Postcard from P. G. Wodehouse to Paul Reynolds, reverse side.
TO PAUL REYNOLDS
Ilag Tost
Oct. 21. 1940
GOODNESS KNOWS WHEN YOU WILL GET THIS. WILL YOU SEND ME A FIVE POUND PARCEL ONE POUND PRINCE ALBERT TOBACCO, THE REST NUT CHOCOLATE. REPEAT MONTHLY. AM QUITE HAPPY HERE AND HAVE THOUGHT OUT NEW NOVEL. AM HOPING BE ABLE WRITE IT. WHEN I WAS INTERNED, I HAD FINISHED A JEEVES NOVEL ALL BUT FOUR CHAPTERS, ALSO TWO SHORT STORIES. YOURS P. G. WODEHOUSE PUT ‘KRIEGSGEFANGENENPOST’ ON PARCEL.
Had Wodehouse written a few months earlier, the news of his capture would have been a terrible shock. Just before he was interned, Leonora was reassuring Wodehouse’s agent that he was ‘in no immediate danger’. In fact, the postcard came as a great relief. By August, rumours of Wodehouse’s internment had reached Britain, and in October Reynolds and an anxious Leonora had written to each other about Wodehouse’s whereabouts, and Reynolds referred to his being held in a ‘concentration camp’. It is clear from contemporary correspondence that nobody in Britain or America actually knew what a ‘concentration camp’ was: one of Wodehouse’s fans cheerfully notes that ‘I doubt if a stay in a concentration camp bears any resemblance to an Eagles’ picnic’.
Nevertheless, Wodehouse’s reference to his ‘Jeeves novel’ (Joy in the Morning), and to what was to become Money in the Bank, was a clear signal that conditions could not be as bad as Leonora and Reynolds had feared. Indeed, in many ways, Wodehouse later wrote, ‘camp was really great fun’. He had secured permission to use a typewriter, entertained his fellow internees with accounts of life at Tost, and enjoyed contributing to the Camp newspaper, the Tost Times:
Described as the first ‘Souvenir Number’ of the Tost Times, 1 June 1941, which contains an abridged version of Chapter 1 of Wodehouse’s ‘All’s Well with Bingo’.
As part of a campaign for his release, Reynolds made a decision to publish Wodehouse’s postcard in the December issue of Time magazine. It prompted a surge of fan mail. The P. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company sent a one-pound tin of Prince Albert Tobacco ‘with best wishes for his early release’, while an ‘admirer of P. G. Wodehouse’ and ‘student of biochemistry’ suggested sending ‘special nut chocolate, containing vitamins which are probably deficient in German prison diet’. Reynolds thanked the correspondent for her ‘suggestions’, although he pointed out that it might be ‘difficult to carry out practically’.
Wodehouse’s second postcard is more heroic than it would first appear. Given his public profile, he guessed that a message from him might act as a coded point of orientation for others, allowing the families of his friends to establish the whereabouts of their loved ones. Max Enke was a fellow internee, known by Wodehouse as the camp ‘linguist’ and ‘chess champion’, and used as the model for Lord Uffenham in Money in the Bank and Something Fishy. Enke’s daughter wrote to Reynolds to thank him for cabling the money, adding that ‘It’s very good of Mr Wodehouse to have used the space on his limited letters to send the message’.
TO PAUL REYNOLDS
Ilag Tost
Nov. 1. 1940
WOULD YOU MIND SENDING FIVE DOLLARS TO MRS RUTH CHAMBERS 4TH AVE R.R.2. LADYSMITH BRIT. COLUMBIA AND FIFTEEN TO STEPHEN ENKE 700 POWER ST HELENA MONTANA – OR RATHER THE OTHER WAY ABOUT, FIVE TO ENKE AND FIFTEEN TO CHAMBERS. I BORROWED FROM A MAN HERE AND HE WANTS IT PAID AS ABOVE. REGARDS P. G. WODEHOUSE