Indiscretions of Archie / The Adventures of Sally

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.

Something Fresh / A Damsel in Distress

I've been, for no good reason, neglecting the Blandings series so far - certainly as compared to the Jeeves books. This is odd, because I have a tremendous affection for Blandings Castle and its denizens (though I do feel the series ran out of fuel rather badly after Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939). At any rate, as a first step towards rectifying matters, here is the first in the series, Something Fresh (1915).

Strangely enough, this title was not published by Penguin until 1979. The Ionicus illustration therefore dates from that year. The book was made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (the Chaucer Press), and the type is Monotype Times. The orange spine has a tendency to fade, and I know from a previous copy of mine that the gum in the spine will crack, shedding pages, given half a chance. I'm therefore taking care with this present copy. The type is very no-nonsense, and looks like this:

Something Fresh (in the U.S., Something New) really is something fresh. The first Blandings novel, it is also, in my opinion, one of the best. Later Wodehouse was, as we know, 95% formula (and none the worse for it) but in these early days PGW was still striking out, exploring stories, themes and ideas for the first time. The hero, Ashe Marson, is a jobbing writer of detective stories (I sometimes feel I wouldn't mind reading a few of his Gridley Quayle shockers) who, for reasons which, as usual, are too complicated to explain here, travels to Blandings Castle in the guise of manservant to dyspeptic mogul J. Preston Peters (no Wodehouse plot is truly complete without a dyspeptic mogul). Some of the strongest and most original scenes come from Ashe's initiation into the complex social rituals of the servants at a large country house. I am convinced that Julian Fellowes must have drawn rather largely on Something Fresh for his picture of the world of the servants in both Gosforth Park and Downton Abbey. The tone is, of course, light, but we don't yet achieve the delirious farce of later titles, and Lord Emsworth has not yet acquired that pearl of sows, Empress of Blandings.

The Ionicus scene is well chosen, showing Lord Emsworth (right), Mr Peters (centre) and the Efficient Baxter (left, back), as well as the object which is the motor of the entire plot, a Cheops Scarab of the Fourth Dynasty, pinched and re-pinched by the characters for their own ends until happiness can be achieved. The scene takes place in the cluttered museum room at the Castle, giving Ionicus plenty of opportunity to draw the furniture and other decorations that he so enjoyed. The figures are well depicted too, every character clear and correct. However, as sometimes happened he appears to have given up at the thought of doing the floor.

I'm taking this opportunity to include A Damsel in Distress (1919) as well, a less successful cover but still worthy of coverage in this ongoing survey:

This book was first published by Penguin in 1961, being reprinted in 1987 with the Ionicus cover. The type, dating from the 1960s version, is in Monotype Garamond:

The more fancy styling of "Chapter 1" is a clear token of the older typesetting.

A Damsel in Distress feels similar to the Blandings series, though it is not one of them, as the characters have different names and the setting is Hampshire, not the more northerly Shropshire. I seem to remember Wodehouse later saying that he regretted settling on Blandings for the series, as it was so remote from London - though that is part of its charm. (By the way: yes, this book was indeed the source for the later Gershwin/Astaire film of the same name.)

I was struck, on rereading Damsel a couple of months ago, by an odd thing. It is quite apparent that this book about England, written by an Englishman (indeed, the quintessential Englishman) is nevertheless rather American in tone. I'm aware that Wodehouse deliberately developed his style as a way of portraying England for Americans, but I don't think I have ever been so aware of this fact as I was in rereading this book.

For example, at the beginning of Chapter Two Wodehouse is describing a side street in the West End of London, and this is what he writes as narrator: "Cats washed themselves on doorsteps, preparatory to looking in for lunch at one of the numerous garbage cans which dotted the sidewalk." Garbage cans rather than dustbins, sidewalk and not pavement? PGW could hardly have made the point clearer.

The hero, George Bevan, is an American composer over in England to see his latest show through its West End production. Naturally, he falls in love, and follows the lady to her country retreat at Belpher Castle, Hants. This is how, in Chapter 7, Wodehouse describes the village in which George finds himself, and while the American references make greater sense now that we are viewing things from George's point of view, they're also clearly for the benefit of the American reader: "It is to be questioned whether in the whole length and breadth of the world there is a more admirable spot for a man in love to pass a day or two than the typical English village. The Rocky Mountains, that traditional stamping-ground for the heart-broken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stern mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear. In the English village there are no such obstacles to meditation. It combines the comforts of civilization with the restfulness of solitude in a manner equalled by no other spot except the New York Public Library."

Ionicus sometimes had a weakness for depicting scenes from very near the end of a book, and indeed containing what we would now consider serious "spoilers". This is one of those illustrations. It is, without going into detail, the moment when the scales finally fall from the eyes of the heroine, paving the way for happy endings all round. The ill-favoured bounder on the right is a young solicitor passing over a summons for Breach of Promise, and doesn't really deserve the honour of being on the cover. Well, never mind.

Psmith Journalist

The history of Psmith Journalist is a little more complicated than might be anticipated. It was first published in volume form in 1915. However, it was originally serialised in the boys' paper The Captain as far back as 1909-10. I don't know why it took so long to achieve separate publication. It's a strong book, very different from what we might expect from PGW in that it deals relatively seriously and factually with the gangs of early 20th century New York - though it is true that this basic setup is farcically disrupted by the intervention of the unruffleable Psmith.

As I've mentioned before, Ionicus seemed to take especial pleasure in the Psmith covers. Here, the shabby offices of the paper Cosy Moments are beautifully evoked, with a glimpse of old New York visible through the window. Psmith is immaculate as ever, but, leaning against a filing cabinet, seems completely at home - as he is in every place. Behind the desk is the firebrand editor Billy Windsor, and on the other side is a certain Francis Parker, a sleek and immaculate young man who is however the mouthpiece for much nastier forces. This is a very carefully composed cover, in the balance of figures, the colours, and the detail in every corner of it. One of the very best. This title was first published in Penguin in 1970, and I would say the Ionicus cover dates from then.

Here's the first page of the book - Wodehouse's Preface in which he assures readers that the events described have a strong basis in reality. The font is Intertype Times, and the book was printed, appropriately enough, in the USA - Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The tale concerns an inoffensive little journal for the home, called Cosy Moments. When the editor goes off on holiday for the good of his health, it is left in the hands of an ambitious and frustrated young man from Wyoming, Billy Windsor. With Psmith's encouragement, he turns the paper into a sensational and crusading anti-corruption sheet.

For the most part, Psmith treats the whole thing as a game. However, there is one aspect which he treats very seriously. In one episode, he stumbles upon a thoroughfare called Pleasant Street, a place of horrific slum tenements. Having investigated what they are like, Psmith decides as follows:

"I propose... to make things as warm for the owner of this place as I jolly well know how. What he wants, of course... is disembowelling. I fancy, however, that a mawkishly sentimental legislature will prevent our performing that national service. We must endeavour to do what we can by means of kindly criticisms in the paper."

It is this crusade which leads to attacks on the paper by the gangs of New York. After some digging they discover that the owner of the tenements is as certain Stewart Waring, "one of the biggest men in New York", who happens to be running for the post of City Alderman. Waring had previously been Commissioner of Buildings, but had to resign when a music hall built under his watch collapsed on the third night due to its poor construction, "killing half the audience." That was five years ago, however, and it has since been put about that he is a reformed character. "The other papers said it was a shame, hounding a man who was sorry for the past and who was trying to make good now.... He's been shooting off a lot of hot air lately abut philanthropy and so on. Not that he has actually done a thing - not so much as given a supper to a dozen news-boys; but he's talked, and talk gets over if you keep it up long enough."

Anyway, finally the man Waring is against the ropes, worsted, of course, by the fiery Billy Windsor and the debonair Psmith. They have the proof that could break him. What, Waring asks, will they do? Psmith replies:

"The right plan would be to put the complete kybosh (if I may use the expression) on your chances of becoming an alderman. On the other hand, I have been studying the papers of late, and it seems to me that it doesn't much matter who gets elected. Of course the opposition papers may have allowed their zeal to run away with them, but even assuming that to be the case, the other candidates appear to be a pretty fair consignment of blighters. If I were a native of New York, perhaps I might take a more fervid interest in the matter, but as I am merely passing through your beautiful little city, it doesn't seem to me to make any very substantial difference who gets in. To be absolutely candid... If the People are chumps enough to elect you, then they deserve you."

So he allows Waring to run for Alderman without exposing his nastiness; but Psmith does insist that Pleasant Street is renovated completely and made fit for human habitation. A practical solution, and studiously unpolitical in the narrow sense of the word.

For Wodehouse, this is almost angry; very nearly a serious political statement. I can't immediately think of another instance. For that alone, mark it well.

Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin

I will admit frankly that the only reason I'm choosing to feature this book at this time is that the cover seems so appropriate to the festive season. Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin is late period Wodehouse, first published in 1972 when he was over ninety years old. It forms the third part of what one might loosely call the Monty Bodkin Trilogy, the other two books being Heavy Weather (1933) and The Luck of the Bodkins (1935).

It's difficult to think what might have spurred PGW to continue this saga in the 1970s after such a long hiatus. Clearly, he felt the story had not been satisfactorily concluded in the previous instalment. As happened in the cases of other long-running sagas (the Fink-Nottle/Bassett romance springs to mind) he took a late decision to change the formula. Here, Monty Bodkin, long-term beau of the formidable Gertrude Butterwick, changes his mind. The way to happiness is complicated by the requirement to keep in the good books of dim but temperamental Hollywood mogul Ivor Llewellyn. In my memory, it was a not-so-good tale; but I was pleasantly surprised by it upon rereading it a few months ago. In these last novels, Wodehouse seems to relax a little. He is not so worried about plot, and the style is not so strenuous. (In the 1960s especially, the zest seemed to go out of Wodehouse, and he tried to replace it with unflagging busyness.) This novel is only 170 pages long, and its successors were even shorter.

It is set in Linotype Times. Here we go:

Unfussy, straightforward.

This edition was first published by Penguin in 1974, only two years after the first edition. The Ionicus cover dates from this time, too. I think it is one of his very best. The atmosphere of the nightclub is conveyed wonderfully (it looks much more fun than any actual nightclub could ever have been): Llewellyn dancing enthusiastically with the rather Grace-Kelly-ish heroine Sandy Miller while Monty Bodkin looks on, despondently. Get those reds and yellows! It's been mentioned to me that Ionicus's figures could be rather lifeless (and I agree), but surely that criticism couldn't be levelled here.

The Immortal World of P.G. Wodehouse

I have this recurring dream.

I'm about fourteen years old again, and I'm in a bookshop, browsing through its extensive collection of Wodehouse titles. And I find a title I haven't seen before, have never even heard of. It has, of course, an Ionicus cover. It's a moment of immense rapture and excitement.

I look at the title, and I know it's a brilliant title, even though when I try to concentrate on it and memorise it, it turns into a jumble of nonsense. Just as, when I open the book and I try to make sense of the opening words (which I know are superb) they also dissolve and become random letters.

I don't think that in my dream I ever manage to get the book to the payment counter.

That moment of finding a new Wodehouse or a new Ionicus cover, which I really did experience often at that stage in my life, in the early to mid-1980s, has remained with me as a pure and genuine peak of my existence. I suppose that's an indictment of my eventless life; but so it goes.

That's another reason why I started this blog. Having found the "Life At Blandings" box set, I wanted to share it.

More recently, I found and acquired another box set, apparently dating from about 1973 to judge from the printing date of the books inside. It's called "The Immortal World of P.G. Wodehouse", but really it's a Jeeves and Bertie Wooster set....

This is the front illustration: Bertie caught en dishabille prior to his morning tea, and not in the best of moods. The picture on the spine shows him washed and brushed and almost ready to sally forth:

.... while the one on the back of the box shows him setting out, Jeeves having done all he can to ensure he is spruce and immaculate:

As you can see, the box set has had a rough time of it in the past forty years or so, and has become faded and blotchy. But I think and hope we can forgive it.

As I've mentioned before, Jeeves and Bertie change appearance radically throughout the Ionicus series. Here, Jeeves in particular is something of a disappointment: too nondescript, seemingly your standard non-speaking-role manservant. Still, this series of pictures has a real charm, I think, and gives a valuable peep into Bertie's behind the scenes existence, between the books as it were.

Oh, and which books are in the set, you ask? These:

Big Money

Wodehouse's novels are variable in quality. None fall below a fairly high bar; but it must be admitted not all achieve the intoxicating brilliance of Right Ho, Jeeves. I do find that some of them, though using every comic device he knew, leave me thinking, as Wodehouse himself did on rereading one of his books, "Fairly good, I think, but what does it prove?" In my mind, I classed Big Money (1931) as one of these "what does it prove?" titles - until I re-read it.

It's a non-series novel, featuring dud mine shares which turn out to be worth a fortune, financiers, conmen, and aristocrats on their uppers. The main situation is rather interesting: two old school pals, Berry Conway and Lord Biskerton ("the Biscuit"). Berry has no money and holds down a job as secretary to mogul T. Paterson Frisby to pay back a moral debt. The Biscuit is also penniless but is content to scrounge a living as best he can, getting a job being of course out of the question. Both characters are likeable and there is no disapproval expressed towards the Biscuit for his frankly amoral attitude. And both characters are equally willing to flog dud shares to a mug for profit, when the opportunity arises.

Money is seen as morally neutral. Anything can be done to gain it; its worth is entirely practical.

The book has a feel of being unusually close to reality. (Of course, in Wodehouse this is a very relative concept.) The London portrayed is not quite the usual fantasy land. It portrays not a Bertie Wooster effortlessly living on untold and unmentioned riches, but a noble family scraping a living by ignoble means in ways not very far from what must have been often the case at the time. The plot itself is nonsense, of course; but the journey is a lot of fun.

Here's the Ionicus cover:

The scene shows a country inn, where the Biscuit, in disguise to escape his creditors, has his false beard pulled off by the barmaid just as Berry walks in. The barmaid is described as "a robust lady in black satin with... a large brooch athwart her bosom with the word 'Baby' written across it in silver letters", but Ionicus has exercised artistic licence on this occasion, probably to get the colour balance right. As always, the décor is faultless. This is one of the covers that recall fond memories of reading Wodehouse in the 1980s; I would stare at a cover like this and drink the atmosphere intensely.

The text is in Linotype Times and it looks like this:

It is a low key beginning to a tale very much worth reading.

The Mating Season

From the information on the reverse side of the title page, this seems to have been created by Ionicus in 1971. It's very unusual in his work from this time in being, not a depiction of events in carefully drafted settings, but character studies floating in space. The characters are well delineated (we are given Ionicus's only depiction of Gussie Fink-Nottle, and the only criticism I might make is that it is too much like Gussie Fink-Nottle to be entirely pleasant), and we have an excellent Bertie and Jeeves in the middle.

There is however one point I'd like to raise in this connection. Ionicus, at his best, was an excellent depicter of character; but what he could not do, seemeingly, was consistently show a character over a series of images. I would ask the reader to glance again at the covers of Carry On, Jeeves, Jeeves in the Offing and Much Obliged, Jeeves. Each has its charm and its virtues, especially the first two, and each is a carefully considered depiction of Jeeves and Bertie. But the Bertie of Carry On, Jeeves has dark, mousy hair; in Much Obliged, Jeeves it is grey; and here in The Mating Season it is coppery brown. The Jeeves of Carry On, Jeeves is quite simply different from the Jeeves of Much Obliged, Jeeves, and both are different from the Jeeves of The Mating Season. They even have differently shaped heads. The same strictures could be made about Ionicus's depictions of Lord Emsworth, the Hon Galahad Threepwood, and some others. It did worry me slightly, in the way that matters that are of no importance whatsoever can worry a person. But now I know how to think about the matter, and I am at peace. What we have over these series is the characters of Jeeves, Bertie and the others, all excellently depicted, only by different actors.

The type is Monotype Bembo: a little different from most of the others, larger and easier to read:

I have very fond memories of my first encounter with this novel, at about the age of fourteen. I had devoured the "classic" Jeeveses: the short stories, plus Right Ho, Jeeves and The Code of the Woosters (named by my father as the true classics, as of course they are); I had also read Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954), a later and inferior title in the series; but The Mating Season (1949), which I now consider the last of the first-rank Jeeves novels (not counting the sweet swan-song, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974)), was a quite new discovery to me, the title's existence becoming apparent at the same moment as the book itself manifested itself in the bookshop. It revisits some of the ideas from previous books (the Market Snodsbury Grammar School Prizegiving becomes the King's Deverill Village Concert; the Aberdeen terrier Bartholomew in The Code of the Woosters becomes the shaggy dog Sam Goldwyn; and so on), but it plays some excellent variations along the way. It also has a great, and unusual ending, with the promise of Bertie for once in his life facing up to the dread Aunt Agatha. (A very similar act of defiance occurs at the end of Uncle Dynamite (1948); was there a special importance for Wodehouse himself in this?) And Wodehouse also manages to wreak a petty but very satisfying revenge on A.A. Milne, who had heaped abuse on Wodehouse during the war years.