The Code of the Woosters

So, having made a fairly wobbly start last week, how do I proceed?

After some thought, I think I should focus on one book per post, for the moment at any rate, and see where it gets us. And for the first post proper, why not have one of the best, if not the very best of all?

I do need to say a few words, first of all, about the general cover design of the Wodehouse series at this time. I've mentioned before that I came to these books at the impressionable time between my 13th and 15th years. I don't think I'm unique to have been at that time alert to sensory details in a way that seems to have dulled in more recent years, somehow. The details of the cover designs had an elemental importance to me. The choice of font for the book title was clearly made with great, great care; the uniform "P.G. Wodehouse" logo which caps the arched-window frame for the Ionicus illustration is surely a design classic. The lettering was in a different colour for each title, to match or complement the colouring of the Ionicus illustration. (This sometimes had the unfortunate effect of making Wodehouse's name almost invisible when the logic of the design led to the use of very pale yellow lettering, as in Jeeves in the Offing or Quick Service. But that's by the way.) I'm not sure I can properly convey to you the pure pleasure felt by my adolescent self by the deep purple of Wodehouse's name on this cover.

One odd thing about these books, which I will note here without attempting answers, is the inconsistency of certain details. Why were some titles (e.g. Summer Lightning) given a soft, flexible cover and bound with gum that allowed the reader to open and read the book with comfort and without apprehension, while others (such as Heavy Weather as I recall) had stiff card covers that creased at the slightest pressure and gum that cracked painfully about page 120, however much care you took, sometimes detaching a handful of pages suddenly and with a horrid lurch of the heart? Why did the orange spines of some titles fade to yellow in a matter of months, while others remained that deep, gorgeous orange through years and, now, decades? Why did the internal typography vary so much?

On this last point, I'm thinking that a slow survey of fonts might be of (marginal) interest. Below, you'll find a scan of the first lines of The Code of the Woosters. The font, noted behind the title page, is Monotype Garamond. The book was first published in Penguin in 1953, and I believe the typesetting dates from that year. The chapter headings are centred and italicised. The effect is not modern but just "old" enough to be comforting and (in my untutored opinion) exactly right for the timelessly English-traditional tone of Wodehouse.

The Code of the Woosters (1938) is, and not only in my opinion, one of the two or three absolute best Wodehouse novels. It combines a fiendishly intricate and perfect plot with beautiful set pieces and, uniquely, a satire on British Fascism which is both light in touch and absolutely spot on.

Roderick Spode, founder and head of the Saviours of Britain (aka the Black Shorts), is a putative Dictator with an eye that could open an oyster at sixty paces, and he is best buddies with the stuffy and autocratic Sir Watkyn Bassett, J.P. Authority figures in Wodehouse are always to be distrusted, and his instincts in placing Spode alongside Sir Watkyn Bassett as pompous prigs to be deflated are unerring.

Ionicus has chosen to depict the key scene early in the novel when Bertie, newly arrived at Totleigh Towers, country seat of Sir Watkyn Bassett, wanders into Sir W.'s collection room and picks up a silver cow-creamer with intent to steal (for reasons already too complicated to explain, even by page 36).

"... at this point a voice behind me said 'Hands up!' and, turning, I observed Roderick Spode in the window. He had a shotgun in his hand, and this he was pointing in a negligent sort of way at my third waistcoat button. I gathered from his manner that he was one of those fellows who like firing from the hip."

On the next page it is further described how Spode calls to Sir W. and "There was a distant sound of Eh-yes-here-I-am-what-is-it-ing.... It is, of course, an axiom, as I have heard Jeeves call it, that the smaller the man, the louder the check suit, and old Bassett's apparel was in keeping with his lack of inches. Prismatic is the only word for those frightful tweeds...."

As can be seen, Ionicus is absolutely scrupulous in depicting all this in his design. Spode is, here, spot-on: no comedy Dictator but a tough cookie whom, genuinely, no one would wish to meet unexpectedly down a dark alleyway. Add to this the meticulous detail in depicting the glass cabinets, the silverware, the picture-frames, the open French windows, the stonework, the movement of Bertie's monocle-cord as he flinches, the impressionistic English landscape, and, again, those hands (unlike most cartoonists Ionicus is careful to give his people the anatomically correct number of fingers)... and you have an illustration that must have been designed and executed with immense care and over a considerable time. An observant young reader could get lost in that picture for hours.

I'm not an art expert, not even an art dilettante; but I would wager that this Ionicus cover is perfectly balanced in an artistic sense.

One thing more for the moment. I may have said it before, and I'll almost certainly say it again and again in the future to the point of universal disgust. The scene above is farcical: but for the characters it is deadly serious, and Ionicus understands that utterly. Terry Pratchett explained that his novel Equal Rites "is not wacky. Only dumb redheads in Fifties' sitcoms are wacky." He then added as an afterthought: "No, it's not zany, either."

True comic writing is never "wacky" or "zany", and anything that hints otherwise is an abomination. All current illustrators of Wodehouse, please, please note.

Ionicus: The Art of Wodehouse

I came to the works of P.G. Wodehouse at an impressionable age, when I was about twelve or thirteen. My dad had a well-read Penguin copy of Right Ho, Jeeves; one day, when I was off school sick, I picked it up and, at first baffled by Wodehouse's colourful style, so completely different from the penny-plain prose I was used to, I soon became addicted. In the following years, I obsessively collected paperback editions of Wodehouse. That was in the early to late 1980s.

Well, today, thirty years later, I've got rid of most of that old collection, alas, alas. But I find myself going back, not only to Wodehouse but also to the particular editions that, I now realise, were for me an equally powerful positive factor. It's too easy to overlook the attraction of a book lies not only in the words, but also in its physical form, the feel of the cover and of the pages, the quality of the binding, the design of the front and back covers, even the look of the spine on the shelf.

Most, though not all, the Wodehouse titles were published by Penguin at that time, and at that time this meant the covers were by Ionicus.

I knew nothing of Ionicus, of course: not even his real name. I only knew that he was a meticulous, stylish artist who had caught some of the true atmosphere of Wodehouse's world; or was it that my perception of Wodehouse's world was coloured, from the first, by this gravely humorous artist?

Wodehouse's books have been badly served over the years by cover artists. I'll probably come back to that in the future. Let's be honest for a moment. I hate with a passion the editions of Wodehouse that have been published by Penguin and Arrow since the Millennium. The Arrow art has a cheap and crude look, without style. The Penguin editions that were in the shops a few years ago seem to have died out, but I cannot regret that: of course Wodehouse's characters are almost cartoons, but the art made them too cartoonish, and as for the decision to set the internal text left-justified, with ragged right hand edges.... Well, I will say no more. Even the Everyman editions, though admirable in seeking to publish Wodehouse accurately, have problematic cover art, often with a grim, hard edge. In particular, the decision to illustrate the cover of Uncle Fred in the Springtime with a character who has decided to black up as an African warrior, is, in this day and age, not well judged.

No, give me Ionicus every time.

The aim of this blog is to celebrate the artwork created by Ionicus for the Penguin Wodehouse in the 1970s and 1980s. I will be including scans of the best of these covers, with my personal comments and some possibly debatable opinions. I hope I do not offend copyright, and if I receive any serious objections I'll take the site down. My intention is only to show my love for the work of this remarkable artist, and is not in any sense commercial.

To start, here is his cover for Vintage Wodehouse, an anthology edited by Richard Usborne:

Here we have the major recurrent Wodehouse characters: Jeeves and Bertie Wooster of course, Lord Emsworth and Beach, Lady Constance and Aunt Agatha, Ukridge, and looking directly out at us, the irrepressible Hon Galahad Threepwood; even the great Empress of Blandings, for once given her true colours (Wodehouse described her as a Black Berkshire sow but illustrators, including Ionicus on other occasions, usually made her pink). Ionicus didn't depict Lady Florence Craye elsewhere,* but I think we have her, and possibly Madeleine Bassett too (speaking with Mr Mulliner). Wodehouse plots almost always revolve around significant objects to be obtained by fair means or foul, and we have a fair selection of these scattered around also. Ionicus clearly knew and understood the Wodehouse world well by the time he designed this cover.

I'll say more about his style on other occasions, I think, but for now: just look at those hands!

One final thing. I call him Ionicus, but his name was Joshua Charles Armitage. You can find more about his life here.

*Correction: she appears on the cover of A Pelican at Blandings, and also the non-Penguin Sunset at Blandings. I will have to take care to do my homework for future posts.

Postscript: 10 September 2016

As the comments below make abundantly clear, I wrote this post without having a copy of the actual book in front of me and making use instead of a scan of the cover taken from the Internet. I have now acquired a real copy of Vintage Wodehouse, and I have taken the opportunity to replace the previous scan with an actual scan of the copy I now have. I also add a scan of the back cover below, because it includes a helpful key to the figures on the front.