CONTENTS
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PREFACE
1 ARCHIBALD’S BENEFIT
2 THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT
3 A WOMAN IS ONLY A WOMAN
4 A MIXED THREESOME
5 SUNDERED HEARTS
6 THE SALVATION OF GEORGE MACKINTOSH
7 ORDEAL BY GOLF
8 THE LONG HOLE
9 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES
10 THE ROUGH STUFF
11 THE COMING OF GOWF
12 THE HEART OF A GOOF
13 HIGH STAKES
14 KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER
15 CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF
16 THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS
17 THE AWAKENING OF ROLLO PODMARSH
18 RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY
19 JANE GETS OFF THE FAIRWAY
20 THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN
21 THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE
22 THE LETTER OF THE LAW
23 FAREWELL TO LEGS
24 THERE’S ALWAYS GOLF
25 UP FROM THE DEPTHS
26 FEET OF CLAY
27 EXCELSIOR
28 RODNEY HAS A RELAPSE
29 TANGLED HEARTS
30 SCRATCH MAN
31 SLEEPY TIME
COPYRIGHT
About the Book
‘I attribute the insane arrogance of the later Roman emperors almost entirely to the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strangely chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip-shot. If Cleopatra had been ousted in the first round of the Ladies Singles, we would have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness.’
The Oldest Member’s reverence for golf does not cramp his style in telling some of the funniest, tallest and most joyful stories in the whole Wodehouse canon. In this splendid Omnibus, introduced by Wodehouse himself, love and the links are inextricably intertwined, and the reader can click with Cuthbert, thrill to the feats of the Magic Plus Fours and even leap cleanly into The Purification of Rodney Spelvin.
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 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
The Golf Omnibus
P. G. Wodehouse
TO THE
IMMORTAL MEMORY
OF
JOHN HENRIE AND PAT ROGIE
WHO
AT EDINBURGH IN THE YEAR 1593 A.D.
WERE IMPRISONED FOR
“PLAYING OF THE GOWFF ON THE LINKS OF
LEITH EVERY SABBATH THE TIME OF THE
SERMONSES”,
ALSO OF
ROBERT ROBERTSON
WHO GOT IT IN THE NECK IN 1604 A.D.
FOR THE SAME REASON
PREFACE
As I start to write this Preface, I am brooding a bit. My brow is furrowed, sort of, and I can’t help sighing a good deal.
The trouble about reaching the age of ninety-two, which I did last October, is that regrets for a misspent life are bound to creep in, and whenever you see me with a furrowed brow you can be sure that what is on my mind is the thought that if only I had taken up golf earlier and devoted my whole time to it instead of fooling about writing stories and things, I might have got my handicap down to under eighteen. If only they had put a putter in my hands when I was four and taught me the use of the various clubs, who knows what heights I might not have reached. It is this reflection that has always made my writing so sombre, its whole aroma like that of muddy shoes in a Russian locker room.
And yet I may have managed to get a few rays of sunshine into the stories which follow. If so, this is due to the fact that while I was writing them I won my first and only trophy, a striped umbrella in a hotel tournament at Aiken, South Carolina, where, hitting them squarely on the meat for once, I went through a field of some of the fattest retired business men in America like a devouring flame.
I was never much of a golfer. Except for that glorious day at Aiken I was always one of the dregs, the sort of man whose tee shots, designed to go due north, invariably went nor-nor-east or in a westerly direction. But how I loved the game. I have sometimes wondered if we of the canaille don’t get more pleasure out of it than the top-notchers. For an untouchable like myself two perfect drives in a round would wipe out all memory of sliced approach shots and foozled putts, whereas if Jack Nicklaus does a sixty-four he goes home and thinks morosely that if he had not just missed that eagle on the seventh, he would have had a sixty-three.
I have made no attempt to bring this book up to date, and many changes have taken place since I wrote “The Clicking of Cuthbert” in 1916. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away, and with them have gone the names of most of the golf clubs so dear to me. I believe one still drives with a driver nowadays, though at any moment we may have to start calling it the Number One wood, but where is the mashie now, where the cleek, the spoon and the baffy?
All Scottish names, those, dating back to the days (1593 A.D.) when we are told that John Henrie and Pat Rogie were imprisoned for “playing of the Gowff on the links of Leith every Sabbath the time of the sermonses”. It is very sad, the way the Scottish atmosphere has gone out of the game. In my youth, when the Badminton book was a comparatively new publication, one took it for granted that to be a good golfer you had to be Scottish, preferably with a name like Sandy McHoots or Jock Auchtermuchty. And how we reverenced them. “These,” we said, “are the men whose drives fly far, like bullets from a rifle, who when they do a hole in par regard it as a trifle. Of such as these the bard has said, ‘Hech thrawfu’ raltie rorkie, wi’ thecht ta’ croonie clapperhead and fash wi’ unco’ pawkie’.” And where are they now? How long is it since a native Scot won an Open? All Americans these days, except for an occasional Mexican.
No stopping Progress, of course, but I do think it a pity to cast away lovely names like mashie and baffy in favour of numbers. I like to think that when I got into a bunker (isn’t it called a trap now?) I got out of it, if I ever did, with a niblick and not a wedge. I wonder what Tommy Morris, winner of the British Open four years in succession, would have had to say to all this number six iron, number twelve iron, number twenty-eight iron stuff. Probably he wouldn’t have said anything, just made one of those strange Scottish noises at the back of his throat like someone gargling.
A FOOTNOTE. In one of these little opuses I allude to Stout Cortez staring at the Pacific. Shortly after the appearance of this narrative in the Saturday Evening Post I received a letter from a usually well-informed source which began
Dear Sir
Where do you get that Cortez stuff? It was Balboa.
This, I believe, is historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it was Balboa, the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time, and I see no reason why Cortez should not have had a look at it as well.
P. G. WODEHOUSE.
1
ARCHIBALD’S BENEFIT
ARCHIBALD MEALING WAS one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America. Whether it was that Archibald pressed too much or pressed too little, whether it was that his club deviated from the dotted line which joined the two points A and B in the illustrated plate of the man making the brassy shot in the Hints on Golf book, or whether it was that he was pursued by some malignant fate, I do not know. Archibald rather favoured the last theory.
The important point is that, in his thirty-first year, after six seasons of untiring effort, Archibald went in for a championship, and won it.
Archibald, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.
I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see clearly before me the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging me to tell it to the King of Denmark, others insisting that I produce my Eskimoes. Nevertheless, I do not shrink. I state once more that in his thirty-first year Archibald Mealing went in for a golf championship, and won it.
Archibald belonged to a select little golf club, the members of which lived and worked in New York, but played in Jersey. Men of substance, financially as well as physically, they had combined their superfious cash and with it purchased a strip of land close to the sea. This land had been drained—to the huge discomfort of a colony of mosquitoes which had come to look on the place as their private property—and converted into links, which had become a sort of refuge for incompetent golfers. The members of the Cape Pleasant Club were easy-going refugees from other and more exacting clubs, men who pottered rather than raced round the links; men, in short, who had grown tired of having to stop their game and stand aside in order to allow perspiring experts to whiz past them. The Cape Pleasant golfers did not make themselves slaves to the game. Their language, when they foozled, was gently regretful rather than sulphurous. The moment in the day’s play which they enjoyed most was when they were saying: “Well, here’s luck!” in the club-house.
It will, therefore, be readily understood that Archibald’s inability to do a hole in single figures did not handicap him at Cape Pleasant as it might have done at St. Andrews. His kindly clubmates took him to their bosoms to a man, and looked on him as a brother. Archibald’s was one of those admirable natures which prompt their possessor frequently to remark: “These are on me!” and his fellow golfers were not slow to appreciate the fact. They all loved Archibald.
Archibald was on the floor of his bedroom one afternoon, picking up the fragments of his mir
ror—a friend had advised him to practise the Walter J. Travis lofting shot—when the telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver, and was hailed by the comfortable voice of McCay, the club secretary.
“Is that Mealing?” asked McCay. “Say, Archie, I’m putting your name down for our championship competition. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” said Archibald. “When does it start?”
“Next Saturday.”
“That’s me.”
“Good for you. Oh, Archie.”
“Hello?”
“A man I met to-day told me you were engaged. Is that a fact?”
“Sure,” murmured Archibald, blushfully.
The wire hummed with McCay’s congratulations.
“Thanks,” said Archibald. “Thanks, old man. What? Oh, yes. Milsom’s her name. By the way, her family have taken a cottage at Cape Pleasant for the summer. Some distance from the links. Yes, very convenient, isn’t it? Good-bye.”
He hung up the receiver and resumed his task of gathering up the fragments.
Now McCay happened to be of a romantic and sentimental nature. He was by profession a chartered accountant, and inclined to be stout; and all rather stout chartered accountants are sentimental. McCay was the sort of man who keeps old ball programmes and bundles of letters tied round with lilac ribbon. At country houses, where they lingered in the porch after dinner to watch the moonlight flooding the quiet garden, it was McCay and his colleague who lingered longest. McCay knew Ella Wheeler Wilcox by heart, and could take Browning without anaesthetics. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Archibald’s remark about his fiancée coming to live at Cape Pleasant should give him food for thought. It appealed to him.
He reflected on it a good deal during the day, and, running across Sigsbee, a fellow Cape Pleasanter, after dinner that night at the Sybarites’ Club, he spoke of the matter to him. It so happened that both had dined excellently, and were looking on the world with a sort of cosy benevolence. They were in the mood when men pat small boys on the head and ask them if they mean to be President when they grow up.
“I called up Archie Mealing to-day,” said McCay. “Did you know he was engaged?”
“I did hear something about it. Girl of the name of Wilson, or⎯”
“Milsom. She’s going to spend the summer at Cape Pleasant, Archie tells me.”