The ‘dream of every redblooded man’, Wodehouse wrote in 1957, is to do ‘down the income tax authorities’.1 It could be said that trying to make practical sense of the emerging swathe of tax legislation in England and America was one of Wodehouse’s main concerns in the 1930s. He was one of the highest-earning authors in the world, making large sums in each country, on which he was, quite reasonably, required to pay income tax. As with Osbert Mulliner, income tax assessors might have ‘screamed with joy when forwarding Schedule D to his address’.2 However, the international agreements which prevented two sets of tax authorities from trying to tax the same income in full were not to be negotiated until the late 1940s. Throughout his career, Wodehouse dealt with the requirements of income tax, but he only wanted to do so once.
His judgement had undoubtedly been at fault in appointing John Rumsey, a play-broker, to handle aspects of his American tax affairs in the 1920s, for Rumsey had responded to this act of faith by failing to file any tax returns on Wodehouse’s behalf for five years. Rather than ask his literary agent, Reynolds, to pick up the pieces and bring his tax affairs up to date, he delegated the task to Bobby Denby, a family friend. Denby also did nothing, and the situation remained unresolved in 1932. At this point he turned to professional advisers. But the meaning of several new tax laws enacted in each country was unclear, and their correct interpretation by the courts lagged many years behind. Therefore, as Wodehouse was one of the very first transatlantic commuters with substantial income on both sides of the Atlantic, he and his advisers had a number of disagreements with each set of revenue authorities as to their correct interpretation, and he had to endure a number of court hearings to obtain rulings on several matters.
In England, he won the only case that came to court, which resulted in the assessments made on him being revoked in 1934. The technical disputes in America were more numerous, and the American Internal Revenue Service raised huge assessments, some plausible, some bizarre. Disputes and tax hearings in America punctuated the 1930s, with the IRS claiming over $250,000 in 1934, as well as freezing his American assets and future American earnings. All the technical disputes were then settled for the lesser sum of $83,000 two years later. Further disputes arose in America during the 1940s, and after a series of court cases (including some which reached the Supreme Court), Wodehouse won on all substantive points.
The tax situation had emotional as well as financial consequences. The Wodehouses had already spent much of the twenties moving between locations to avoid tax liabilities. After their time in Hollywood, just as Ethel felt herself to be tired of living abroad and Wodehouse was looking forward to catching up on the cricket with Bill Townend, they realised that they had to be even more careful about residency. They shifted to the South of France, renting a house in Auribeau, near the French Riviera, where their neighbours were H. G. Wells and the mystery writer E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Despite all their tax issues, the Wodehouses were never in any danger of being badly off. From the start of his career, with his careful log of Money Received for Literary Work, Wodehouse was financially realistic, and guarded the ‘family sock’ with care; what Bertie would term ‘the oof’, the ‘moolah’ or the ‘spondulicks’ was, in many ways, the driving force behind both his plots and his life. Wodehouse turned fifty in 1931, and, despite the inconvenience caused by the financial uncertainty, his letters also show a certain sense of excitement at the prospect of existing, for a while, on the edge. He confesses to feeling pleased at having something to assuage life’s monotony. ‘Everything was so easy for me’, he notes, ‘I was getting a bit bored.’3 The only cloud was the continued financial responsibility that he felt towards his friend William Townend. Some thirty years after their time at Dulwich, Wodehouse was still offering to rewrite Townend’s work to make it more saleable, and canvassing publishers on his behalf. ‘If only you were making a couple of thousand a year steady’, he told Bill, ‘I shouldn’t have a worry in the world.’4
Wodehouse’s own writing was seeing widescale success, with the publication of some of his greatest novels, including Thank You, Jeeves (1934), Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) and The Code of the Woosters (1938). With his new British agent, A. P. Watt, operating alongside Reynolds in the States, Wodehouse was established not simply as a writer, but as an international brand. Notes from his agents show that an ‘option’ on Jeeves had been sold to promote ‘“Sir” shaving requisites’; ‘The Pipe and Tobacco Guild’ requested Wodehouse’s contributions in a book to promote smoking; the Daily Mail commissioned a series of feature articles from Wodehouse to increase circulation; and Wodehouse investigated options for a spin-off Jeeves cartoon, with a butler called ‘Keggs’.
In 1934, Wodehouse was also surprised to receive an offer from Paramount Studios to return to Hollywood. For tax reasons, he had to decline. He was, in his words, ‘Public Enemy Number One in America’, but found the offer ‘rather gratifying after the way Hollywood took a solemn vow three years ago never to mention my name again’.5 Wodehouse’s Hollywood scandal had obviously been swiftly forgotten: in 1936 he was offered, and accepted, a six-month contract with MGM to work on various scripts, including the seemingly never-ending musical Rosalie. A return to Hollywood allowed him to renew his friendship with the movie star Maureen O’Sullivan, and her husband, John Farrow.
Among the highlights of 1932 was the announcement of Leonora’s engagement. Leonora had met her fiancé, Peter Cazalet, in the late 1920s. A leading amateur steeplechase jockey and trainer, Peter was the youngest son of four, and was later to take over the management of the family estate. Wodehouse had known the Cazalet family for a number of years through Leonora’s friendship with Peter’s sister, Thelma. He had stayed at Fairlawne, the family home in Kent, where he met writers and artists such as Rudyard Kipling and Hugh Walpole. He also accompanied Leonora and Thelma to Lord’s cricket ground in 1926, when Peter scored a century for Eton against Harrow. Wodehouse instantly approved, writing with delight about the engagement. Part of his pleasure came from a sense of relief. Wodehouse had been worried by some of Leonora’s admirers. The prospect of having to welcome a sensitive new-age twenties man as a son-in-law (a Percy Gorringe type from Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit) had filled him with dread. The unidentified figure of ‘Dennis Freeman’ stands, in these letters, as a cipher for the sort of man Wodehouse detested, the sort who, as he put it elsewhere, would spend his time ‘twittering all over the place, screaming: “Oh, Lionel!”’6
After returning to London for the wedding, Ethel and Wodehouse spent 1933 and 1934 in France, living in both Auribeau and Paris, and summering at Hunstanton. During this period, there was a new collaboration for Wodehouse, as he joined Guy Bolton and Cole Porter on what was to be the hit musical Anything Goes. Bolton detested Paris, so Wodehouse’s French headquarters moved to the small holiday resort of Le Touquet, on the northern coast of France. Wodehouse soon grew to ‘love the place’. There is ‘nothing to do but work’, he told Denis Mackail, ‘we really are leading the most hermit existence here’.7
Le Touquet, resort of choice for the Drones’ annual weekend away, had a history of welcoming the English.8 In 1904, a British linoleum tycoon, John Whitley, had bought up land in the area, with the aim of selling it on to members of the British upper classes. Hundreds of individually designed Art Deco villas were built, as well as a huge casino. Sports facilities, a sea-front pool, a racecourse, a golf course and a cricket ground made Le Touquet into a luxury playground for England’s wealthy elite, attracting visitors such as Noel Coward, H. G. Wells and the then Prince of Wales. Before renting a house, the Wodehouses enjoyed staying at the brand-new Royal Picardy Hotel, famous for its nine-room suites, each with its own pool. Geographically, Le Touquet suited the Wodehouses well. Within easy reach of England, they were able to make visits to England to see Leonora and the growing Cazalet family: a daughter (Sheran) and a son (Edward) were born in 1934 and 1936.
After Wodehouse’s return from Hollywood, he and Ethel spent a brief spell in London, before deciding to make Le Touquet their permanent base. The latter part of the decade was to bring considerable recognition for Wodehouse. In 1939, Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate. After the crushing disappointment of being denied an Oxford education this was, for Wodehouse, a particular triumph.
Although the situation in Europe was becoming increasingly unsettled, Wodehouse resisted acknowledging the reality of impending conflict. His comments to Bill Townend at this time demonstrate his belief that this was a war that would never happen. In the months following 1 September 1939, there was – at first – little to disturb the equilibrium of their life in northern France. Wodehouse continued to attend steadfastly to his novels – and his growing brood of animals.
1 Over Seventy, p. 107.
2 ‘The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner’, published in Liberty and The Strand in 1928. Repr. in Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929).
3 PGW to William Townend, 1 December 1932 (Dulwich).
4 Ibid.
5 PGW to William Townend, 11 June 1934 (Dulwich).
6 See Performing Flea, p. 71. ‘Dennis’ or ‘Denis’ Freeman occurs occasionally in PGW’s correspondence as an unwanted house guest who borrowed money, and repaid the Wodehouses with bouncing cheques. See PGW to William Townend, 10 October 1932 (Dulwich).
7 PGW to Denis Mackail, 6 April 1932 (Wodehouse Archive).
8 See Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), Chapter 4.