Indiscretions of Archie (1921) - the title, despite all instinct, has no "The" - is a series of loosely connected short stories, set in New York and featuring a sterling example of the Wodehouse patent nice-but-dim English hero: Archie Moffam, pronounced Moom, newly wedded to Lucille Brewster, daughter of hotel tycoon Daniel Brewster. I can't remember if D. Brewster is said to be dyspeptic, but frankly Archie Moffam as a son-in-law would make anyone so.
So here is Ionicus's cover for the Penguin edition, created for the 1975 reprint. I would call this a good-bad cover. The actual design is very effective: seven figures, all very well done, the spread of rubbish on the ground suggesting a back alley rather effectively without the trouble of depicting it; in the middle, a fiery character about to poke the snoot of the ineffectual gent on the left. The man in the middle, so the passing book-buyer would assume, must be the indiscreet Archie. His position on the cover certainly places him as the hero, as well as the matching of his red hair with the red author banner across the top. Only, of course, he isn't: Archie is the ineffectual snoot-pokee. Archie is the kind of person to whom things happen; a sort of Bertie with no Jeeves, but with the very occasional flash of intelligence. The snoot-poker is actually supposed to be a baseball pitcher by the name of Looney Biddle, into whose affairs Archie has, for the very best motives, been interesting himself, with the worst results. I'm not sure what the baseball player in the background is supposed to be, as there is no other distinct baseball character in the book.
The font is Intertype Garamond, thusly:
I like the layout of chapter headings: just the right air of the old-fashioned.
Archie Moffam is supposed to have fought in the Great War. I find this aspect of the book unconvincing in the extreme. His character is too soft and naïve to match a first hand experience of that conflict. Wodehouse seems to have felt the same. Anyhow, he never repeated the idea.
The Adventures of Sally (1922) had its first Penguin publication in 1986, with this cover:
Another red-headed hero; but more civilised, this time. I like the chiming of the green seats with the green above the picture. Archie was farcical in tone, buy Sally is more romantic, with some rather perfunctory mishaps and misunderstandings between Sally, Ginger, and their happy ending. Ionicus is beginning to go off the boil a little, I fear; there's a similar underpowered note as in the Damsel in Distress cover - rather as if his heart were not in it. Here, as with Archie, the ground/floor is left completely blank. Perhaps he found floors too dull, or difficult. He could do them, but he did have a tendency to leave them out whenever he felt he could.
Here's the opening, in Baskerville:
There's nothing actually
wrong with this, but the small capitals for the chapter title seem somehow over-fussy.
These books of the early twenties suffer from being of Wodehouse's transitional period. He's still trying out different types of story, some of them more effectively than others. He had yet to settle on his perfect blend of farce and romance. It's a little frustrating - he had already started writing his stories of Jeeves and Bertie - but after all, he had to find his own way.
