At the next meeting of The Den(ver) of the Secret Nine, we’ll be discussing P.G. Wodehouse’s 1917 short story collection The Man with Two Left Feet, which includes the short story Extricating Young Gussie, the first introduction of characters Bertie, Jeeves and Aunt Agatha … sort of. The collection is available at both Project Gutenberg and Librivox.
The next meeting will be at 12:30 pm Sunday, Sept. 10 at Pints Pub in Denver.
Please join The Den(ver) of the Secret Nine, Doctor Watson’s Neglected Patients and the Jane Austen Society of North America at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27* on the cricket pitch at Cornerstone Park in Littleton to watch the Fort Collins Cricket Club vs the Littleton CC.
For more information, email petkusj@virtualight.com or call 303-377-6445
Water, tea (hot and cold) and lemonade will be provided as well as some shade. Please bring cookies, scones, veggies, cheese and finger sandwiches, either to greedily consume yourself or to share with others. You might also want to bring something to sit on.
There is a nearby restroom. Please, no alcohol. Plenty of parking.
*The match begins at 2 p.m. Games last about three hours with a break in the middle.
Member Joice contributes these questions for our discussion:
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Lower your voice!” “He can’t. He’s a tenor.”
“I made you what you are today—I’m hope I’m satisfied.”
“Lion in a den of Daniels”
At the next meeting of The Den(ver) of the Secret Nine—at 12:30 pm Sunday, July 9 at Pints Pub in Denver—we’ll discuss P.G. Wodehouse’s 1922 novel The Adventures of Sally. As an aid to discussion, here’s a synopsis of the story and some observations about the story.
Sally and Fillmore Nicholas were orphaned at an early age and raised by an uncle who was also trustee of their fortune. A falling out after Fillmore was expelled from Harvard meant they both left their uncle’s home and had to survive on their own until they came into their inheritances. They lived in a New York boarding house where Sally’s good nature was evident to all. Fillmore survived as an assistant stage manager and Sally as a taxi dancer at a dance palace.
Now comparatively wealthy after receiving his inheritance at age 25, Fillmore invests his money in a play written by Sally’s fiancée, Gerald Foster. Sally is more cautious with her money when she inherits at age 21, but does decide to spend some of it on a vacation in France, including that favorite fictional Wodehouse beach resort Roville-sur-Mer. There she meets Lancelot “Ginger” Kemp and his cousin Bruce Carmyle.
Ginger is the black sheep of “the family,” having recently been let go as secretary to one Scrymgeour, an up-and-coming member of parliament. This Scrymgeour made the mistake of “disciplining” his dog with a walking stick, which Ginger promptly broke into pieces, accompanied with the tongue lashing. The family, which would like to see Ginger become someone in politics or business, wants Ginger to apologize to Scrymgeour.
Ginger explains all this in a meet cute when he and Sally are trapped in an elevator. Sally is incensed that Ginger kowtows to the family and several times tells him “Death to the family!” This inspires Ginger so much that he falls in love with Sally, asks her to marry him and later defies the family (aided by winnings at the roulette table).
Sally equally impresses Bruce Carmyle, Ginger’s cousin. A hardheaded self-important man, he’s taken by Sally’s looks and demeanor, but put off by her defense of Ginger. After Sally returns to New York, Carmyle pursues her to America. Sally is both repelled and tolerant of Carmyle, and Carmyle is alternately enamored and disdainful of Sally, so he has little success in plighting his troth. Sally brother’s Fillmore, however, is impressed with Carmyle as a man of importance.
Speaking of Fillmore, he wants a bigger stake in Gerald Foster’s (Sally’s fiancée’s) play and asks Sally to help him buy out the current backer, whose insistence on casting a temperamental star is threatening to derail the show. Fillmore doesn’t have enough from his own inheritance for the takeover thanks to ill-considered stock market trades.
She agrees to lend Fillmore the money and also learns that Fillmore is engaged to Gladys Winch, a woman Sally approves of for she thinks Gladys is just the sort of level-headed wife Fillmore needs.
In the mean time Ginger has also come to New York and is staying at the same boarding house as Sally (he having obtained her address before they were parted in France). Unfortunately his roulette winnings had disappeared after another spin of the wheel and he is destitute. Sally convinces Fillmore, now an aspiring theater impresario, to hire Ginger as his right-hand man.
Unfortunately for Sally, Gerald’s play is successful—unfortunate because Gerald marries the actress who replaced the temperamental star, and unfortunate for Fillmore who lets the success of the play go to his head. He takes his profits, despite the protestation of his now wife Gladys, and sinks it into a revue that fails. He loses all his money and everything Sally invested.
Sally is unaware of Fillmore’s financial collapse, however, because she’s fled to England, ostensibly to help out a former boarding house resident who’s returned to England. In truth, she doesn’t want to deal with Gerald’s betrayal. While in England, she is invited to visit the home of Uncle Donald, the head of “the family” of Ginger and Carmyle. What she doesn’t know is that the visit is really Carmyle’s plan to endear Sally to “the family,” and then to propose to her.
I’ll stop the synopsis here so as not to spoil the ending of the story.
. I will point out that others have noted/criticized that in many ways Sally is a reprise of Wodehouse’s earlier Jill the Reckless, but it’s pointless to lift that veil.
Normally I think of P.G. Wodehouse and Jane Austen existing in differing worlds. They both wrote books that are comedies of manners, but Wodehouse is mostly known as a comic writer whose plots were driven by romance, status and money, while on the surface Austen is a romance writer whose plots are actually driven by pretty clear-eyed considerations of status and money.
Both authors are geniuses at dialog and observational humor, but their styles are distinctly different … or so I always thought. Before joining The Secret Nine, I was familiar with about 20 percent of Wodehouse’s novels and like most people, tended to stick with the Jeeves and Wooster and Blandings stories and read only a few of his very early stories. I was familiar with the mature author, confident of his style and métier and quite happy to fall back on tropes, especially since he’d invented many of the tropes of romantic comedies that are still in use today.
The Adventures of Sally, however, makes me appreciate Wodehouse as a romance writer who could create a heroine worthy of Austen. Wodehouse’s female characters have always been enjoyable and complex, but Sally Nicholas is something special. She shares a common trait of many Wodehouse heroines in being small and trim and pretty, but she’s also independent, caring, forceful, playful and more than a little self-assured. She has a strong tendency to cajole, lecture and interfere on behalf of others. Some might call her motherly but I think she’s more of a headmistress with a distinct hint of moral arbiter. Unlike Wodehouse’s other female characters who want to improve the male (think Florence Cray), however, I think the author has a fondness for Sally.
Like many of Austen’s heroines, Sally suffered from poverty, in her case because she stood up for her brother, but unlike an Austen heroine she lived in a time when a woman of her class and quality could work—even as a taxi dancer—and still remain an honorable woman. I hope Elizabeth Bennet—had her father died and herself, her mother and sisters been ejected from Longbourn by Mr. Collins—would have had the gumption to work as a taxi dancer at some assembly—if that profession had existed during the Regency.
When Fillmore loses Sally’s money, she has to return to the dance palace, causing the owner of that palace some distress:
“Everybody liked her,” said Mr. Abrahams. “The nicest girl I ever hired, and I don’t hire none but nice girls, because the Garden’s a nice place, and I like to run it nice. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for any of your tough joints where you get nothing but low-lifes and scare away all the real folks. Everybody liked Sally Nicholas. Always pleasant and always smiling, and never anything but the lady. It was a treat to have her around.”
Eventually, though, her misadventures—her fiancée marrying another, Fillmore’s poor financial decisions, Ginger’s inability to keep a job (through no fault of his own) and the pain of rejecting Carmyle’s proposal and the scorn of “the family”—weigh her down. Surprised by Carmyle who has tracked her to the dance palace (to the displeasure of Uncle Donald), her resolve falters. He proves a masterful dancer, a pleasant relief from the clumsy men who step on her toes, and when he again proposes, she accepts.
It’s cleverly done because we never hear Carmyle proposal’s, all we read is Sally’s despair:
She felt his arm tighten about her, the muscles quivering. She caught sight of his face. His dark eyes suddenly blazed into hers and she stumbled with an odd feeling of helplessness; realizing with a shock that brought her with a jerk out of the half-dream into which she had been lulled that this dance had not postponed the moment of decision, as she had looked to it to do. In a hot whisper, the words swept away on the flood of the music which had suddenly become raucous and blaring once more, he was repeating what he had said under the trees at Monk’s Crofton on that far-off morning in the English springtime. Dizzily she knew that she was resenting the unfairness of the attack at such a moment, but her mind seemed numbed.
The music stopped abruptly. Insistent clapping started it again, but Sally moved away to her table, and he followed her like a shadow. Neither spoke. Bruce Carmyle had said his say, and Sally was sitting staring before her, trying to think. She was tired, tired. Her eyes were burning. She tried to force herself to face the situation squarely. Was it worth struggling? Was anything in the world worth a struggle? She only knew that she was tired, desperately tired, tired to the very depths of her soul.
The proposal is as much a blur to Sally as it is to us.
I cannot help but think of Jane Austen when Harris Bigg-Wither proposed to her. She was nearly 27—an old maid in 1802—and she accepted his proposal, no doubt worried about her future and the future of her mother and sister should her father die, which he did in 1805. A marriage with Bigg-Wither would have ensured she have a home. But she returned the proposal the next day. I can imagine Austen being similarly tired and wondering what was the use of struggling.
Of course Sally is far more affected by Gerald Foster’s betrayal than any Austen heroine. Elizabeth Bennet takes in stride the revelation that George Wickham is a cad and Emma Woodhouse has no grudge when she realizes she’s not in love with Frank Churchill, nor does he love her. There is a parallel with Emma and Sally, however. Both are unaware until it becomes blindingly obvious who they should marry. Emma is oblivious to the fact she must marry George Knightley until she thinks she has lost him. Sally is unaware that she must marry Ginger, even though Gladys gave her a clue when she advised:
“Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.”
Ginger is obviously the chump for Sally. He deserves Sally because he recognized her worth from the beginning, in the first minutes of their meeting in fact. Sally should have recognized the advice she gave her brother when he told her of his love for Glady: “… she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.”
I also love this story in that it’s tone is completely different from most Wodehouse novels. He uses none of his tropes in this book—no stout Cortez staring at the Pacific, no larks on the wing, no statues of the Infant Samuel. There are no Pat and Mike routines where it takes three pages just to get past some silly misunderstanding. Instead this is a breezy novel with very modern sounding dialog. I especially love Sally’s teasing of her brother, especially when he’s considering buying a fur coat:
“I wish you wouldn’t keep on harping on that damned coat. And, anyway, why shouldn’t I have a fur coat?”
“Fill…! How can you be so brutal as to suggest that I ever said you shouldn’t? Why, I’m one of the strongest supporters of the fur coat. With big cuffs. And you must roll up Fifth Avenue in your car, and I’ll point and say ‘That’s my brother!’ ‘Your brother? No!’ ‘He is, really.’ ‘You’re joking. Why, that’s the great Fillmore Nicholas.’ ‘I know. But he really is my brother. And I was with him when he bought that coat.’”
“Do leave off about the coat!”
“‘And it isn’t only the coat,’ I shall say. ‘It’s what’s underneath. Tucked away inside that mass of fur, dodging about behind that dollar cigar, is one to whom we point with pride… ‘”
Another item of note: I’ve never read a book that treated the influenza epidemic of 1918–1919 with such humor. The flu, which came to America with soldiers returning from World War I, killed three to five percent of the world’s population, but in this story it serves principally to inconvenience Fillmore and Gerald Foster when the theaters are closed. Even the elderly Mr. Faucitt, a fellow inmate of Sally at the boarding house, seems to thrive after contracting the disease:
“Oh no, not that.” Mrs. Meecher [the landlady] sighed, for she had been a little disappointed in the old gentleman, who started out as such a promising invalid, only to fall away into the dullness of robust health once more. “He’s well enough. I never seen anybody better. You’d think,” said Mrs. Meecher, bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, “you’d think this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic or somep’n, the way he looks now. Of course,” she added, trying to find justification for a respected lodger, “he’s had good news. His brother’s dead.”
Then again the flu had a higher mortality rate among the young—like Fillmore and Sally.
There are some problems with Sally that others have observed. It too closely resembles the style of Plum’s earlier Jill the Reckless, but I’ve never objected to Wodehouse borrowing from himself. And perhaps the pacing is a little off towards the end, with a convenient conclusion to Sally’s unwanted engagement to Carmyle, but again I look kindly on that sort of thing. After all, I just saw Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe where the heroine is saved from death by someone suggesting that instead of saying “every fairy shall die who marries a mortal” to “every fairy shall die who doesn’t marry a mortal.” After all it’s just one extra word.
Again, why quibble when it comes to Wodehouse.
When next we meet, The Den(ver) of the Secret Nine will discuss Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, the 1954 Jeeves and Wooster pairing called Bertie Wooster Sees It Through in the U.S.
That next meeting will be at Pints Pub in downtown Denver at 12:30 pm on Sunday, May 14. Unfortunately this correspondent shall not be there (I shall be up to no good out of the country), and so any RSVPs or questions should be addressed to member Larry or posted at the facebook page.
As is our usual practice, the member who fought tooth and nail to propose the agenda has the privilege, nay the honor, of supplying the rest of us with discussion notes. Member Larry, in his diabolical fashion, however, credits us with more resourcefulness than perhaps is our due. Rather than telling us, he encourages us to seek out our own information. And thus we have:
Contemplate: What was the nature of these powerful concoctions of Jeeves? What was in them? What could explain their powerful effects?
What two famous detectives does Wooster suggest in the following phraseology in Chapter 1:
“These are deep waters, Jeeves.”
“… her bean was crammed to the bursting point with little gray cells”.
“I might be the most consummate ass that ever eluded the vigilance of the talent scouts of Colney Hatch.” (Chapter 7)
Research: What and where is Colney Hatch?
Research: Who is/was Eugene Aram?
(Members would be advised to read The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders, ed.)
Ah Sweet Mystery of Life, Roll out the Barrel, I Love a Lassie, Pale Hands I Love Beside the Shalimar, Every Day I Bring Thee Violets
Thanks Larry for throwing down the gauntlet. It’s a shame I shall miss the spirited discussion these notes will no doubt engender. I also propose our cabal order the modern-day equivalents of one of Jeeves’ Specials at Pints Pub.
As I will be gone, I will throw in my two cents for the suggestion of the next book. I propose either The Adventures of Sally or Jill the Reckless. I’ve also made it a little easier to pick our next book by updating the list of books we’ve read so far.
Eagle-eyed member Larry saw this and wanted to share it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574698/P-G-Wodehouse-fan-reveals-the-real-life-Jeeves.html
A P G Wodehouse enthusiast has revealed the real-life inspiration behind the author’s seemingly improbable fictional creations.
A new study by Norman Murphy sheds light on the origins of such literary legends as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.
It was new Member Mike who won the day in proposing Laughing Gas for our next book discussion, but before posting his notes, I thought I’d mention my little challenge in preparing for our next meeting. I waited too long to order a copy of the book, and like many Wodehouseans, I am very fond of the Overlook Press editions. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a new copy and had to order a used one from Abe Books.
Being a frugal person, I jumped at the free shipping offer for an $8 book, but then felt rather stupid when I realized it would arrive March 11, and our next meeting is March 12. Fortunately I found a YouTube video of an audio recording of the book. It’s been a struggle, however, listening to it as I like to read before going to sleep. With a book, however, I am in less danger of falling asleep as the book falls down and hits me in the face if I do nod off. But I keep my iPad flat on my chest because it’s a little too heavy and cumbersome to keep upright, and so I’ve found myself drifting off. Ah, first-world problems.
(Transmigration: Transmigration [is] migration from one life (body) to another.)
McCrum’s description of the book is more concise than anything I could think up:
“Laughing Gas, which reflects Wodehouse’s lifelong interest in astral matters, is set in Beverly Hills, and tells the story of an Englishman, Reggie, the 3rd Earl of Havershot, and the Hollywood child star Joey Cooley, who exchange identities while under the ether in a dentist’s chair. The novel is narrated by Havershot, who also provides the ‘love interest’ in his contrasting relationships with the star April June and the studio publiscist Ann Bannister. Havershot is trapped for most of the action in Colley’s pampered, juvenile frame. This gives Wodehouse the opportunity to make several cracks against the absurdities of the Hollywood system”
(pg 235 Robert McCrum, Wodehouse: A Life)
This is really Bertie Wooster, without Jeeves, on a family errand in Hollywood. It is narrated in a first-person style, with many of Wooster’s expressions sprinkled throughout the book. Bertie’s first appearance in the Jeeves stories was not as Bertie Wooster but a Mannering-Phipps (short story: Extracting Gussie). Wodehouse may have recycled that name for this story. Eggy’s name after all is Mannering. Jeeves must have been at Bognor Regis.
Set in America, written and published in 1936, this comes at the end of Wodehouse’s second foray into Hollywood. The nice thing that his publishers were doing to assist with the way Wodehouse was taxed, was to publish once in the US and the second edition in France. Both publications garnered him $20K each in 1936 dollars or $347K in current dollars. Meanwhile during his stays in Hollywood he picked up over $1M (current dollars) for negligible work for the studios.
Wodehouse’s brother Ernest Armine Wodehouse. Armie, was a poet, theosophist and editor of the Theosophical Society Magazine, The Herald of the Star. Occultism was a popular topic in the 20s. It was of interest to PG as he attended at least three seances in the mid to late 20s. When PG died, some sixty titles relating to the occult were found in his possession. In my opinion, while Laughing Gas deals with the “migration of one body to another,” I’m not sure this is “occult” related. Perhaps in the 30s such things were considered to be occult, today it seems that the title of the book is more appropriate when discussing such topics. Maybe PG was giving his brother a gentle poke.
Casual Racism: No Blackface! However we get some 1930s expressions: Jap, Negroid Train Attendant, untutored savage, and Coloured Brother, (which is just a curious choice of words).
We have a full-fledged “souse” in the form of Eggremont “Eggy” Mannering, whose mannerisms are pure stereotypical drunkenness that would set a standard for “educated” drunks for decades (Arthur with Dudley Moore is the last of the sympathetic comic “drunken” characters).
Wodehouse’s writing has a sense of timelessness. Oh sure, there are things that don’t exist anymore: titles and clubs. But this book is a snapshot of 30s Hollywood, with the mention of several movie stars, (Jimmy Cagney, Ronald Coleman, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable) and a brief passing of Hitler and Mussolini as they compared to studio heads (with the German and Italian placing favorably in the lineup).
We welcome the return of the that time-honored card game, known for parting a fool and his money … Persian Monarchs.
We meet Joey Cooley, who as a child star has to maintain a facade of golden curls and short pants. The “idol” of today’s American Motherhood, he longs to go home to Ma, in Chillicothe, Ohio. Not necessarily a sympathetic character, especially when he does start bopping people on their noses. On the other hand, we see from today’s perspective he was being exploited. Havershot’s life as Joey Cooley and his interactions with the other boys, probably gave Plum a chance to revisit some his “boys” books from 30 years earlier.
Reggie Havershot, (Bertie in an Earl’s clothing), is the adult in Joey’s body. As the two switch bodies, we learn little of Joey’s perspective during the novel and his visits are like apparitions, fleeting and ominous. His foray into bodily assault earns him the title of “fiend,” one that he relishes.
Two love interests—April June and Ann Bannister. Two ends of the Wodehouse female spectrum. One a gorgeous, phony movie star and the other an earnest, likable best friend female with a heart of gold. Guess who our hero will end up with?
If Plum’s defense of being “non-political” or politically naive was a stretch after his pre-War broadcasts, his interview that brought the wrath of the movie studios down on him was possibly met with the same innocent response. In the scene at April June’s where Havershot/Joey is interviewed and where he fixes himself a scotch and smokes a cigarette, he does get to mock the studios. Then to my thought, HE plays out the idea that it was the young child being preyed upon by the press. This may have been his response to the war time broadcasts. While not a child, he was naive.
The number of people impersonating other people in this book staggering. From the main characters to the three kidnappers at the end, there have rarely been this many characters representing them selves as other people, or in disguise.
