Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com. Ames, our mentor at this website, has an excellent new book out called, Wake Up, Sir!
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Revisiting Wodehouse & Chandler: A Visit to Dulwich College
Back in May of the 2004 I reported on The Mystery of Whether or Not Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodhouse Knew Each Other When They Were At Dulwich College. My investigation led me to conclude that Wodehouse left the school just before Chandler arrived; they had some friends and teachers in common but didn’t know each other.
Dulwich College is located in London and as the Gods would have it it is about a 40 minute walk from where I live in Brixton. The other day I was fortunate enough to visit the school and inspect the Wodehouse Library. With its vast collection of Wodehouse’s papers and personal effects the library – which was recently utilized by Plum’s biographer Robert McCrum – is one of the best places in the world to study Wodehouse.
Chandler and Wodehouse’s old school is very pleasant. It’s made up of nice old red brick buildings. There is a big playing field. The day I went its students were on break, so I didn’t see any of the 7-18 years old boys that are normally studying there. Because it was empty the school was somewhat spooky, like the hotel in The Shinning.
My visit was arranged through Dulwich’s Keeper of The Archives, Dr. Jan Piggott. For the sake of this story it might have been better if Dr. Piggott were more like a character out of Wodehouse. As it is, though Dr. Piggott seems to spend much of his time in a library, it is not in the pottering-around, looking-for-the-spectacles-he-is-wearing fashion of, say, Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth. Lord Emsworth dithers about Blandings Castle in Leave it to Psmith, which features my favorite Wodehouse character, Psmith. (The p is silent, we are told, “as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan”.) Much has been written of how Wodehouse’s years at Dulwich inspired his work, particularly the Mike and Psmith stories, and some of that writing has been done by Dr. Piggott himself. In two introductory essays to Wodehouse Goes to School (1997), Dr. Piggott writes elegantly of the relationship between Dulwich and its stand-in in those stories, Wrykyn College. So while he dressed in tweeds and was very jolly and referred to people as “Old boy,” Dr. Piggott – formerly the head of the school’s English department – was far too competent and scholarly to fit in a Wodehouse story. And maybe that was for the best, because had Dr. Piggott not been so versed in Wodehouse lore, I might not have become aware of some possible errors in my last report.
Writing in May I quoted from Performing Flea, a book of Wodehouse’s letters to fellow Dulwich alum (and friend of Raymond Chandler’s) William Townend. After looking at many of the original correspondences that are reproduced in that book I now suspect that the letters as I quoted them are not as Wodehouse originally wrote them. “Oh yes,” said Dr. Piggott, “he changed all of those letters.” He said this as I sat at a table in his office, looking at a book that held, protected in plastic slips, the letters Wodehouse had typed up or written by hand. The letters were littered with red penciling – straight lines along the margins and scribbled notes. These are Wodehouses’s markings, which he made in the early 1950s, when Performing Flea was being prepared for publication. As I looked at the originals I also had a copy of Performing Flea in front of me; it was fun to spot the differences. Here is one I made a note of:
From 1953’s Performing Flea: “I just got a copy of The Ship in The Swamp. I think it’s marvelous. My introduction is all wrong, of course, much too flippant.”
And from Wodehouse’s original letter to Townend of October 18, 1928: “I’ve just got a copy of the S. in Swamp. Laddie, it’s marvelous. My introduction is all wrong, of course.”
The above is a small example of the kind of thing Wodehouse got up to in his altering of the original letters. I asked Dr. Piggott if he had any theories to explain Wodehouse’s actions. “Oh yes,” he said, “I think he did it to make them funnier.” If that was Wodehouse’s intent (and I am inclined to agree with Dr. Piggott’s explanation) it is still a little unclear why he altered the above as he did. In any case, Dr. Piggott expressed a similar theory in one of his essays on Wodehouse. His comments here pertain to an old school report that I also wrote about (back in May) - at the time not doubting for a moment its provenance. (Gilkes, in the below, is Wodehouse and Chandler’s old teacher.)
“Gilkes’s final report on Wodehouse was quoted in an article in the Daily Mail on 12 July, 1939 but the original has not survived. It is tempting to believe that some of it may have been ‘improved’ by Wodehouse himself. […] Gilkes is said to have written as follows:
He is a most impractical boy. Continually he does badly in examinations from lack of the proper books; he is often forgetful […] He has the most distorted ideas about wit and humor” (Ring, Tony and Geoffrey Jaggard. Wodehouse Goes To School. Introductory Essays by Jan Piggott. Porpoise Books, 1997. p. xxiv)
After seeing firsthand the editing job Wodehouse did on his letters to Townend I would not be surprised if there was much truth in Dr. Piggott's suspicions.
But what of Dulwich’s other famous son, Raymond Chandler? Apparently Chandler did not, as Wodehouse did, maintain lifelong connections with the school. “He appears to have done nothing outside the class-room, unlike Wodehouse who was a sportsman, singer, editor, prefect, librarian, actor, boxer &c. Chandler was what we call a 'swot', and came top of his form in Classics, winning a prize. So he was the best student of his year in the best subject!” says Dr. Piggott, “But he was often poorly.” As a result of these factors the Wodehouse Library doesn’t have that much Chandler paraphernalia. I was shown an old library registry showing Chandler signing out a copy of Thackeray’s Henry Esmond. This was shown to me as many fun things were that day: I would have my nose in some papers and Dr. Piggott would say, calmly but with vigor, “Would you like to see …” and then he would ask if I wanted to see some old photos of the authors, or a particularly interesting letter, or something like that. Occasionally he would ask if I wanted to see an item unrelated to the writers which the library happened to have. “Would you like to see Ben Johnson’s handwriting?” he said, and before I had time to answer the paper was, in its plastic slip, floating down to me like a feather; the ink that had left Johnson’s pen four-hundred years ago was now brown.
So many thanks to Dr. Jan Piggott for all his help. The below extracts are taken from letters I transcribed at the library that I thought were neat. Both were written to Townend but not published (even in an altered form) in Performing Flea. As far as I know they have never been published, and they are here with the kind permission of the Governors of Dulwich College.
Wodehouse wrote to Townend from 1000 Park Avenue on November 28, 1949:
“But human beings are incalculable. I’ll tell you, Bill, what maddens me. All around you in this world you see married couples, and it is utterly impossible to say what A. saw in B. or B. in A., but you accept it. You say to yourself that while you yourself would never dream of marrying B yourself, she must have appealed to A. But when it’s a question of a play, the management always insists on some specific reason why your heroine is attracted to your hero.”
And on January 31, 1951 Wodehouse wrote:
“Bernard Shaw. Didn’t it make you sick when you read about his will? With people starving on every side and doctors needing every penny they can get for cancer research and so on, he leaves his entire fortune to starting a new alphabet. I believe the man was dotty. I met a man who was with him a lot in his last days and all G.B.S would talk about was his income tax. […] A Life of Scott Fitzgerald has just been published. Rather dully written, but interesting. One never ceases to marvel what damned fools people can be. Scott Fitzgerald seems scarcely to have drawn a sober breath from the time he was twenty. The thing that astonishes me about the book is that, though he always made a large income, he was always in debt and his principal creditors were his publishers and his agent.”
(If you’d like to learn more about the excellent Dulwich College you can visit their website.)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com. Ames, our mentor at this website, has an excellent new book out called, Wake Up, Sir!
____________________________________________________________________________
Revisiting Wodehouse & Chandler: A Visit to Dulwich College
Back in May of the 2004 I reported on The Mystery of Whether or Not Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodhouse Knew Each Other When They Were At Dulwich College. My investigation led me to conclude that Wodehouse left the school just before Chandler arrived; they had some friends and teachers in common but didn’t know each other.
Dulwich College is located in London and as the Gods would have it it is about a 40 minute walk from where I live in Brixton. The other day I was fortunate enough to visit the school and inspect the Wodehouse Library. With its vast collection of Wodehouse’s papers and personal effects the library – which was recently utilized by Plum’s biographer Robert McCrum – is one of the best places in the world to study Wodehouse.
Chandler and Wodehouse’s old school is very pleasant. It’s made up of nice old red brick buildings. There is a big playing field. The day I went its students were on break, so I didn’t see any of the 7-18 years old boys that are normally studying there. Because it was empty the school was somewhat spooky, like the hotel in The Shinning.
My visit was arranged through Dulwich’s Keeper of The Archives, Dr. Jan Piggott. For the sake of this story it might have been better if Dr. Piggott were more like a character out of Wodehouse. As it is, though Dr. Piggott seems to spend much of his time in a library, it is not in the pottering-around, looking-for-the-spectacles-he-is-wearing fashion of, say, Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth. Lord Emsworth dithers about Blandings Castle in Leave it to Psmith, which features my favorite Wodehouse character, Psmith. (The p is silent, we are told, “as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan”.) Much has been written of how Wodehouse’s years at Dulwich inspired his work, particularly the Mike and Psmith stories, and some of that writing has been done by Dr. Piggott himself. In two introductory essays to Wodehouse Goes to School (1997), Dr. Piggott writes elegantly of the relationship between Dulwich and its stand-in in those stories, Wrykyn College. So while he dressed in tweeds and was very jolly and referred to people as “Old boy,” Dr. Piggott – formerly the head of the school’s English department – was far too competent and scholarly to fit in a Wodehouse story. And maybe that was for the best, because had Dr. Piggott not been so versed in Wodehouse lore, I might not have become aware of some possible errors in my last report.
Writing in May I quoted from Performing Flea, a book of Wodehouse’s letters to fellow Dulwich alum (and friend of Raymond Chandler’s) William Townend. After looking at many of the original correspondences that are reproduced in that book I now suspect that the letters as I quoted them are not as Wodehouse originally wrote them. “Oh yes,” said Dr. Piggott, “he changed all of those letters.” He said this as I sat at a table in his office, looking at a book that held, protected in plastic slips, the letters Wodehouse had typed up or written by hand. The letters were littered with red penciling – straight lines along the margins and scribbled notes. These are Wodehouses’s markings, which he made in the early 1950s, when Performing Flea was being prepared for publication. As I looked at the originals I also had a copy of Performing Flea in front of me; it was fun to spot the differences. Here is one I made a note of:
From 1953’s Performing Flea: “I just got a copy of The Ship in The Swamp. I think it’s marvelous. My introduction is all wrong, of course, much too flippant.”
And from Wodehouse’s original letter to Townend of October 18, 1928: “I’ve just got a copy of the S. in Swamp. Laddie, it’s marvelous. My introduction is all wrong, of course.”
The above is a small example of the kind of thing Wodehouse got up to in his altering of the original letters. I asked Dr. Piggott if he had any theories to explain Wodehouse’s actions. “Oh yes,” he said, “I think he did it to make them funnier.” If that was Wodehouse’s intent (and I am inclined to agree with Dr. Piggott’s explanation) it is still a little unclear why he altered the above as he did. In any case, Dr. Piggott expressed a similar theory in one of his essays on Wodehouse. His comments here pertain to an old school report that I also wrote about (back in May) - at the time not doubting for a moment its provenance. (Gilkes, in the below, is Wodehouse and Chandler’s old teacher.)
“Gilkes’s final report on Wodehouse was quoted in an article in the Daily Mail on 12 July, 1939 but the original has not survived. It is tempting to believe that some of it may have been ‘improved’ by Wodehouse himself. […] Gilkes is said to have written as follows:
He is a most impractical boy. Continually he does badly in examinations from lack of the proper books; he is often forgetful […] He has the most distorted ideas about wit and humor” (Ring, Tony and Geoffrey Jaggard. Wodehouse Goes To School. Introductory Essays by Jan Piggott. Porpoise Books, 1997. p. xxiv)
After seeing firsthand the editing job Wodehouse did on his letters to Townend I would not be surprised if there was much truth in Dr. Piggott's suspicions.
But what of Dulwich’s other famous son, Raymond Chandler? Apparently Chandler did not, as Wodehouse did, maintain lifelong connections with the school. “He appears to have done nothing outside the class-room, unlike Wodehouse who was a sportsman, singer, editor, prefect, librarian, actor, boxer &c. Chandler was what we call a 'swot', and came top of his form in Classics, winning a prize. So he was the best student of his year in the best subject!” says Dr. Piggott, “But he was often poorly.” As a result of these factors the Wodehouse Library doesn’t have that much Chandler paraphernalia. I was shown an old library registry showing Chandler signing out a copy of Thackeray’s Henry Esmond. This was shown to me as many fun things were that day: I would have my nose in some papers and Dr. Piggott would say, calmly but with vigor, “Would you like to see …” and then he would ask if I wanted to see some old photos of the authors, or a particularly interesting letter, or something like that. Occasionally he would ask if I wanted to see an item unrelated to the writers which the library happened to have. “Would you like to see Ben Johnson’s handwriting?” he said, and before I had time to answer the paper was, in its plastic slip, floating down to me like a feather; the ink that had left Johnson’s pen four-hundred years ago was now brown.
So many thanks to Dr. Jan Piggott for all his help. The below extracts are taken from letters I transcribed at the library that I thought were neat. Both were written to Townend but not published (even in an altered form) in Performing Flea. As far as I know they have never been published, and they are here with the kind permission of the Governors of Dulwich College.
Wodehouse wrote to Townend from 1000 Park Avenue on November 28, 1949:
“But human beings are incalculable. I’ll tell you, Bill, what maddens me. All around you in this world you see married couples, and it is utterly impossible to say what A. saw in B. or B. in A., but you accept it. You say to yourself that while you yourself would never dream of marrying B yourself, she must have appealed to A. But when it’s a question of a play, the management always insists on some specific reason why your heroine is attracted to your hero.”
And on January 31, 1951 Wodehouse wrote:
“Bernard Shaw. Didn’t it make you sick when you read about his will? With people starving on every side and doctors needing every penny they can get for cancer research and so on, he leaves his entire fortune to starting a new alphabet. I believe the man was dotty. I met a man who was with him a lot in his last days and all G.B.S would talk about was his income tax. […] A Life of Scott Fitzgerald has just been published. Rather dully written, but interesting. One never ceases to marvel what damned fools people can be. Scott Fitzgerald seems scarcely to have drawn a sober breath from the time he was twenty. The thing that astonishes me about the book is that, though he always made a large income, he was always in debt and his principal creditors were his publishers and his agent.”
(If you’d like to learn more about the excellent Dulwich College you can visit their website.)
