Wodehouse At the Wicket Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by P.G. Wodehouse

  A Cricketing Chronology

  Title Page

  Introduction

  ‘The MCC Match’

  ‘The Match with Downing’s’

  ‘At Lords’

  ‘Bingley Crocker Learns Cricket’

  ‘How’s That, Umpire?’

  ‘Reginald’s Record Knock’

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen v. Players’

  ‘Between the Innings’

  ‘On Fast Bowling’

  ‘Missed!’

  ‘The Cricketer in Winter’

  ‘The Umpire’

  ‘MCC’

  ‘Under MVC Rules’

  ‘Five Minutes on the Cricket Field’

  ‘Now, Talking About Cricket’

  ‘Dulwich v. St Paul’s’

  Extras

  Scorecards

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  From his early days Wodehouse adored cricket, and references to the game run like a golden thread though his writings. He not only wrote about this glorious British pastime, but also played it well, appearing six times at Lord’s, where his first captain was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Illustrated with wonderful drawings and contemporary score-sheets, Wodehouse at the Wicket is the first ever compendium of Wodehouse’s writings on cricket. Edited by cricket historian Murray Hedgcock, this charming book also contains fascinating facts about Wodehouse’s cricketing career and how it is reflected in his work.

  This is the perfect gift for Wodehouse readers and fans of all things cricket.

  About the Author

  Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as ‘Plum’) wrote more than ninety novels and some three hundred short stories over 73 years. He is widely recognised as the greatest 20th century writer of humour in the English language.

  Wodehouse mixed the high culture of his classical education with the popular slang of the suburbs in both England and America, becoming a ‘cartoonist of words’. Drawing on the antics of a near-contemporary world, he placed his Drones, Earls, Ladies (including draconian aunts and eligible girls) and Valets, in a recently vanished society, whose reality is transformed by his remarkable imagination into something timeless and enduring.

  Perhaps best known for the escapades of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse also created the world of Blandings Castle, home to Lord Emsworth and his cherished pig, the Empress of Blandings. His stories include gems concerning the irrepressible and disreputable Ukridge; Psmith, the elegant socialist; the ever-so-slightly-unscrupulous Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred; and those related by Mr Mulliner, the charming raconteur of The Angler’s Rest, and the Oldest Member at the Golf Club.

  Wodehouse collaborated with a variety of partners on straight plays and worked principally alongside Guy Bolton on providing the lyrics and script for musical comedies with such composers as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. He liked to say that the royalties for ‘Just My Bill’, which Jerome Kern incorporated into Showboat, were enough to keep him in tobacco and whisky for the rest of his life.

  In 1936 he was awarded The Mark Twain Medal for ‘having made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the happiness of the world’. He was made a Doctor of Letters by Oxford University in 1939 and in 1975, aged 93, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine’s Day.

  To have created so many characters that require no introduction places him in a very select group of writers, lead by Shakespeare and Dickens.

  Also by P.G. Wodehouse

  Fiction

  Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen

  The Adventures of Sally

  Bachelors Anonymous

  Barmy in Wonderland

  Big Money

  Bill the Conqueror

  Blandings Castle and Elsewhere

  Carry On, Jeeves

  The Clicking of Cuthbert

  Cocktail Time

  The Code of the Woosters

  The Coming of Bill

  Company for Henry

  A Damsel in Distress

  Do Butlers Burgle Banks

  Doctor Sally

  Eggs, Beans and Crumpets

  A Few Quick Ones

  French Leave

  Frozen Assets

  Full Moon

  Galahad at Blandings

  A Gentleman of Leisure

  The Girl in Blue

  The Girl on the Boat

  The Gold Bat

  The Head of Kay’s

  The Heart of a Goof

  Heavy Weather

  Hot Water

  Ice in the Bedroom

  If I Were You

  Indiscretions of Archie

  The Inimitable Jeeves

  Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

  Jeeves in the Offing

  Jill the Reckless

  Joy in the Morning

  Laughing Gas

  Leave it to Psmith

  The Little Nugget

  Lord Emsworth and Others

  Louder and Funnier

  Love Among the Chickens

  The Luck of Bodkins

  The Man Upstairs

  The Man with Two Left Feet

  The Mating Season

  Meet Mr Mulliner

  Mike and Psmith

  Mike at Wrykyn

  Money for Nothing

  Money in the Bank

  Mr Mulliner Speaking

  Much Obliged, Jeeves

  Mulliner Nights

  Not George Washington

  Nothing Serious

  The Old Reliable

  Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin

  A Pelican at Blandings

  Piccadilly Jim

  Pigs Have Wings

  Plum Pie

  The Pothunters

  A Prefect’s Uncle

  The Prince and Betty

  Psmith, Journalist

  Psmith in the City

  Quick Service

  Right Ho, Jeeves

  Ring for Jeeves

  Sam me Sudden

  Service with a Smile

  The Small Bachelor

  Something Fishy

  Something Fresh

  Spring Fever

  Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

  Summer Lightning

  Summer Moonshine

  Sunset at Blandings

  The Swoop

  Tales of St Austin’s

  Thank You, Jeeves

  Ukridge

  Uncle Dynamite

  Uncle Fred in the Springtime

  Uneasy Money

  Very Good, Jeeves

  The White Feather

  William Tell Told Again

  Young Men in Spats

  Omnibuses

  The World of Blandings

  The World of Jeeves

  The World of Mr Mulliner

  The World of Psmith

  The World of Ukridge

  The World of Uncle Fred

  Wodehouse Nuggets (edited by Richard Usborne)

  The World of Wodehouse Clergy

  The Hollywood Omnibus

  Weekend Wodehouse

  Paperback Omnibuses

  The Golf Omnibus

  The Aunts Omnibus

  The Drones Omnibus

  The Jeeves Omnibus 1

  The Jeeves Omnibus 3

  Poems

  The Parrot and Other Poems

  Autobiographical

  Wodehouse on Wodehouse (comprising Bring on the Girls, Over Seventy, Performing Flea)

  Letters

  Yours, Plum

>   P.G. Wodehouse: A Cricketing Chronology

  1881, 15 October

  – Born Guildford, Surrey

  1894, 2 May

  – Enters Dulwich College

  1894, July

  – Plays for Upper IIIB v. Upper IIIA

  1899, 20 May

  – Writes first cricket match report for The Alleynian (Brighton v. Dulwich)

  1899, 21 June

  – Plays for Dulwich v. MCC

  1899, 21 June

  – Takes 7/50 against Tonbridge, dismissing future Test batsman K.L. Hutchings

  1899, 21 June

  – Takes 7/13 including hat-trick as Sixth Form beat Engineers

  1900, 27 June

  – Plays for Dulwich v. MCC

  1900, 27 June

  – Takes 9/14 and 6/23 for Remove v. Modern VI

  1900, July

  – Leaves Dulwich

  1900, Sept.

  – Joins Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, City of London (plays cricket for bank teams)

  1902, 9 Sept.

  – Leaves bank to work as freelance writer

  1903, 22 May

  – First plays for Authors v. Artists at Esher

  1903?

  – First plays for Punch

  1904 July

  – First plays for Allahakbarries

  1905, 29 June

  – First plays at Lord’s for Authors v. Actors

  1906, 19 July

  – Plays at Lord’s for Authors

  1906, 4 May

  – P.G. Wodehouse’s XI plays Dulwich (team includes N.A. Knox and A.A. Milne)

  1907, 15 August

  – Plays at Lord’s for Authors

  1908, 16 July

  – Plays at Lord’s for Authors

  1909, 15 Sept.

  – Schoolboy cricketer, Mike, appears in The Captain

  1911, 12 August

  – Plays at Lord’s for Authors v. Publishers

  1912, 21 August

  – Last Lord’s match, Authors v. Publishers

  1915, 15 Sept.

  – First appearance of Jeeves, named after Warwickshire all-rounder Percy Jeeves

  1920

  – Becomes member, Surrey County Cricket Club

  1932

  – Founder member Hollywood Cricket Club

  1939, 8 July

  – Watches his last Dulwich match

  1941, 21 June

  – Playing cricket at Tost Internment camp, Upper Silesia, when told he is to be released

  1950, 21 July

  – Publishes last cricket piece (‘How’s That, Umpire?’ in Nothing Serious)

  1975

  – Dies aged 93

  Introduction

  1 Dulwich Cricketing Days

  Pick up the 1976 Wisden, and you find a niggardly forty-four words in its obituary of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, recording him as ‘the famous novelist’ once in the Dulwich XI, and godfather to Mike Griffith. The 1982 Wisden has a brief review by John Arlott of Benny Green’s P.G. Wodehouse – A Literary Biography, which quotes: ‘In changing from an English readership and scene to meet his American public – in kissing cricket goodbye, he did so only in fiction, not in life … passionately though he loved the game, he knew it must be expelled from his work.’

  However, for all Wodehouse and cricket fans, it is Wisden of 1901 which is special. In the public schools section, you will note that N.A. Knox headed the Dulwich bowling. Neville Knox was top-rate: a Wisden Cricketer of the Year, he played twice for England against South Africa in 1907, and was called by Jack Hobbs ‘the best fast bowler I ever saw’. He was tall, loose-limbed, took a long, angled run, and bowled at a great pace, breaking from the off, and making the good-length delivery rear awkwardly.

  No wonder Wodehouse wrote with pleasure to a friend in 1956: ‘I was in the Dulwich cricket team in 1899 and 1900, and I am always proud to think that in 1900 I used to go on to bowl before N.A. Knox (I admit he was a child of about ten then)’. As usual Wodehouse could not resist the self-deprecating touch; in fact Knox was only three years his junior, and was actually fifteen when they shared the Dulwich bowling. But it makes a better story the way he tells it.

  That 1901 Wisden entry records Wodehouse’s name in the Dulwich team alongside Knox. He finished last in the batting, with a total of 48 runs from ten innings (top score 14): he was primarily a fast bowler, fourth in the averages with just seven wickets at 16 runs apiece.

  Dulwich were at that stage not highly regarded as a cricket school, despite producing a number of university or county players: no fewer than seven future first-class players were in the 1888 Dulwich XI. College cricketers for decades had to endure an ancient pavilion, not replaced until 1934, when the Old Alleynian the Rev. F.H. Gillingham, who played for Essex and was a pioneer of Thirties radio cricket commentary, performed the opening ceremony. Recalling pleasant associations with the game and the school, Canon Gillingham declared he was sure ‘that the odours that arose from the subterranean passages, which were known by the name of “changing rooms” had been of great service in preparing him for his work in the slums’.

  The college in Wodehouse’s day did boast an Old Boy as England captain, the shadowy M.P. Bowden, who was just seventeen and still at Dulwich when he first played for Surrey in 1883 as a stylish wicket-keeper batsman. He toured Australia with Vernon’s team in 1887-88, and a year later went to South Africa as deputy to C. Aubrey Smith. When the future film star took ill with fever on the eve of only the second Test to be played against South Africa, Monty Bowden deputised: at the age of 23 years 144 days, he remains the youngest to lead England. Bowden settled in South Africa, first working in partnership with Aubrey Smith on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, but then he came on hard times, tried smuggling liquor, and in 1892 died in Rhodesia after a fall, aged only twenty-six.

  On 2 May, 1894, Wodehouse started at Dulwich, where his older brother Armine had studied before him. Dulwich then had 600 boys: he spent the first term living at the East Dulwich home of an assistant master. When the new school year began in September, he became a boarder in Escott’s House. (He had a brief spell as a day-boy when his parents took a house nearby: he then resumed as a boarder, this time at Treadgold’s House). He was already known as Plum to his family, although simply Wodehouse (Minor as long as Wodehouse Major – Armine – was still there) to masters and classmates. Later he recalled: ‘If you say Pelham quickly, it comes out sounding something like Plum. I rather liked it, particularly after I learned during my boyhood that a famous Middlesex cricketer, Pelham Warner, was called Plum. He captained England a number of times’.

  The junior Wodehouse was encouraged in all things by his father – not least in his cricket (although Ernest Wodehouse was no athlete): a nephew, Norman Wodehouse, captained England at rugby in the Edwardian age, but otherwise the only sporting successes of the immediate family were P.G. Wodehouse’s older brother and Dulwich trailblazer Armine, to a modest degree, and then Plum, himself. According to Richard Usborne, there was a scale of reward for the Dulwich sons – five shillings for taking six wickets, ten shillings for making fifty, and so on. We might feel six wickets to be a greater achievement than half a century – but those generally low scores in turn-of-the-century cricket may explain the ratio, and Dulwich had a name for unhelpful wickets on which batsmen could struggle for success.

  The first record of cricketing activity for young Wodehouse is in the college magazine, The Alleynian, of October, 1894: he appeared for Upper IIIB against UIIIA in July. It was not a match of high achievement, as his team made 39 and 49, edging home by three runs, to 53 and 32. Wodehouse batted No.11, recording a pair of ducks – bowled by H.A. Green in both instances. He did not bowl, but took a second innings catch.

  One other future author of potential cricket significance was in full flow for the College that season, described in The Alleynian as ‘a very promising slow bowler, with a good legbreak, a useful though not a stylish bat, and a good field’. This w
as Hugh de Selincourt, whose evocative novel on between-the-wars village cricket, The Cricket Match, set at Storrington in Sussex, which was to be published thirty years later, still stands as the best single work of fiction the game has inspired.

  It is not until 1899 that Wodehouse becomes a figure of cricketing note – or at least, that his senior cricket is properly recorded at all. He won his 3rd XI cap in 1898: next season saw only one old 1st XI cap return, and the young fast bowler made the jump to the Firsts – effectively replacing brother Armine, who had been in the Eleven for the previous two years. In a school of 600 boys, a place in the First XI was something special.

  In June of that year Wodehouse appeared as cricket writer for the first time, reporting four games played by Dulwich against other schools (in which he of course took part). He was in his customary batting slot of last man, and the Brighton match report informs us: ‘Wodehouse now came in and held us in suspense for about a quarter of an hour, hardly a run being added’. In fact he shared one of the best stands of the innings – all of 11.

  The older Wodehouse then returned to face his brother. Dulwich played Oxford’s Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with Armine Wodehouse batting No.5, and probably involved in arranging the fixture. For the school, Wodehouse Minor managed a single wicket, and his favourite score: nought not out. Dulwich recorded just 101 against 287 by the undergraduates.

  Then came opportunity, and triumph: ‘Wodehouse bowled excellently throughout the innings, taking seven wickets for 50 runs’, reads the account of Dulwich, well beaten by Tonbridge. Oh yes – with another Wodehouse duck. In this match, he secured his most glorious scalp – having the aggressive but graceful Kenneth Hutchings caught for 60. Sixteen at the time, Hutchings was an outstanding schoolboy cricketer who went on to play for Kent and seven times for England. Like so many of the best cricketers of the late Victorian and Edwardian age, he was to die on the battlefields of France.

  The season ended with the final Cup match in which the Sixth Form beat the Engineers – this time bringing glory. Wodehouse not only took 7/13, including the hat-trick, as the Engineers chased a mere 80 in the second innings (having made 191 in their first innings): he actually hit 24 not out. The Alleynian wrote a famous summary widely recorded by his biographers: ‘Wodehouse bowled well against Tonbridge but did nothing else. Does not use his head at all. A poor bat and very slack field’. It is a stern verdict, but appears to be fair enough – and intriguingly, all the indications are that Wodehouse wrote it himself.