On their arrival in France, Werner Plack organised a room for the Wodehouses at the Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris. This, again, was an ill-advised move. As McCrum notes, ‘Wodehouse may have been oblivious to the fact ... but the Bristol was the Nazi hotel in occupied Paris’.
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Hôtel Le Bristol
Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
Paris
Nov 21. 1943
Dearest Anga.
What a long time since I wrote to you. (Il est longtemps que je vous n’ai pas écrit.). I wonder if you are still at Degenershausen. If I remember, you generally go off for your cure about this time. Il doit être assez froid chez vous actuellement.
We are having a very pleasant time in Paris. I must say I prefer the city in its present calm state with no roar of traffic. We have started using the Metro and it has enlarged my scope of movement very much. Ethel is very busy going round the shops and seeing collections, and I am trying hard to learn French. (When you write to me, write in French, if it comes easier to you, as I now read French with complete facility.) I went for a couple of weeks to the Berlitz school, but now I have a private teacher who comes three times a week, and in between her visits I read Colette’s novels and am translating my last novel into French. I can understand all that is said to me, but I don’t seem to make much progress in speaking.
Ethel got pinched the other night for being out without her papers. She arrived back at the hotel with five military policemen, but the leader of them turned out to be a reader of my books, so all ended well. It was a very unpleasant experience for her, though.
We have had one bit of luck. The manager of this hotel has been charming and has given us splendid rooms at a nominal rate. We shall pay him the difference after the war. This is very fortunate, as everything is terribly expensive here. We were taken to dinner at Maxim’s the other night, and the sight of the bill nearly made me sick. You could have got a good dinner before the war for less than what they charged for one portion of fish. There seems to be a great deal of money in Paris. The theatres and cinemas are packed at every performance. But the average restaurant is pretty bad. We take all our meals at the hotel. […] We have also run into one or two of our Le Touquet friends, which has been very pleasant. We have got to know a few very nice people, so we have a little circle.
I had a very nice letter from Schmidt the other day.1 He said he had been talking to an English officer who had been taken prisoner and the English officer had said about me that although the British Government might be angry with me they couldn’t do anything and couldn’t even start a campaign in the British press, because if they did the British public would at once come forward to defend me. Schmidt said ‘He added that the Britons are missing you very much, as they consider you an English institution.’ That was nice, wasn’t it? Schmidt said that he had read in an American paper that I was the favourite author of Princess Elizabeth. So things are looking up!2
Love from us both. Ethel sends all sorts of messages. I wonder when we shall meet again. However long it may be, we shall always be thinking of you, Anga darling.
Yours ever
Plummie
1 Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter.
2 In 1941, the Royal Librarian reported that the Queen Mother had ordered eighteen new books for Princess Elizabeth, all of which were by P. G. Wodehouse (William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (London: Macmillan, 2009), p. 335).
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Hôtel Le Bristol
Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
Paris
May 3. 1944
Dearest Anga.
[…]
We continue to lead a quiet life, though a good deal disturbed just at present by continual alertes and a general atmosphere of strained nerves owing to everyone wondering when the invasion is going to come and what will happen when it does! People tell us we ought to lay in a stock of food enough for three weeks in case of trouble, but it is difficult to do that, as tinned stuff is almost impossible to get. So we are simply hoping that things will be all right.
[…] We generally get an alerte round about midnight, which means not getting to bed till about half past one, and then it often happens that planes which have been to Germany come back past Paris and the flac [sic] fires at them and wakes us up at four in the morning. The only consolation we have is that it is unlikely that they would deliberately bomb the centre of Paris, though Montmartre got it rather badly the other night and there is always the chance of a stray plane coming down on one’s head!
What a terrible time Berlin has had since we left it. A man here went to stay at the Bristol the night it was destroyed, but had the good luck to have a business appointment at Wansee [sic] that night, so escaped. But I am afraid that all the maids and waiters we used to like so much were killed. Mr Vetter, the manager of the dining room, and the manager of the hotel, the man who had the dog, are both safe.
[…]
Our main worry just now, apart from the danger of being bombed, is that our money is running rather short. We have plenty in Berlin, and Schmidt was arranging to have it sent to us, but I suppose his accident will prevent this. Still, we have got our furniture up from Le Touquet and it is now in storage here, so that we shall be able to raise a bit by selling it. Unfortunately, in the four years since we left Le Touquet, a good many things have disappeared.
It is awful being so out of touch with you. I always think of Degeners-hausen as the peaceful place I knew and loved so much, but for all I know you may be overrun now with refugees. I hope not. I like to think of you all alone there with Reinhild and possibly Heinrich, wandering round the drive after dinner and listening to the radio – the German radio, of course, – in the library.1
All our love, Anga dearest. Remember me to everyone at Degeners-hausen, and do write, if you can, and tell me all that is happening to you.
Yours ever
Plummie
1 A concealed and light-hearted reference to the BBC World Service, which they listened to regularly, in breach of strict German rules and regulations.
6 June 1944 – ‘D-Day’ – marked the beginning of the bloodiest stage of the conflict for occupied France. Coded messages were sent from the BBC alerting the French resistance to set their plans into action. By 31 July, the Allies had broken out of Normandy. On 17 August, French Communist resistance fighters launched an uprising in and around Paris. The days before liberation saw heavy conflict in the Latin Quarter and around the Gare de la Villette. Over the next week, some 1,500 resistance fighters were killed. The French Second Armoured Division brought about the German surrender of the city on 25 August. Wodehouse later remembered the scenes of celebration, and of violence.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Hotel Lincoln
Rue Bayard
Paris
December 30. 1944
[…]
The afternoon of the big parade down the Champs Elysées, Ethel and I and Wonder went to the part near the Marigny Theatre and Ethel managed to wriggle into the front rank of the crowd, leaving me with Wonder. I was just starting to give Wonder a run on the grass near one of the restaurants which are in the gardens when I saw a policeman coming, so edged away. At that moment a brisk burst of firing came from the restaurant, which would have outed me if I had been on the grass. The guns began to go off all over the place, and I was in a panic because I thought Ethel was still in the crowd. I rushed about looking for her, and was swept into the Marigny with the crowd. A dead girl was brought in on a stretcher and laid down beside me. It was all rather ghastly. Eventually the firing stopped, and I was able to get back to the Hotel Bristol, where we were staying then, and found Ethel there. She had gone back before the firing began, but had run into another battle outside and inside the hotel. It was all very exciting, but no good to me from a writing point of view. […]
With Paris under Allied control, the British Government sent over an MI5 officer and barrister, Major Cussen, to interview Wodehouse. Wodehouse recalls feeling most alarmed by this ‘flinty-eyed Home Office official’ who listened to his evidence – and by the fact of ‘not knowing if he believed a word of it and wondering, even if he did, whether I hadn’t been technically guilty of crimes punishable by death’. He wrote the following letter in advance of the interview.
TO THE RIGHT HONBLE. HERBERT MORRISON, THE HOME SECRETARY
Hôtel Le Bristol
Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
Paris
Sept 4. 1944
Sir,
In view of the fact that on numerous occasions, through official and other channels, charges of great seriousness have been brought against me, I am hastening to report to you my presence here.
This is not the occasion for me to make a detailed statement, but may I be allowed to say that the reports in the Press that I obtained my release from internment by agreeing to broadcast on the German radio are entirely without foundation. The five talks which I delivered were arranged for after my release, and were made at my own suggestion.
That it was criminally foolish of me to speak on the German radio, I admit. But my only motive in doing so was to give my American readers a humorous description of my adventures, as some response to the great number of letters which I had received from them while I was in camp. The five talks covered the five phases of my imprisonment, were purely comic in tone and were designed to show to American listeners a group of English keeping up their spirits and courage under difficult conditions.
You will understand that my present position is a highly embarrassing one, and I am most anxious to do everything possible to clear it up. I should be most grateful if you would let me know when I may have the opportunity of doing so.
Meanwhile, unless you desire my presence in England, I will remain at the above address and keep in touch with the British authorities here.
I am, Sir,
Yours obediently,
P. G. Wodehouse
In anticipation of Cussen’s visit, the British Government decided that Wodehouse should be kept under surveillance, and so a young MI6 officer, Malcolm Muggeridge, who was already in Paris, was sent to meet him and to report back. Muggeridge was a British liaison officer with the Services Spéciaux, and took on the task of a preliminary ‘investigation’ of the Wodehouse case. In due course, Muggeridge and the Wodehouses became friends and, once Major Cussen had arrived, Muggeridge continued to keep in touch with them.
Muggeridge discovered that the Wodehouses were out of touch with events in England. Most poignantly, they were unaware that their daughter, Leonora, had died. Given that Ethel was ‘in an extremely hysterical state’ as a result of Cussen’s interrogation, the British Government was urged by Thelma Cazalet-Keir (Leonora’s sister-in-law) to allow Muggeridge to deliver the news of the family’s loss personally. The following message from Thelma was delivered:
‘Only just found your address. Greatly fear Red Cross message sent by Peter in May can never have reached you. Our most beloved Leonora died suddenly of heart failure on May 16th. Gloriously well and happy until peaceful end. Peter and children wonderfully brave. Peter now in France with his regiment. Very glad to hear you are safe. All our dear love and may we meet soon. Communicate with me at Fairlawne about your plans.’
Ethel and Wodehouse were devastated.
Writing to Muggeridge later, Wodehouse noted that ‘Ethel has had a terrible time, but is more herself now’. The following message was forwarded via the Foreign Office for Thelma Cazalet-Keir.
TO THELMA CAZALET-KEIR
September 27. 1944
Thank you dear Thelma for your message. Your sad news came as a terrible shock and has stunned us. Poor Ethel is prostrated. We still cannot realise we shall not see our darling Leonora and Victor again in this life.1 Our love to Molly and yourself and deepest sympathy. We remain this address [sic] indefinitely. Longing to see Sheran and Edward. Terribly anxious about Peter.2 Can you get news of him.
Plum
1 Thelma’s brother, Victor Cazalet M.C., MP, had been killed on active service during the war.
2 Peter Cazalet, Leonora’s widower, was a Major in the Guards Armoured Division and had come over to France as part of the D-Day landings force.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Oct 24. 1944
Dear Bill.
At last I am able to write and thank you for all the letters you wrote me, which were a great comfort. We were so glad to hear from Rene. It’s nice to think of you settled again in a home, and thank goodness you are both of you all right after these last five years. When you write, be sure to tell me what books you have written since the war started and what sort of sales you are having now. I have had several very nice postcards from friends in England. Everything is going quite well with us, but we are quite crushed by the dreadful news about Leonora. I really feel that nothing matters much now.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
Cussen’s verdict on Wodehouse’s ‘unwise’ behaviour was that ‘a jury would find difficulty in convicting him of an intention to assist the enemy’. Nevertheless, the French authorities were still suspicious of the Wodehouses’ motives, and arrested them. They had been staying at the Lincoln Hotel, to avoid reporters in the wake of Cussen’s interview, when the arrest took place. Ethel recalls that Plum was staying on the floor above her, and at 12.30 a.m. she ‘suddenly woke up and saw a sinister man leaning over my bed with his hat on and his coat collar turned up exactly like a movie. I produced my British passport. Useless. I was told if I didn’t dress at once I would be taken in my night gown!!’
TO MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
November 22. 1944
Dear Malcolm.
Ethel and I were arrested last night at one in the morning by the French police. We passed the night on hard chairs and we now learn (6 p.m.) that we have another night of it before us, before we are taken to Drancy, the charge being ‘making German propaganda’, – IE those five talks of mine, nothing else.1
We have not tasted food all day. I believe the bearer of this is going to get us some, if he can, but what can he get and where? Can you supply anything. We are absolutely fainting with hunger, & Ethel is on the verge of collapse. Do try to send us something.
I understand the Embassy has heard of our arrest and is enquiring into it, but unfortunately the Prefet de Police had left before the Embassy inspecteur arrived.
There seems to be absolutely nothing against us except the five talks, so I feel sure the Embassy won’t let us be taken to Drancy because of those.
Is there any chance of your coming to see us tonight?
Yours ever
P.G.
This is absolute hell, old man. We have spent the day sitting on hard chairs in a draughty passage – nothing to eat, not even a glass of water to drink. I can’t wash and my face is a foul mass of beard!
1 Drancy was a transit camp, just outside Paris, which had been used to hold thousands of Parisian Jews. It was now used to hold suspected collaborators. Conditions were extremely harsh.
Wodehouse was still not popular in England, but given the ferocity of the French purges, there was concern over his arrest. Churchill wrote that ‘it seems to me that the French are overdoing things about P. G. Wodehouse. Is he a British subject? If not, we have no interest. But if he is, I think we ought to know what he is accused of doing.’ By December, the Wodehouse question remained, for Churchill, ‘rather a poser’. ‘Would it be too much to ask the French to let him live under mild surveillance out of the way as long as he can find the money to do so. […] We would prefer not ever to hear about him again and this would be best in the general interest. His name stinks here, but he would not be sent to prison. However, if there is no other resort, he should be sent over here and if there is no charge against him, he can live secluded in some place or go to hell as soon as there is a vacant passage.’
The French authorities released Ethel, but kept Wodehouse in custody while they decided how they would proceed. After a few days, the French decided that while it was not deemed safe to release Wodehouse, an improvement in living conditions for him could be achieved by stating that he was suffering from ill-health, and moving him to a hospital where he would be kept under guard. But all hospitals in Paris were already full, so Wodehouse found himself billeted to a maternity home. Conditions there were not at all bad. Ethel noted that ‘Plummie was on velvet in the hospital, about the only place heated in Paris. I was frozen at the Lincoln, no heat whatever or hot water, and Plummie had both.’
TO ETHEL WODEHOUSE
Nov 25. 1944
My own darling.
How lovely to hear from you & thanks awfully for the parcel. There is so much to tell you, but I can’t make this very long, as your nice friend who brought it has to leave.
The first person I met here was Mrs Sholto Douglas! She is charming – leaving tonight, I believe, & I am to have her room, which is ever so much nicer than mine.
Everything is absolutely all right with me, except that I miss my darling so terribly. Once I can start to write I shall be fine. Meals quite good, but can you send me the big thermos and a pound of tea. Then I shall be ok. Also some red wine or brandy, but this is not too important. What a time we’re having! Thank God you are all right – they can’t possibly touch you. I don’t know how long I shall be here. The cop told me this morning that I was being released soon, but it may be just a ruse. I think it would be well to get in touch with the de Rocquignys and see if they can have us, so that if I do get out on that 50 miles from Paris scheme we can start straight off there without any delay.
Darling, you’re all I’m worrying about. Keep your courage up and don’t be too sad. Always remember that I’m quite comfortable here. Everyone, including the cops, are friendliness itself. One of the doctors gave me tobacco today and sent that letter to you. I am great friends with M. de Castellane. Do you remember once an old gentleman stopping us in the gardens and admiring Wonder? That was M. de C.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the publicity. It’s more likely to get me sympathy in England than otherwise.
Anyway all this prejudice will pass away in time. But what a time you must have had with those two reporters, curse them. I think they will leave you alone in a day or two.
This is such a hurried letter, sweetheart, and I feel I’m leaving out all I really want to say. I think of you all the time and love you more than ever. Every minute! I can’t believe that two people who love each other as we do can be separated long.
My, damn it, I’ve got to hurry and finish. God bless you, darling.
Your
Plummie
My day is – get breakfast in bed at about 8 then all sixty nurses, cops, etc. come in and chat – then we go for an hours walk in the garden, then lunch – then stroll in corridor, read and so on – dinner at 6 – bed at 9 – suite all right and will be okay when I start work. Send all the papers in the drawer in writing table where script of Uncle Dynamite is, as some of them are scenario. Keep me well supplied with baccy, and as soon as reporters have died away and won’t follow you come and see me. Better bring Francie to help you find the way.
Keep your spirits up, angel. I am fine.
TEA & THERMOS!!!
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Hotel Lincoln
Rue Bayard,
Paris
Dec 30. 1944
[…]
I wish there was some means of getting to know just how I stand now in England. I had resigned myself to being an outcast with no friends except you and Rene, but since the liberation we have had the nicest possible cards from all our friends in England, and now you say that Christison, Rees, Paddy Millar etc have been asking after me.1 It gives me the pleasant feeling that I have lost none of my friends, and I am hoping that eventually things will straighten themselves out. The unfortunate thing was not being able to contradict lies told about me at the time.
[…]
My arrest by the French came as a complete surprise! I had gone to bed at about twelve on the night of November the twenty-first, and at one o’clock woke to find two inspectors in my room. They took Ethel and me to the Palais de Justice, and we spent sixteen hours without food in a draughty corridor. Next day they released Ethel, and I spent four days in the inspectors’ office. I was then brought to this hospital, where I have been ever since.
The original idea was to put me in the camp at Drancy, but thank goodness that was changed. I believe Drancy is very tough, not at all like my beloved Tost, where life was one long round of cricket, lectures, entertainments and Red Cross parcels. Here in the hospital I am sitting pretty, though naturally it is pretty foul to be cooped up. I have a room to myself, quite good food, plenty of tobacco and drinks, and Ethel is allowed to come and see me. I also had a marvellous five days visit from Peter. He used to bring champagne every day and we had great times.
I generally wake up at four a.m., lie in bed till six, then get up and boil water on a boiler lent me by one of the doctors and have breakfast. The concierge arrives with the Paris Daily Mail at nine, and after my room has been cleaned, that is by half past nine, I start writing. Lunch at half past twelve. At four I get my walk in the garden with an inspector, the only time I am allowed out of doors. I walk up and down on the landing from six-thirty to eight, and then go to bed. Light out at nine-thirty. The nurses and inspectors are very friendly, and I am improving my French. When I get visitors, they usually come at three. It isn’t a bad sort of life at all, if you have a novel to write. The only point in the day when the time drags a bit is between half-past one and four. The mornings are taken up with work, and after five, when I come in for my walk, I always feel all right.
[…]
Wonder is in terrific form. Ethel, poor darling, is having a rotten time just now, as Paris is entirely without heating and her hotel is icy. It was bad enough when I was there, but since then the weather has turned really cold and she suffers a lot. She tells me this place is a Paradise in comparison, and I suppose it is, as we have hot water and the rooms are warmed.
Well, I must be stopping now. I hope this reaches you safely.
Love to Rene.
Yours ever
Plum
1 Old Alleynians.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
Hotel Lincoln
Rue Bayard
Paris
Jan 4. 1945
Dear Denis.
The above address is where letters should be sent, as they will always be forwarded. At the moment, however, I am in the hospital where I was taken six weeks ago, to live under the surveillance of an inspecteur.
[…]
A few days ago I got your card, which was very welcome. Peter came to see me about a month ago, and was speaking about your words in the Times about our darling Leonora, telling me how much they had touched him. What a horrible, bleak feeling it gives one, to think that we shall never see her again. It just sets the seal on all the ghastliness of life these days.
[…] I can imagine how you must be hating this present state of things, and I am afraid that ‘Swan Court’ must mean that Church Street is no more. Low Wood, I believe, is a ruin, like everything else in Le Touquet. I don’t suppose we shall ever go back there again. As far as I can gather, the whole place is a mass of bomb craters and the forest is destroyed, so it is hardly worth while rebuilding the house after the war. […] Do write to me if it is possible to send letters from England. Love to Diana.
Yours ever
Plum
Back in Paris, Ethel noted that ‘the food situation is simply terrible’. The cook ‘has been pinching our bread tickets […]. I go to bed with about four sweaters on, and skiing drawers, scarves etc, and I am frozen and so is Plummie.’ ‘We don’t’, Ethel confided, ‘want to go into any of the black market shops as we don’t want to be arrested again. Can you imagine what the headlines would be. “WODEHOUSES SWILLING CHAMPAGNE IN BLACK MARKET RESTAURANTS WHILE PARIS STARVES!”’
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Hotel Lincoln
Rue Bayard
Paris
Feb 15. 1945
Dear Bill.
[…]
I was in the clinic when I wrote to you last. (I hope you got the letter all right). I spent eight weeks there, and then Malcolm Muggeridge drove Ethel and Wonder and me down to Barbizon, about thirty miles from Paris, in the most awful blizzard. We lunched at a marvellous restaurant in Fontainebleau forest in front of a great log fire and thought things were going to be wonderful. But when we got to the hotel at Barbizon we found it was a strictly summer hotel, no carpets, no heating and no running water owing to the frost freezing the pipes. However, we settled down and had a very good time for three weeks, and then the hotel was requisitioned, so now we are back in Paris. I think eventually we shall go to Ethel’s friends the De Rocquignys at their house near Hesdin, but in the meantime Paris is very pleasant, though living conditions are getting tougher every day and I don’t like the look of the Seine, which may burst its banks at any moment. Still, Paris is always Paris, and we are quite happy.
I was thrilled by what you told me about Dulwich winning all its school matches last cricket season, including Harrow and Malvern. It’s odd, but I don’t find that world cataclysms and my own personal troubles make any difference to my feelings about Dulwich. To win the Bedford match seems just as important to me as it ever did. I wonder how I am regarded at Dulwich. Have you any means of finding out? Perhaps Slacker could give you some idea. Mine is a curious position, as I meet nobody but friends and keep getting encouraging letters, so that I sometimes get the illusion that everything is all right. I have to remind myself that there must still be an enormous body of public opinion which is against me. (I was just writing this, when an air raid warning sounded. I thought all that sort of thing was over in Paris. I can’t imagine the Germans having planes to spare to send here. Still, there it is. I will let you know how the matter develops.) Where was I? Oh, yes. Enormous body of public opinion. Or is there? It’s so difficult to find out. I meet English and American soldiers, and when they discover who I am they are perfectly friendly. And yet unpleasant things still appear from time to time in the papers. By the way, what was it that the Times said about me – you referred to it in your last card – which you said was nice? It’s fine if the papers are beginning to change their attitude. But I’m afraid there is a long way to go before things can come right, but I haven’t a twinge of self-pity. I made an ass of myself, and must pay the penalty. One thing these troubles have driven home to me and that is what wonderful friends I have. When everything goes right, one rather tends to take one’s friends for granted, but being in a position like mine makes one realize how splendid they are. (Hon’ble air raid still apparently in progress, as there has been no All Clear, but nothing seems to be happening. We got a scare one night at Barbizon when terrific explosions suddenly shook the hotel. I believe it was some Allied plane which had to jettison its bombs in the neighbourhood.)
Do tell me, when you write, about your work since the war started. You mention books you are writing but don’t tell me how you are selling these days. I am longing to know the figures. You must have built up a large public by now. Is the Strand still going? Have you read (All Clear just gone) Hesketh Pearson’s life of Conan Doyle? Very interesting. […]
I have been plugging away at my latest novel. I managed to get a hundred pages done while in the clinic, in spite of constant interruptions. I would start writing at nine in the morning and would get a paragraph done when the nurse would come in and sluice water all over the floor. Then the concierge arrived with the morning paper, then the nurse with bread for lunch, then another nurse with wine, then a doctor and finally a couple of inspecteurs. All the inspecteurs were very interested in my writing. It was the same thing in camp, where I used to sit on my typewriter case with the machine balanced on a suitcase and work away with two German soldiers standing behind me with guns, breathing down the back of my neck. They seemed fascinated by this glimpse into the life literary.
[…]
So long. Yours ever
Plum
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Feb 24. 1945
[…]
What you say about the book you want me to write is very valuable. The posish at present is this. In 1941, when I was in the Harz Mountains, I wrote a comic book about my adventures at Le Touquet and my camp experiences, but I’m not sure whether it is the sort of thing that is needed. At that time I saw the situation thus: – There had been a terrific outcry in England about the talks, but it had all happened before I made the talks. They were then relayed to England, and I supposed that everybody there had now heard them and realized that they were harmless, so I took rather an airy tone in my book, – all having a good laugh together over the whole amusing misunderstanding sort of thing. And now it seems that practically nobody heard the talks, so that the bulk of the populace are under the impression that I did propaganda. In other words, instead of writing for a friendly public, I shall have to assume that ninety per cent of my readers will be hostile. In which case, a humorous treatment might be resented. It is all very difficult. But Malcolm Muggeridge insists that I shall be making a mistake if I try to write differently from my usual style, and I feel he is right.
One thing against a serious treatment is the fact that everybody in England has been through such hell these last years that it seems to me that it would be simply ludicrous if I were to try to make heavy weather over the really quite trivial things that happened to me. It isn’t pleasant to travel for three days and nights in a third class compartment with wooden seats and four aside and almost nothing to eat and drink, but I don’t see how I can attempt to make a tragedy of it when writing for an audience which has been under fire from V-bombs for months. There was a picture in Punch during the last war, showing a woman talking to a soldier just back from Paschendael [sic] and telling him about an air raid on London. She says ‘A bomb fell quite close to us. It was terrible. You simply can’t imagine what it was like.’ That’s the sort of attitude I must avoid at all costs.
[…]
A thing I particularly want to clear up is this Adlon business. We had to stay at the Adlon, we had no option. We tried several times to go elsewhere, but were foiled, – or, when I say foiled, I mean that always at the last moment there was some hitch and we were told that it couldn’t be managed owing to one thing or another. But I doubt if I shall ever be able to drive it into the nut of the public that I wasn’t living a riotous life there, having nightly parties with all the leading Nazis.
That story you told me in your letter about Mowat saying that while I was in camp the German officers talked to me in German is amusing. I wonder why people invent these things. All the German I know is ‘Es ist schonus [sic] wetter’. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even talk to me in English. It’s extraordinary how things get twisted. When I was making my statement in Paris after the liberation to the Foreign Office representative, he started by questioning me keenly as to whether I had written for a German paper (in English) called The Camp, which was circulated among British prisoners. It seemed that somebody had denounced me as having done so, and all that had happened really was that in one number there was a parody of my Jeeves stuff under the title of ‘Bertie at the War’ or something like that, signed ‘P. G. Roadhouse’ or some such name. A damned bad parody, too. I was rather surprised that nobody brought up that article I wrote for the Saturday Evening Post when I was in camp, which ended with an offer to make a separate peace with Germany, they to give me a loaf of bread and direct the gentleman with the musket at the front door to look the other way for a few moments, while I agreed to hand over India, an autographed set of my books and a recipe for cooking potatoes on the radiator, known at present only to Internee Arthur Grant (the Le Touquet golf pro) and myself.
Of course, the thing that really gets my goat is that statement of Flannery’s that Werner Plack came to Tost and arranged with me about my release. I never saw the chap, and I don’t suppose he ever came within miles of the camp. It’s just that these blighters have to try to sell their books by inventing sensational things. And all that rot about Ethel and the evening dresses. She happened to mention to Flannery that she had lost a trunk and that it contained her evening dresses, and he went on from there. You would think that anyone would know that one doesn’t dress for dinner in war time. The nearest I ever came to it was putting on a dressing gown when I lined up with my bowl.
Talking of Mowat, I can’t place him, but I had the most tremendous liking and admiration for the War Graves Commission men. They really are the salt of the earth. With one of them, Bert Haskins, I formed a friendship which will last all our lives. He was pure gold, and we kept up a correspondence all the time after I left Tost until, a few weeks before the liberation, his letters suddenly ceased and I assumed that he had been repatriated. I hope so. Bert was the chap who, when we were spending that eight hours in the cattle trucks before leaving Loos, suddenly appeared at my side with half a loaf of bread, butter, radishes, wine and potted meat. He didn’t know me, but out of sheer goodness of heart he came and gave me the stuff. He was a splendid chap, and all the other War Graves men I met were fine, too. I was always so sorry that Bert was not in my dormitory, as when in camp you don’t see much of people who aren’t in your dormitory. It’s like being in a house at school. Did I tell you that Lord Uffenham in Money in the Bank was drawn from a man in my dormitory?1 It isn’t often one has the luck to be in daily contact with the model for one’s principal character.
[…]
This new push in the West makes me uneasy. I hope to God Peter and Anthony [Mildmay] will be all right. Did I tell you that Anthony had a very narrow escape some time ago? He happened for some reason to be sitting on the floor of his tank and a shell came along and smashed the upper half, so that if he had been in the seat he would have been killed. Peter’s wound was a slight one in the forearm, which he got while standing by someone else’s tank. He was terrifically fit when he came to the clinic, and just the same as ever. He wants us to come and live at Fairlawne for the rest of our lives.
[…]
Well, so long. I’ve probably left out a dozen things I wanted to say, but I will put them in my next.
Yours ever
Plum
1 Max Enke.
In December 1944, Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney-General, had stated in the House of Commons that Wodehouse was cleared of all charges of collaboration. ‘There is not enough evidence of intent to assist the enemy which would justify proceedings’, he commented. It follows from this that the contents of the Cussen Report, although not disclosed for another thirty-six years, had been accepted, bringing much relief to the Wodehouses. In February 1945, the question of Wodehouse’s broadcasts was once again raised in the House of Commons. There were no grounds for the renewal of this question, but without the publication of the Cussen Report, Thelma Cazalet-Keir reported to Wodehouse that ‘the publicity the next day was bad’.
TO THELMA CAZALET-KEIR
Hotel Lincoln.
Rue Bayard, Paris.
March 1. 1945
Dearest Thelma.
[…]
Do write us all the news and give the letter to Malcolm to bring back with him. We are longing to hear how you all are, and particularly if there is any improvement in poor little Edward’s condition.1 I can’t bear to think of him being on his back like that week after week. It must be terrible at his age. […]
Paris is having a bad time just now, as food is very scarce. We manage to get along, though life is frightfully expensive. All the black market places have been closed, and all the others except the Ritz and Claridge’s taken over by the troops, so what people do I can’t imagine. Gertie Dudley sent us some packets of powdered soup some time ago, and we have been dining off that for a week.2
We were so sorry to see in the papers about Lloyd George’s illness. It must be a very anxious time for Megan and for you, too.3 I do hope he will soon be better.
[…]
Would it be possible for you to get hold of a copy of Hansard containing that debate in the House when the Attorney-General made that statement about me? If so, I wish you would give it to Malcolm to bring back with him. […]
Love to Mollie and the children, and all our good wishes to you. We think of you all the time.
Yours ever
Plum
We are dining tonight with the only man in Paris who is able to get a bit of fish! How he does it, I don’t know. Turbot, egad! I can scarcely wait.
1 Leonora and Peter’s son, Edward, was suffering from the hip problem known as Perthes’ Disease. With treatment, this took two years to resolve, including twelve months in bed in traction.
2 Gertie Dudley (formerly Millar) had been a neighbour and friend of the Wodehouses in Le Touquet.
3 Megan Lloyd George, daughter of David Lloyd George, was an MP from 1929 onwards. Though she was a Liberal before becoming a Labour MP, she was close friends with Thelma Cazalet-Keir, a Conservative.
In the spring of 1945, Muggeridge brought George Orwell to meet Wodehouse.
TO MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
Hotel Lincoln
Rue Bayard
Paris
April 16. 1945
Dear Malcolm.
The anguish caused by your departure in your circle of admirers here shows no signs of abating. You can do without Paris, but can Paris do without you? The answer is no. Our lives creep along on a crippled wing, as Tennyson says, and we miss you all the time. It is a frightful thing to have to realize that you aren’t round the corner, waiting to cheer us all up.
So far, no major problems have arisen calling for the Muggeridge touch, and it is Muggeridge the Man whom we miss, rather than Muggeridge the Diplomat. We sip our cognac (last bottle) and wish that you were there to sip too. Our only consolation is reading The Thirties, which came as a delightful surprise.1 I never dreamed that you would be able to lay your hands on a copy. A masterly work, which I devoured at a sitting and am now re-reading at intervals. Ethel loved it too. It is a book one can always dip into after the first reading.
[…]
I had a long letter from Watt the other day. […] He has heard from the Jenkins people, who come out strongly in favour of publication of my ‘camp’ book as a starter. But since writing the above Mrs Cazalet-Keir rang me up and we had a long talk about you and your affairs. Thelma seems to think that ‘the publication of a new book, either a defence or a novel, would be inadvisable for some time’. So I suppose the best plan is to wait a bit. I must say, though, that it seems to me that no harm could be done by publishing a defence.
[…]
We do miss you terribly, Malcolm. We have tried at times to express all we feel about your wonderfulness to us, but we feel we made a poor job of it. It is ghastly, having to try to get on without you. It wasn’t only the definite things you did, it was the way you always bucked us up. In our moments of despondency we used to feel ‘Oh, it will be all right when Malcolm comes round.’ And now you are in London, where they can’t possibly need you as you are needed here. We try to picture you in London, but it seems all wrong. Surely a word from you to the men up top would be enough to bring you back here.
Ethel sends her love. We talk of you all the time. Do drop us a line to let us know how you are doing.
Yours ever
Plummie
1 Muggeridge’s The Thirties: 1930 to 1940 in Great Britain, published in 1940, surveyed the events of the last decade, especially those leading up to the war.
During this period, the Wodehouses had trouble finding accommodation. The authorities still would not allow Wodehouse to leave France, but after the liberation of Paris the Americans requisitioned large numbers of hotel rooms, so it was difficult to know where they could live. Ethel was allowed to keep her room at the Bristol hotel, but Wodehouse was asked to leave, and went to stay in a friend’s apartment at Neuilly. Even if a departure to England had been allowed, Ethel would have found it hard to countenance the idea: ‘I have my beloved Leonora’s photograph by my side as I write, and I can hardly bear the thought of ever returning […] and she won’t be there to meet me. It’s knocked me all to bits, and I feel I shall never be able to cope with life again. I feel in a dream most of the time, and it seems so strange to see people laughing in the streets and doing this and that.’
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris
April 22. 1945
Dear Bill.
[…]
I had a long letter from Watt the other day, the contents of which were quite encouraging. […] The bad period was at the end of 1942, when the sales dropped to about 6 copies of each book. In the first half of 1943 they rose to about 100 per book, and in the first half of 1944 they were up to as much as 900. I haven’t had the returns for the last half of 1944. But in all the cheap editions seem to have sold about half a million in three years, which looks as if people had had a change of heart. Of course, they may be buying my books with one hand and hating my insides with the other, but I hope not.
Somebody, presumably Slacker, sent me the Dulwich Year book for 1943 and 1944, which I was delighted to have, though it was saddening to see the Roll of Honour. Most of the names I did not know, but quite a few were of chaps I knew slightly as members of the cricket and football teams. I see Doulton’s son and D. G. Donald’s have both been killed, and also R. H. Spenser, who played half, and a fellow named Darby who was in the cricket team of 1935 and wrote to thank me for a notice I gave him in my report of the Tonbridge match.
[…]
You never told me if H. T. Bartlett was all right. He got through Arnhem with Billy Griffith, and then I heard a rumour that he had been blown up by a mine. I do hope it wasn’t true. And I hope to goodness that Billy is all right. I had a message through an R.A.F. man in September from A. C. Shirreff, so he was all right then, but you never know from one day to another, worse luck. At last reports Peter and Anthony Mildmay were all right, but they must be down near Bremen, and somebody was telling me that it was pretty nasty there. There is nothing one can do but hope and wait for the end, which surely can’t be far away now. I was told today that the Russians were four miles from the centre of Berlin, but of course it may be just a story. Still, they can’t be very far away, I imagine. Gosh, won’t it be wonderful when it’s all over. I am hoping that the Russians will establish General Paulus in authority and that he will be able to surrender for Germany. It only needs someone who is in a position to speak for Germany against the Nazis.
I hope my letters are reaching you all right. Love to Rene. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I really am 63 and a half. I can’t go on kidding myself that though that may be my official age I am really about 40. I tire rather easily now and feel pretty weak sometimes, though that may be just a hangover from a bad cold which I have had plus this extraordinary hot spell.
Yours ever
Plum
P.S. I have been reading Mark Twain’s letters. Very interesting.
TO MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
78 Ave Paul Doumer
Paris
May 19. 1945
[…]
We had a marvellous letter from Peter the other day. Thank God he has come through all right. He says the toughest time of all was just before the finish. They took a town and cleared out all the Germans, as they thought, and fixed themselves up in a headquarters and were just settling down to lunch when a Guardsman poked his head in at the door and said ‘You’ll excuse me troubling you, gentlemen,’ or words to that effect, ‘but the house is surrounded and the Germans are coming through the garden.’ Then followed a terrific battle with shooting through the windows, and then suddenly Peter’s great friend, Anthony Mildmay, arrived with a lot of tanks and saved them all, just like the United States Marines in a film. Anthony got his head phones shot off and one of his ears chipped by a bullet, but he has come through, too, so all is well.
[…]
Frances Donaldson, later Wodehouse’s biographer, had been Leonora’s best friend.
TO FRANCES DONALDSON
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris
France
June 2. 1945
Dear Frankie.
[…]
I wonder what England is like after six years of war. All our correspondents there speak of London as being very dirty and shabby, which it might well be after what it has gone through.
[…]
I have had a long spell of inaction since finishing a novel at the end of March. I suppose I shall get another plot some day, but nothing seems to stir as yet. […] My trouble is that I already have five novels waiting to be published in England, so that anything I write now will presumably appear round about 1950, and I find it very hard to imagine what the world will be like then. I mean, it seems a waste of time to write about butlers and country houses if both are obsolete, as I suppose they will be. I can’t see what future there is for Blandings Castle, and I doubt if Bertie Wooster will be able to afford a personal attendant with the income tax at ten shillings in the pound. It looks to me as if the only one of my characters who will be able to carry on is Ukridge. His need for making a quick touch will be all the greater in an impoverished world, though I don’t see who is going to be in a position to lend him the ten bob he is always wanting.
Love to you and the family from us both. Do drop me a line if you have time and let me know how things are going.
Yours ever
Plum
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris
June 30. 1945
Dear Bill.
[…] In one of your letters you asked me if I had ever read anything by Trollope. At that time I hadn’t, but the other day, reading in Edward Marsh’s A Number of People that Barrie had been fascinated by a book of his called Is He Popenjoy? I took it out of the American Library. I found it almost intolerably slow at first, and then suddenly it gripped me, and now I am devouring it. It is rather like listening to somebody who is a little long-winded telling you a story about real people. The characters live in the most extraordinary way and you feel that the whole thing is true. Of course I read Trollope’s Autobiography and found it very interesting. But I still don’t understand his methods of work. Did he sit down each morning and write exactly fifteen hundred words without knowing when he sat down how the story was going to develop, or had he a careful scenario on paper? I can’t believe that an intricate story like Popenjoy could have been written without very minute planning. Of course, if he did plan the whole thing out first, there is nothing so very bizarre in the idea of writing so many hundred words of it each day. After all, it is more or less what one does oneself. One sits down to work each morning irrespective of whether one feels bright or lethargic and before one gets up a certain amount of stuff, generally about fifteen hundred words, has emerged. But to sit down before a blank sheet of paper without an idea of how the story is to proceed seems to me impossible. Anyway, I think Trollope is damned good and I mean to read as much of him as I can get hold of.
[…]
I’m sorry the short story didn’t get over with the S.E.P. How extraordinary that they should be so against war stories. It is a complete change of policy since the last number I read, which was only about a year ago. At that time the synopsis of a S.E.P. serial would be something like ‘Major Dwight van Renssaeller, a young American officer in the F.G.I. has fallen in love with a mysterious veiled woman who turns out to be Irma Kraus, assistant Gauleiter of the Gestapo, who is in New York disguised as a Flight Lieutenant of the R.A.F. in order to secure the plans of the P.B.O. One night at a meeting of the X.T.D. he meets ‘Spud’ Murphy, in reality a Colonel in the T.H.B., who is posing as Himmler in the hope of getting a free lunch at a German restaurant on 44th St. They decide to merge the Y.F.S. with the P.X.Q., thus facilitating the operations of W.G.C. Go on from here.’
[…]
Peter is back at Fairlawne and expects to be demobbed in September. Ethel is well, but very tired today after an awful night with Wonder, who had some medicine and kept her up all night. We still manage to get along with the housekeeping. Something like a chicken or a bit of veal keeps turning up. The French bread is very good now. I am very fit, ever so much more than I was when feeding at the Bristol. I have resumed my daily five-mile walks.
Love to Rene.
Yours ever
Plum
While Wodehouse’s letters continue to be fairly optimistic, Ethel’s were decidedly depressed: ‘if only our Leonora could be here’, she wrote, ‘it comes over me sometimes like a heavy black out, just suddenly, as it did last night, and I broke down for hours, but Plummie was so sweet and understanding.’ Wodehouse’s sympathies also extended to George Orwell, whose wife had just died. Orwell’s loss was especially tragic, as the couple had only recently adopted a baby boy.
TO GEORGE ORWELL
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris (16)
Aug 1. 1945
Dear Orwell.
I wrote to you a few days before your letter arrived to thank you for The Windmill, and I am writing again to tell you how terribly sorry I am to hear of your sad loss. I am afraid there is nothing much one can say at a time like this that will be any good, but my wife and I are feeling for you with all our hearts, the more so as a year ago we lost our daughter and so can understand what it must be for you. I am so glad you have got a nurse for your little boy and that he is all right. If you come to Paris again, do let us know. We should both so much like to see you again.
I want to thank you again for that article.1 It was extraordinarily kind of you to write like that when you did not know me, and I shall never forget it. […]
[…] It was a masterly bit of work and I agree with every word of it.
With best wishes
P. G. Wodehouse
1 George Orwell had written an article, ‘In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse’, published in The Windmill in July 1945.
TO GUY BOLTON
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris (16)
Sept 1. 1945
Dear Guy.
[…] As far as we are concerned, things are beginning to stir faintly, like the blood beginning to circulate in a frozen Alpine traveller who has met a St Bernard dog and been given a shot from the brandy flask. Some weeks ago we were told by our London bank that by a new arrangement ‘French’ accounts had been started for us, whereby we could touch a certain amount of our cash, and today I read in the paper that residents in France now enter into full possession of what stuff they have in England. This relieves the financial situation. We have also started to set matters in train for a dash to America.
[…]
I was awfully pleased and grateful for what you said in your letter about getting up that petition for me.1 How sweet of Virginia to sweat round with it. You say it did no earthly good, but I’m not sure. I think it was that and the agitation made by the Saturday Evening Post that induced the Germans to release me three months before I was sixty. Certainly something happened to make them do it, and it certainly wasn’t anything to do with my broadcasting, because the idea of broadcasting did not come up till after I had been released. Isn’t it the damnedest thing how Fate lurks to sock you with the stuffed eelskin.2 […] Do write again soon and tell me all you are doing. I hope you are busy with rehearsals.
Yours ever
Plum
1 In 1940, a petition, canvassing for Wodehouse’s release from internment, had been arranged by Guy Bolton and signed by a large number of writers and well-known individuals in the US. The petition gained the attention of the Saturday Evening Post.
2 Stuffed eelskins were an old favourite of Wodehouse’s when it came to metaphors and similes: ‘What is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin?’ (Uneasy Money (1916), Chapter 13); ‘He resembled a minor prophet who had been hit behind the ear with a stuffed eel-skin’ (‘Ukridge’s Dog College’, Ukridge, 1924); ‘I didn’t want to get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a stuffed eelskin’ (‘Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest’, My Man Jeeves (1919)).
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris (16)
Sept 13. 1945
Dear Bill.
[…]
It looks to me as if my position in America was swaying in the balance. An American newspaper woman (on News Review) who came to lunch yesterday told me that except for the extreme leftists everyone over there was pro-me, and I have had a letter today from Paul Reynolds Jr which suggests that things are coming right. But Ben Hibbs, the new editor of the S.E.P., uncompromisingly refuses to consider publishing anything of mine in the Post, saying that if he did there would be a storm of protest. So I really don’t know what to think. Anyway, the camp book will settle it. If it goes, then everything will be well.
[…] My trouble has been to get the right tone. You know how one’s moods change from day to day. I go for a walk and work up a spirit of defiance and come home and write a belligerent page or two indicating that I don’t give a damn whether the public takes a more favourable view or not, because all my friends have stuck to me and it’s only my friends I care about. Then I sleep on it and wonder if this is quite judicious! Also, comedy will keep creeping in at the most solemn moments. I wrote this yesterday –
The global howl which went up as the result of my indiscretion exceeded in volume and intensity anything I had experienced since the time in my boyhood when I broke the curate’s umbrella and my aunts started writing letters to one another about it.
I showed the script to Ethel, making sure that she would swoon on reading the above and insist on it coming out, and she thought it marvellous and said that whatever I cut it mustn’t be that. What do you think? Will the reaction be ‘Ha, ha. I don’t care what this chap has done. He makes me laugh’ or ‘Mr Wodehouse appears to imagine that his abominable action is a subject for flippancy.’ You see. It might go either way, and I can’t tell in advance.
[…]
Ethel is rather tired […] these days, as Wonder, who sleeps on her bed, has taken to scratching in the night and waking her up. She is full of pep, however, and goes off daily to see one of Peter’s friends, a Captain in the Welsh Guards, who has had flu and is in a small hotel which has been turned into a hospital.
[…]
I must stop now and take Wonder for a walk.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
H. D. Ziman, an English literary journalist, was introduced to Wodehouse by Malcolm Muggeridge. Wodehouse had sent him the manuscript of his book of camp reminiscences. The extract from the following letter shows his response to Ziman’s feedback.
TO H. D. ZIMAN
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris (16)
Sept 26. 1945
[…]
8. ‘Admit candidly that I made a mistake’.
Yes. I agree with that. What has hampered me is the difficulty of writing the stuff – what is called ‘expressing contrition’ – without grovelling. It seems to me that anything would be better than grovelling. Surely, if I do, people will rank me with all the Germans who now go about saying how much they disliked the Nazis. Won’t it seem that I am simply trying to curry favour? I would much rather be thought a Benedict Arnold than a Uriah Heep.
But there must be a way of doing it, if one could only find a method of avoiding servility. I have felt all along that the tone of the book was too flippant, but I couldn’t find the mean between flippancy and grovelling.
[…] Best wishes from us both
Yours ever
Plum
P.S. I have been greatly cheered by a letter from a very big American theatrical manager, to whom I wrote to ask if he would care to read a play I was writing. I said in my letter that I was quite prepared to have him reply that it would be impossible to put on a play by me on account of anti-Wodehouse feeling in the States, but he writes that he doesn’t feel that way.
He says: –
‘I think you will find that your German troubles are pretty well forgotten in this country. As your personal spy, I will tell you that the general consensus of opinion is that you did a foolish thing but not a malicious thing. In any case, I can assure you that it would have no effect whatever on the public reaction to anything that you might write.’
This has naturally bucked me up more than somewhat, and I am hoping that the feeling in England will eventually be the same.
All well here. We now have the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as comparatively near neighbours.
Do come back to Paris as soon as you can.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
78 Avenue Paul Doumer
Paris (16)
Oct 14. 1945
Dear Denis.
[…]
I wish we were together and could have a talk, for I would like to discuss with you the subject of the Nude on the stage. Peter got tickets for the Casino de Paris and I sat brooding on the Nude and wondering how it can always come as a fresh surprise to the French audience. Revues must have been going for well over a century in Paris and every one of them not only relies for its big first act curtain on Nudes Through the Ages but one spots Nudes at intervals all the way through, and yet no-one ever seems to get tired of it. If you want a subject for another essay, I would suggest one on chorus girls, featuring the Paris chorus girl. Their utter lack of interest in their job is what amazes me. They just walk through the show without a smile. As for dancing, they never attempt it.
I must say Ho! gave a pretty grim picture of what life in London must have been like during the war.1 But I always think London is depressing and wonder at your devotion to it, considering that your aim, like mine, is to avoid your species. Now that I am 64 (tomorrow) I want to settle down in some quiet nook and turn into a vegetable.
[…]
Yours ever
Plum
1 Denis Mackail’s wartime reminiscences, Ho! Or How It All Strikes Me, were published in 1944.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris (16)
Nov 7. 1945
Dear Denis.
First of all, observe and jot down in your tablets the above address. It is a new flat into which we move as soon as we can get our packing done. Very posh, being right on the Bois (wonderful facilities for Peke exercising) and two doors from neighbour Windsor, who lives at No 24 and will no doubt be dropping in all the time. We got it through Bea Davis, the owner being a friend of hers, and the price is almost the same as we are paying for the Paul Doumer hovel. I think we shall have a good time there, as it is beautifully light and, as I say, with vastly superior facilities for promenading the petit chien. If we feel in sporting mood, Auteuil race course is only a hundred yards away. One excellent feature is that I have a very good work room. The only drawback, which can easily be remedied by taking the dam thing down and hiding it in a spare room, is an enormous picture of a nude which dominates the living room. I have already expressed to you my views on nudes. I want no piece of them.
[…]
Talking of books, as we so often do when we get together, ought I to be ashamed of confessing to you a furtive fondness for Angela Thirkell?1 You told me once that she bullied you when you were a child, and for years I refused austerely to read her. But recently Wild Strawberries and Pomfret Towers have weakened me. I do think she’s good, though if we are roasting her I will add that August Folly was rotten and I couldn’t get through it.
[…]
Keep me supplied with news about the pug, in whom I am very interested.
Yours ever
Plum
I’m so glad you like Malcolm Muggeridge. Words can’t tell what a friend he has been to us.
1 The novelist Angela Thirkell was Denis’s sister. The pair were not close, and Wodehouse learned later that Mackail did not appreciate hearing compliments about her.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
Nov 8. 1945
Dear Bill.
[…]
Yielding to the overwhelming pressure from Watt etc, I have decided to postpone publication of the camp book. I still agree with you about it, but everybody else is so insistent that it should be held back till this Belsen business has become a thing of the past that I am pigeonholing it for the time being.1
[…]
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
1 The concentration camp Bergen–Belsen had been liberated by the British in April 1945. Over a hundred thousand people had died within its walls – and some twenty thousand more were too ill to survive, even after liberation came. Between August and November 1945, the Commandant of the camp, and forty-four others, were tried in a British war crimes court at Lüneburg. Thirty were found guilty, and twelve were sentenced to death.
Ethel, meanwhile, recovering from the shock of her daughter’s death, was starting to enjoy life in Paris more. ‘I had a very nice cocktail party the other day. [...] I thought it was about time I paid back to a few people who had been so nice to us. I couldn’t begin to find anything to eat or drink, but a friend of mine, an American girl and her Mother came to the rescue […] and she found everything […]. Lots of decorative young officers came, and it was a great success.’
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Boulevard Suchet,
Paris (16)
Nov 27. 1945
Dear Denis,
[…]
I find that my personal animosity against a writer never affects my opinion of what he writes. Nobody could be more anxious than myself, for instance, that Alan Alexander Milne should trip over a loose boot lace and break his bloody neck, yet I re-read his early stuff at regular intervals with all the old enjoyment and still maintain that in The Dover Road he produced about the best comedy in English.
It was awfully good of you to write to Iddon in my defence, and I think it must have done good, as he appears to have been impressed.1 You know, I can hardly blame anyone in America for being hostile to me after the weird things that have been printed there about me. Yesterday Ethel got a letter from an old friend of hers in Boston, in which the latter mentioned an article which said that we used to lie in bed in Berlin feeding our dog with pork chops!! How on earth the writer was supposed to have got his facts, I don’t know. Actually we used to victual Wonder just as you in similar circumstances would have victualled Tan, – we had an ounce of meat each daily and we gave this to Wonder and ate vegetables ourselves. I don’t think I ever saw a pork chop when I was in Germany.
The new flat is a stupendous success. It is like living in the country with all the conveniences of town. We are right on the edge of the Bois, and every morning I put on plus fours and a sweater and go and do my Daily Dozen under the trees before breakfast. The improvement in my health has been immediate. I am now very fit, and my eyes, which had been troubling me owing to the bad lighting at 78 Paul Doumer, are now all right again. One thing I love about the French is that they are not hicks, – I mean that if they see anything unusual they accept it politely and don’t guffaw. Not a single pedestrian who has passed me during my morning exercises has even turned his head. They see a man in a white sweater and golf bags bending and stretching and they say to themselves ‘Ah, a man in a white sweater and golf bags bending and stretching. No doubt he has excellent motives, and in any case it has nothing to do with me’. […]
Love to Diana and Tan and all
Yours ever
Plum
1 Don Iddon, a British journalist, had written an unfavourable article about PGW.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Boulevard Suchet,
Paris (16)
Dec 23. 1945
Dear Denis.
[…]
You’re quite right about my books being early Edwardian. I look on myself as a historical novelist. I read a book about Dickens the other day which pointed out that D. was still writing gaily about stage coaches etc long after railways had come in. I don’t believe it matters and I intend to go on hewing to the butler line, let the chips fall where they may. By the way, I was vastly encouraged, when reading in the paper about Viscount Selby and his lady friend, to see that at one point ‘the butler’ entered and spoke a line or two. So they still exist.
More later. Send news of pug.
Yours ever
Plum
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris (16)
Jan 11. 1946
Dear Bill.
[…]
Life here continues very pleasant. I am getting fonder and fonder of Paris. It was a blow when they started rationing bread again, but in actual practice it doesn’t affect us much. We now have a cook who buys the stuff and there always seems enough. There is some sort of row on just now between the wholesale and retail butchers, which has resulted in no meat for the populace for about two weeks. But something always seems to turn up. There is a mysterious Arab gentleman who calls from time to time with offerings. He has just come and fixed us up with a great chunk of mutton. And a rabbit! Also a Dane (unknown to me) has sent us an enormous parcel, the only trouble being that all the contents are labeled in Danish, so we don’t know what they are. There are three large tins which I hold contain bacon, but Ethel, who is in a pessimistic mood today owing to a bad night, says that they are stuff for cleaning floors. But surely even the most erratic Dane wouldn’t send us stuff for cleaning floors. The only way I can think of of solving the mystery is to ring up our Danish friend at Neuilly and spell the labels over the phone to him and ask him to translate. (N.B. We did very well at Christmas, managing to buy two chickens and a turkey, and our ex-lodger of the Low Wood 1939 days, who is in the fish business, sent us a large box of fish.)
[…]
Who do you think I heard from a couple of days ago? Old Brook. A shortish letter written on filthy paper. He seems to be getting along still and says that somebody has bought an option on a dramatization he made of A Diary of a Nobody.
[…]
Love to Rene.
Yours ever
Plum
Wodehouse’s lyric ‘Bill’, with music by Jerome Kern, had been imported into the 1927 musical Show Boat. In 1945, Kern and Hammerstein revived the show, and made sure they gave Wodehouse a writing credit on the programme.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
Paris
Jan 26. 1946
Dear Denis.
[…]
‘Bill’. I am enclosing a sheet from the programme of Show Boat which has just been revived in N.Y. Don’t you think it was extraordinarily decent of O. Hammerstein to go out of his way to print a thing like that? He is one of the few men of whom I have never heard anyone say a bad word. Everybody likes him, and I don’t wonder. Years ago, I remember, Oscar lent me his script of Show Boat to read some time before the original production. I read it in a kindly spirit, liking him so much, but was quite convinced it hadn’t a chance of success. I came to the same conclusion about On the Spot when Edgar Wallace gave it to me to read.1 So I seem to be a good picker.
Ethel is yowling in the passage that my cocktail is ready, so no more for the present.
Yours ever
Plum
1 The detective novel On the Spot is regarded as Wallace’s masterpiece.
In February 1946, Wodehouse wrote to Townend about a ‘visit from the Home Office bloke who came to Paris after the Liberation to take my statement’. Although Cussen was ‘terrifically friendly’ he raised a ‘snag’: this related to the recent trial and execution of William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’). In stark contrast to Wodehouse, Joyce actively collaborated for many years with the Nazi regime and had regularly broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain. The Director of Public Prosecutions had noted that Wodehouse ‘was in an altogether different category’ and ‘made only isolated unpolitical broadcasts’. Nevertheless, Wodehouse writes, ‘[i]n the Joyce trial the Judge laid it down that it was an offence to speak on the German radio, irrespective of what one said. This means that I have been technically guilty of an offence and that if I came to England the authorities would presumably take some action. This man said that the case against me had been completely and entirely dropped, but that if I came to England it might have to be re-opened.’
TO MAJOR EDWARD CUSSEN
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris (16)
Feb 1. 1946
My dear Cussen.
It was such a joy to us to see you again, looking so fit (and much thinner!). […]
[…]
I wish you had not had to leave in such a hurry, as there were a number of questions I wanted to ask you about my position as regards England. That pronouncement of the Judge in the Joyce case bars me from coming to England. Right. But for how long? Indefinitely? For ever?
If for ever, how do I live? The present regulations of the Bank of England seem to make it impossible for me to touch my money over there. […]
In these circumstances, how do I manage? […] If they are going to go on for ever refusing to allow me to receive my literary earnings and won’t let me touch my capital, it looks as if I would either have to starve or else buy a gun and a black mask and go about Paris holding up the fortunate people who have a bit of the stuff on them. And I don’t know enough French to stick natives up.
With best wishes from us both
Yours sincerely
P. G. Wodehouse
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
March 7. 1946
Dear Bill.
[…] I am wondering, with some mild amusement, what the result is going to be of the impact of a book like Money in the Bank on the world of 1946! It is so absolutely archaic. It assumes a state of affairs which is as out of date as Three Men in a Boat. It will be very interesting to see how it goes. I believe that people will jump at something that takes them away from modern conditions. The same applies to the impending publication of my Jeeves novel in America.1 But of course my stuff has been out of date since 1914, and nobody has seemed to mind.
[…]
Yours ever
Plum
1 Joy in the Morning.
Wodehouse was writing to his granddaughter, Sheran, just before her twelfth birthday.
TO SHERAN CAZALET
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
March 27. 1946
My darling Sheran.
If I post this tonight, it ought to reach you on the 31st, so many happy returns and I hope you will have a lovely birthday and get all the presents you most want. We shall be thinking of you on Sunday and will drink your health.
[…]
I am working very hard trying to plan out a story about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves which I began to work at in 1942 and couldn’t get on with because I couldn’t think what could happen.1 Yesterday and this morning it suddenly began to come out, and now I really think it is going to be funny. Bertie has a friend called Stilton Cheesewright – at least, his name is really D’Arcy Cheesewright, but everybody calls him Stilton – and they are both going to stay at a house in the country with some people they have never met. Well, the night before they are supposed to go Stilton (who is rather quick-tempered) has a fight with someone in the street and is arrested by the police and the magistrate says he will have to go to prison for two weeks. And if he does not go to the house for this visit of his[,] his family will find out that he is in prison and will be very angry with him, so Bertie asks Jeeves what is to be done, and Jeeves says the only thing to do is for Bertie to go to the house pretending to be Stilton. So Bertie goes, and the first thing he finds is that the man who owns the house is a great enemy of Stilton’s, though they have never met. (This sounds odd, but it is all explained in the story.) This makes things very awkward for Bertie, because he can’t say he isn’t Stilton.
Meanwhile, the magistrate thinks it over and decides that he was too hard on Stilton, so he says Stilton can pay a fine instead of going to prison. So Stilton comes to the house because he is going to marry a girl and she will expect to get letters from him every day written from the house, and he can’t go as himself because Bertie is pretending to be him, so he comes there pretending to be Bertie. So everybody thinks Bertie is Stilton and Stilton is Bertie and all sorts of funny things happen. I haven’t got the middle of the story yet, but I have thought out the end of it, which is always the most important part, and I believe it is going to be good. But just fancy having to take four years to think out a story!
[…]
You would like this flat, as you are so fond of horses, for it is within a hundred yards of Auteuil race course, so when I want to go to the races all I have to do is just stroll round the corner. I meant to go last Sunday, but it rained very hard all day and I thought it would be nicer indoors.
Lots and lots of love to you and Daddy and Buddy and Nitty and everybody.2
Your
Plummie
1 The Mating Season.
2 ‘Buddy’ is Edward, Sheran’s brother; ‘Nitty’ is Anthony Mildmay.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
March 28. 1946
Dear Denis.
[…]
Not much news from the Paris front. The other night, having run out of Murine,1 Ethel squirted some stuff into her eyes which the vet prescribed for Wonder, and a quarter of an hour later complained of violent pains in the head and said that the room was all dark and she couldn’t read the print of her Saturday Evening Post. Instead of regarding this as a bit of luck, as anyone should do who knows the present Saturday Evening Post, she got very alarmed and remained so till next morning, when all was clear again. It just shows what a dog has to endure. Though, as a matter of fact, I believe dogs’ eyes are absolutely insensitive. I don’t think dogs bother about their eyes at all, relying entirely on their noses.
[….]
Well, lunch now. More later.
Yours ever
Plum
I have been looking through my diary and I realize that I must be one of the world’s great correspondents. This is the 43rd letter I have written this month, and my monthly average for the last year has been over thirty. Do you write a lot of letters? I love getting letters, so I get a reward for my large output.
1 Eye drops.
TO IRA GERSHWIN
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
April 5. 1946
Dear Ira,
That bit in your letter of March 14 about Leonore sending us parcels stirred me like a bugle. Parcels are what we don’t want anything except. Before I send off this letter I will consult Ethel, who is out at the moment, and ask her what we particularly need. It really would be frightfully good of her to send us something, if it isn’t too much trouble, as the food situation, though better, is still a long way from being what it should be.
[…]
I have now written eleven lyrics, and I really think they are good. But how difficult it is to write lyrics without the melody. I could never make out how you and George worked. Somebody told me once that George sat down at the piano and doped out a tune and that you stood alongside working out the lyric at the same time, but it sounded impossible. Don’t you have to sit down all by yourself somewhere and hold your head and gradually chisel the thing out? Jerry1 set quite a number of my lyrics, but I always worked best when he gave me the completed melody. That old devil Friml used to drive me off my nut because he would never finish a tune. He would tell me he had got one ready for me and then play about four bars on the piano and wander off into nothing and say ‘Of course, it’s just a sketch.’ I live in hopes of one day doing a show with Romberg. He gave me the impression during the Rosalie time of being a wonderful composer to work with.
Love to Leonore
Yours ever
Plum
Ethel has now come in and says that what we need most are the following: –
Sardines (or any tinned fish)
A cake
Jam (with which is incorporated anything
to spread on bread – e.g. honey)
Canned Meats to be spread on bread
Candy
Cheese
But anything Leonore picks will be okay with us. Ethel says Thank you both ever so much. It really is wonderful of you.
1 Jerome Kern.
In early 1946, in the wake of William Joyce’s execution, the Attorney-General, Hartley Shawcross (‘an Old Alleynian, blast him!’, noted Wodehouse), spoke about Wodehouse in the House of Commons. He declared that ‘the question of taking proceedings against Mr. Wodehouse would be reconsidered if and when he came within the jurisdiction of the British courts’.
TO COMPTON MACKENZIE
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
April 10. 1946
Dear Monty.
Thelma Cazalet-Keir came over here a couple of days ago and told me of the marvellous way you had been sticking up for me in England. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. It makes the whole situation seem different when I know that friends like you are still with me.
The recent remarks of the Attorney-General in the House of Commons came as rather a shock after the attitude taken by the previous Attorney-General, making my position difficult again. Apparently the view taken now, as the result of what the Judge said in the Joyce trial, is that the mere act of speaking on the German Radio is regarded as a crime, irrespective of what was said. My five talks were simply a humorous description of life in camp, designed purely to amuse American readers of my books and made because I wanted to do something to show my gratitude for letters and parcels they had sent me, but that, it seems, does not let me out. The Government seem to be standing firmly on a technicality, against which of course I have no defence. So I can only hope that time will eventually straighten things out.
[…]
My own position is rather like that of the mild man with the small voice who sits in a corner making remarks that nobody listens to. I keep on writing, and the books have been piling up for five years or so, but I am the only person who reads them. However, the dam shows signs of bursting. Doubleday are bringing out my Jeeves novel in the Autumn, and I suppose after that the others will follow. They will be definitely historical novels now, as they all deal with a life in which country houses flourish and butlers flit to and fro. I’m hoping that people, in America at any rate, will overlook the fact that they are completely out of date and accept them for their entertainment value. I think they’re all pretty funny, but, my gosh, how obsolete!
[…]
A few days ago I received a formal notification from the French Government that I was no longer considered ‘dangereux’ to the safety of the Republic. Up till now the Republic has been ducking down side streets when it saw me coming and shouting ‘Save yourselves, boys! Here comes Wodehouse!’, but now all is well and me and them are just like that. I am glad of this, because I have always considered them one of the nicest Republics I have ever met, my great trouble being that I simply can’t master the language. My instructor at the Berlitz was strong on pencils. She would keep saying ‘Un crayon. Le crayon est jaune. Le crayon est bleu’ and so on till I really got good on pencils. But in actual conversation I found that it didn’t carry me very far. I was sunk unless I could work the talk round to pencils, and nobody seemed really interested in them. I now leave everything to my wife who can’t speak a word of French but somehow manages to make herself understood.
I do hope you will some day be coming over to Paris, so that we can meet again. I haven’t gone at length into what I think of your wonderful loyalty to me, because I know you know how I feel. God bless you!
Yours ever
Plum
Wodehouse was writing to his grandson Edward, just before his tenth birthday.
TO EDWARD CAZALET
35 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
April 23. 1946
My darling Buddy.
Many happy returns of the day. What splendid news that you are so much better and can go out in the car. I hope by the time your next birthday comes you will be quite well and riding again and that it won’t be long before you are playing cricket. I do think it’s wonderful how brave you have been.
[…]
I wonder what you have been reading lately. I found a book in the American Library which I am sure you would like. It is called The Sword in the Stone and it is about the childhood of King Arthur – you know, the Round Table chap. It is very exciting and very funny because all the characters talk like people of today. There is a king called King Pellorin who spends all his time chasing the Questing Beast with a hound that keeps getting its leash entangled in his legs. I don’t know if it has been published in England, but if it has do ask Daddy to get it for you as a present from me.
[…]
It was lovely seeing your Daddy and your aunt Thelma, and I wish they could have stayed longer. Did they tell you about the funny little man with the white beard in the restaurant? He told us what he wanted us to eat and wouldn’t let us eat anything else. Poor Bunny wanted fish, but he said she mustn’t have fish because the rest of us were having duck and we must all have the same, and when she asked for a salad he said she couldn’t have salad with duck. By the way, a friend of ours in America sent us a parcel of chocolates the other day. They were good! You can’t get chocolates in Paris unless you are a growing child, which I’m not. I am thinking of putting on a sailor suit and having a try, but I doubt if it will work.
Well, I wish I could be with you for your birthday, and I hope this will arrive on or about the right day.
Oceans of love
Plummie
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
April 29. 1946
[…]
George Orwell. I wish I could get hold of that book of his, as it’s just the sort of thing I like reading nowadays. He is a friend of my friend Malcolm Muggeridge and about a year ago or more came over to Paris and gave us a very good lunch at a dingy place down by Les Halles (the markets to you). He then sent me that article about me, which appeared in The Windmill and later in his book. I liked him very much indeed. Odd him being an old Etonian. He wrote a book once called Down and Out in Paris [sic] and gave me the impression of somebody out of your novels, a sort of gentleman beach-comber. I thought that criticism he did of my stuff was masterly. I was tremendously impressed by his fairmindedness in writing such an article at a time when it was taking a very unpopular view. He really is a good chap. I wonder, though, how many people read a book of essays. I should think that article ought to help me with writing people, but I’m afraid the general public will miss it.
[…]
Yours ever
Plum
Ever since Wodehouse’s broadcasts, the Cazalet family had felt strongly that Wodehouse should keep as low a public profile as possible, stop publishing – and remain away from England. The book of camp reminiscences was seen as a particularly dangerous publication. Thelma Cazalet-Keir was generally against any of Wodehouse’s work appearing in print at this time, in order to protect Wodehouse from doing further damage to himself. She frequently wrote to Wodehouse’s publishers, Herbert Jenkins, on this subject. The continuing lack of information from official sources surrounding what had actually taken place in Berlin explains Thelma Cazalet-Keir’s caution, but Wodehouse found it difficult to comprehend.
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
May 7. 1946
Dear Denis,
[…]
How right you are in the passage at the foot of page one of your letter of April 24. (May as well be discreet, even to a trusted friend like you.) Every word you say about the party of whom you said the words you said is true to the last drop. The party of whom you said the words you said is thinking solely of the interests of the said party and not of mine. I have felt all along that the Camp book should have been published right away and that it was only the sinister influence of the party that made all the jelly-backboned people who gave their opinions (no names) take the stand they did. I’ll tell you one thing. If Money in the Bank (you should be receiving your copy shortly) gets over, I intend to do a bit of Russian expansionism and throw my weight about. And by ‘gets over’ I mean if it sells. Slams from the baser element don’t matter a damn so long as the heart of the Public is sound.
[…]
Hectic visit, just finished, from Gertrude, Countess of Dudley, bless her. Just the same as ever and very sound on the party to whom I alluded earlier. In fact, after a champagne dinner topped off with brandy she dictated a specimen letter which she wanted me to send to the party which would infallibly have led to severing relations for ever. (Cruel Sports of the Past, – Severing the Relation.)
What a shame Treasure is no longer with you. Wonder is in great form, but let the side down on our walk this morning by squatting down and then changing her mind.
Yours ever
Plum
TO IRA GERSHWIN
36 Boulevard Suchet,
Paris
May 31. 1946
Dear Ira.
A perspiring Frenchman, sagging badly at the knees, has just staggered to our back door drooping under the weight of Leonore’s two magnificent parcels. I never saw such enormous ones in my life, and Ethel and I are overcome and really don’t know how to thank Leonore enough. Contents exactly what we wanted, too, – all those little delicacies which you can spread on bread. There was a good story in the New Yorker some time ago about an Englishwoman writing to an American friend about parcels and saying ‘For heaven’s sake send something that tastes of something.’ I know exactly what she meant. We opened a can of roast beef last night, and while it was filling it just meant nothing. How different with your effort! That fruit cake alone would have made us happy.
By this time, I imagine, you are up to your eyes in the new show and wondering what on earth induced you to become a lyrist.1 I love all the preliminaries to doing a show, – the invitation to join the gang, the meetings with the rest of the crowd, the diving in and out of managers’ offices, but what a sweat it is when you really have to get down to the work. I shall always remember Boston and Rosalie, particularly those testing days when you and I hammered out ‘Say so’ with George […].
The other day I was asked to do book and lyrics for a show from Vienna in which Grace Moore is to star, Hassard Short directing, – about Madame Pompadour, and I was torn between the desire to get in on what will presumably be a big production and a hit, especially as I was an old beach-comber trying to make a come back after thirty years, and the desire to put on a false beard and hide somewhere till the thing had blown over. I imagine you probably feel the same as I do when asked to work on a ‘period’ musical show, – a sort of deadly feeling that you are going into a fight with one arm strapped to your side and hobbles around your ankles, because you won’t be able to use anything in the nature of modern comedy lines or ideas and so are robbed of your best stuff. When I write a lyric I want to be able to work in Clark Gable and Grover Whalen’s moustache and corned beef hash, and you can’t when you are dealing with La Pompadour.
[…]
However, I rather think the thing has fallen through, as I gather the offer was contingent on my coming to America immediately, and I don’t believe I can manage it. I am hoping to be able to get over towards the end of the summer, but a flying start is impossible. I expect to hear more definitely tomorrow, but I have already made up my mind that the deal is off.
Still I was – and continue to be – very bucked at having received the offer after all that has occurred. Compare the story of the old gentleman of eighty who was accosted by a tart one dark night in Piccadilly and said with a good deal of feeling ‘Madam, I thank you for the compliment.’
[…]
Love from us both and again a thousand thanks for the parcels.
Yours ever
Plum
1 Gershwin’s new show, Park Avenue, about marriage and divorce in the smart New York set, opened on Broadway in 1946, with book by Kaufman and Johnson, music co-written with Schwartz, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was not a success.
TO COMPTON MACKENZIE
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
June 4. 1946
My dear Monty.
It was wonderful getting your letter. Send me more!
I asked Watt to send you a copy of Money in the Bank. I hope this reaches you safely and that you will like it. I haven’t seen any reviews of it yet, but imagine that if there are any they will be stinkers. […]
Whisky Galore sounds promising.1 I hope it comes out without any of those awful hitches in the middle which whiten an author’s hair. Why is it that even if you prepare the most detailed scenario you always seem to strike a snag somewhere in a book? I have just got out the plot of a new Jeeves novel and it looks as if it would write itself, but difficulties are sure to crop up.
Yes, the Duke of Windsor is practically next door to us. There is only a derelict barracks in between. Oddly enough I haven’t seen him yet.
[…]
Yours ever
Plum
1 Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore, a novel about a shipwrecked cargo of whisky off the coast of a small Scottish island, was published in 1947.
TO V. S. PRITCHETT
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
June 15. 1946
Dear Mr Pritchett.
A friend of mine has just written to tell me of the kind way in which you spoke of my Money in the Bank on the Home Service on the night of the 12th, and I am kicking myself for having missed it. I really don’t know how to thank you enough. It will mean everything to the book, and I am tremendously grateful.
Apart from the réclame (as we call it over here) it is a joy to know that a critic of your standing liked the story. I am particularly pleased that Lord Uffenham amused you. I had great luck with him. There was a man in camp with me who was Uffenham to the life, except for the murky past and the conviction that he was irresistible to women. All the Uffenham obiter dicta were thrown off by this man from time to time in the dormitory. I simply had to drink the stuff in and write it down.
The whole story was thought out and written while I was in camp. I had to do it in pencil in a room where a hundred men were playing darts and ping-pong, with generally a lecture on Beowulf going on in the background, but oddly enough it came out quite easily, though a bit slowly. Until I tried, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to write a story by hand, as I have worked on the typewriter since 1911, but it turned out to be perfectly simple. It just meant being satisfied with doing a page a day instead of my usual eight.
You can probably imagine how I felt when I heard of your talk, for it was not without diffidence that I agreed to the publication of the book. I saw myself rather in the position of a red-nosed comedian who has got the bird at the first house on Monday and is having the temerity to go on and do his stuff at the second house, outwardly breezy and cheerful but feeling inside as if he had swallowed a heaping tablespoonful of butterflies and with a wary eye out for demonstrations from the gallery. And now comes this applause from the stalls, thank God! Bless you.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
P. G. Wodehouse
TO DENIS MACKAIL
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
July 4. 1946
Dear Denis.
I saw that stinker in the Observer and for a couple of moments reeled beneath the coarse abuse, but it wasn’t long before I was saying ‘What the hell?’ and realizing that the fact that a man who obviously hated my guts couldn’t refrain from praising the book was all to the good. (In their advertisement ye Jenkinses have boiled the review down to the words ‘Eminently readable’, bless them!). Anyway, a few days later my spies inform me that the B.B.C. of all people gave the book a terrific boost per V. S. Pritchett in his Book Talk, and the sales have been absolutely all right, – 21,000 up to the morning of June 12 […]. The Times Lit. Supp. also gave me quite a decent notice, and the heart of the Yorkshire Post and others seems to have been sound. So, as I say, what the hell! But I agree with you that the Camp book must be published.
I am still trying to get a visa for America, and feeling that the only thing to be done was to get as many people as possible to assail the U.S. Embassy in London.
[…]
Too hot to write any more now. Love to all.
Yours ever
Plum
Oh, I was forgetting. A most satisfactory review of A.A.M.’s Chloe Marr in the Daily Mail. In case you missed it, it said that it was the silliest book of the year. I must say from the notices I have seen it sounds pretty bad drip.
Yes, you were right. I lifted Pennefather out of Happy Thoughts.1 I had no idea that even you with your encyclopaedic knowledge of Eng. literature would remember Happy Thoughts. By the way, in another opus entitled Uncle Dynamite the names of the girl’s publishers are Popgood and Grooly [sic].
1 Wodehouse’s character Ernest Pennefather is a cab-driver who appears in Money in the Bank. He is modelled on George Cornelius Pennefather, a character in Francis Cowley Bernand’s Happy Thoughts, published in Punch in 1863–4. Popgood and Groolley feature as the hero’s publishers.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Boulevard Suchet
Paris
Aug 27. 1946
Dear Bill.
Thanks for your letters. I would have written to you a long time ago, but have been tensely occupied with a rush job which started on Aug 8 and finished last night, – viz. the dramatization of Leave It to Psmith for America. Did I tell you about that? An American manager named Montgomery Ford apparently thinks it is the finest book in the language, and we corresponded and eventually decided that he was to construct the thing and I would dialogue it. His effort reached me on the 7th, together with a letter saying that he was on the verge of getting backing for it to the tune of $75,000. In New York now it apparently costs that to put on an ordinary comedy. A musical show on a biggish scale costs $200,000. It beats me how anybody continues in the theatre business.
[…]
The position at the moment, I gather from this Joint Opinion,1 is that they think it would be unwise for me to go to England for a while. They say there is no question of a trial for Treason, but I might get caught on Section 2, Sub-section A of the Defence Regulations or something of that sort, – for which, they say, the penalty is two months in chokey (though, they add, it is possible to get imprisonment for life!).
They say the Prosecution would try to convince the jury that my object in making the broadcasts was to attract listeners to the German radio, and that it is no answer to this to say that as they were made at four in the morning the number of listeners who got up at that hour to hear them must have been very small. A thing I’ve noticed in these legal Opinions is that nothing that would convince an ordinary sensible man ever is an ‘answer’. I haven’t suggested it yet to any of my advisers, but I should have thought the best proof that I had no desire to have Germany triumph and ruin England was that my entire life savings are invested in British Government securities, which in such circs would inevitably have gone phut.
So I am off to Switzerland probably on Sept 2, and expect to return about Sept 4. I shall then start making arrangements for going to America, as Ford is anxious that I shall be with him when the show goes into rehearsal. This, like the trip to Switzerland, will be a hell of a business. I don’t want to fly, and if one goes by boat it means sharing a cabin with about thirty other men on a 10,000 ton Liberty ship. Though I am not sure if on the Liberty ships the number of passengers isn’t limited. Are they really cargo boats? What I would like would be to get a passage on one of your tramp steamers, but how is this managed? Anyway, I expect I shall leave somehow towards the middle of September. We have to give up this flat on Oct 15, and Ethel wants me out of the way during the move. I am hoping that she will clean everything up and join me in N.Y. in about a month.
[…]
Since I wrote last, we have had a short holiday at Le Touquet, where I ran into several men from my camp and was relieved to find them all very friendly. I went several times to see Low Wood. It isn’t in such bad shape as I had feared. The walls, ceilings, staircases and mantelpieces are still there. It would apparently cost about two thousand quid to put right, and Ethel has given a man an option till next Monday to buy at four thousand. Our trouble is that, until they relax this rule about not being able to touch our English capital, we simply can’t raise two thousand, and four thousand paid over in cash would be the salvation of us. At present we are living on driblets from America and England, just enough to keep us going. But I am hoping that in a year or so things will be normal.
[…]
I must stop now, as I have to go to the Swiss Embassy to get my visa.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
You say you tend to get tired nowadays. Me, too. But I am really very fit, and I find that though I write slower these days I turn out just as good stuff.
1 Wodehouse had asked the advice of his London solicitor, who engaged a Junior Counsel and a KC to advise further.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
36 Blvd Suchet
Paris
Aug 30. 1946
Dear Bill.
I simply must write and tell you the good news. This morning there arrived from a newspaper friend in Virginia a review of Joy in the Morning from the New York Times Book Review, Sunday last, raving about the book and concluding with this:
Maybe Wodehouse uses the same plot over and over again. Whatever he does, it’s moderately wonderful, a ray of pale English sunshine in a gray world… There is, of course, the question of Mr Wodehouse’s ‘war guilt’. Upon mature post-war reflection, it turned out to be about equal to the war guilt of the dachshunds which were stoned by super-heated patriots during World War I.
Terrific, isn’t it? The one paper that matters is the N.Y. Times.
I sent you a copy of Joy in the Morning yesterday. I hope you will like it. I don’t think it’s bad, considering that it was written during the German occupation of Le Touquet, with German soldiers prowling about under my window, plus necessity of having to walk to Paris Plage every morning to report to a German Kommandant with a glass eye, which made him even more formidable than the ordinary German Kommandant.
[…]
When you say you liked Priestley’s book, do you mean Bright Day? I read that and liked it, and I also liked Daylight on Saturday. I haven’t seen any others by him. Yes, I think he’s a bit pompous, but he writes very well and is always readable. I am now reading Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags, and am absolutely stunned by his brilliance. I think you said you didn’t like Brideshead Revisited, which I haven’t read, and I imagine it’s different from his usual work. But I do think that as a comic, satiric writer he stands alone. That interview between Basil Seal and the Guards Colonel is simply marvellous.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
By December 1946, the Wodehouses were settled in ‘a couple of rather chilly hotel rooms’ in a village just outside Paris. A long feature interview appeared in the British paper, Illustrated, the first complete interview that Wodehouse had given to any British journal since the broadcasts.
TO GEORGE SHIVELY1
Pavilion Henri Quatre
St Germain en Laye
France
Dec 2. 1946
Dear Mr Shively.
[…] I have read the reviews of Joy in the Morning with great interest. They are a good deal better than I expected but I note rather a sinister anti-Jeeves tone! The New Yorker frankly said he had become a bore. […] My own opinion is that critics get fed up with a character years before the general public. After all, the Katzenjammer Kids still seem popular after about half a century!2 And the great thing is that Joy in the Morning has sold well. By the way, do keep me posted regularly about the sales. I was delighted with that October jump to 19,950, and I am hoping that by now we are well over the 20,000. What sort of a final total do you anticipate? And do you feel that Jeeves ought to be shelved after thirty years of service? I am now about two-thirds of the way through the Jeeves novel I am working on, and hope to finish it fairly soon.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
P. G. Wodehouse
1 Shively was one of the editors at Nelson Doubleday, his American publishers.
2 An American comic strip which ran from 1897 to 1912 in the New York Journal.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Pavillon Henri Quatre
St Germain-en-Laye
France
Dec 24. 1946
Dear Bill.
[…]
It’s curious how life nowadays has got down to simplicities. I mean, Fame and all that doesn’t seem to matter a damn, all that matters is the three square meals a day and light and warmth. Here we are all right for food, in fact extremely well off, though the stuff is very expensive. But every Monday and Tuesday there is no electric light till six in the evening, which means that the heating subsides to nothing, as the apparatus relies on electric current. I have come to the conclusion that the greatest thing in life is gin and Italian vermouth. Every day at 12.30 Ethel mixes me a large bumper and it sends a glow all over my system. I very seldom drink anything else all day, but I do love the moment when the first sip trickles down my throat and I begin to warm up. […]
I return the Rich and Cowan letter.1 Of course, the man’s dotty. These publishers do think up the darnedest objections to an author’s work. […]
My publisher is not so dotty as yours, but I, too, have had my troubles. In Joy in the Morning Bertie speaks of himself as eating a steak and Boko is described as having fried eggs for breakfast, and Grimsdick of Jenkins is very agitated about this, because he says the English public is so touchy about food nowadays that stuff like this will probably cause an uproar. I have changed the fried egg to a sardine and cut out the steak, so I hope all will now be well. But I was reading Agatha Christie’s The Hollow just now, and the people in it simply gorge roast duck and soufflés and caramel cream and so on, besides having a butler, several parlourmaids, a kitchen maid and a cook. I must say it encouraged me to read The Hollow and to see that Agatha was ignoring present conditions in England.
[…]
The interview in Illustrated has apparently appeared, as I have had one or two letters about it. I don’t want to see it, though, as these interviews always make me sick and upset me for days. So if you come across it, don’t send it over!
[…]
Must stop now. Ethel has just come in and wants tea.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
1 Townend’s London publishers.
TO SHERAN CAZALET
Pavillon Henri Quatre
St Germain-en-Laye
France
March 29. 1947
My darling Sheran.
Many happy returns of the day. I hope this will reach you on Monday, but you never know nowadays how long letters are going to take. And I hope you have a very happy birthday. I wish I could be with you.
Wonder and I are very lonely without our Bunny. Since she left, I have been going to bed at nine at night! Now that I am alone, I find meals an awful nuisance. […]
Bunny and I are very excited about getting Low Wood rebuilt. Won’t it be lovely when it is fit to live in again and you and Buddy can come over and stay with us. You would love it at Le Touquet. It is an absolute Paradise except that there are ticks in the grass, and some of them are poisonous and kill the dogs. […]
Tell Bunny that I went to the shop opposite the Bristol Hotel yesterday to have my clothes fitted and they had to take the trousers in an inch and a half because I had got so much thinner since I was last there!! I was very proud of myself. Do you find you have any special temptation in the way of food, which you know you ought not to eat so much of but can’t resist? Mine is bread. If it didn’t make me fat, I could live on bread. But I am very strong-minded and make myself eat what the French call biscottes, which taste like sawdust but are very good for the figure.
All my love, darling.
Your
Plummie