Young Men in Spats Read online

  Contents

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY P.G. WODEHOUSE

  TITLE PAGE

  1 FATE

  2 TRIED IN THE FURNACE

  3 TROUBLE DOWN AT TUDSLEIGH

  4 THE AMAZING HAT MYSTERY

  5 GOODBYE TO ALL CATS

  6 THE LUCK OF THE STIFFHAMS

  7 NOBLESSE OBLIGE

  8 UNCLE FRED FLITS BY

  9 ARCHIBALD AND THE MASSES

  10 THE CODE OF THE MULLINERS

  11 THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED

  COPYRIGHT

  About the Book

  Meet the Young Men in Spats – all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes nonexistent fortunes on unlikely outcomes – that’s when they’re not recovering from driving their sports cars through rather than round Marble Arch.

  These stories are the essence of innocent fun. In them you’ll encounter some of Wodehouse’s favourite characters – including, for the first time, his future hero Uncle Fred. The collection is widely regarded as one of Wodehouse’s best and includes one of his own favourites, ‘The Amazing Hat Mystery’.

  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

  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

  Young Men in Spats

  P.G. Wodehouse

  1 FATE

  IT WAS THE hour of the morning snifter, and a little group of Eggs and Beans and Crumpets had assembled in the smoking-room of the Drones Club to do a bit of inhaling. There had been a party of sorts overnight, and the general disposition of the company was towards a restful and somewhat glassy-eyed silence. This was broken at length by one of the Crumpets.

  ‘Old Freddie’s back,’ he observed.

  Some moments elapsed before any of those present felt equal to commenting on this statement. Then a Bean spoke.

  ‘Freddi
e Who?’

  ‘Freddie Widgeon.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘Back here.’

  ‘I mean, back from what spot?’

  ‘New York.’

  ‘I didn’t know Freddie had been to New York.’

  ‘Well, you can take it from me he has. Or else how,’ argued the Crumpet, ‘could he have got back?’

  The Bean considered the point.

  ‘Something in that,’ he agreed. ‘What sort of a time did he have?’

  ‘Not so good. He lost the girl he loved.’

  ‘I wish I had a quid for every girl Freddie Widgeon has loved and lost,’ sighed an Egg wistfully. ‘If I had, I shouldn’t be touching you for a fiver.’

  ‘You aren’t,’ said the Crumpet.

  The Bean frowned. His head was hurting him, and he considered that the conversation was becoming sordid.

  ‘How did he lose his girl?’

  ‘Because of the suitcase.’

  ‘What suitcase?’

  ‘The suitcase he carried for the other girl.’

  ‘What other girl?’

  ‘The one he carried the suitcase for.’

  The Bean frowned again.

  ‘A bit complex, all this, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Hardly the sort of stuff, I mean, to spring on personal friends who were up a trifle late last night.’

  ‘It isn’t really,’ the Crumpet assured him. ‘Not when you know the facts. The way old Freddie told me the story it was as limpid as dammit. And what he thinks – and what I think, too – is that it just shows what toys we are in the hands of Fate, if you know what I mean. I mean to say, it’s no good worrying and trying to look ahead and plan and scheme and weigh your every action, if you follow me, because you never can tell when doing such-and-such won’t make so-and-so-happen – while, on the other hand, if you do so-and-so it may just as easily lead to such-and-such.’

  A pale-faced Egg with heavy circles under his eyes rose at this point and excused himself. He said his head had begun to throb again and he proposed to step round to the chemist on the corner for another of his dark-brown pick-me-ups.

  ‘I mean to say,’ resumed the Crumpet, ‘if Freddie – with the best motives in the world – hadn’t carried that suitcase for that girl, he might at this moment be walking up the aisle with a gardenia in his buttonhole and Mavis Peasemarch, only daughter of the fifth Earl of Bodsham, on his arm.’

  The Bean demurred. He refused to admit the possibility of such a thing, even if Freddie Widgeon had sworn off suitcases for life.

  ‘Old Bodders would never have allowed Mavis to marry a bird of Freddie’s calibre. He would think him worldly and frivolous. I don’t know if you are personally acquainted with the Bod, but I may tell you that my people once lugged me to a week-end at his place and not only were we scooped in and shanghaied to church twice on the Sunday, regardless of age or sex, but on the Monday morning at eight o’clock – eight, mark you – there were family prayers in the dining-room. There you have old Bodders in a nutshell. Freddie’s a good chap, but he can’t have stood a dog’s chance from the start.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the Crumpet warmly, ‘he made his presence felt right from the beginning to an almost unbelievable extent, and actually clicked as early as the fourth day out.’

  ‘Were Bodders and Mavis on the boat, then?’

  ‘They certainly were. All the way over.’

  ‘And Bodders, you say, actually approved of Freddie?’

  ‘He couldn’t have been more all over him, Freddie tells me, if Freddie had been a Pan-Anglican Congress. What you overlook is that Bodsham – living, as he does, all the year round in the country – knew nothing of Freddie except that one of his uncles was his old school-friend, Lord Blicester, and another of his uncles was actually a Bishop. Taking a line through them, he undoubtedly regarded Freddie as a pretty hot potato.’

  The Bean seemed shaken, but he put another point.

  ‘What about Mavis, then?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I should have thought Freddie would have been the last bloke she would have considered hitching up with. I’ve seen her in action down at Peasemarch, and you can take it from me that she is very far from being one of the boys. You needn’t let it get about, of course, but that girl, to my certain knowledge, plays the organ in the local church and may often be seen taking soup to the deserving villagers with many a gracious word.’

  The Crumpet had his answer to this, too.

  ‘She knew nothing of Freddie, either. She liked his quiet, saintly manner and considered that he had a soul. At any rate, I can assure you that everything went like a breeze. Helped by the fact that the sea was calm and that there was a dashed fine moon every night, old Freddie shoved his nose past the judge’s box at 10.45 p.m. on the fourth day out. And when next morning he informed old Bodsham that he had now a son to comfort his declining years, there was not a discordant note. The old boy said that he could wish no better husband for his daughter than a steady, respectable young fellow like Freddie, and they arrived in New York a happy and united family.’

  The only thing in the nature of a flaw that Freddie found in New York, he tells me, was the fact that the populace, to judge from the daily papers, didn’t seem to be so ideally happy in its love-life as he was. What I mean to say, he wanted smiling faces about him, so to speak, and it looked to him as if everybody in the place were cutting up their wives and hiding them in sacks in the Jersey marshes or else putting detectives on to them to secure the necessary evidence.

  It saddened him, he tells me, when he opened his illustrated tabloid of a morning, to have to try to eat eggs and bacon while gazing at a photograph of Mae Belle McGinnis, taken when she was not looking her best because Mr McGinnis had just settled some domestic dispute with the meat-axe.

  Also, there seemed to him far too much of all that stuff about Sugar-Daddies being Discovered In Love Nest As Blizzard Grips City.

  However, when you are the guest of a great nation, you have to take the rough with the smooth. And there appears to be no doubt that, despite all the marital unrest around him, Freddie at this juncture was indisputably in the pink. I’ve never been engaged myself, so I know nothing of the symptoms at first hand, but Freddie tells me that the way it takes a fellow is to make him feel as if he were floating on a fleecy cloud, high up in the air, and only touching the ground at odd spots.

  Most of the time, he says, he just hovered over New York like some winged thing. But occasionally he would come down and emerge from the ether, and on one of these rare occasions he found himself wandering in the neighbourhood of Seventy-Second Street, somewhere on the West Side.

  And just in front of him was a girl lugging a dashed great heavy suitcase.

  Now, I want you to follow me very closely here. This is where Freddie stands or falls. He was pretty eloquent at this point, when he told me the story: and, as far as I am concerned, I may say fearlessly that I dismiss him without a stain on his character. I consider his motives to have been pure to the last drop.

  One of the things that being engaged does to you, you must remember, is to fill you to the gills with a sort of knightly chivalry. So Freddie tells me. You go about the place like a Boy Scout, pouncing out on passers-by and doing acts of kindness to them. Three times that day Freddie had chased seedy-looking birds up side-streets and forced cash on them. He had patted four small boys on the head and asked them if they meant to be President some day. He had beamed benevolently on the citizenry till his cheeks ached. And he was still full of the milk of human kindness and longing to assist some less fortunate fellow-traveller along the road of Life, when he saw this girl in front of him, staggering under the weight of the suitcase.

  Now, although the impulse to help her with her burden was intense, he tells me that, if she had been a pretty girl, he would have resisted it. His sense of loyalty to Mavis was so great that he was right off pretty girls. They were the only persons he had excluded from his beaming ope
rations. Towards them, in spite of all that milk of human kindness, he had been consistently aloof and austere. The cold face. The unwobbly eye. Something seemed to tell him that Mavis would prefer it so.

  But this girl before him was not pretty. She was distinctly plain. Even ugly. She looked as if she might be a stenographer selected for some business magnate by his wife out of a number of competing applicants. And, such being so, he did not hesitate. Already the suitcase seemed to be giving the poor little thing a crick in the back, and it was as if he heard Mavis’s voice in his ear, whispering: ‘Go to it!’

  He ambled up like a courtly mustang.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘May I help you with that apparatus of yours?’

  The girl gave him a keen look through her spectacles, and either thought he was thoroughly to be trusted, or didn’t. At any rate, she passed over the bag.

  ‘And now where?’ asked Freddie.

  The girl said she lived in Sixty-Ninth Street, and Freddie right-hoed, and they set off. And presently they came to a brownstone building, in which she had Flat B on the fourth floor.

  Well, of course, you may say that, having deposited female and suitcase at their destination, old Freddie should have uttered a brief, courteous ‘Pip-pip!’ and legged it. And very possibly you are right. But consider the facts. The flat, as I have indicated, was four flights up. There was no lift, so he had to hoof it up all those stairs. It was a warm day. And the suitcase appeared to be packed with sheet-iron or something.

  I mean to say, by the time he had reached Journey’s End, he was in sore need of a spot of repose. So, rightly or wrongly, he didn’t biff off, but sort of collapsed into a chair and sat there restoring his tissues.

  The girl, meanwhile, prattled in friendly vein. As far as Freddie can recall her remarks, her name was Myra Jennings. She was employed in the office of a wholesale silk importer. She had just come back from the country. The photograph over the sideboard was her mother’s, who lived in Waterbury, Connecticut. The girlfriend with whom she shared the flat was away on her vacation. And all that sort of thing, don’t you know. I mean, pleasant gossip from the home.

  She had just begun to tell him that, though she yielded to no one in her admiration for Ronald Colman, she couldn’t help saying that William Powell had a sort of something that kind of seemed to place him sort of even higher in a girl’s estimation, when there occurred one of those interruptions which, I understand, are always happening in New York.