Not George Washington by Herbert Westbrook and P. G. Wodehouse
This early novel, a joint product of Herbert Westbrook and P. G. Wodehouse, is an intriguing admixture, a foretaste.
First, a little about the book itself. It’s a comic chronicle of a would-be man of letters, who after wooing the lady Margaret on the isle of Guernsey, sets off to London to make of himself a literary reputation – and enough money so he may marry her.
He arrives at a common lodging house and decides to become a bohemian. They must be there, he reasons, the bohemians, waiting for him to make their friendship. They’re there, watching him from the lidded windows, awaiting his proofs. Then they will come out, take him madly by the hand, and usher him into their world. One has only to wait to be introduced. It’s surely only a matter of time.
In London, he lives among criminals and landladies who do not appreciate his taste in interior decoration. Then, thrown out of his old lodgings, and slowly becoming more and more enamoured with the great city, this literary man makes friends of bizarre clubmen, permanently drowsy writers of advertisements, the fish-shop girl who married the very important man in the foreign office, and many more.
And he learns, meanwhile, his trade in writing trash: in producing the ‘paragraphs’ required for the painfully comic column in the newspaper that he is deputised to work on for holiday cover. The feeble poetry and faux-knowing items of disguised society gossip that the terrible magazines most desire. He is producing books and stories and poems all too rapidly. And then, much to his regret, this man realises something terrible. He is in love with London; he has London in his veins. But all the while, there is a girl awaiting him in the Channel Islands.
Margaret is out there with her mother, an old woman whose idea of a good time is a Greek treatise on the philosophical roots of tragedy. It is Margaret whom our hero no longer wishes to see.
But he is a success! They get newspapers in Guernsey, too! Soon she will know that he is a great feature of London literary life and is coining it in enough quantity to be a fit mate for her! She will arrive, expecting rapture, expecting marriage, and that would be so awkward as to be beyond description.
Thus our hero must claim poverty; he must hide his wealth. And he then decides, after much thought and a good deal of fretting, upon an obvious solution. He has met many oddballs in his time in the capital. One of them is a young man, vulgar, in the insurance (he says assurance) business – a bit of a swell. Another is a working class boatman, violent in his cups, apt to knock out a whole assemblage of younger men who believe – as it turns out incorrectly – that they have been taught to box. And the last is a strange churchman, a very reverend. This one says he wants money for the poor. But he is as odd and devious as they come.
Our hero decides to throw some work their way. He decides to palm off his writing on them, to have it appear under their names. They get ten per cent for doing nothing other than signing the manuscripts and sending them on. Thus the protagonist can hide his wealth and his light under a bushel. Thus he might be saved from the embarrassment of being pursued, the necessity of marriage.
Of course, it would be awful, a terrible thing, if anyone heard about this little dodge. So it is vital, beyond vital, that no one finds out. And meanwhile, the young lady, hearing that her groom-to-be is in financial difficulties, begins to wonder as to how she might make him some money herself.
Now what, having read a little Wodehouse yourself, do you imagine is most likely to happen next?
One word about the format of this book, if I may. I am a great admirer of formats. This one is a little odd. The book is written from a number of perspectives – first the love-stricken young woman who believes her suitor has gone off to the mainland to make their fortunes; then the young man himself; and then from a number of his own associates. They see each event from several different angles. This does not always work, but it is always interesting. The book is worth reading; it is often quite funny. It’s the beginning, after Love Among the Chickens gave us Ukridge, of Wodehouse as a mature comic talent.
I am also a great consumer of media about ghostwriting. And for the protagonist here to be visited by, indeed haunted by, three ghosts is a satisfying thing to see. It is how one often feels.