Psmith

As I’ve blogged before, I’m on a bit of a Wodehouse binge. I’ve read and reread the sublime Jeeves and Wooster books many times but this year I thought I’d branch out. I started by reading the Blandings books, which are just as wonderful as everyone claims and I’m now encouraged to keep going. I am aware that there are lots of entirely stand-alone books without repeating character, but while I figure out a logical way to explore those I’m going to stick with the series. The next book series I’ve read concerns Psmith.

In fact, I’ve already read a Psmith book because he crosses over with Blandings in the second in that series Leave it to Psmith. This is actually the last of the Psmith books. There are four or five Psmith books. I say ;four or five’ because I’ve read a single volume called Mike and Psmith which seems to be a repackaging and revision of two earlier books (though I’m not sure Psmith appears in both). The complete series, in order of events depicted, is Mike and Psmith (1953), Psmith in the City (1910), Psmith, Journalist (1915), and Leave it to Psmith (1923). Psmith is, therefore, an earlier creation than either Blandings or Jeeves and Wooster.

Who is Psmith? He’s a public schoolboy, immaculately dressed, very wealthy, with a monocle. The most notable thing about him is his most of speech which is elegantly voluble. In fact his speech is the chief pleasure of these books. The wit of them almost entirely derives from Psmith himself, his unconceited high opinion of himself, his lordly high status, and his ability to talk his way out of or into any situation he desires. His chief interlocutor is Mike who appears in all the books as his right-hand man (though he is absent for most of Psmith, Journalist) and Mike is very ordinary, normal, down to earth, an excellent cricketer, a reliable fellow, and a stout friend. He serves, in other words, to emphasise the extraordinary creation that is Psmith. In fact, Psmith seems somewhat Wildean; partly in the taste for paradox, but also in the sublime brilliance of his manner of speech, his attention to aesthetics above almost all else, and a fondness for dramatic exaggeration.

There is also, I might add, a certain queerness to Psmith. He exists in almost entirely male company, is effete and beautifully dressed. He has a camp turn of phrase that seems to suggest fin de siècle aestheticism: in Psmith, Journalist he imagines not solving a particular social problem:

If I were to depart without bringing off improvements […], I shouldn't be able to enjoy my meals. The startled cry would go round Cambridge: 'Something is the matter with Psmith. He is off his feed. He should try Blenkinsop's Balm for the Bilious.' But no balm would do me any good. I should simply droop and fade slowly away like a neglected lily.

When he is shot at in the same book, he is more concerned about the damage to his hat than to his person; And when he does settle down with a woman, he does so with the noticeably slender and boyish Eve Halliday.

But really to know him is to hear him. It’s the way he speaks that is so delightful. A classic mode of speech, almost a catchphrase of his is to imagine that his doings are the talk of the town. In Psmith Journalist, he introduces himself to guests to the newspaper at which he has started working:

‘I am acting sub-editor. The work is not light,’ added Psmith gratuitously. ‘Sometimes the cry goes round, “Can Psmith get through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?” But I stagger on. I do not repine.’

He sprinkles his conversation with Latin phrases and literary references (actually a very Wodehousean style). In Mike and Psmith he urges Mike to stay and listen to him:

"Don't dream of moving," said Psmith. "I have several rather profound observations on life to make and I can't make them without an audience. Soliloquy is a knack. Hamlet had got it, but probably only after years of patient practice.

Often there is great comedy out of the graceful way he places a positive construction on bad situations. In Psmith, Journalist, he describes being asked to go down to the police station by some violent and corrupt cops:

There, standing on the mat, were three policemen. From their remarks I gathered that certain bright spirits had been running a gambling establishment in the lower regions of the building--where, I think I told you, there is a saloon--and the Law was now about to clean up the place. Very cordially the honest fellows invited me to go with them. A conveyance, it seemed, waited in the street without. I pointed out, even as you appear to have done, that sea-green pyjamas with old rose frogs were not the costume in which a Shropshire Psmith should be seen abroad in one of the world's greatest cities; but they assured me - more by their manner than their words - that my misgivings were out of place, so I yielded. These men, I told myself, have lived longer in New York than I. They know what is done and what is not done. I will bow to their views. So I went with them

And very often he wriggles out of situation by sheer force of language, as in Psmith in the City where he talks his boss out of sacking him and then ends:

'It has been a great treat to me, this little chat,' he said affably, 'but I fear that I must no longer allow purely social enjoyments to interfere with my commercial pursuits. With your permission, I will rejoin my department, where my absence is doubtless already causing comment and possibly dismay. But we shall be meeting at the club shortly, I hope. Good-bye, sir, good-bye.'

The high-minded tone is beautifully done. In Mike and Psmith, he has snatched a prized study away from another boy simply by grabbing it and giving the boy no chance to claim what is rightfully his. Too late, the boy appeals to the teacher, to not avail. Psmith has advice for him:

‘This tendency to delay, Spiller,’ he said, ‘is your besetting fault. Correct it, Edwin. Fight against it.’

It is Psmith himself who makes these books work. He has to because there is no real consistency in the style of the books. Mike and Psmith is a series of School and Cricket japes, enjoyable but simple. Psmith in the City is much better, but essentially transplants the school ragging into the workplace, with a rather awkward diversion into the world of left-wing politics. Psmith, Journalist is entirely different, a comic thriller, set in New York with gangsters, boxing, slums and a campaigning newspaper. It is arresting to see Wodehouse describing with real feeling the horrible conditions experienced by people living in slum housing and there is a genuinely heroic desire to expose the horrors of capitalism in the book. There is also a brutal description of a boxing match. The peril never seems entirely perilous, in part because Psmith rises above it at all times. There is also quite a lot of racist language and at one point an undeniably racist comment about an African-American character in the mouth of the book’s sidekick hero Billy Windsor and surely meant to amuse rather than scandalise. Leave it to Psmith is again, different, this much more on the traditional Wodehouse ground of the romantic farce set in a stately home. Indeed, it rather feels like he brings Psmith to Blandings to liven up the place but realises that Blandings has more potential than his hero so he married Psmith off and proceeds with the 9th Earl of Emsworth and the rest of them.

In fact it is Psmith’s language that provides the continuity across the books, because his character is all over the place. He shows no sign of interest in romance in book before Leave it to Psmith until he woos Eve Halliday;, but then neither did he seem likely to show compassion for the victims of slum landlords before Psmith, Journalist. In Mike and Psmith he reveals a hitherto-silent talent for cricket at the end of chapter 26 of a 30-chapter book that is largely about whether these characters can and want to play cricket. His ‘socialism’ - Psmith declares himself to be a socialist and refers to everyone as Comrade - is really just a verbal joke that isn’t explored in any meaningful way.

And yet it all works. These are deliriously enjoyable books, because Psmith is such a magnificent comic creation and a creation almost entirely of speech.