took advantage of the lack of protection for foreign material which so infuriated Charles Dickens. (In fact, I have come across one of James Payn's stories in Ballou's under a fictitious author's name.) The illustration is new:

The scientific literature of the time also took notice of the poster. In The Monthly Journal of Science for September 1879 an article "The Criminal Law of the Future" on the role of heredity in the development of criminal tendencies alluded to it in these terms:

we may ask if external influences, moral or social, can modify the conduct and character of the individual, what is our right to assume—as the author just quoted evidently does—that their effects must cease with his death, and fail to reach his posterity? Everyone has seen a series of parallel portraits entitled "The Child; what will he become?" Can we suppose that the diverse agencies which have moulded the one into intelligence, refinement, and integrity, but have warped the other into ignorance, vice, and brutality, will leave their descendants equal and similar, the minds of both groups being tabula rasa as easily open to good as to bad impressions? Unless we can grant this monstrous postulate we must, "vulgar" as it may seem, recognise heredity as an important factor in the generation of conduct and character.

In 1885 a humorous picture by Frank Dadd was presented at the yearly exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, bearing the title "The Boy—What will he become?" which is the final form of the phrase as we encounter in Wodehouse. It portrays a father taking his son to a phrenologist to have the boy's cranium measured:

The parent is awed by the scientific man's jargon but tries to conceal his ignorance; the crank looks superciliously from a lofty position; and the boy just wants to be somewhere else, the sulk on his face denouncing the idiocy of the whole situation (my interpretation). The picture was praised in several art journals, and got a cartoon in Punch, May 30, 1885:

I believe Dadd's painting is satirical in intent, but that didn't stop the advocates of phrenology using it to promote their practice:

Ad in Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1889

Another pictorial derivative is found in The Girl's Own Paper, October 6, 1894 with the title "The Child:—How will she develop?", too large to reproduce here. As could be expected, it contemplates not only education but a number of other desirable virtues in a lady of the age.

But it was the posters that lived for decades in popular memory, and most likely what Wodehouse had in mind when he quoted the phrase. References to them appear continuously from the 1870s onward in literature, journalism, comic strips etc., and start declining in the 1920s, when they usually take the form "like in those old posters."

Reviewing even only the most creative of these in the 20th century escapes the limits of this post about the origins of the phrase, but we could mention a 1934 one-act play of that title by Harold Brighouse that can be read here, and one very late allusion which brings us close to Over Seventy. In Punch for November 22, 1950 a report of a discussion in Parliament of the recently founded Council of Europe and its future prospects makes the following comparison:

But what struck the unbiased onlooker most was that the unfortunate infant's future seemed very unclear and uncertain. For neither side seemed to have any great faith in its ability to rise above difficulties to come. It was all rather like one of those old "The Child—What Will he Become?" charts, only with both life-courses more than a bit cloudy and unpromising.

* * *

Such, then, is the history of our phrase, at least up until the time it was applicable to Wodehouse and his early characters.

One last reflection: the three occurrences in the Wodehouse canon are equally unfamiliar to a 21st century reader, but in context they are slightly different. In The Lost Lambs and Piccadilly Jim the author could count on his public recognizing the phrase, either from their own experience or from repeated contemporary references. In Over Seventy the passage was more of an nostalgic evocation of a bygone era, conjuring up a memory which only those above a certain age would share.

Jimmy Pitt, Spike Mullins and Ulysses

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 the 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 travelling 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 throughout 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.