A WODEHOUSE MISCELLANY
Articles & Stories
By P. G. WODEHOUSE
[Transcriber's note: This collection of early Wodehouse writings was
assembled for Project Gutenberg. Original publication dates for the
stories are shown in square brackets in the Table of Contents.]
CONTENTS
ARTICLES
SOME ASPECTS OF GAME-CAPTAINCY
AN UNFINISHED COLLECTION
THE NEW ADVERTISING
THE SECRET PLEASURES OF REGINALD
MY BATTLE WITH DRINK
IN DEFENSE OF ASTIGMATISM
PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ME
A PLEA FOR INDOOR GOLF
THE ALARMING SPREAD OF POETRY
MY LIFE AS A DRAMATIC CRITIC
THE AGONIES OF WRITING A MUSICAL COMEDY
ON THE WRITING OF LYRICS
THE PAST THEATRICAL SEASON
POEMS
DAMON AND PYTHIAS: A Romance
THE HAUNTED TRAM
STORIES
WHEN PAPA SWORE IN HINDUSTANI [1901]
TOM, DICK, AND HARRY [1905]
JEEVES TAKES CHARGE [1916]
DISENTANGLING OLD DUGGIE [1912]
ARTICLES
SOME ASPECTS OF GAME-CAPTAINCY
To the Game-Captain (of the football variety) the world is peopled by
three classes, firstly the keen and regular player, next the partial
slacker, thirdly, and lastly, the entire, abject and absolute slacker.
Of the first class, the keen and regular player, little need be said.
A keen player is a gem of purest rays serene, and when to his keenness
he adds regularity and punctuality, life ceases to become the mere
hollow blank that it would otherwise become, and joy reigns supreme.
The absolute slacker (to take the worst at once, and have done with
it) needs the pen of a Swift before adequate justice can be done to
his enormities. He is a blot, an excrescence. All those moments which
are not spent in avoiding games (by means of that leave which is
unanimously considered the peculiar property of the French nation) he
uses in concocting ingenious excuses. Armed with these, he faces with
calmness the disgusting curiosity of the Game-Captain, who officiously
desires to know the reason of his non-appearance on the preceding day.
These excuses are of the "had-to-go-and-see-a-man-about-a-dog" type,
and rarely meet with that success for which their author hopes. In the
end he discovers that his chest is weak, or his heart is subject to
palpitations, and he forthwith produces a document to this effect,
signed by a doctor. This has the desirable result of muzzling the
tyrannical Game-Captain, whose sole solace is a look of intense and
withering scorn. But this is seldom fatal, and generally, we rejoice
to say, ineffectual.
The next type is the partial slacker. He differs from the absolute
slacker in that at rare intervals he actually turns up, changed withal
into the garb of the game, and thirsting for the fray. At this point
begins the time of trouble for the Game-Captain. To begin with, he is
forced by stress of ignorance to ask the newcomer his name. This is,
of course, an insult of the worst kind. "A being who does not know my
name," argues the partial slacker, "must be something not far from a
criminal lunatic." The name is, however, extracted, and the partial
slacker strides to the arena. Now arises insult No. 2. He is wearing
his cap. A hint as to the advisability of removing this piece de
resistance not being taken, he is ordered to assume a capless state,
and by these means a coolness springs up between him and the G. C. Of
this the Game-Captain is made aware when the game commences. The
partial slacker, scorning to insert his head in the scrum, assumes a
commanding position outside and from this point criticises the
Game-Captain's decisions with severity and pith. The last end of the
partial slacker is generally a sad one. Stung by some pungent
home-thrust, the Game-Captain is fain to try chastisement, and by
these means silences the enemy's battery.
Sometimes the classes overlap. As for instance, a keen and regular
player may, by some more than usually gross bit of bungling on the
part of the G.-C., be moved to a fervour and eloquence worthy of
Juvenal. Or, again, even the absolute slacker may for a time emulate
the keen player, provided an opponent plant a shrewd kick on a tender
spot. But, broadly speaking, there are only three classes.
AN UNFINISHED COLLECTION
A silence had fallen upon the smoking room. The warrior just back from
the front had enquired after George Vanderpoop, and we, who knew that
George's gentle spirit had, to use a metaphor after his own heart,
long since been withdrawn from circulation, were feeling uncomfortable
and wondering how to break the news.
Smithson is our specialist in tact, and we looked to him to be
spokesman.
"George," said Smithson at last, "the late George Vanderpoop----"
"Late!" exclaimed the warrior; "is he dead?"
"As a doornail," replied Smithson sadly. "Perhaps you would care to
hear the story. It is sad, but interesting. You may recollect that,
when you sailed, he was starting his journalistic career. For a young
writer he had done remarkably well. The _Daily Telephone_ had
printed two of his contributions to their correspondence column, and a
bright pen picture of his, describing how Lee's Lozenges for the Liver
had snatched him from almost certain death, had quite a vogue. Lee, I
believe, actually commissioned him to do a series on the subject."
"Well?" said the warrior.
"Well, he was, as I say, prospering very fairly, when in an unlucky
moment he began to make a collection of editorial rejection forms. He
had always been a somewhat easy prey to scourges of that description.
But when he had passed safely through a sharp attack of Philatelism
and a rather nasty bout of Autographomania, everyone hoped and
believed that he had turned the corner. The progress of his last
illness was very rapid. Within a year he wanted but one specimen to
make the complete set. This was the one published from the offices of
the _Scrutinizer_. All the rest he had obtained with the greatest
ease. I remember his telling me that a single short story of his,
called 'The Vengeance of Vera Dalrymple,' had been instrumental in
securing no less than thirty perfect specimens. Poor George! I was
with him when he made his first attempt on the _Scrutinizer_. He
had baited his hook with an essay on Evolution. He read me one or two
passages from it. I stopped him at the third paragraph, and
congratulated him in advance, little thinking that it was sympathy
rather than congratulations that he needed. When I saw him a week
afterwards he was looking haggard. I questioned him, and by slow
degrees drew out the story. The article on Evolution had been printed.
"'Never say die, George,' I said. 'Send them "Vera Dalrymple." No
paper can take that.'
"He sent it. The _Scrutinizer_, which had been running for nearly
a century without publishing a line of fiction, took it and asked for
more. It was as if there were an editorial conspiracy against him."
"Well?" said the man of war.
"Then," said Smithson, "George pulled himself together. He wrote a
parody of 'The Minstrel Boy.' I have seen a good many parodies, but
never such a parody as that. By return of post came a long envelope
bearing the crest of the _Scrutinizer_. 'At last,' he said, as he
tore it open.
"'George, old man,' I said, 'your hand.'
"He looked at me a full minute. Then with a horrible, mirthless laugh
he fell to the ground, and expired almost instantly. You will readily
guess what killed him. The poem had been returned, _but without a
rejection form!_"
THE NEW ADVERTISING
"In Denmark," said the man of ideas, coming into the smoking room, "I
see that they have original ideas on the subject of advertising.
According to the usually well-informed Daily Lyre, all 'bombastic'
advertising is punished with a fine. The advertiser is expected to
describe his wares in restrained, modest language. In case this idea
should be introduced into England, I have drawn up a few specimen
advertisements which, in my opinion, combine attractiveness with a
shrinking modesty at which no censor could cavil."
And in spite of our protests, he began to read us his first effort,
descriptive of a patent medicine.
"It runs like this," he said:
Timson's Tonic for Distracted Deadbeats
Has been known to cure
We Hate to Seem to Boast,
but
Many Who have Tried It Are Still
Alive
* * * * *
Take a Dose or Two in Your Spare Time
It's Not Bad Stuff
* * * * *
Read what an outside stockbroker says:
"Sir--After three months' steady absorption of your Tonic
I was no worse."
* * * * *
We do not wish to thrust ourselves forward in any way. If
you prefer other medicines, by all means take them. Only we
just thought we'd mention it--casually, as it were--that TIMSON'S
is PRETTY GOOD.
"How's that?" inquired the man of ideas. "Attractive, I fancy, without
being bombastic. Now, one about a new novel. Ready?"
MR. LUCIEN LOGROLLER'S LATEST
The Dyspepsia of the Soul
The Dyspepsia of the Soul
The Dyspepsia of the Soul
Don't buy it if you don't want to, but just
listen to a few of the criticisms.
THE DYSPEPSIA OF THE SOUL
"Rather ... rubbish."--_Spectator_
"We advise all insomniacs to read Mr. Logroller's soporific
pages."--_Outlook_
"Rot."--_Pelican_
THE DYSPEPSIA OF THE SOUL
Already in its first edition.
"What do you think of that?" asked the man of ideas.
We told him.
THE SECRET PLEASURES OF REGINALD
I found Reggie in the club one Saturday afternoon. He was reclining in
a long chair, motionless, his eyes fixed glassily on the ceiling. He
frowned a little when I spoke. "You don't seem to be doing anything,"
I said.
"It's not what I'm doing, it's what I am _not_ doing that
matters."
It sounded like an epigram, but epigrams are so little associated with
Reggie that I ventured to ask what he meant.
He sighed. "Ah well," he said. "I suppose the sooner I tell you, the
sooner you'll go. Do you know Bodfish?"
I shuddered. "Wilkinson Bodfish? I do."
"Have you ever spent a weekend at Bodfish's place in the country?"
I shuddered again. "I have."
"Well, I'm _not_ spending the weekend at Bodfish's place in the
country."
"I see you're not. But----"
"You don't understand. I do not mean that I am simply absent from
Bodfish's place in the country. I mean that I am _deliberately_
not spending the weekend there. When you interrupted me just now, I
was not strolling down to Bodfish's garage, listening to his prattle
about his new car."
I glanced around uneasily.
"Reggie, old man, you're--you're not--This hot weather----"
"I am perfectly well, and in possession of all my faculties. Now tell
me. Can you imagine anything more awful than to spend a weekend with
Bodfish?"
On the spur of the moment I could not.
"Can you imagine anything more delightful, then, than _not_
spending a weekend with Bodfish? Well, that's what I'm doing now.
Soon, when you have gone--if you have any other engagements, please
don't let me keep you--I shall not go into the house and not listen to
Mrs. Bodfish on the subject of young Willie Bodfish's premature
intelligence."
I got his true meaning. "I see. You mean that you will be thanking
your stars that you aren't with Bodfish."
"That is it, put crudely. But I go further. I don't indulge in a mere
momentary self-congratulation, I do the thing thoroughly. If I were
weekending at Bodfish's, I should have arrived there just half an hour
ago. I therefore selected that moment for beginning not to weekend
with Bodfish. I settled myself in this chair and I did not have my
back slapped at the station. A few minutes later I was not whirling
along the country roads, trying to balance the car with my legs and an
elbow. Time passed, and I was not shaking hands with Mrs. Bodfish. I
have just had the most corking half-hour, and shortly--when you have
remembered an appointment--I shall go on having it. What I am really
looking forward to is the happy time after dinner. I shall pass it in
not playing bridge with Bodfish, Mrs. Bodfish, and a neighbor. Sunday
morning is the best part of the whole weekend, though. That is when I
shall most enjoy myself. Do you know a man named Pringle? Next
Saturday I am not going to stay with Pringle. I forget who is not to
be my host the Saturday after that. I have so many engagements of this
kind that I lose track of them."
"But, Reggie, this is genius. You have hit on the greatest idea of the
age. You might extend this system of yours."
"I do. Some of the jolliest evenings I have spent have been not at the
theatre."
"I have often wondered what it was that made you look so fit and
happy."
"Yes. These little non-visits of mine pick me up and put life into me
for the coming week. I get up on Monday morning feeling like a lion.
The reason I selected Bodfish this week, though I was practically
engaged to a man named Stevenson who lives out in Connecticut, was
that I felt rundown and needed a real rest. I shall be all right on
Monday."
"And so shall I," I said, sinking into the chair beside him.
"You're not going to the country?" he asked regretfully.
"I am not. I, too, need a tonic. I shall join you at Bodfish's. I
really feel a lot better already."
I closed my eyes, and relaxed, and a great peace settled upon me.
MY BATTLE WITH DRINK
I could tell my story in two words--the two words "I drank." But I was
not always a drinker. This is the story of my downfall--and of my
rise--for through the influence of a good woman, I have, thank Heaven,
risen from the depths.
The thing stole upon me gradually, as it does upon so many young men.
As a boy, I remember taking a glass of root beer, but it did not grip
me then. I can recall that I even disliked the taste. I was a young
man before temptation really came upon me. My downfall began when I
joined the Yonkers Shorthand and Typewriting College.
It was then that I first made acquaintance with the awful power of
ridicule. They were a hard-living set at college--reckless youths.
They frequented movie palaces. They thought nothing of winding up an
evening with a couple of egg-phosphates and a chocolate fudge. They
laughed at me when I refused to join them. I was only twenty. My
character was undeveloped. I could not endure their scorn. The next
time I was offered a drink I accepted. They were pleased, I remember.
They called me "Good old Plum!" and a good sport and other
complimentary names. I was intoxicated with sudden popularity.
How vividly I can recall that day! The shining counter, the placards
advertising strange mixtures with ice cream as their basis, the busy
men behind the counter, the half-cynical, half-pitying eyes of the
girl in the cage where you bought the soda checks. She had seen so
many happy, healthy boys through that little hole in the wire netting,
so many thoughtless boys all eager for their first soda, clamoring to
set their foot on the primrose path that leads to destruction.
It was an apple marshmallow sundae, I recollect. I dug my spoon into
it with an assumption of gaiety which I was far from feeling. The
first mouthful almost nauseated me. It was like cold hair-oil. But I
stuck to it. I could not break down now. I could not bear to forfeit
the newly-won esteem of my comrades. They were gulping their sundaes
down with the speed and enjoyment of old hands. I set my teeth, and
persevered, and by degrees a strange exhilaration began to steal over
me. I felt that I had burnt my boats and bridges; that I had crossed
the Rubicon. I was reckless. I ordered another round. I was the life
and soul of that party.
The next morning brought remorse. I did not feel well. I had pains,
physical and mental. But I could not go back now. I was too weak to
dispense with my popularity. I was only a boy, and on the previous
evening the captain of the Checkers Club, to whom I looked up with an
almost worshipping reverence, had slapped me on the back and told me
that I was a corker. I felt that nothing could be excessive payment
for such an honor. That night I gave a party at which orange phosphate
flowed like water. It was the turning point.
I had got the habit!
I will pass briefly over the next few years. I continued to sink
deeper and deeper into the slough. I knew all the drugstore clerks in
New York by their first names, and they called me by mine. I no longer
even had to specify the abomination I desired. I simply handed the man
my ten cent check and said: "The usual, Jimmy," and he understood.
At first, considerations of health did not trouble me. I was young and
strong, and my constitution quickly threw off the effects of my
dissipation. Then, gradually, I began to feel worse. I was losing my
grip. I found a difficulty in concentrating my attention on my work. I
had dizzy spells. I became nervous and distrait. Eventually I went to
a doctor. He examined me thoroughly, and shook his head.
"If I am to do you any good," he said, "you must tell me all. You must
hold no secrets from me."
"Doctor," I said, covering my face with my hands, "I am a confirmed
soda-fiend."
He gave me a long lecture and a longer list of instructions. I must
take air and exercise and I must become a total abstainer from sundaes
of all descriptions. I must avoid limeade like the plague, and if
anybody offered me a Bulgarzoon I was to knock him down and shout for
the nearest policeman.
I learned then for the first time what a bitterly hard thing it is for
a man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has
got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle
began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to
look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid
all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt
that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle.
I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an egg-zoolak,
before pausing to take breath.
And then, the next day, I met May, the girl who effected my
reformation. She was a clergyman's daughter who, to support her
widowed mother, had accepted a non-speaking part in a musical comedy
production entitled "Oh Joy! Oh Pep!" Our acquaintance ripened, and
one night I asked her out to supper.
I look on that moment as the happiest of my life. I met her at the
stage door, and conducted her to the nearest soda-fountain. We were
inside and I was buying the checks before she realized where she was,
and I shall never forget her look of mingled pain and horror.
"And I thought you were a live one!" she murmured.
It seemed that she had been looking forward to a little lobster and
champagne. The idea was absolutely new to me. She quickly convinced
me, however, that such was the only refreshment which she would
consider, and she recoiled with unconcealed aversion from my
suggestion of a Mocha Malted and an Eva Tanguay. That night I tasted
wine for the first time, and my reformation began.
It was hard at first, desperately hard. Something inside me was trying
to pull me back to the sundaes for which I craved, but I resisted the
impulse. Always with her divinely sympathetic encouragement, I
gradually acquired a taste for alcohol. And suddenly, one evening,
like a flash it came upon me that I had shaken off the cursed yoke
that held me down: that I never wanted to see the inside of a
drugstore again. Cocktails, at first repellent, have at last become
palatable to me. I drink highballs for breakfast. I am saved.
IN DEFENSE OF ASTIGMATISM
This is peculiarly an age where novelists pride themselves on the
breadth of their outlook and the courage with which they refuse to
ignore the realities of life; and never before have authors had such
scope in the matter of the selection of heroes. In the days of the
old-fashioned novel, when the hero was automatically Lord Blank or Sir
Ralph Asterisk, there were, of course, certain rules that had to be
observed, but today--why, you can hardly hear yourself think for the
uproar of earnest young novelists proclaiming how free and unfettered
they are. And yet, no writer has had the pluck to make his hero wear
glasses.
In the old days, as I say, this was all very well. The hero was a
young lordling, sprung from a line of ancestors who had never done
anything with their eyes except wear a piercing glance before which
lesser men quailed. But now novelists go into every class of society
for their heroes, and surely, at least an occasional one of them must
have been astigmatic. Kipps undoubtedly wore glasses; so did Bunker
Bean; so did Mr. Polly, Clayhanger, Bibbs, Sheridan, and a score of
others. Then why not say so?
Novelists are moving with the times in every other direction. Why not
in this?
It is futile to advance the argument that glasses are unromantic. They
are not. I know, because I wear them myself, and I am a singularly
romantic figure, whether in my rimless, my Oxford gold-bordered, or
the plain gent's spectacles which I wear in the privacy of my study.
Besides, everybody wears glasses nowadays. That is the point I wish to
make. For commercial reasons, if for no others, authors ought to think
seriously of this matter of goggling their heroes. It is an admitted
fact that the reader of a novel likes to put himself in the hero's
place--to imagine, while reading, that he is the hero. What an
audience the writer of the first romance to star a spectacled hero
will have. All over the country thousands of short-sighted men will
polish their glasses and plunge into his pages. It is absurd to go on
writing in these days for a normal-sighted public. The growing
tenseness of life, with its small print, its newspapers read by
artificial light, and its flickering motion pictures, is whittling
down the section of the populace which has perfect sight to a mere
handful.
I seem to see that romance. In fact, I think I shall write it myself.
"'Evadne,' murmured Clarence, removing his pince-nez and polishing
them tenderly....'" "'See,' cried Clarence, 'how clearly every leaf of
yonder tree is mirrored in the still water of the lake. I can't see
myself, unfortunately, for I have left my glasses on the parlor piano,
but don't worry about me: go ahead and see!" ... "Clarence adjusted his
tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles with a careless gesture, and faced the
assassins without a tremor." Hot stuff? Got the punch? I should say
so. Do you imagine that there will be a single man in this country
with the price of the book in his pocket and a pair of pince-nez on
his face who will not scream and kick like an angry child if you
withhold my novel from him?
And just pause for a moment to think of the serial and dramatic rights
of the story. All editors wear glasses, so do all theatrical managers.
My appeal will be irresistible. All I shall have to do will be to see
that the check is for the right figure and to supervise the placing of
the electric sign
SPECTACLES OF FATE
BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
over the doors of whichever theatre I happen to select for the
production of the play.
Have you ever considered the latent possibilities for dramatic
situations in short sight? You know how your glasses cloud over when
you come into a warm room out of the cold? Well, imagine your hero in
such a position. He has been waiting outside the murderer's den
preparatory to dashing in and saving the heroine. He dashes in. "Hands
up, you scoundrels," he cries. And then his glasses get all misty, and
there he is, temporarily blind, with a full-size desperado backing
away and measuring the distance in order to hand him one with a
pickaxe.
Or would you prefer something less sensational, something more in the
romantic line? Very well. Hero, on his way to the Dowager Duchess's
ball, slips on a banana-peel and smashes his only pair of spectacles.
He dare not fail to attend the ball, for the dear Duchess would never
forgive him; so he goes in and proposes to a girl he particularly
dislikes because she is dressed in pink, and the heroine told him that
she was going to wear pink. But the heroine's pink dress was late in
coming home from the modiste's and she had to turn up in blue. The
heroine comes in just as the other girl is accepting him, and there
you have a nice, live, peppy, kick-off for your tale of passion and
human interest.
But I have said enough to show that the time has come when novelists,
if they do not wish to be left behind in the race, must adapt
themselves to modern conditions. One does not wish to threaten, but,
as I say, we astigmatics are in a large minority and can, if we get
together, make our presence felt. Roused by this article to a sense of
the injustice of their treatment, the great army of glass-wearing
citizens could very easily make novelists see reason. A boycott of
non-spectacled heroes would soon achieve the necessary reform. Perhaps
there will be no need to let matters go as far as that. I hope not.
But, if this warning should be neglected, if we have any more of these
novels about men with keen gray eyes or snapping black eyes or
cheerful blue eyes--any sort of eyes, in fact, lacking some muscular
affliction, we shall know what to do.
PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ME
I look in my glass, dear reader, and what do I see? Nothing so
frightfully hot, believe me. The face is slablike, the ears are large
and fastened on at right-angles. Above the eyebrows comes a stagnant
sea of bald forehead, stretching away into the distance with nothing
to relieve it but a few wisps of lonely hair. The nose is blobby, the
eyes dull, like those of a fish not in the best of health. A face, in
short, taking it for all in all, which should be reserved for the gaze
of my nearest and dearest who, through long habit, have got used to it
and can see through to the pure white soul beneath. At any rate, a
face not to be scattered about at random and come upon suddenly by
nervous people and invalids.
And yet, just because I am an author, I have to keep on being
photographed. It is the fault of publishers and editors, of course,
really, but it is the photographer who comes in for the author's hate.
Something has got to be done about this practice of publishing
authors' photographs. We have to submit to it, because editors and
publishers insist. They have an extraordinary superstition that it
helps an author's sales. The idea is that the public sees the
photograph, pauses spell-bound for an instant, and then with a cry of
ecstasy rushes off to the book-shop and buys copy after copy of the
gargoyle's latest novel.
Of course, in practice, it works out just the other way. People read a
review of an author's book and are told that it throbs with a passion
so intense as almost to be painful, and are on the point of digging
seven-and-sixpence out of their child's money-box to secure a copy,
when their eyes fall on the man's photograph at the side of the
review, and they find that he has a face like a rabbit and wears
spectacles and a low collar. And this man is the man who is said to
have laid bare the soul of a woman as with a scalpel.
Naturally their faith is shaken. They feel that a man like that cannot
possibly know anything about Woman or any other subject except where
to go for a vegetarian lunch, and the next moment they have put down
the hair-pin and the child is seven-and-six in hand and the author his
ten per cent., or whatever it is, to the bad. And all because of a
photograph.
For the ordinary man, the recent introduction of high-art methods into
photography has done much to diminish the unpleasantness of the
operation. In the old days of crude and direct posing, there was no
escape for the sitter. He had to stand up, backed by a rustic stile
and a flabby canvas sheet covered with exotic trees, glaring straight
into the camera. To prevent any eleventh-hour retreat, a sort of spiky
thing was shoved firmly into the back of his head leaving him with the
choice of being taken as he stood or having an inch of steel jabbed
into his skull. Modern methods have changed all that.
There are no photographs nowadays. Only "camera portraits" and "lens
impressions." The full face has been abolished. The ideal of the
present-day photographer is to eliminate the sitter as far as possible
and concentrate on a general cloudy effect. I have in my possession
two studies of my Uncle Theodore--one taken in the early 'nineties,
the other in the present year. The first shows him, evidently in pain,
staring before him with a fixed expression. In his right hand he
grasps a scroll. His left rests on a moss-covered wall. Two sea-gulls
are flying against a stormy sky.
As a likeness, it is almost brutally exact. My uncle stands forever
condemned as the wearer of a made-up tie.
The second is different in every respect. Not only has the sitter been
taken in the popular modern "one-twentieth face," showing only the
back of the head, the left ear and what is either a pimple or a flaw
in the print, but the whole thing is plunged in the deepest shadow. It
is as if my uncle had been surprised by the camera while chasing a
black cat in his coal-cellar on a moonlight night. There is no
question as to which of the two makes the more attractive picture. My
family resemble me in that respect. The less you see of us, the better
we look.
A PLEA FOR INDOOR GOLF
Indoor golf is that which is played in the home. Whether you live in a
palace or a hovel, an indoor golf-course, be it only of nine holes, is
well within your reach. A house offers greater facilities than an
apartment, and I have found my game greatly improved since I went to
live in the country. I can, perhaps, scarcely do better than give a
brief description of the sporting nine-hole course which I have
recently laid out in my present residence.
All authorities agree that the first hole on every links should be
moderately easy, in order to give the nervous player a temporary and
fictitious confidence.
At Wodehouse Manor, therefore, we drive off from the front door--in
order to get the benefit of the door-mat--down an entry fairway,
carpeted with rugs and without traps. The hole--a loving-cup--is just
under the stairs; and a good player ought to have no difficulty in
doing it in two.
The second hole, a short and simple one, takes you into the telephone
booth. Trouble begins with the third, a long dog-leg hole through the
kitchen into the dining-room. This hole is well trapped with
table-legs, kitchen utensils, and a moving hazard in the person of
Clarence the cat, who is generally wandering about the fairway. The
hole is under the glass-and-china cupboard, where you are liable to be
bunkered if you loft your approach-shot excessively.
The fourth and fifth holes call for no comment. They are without
traps, the only danger being that you may lose a stroke through
hitting the maid if she happens to be coming down the back stairs
while you are taking a mashie-shot. This is a penalty under the local
rule.
The sixth is the indispensable water-hole. It is short, but tricky.
Teeing off from just outside the bathroom door, you have to loft the
ball over the side of the bath, holing out in the little vent pipe, at
the end where the water runs out.
The seventh is the longest hole on the course. Starting at the
entrance of the best bedroom, a full drive takes you to the head of
the stairs, whence you will need at least two more strokes to put you
dead on the pin in the drawing-room. In the drawing-room the fairway
is trapped with photograph frames--with glass, complete--these serving
as casual water: and anyone who can hole out on the piano in five or
under is a player of class. Bogey is six, and I have known even such a
capable exponent of the game as my Uncle Reginald, who is plus two on
his home links on Park Avenue, to take twenty-seven at the hole. But
on that occasion he had the misfortune to be bunkered in a photograph
of my Aunt Clara and took no fewer than eleven strokes with his
niblick to extricate himself from it.
The eighth and ninth holes are straightforward, and can be done in two
and three respectively, provided you swing easily and avoid the
canary's cage. Once trapped there, it is better to give up the hole
without further effort. It is almost impossible to get out in less
than fifty-six, and after you have taken about thirty the bird gets
visibly annoyed.
THE ALARMING SPREAD OF POETRY
To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the
realization that we are becoming a nation of minor poets. In the good
old days poets were for the most part confined to garrets, which they
left only for the purpose of being ejected from the offices of
magazines and papers to which they attempted to sell their wares.
Nobody ever thought of reading a book of poems unless accompanied by a
guarantee from the publisher that the author had been dead at least a
hundred years. Poetry, like wine, certain brands of cheese, and public
buildings, was rightly considered to improve with age; and no
connoisseur could have dreamed of filling himself with raw,
indigestible verse, warm from the maker.
Today, however, editors are paying real money for poetry; publishers
are making a profit on books of verse; and many a young man who, had
he been born earlier, would have sustained life on a crust of bread,
is now sending for the manager to find out how the restaurant dares
try to sell a fellow champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut.
Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of the community.
Our children grow to adolescence with the feeling that they can become
poets instead of working. Many an embryo bill clerk has been ruined by
the heady knowledge that poems are paid for at the rate of a dollar a
line. All over the country promising young plasterers and rising young
motormen are throwing up steady jobs in order to devote themselves to
the new profession. On a sunny afternoon down in Washington Square
one's progress is positively impeded by the swarms of young poets
brought out by the warm weather. It is a horrible sight to see those
unfortunate youths, who ought to be sitting happily at desks writing
"Dear Sir, Your favor of the tenth inst. duly received and contents
noted. In reply we beg to state...." wandering about with their
fingers in their hair and their features distorted with the agony of
composition, as they try to find rhymes to "cosmic" and "symbolism."
And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar
Lee Masters and invents _vers libre_. It is too early yet to
judge the full effects of this man's horrid discovery, but there is no
doubt that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces over which
none can have any control. All those decent restrictions which used to
check poets have vanished, and who shall say what will be the outcome?
Until Mr. Masters came on the scene there was just one thing which,
like a salient fortress in the midst of an enemy's advancing army,
acted as a barrier to the youth of the country. When one's son came to
one and said, "Father, I shall not be able to fulfill your dearest
wish and start work in the fertilizer department. I have decided to
become a poet," although one could no longer frighten him from his
purpose by talking of garrets and starvation, there was still one
weapon left. "What about the rhymes, Willie?" you replied, and the
eager light died out of the boy's face, as he perceived the catch in
what he had taken for a good thing. You pressed your advantage. "Think
of having to spend your life making one line rhyme with another! Think
of the bleak future, when you have used up 'moon' and 'June,' 'love'
and 'dove,' 'May' and 'gay'! Think of the moment when you have ended
the last line but one of your poem with 'windows' or 'warmth' and have
to buckle to, trying to make the thing couple up in accordance with
the rules! What then, Willie?"
Next day a new hand had signed on in the fertilizer department.
But now all that has changed. Not only are rhymes no longer necessary,
but editors positively prefer them left out. If Longfellow had been
writing today he would have had to revise "The Village Blacksmith" if
he wanted to pull in that dollar a line. No editor would print stuff
like:
Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands.
The smith a brawny man is he
With large and sinewy hands.
If Longfellow were living in these hyphenated, free and versy days, he
would find himself compelled to take his pen in hand and dictate as
follows:
In life I was the village smith,
I worked all day
But
I retained the delicacy of my complexion
Because
I worked in the shade of the chestnut tree
Instead of in the sun
Like Nicholas Blodgett, the expressman.
I was large and strong
Because
I went in for physical culture
And deep breathing
And all those stunts.
I had the biggest biceps in Spoon River.
Who can say where this thing will end? _Vers libre_ is within the
reach of all. A sleeping nation has wakened to the realization that
there is money to be made out of chopping its prose into bits.
Something must be done shortly if the nation is to be saved from this
menace. But what? It is no good shooting Edgar Lee Masters, for the
mischief has been done, and even making an example of him could not
undo it. Probably the only hope lies in the fact that poets never buy
other poets' stuff. When once we have all become poets, the sale of
verse will cease or be limited to the few copies which individual
poets will buy to give to their friends.
MY LIFE AS A DRAMATIC CRITIC
I had always wanted to be a dramatic critic. A taste for sitting back
and watching other people work, so essential to the make-up of this
sub-species of humanity, has always been one of the leading traits in
my character.
I have seldom missed a first night. No sooner has one periodical got
rid of me than another has had the misfortune to engage me, with the
result that I am now the foremost critic of the day, read assiduously
by millions, fawned upon by managers, courted by stagehands. My
lightest word can make or mar a new production. If I say a piece is
bad, it dies. It may not die instantly. Generally it takes forty weeks
in New York and a couple of seasons on the road to do it, but it
cannot escape its fate. Sooner or later it perishes. That is the sort
of man I am.
Whatever else may be charged against me, I have never deviated from
the standard which I set myself at the beginning of my career. If I am
called upon to review a play produced by a manager who is considering
one of my own works, I do not hesitate. I praise that play.
If an actor has given me a lunch, I refuse to bite the hand that has
fed me. I praise that actor's performance. I can only recall one
instance of my departing from my principles. That was when the
champagne was corked, and the man refused to buy me another bottle.
As is only natural, I have met many interesting people since I
embarked on my career. I remember once lunching with rare Ben Jonson
at the Mermaid Tavern--this would be back in Queen Elizabeth's time,
when I was beginning to be known in the theatrical world--and seeing a
young man with a nobby forehead and about three inches of beard doing
himself well at a neighboring table at the expense of Burbage the
manager.
"Ben," I asked my companion, "who is that youth?" He told me that the
fellow was one Bacon, a new dramatist who had learned his technique by
holding horses' heads in the Strand, and who, for some reason or
other, wrote under the name of Shakespeare. "You must see his
_Hamlet_," said Ben enthusiastically. "He read me the script last
night. They start rehearsals at the Globe next week. It's a pippin. In
the last act every blamed character in the cast who isn't already dead
jumps on everyone else's neck and slays him. It's a skit, you know, on
these foolish tragedies which every manager is putting on just now.
Personally, I think it's the best thing since _The Prune-Hater's
Daughter_."
I was skeptical at the moment, but time proved the correctness of my
old friend's judgment; and, having been present after the opening
performance at a little supper given by Burbage at which sack ran like
water, and anybody who wanted another malvoisie and seltzer simply had
to beckon to the waiter, I was able to conscientiously praise it in
the highest terms.
I still treasure the faded newspaper clipping which contains the
advertisement of the play, with the legend, "Shakespeare has put one
over. A scream from start to finish."--Wodehouse, in _The Weekly
Bear-Baiter_ (with which is incorporated _The Scurvy Knaves'
Gazette_).
The lot of a dramatic critic is, in many respects, an enviable one.
Lately, there has been the growing practice among critics of roasting
a play on the morning after production, and then having another go at
it in the Sunday edition under the title of "Second Swats" or "The
Past Week in the Theatre," which has made it pretty rocky going for
dramatists who thus get it twice in the same place, and experience the
complex emotions of the commuter who, coming home in the dark, trips
over the baby's cart and bumps his head against the hat stand.
There is also no purer pleasure than that of getting into a theatre on
what the poet Milton used to call "the nod." I remember Brigham Young
saying to me once with not unnatural chagrin, "You're a lucky man,
Wodehouse. It doesn't cost you a nickel to go to a theatre. When I
want to take in a show with the wife, I have to buy up the whole of
the orchestra floor. And even then it's a tight fit."
My fellow critics and I escape this financial trouble, and it gives us
a good deal of pleasure, when the male star is counting the house over
the heroine's head (during their big love scene) to see him frown as
he catches sight of us and hastily revise his original estimate.
THE AGONIES OF WRITING A MUSICAL COMEDY
Which Shows Why Librettists Pick at the Coverlet
The trouble about musical comedy, and the reason why a great many
otherwise kindly and broadminded persons lie in wait round the corner
with sudden scowls, their whole being intent on beating it with a
brick the moment it shows its head, is that, from outside, it looks
too easy.
You come into the crowded theatre and consider that each occupant of
an orchestra chair is contributing three or four cents to the upkeep
of a fellow who did nothing but dash off the stuff that keeps the
numbers apart, and your blood boils. A glow of honest resentment fills
you at the thought of anyone having such an absolute snap. You little
know what the poor bird has suffered, and how inadequate a reward are
his few yens per week for what he has been through. Musical comedy is
not dashed off. It grows--slowly and painfully, and each step in its
growth either bleaches another tuft of the author's hair or removes it
from the parent skull altogether.
The average musical comedy comes into being because somebody--not the
public, but a manager--wants one. We will say that Mr. and Mrs.
Whoosis, the eminent ballroom dancers, have decided that they require
a different sphere for the exhibition of their talents. They do not
demand a drama. They commission somebody to write them a musical
comedy. Some poor, misguided creature is wheedled into signing a
contract: and, from that moment, his troubles begin.
An inspiration gives him a pleasing and ingenious plot. Full of
optimism, he starts to write it. By the time he has finished an
excellent first act, he is informed that Mr. and Mrs. Whoosis propose
to sing three solos and two duets in the first act and five in the
second, and will he kindly build his script accordingly? This baffles
the author a little. He is aware that both artistes, though extremely
gifted northward as far as the ankle-bone, go all to pieces above that
level, with the result that by the time you reach the zone where the
brains and voice are located, there is nothing stirring whatever. And
he had allowed for this in his original conception of the play, by
making Mrs. Whoosis a deaf-mute and Mr. Whoosis a Trappist monk under
the perpetual vow of silence. The unfolding of the plot he had left to
the other characters, with a few ingenious gaps where the two stars
could come on and dance.
He takes a stiff bracer, ties a vinegar-soaked handkerchief round his
forehead, and sets to work to remodel his piece. He is a trifle
discouraged, but he perseveres. With almost superhuman toil he
contrives the only possible story which will fit the necessities of
the case. He has wrapped up the script and is about to stroll round
the corner to mail it, when he learns from the manager who is acting
as intermediary between the parties concerned in the production that
there is a slight hitch. Instead of having fifty thousand dollars
deposited in the bank to back the play, it seems that the artistes
merely said in their conversation that it would be awfully jolly if
they _did_ have that sum, or words to that effect.
By this time our author has got the thing into his system: or, rather,
he has worked so hard that he feels he cannot abandon the venture now.
He hunts for another manager who wants something musical, and at
length finds one. The only proviso is that this manager does not need
a piece built around two stars, but one suited to the needs of Jasper
Cutup, the well-known comedian, whom he has under contract. The
personality of Jasper is familiar to the author, so he works for a
month or two and remoulds the play to fit him. With the script under
his arm he staggers to the manager's office. The manager reads the
script--smiles--chuckles--thoroughly enjoys it. Then a cloud passes
athwart his brow. "There's only one thing the matter with this piece,"
he says. "You seem to have written it to star a comedian." "But you
said you wanted it for Jasper Cutup," gasps the author, supporting
himself against the water-cooler. "Well, yes, that is so," replies the
manager. "I remember I did want a piece for him then, but he's gone
and signed up with K. and Lee. What I wish you would do is to take
this script and twist it to be a vehicle for Pansy Glucose."
"Pansy Glucose?" moans the author. "The ingenue?" "Yes," says the
manager. "It won't take long. Just turn your Milwaukee pickle
manufacturer into a debutante, and the thing is done. Get to work as
soon as you can. I want this rushed."
All this is but a portion of the musical comedy author's troubles. We
will assume that he eventually finds a manager who really does put the
piece into rehearsal. We will even assume that he encounters none of
the trials to which I have alluded. We will even go further and assume
that he is commissioned to write a musical comedy without any definite
stellar personality in mind, and that when he has finished it the
manager will do his share by providing a suitable cast. Is he in soft?
No, dear reader, he is not in soft. You have forgotten the "Gurls."
Critics are inclined to reproach, deride, blame and generally hammer
the author of a musical comedy because his plot is not so consecutive
and unbroken as the plot of a farce or a comedy. They do not realize
the conditions under which he is working. It is one of the immutable
laws governing musical plays that at certain intervals during the
evening the audience demand to see the chorus. They may not be aware
that they so demand, but it is nevertheless a fact that, unless the
chorus come on at these fixed intervals, the audience's interest sags.
The raciest farce-scenes cannot hold them, nor the most tender love
passages. They want the gurls, the whole gurls, and nothing but the
gurls.
Thus it comes about that the author, having at last finished his first
act, is roused from his dream of content by a horrid fear. He turns to
the script, and discovers that his panic was well grounded. He has
carelessly allowed fully twenty pages to pass without once bringing on
the chorus.
This is where he begins to clutch his forehead and to grow gray at the
temples. He cannot possibly shift musical number four, which is a
chorus number, into the spot now occupied by musical number three,
which is a duet, because three is a "situation" number, rooted to its
place by the exigencies of the story. The only thing to do is to pull
the act to pieces and start afresh. And when you consider that this
sort of thing happens not once but a dozen times between the start of
a musical comedy book and its completion, can you wonder that this
branch of writing is included among the dangerous trades and that
librettists always end by picking at the coverlet?