Sam the Sudden / Company for Henry

This Penguin edition of Sam the Sudden (1925), first printed in 1974 and here in a reprint from 1978, includes a Preface written by Wodehouse in 1972. It starts "I have always been particularly fond of this one." I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment.

Despite a mannequin-like suggestion in the figure of Sam above (Ionicus's old failing) I do like this cover. The details in the décor, and the maid Claire's impassiveness in the face of Sam's excitement (this is a key moment when he realises he is in the house of the woman he has fallen in love with from afar), are very well done. I like the detail of the half-eaten toast which has fallen onto the carpet!

Wodehouse is of course associated with the lives of the upper crust, with toffs and their servants, enormous country houses with 52 rooms and 365 windows (366 in leap years), and so on; but he could also deal with life at a lower and more familiar level, and I especially like his Valley Fields novels, of which this is the first. Valley Fields was a very thinly disguised Dulwich, which he knew from his education at Dulwich College.

(Rereading the book a few days ago, I noticed a reference to "the faint grunting of a train as it climbed the steep gradient of Sydenham Hill." A quick glance at Google Maps shows that Sydenham Hill is the station before West Dulwich. Wodehouse must have heard the sound of that grunting train often when he was at the College.)

It is a novel of semi-detached existence, and I have always imagined the two houses Mon Repos and San Rafael to be very like the house of my parents and the house next door, though of course we didn't have a maid (!) or anything of that nature.

The hero Sam Shotter is himself a transatlantic character, brought up in England but first seen in New York. This is how the tale begins:

The type is Linotype Times, with a no-nonsense look to it that is typical of the Wodehouse titles added to Penguin's repertoire in the 1970s. I would note in passing that the opening paragraph, nine lines long, consists of a single sentence as smooth and seemingly effortless as a very smooth and effortless thing. This is typical of the easy flow of the writing throughout.

Sam the Sudden has plot similarities with other Wodehouse works of the period, including The Girl on the Boat (1922) and Bill the Conqueror (1924), but is superior to them both, more assured and less flawed. The introduction of the suburban note adds reality to the absurd and unreal doings described. There are at least two absolutely outrageous coincidences in the plot, but the reader accepts them cheerfully.

Forty-two years later, Wodehouse published Company for Henry (1967). Reading this immediately after Sam the Sudden, as I have done, emphasises the sad contrast between them. Nevertheless, I have always had a fondness for Company for Henry, and maybe that is in large part due to Ionicus's charming cover (dating from 1980):

It's one of Ionicus's best "group photo" covers, a study in green.

Here's the opening paragraph, and again we're in Linotype Times:

This time round, the opening paragraph is only seven lines, consisting of three sentences. Still, though the breath may be slightly shorter, the tone is still there, including a nice modern-period gag about Ben Casey (according to Wikipedia, "An American medical drama series that aired on ABC from 1961 to 1966"). 

I know some people rather object to Wodehouse making any reference at all to post-WW2 matters, but after all, he always made a point of current references. If he could jest about Hitler's moustache and puffed-up British Fascists in the 1930s, why not Ben Casey and the Beatles in the 1960s? Today, these too are quaint period references; and after all, dash it, he was P.G. Wodehouse! It was his privilege to choose what to write, and our privilege to read.

Nevertheless, let us be honest. This is one of Wodehouse's weaker late-period works He was in his mid-eighties and he felt the waning of his powers. He confessed somewhere that he no longer had the sustained imagination to create big comic scenes. He also had a tendency to "write short" - to set down events briefly and sparely, for instance writing the dialogue baldly and with hardly any of the narrative interjections that in his earlier works give spice and humour to the proceedings. 

These are factors that the reader should bear in mind when tackling any of Wodehouse's later novels, but what is unusual in Company for Henry is the level of frank self-borrowing. Whole passages are transplanted with minor variations from earlier works, especially Sam the Sudden and The Small Bachelor (1927). For instance, an episode from Sam the Sudden in which the hero rescues a cat from a tree becomes the "meet-cute" at the start of Company for Henry. Here is another passage from Sam the Sudden:

… which becomes after only the smallest adjustment the following in Company for Henry:

Nevertheless, there is much to savour in the later book, including some nice new one-liners, and afterwards, it is perhaps the atmosphere of it - deckchairs on the lawn, leisurely tomfoolery about the theft of a paperweight, romance and sunshine - that remains. In these times, who could ask for anything more?

Right Ho, Jeeves / Very Good, Jeeves!

Here I am again!

I've been wanting to do this one a long time; really, it should have come first. This is where the whole story began for me, with Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), in this edition.

There was, at a guess, about 1981. I was about twelve, and I would have been at school, only I was ill. With what, I can't remember. I only know that I was desperate for something to read, and I picked up this book from Dad's bookshelves. I stared in some bafflement at the opening lines:

Raised on simple tales that began clearly and simply, stating who was who and what was what from the off, I couldn't begin to get a grip on this. Dialogue. Yes, that was all right. I could cope with dialogue. But then... what was this? The narrator bursts in, interrupting: "No - wait. Hold the line a minute. I've gone off the rails." But what line? What rails?

Never mind; I was ill, and there was nothing else to read. I ploughed on, baffled to the utmost by a barrage of unfamiliar slang. And yet, by the end of the page, it was as if something had clicked in my brain. It all started to make a sort of sense. The truth is that this young lad, raised to read basic narrative of the Enid Blyton sort, had suddenly been brought for the first time into violent contact with Style. From there on, his fate was sealed.

I could not have started in a better place. Right Ho, Jeeves is Wodehouse's best book, and that is not a matter of opinion but solid, scientific fact. Almost everything is right with it. Let us be honest: sometimes a Wodehouse plot, clockwork-precise though it may be, has a flaw. Occasionally, it may occur to the reader: that would never happen. Or: that isn't a strong enough motive. Sometimes, you can even see Wodehouse skating over the weak part of the logic and hoping no one will notice. But not here. Everything fits. But much more than that, this is the book in which Wodehouse hits his highest peak, with Gussie presenting the prizes. That is the thing that takes the book to a whole new level. It goes off like a firework display.

Anyway, that isn't what I'm supposed to be talking about. Ionicus's cover is arresting, but I am not sure it is his best effort. First of all, it is a prime example of his weakness for illustrating the end of the story. It sets out Jeeves's final devious twist which Bertie himself will not know about for another dozen pages. The first time reader, getting to the moment when Bertie sets out on his nightmare bike ride, looks again at the cover and thinks: Oh, I see!

For another thing, perhaps it is that I grew up at a time when skinheads were thugs, but Jeeves has altogether too sinister a look about him here. He is a Machiavelli, yes, but a benign Machiavelli. Here, his scheming appears too malicious.

Nevertheless, as a cover it is good: intriguing, puzzling, well-composed, a study in grey.

The text, for those who wish to know, is Monotype Garamond.

Very Good, Jeeves! (1930), the fourth volume of Jeeves short stories (if we count the ur-text, My Man Jeeves, in the number), is to my mind a sort of companion volume to Right Ho, Jeeves. These stories effectively set up the situation in the later novel, especially those relating to Aunt Dahlia, Tuppy Glossop and Angela Travers. 

The cover is, if I may say so, a stunner. It's a genuine work of art, which I would be proud to have on my wall. Everything is there from the story "Jeeves and the Impending Doom": the octagonal folly, the swan, the rain, the Cabinet Minister in distress; and, coming to the rescue, Bertie and the mysterious but instantly recognisable figure of Jeeves. Personally, I am inclined to say this is the best of the Ionicus covers, and that is saying something.

The type is Linotype Georgian, and the narrative grips from the beginning.

Doctor Sally / Do Butlers Burgle Banks?

It's strange to think it of Wodehouse, who was so prolific in his writing and who made it look so easy, but sometimes he just ran out of plots. A small but significant number of his books are based on the works of other hands. A good example is Barmy in Wonderland (1952), known in the USA as Angel Cake, and based on the George S. Kaufman stage comedy The Butter and Egg Man (1925). 

Doctor Sally (1932) is based on Good Morning, Bill (1927), which was itself an adaptation of a Hungarian play by Ladislaus Fodor. As such, it has some elements that don't quite sit with the Wodehouse atmosphere - some slightly fruity gags, and an actual definite theme about sexual equality. But the writing itself is, of course, glorious.

It isn't long enough to be called a novel - it's really a novella, 121 pages long in the Penguin edition. The wonderful Ionicus cover seems to date from 1975, and shows the hotel room of the hero, Bill Bannister, just as he is introduced to Doctor Sally Smith at a moment of high drama. Wodehouse is full of what an old school Hollywood writer like Billy Wilder would call "meet cutes", and this is not the worst of them. The Ionicus virtues of meticulously drawn furnishings and perspectives, with a view of the fictitious Bingley-on-Sea peeping through in the background, are combined with a sure feeling (not always apparent in Ionicus) of the telling moment - the moment when their eyes meet. Don't worry about the broken crockery - the explanation would be more complex than it is worth.

Here's the opening paragraph - Monotype Baskerville, with chapter headings a rather soothing italics:

Do Butlers Burgle Banks? was published in 1968, but like Doctor Sally it was the product of plot-block, being based on a play by Guy Bolton. (The lamentable Ring for Jeeves was also based on a Bolton script.) I haven't read Do Butlers Burgle Banks? recently, and to be truthful I don't feel like doing so now, having sad memories of disappointment last time. But it must be admitted Ionicus did the book proud:

The street scene has a little echo of Ionicus's charming Dalesman covers such as this one....

… especially in the steep sloping pavement (which seems more appropriate to the Yorkshire Dales than to Worcestershire, where the novel is set). The scene depicted illustrates the title very clearly: well, do they? This particular example of the butlerine species is accompanied, rather improbably, by a Chicago gangster, and here, if you don't mind, I will draw a veil over proceedings. I will only say that the moment depicted may be described as a meet-uncute.

Do Butlers Burgle Banks? is set in Monotype Times, giving it a more austere look than Doctor Sally:

I'm sorry for the long hiatus in updating this blog. Perhaps, dear reader, an annual update is the most you should expect. Things do get in the way, don't they? In the meantime, happy new year!

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets / Cocktail Time

It's been a while since I last posted on this blog. This has due to various factors, including pressure of other projects, existential ennui, and a feeling that no one has been reading this guff in the first place. However, a small flurry of very nice comments to various entries over the past couple of days has reminded me of my obligations. No, I don't mean obligations really - writing this really is fun!

So, let us proceed. Today, a couple of genuine classics.

This is Ionicus's 1971 cover for the short story collection Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940, though for some reason this Penguin edition says it was first published in 1951). These tales of the Drones Club and elsewhere are set in Linotype Times, looking like this:

There is an amazing wealth of detail in the cover here, from the crusty buffers in the foreground, through the exuberant figure of Bingo Little bursting in with an almost audible "Vo-de-o-de-o" in the middle distance (the waiter and the page boy equally startled by the apparition) and the corners of respectable old portraits appearing at the edges (when was the Drones Club founded, for heaven's sake?), and to the beautifully detailed perspective through the double doors and the corridor to the arched window at the end. The only issue I would now take with Ionicus is that the Drones on display are in general far too elderly and respectable. There is not one of them that I would trust to chuck bread at each other at mealtimes; not with accuracy, anyway. The Drones, as everyone knows, are a lighthearted bunch, but not here.

I suspect this matter may have been discussed with Ionicus, or he may have reached the same conclusion independently. At any rate, his 1987 cover for the Uncle Fred novel Cocktail Time (1958) makes ample amends:

Here the building may be the same, but the members are more of the age and disposition you would hope and expect. But the focus, as is right and proper, is on the central figure of Uncle Fred, the fifth Earl of Ickenham, about to wang a Brazil Nut at Sir Raymond Bastable's top hat via a catapult. The composition of this is gorgeous, with an attention to detail that Ionicus was, to be honest, not always showing in his covers of this period. The yellow waistcoat, matching his shoes, that combined with the natty white suit ensures Lord Ickenham is the centre of attention; the moment of dramatic tension on every face as he takes careful aim; the anticipation of the consequences of this frivolous and irresponsible act, which will reverberate through the entire novel; it's all there.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the typeface yet: let's repair the omission. It's Plantin, slightly more extrovert than the Linotype Times used above, using stars against the chapter numbers and a large initial letter to boot:

One final thing. I don't know the law, or even the unwritten rules, of cover design, but I confess to being rather taken aback by the use later illustrators have made of Ionicus's cover design:

The same yellow waistcoat (not mentioned in the book); the same attitude with catapult, same spatial relationship with the victim; oh, but I don't need to spell it all out, for you can see for yourselves. No previous cover design was anything like it, but now they all do it. I make no accusation, you know. I just mention it. 

Summer Lightning / Heavy Weather

Summer Lightning (1929) is undoubtedly one of Wodehouse's very best works. It's the third in the Blandings sequence, but is the first to feature Lord Emsworth's prize pig, Empress of Blandings (described as a black Berkshire sow, but usually depicted, as here, pink). Beach the butler (left) finds his role deepening, now not just a trusted servant but also a reluctant conspirator in the dirty deeds inseparable from a Wodehouse plot (in this case, pignapping). The Gamekeeper's Cottage in the West Wood, a key location in Leave It to Psmith (1923) reappears, and is the setting for the cover.

The novel was first published by Penguin in 1954, and the Ionicus cover dates from 1971. The font is Monotype Garamond, with the chapter titles in attractive italic:

Wodehouse went out of his way to be lyrical about Blandings in this novel. His descriptions of physical settings are usually brief and functional; but in Summer Lightning there are numerous pauses in the narrative to revel in the beauties of the setting, and without any obvious punch line. Take, for instance, the opening paragraph of Chapter 13: "Blandings Castle basked in the afterglow of a golden summer evening. Only a memory now was the storm which, two hours since, had raged with such violence through the parks, pleasure grounds and messuages. It had passed, leaving behind it peace and bird-song and a sunset of pink and green and orange and opal and amethyst. The air was cool and sweet, and the earth sent up a healing fragrance. Little stars were peeping down from a rain-washed sky." Wodehouse was making a special point, and the point was: don't you wish you were here?

I have a theory about this novel and its sequel, Heavy Weather (1933). The theory is this. PGW is associated with the era of the Twenties and Thirties, the era of jazz and flappers, Oxford Bags and Brideshead. The young generation was renowned to be fun-loving and outrageous. Wodehouse, who was in his forties and fifties during this time, seems to have responded by wishing to remind a few people that earlier times had also featured outrageous revels; and so he invented the Hon Galahad Threepwood, reprobate younger brother to Lord Emsworth, who, now in his fifties, is busy writing scandalous Reminiscences of his life when he was young and riotous in the 1890s - and of the lives of his contemporaries, now old and respectable, who will do almost anything to suppress anecdotes of a phase in their lives that they thought was dead and buried. Wodehouse plots all tend to the same pattern, but here he found something like a new pattern, a brilliant pattern with deeper implications than we usually expect in his work. Landowners, noblemen, prospective Conservative politicians, all are in terror of the facts that may be laid bare in the Reminiscences. The sight of respectability in a panic is always funny and strangely satisfying. The fact that the instigator of all this is a dapper little man in his fifties with and eyeglass and absolutely no respect for anyone makes it all the funnier.

Here is the Ionicus cover for Heavy Weather:

Not quite as stylish as the Summer Lightning cover, but it has its points. We are in the small library of Blanding Castle, with photos of the Empress on the bookcase. It's a working study for Galahad (seated), who is about to put his manuscript of the Reminiscences into the top right hand drawer of the desk (the scene is on page 97 of this edition) while his erstwhile publisher, the mogul Stinker Pyke (I beg your pardon, Lord Tilbury) looks on. We look on from a rather Hitchcockian aerial view, appropriate to the intrigue of the plot, centring on stealing the manuscript from that very same desk drawer. Ionicus has decided not to draw the floor or walls, which gives the scene a strange, floaty feel which is presumably not intended. (I have just noticed the Hon Galahad's bright yellow socks, which match is waistcoat: perfect!)

The font here is Monotype Times: more sober than its predecessor's Monotype Garamond:

I don't know if Wodehouse always had it in his mind to write a sequel to Summer Lightning, but that is what Heavy Weather is: a direct continuation of the plot of the previous offering. At the end of Summer Lightning (spoiler alert), a deal had been arranged in the Threepwood family to allow young Ronnie Fish to marry chorus girl Sue Brown, on the understanding that in return Galahad would not publish his book. Wodehouse must have started wondering at some point about some of the loose ends, specifically: 1. what happens when his publisher finds out that he's backing out?; and 2. what happens when Ronnie Fish's mother learns of the deal that has been struck? Cue renewed machinations, with Respectability in full attack mode against love and wit.

There are some surprisingly forthright lines in both books in criticism of the Downton Abbey milieu which we are supposed to take so reverently in these days; as when Ronnie Fish valiantly suggests earning his living (at the end of Summer Lightning):

" 'The market value of any member of this family,' said the Hon. Galahad, who harboured no illusions about his nearest and dearest, 'is about threepence-ha'penny per annum.' "

Oh, and before I finish.... I have an omnibus volume of Something Fresh, Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather, confusingly called Life at Blandings, like the box set I have featured previously. It uses the Ionicus illustration for Summer Lightning:

It was while perusing this volume that I noticed an odd thing about the opening sentence of each of its constituent novels. Thus:

"The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously upon London town." (Something Fresh)

"Blandings Castle slept in the sunshine." (Summer Lightning)

"Sunshine pierced the haze that enveloped London." (Heavy Weather)

Of course, it doesn't work for all the novels. But it must be admitted that having sunshine right at the start of a Wodehouse novel is somehow exactly right.

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.