Part 2 Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)

8/3/2019 Part 2 Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)

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ENTERTAINING FOR THE YOUNGThe Etiquette by P. G. Wodehouse.

Vanity Fair (February 1915)IN planning entertainments for the younger set it cannot be too clearly pointedout that the really smart child hostess must not insult her guests with the sugg

estion of parlor games. Dancing is de rigueur, provided the dances are strictlymodern and do not include such atrocities as the polka or the Sir Roger de Coverley. But to ask Harold, who has done Europe twice by himself, and Amlie, who is practically engaged to an infant Marquis, to stoop to Kiss-in-the-ring and BlindMans Bluff and Hunt-the-slipper is to ruin yourself socially in the best juvenilecircles of New York. I shall never forget the lookjust one lookwhich little Clarence G. van Doop gave a misguided conjurer who so far forgot himself as to extract a hard-boiled egg from a head which will one day control two railroads and a pork-packing business which has already been denounced at three hundred and fifty-seven Socialist meetings, in this country alone.

CARD-GAMES are admissible, provided the the stakes are sufficiently high to prev

ent players from becoming bored. Poker and auction bridge are always safe, but do not suggest Snap, or Animal Grab for lima beans. One of the saddest cases I can recall is that of little Angela Goldinger, who at one time showed promise of an exceedingly bright career as a hostess. Poor child, in spite of an excellent social education, she could not succeed in eradicating an infantile passion for agame calledI hate to write itOld Maid. This degraded pastime she insisted on forcing upon her guests during nearly the whole of an evening. Too well-bred to object, they set their teeth and went through with it like heroes and heroines; butit finished Angela socially. You never see her anywhere nowadays.

As regards smoking, much must be left to the discretion of the individual hostess. Where there is little or no formality in the party, cigarettes may be passedat table: but otherwise, of course, the girls will smoke in the sitting-room af

ter the men have left them.

A roulette-wheel and lay-out for the older boys is no bad thing, and has often saved a party which showed dangerous signs of hanging fire. It has, however, beenknown to lead to an occasional unpleasantness. I remember little Reginald Jopperson, the son of the Fruit Biscuit magnate, completely forgetting his breeding and accusing the heir to the Linoleum trustwho happened to be acting as bank at the momentof having fixed the wheel when zero turned up three times in succession.On that occasion blood was actually spilt, and so serious was the episode considered that several of his clubs requested Reginalds resignation.

As to the drama, the modern child prefers plays with a little zip to them. Almos

t anything that has been denounced by the Parents League should prove acceptable.

REFRESHMENTS are another serious problem. Broadly speaking, the child hostess cannot go wrong if she observes the following rules. Immediately on arrival, the guest should be confronted with a tray of cocktails. During dinner; sherry, hock,and champagne. After dinner, liqueurs; and possibly, though this is not essential, high-balls when the party breaks up. Only the best brands of champagne may be used. Better be seen on Fifth Avenue in the afternoon carrying a Teddy-bear than try and palm off any of the American brands in the hope that, if the butler and footmen keep their hands over the labels, your guests will not know the difference.

On the all-important matter of amusing her guests after dinner, in the event of

there being no theatre-party, the child hostess must be warned to spare no expense. Only the best entertainers should be permitted to perform. If Uncle Frank wants to sing comic songs "to amuse the children," suppress him at once. In the ma


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tter of comedy Harry Lauder and Fred Stone would be safe cards to play, but children are such stern critics of humor that it would probably be better to steer clear of it altogether and stick to such tried performers as Caruso, and Pavlova.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE COUNTRY SERVANT PROBLEMAn Anguished Word or Two On the Matter of Securing and Retaining Rural DomesticsBy Pelham GrenvilleVanity Fair (February 1015)HOW dwellers in the city can go about saying that they have a Servant Problem ismore than I can understand. When I lived in town, I found life absolutely simple in that respect. I just went around to a good Agency, collected a Norwegian, p

aid her five hundred dollars a month, or whatever it was, suited my hours to hers, had all the washing done at a laundry, and there I wason velvet, as you mightsay.

How different it is in the country. Here in the wilds, the Servant Problem hitsyou like a dum dum shell from a German howitzer. It isnt only a question of keeping your maid. It is a question of having her appear at all. I shall not readilyforget Miss OConnorJulia, to her intimates. She came to us like manna from the sky. She agreed, in the interview, to everything. She liked cooking, loved washing,and counted that day lost when she did not make beds or shake stoves. Moreover,she only demanded a salary of such modest proportions that it would have left us ample for our little necessities and perhaps even for an occasional jaunt to the city. She left our preliminary interview promising to appear again at eight oc

lock on Monday morning.

MONTHS have passed since that day, but we have never again set eyes upon the sunshine of Miss OConnors smiles. She sent no word: she wrote no letter: she simply didnt come, Weeks later we heard by the merest chance that her mother did not wanther to go out that season.

In these parts it is the mothers who are at the heart of the Servant Problem. They have a habit of doing the family washing on Monday mornings, and the daughters all want to help their maternal parents at their cleansing tasks. Celia, our present maid, lives at home with her mother, and visits us only by day. She is ajewel of the first water. She cooks like a chef and shakes a stove like a Sandow, but it would be a rash man who would bet on the off chance of her arriving here on Monday morning.

It is the old, old story. The fatal fascination of the maternal wash-tub is a little too great for her.

I sometimes have a vision of Celia on a Monday morning. I see her just mountingher bicycle, all ready to come to us! Another moment, and she will be on her way, and all will be joy, jollity, and song. And then through the window floats thestrange, seductive scent of wet linen. She sniffs, hesitates, and, hesitating,is lost. The bicycle is wheeled back, and she flies like a homing pigeon to mess

about with soap and things, while we, listening for her lightsome step upon thestairs, gradually pass from hope to despair.


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OF course, we have our great moments. There is probably no purer joy than that which comes from hearing Celias tap on the door just when we have given up hope and resigned ourselves to a maidless day. Once she turned up at ten oclock, and itwas perfectly amazing to see the way the sun came out and the birds began suddenly to sing; as if somebody had pressed a celestial button.

Celia is older than most of the maids out here. They all seem to believe in starting their professional careers early. They combine them with school. I rememberhow madly we rushed about the country last October in search of an Italian girlof whom we had heard. It transpired, on enquiry, that she was twelve years old.I once came home and found a tiny child toddling about the kitchen. After I hadgiven her candy and hunted out a picture-book for her to look at and offered toplay Bears or Red Indians with her, and wondered which of the neighbors little tot she might be, I discovered that it was this child to whom I was about to paysix dollars a week for cooking my meals and cleaning my house.

THEY manage all these things better in British India. Sometimes, before Celia came to us, after I had shaken the stove and taken the cinders out into the gardenand fed the animals and washed the dishes and mopped the kitchen-floor and swept the living-rooms and made the beds and got in wood from the cellar (which, forthe convenience of the occupant, is situated outside the house) and carried ina pail-full of coal and settled down for a quiet smoke and found that I had forgotten the coal for the kitchen-range and gone out again and got in the coal forthe kitchen-range and settled down for a quiet smoke and found that I had omitted to let the kitten in and gone out again and let the kitten in and settled downfor a quiet smoke and found that through an oversight there was no kerosene inthe oil-stove and gone out again and brought in kerosene and settled down for aquiet smoke, I would draw my chair closer to my wifes and say in a reverent sort

of way, Tell me about India.

And my wife would say, When I lived in India, we had a butler, an assistant-butler, a cook, an assistant-cook, a sweeper, several grooms, a few gardeners, a dog-boy, a ladys maid, and a chokrah!

What, I would ask, though knowing quite well and merely wishing to luxuriate in the description, is a chokrah?

A chokrah, my wife would say, is an assistant-assistant-butlera man whose sole dutyit is to help the assistant-butler assistant-buttle.

And the salaries, the united salaries, of this entire mob?

About twenty dollars a month, and they find their own food.

THAT if you please, is homelife in India.

Why, in these United States the dog-boy would want about that amount a week forhimself, and would undertake his arduous duties only on the understanding that he was not expected to have anything to do with looking after the dogs.

As for the assistant-assistant-butlerthe imagination simply declines to dwell upo

n him at all.


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~~~ The End ~~~

BOY! PAGE MR. COMSTOCK!Somebody Wants to See Him About Some Plays Now Running in New YorkBy P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (March 1915)

ONE of the most puzzling of the phenomena of social life in New York is the curiously erratic behavior of that guardian of the public morals, Mr. Anthony Comstock. He is like the pea in the shell-game. Now you see him, and now you don

t. Healso resembles one of those German bombs which sometimes make an explosion like

the simultaneous excavation of a dozen subways, and sometimes fail to go off atall. He leaped upon September Morn in a manner reminiscent of young Mr. Hardwickof Harvard making a flying tackle; he set himself for the punch and swung on TheBeautiful Adventure, like a White Hope, but, up to the moment of going to press,he has failed to emit so much as a soft moan of protest against The Song of Songs. Has he ceased to patronize the drama, or have his views on what is and what isnot suitable for the New Yorker changed of late?Possibly the title of the above-named masterpiece has deceived him. That is theworst of play titles. Ninety in the Shade for instance, is nothing of the sort. TheSong of Songs, from which we only just steered away our maternal grandmotherwho had bought tickets under the impression that it was a musical comedy, to which form of entertainment she is passionately addictedought to have been called Why Girls Go Wrong or Doras Downfall or something of that sort.

Be that as it may. it is our considered opinion that Mr. Comstock has missed thechance of his young life.

There is yet another possibility, to wit, that Mr. Comstock did see The Song of Songs, but was so enchanted with Miss Irene Fenwicks acting of the principal rle that he failed, as we did, till we got away and thought it over quietly, to appreciate the indecency of the play. Whatwould happen to Mr. Sheldons dramatization of Herr Sudermanns novel, without MissFenwick to soften down the coarseness of the heroine, does not bear thinking of.Life with Lily Kardos, the shop-girl from the Boardwalk Bazaar at Atlantic City, was, reduced to its simplest terms, just one man after another, and differed from other lives of the same kind only in the fact that, as far as one could gather, she did it at all from the highest motives.

Her dear old father had left her a song about seeking him whom my soul loved, andwe are supposed to accept Lilys various adventures as so many false starts in thesearch for an ideal. And such is Miss Fenwicks charm that we do so accept themtill the curtain falls and we are out once more in the pure air of Forty-second Street. And then, in the sober, wholesome atmosphere of Broadway, we begin to doubt. Take away Miss Fenwick, whispers a voice, and is not The Song of Songs simply the same old stuff which kindly managers have been producing for so many seasons,to give the Tired Business Man something to smack his lips over?

AND we are compelled to answer that it most certainly is. Hogarth said all therewas to be said on the theme when he drew "The Harlot

s Progress." You may gild


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the life of the courtesan, and sentimentalize over it as you will, but it remains a poor thing, and only artists of the highest class can save it from dreariness.

Irene Fenwick is wonderful. She would have been enough by herself to have savedthe piece. But the management wisely took no chances, and saw to it that each ofthe other principal parts should be in the best possible hands. Rather than The

Song of Songs, The Cast of Casts would have made an excellent title; for better acting than that of Dorothy Donnelly, John Mason, Cyril Keightley and Thomas Wise has not been seen on Broadway for many seasons. Even the tiny rles of Ruby Purcelland Della Shay, the shop-girls, are perfectly played by Maude Allan and HelenaRapport.

Our personal attitude towards The Song of Songs is very much that of the editor ofthe country paper towards the Jeffries-Johnson fight at Reno, who wrote that the forthcoming contest was the most brutal, soul-destroying, degrading exhibitionever scheduled, but that he would certainly go. The Song of Songs is a thoroughlybad, immoral, and deleterious product, but we are going again next Tuesday. Wetrust, however. that Mr. Sheldons conscience will lead him to divide his authors r

oyalty on our two dollars between Miss Fenwick and Miss Donnelly.

THERE seems to be something of a boom in Women Who Did But Shouldnt Have Done this season. Miriam, in Outcast, walks on to the stage from the street, and the nearest approach to a heroine in Mr. Hobarts morality-play, Experience, is Frailty in theepisode of The House of Last Resort; and in six other successes the principal female character is a woman who has fallen some of the way, if not all of itfrom the frankly immoral Innocent in the play of that name, to the injured but erring wife in On Trial. It would seem as if the public did not begin to be attracted to a woman until Society had cast her off,

There is one other play in which, though women are falling, as it were, with dull thuds all over the place, there is nothing into which Mr. Comstock, when discovered and dragged from his hiding-place, could, so to speak, get his teeth. Thisis that curious Mormon drama Polygamy, by the authors ofof all piecesThe Dummy.

Life in Utah is still, according to Miss Ford and Mr. OHiggins, the corollary ofLily Kardos just one woman after another. Miss Ford and Mr. OHiggins, unlike the gifted author of the ballad entitled, OGorman the Mormon, who pointed out how hard the practice of polygamy was on the male, take the view that it is the women who really suffer from it. They have drawn a picture of quiet, peaceful, home life inSalt Lake City, with everybody marrying everybody else, which should do much todiscourage immigration to that district. The beauty of the Mormon play, from one point of view, is that you can be corkingly improper and nobody can say a word, because you are exposing a GRAVE EVIL. That scene where the first wife falls swooning outside the second wifes bedroom door gets considerably closer to the point where the police rush in with locust- sticks, and announce that the theatre is pinched, than anything in The Song of Songs, yet the authors, if charged, wouldunhesitatingly reply, Salacious? Where do you get that? What do you mean, salacious? This is a Grave Exposure. And, presumably, they would have right on their side. But the Tired Business Man gets his thrill arid smacks his lips, just the same.

As far as the success of Polygamy is concerned, it was unfortunate that The Girl From Utah was such a hit earlier in the season, at the Knickerbocker. Mormons may be everything that is sinister and awful, but, to the average man, they are inext

ricably bound up with Mr. Joseph Cawthorn, and Polygamy gives one a sense of something missing, which can only be removed by the writing in of a couple of good comic songs for the Prophet. This done, and a dancing chorus added to Act II, ther


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e is no reason why Polygamy should not run into 1916.

THAT same advantage which we have just noted in the Mormon drama belongs also tothe Modern Morality play. So long as you call your characters Youth,Frailty, and soon, you, as the playwright, may go the limit, and the policeman on the sidewalk

, outside the theatre, will touch his hat to you. However improper you are, youmean well and are simply working for moral good. All things considered, Mr. Hobart has been rather niggardly to the Tired Business Man, who would probably haveliked to see a good deal more of the lady called Passion than the one brief scene in which she figures. As for Mr. Hobarts Pleasure, she might have been called Respectability. There is a certain amount of good knock-about vice in the House of Last Resort, but nothing to bring a blush to the baldest head, and, all in all, Mr. Hobart may be said to have rather slipped one over on the t. b. m.

But, if Mr. Hobart has failed him, M. Brieux has not. In Maternity he achieves thelimit, and then not a little. But here again Mr. Comstock will find himself handicapped. You cannot shriek the charge of immorality at Brieux unless you are pr

epared to deal singly and seriatim with every highbrow in the land, for Brieux is Serious and Educational, and only crashes through thin ice because he feels that thin ice ought to be crashed through for the good of the nation.

Looking at it dispassionately, indeed, one comes to the conclusion that Mr. Comstock is a wise man to lie hid, and make no outcry against the present crop of plays. They are extremely blushful, but how is he to say so? If he attacks Maternity, Brieux raises his eyebrows, and says, Has this man no desire to improve socialconditions? If he turns on Polygamy, Mr. OHiggins looks pityingly at Miss Ford, as who should exclaim: This poor person is apparently unaware that we are Opening TheEyes Of America to an Awful State Of Things. If he objects to certain incidentsin Experience, Mr. Hobart silently directs his attention to the abstract names ofhis characters. The only play he can really assault without putting himself in a

false position is The Song of Songs, and Miss Fenwick is so charming that he would hardly have the heart to do that.

BUT the fact remains that he ought to do something, and that soon. Did you hearwhat Mr. Billy Sunday has been saying about us? Here are his exact words: Theres rotten, stinking, corroding, corrupt, hell-ridden, God-defying, devil-ridden NewYork. God will get it in his own good time. It must have been the theatres whichgave Mr. Sunday that idea, for wheat there is corroding and devil-ridden in theordinary life of the city cannot be discovered. New York is a most respectable place, full of nice old gentlemen dancing the maxixe in restaurants, and crowds of lovely girls flocking to see the Perils of Pauline at the moving-picture houses,and fair women and brave men drinking ice-cream sodas in drug-stores and innocent-hearted-commuters sprinting to make the five-fifteen for Kew Gardens. There is not a bit of harm In New York, but the place is getting a bad name simply because these powerful dramatists try to make out that all men are villains and allwomen are either villainesses, or Women Who Have Been Wronged.

Mr. Comstock must act, and at once.

There is still time. In this mornings papers there was a headline:

BILLY SUNDAY CANNOT SAVE NEW YORKTILL THE FALLThat gives us a few months more in which to put our house in order, but every mo

ment is precious. We must rout out Mr. Comstock at once.

Boy, page Mr. Comstock.


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~~~ The End ~~~

SCOOTERIN: HALF SAILING, HALF ICE-BOATINGBy P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (March 1915)LIKE so many other pastimes, Scooterin did not start its career with the idea ofbeing a pastime at all. Its original idea was a purely utilitarian one. This frequently happens in the world of sport.

Tue first men to Scooter did it, not because they wanted to be exhilarated by the movement, but because they wanted to get from one place to another. They werethe various groups of life-savers on the beach which bounds the ocean side of the Great South Bay, and they found it impossible to get over to the mainland in winter for supplies owing to the danger from the ice-holes in the bay. With a touch of natural genius, they put a pair of runners on the bottom of their boats. The boats whizzed across the ice, plunged into a hole, and, instead of being at all discommoded by the hole, behaved better in the water than on the ice.

And therein lies the charm of Scooterin, that it is at its best when the ice hasholes in it, for the pleasurable sensation comes from the abrupt change from iceto water and from water to icea sensation somewhat resembling that obtained by shooting the chutes at Coney Island. It is this that makes your Scooterer laugh a s

harp, derisive laugh, when you say to him that you suppose that Scooterin is really just the same as ice-boating, isnt it? In an eloquent burst he will point out that Scooterin has it over ice-boating in a dozen ways, which he will proceed specifically to name.

For one thing its cheaperas a good Scooter boat costs only $100. You have to steera Scooter entirely by the jib. It takes two or three persons to work it properly, and some thing of a Polar bear or an Arctic explorer to enjoy it on a reallycold day.

When the hardy Scooter rises from his couch on a February morning and finds thewater frozen in his bedroom pitcher, and, putting his head out of doors, is nearly decapitated by a razor-like wind blowing from the east, he says to himself, Itsa hanged fine day. Ill go Scooterin. So he trots off to the partly frozen lake orbay, collects a few friends, and gets out his boat. And presently they are flying across the ice at the pace of a racing automobile. Soon they come to a spot where the ice has melted and left a watery gap. The Scooter boat does not even hesitate. It skims across the gap like a duck, and goes about its lawful occupations on the other side as if nothing had happened. And then the wind drops suddenly, or shifts, and the boat goes round in circles, while he at the tiller shouts unintelligible directions to one of his passengers to shift his weight to one side, or not to shift his weight to one side, or to do something which he is not doing, or not to do something which he is doing. And the passenger, by now a chunk

of solid ice, tries to thaw his frozen senses sufficiently to do what he is told to do or not to do what he is told not to do. And somewhere, deep down in him,a voice is whispering, About now, you poor deluded nut, if you hadnt come Scooter


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in, you would be sitting down to a nice, hot breakfast in front of your fire.

I hold no brief for or against Scooterin. If the public likes to rush to lakes and rivers and bays and start Scooterin, by all means let it so rush and Scooter: but let it be clearly understood that I, though advertising this weird pastime inthis esteemed paper, will not often be dragged from my warm fireside to participate in it.

~~~ The End ~~~

All About the Pastime of Divorce

By Pelham GranvilleVanity Fair, May 1915DIVORCE, which is derived from the Latin word divertere, to go apart, and may beeither an occasional experiment, as in the case of the ordinary citizen, or a hobby, as with Mr. Nat Goodwin, Mr. Robert Fitzsimmons, and Mr. De Wolf Hopper, is best described as the privilege accorded to the losing player (in the game ofmatrimony) to buy another stack of chips and start in all over again. It is an ingenious invention by which the resolute man may enjoy all the advantages of being a Mormon elder, without having plays written about him by Harriet Ford and Harvey OHiggins. The word divorce is in many ways the most popular in the language,and it is by virtue of constantly repeating it to himself, like a magic charm,that the fastidious man is enabled to bear up, when first confronted by his wifesrelations.

Divorce, in its earliest stages, was a crude thing. Prehistoric Man conducted his divorces, as he did his marriages, with the fat end of a stone bludgeon. The only way in which the divorce ceremony differed from the marriage ceremony was that in the former case the plaintiff hit harder.

The idea of the remarriage of a divorce was repugnant to him, and he endeavored to render such a thing out of the question.

IT was under the Ancient Romans that Divorce, considered as a fine art, reachedits highest point. The astute husbands and wives of that epoch saw their way todoing themselves a bit of good by means of it. There is no doubt that the Romansgave divorce-presents, probably in the shape of fish-slices, egg-holders, plate-warmers and all those things which, when taken round the corner to the local pawnbroker (avunculus), could be exchanged for solid and satisfactory cash (denarii). The Ancient Roman, therefore, got his unfortunate friends as it were, comingand going, and may be said to have known a bit.

In modern times Divorce varies greatly according to the country in which it takes place. In England for instance, it is so rare that, when it happens, the newspapers devote most of their middle page to a report of the proceedings. But as amatter of fact, divorce in England is mostly confined to the theatre. If the first act of an English play is laid either in the morning-room of Maltravers Park

or in the drawing-room of Lady Beevors town-house in Grosvenor Square, you can hepretty sure that somebodys divorce is going to be the motive of it.


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It is assumed in England, at any rate that the United States leads the world inthe matter of divorce: and it will probably be a severe blow to our patriots tolearn that this is not the case. Even at the risk of inflaming Messrs. Goodwin,Fitzsimmons, and Hopper to renewed efforts, we must state the truth that Japan makes America look like a timid novice in this particular branch of industry. InJapan there are twenty-two divorces per thousand inhabitants, while in the United States there are a mere eight per thousand. It is but a melancholy consolation

that the next competitor in order, Switzerland, only scores three.

This is the sort of revelation which takes all the heart out of an energetic andpersevering people. The reason is not far to seek. It lies in the fact that, while certain States are doing all that can be expected of them we take off our hat to Washington, where there are eleven separate and distinct grounds for divorce others are simply loafing. In South Carolina, for instance, divorce is actually not permitted, and in many states it cannot he obtained for such perfectly adequate causes as teasing the Siberian eel-spaniel, omitting to bring home candy,putting ice in the claret, wearing a straw-hat before June the fifteenth, reading the novels of Harold Bell Wright, using a last seasons automobile, revoking atBridge, and appearing in public in tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. Naturally t

he Japanese, a race which pulls together as one man in every patriotic movement,is way ahead of the United States.

BUT, even under existing conditions, with every obstacle placed in the way of divorce, it is astonishing that it is not more common. When we look about us and see how uniformly repulsive our fellow human-beings are, it seems extraordinary that only eight out of every thousand of them take the sensible course of breaking away from one another forever. The reason is that, in this country, the expense of divorce is so great. The male aspirant is faced with the prospect of havingto part not only from his wife, which he could endure cheerfully, but from a considerable portion of his hard-earned doubloons in the shape of alimony. Judges,

as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is only found in men who are giving away somebody elses money. It is getting so that divorce, instead of being the pastime of the people, has degenerated into a relaxation for the idle rich.

Alimony in Japan is a mere matter of yen a yen being about a thousandth part ofa dollar. With a reasonable amount of luck, your Japanese can get divorced halfa dozen times a year for about what it would cost him in New York to tip the head-waiter of a second-rate cabaret for getting him a table twenty-seven feet fromthe dancing-floor and directly behind a pillar.

~~~ The End ~~~

Aubreys Arrested Individualityby P. Brooke HavenVanity Fair, May 1915** Editors Note : P. Brooke Haven is one of the many pseudonyms PGW usedWHAT soured existence for Aubrey Devine was the fact that his wife was, in one i

mportant matter, unreasonable. She declined to go before the world as the bearerof his name. Her argument was two-fold. In the first place she claimed that, asAdelaide Brewster Moggs, she was already carrying a sufficient weight of name f


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or one weak woman and that, in a world which contained Virginia Terhune van derWater, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, and Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale, there was not sufficient space for Adelaide Brewster Moggs Devine. In the second place,Adelaide Brewster Moggs was not so much a name as a trade-mark. The public hadgrown accustomed to welcoming the utterances on The Future of Woman by AdelaideBrewster Moggs, and to spring an unexpected Devine on them would perplex and annoy them. It would be as if they were suddenly confronted at their favorite vaude

ville house with Eva Tanguay Robinson or Irene Franklin Chesterfield-Bodsworth.

Aubrey yielded the point, and with it his individuality. It is true that one ortwo intimate friends down-town knew him as Devine, but to the world at large hewas I-forget-his-name, Adelaide Brewster Moggs husband. Earnest sociologists who tripped over Aubrey in dark corners of the Devine apartment on the occasion of Adelaide Brewster Moggs weekly salons, in relating the episode to their wives, wouldnot say that they had stubbed their toe on Aubrey Rockmetteller Devine, they would say that they fell foul of Miss Moggs husband. Newspaper reports of meetingsgraced by the presence of Americas leading exponent of Womans Rights would recorda speech from Miss Adelaide Brewster Moggs, who was accompanied by her husband. Sometimes a snapshot of Adelaide would appear in a Sunday paper, with Aubrey at he

r side. The legend beneath it would run Miss Adelaide Brewster Moggs, the famouschampion of Womanhood, with her husband.

This preyed upon Aubreys mind. It gave him a feeling of disembodied spiritualitywhich was most unpleasant. Sometimes he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was there. When signing a check he would often pause an instant to remember what name he ought to write.

He began to brood. Lying awake at night, he would try to think up ways of makinga name for himself. He went at it systematically. He made a list of the most prominent men in the country, men who had made names for themselves, as follows:

President Wilson, William J. Bryan, Jack Johnson, Vernon Castle, Billy Sunday, G

eorge M. Cohan, John D. Rockefeller.

Could he follow in these mens footsteps? No, and, briefly, for the following reasons:

He did not know how to wait watchfully. He disliked grape-juice. He could not box. He tripped over his feet when he tried to foxtrot. He did not perspire readily. He had no father. He had a good digestion.

SOMETIMES he thought of committing a murder or robbing a bank, but refrained because the sight of blood always made him feel faint and there seemed, for a novice, to be so few opportunities of robbing banks.

But one morning Fate relented. Genevieve OGrady entered his life.

One really scarcely knows what to say of Miss OGrady. She was employed by the Mammoth Store, and, except on very rare occasions, hardly ever had to work more than eleven hours a day. And she was in receipt of the excellent salary of five andhalf dollars a week, ample for a young girl who does not keep an automobile andhas mastered the art of living on bread and weak tea. Looking at it with the eye of a dispassionate observer, one would have said that life was one long roundof enjoyment for the girl. She had the whole day to herself except from eight inthe morning till seven at night, and nothing to do with her money, after feedin

g and clothing herself, except squander it on her personal pleasures.

Yet this child of fortune, in a silly mood, flung herself off the side of a ferr


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y-boat into the whirling waters of the Hudson River. Of the dozen or so spectators of the incident, all had some remark to make about it. One said, What did shedo that for? Another said, Would you look at that! Others declared that somebody ought to do something about it.

The only person present to take definite action was Aubrey Rockmetteller Devine.

To Aubrey this chance seemed sent by Heaven. Pausing merely to remove his hat heplunged in and swam to where Miss OGrady, now repenting of her rash act, kickedand called for help. The only doubt in his mind was the exact way in which the papers would feature the thing.

They might say:

DEVINES DASHING DEEDDARINGLY DRAGS DAMSELFROM DIRE DESTRUCTION

Or possibly,

DEVINE DID ITSaw, Seized, Saved SuicidalShop-Girl

Or again,

DARE-DEVIL DEVINEDIVERTS DEATHBY DROWNING

As he reached her, Miss OGrady came up for the third time and twined herself clin

gingly about him. They returned below the surface together.

Just about the time when the only really suitable headline for the incident would have been

DEVINE SWALLOWS ALLOF THE HUDSON RIVER

help arrived.

After they had done all that first-aid-for-the-apparently-drowned stuff on Aubrey, they took him and the dripping lady to Park Row. There the reporters all hada good look at him.

Why, I know that man, one of the news editors finally exclaimed. Its its Ive forhis name, but hes Adelaide Brewster Moggs husband.

~~~ The End ~~~

The Disappearance Of Podmarsh


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Good News For After-Dinner Speakers

By P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (June 1915)STUYVESANT Bodger, the explorer, is back from West Africa with a strange story, several strange stories, in fact, but one which differs from the others in that

we cannot be absolutely certain that it is a lie. He claims to have seen and spoken to Robert Podmarsh.

Only the oldest members now remember Podmarsh, once the scourge of the club. Itis so many years since he disappeared. He vanished one summer without warning, and I can still recall the period of anxiety we lived through. We were afraid hemight be in our midst again at any moment, telling us those old familiar humorous stories of his under which we had suffered so long. Then, as the days went byand he still remained absent, a new hope began to animate our breasts. And finally we came to the conclusion that he must be dead.

Those were happy days.

But Bodger says that Podmarsh is not dead.

I will tell you the whole thing, said Bodger. I was travelling through the Oojoobwaregion, south of the MPongo, when, as night was falling, I came to a small village, a mere collection of mud huts. The inhabitants looked friendly, so I determined to stop for the night. There seemed to be a good deal of excitement in the place. There was a crowd of semi-naked persons of both sexes chattering and gesticulating. I enquired the reason, and learned that it was the night of the complimentary dinner to Ggbrllmx, which in the MPongo dialect, means He Who Entertains. Afowl was to be roasted whole in the market-place, and human sacrifices and allsorts of jollifications, and afterwards He Who Entertains would make one of hisfamous speeches and tell some of his inimitable dialect stories.

Well, to cut a long story short, which Podmarsh would never have done, I attended the dinner, and the first thing that struck me (not counting a cocoanut thrownby one of the guests) was the extraordinary likeness of the principal guest tosomeone I had seen before.

That speech of his took me straight back to this club. It was Robert Podmarsh. The speech contained no fewer than six of those Irish dialect stories which he used to inflict on us. He spoke, of course, in the MPongo dialect, but the storieswere the same.

It seems that he began to suspect from almost imperceptible signs that his anecdotes had outstayed their first strong welcome in this club.

He decided to travel, to give us time to miss him. And, while off the coast of West Africa, his vessel was wrecked. Coming ashore, he was met and captured by roving natives, and conducted to that village.

THE first and only ballot taken among the inhabitants on the question of what todo with him resulted in a sweeping victory for the party the main plank in whose platform was that Podmarsh should be cooked and eaten.

The preparations were well under way, when a fowl, which had been nesting in som

e bushes, ran past. Habit, even in that crisis, was too much for Podmarsh.

Why, he asked, did that chicken cross the road? The tribe gave the matter its attent


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ion. Opinions varied. Some said that it crossed the road to avoid a snake. Others hinted at witchcraft. Not at all, said Podmarsh. It crosses the road to get to the other side.

The effect, he tells me, was instantaneous. There was a riot. Dignified medicine-men held their sides: portly witch-doctors rolled in the dust. And before theycould recover, Podmarsh was telling them other stories of the same vintage.

AFTER that there was no more talk of eating Podmarsh. The tribe took him to itsheart. A special hut and seven wives were assigned to him.

Podmarsh was in his element. The MPongo are a simple, untutored race, and such istheir mental darkness that they did not even know, till Podmarsh informed them,that a door could ever be anything but a door.

The whole affair, concluded Stuyvesant Bodger, is a remarkable example of the law of supply and demand. And I could not help thinking, as I left the village, where

there was already talk of running Podmarsh for the office of local God, in place of a stone idol which had let the MPongo down badly in its last two wars with neighboring tribes, what a pity it is that all our club jesters and after-dinnerspeakers cannot be induced to follow his example and go to some distant spot where they would be really appreciated.

Failing that, he added sadly, the next best thing would be to adopt in New York theadmirable MPongo custom of human sacrifices.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE SECRET PLEASURES OF REGINALDby P. Brooke-HavenVanity Fair - (June 1915)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 dont seem to be doing anything, I said.

Its not what Im doing, its 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 youll go. Do you know Bodfish?

I shuddered. Wilkinson Bodfish? I do.

Have you ever spent a week-end at Bodfishs place in the country?

I shuddered again. I have.


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Well, Im not spending the week-end at Bodfishs place in the country.

I see you are not. But

You dont understand. I do not mean that I am simply absent from Bodfishs place in the country. I mean that I am deliberately not spending the week-end there. Whenyou interrupted me just now, I was not strolling down to Bodfishs garage, listeni

ng to his prattle about his new car.

I glanced round uneasily.

Reggie, old man, youre youre not This hot weather

I am perfectly well, and in possession of all my faculties. Now tell me! Can youimagine anything more awful than to spend a week-end with Bodfish?

On the spur of the moment I could not.

Can you imagine anything more delightful, then, than not spending a week-end with

Bodfish? Well, thats what Im doing now. Soon, when you have gone if you have anyother engagements, please dont let me keep you I shall not go into the house andnot listen to Mrs. Bodfish on the subject of young Willie Bodfishs premature intelligence.

I GOT his true meaning. I see. You mean that you will be thanking your stars thatyou arent with Bodfish.

That is it, put crudely. But I go further. I dont indulge in a mere momentary self-congratulation, I do the thing thoroughly. If I were week-ending at Bodfishs, Ishould have arrived there just half an hour ago. I therefore selected that momen

t for beginning not to week-end with Bodfish. I settled myself in this chair andI 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 hadthe 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 timeafter 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 week-end, though. That is when I shall enjoy myself. Do you know a man named Pringle? Next SaturdayI 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 run-down and needed a real test. I shall be all right on Monday.


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And so shall I, I said, sinking into the chair beside him.

Youre not going to the country? he asked regretfully.

I am not. I, too, need a tonic. I shall join you at Bodfishs. I really feel a lotbetter already.

I closed my eyes, and relaxed, and a great peace settled upon me.

~~~ The End ~~~

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO HAMLETThe Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy Settled at LastBy Pelham GrenvilleVanity Fair (June 1915)

THE Baconians say that Shakespeare could not have written the Shakespeare playsbecause he had not the education.

Mr. Arnold Daly in a recent number of Vanity Fair said that Bacon could not havewritten them because he had not the stagecraft.

It is just as well to get this controversy settled and remove a powerful temptation from the paths of young authors, so here is my theory, which not only givesa satisfactory answer to every difficulty but bears also to anyone with any knowledge of the mechanism of the theatre: that is to say, a knowledge of what happens before a play is produced on the stage the obvious stamp of truth.

Bacon, it will be remembered by historical students, was a man of considerable g

ifts, best known to the reading public of his day as the author of two bright little works entitled respectively The Novum Organum and De Interpretatione Naturae etc., etc.

Like everybody else since Adam, he had the firm conviction that he could write acorking play.

There never has been anyone who did not think that he could write a play and there never will be anyone.

SO Bacon, in the intervals of Chancellor-of-the-Exchequering, sat down, got outthe old quill pen, and dashed off a tragedy. Titles were not his forte, so, instead of calling it The Girl from Elsinore," the best he could do was Hamlet."

A hanged good bit of work, by my halidom, he said to Lady Bacon. This will be a hit.

And he began sending it round to the managers.

The first manager kept it six months, and, when Bacon wrote enquiring about it,sent him back a farcical comedy by some other gentleman, regretting that it wasnot in his power, much as he admired it, to produce the same.

Bacon sighed, and sent another copy to another manager.

When a year had elapsed, he wrote, apologizing for seeming in any way to be tryi


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ng to rush the manager, but asking if any decision on his drama Hamlet had been arrived at. A few days later he received by the same mail his manuscript and a letter from the managers secretary saying there was evidently some mistake, for no such manuscript had ever been received in the office.

BY this time Bacon had begun to realize, as so many others have realized since,that things theatrical are inseparable from a sort of brisk delirium usually associated only with the interiors of homes for the insane.

He had just resolved to give the thing up, when, quite unexpectedly, a manager wrote asking him to call.

After waiting three and a half hours in the ante-room, with a crowd of blue-chinned persons who told each other how At John-o-Groats a year agone come the feast of St. Paul, I jumped right in and saved ye show and By St. George of England I wasa riot at Bootle," he was shown in to the managers private office.

Now this whats-its-name, this Hamlet of yours, said the manager. It looks pretty gooto me, by St. James of Compostella. I kind of like it. Its got the punch.

Bacon murmured his gratification.

Of course, added the manager, itll have to be fixed.

Fixed?

Sure. Couldnt put it on as it stands. The public wouldnt look at it. Youre new at this game, I suppose!

BACON muttered something about having done a bit of writing.

Oh, shucks, said the manager, I know all about that. I know a fellow whose cousin read a piece by you, the Novum something. But writing plays is quite different. No essayist ever wrote a good play. Its a rule in the theatre that the better thestuff a man writes in any other line, the worse he is at writing plays. No, wellget this thing of yours fixed. I know a lad wholl do it. Shakespeares his name. Hesin my company. Hell put some ginger in it. Now about terms. You get one per centof the gross.

Bacon, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer was pretty good at figures, protestedthat one per cent of the gross was not much.

Forget it, said the manager. Why, you might make a pile out of one per cent. Columbus discovered America so youll have the American money as well, and so on. Sign here.

A shrewd man, Bacon realised at once that there was nothing else for him to do.

THE superstition current in theatrical circles that there was a kind of magic inplaywriting, and that nobody could fathom the mysteries of the craft unless hewas one of the small coterie who spent their time in the Mermaid Tavern buying s

ack for managers, was too strong for him.

He knew his Hamlet was good, but he also knew that he would never get it produced


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unless he consented to hand it over to the men who had been twenty years in the business, and knew it all, to do what they liked with it. So he signed the contract, and the manager sent round to the Mermaid for Shakespeare.

Shakespeare read the manuscript, then and there.

The finish is weak, he said. No pep. What you want to do is to have the whole bunch

jump on each other and everybody kill everybody else. Ill fix it.

But surely, said Bacon, isnt that all a little improbable?

It doesnt matter whether its improbable, said Shakespeare, coldly. Its what the publwants. Its good stuff. Now, you make Hamlet loony. That wont do. Do you think matine girls are going to worship a nut?

But its in the character. His sufferings drove him mad.

BACK to the egg, youre not hatched yet. Check his sufferings with your hat. What hes going to do is to pretend hes crazy, see? Everybodys fooled but the audience. Gives a chance for comedy, too. Make the girl loony, if you like. Ill write in a scene where he joshes those two college friends of his. Now what about this To be or not to be speech? The public dont like soliloquies. I guess Ill cut that. No, I guess itll have to stand. It gives the stage-hands a chance to set the scene backof the front-cloth. But if its to stay in, it wants to be longer. Ill write in a line or two. Hows this for a line: Or to take arms against a sea of troubles?

BUT you cant take arms against a sea. Its a mixed metaphor.

Never mind, its a good acting line. In it goes. Well, there we are for a start. Illtake the script off to the Mermaid and be thinking up some other improvements.

Bacon went home and tied a vinegar-soaked kerchief round his forehead.

He did not attend the opening of Hamlet or any subsequent performance.

That, I think, is undoubtedly the solution of the controversy which has caused so much good ink to be spilled and so many homes to be broken up.

We know what theatrical managers are to-day, and we know what they were like inold Greece, for it is on record that even Aristophanes only succeeded in gettinghis first play produced by allowing a since forgotten, but then established, dramatist to put his name to it.

Is it likely that conditions were any different in the days of Elizabeth? We trow not, by our halidom, and by other of our personal possessions.

NOTHING is more likely than that Bacon should write a play, and nothing is lesslikely than that the managers of his day should permit it to see the footlightsunfixed by the twenty-years-in-the-business brigade.

One does not wish to think hardly of Shakespeare, so we may assume that he did offer to have the bills read as follows:

HAMLETbyWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE


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and Francis Baconbut Bacon, after attending one or two rehearsals, absolutely refused to have hisname connected in any way with the production.

It has always been a mystery to critics why the author of these plays, capable as he was of the most exalted writing, should have inserted lines and scenes in them so far below his best standard.

OBVIOUSLY they were the good acting lines and the corking bits which Shakespeare added in the process of fixing.

One of these days a body of scholars will unearth a cryptogram or something containing Bacons frank opinion of theatrical circles.

If they do, it will probably be indelibly written on asbestos paper.

~~~ The End ~~~

SOME THOUGHTS ON MR. OPPENHEIMBy P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (July 1915)ONE of the worst features of the Great War would seem to be that, as far as the

best and most thrilling side of his work is concerned, it must of necessity putMr. E. Philipps Oppenheim out of business. He may, and no doubt will, continue to write excellent sensational stories, but we fear that what might be called theInternational Spy element in his fiction is doomed.

You know how the Oppenheim novel starts out. As he sups at Londons most expensiveand exclusive restaurant, the notice of the hero is attracted by a beautiful girl in company with a distinguished and red-ribbony sort of man. Enquiry elicitsthe fact that this is the French Ambassador.

Why is he in London? Nobody knows. To those in close touch with international politics his presence there is sinister. The hero returns to his hotel, thinking deeply, and stubs his toe on something soft and squdgy under the bed. It is the body of the French Ambassador. Pinned to the corpse is a card, on which, in a disguised hand, are written the words At-a-boy! Keep-a-working! At this moment thereis a tap at the window, the beautiful girl enters from the fire-escape, hands the hero a sealed envelope marked Important papers. Keep dry, and retires. The restof the story deals with the various attempts of mysterious plug-uglies to give the hero his. In the end it turns out that the envelope contains material which,if disclosed, would inevitably plunge Europe into a general conflict.

But now all the European powers have suddenly come out into the open. They haveceased to plot and begun to fight. Platoons of beautiful girls could inundate anOppenheim hero with letters and he would light his pipe with them.


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It is a great pity, for, if there was one safe refuge from weariness and depression to which we could fly at will, it was these behind-the-scenes novels of Mr.Oppenheim. There has never been anyone quite like him. He raised the sensationalnovel to a niche higher than it had ever dreamed of reaching. His easy, distinguished style, the naturalness of his dialogue, and the wonderfully expert storyconstruction in them made his novels unique.

OF course, he will continue to supply us with perfectly good murders, but his assassins will be mere amateurs, working to gain some private end, not polished schemers in the pay of a great power, with all that powers complicated system of espionage behind them. No, it will not be the same. We shall miss the teamwork. InThe Great Secret spies took the whole floor of the hotel where the hero lived inorder to be able to go about their job of eliminating him with that leisure so essential to Oppenheim assassins.

That is good.

That has the spacious touch. And now this War comes along and spoils it all.

We shall always be glad to welcome Mr. Oppenhems well-bred corpses, but, somehow,they will never be quite the same.

~~~ The End ~~~

Part 2 Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)

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Transcript of Part 2 Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)