A Wodehouse a Week #57: If I Were You

Here's an oddity as far as my Wodehouse collection goes, I think: a Wodehouse book I'm pretty sure I've never read before this week, even tho' I've got two copies in my collection. Yes, it's true, Plum partisans: this little stuffed Wodehouse fan hasn't racked up every book in the Canon. Yet. It's mostly a handful of Wodehouse's earlier books that I haven't snuggled up in my comfy chair with yet, but take as the moral of this: even the most diehard of Wodehouse fans can discover something new in their collection.

If I Were You (1931) is one of Wodehouse's non-series light comedy/romances, and one that hangs on a gimmick: when they were babies, Tony (Earl of Droitwich) and Syd (the son of his childhood nanny), were swapped in the cradle by none other than that nanny, the tippling Ma Price. Now, when the truth comes out, Syd wants his rightful inheritance among the aristocracy, leaving Tony to take up his role as a London barber among the hoi polloi. Surprisingly, Tony's got no problem doing so, mainly due to one of those polloi being the lovely ladies' hairstylist Polly Brown, a much more suitable love interest than his fiancé Violet Waddington, the spoiled and sharp-tongued soup heiress. Tony's family isn't too keen on welcoming the uncultured Syd into their world as the new Earl of Droitwich, and the family butler—Syd's uncle—simply won't allow it. What's a prince and a pauper to do when the cultured enjoys the low life with more grace and humor than the poor steps into the shoes of a Lord. What will they do, what will they do?

If I Were You is exceptionally fast-paced (I zipped through it in an afternoon and a half) , and, while not possessing Wodehouse's wittiest plot or most sparkling dialogue, still is swift, breezy, and lightly lyrical. There's plenty of chuckle-worthy moments and off-the-cuff bon mots in the Wodehouse style, dialogue exchanges that would be perfect for the stage. Well, like this:

'I'm nearly dead. It was over a hundred in the shade.'

'You shouldn't have stayed in the shade,' said Freddie.

...and...

'I'm engaged!'

'Engaged?'

'Absolutely. To Luella, only daughter of J. Throgmorton Beamish, of New York City.'

Freddie was duly impressed.

'You don't say!'

'I do say. I've just been saying.'

Freddie lighted a cigarette.

'Blind girl?' he asked.

'What do you mean, blind girl?'

'Well, she'd have to be, wouldn't she?'

...or, when Syd spouts his revolutionary passion:

'A way,' said Syd ominously, 'that'll lead ere long to tumbrels in Piccadilly and blood running in rivers down Park Lane.'

Tony shuddered.

'What a beastly idea!' he said. 'So slippery.'

In fact, these lines are so much like lines from a play that it's no surprise that the plot originally came from a earlier play of Wodehouse's (it may never have been produced) and inspired a later, 1934 short-running stage play (it only ran 19 performances) called Who's Who, co-written with Wodehouse's longtime collaborator Guy Bolton. Wodehouse had an economical tendency to re-use plots of plays for novels (and vice versa)—he spent much of the late 1920s writing stage comedies and musicals and If I Were You is exceptionally influenced by those works. The narrative has a simple three-act structure and does not move beyond the three scenes the action takes place it: Langley End, the manor hall of the Earl of Droitwich; then, Price's Hairdressers off the Brompton Road, London, two weeks later; and finally, another fortnight later, back at Langley End. The action does not move from the single room each of the settings is placed in, and characters enter and exit abruptly and continuously throughout each part of the story, generally by one of two doors. Some of the book's action is even written in language that seems only slightly removed from stage direction, as in this bit of moving a prop off the "stage" and out of sight:

Clearing the table, Polly had left the champagne bottle. She now picked it up and move to the door. 'You be careful of that stuff, Polly,' said Ma Price. 'Keep off it! The 'arm it does!'

Polly went out with the bottle.

If I Were You may have even been planned as a (and might have made a spiffing) musical, as there's more than a few points where it seems as if the characters are about to burst into song:

'Oh, Polly!' said Tony. He slipped from the shaving-basin and once more enfolded her in and embrace from which even Meech might have picked up a hint or two. 'What an extraordinary lucky thing our godfathers and godmothers happened to christen us the way they did. Tony and Polly...You couldn't have two names that went better together. How nicely they run off the tongue. "Tony and Polly are coming down for the week-end...What, don't you know Tony and Polly? A delightful couple, Tony and Polly."'

'Tony and Polly,' repeated Polly softly.

'You couldn't keep two names like that apart. It's like pepper and salt...or Swan and Edgar...'

'Or Abercrombie and Fitch...'

'Or Fortnum and Mason...or...'

Fortunately, the shop door opens and we're spared a Nelson Eddy/Jeannette MacDonald-style duet.

It's all in good fun and a light read, but there's nothing about If I Were You that you'd call subtle. The twin-swapping plot is genially lifted from a play by W.S. Gilbert (of "and Sullivan" fame), and boldly calls attention to itself by mentioning the play ("The Baby's Revenge") not once but twice in the course of the novel. Early in the book, there's several remarkably unsubtle foreshadowings of events to come:

'...It's fun to think that he and Lord Droitwich were babies together. There must have been a time when you couldn't tell them apart.'

and, as Syd gazes at a painted portrait of a Droitwich ancestor:

'That's funny,' said Tony. 'Do you know there's a likeness between you?'

'Me an' him?'

'Yes. A most striking resemblance.'

Not to mention Tony musing aloud re: Syd:

'He'd be less severe if he knew what a dashed sweat it was being an earl. I wish he could be one for a bit.

Still, it's all forgivable in the pursuit of a happy ending, even if that happy ending comes about through a heck of a deus ex machina tossed onto the stage by Freddie, Tony's younger brother. As I like to say, it's all done with such a humorous touch that you can't find fault with it. It's no masterpiece, but like the shaving cream that's scattered about the stage so liberally in Act 2...it's light, frothy, and leaves behind a fresh soapy scent.



As one of Wodehouse's lesser-known non-series novels, there aren't a lot of editions of If I Were You about (and none in print right now), but back in the late 1980s and early 1990s the publisher International Polygonics made a go at putting a number of seldom-seen Wodehouses back into American print, and that's where I picked up my first copy. I've also got a lovely old Herbert Jenkins UK hardcover, fourth printing. I like this version especially for its extensive selection in the back pages of ads for other Wodehouse books, and the enthusiastic if slightly purple prose trying to sell you Jeeves books (for two shillings sixpence each): "Jeeves! Who does not know him?—the perfect servant, the cream of gentlemen's gentleman, the inimitable Jeeves!" I'm sure he was paid a few pence only for his labours, but the copywriter of that bit surely deserved a pat on the back and a lengthy tea-break after that glorious bit of writing. I'm off for tea myself now. Have yourself a cuppa as well, won't you?

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