It's many years since I last read The Little Nugget, and I wondered if my memories of being rather disappointed with it were unfair. Unfortunately, I can confirm they were not. The idea behind it is great: Ogden Ford, the horrible son of a millionaire, is the target of rival gangsters out to kidnap him. Some years ago, I also read the original serial version of the story, called "The Eighteen-Carat Kid", and it was much better. The reason is easy to see: the serial is all about the kidnapping, and is taut and to the point, while the novel expands the situation to include the hero's rather lugubrious romance, and is frankly flabby.
Well, it was first published in 1913 and is one of Wodehouse's earlier adult novels. He was still feeling his way; and just two years later he would write the magnificent Something Fresh; so I can forgive this momentary unsureness of touch. And, in spite of the major flaws, there is much to enjoy.
The Penguin edition was first published in 1959, and was set in Intertype Times. I'm a bit surprised to find the book title is given on the first page of the text:
One thing I notice of Ionicus's covers is that he generally takes care to suit his figures in the style of the original publication date. Hence the rounded celluloid collars of the men, the Nugget's Eton collar, and so on. I don't know if Audrey's dress is accurate, but it does seem somehow right: simple and pre-flapper. Our hero and heroine - good-looking, serious, rather dull - are well done. There is only one matter upon which I would take issue with Ionicus. White, the butler who (spoiler alert) turns out to be the gangster Smooth Sam Fisher in disguise, is here depicted as slim and even gaunt. In the novel he is "portly" and respectable-looking to a degree; the typical Wodehouse butler. Ionicus does not usually make such mistakes.
I would guess the cover dates from the 1974 reprint.
While I'm at it, I might as well include in this post a few remarks on Piccadilly Jim (1917), which is a sort of sequel, featuring Ogden Ford once more. I read that this novel was one of Wodehouse's biggest successes at the time. I find this rather surprising, as I consider it to be rather obviously inferior to Something Fresh, for instance.
It's an entertaining but improbable farce of mistaken identity. Well, I know what you're going to say. "That's a description of every single Wodehouse plot." Yes; that's a very perceptive remark you have made, and I agree. But this one goes too far, I think. There's a rich New York financier called Peter Pett and his ghastly wife Nesta. That's fine. Then there's Nesta's ghastly sister Eugenia who has married an American actor called Bingley Crocker and gone to live in London. Bingley Crocker's son is a society playboy called by the papers Piccadilly Jim and he has been raising Cain in London. Crocker's wife wants him to become a British Peer. With me so far? But... how can he become a Peer when he's American? Why are they in London? Why is Piccadilly Jim American? It all feels slightly off; if Crocker were a Britisher with an American wife, it would all suddenly make a lot more sense. There's a subplot about Crocker hankering for baseball, but that's really not an essential. It's pretty clear that Crocker must have been made American rather late in the plotting process to solve a glitch. The joins are visible.
I hope you understand that, if I criticise, it is because I love Wodehouse. He set an impossibly high standard in his best works. It's no surprise that he could not always meet that standard, especially in these, his earlier novels, where he was still testing what works.
The Penguin edition was first published in 1969, and perhaps the Ionicus cover was made at that time; or possibly for the 1972 reprint. The font is Intertype Times again:
I love the Ionicus cover. The colours, the yellows and browns and pale greens, have an autumnal feel; the Wodehouse logo colour is very carefully chosen to suit. Jim's clothes are ostentatiously American; Ann Chester to the right is the perfect Wodehouse heroine; Bayliss the butler is ideally butlerine; and the bustle of Paddington Station before the Boat Train (that essential scene in many a Wodehouse plot) is skilfully evoked.
I'm sorry not to be more positive about the books themselves. There's a shadow over them, and as I think it over perhaps I can state what the shadow is. It is Ogden Ford himself, a truly horrible child, spoilt perhaps beyond redemption and portrayed as being without a single redeeming feature. Wodehouse's characters usually have something about them, some remnant of a soul; Ogden has nothing.
