A Wodehouse a Week #70: The Prince and Betty

The Prince and Betty. No, not


but the 1912 novel by...aw, you guessed it, P. G. Wodehouse. The Prince and Betty is something of an odd duck. Plop it in your lap with a trayful of buttered toast at your elbow and turn page one and you're instantly transported to the tiny Mediterranean island paradise known as Mervo, where millionaire Benjamin Scobell plots to turn Mervo into the next Monte Carlo-style gambling paradise, complete with hot and cold running chorus girls, 24-hour baccarat and all the cheap shrimp cocktail you can shovel down your gullet. He's built an expansive casino and is only missing one tourist draw that Monte Carlo can boast of: an honest-to-goodness royal Prince. A simple matter to dispatch his secretary Crump to dig up and bring back the young man who's the real heir to the throne, his family long-ousted by the republic.

Meanwhile, Scobell's stepdaughter Betty pines for her one true love. In what seems like a very open-minded plot for 1912, Betty reveals the name of that love:

Elsa leaned forward eagerly.

'Who, Betty?'

'You don't know him.'

'But what's his name?'

Betty hesitated.

'Well, if I am on the witness-stand—Maude.'

Hotchy motchy! That's some progressive stuff for the nineteen-teens. But wait, faithful reader:

'Maude? I thought you said a man?'

'It's his name. John Maude.'

'But, Betty! Why didn't you tell me before? This is tremendously interesting.'

Yes it is...especially when (could you guess it?) loverboy John Maude and the newly reinstated Prince of Mervo turn out to be one and the same, and both of him are pretty likeable—a stalwart Wodehouse hero:

Ten days after Mr Scobell's visit to General Poineau, John, Prince of Mervo, ignorant of the greatness so soon to be thrust upon him, was strolling thoughtfully along one of the main thoroughfares of that outpost of civilization, Jersey City. He was a big young man, tall and large of limb. His shoulders especially were of the massive type expressly designed by nature for driving wide gaps in the opposing line on the gridiron. He looked like one of nature's center-rushes, and had, indeed, played in that position for Harvard during two strenuous seasons. His face wore an expression of invincible good-humor. He had a wide, good-natured mouth, and a pair of friendly gray eyes. One felt that he liked his follow men and would be surprised and pained if they did not like him.

and becoming royal doesn't go to his head; John's still the same salt-of-the-earth reg'lar guy he always is:

At this point Mr Scobell made his presence felt.

'Glad to meet you, Prince,' he said, coming forward. 'Scobell's my name. Shake hands with General Poineau. No, that's wrong. I guess he kisses your hand, don't he?'

'I'll swing on him if he does,' said John, cheerfully.

Golly. I think I'm falling in love with him.

Just like they always do, complications ensure. (Darn those complications!) Tho' John and Betty are reunited and it feels so good, his conscience won't allow the home of his ancestors to become a gambling haven, and he exercises le droit seigneur to shut down the casino. Around this point, your buttered toast cooling and forgotten, your bottom creeps to the edge of your seat and you lean over the book, enthralled, expecting the rest of the novel to be a romantic swirling Ruritanian romance of princes with mistaken identities and swashbuckling sword fights and court orchestras feverishly playing Strauss's Trisch-Trasch Polka.

And then, on page sixty-five, the thing suddenly turns into The Gangs of New York.

As Mike Nelson so succinctly opined during a fast scene change in a Coleman Francis movie: "Agh! My neck got broken during that jump cut!" But had he been born much earlier and he and his steampunk auto-mat-ons engaged to poke japes at the nickeoleon cinemo-entertainments, Nelson might have been referring to the second two-thirds of The Prince and Betty, which are set in the world of New York City tabloid journalism, so far from Mervo that you may as well take off your tropical shirt and sunglasses. John abdicates the throne rather than put up with being a puppet ruler, and Betty, who has already run away from him in dismay, falls into steady work as a typist for the genial and low-key periodical Peaceful Moments, overseen by the talkative, philosophical, and monocled Rupert Smith:

He was a young man of spirit and resource. His appearance, to those who did not know him, hardly suggested this. He was very tall and thin, with a dark, solemn face. He was a purist in the matter of clothes, and even in times of storm and stress presented an immaculate appearance to the world. In his left eye, attached to a cord, he wore a monocle.

Through this, at the present moment, he was gazing benevolently at Mr Renshaw, as the latter fussed about the office in the throes of departure. To the editor's rapid fire of advice and warning he listened with the pleased and indulgent air of a father whose infant son frisks before him. Mr Renshaw interested him. To Smith's mind Mr Renshaw, put him in any show you pleased, would alone have been worth the price of admission.

'Well,' chirruped the holiday-maker—he was a little man with a long neck, and he always chirruped—'Well, I think that is all, Mr Smith. Oh, ah, yes! The stenographer. You will need a new stenographer.'

The Peaceful Moments stenographer had resigned her position three days before, in order to get married.

'Unquestionably, Comrade Renshaw,' said Smith. 'A blonde.'

Mr Renshaw looked annoyed.

'I have told you before, Mr Smith, I object to your addressing me as Comrade. It is not—it is not—er—fitting.'

Smith waved a deprecating hand.

'Say no more,' he said. 'I will correct the habit. I have been studying the principles of Socialism somewhat deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. A noble scheme. Me for it. But I am interrupting you.'

Mr Renshaw had to pause for a moment to reorganize his ideas.

'I think—ah, yes. I think it would be best perhaps to wait for a day or two in case Mrs Oakley should recommend someone. I mentioned the vacancy in the office to her, and she said she would give the matter her attention. I should prefer, if possible, to give the place to her nominee. She—'

'—has eighteen million a year,' said Smith. 'I understand. Scatter seeds of kindness.'

Mr Renshaw looked at him sharply. Smith's face was solemn and thoughtful.

'Nothing of the kind,' the editor said, after a pause. 'I should prefer Mrs Oakley's nominee because Mrs Oakley is a shrewd, practical woman who—er—who—who, in fact—'

'Just so,' said Smith, eying him gravely through the monocle. 'Entirely.'

The scrutiny irritated Mr Renshaw.

'Do put that thing away, Mr Smith,' he said.

'That thing?'

'Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away.'

'Instantly,' said Smith, replacing the monocle in his vest-pocket. 'You object to it? Well, well, many people do. We all have these curious likes and dislikes. It is these clashings of personal taste which constitute what we call life. Yes. You were saying?'

Mr Renshaw wrinkled his forehead.

'I have forgotten what I intended to say,' he said querulously. 'You have driven it out of my head.'

Huh! sez I, scratching my little stuffed head as I read this bit. This Smith fellow reminds me an awfully lot of another Wodehouse character. Wears a monocle, monopolizes the conversation, calls his peers 'Comrade'...why, this Smith character

(Yes, I actually thought this distinctly before I realized exactly what I was saying)

this Smith character reminds me a lot of Psmith.

Bang! goes my hoof on my forehead as the other shoe or the shiny penny drops and the similarity of the names makes perfect sense: no simple coincidence; this is Rupert Psmith, he of the silent P and the later Wodehouse adventures like Psmith in the City. This is his first full-fledged appearance, and if he's missing his P, very nearly everything else is in place. Our Ruritanian romance has turned into a Psmith adventure. Betty helps the plot along by rescuing the cat of a Manhattan tough guy crime boss (thus ensuring his undying gratitude), and john shows up much later to accompany Psmith Smith on his muckraking newsmaking adventures, but the love story if pretty much tabled in favor of Smith, Journalist, as the pleasant and quiet Peaceful Moments becomes a hard-hitting tabloid that promotes boxing matches and enflames the ire of the mobs by running a series of exposés on the dismal living conditions in the New York slums, turning it into a paper J. Jonah Jameson himself would be proud of, albeit unusually free of Spider-Man bashing. There's plenty of chasing in and across rooftops, being hit by the head with coshes and rival gangs facing off against each other, and the whole thing seems to be The Gangs of New York except with a few jokes along the way and some kisses at the end.

But delve in deep like the journalistic muckraking of Smith and Co. to find the true origins of this novel and its dual two-face nature is revealed. In 1912 Wodehouse released "The Prince and Betty" in serial form in The Strand magazine; it was later collected into a novel of the same name, but not the one I've read this week. Instead, the action is confined to Mervo, the main players to John and Betty, and their love story the primary action. When the novel was published later that same year in the United States, Wodehouse substantially expanded it by integrating most of the plot of a 1909 magazine serial from The Captain magazine that starred (P)smith and Mike. Thus, the edition I've been reading is what's known as the "American version" of The Prince and Betty, which, much like Composite Superman or Certs with Retsin, contains two, two, two things in one. To complicate matters, Wodehouse rewrote and recombined the two plots yet again in 1931 as a magazine serial under the title A Prince for Hire. It's not considered part of the true Wodehouse book canon as it was never originally published in book form (but here's a news story of a publishing endeavor that eventually brought it out in a 2003 limited edition that I need to get my hooves on one of these days. C'mon, A Prince for Hire...to paraphrase Billy Ocean, get out of my dreams and only my shelves!) And there's a 1919 silent film version that featured a young Boris Karloff (as one of the gangsters? We can only hope!). Clearly this evergreen plot was fodder for a lot of Wodehouse's creations, and if the American patchwork version of The Prince and Betty is a wee creaky at times, it makes up for it with some fine dialogue, the sparkling characters of Smith and his comrades, and some really lovely and still-accurate descriptions of New York City:

New York is an egotist. It will suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.

But finally, I can't find fault with a Wodehouse book that so jovially addresses me by name:

John beamed down on them.

'That's right,' he said. 'Bully! I knew you could get a move on as quick as anyone else, if you gave your minds to it.'

Golly. Thank you, Mister Wodehouse.



The Prince and Betty is one of those early Wodehouse novels that, until recently, has been out of print just about forever. Why, if it weren't for the internet itself, we'da scarcely been able to read it: here's the online free text version. But for those of you who prefer to hold a book in your hands and turn the pages with barely-concealed excitement and mounting thrills, well, then, thanks to the modern-day invention of the twenty-first century, The Prince and Betty is now in the public domain and has been republished in Arc Manor's series of inexpensive early Wodehouse paperbacks. Their jacket designs are often amateur and cartoonish and the books are typeset cheaply with regrettable typos that suggest it was optical-scanned without proofreading: 'His first act, on landing, w5as to proceed...' says the opening of Chapter Four, and there's a rogue asterisk in the first sentence of page one: 'A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter in the* shade of the big sycamore.' But skim over these minor annoyances and dive into Mervo and New York—it's well worth the adventure.

Oh, and what of the adventures of Smith/Psmith and friends? If The Prince and Betty existed in two forms, with Smith and without, is the same true for the Psmith storyline: does it exist shorn of its Mervonian origins? But of course!—Wodehouse went back to the well once again for the 1915 Psmith novel Psmith Journalist, a rewriting of the second two-thirds of the American version of The Prince and Betty. Let's read it next week, shall we? Yes, let's! See you then!

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