A Wodehouse a Week #37: Something Fresh

The back cover blurb on the dust jacket of the week's Wodehouse reads 'Take the 4.15 from Paddington Station to Shropshire and arrive in heaven.' Okay!


But, as you will see, there's no need to book a ticket or hop on board an express train: simply pick up a copy of Something Fresh (1915), published in the US under the title Something New (perhaps to avoid confusing it with definition 3e in the Merriam-Webster). Whatever the title, it's absolutely appropriate: not only for a lovely Spring-ish day here in January, not only because it's a brand fresh new year, but because it's A Month of Firsts here at A Wodehouse a Week. And here in my hooves I have the very first Blandings novel, the start to one of Wodehouse's most delightful series.

Let's meet the contestants, shall we? When vigorous, in-shape, energetic mystery writer Ashe Marson meets his neighbor, the lovely and personably Joan Valentine, sparks fly instantly. (With a name like Valentine, it's got to be love!) Far from being immune to her charms, Ashe is utterly mune, and he isn't alone: once upon a time, before our story begins, Freddy Threepwood was enamored of Joan when he saw her on the stage, and tho' he never met her, sent her a stack o' letter professing his undying love. Now Freddy is engaged to Joan's friend Aline, the daughter of millionaire J. Preston Peters, and fears that Joan might use those letters to force a breach of promise suit upon him. (Ah, the days when breach of promise suits would fall upon young bachelors at the drop of a hat!) Freddie needn't worry—Joan had long ago destroyed the letters—but Freddy doesn't know that, and hires shady Dickie Jones to recover the letters. Jones sees an opportunity to make money for himself and rake Freddy over the coals. All clear so far? Good, because here's the catalyst that starts the whole adventure off with a bang:

Enter Clarence, Lord Emsworth, the centerpiece of all Blandings tales: the elder statesman of the Threepwood clan, established early on as a pleasant but absent-minded and easily distracted man:

'Tell me, Adams, have I eaten my cheese?'

'Not yet, your lordship. I was about to send the waiter for it.'

'Never mind. Tell him to bring the bill instead. I remember that I have an appointment. I must not be late.'

'Shall I take the fork, your lordship?'

'The fork?'

'Your lordship has inadvertently put a fork in your coat pocket.'

Lord Emsworth felt in the pocket indicated, and with the air of an inexpert conjurer whose trick has succeeded contrary to his expectations produced a silver-plated fork. He regarded it with surprise; then he looked wonderingly at Adams.

'Adams, I'm getting absent-minded. Have you ever noticed any traces of absent-mindedness in me before?'

'Oh, no, your lordship.'

Far from being simply a comedy bit of juggling with a club fork, it's an important plot point when Emsworth makes a father-in-law to father-in-law visit to J. Preston Peters and accidentally pockets the prize centerpiece of Peters's Egyptian scarab collection. The scarab becomes the Silver Cow Creamer—the object of everyone's intent to steal it—throughout the book, and in a Blandings book that means imposters at the castle. Ashe is hired by Peters to pose as his valet and recover the scarab during Peters's visit. When Aline confides her father's distress to her friend Joan, Joan poses as a lady's maid and accompanies Aline to Blandings—both couples trailed by Jones in an attempt to steal the scarab first. Add to the mix Lord Emsworth's personal secretary, the Efficient Baxter; police officer George Emerson, in love with Aline (and vice-versa? Hmmm...) and of course, butler Beach, presiding over the regular runnings of the household in his usual buterlish way.

With various thieves sneaking in the night in search of the scarab, this is very clearly not an ordinary stay at Blandings—and yet, it sets the stage for the other novels and stories in the Blandings saga: sought-after secret item, imposters at the Castle posing as servants to sneak into the household, dastardly manipulators plotting their plots from the relative safety of the Emsworth Arms inn in Market Blandings town, and a midnight how-do-you-do in which residents fall downstairs, tables are broken, windows are smashed, and Lord Emsworth fires a pistol wildly into the dark:

Lord Emsworth raised his revolver and emptied it in the direction of the sound.

Extremely fortunately for him, the Efficient Baxter had not changed his all-fours attitude. This undoubtedly saved Lord Emsworth the worry of engaging a new secretary. The shots sang above Baxter's head one after the other, six in all, and found other billets than his person. They disposed themselves as follows: The first shot broke a window and whistled out into the night; the second shot hit the dinner gong and made a perfectly extraordinary noise, like the Last Trump; the third, fourth and fifth shots embedded themselves in the wall; the sixth and final shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship's grandmother in the face and improved it out of all knowledge.

One thinks no worse of Lord Emsworth's grandmother because she looked like Eddie Foy, and had allowed herself to be painted, after the heavy classic manner of some of the portraits of a hundred years ago, in the character of Venus—suitably draped, of course, rising from the sea; but it was beyond the possibility of denial that her grandson's bullet permanently removed one of Blandings Castle's most prominent eyesores.

While it sets the groundwork for the eventual Blandings sequels, however Something Fresh has several absences and early versions that show how fully the rich cast of characters evolves. One of the occupants of Blandings Castle in this first book is Lady Ann Warblington, Clarence's widowed sister, but Ann remains off stage for virtually all of the novel and shows none of the vigor and overbearing grace that the Threepwood sisters introduced later—particularly doyenne the intimidating Connie. Beach the butler is a rather stiff version of his later self, prone to dramatic pronunciations on his health and ruling over the household staff with an iron hand in a silk glove, decorum and propriety always prime in his mind.

"It has been," said Mr. Beach, summing up, "a most unfortunate occurrence. The modern tendency of the lower classes to get above themselves is becoming more marked every day. The young female in this case was, I understand, a barmaid. It is deplorable that our young men should allow themselves to get into such entanglements."

This is quite a change from the later Beach, who has a niece named Maudie who is a barmaid herself. As we see in Pigs Have Wings, Beach is very fond of her indeed. The unstarching of Beach as the saga goes on is one of the finer evolutions of characters in Wodehouse: the Beach in Something Fresh is a bit unlikable and serves is a suspicious antagonist towards Ashe's impersonation of a valet. There's an extended section in the book, reminiscent of the movie Gosford Park or the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs, which takes us into the lives of the castle's servants; Wodehouse seldom repeated this in-depth serving-class examination later on, which gives Something Fresh a slightly more social-novel feel than the others.

Oh! I almost forgot another, very vital, very important difference: in Something Fresh, there is no Empress of Blandings!


Yes, that's right: the greatest fictional pig of them all is not present in the first Blandings novel and will not make her debut for another 12 years (in the aptly named short story "Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey"). It's a fine, fine novel, but it's poorer for the paucity of porcines.

On the other hand, it does have a lovely cameo appearance by a little bull (italics mine)!:

Baxter, then, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco, had good reason to brood. Having bought his tobacco and observed the life and thought of the town for half an hour—it was market day and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved and brightened by pigs that eluded their keepers, and a bull calf which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he was tying his shoe lace and lifted him six feet—he made his way to the Emsworth Arms.

The other major element of a Blandings novel is there, however: love, love, love, which makes the world go 'round. It's January right now but it's sixty-plus degrees outside, and it feels like Spring, and in the Spring a young bull's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. (Sigh.)

In every man's life there is generally one moment to which in later years he can look back and say: 'In this moment I fell in love!' Such a moment came to Ashe now.

Betwixt the stirrup and the ground,
Mercy I asked; mercy I found.

So sings the poet and so it was with Ashe.

In the almost incredibly brief time it took the small but sturdy porter to roll a milk can across the platform and hump it, with a clang, against other milk cans similarly treated a moment before, Ashe fell in love.

Which is why the tale of Ashe and Joan is a perfect one for a dreamy bull to read today: it's whimsical, witty, and has what every great romance story needs: a heist. After discovering they're both after the same big cash reward for the return of the scarab, Ashe and Joan agree to compete, and may the best thief win. But like the best Cary Grant/Grace Kelly movie, there's a lot of bantering and one-upmanship, and like the best of Wodehouse's spirited heroines, modern woman Joan Valentine is not to be swayed easily by a pair of strong shoulders and a dashing smile:

Joan laughed.

'It won't do, Mr. Marson. You remind me of an old cat I once had. Whenever he killed a mouse he would bring it into the drawing-room and lay it affectionately at my feet. I would reject the corpse with horror and turn him out, but back he would come with his loathsome gift. I simply couldn't make him understand that he was not doing me a kindness. He thought highly of his mouse and it was beyond him to realize that I did not want it.

'You are just the same with your chivalry. It's very kind of you to keep offering me your dead mouse; but honestly I have no use for it. I won't take favors just because I happen to be a female. If we are going to form this partnership I insist on doing my fair share of the work and running my fair share of the risks—the practically nonexistent risks.'

'You're very—resolute.'

'Say pig-headed; I shan't mind.'

Don't lissen to her, Ashe: don't call ladies 'pig-headed'—it isn't polite. You and I know that by the end of the novel Ashe and Joan will be enfolded in each other's arms, whether or not they get their hands on the scarab. That's the not-so-secret to a Wodehouse romance: no matter the problems, whatever the banter, they'll come together in the end. But well before that, there's a lovely parting line from Joan that mixes romance and rodents like no other love story has:

As they parted at the door, Joan made one further remark: 'There's just one thing, Mr. Marson.'

'Yes?'

'If I could have accepted the mouse from anyone I should certainly have accepted it from you.'

So. Something Fresh. Read it with the love of your life. And if, to paraphrase a very wise man, you can't find a partner, use your nearest rodent.



I've got a rather beat-up old 1970s American mass market edition (printed by Beagle Books, that paragon of publishers) of Something New, an ex-library edition from the Canton Public Library (not the one in China, but the one in New York State's North Country). Like the few other Beagle Books editions in my collection, it's got a rather odd and formal Aubrey Beardsleyesque illustration on the cover; I much prefer the Ionicus watercolor on my Penguin paperback of Something Fresh, with Lord Emsworth (always a bit thinner than I picture him, but never mind) showing off his absent-minded scarab display to Davies while the Efficient Baxter hovers in the background. Want to zoom in on that scarab? No worries: the Everyman Wodehouse/Overlook Press edition features a lovely close-up cartoon of the beetle scarab on its cover, and if that doesn't make you want to go out and get a scarab for yourself, I don't know what will. Hmmm, let's see...ah yes, here we go:

Crickey! A sterling silver scarab poison ring. I would like to have one of those and no mistake. Don't worry, everyone, I will not put poison in it. (I wouldn't even know where to get poison!) I will instead fill it with confectioner's sugar to sprinkle on dessert treats to make them even sweeter. A sugar scarab! Now that would be a beetle worthy of burgling. (Please don't steal, though. It's wrong.)

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

I got a pink baby pig just like I wanted!

Thank you Miss Miranda! XOXOXO!

Sherlock Holmes Weekend Concludes: "...the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known"

So, by now you're asking: Why Sherlock Holmes Weekend?

Today is January 6, Twelfth Night. Although Arthur Conan Doyle doesn't mention it in the Holmes canon, Sherlock Holmes fans and scholars generally propose Holmes was born on January 6, 1854. Today, thanks to a vigorous regime of exercise and royal jelly from the queen bee, he quietly celebrates his 154th birthday from his retirement cottage in Sussex.

Raise a glass of port or your preferred drink of toasting (I'm fond of cocoa or steaming bishop myself) to Mister Holmes today, and celebrate his life and legacy by diving back into the words of Doctor John H. Watson, his confidante, best friend, and biographer:




Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. "I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street," he said, "which would suit us down to the ground. You don't mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?"

"I always smoke 'ship's' myself," I answered.
—from A Study in Scarlet




"But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did—some little distance off, but fresh and clear."

"Footprints?"

"Footprints."

"A man's or a woman's?"

Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered:

"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
—from The Hound of the Baskervilles




Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and a black top-knot.

"So, Watson," said he, suddenly, "you do not propose to invest in South African securities?"

I gave a start of astonishment. Accustomed as I was to Holmes's curious faculties, this sudden intrusion into my most intimate thoughts was utterly inexplicable.

"How on earth do you know that?" I asked.

He wheeled round upon his stool, with a steaming test-tube in his hand, and a gleam of amusement in his deep-set eyes.

"Now, Watson, confess yourself utterly taken aback," said he.

"I am."

"I ought to make you sign a paper to that effect."

"Why?"

"Because in five minutes you will say that it is all so absurdly simple."
—from "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"




"There's an east wind coming, Watson."

"I think not, Holmes. It is very warm."

"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it's time that we were on our way."
—from "His Last Bow"




...If I have now been compelled to make a clear statement of his career, it is due to those injudicious champions who have endeavored to clear his memory by attacks upon him whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.
—from "The Final Problem"

Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection presents Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

One of my favorite TV series that's never been released on DVD (yet!...we can but hope) is the 1980s Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection. Before Mystery Science Theater 3000 added heckled riffing over the soundtrack of a cheesy movie, Mad Movies, originating from an improv group in Los Angeles, took old public domain movie, chopped them up and re-edited them into a half-hour show, and re-dubbed them completely with a new comedy soundtrack. The show ran in syndication and on Nick at Nite for several years in the eighties—I'm lucky enough to still have my much-watched VHS tapes of the show...but it hasn't been seen publicly for ages. Until the age of YouTube, that is! All hail YouTube!

Tonight, get in the mad moodvie by watching their version of 1943's Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, one of the many Universal Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Holmes vehicles that brought the Victorian sleuth to contemporary times to battle Nazis. (Well, somebody's gotta.) Mad Movies re-spins the film as Holmes's search for missing library books. Let's watch!



(A fair warning: the host segments and introductions with Kent Skov are usually...to be honest...absolutely missable. If you want to start right off with the movie portion of the show, start at 2:00 into the YouTube clip.)

That's Part 1. Here's Part 2 and here's Part 3.

Today's 21st century L.A. Connection still features live stage shows with improv, stand-up and the modern version of Mad Movies: "Dub-A-Vision." Plus, there's other classic Mad Movies clips and shows on YouTube. Only a few of them are Sherlock Holmes Weekend-appropriate, of course, but don't let that stop you.

A Wodehouse a Week: Wodehouse's introduction to The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

As far as great British genre fiction goes, I've been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for longer than I have of P. G. Wodehouse...but only a little bit longer. I remember taking Sherlock Holmes mysteries out of the Liverpool Public Library as a small(er) stuffed bull and racing home to read them cover to cover, obsessed with the Adventure of the Red-Headed League and the Dancing Men and just where the heck did Doctor Watson get shot, anyway? (My theory? He's careless while cleaning his service revolver. Bang!)

Even tho' I am only six, the mid-seventies was a bang-on time to be a Holmes fan, thanks to Nicholas Meyer, who revitalized Holmes fandom with The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1974 as surely as he perked up the Star Trek franchise in 1982 directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (Meyer is also responsible for a clever, if sometimes controversial among fans, line spoken by Spock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: "As one of my ancestors used to say, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." On his mother's side of the family, I presume.)

There's been a mini-resurgence of Holmesean fiction over the past couple years with acclaimed writers like Michael Chabon and Caleb Carr contributing to the apocryphal non-quite-canon, but believe me, it's nothing compared to the massive Holmes publishing events of the 1970s. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, teaming up Holmes and Sigmund Freud, is directly responsible for a massive boom in Holmes pastiches and "continuing adventures" published mainly in paperback throughout the 1970s, and especially stories and novels that teamed up Holmes with other fictional and real-life adventurers, heroes, villains and events from Dracula to the Phantom of the Opera, Jack the Ripper and John Merrick, even fighting the War of the Worlds. It's Wold-Newtrony in action!

But, as far as I can tell, Sherlock Holmes has never met Jeeves. Which is a pity. You might argue that Holmes would have been too old to team up with characters in the 1920s and 1930s, but one of the appeals of the non-Doyle fiction is Holmes's extreme longevity, usually attributed to royal bee jelly (yum!) from his beekeeping farm in his Sussex retirement home. An eighty-nine year old retired detective (who may or may not be Holmes) is at the center of a mystery, a visit to post-Hiroshima Japan, and musings on bees in Michael Chabon's 2004 The Final Solution, and a very-well preserved Holmes teams up with Batman (and even outthinks him) in 1987's Detective Comics #572. So there's no reason Holmes couldn't have been around for the Age of Wooster and Blandings, and I guess we just have to wait for some enterprising fan fiction writer to combine the two worlds. Of course, there's the next best thing: the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy Sayers. And then there's this wonderful team-up: The Sixth Annual Cricket Match Between the Sherlock Holmes Society and the P. G. Wodehouse Society!

In the meantime—and the subject of this post—let me show you my treasured favorites of all my Sherlock Holmes books (and I've got a lot of 'em): a 1975 boxed set of Ballantine Books paperback editions:


Dated 1975, these reissues in mass market paperback came out the year the mega-successful Seven-Per-Cent Solution was released in Ballantine paperback, and were clearly designed to capitalize on its bestselling status. I'm pretty sure I got this for Christmas 1975 and probably devoured the entire set by New Year's Eve. It's not a complete Holmes: three later books are missing (The Valley of Fear, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, and His Last Bow), probably omitted to keep the set under a $10.00 retail price. Aside from being able to read the first six books for my first time in chronological order, I love these editions for their introductions: each has a short preface on Holmes and Doyle by a leading author, almost all of them in the mystery or detective field:

• A Study in Scarlet is introduced by Ed McBain, author of the 87th Precinct police procedurals, who discusses the difference between police work of Lestrade and Gregson and his own characters.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is introduced by Ellery Queen, in one of my favorite short pieces on Holmes. At the time Queen had recently been revitalized on TV in the wonderful but short-lived Ellery Queen TV series starring Jim Hutton and David Wayne, and I'd been eagerly reading the various EQ paperback mystery reissues that had come out at the same time. "Ellery"'s essay on his he discovered Sherlock Holmes at a young age put a lovely background to the character that would eventually become my favorite mystery writer and character.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles has an introduction by Don Pendleton, who teams up his action-adventure character Mack Bolan (forerunner of Frank Castle) and Holmes in a mini short-story.
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is introduced by mystery and television writer Joe Gores (and I'm astonished to learn there's not a Wikipedia page on him). Gores tells a fine detailed story of his own life as a detective and its differences from that of Holmes.
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes's introduction is by Nicholas Meyer, a fitting choice as The Seven-Per-Cent Solution proposed the theory of Holmes's return was not quite canon. (He draws close comparisons between Doyle, Holmes, and Dr. Joseph Bell, often acknowledged to be the inspiration for Holmes.)

Did I miss one? Well, yes, of course. The Sign of Four features an introduction by (go ahead, guess) P. G. Wodehouse. It's a piece I've not seen collected any other place, so it's fitting and appropriate I read and discuss it on this Sherlock Holmes Weekend. Plum begins

When I was starting out as a writer—this would be about the time Caxton invented the printing press—Conan Doyle was my hero. Others might revere Hardy and Meredith. I was a Doyle man, and I still am. Usually we tend to discard the idols of our youth as we grow older, but I have not had this experience with A.C.D. I thought him swell then, and I think him swell now.

This isn't just a homage, of course—Wodehouse has something much wittier up his sleeve: where did Holmes get all his money from? It's a clever and funny—and well-argued—essay. Holmes couldn't afford to rent rooms by himself (leading to his historic meeting with Doctor John Watson and their subsequent lodging at 221B Baker Street). He has a small income from cases, but while a handful are from dukes or barons, most of these are from clerks, governesses, landladies, undergraduates, or unpaid work for Scotland Yard. There isn't a grand or regular amount of money flowing into the Holmes bank account. Yet he has a steady purchase habit of tobacco, ammunition, chemistry supplies, newspapers, cab fares, and the like (not to mention cocaine), and is willing to spend money dashing off on trains around the countryside at the first hint of a case.

For what would the ordinary private investigator have said to himself when starting out in business? He would have said 'Before I take on work for a client I must be sure that the client has the stuff, the daily sweetener and the little something down in advance are of the essence,' and he would have had those landladies and those Greek interpreters out of his sitting room before you could say 'bloodstain.' Yet Holmes, who could not afford a pound a week for lodgings, never bothered. Significant!

Wodehouse's solution to the mystery? Holmes had a stack of cash he was hiding from Watson. But where do you get stacks of cash? Crime, my son, crime. Simply put, Holmes was a master criminal. Wodehouse qualifies that: Holmes was the master criminal: Professor Moriarty.

Wodehouse points out (absolutely following canon and completely accurately) that Watson (and we) never see or meet Moriarty: we are told of his existence by Holmes.

And Holmes made a little slip on the occasion. He said that on his way to see Watson he had been attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. A face-oscillating napoleon of Crime, anxious to eliminate someone who disliked, would have thought up something better than roughs with bludgeons. Dropping cobras down the chimney is the mildest thing that would have occurred to him.

Why, it's elementary! You might even gasp upon reading it. Such a revelation would startle and shock Holmesean scholarship and shake it to its roots. At least until Wodehouse adds

P.S. Just kidding, boys. Actually, like all the rest of you, I am never happier than when curled up with Sherlock Holmes, and I hope Messrs Ballantine will sell several million of him. As the fellow said, there's no police like Holmes.

Whew! Another of my childhood heroes preserved and saved.

(But I still wanna see Holmes team up with Jeeves to solve the Adventure of the Silver Cow Creamer.)

There's some other wonderful editions out there today—I'm especially fond of the chunky and comprehensive two-volume Bantam Complete Holmes and Norton's oversized three-volume New Annotated Sherlock Holmes—but the Ballantine mass-market paperback editions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are long out of print. Holmes in his day would have had to scout out a book by placing advertisements in every one of the multitude of afternoon London newspapers, or by meeting dark and mysterious characters in a shadowy mews off Charing Cross Road, or possibly by convincing his lethargic brother Mycroft to release the Queen's personal copy to him. Your job of detection is easier to hunt down these books: The Sign of Four with Wodehouse introduction is readily available online, and the other books in the boxed set series are plentiful and readily purchased online and at used book shops. Whatever the edition you pick up, however, you're in for a treat. Wodehouse is the creamy icing on a rich luscious Sherlock cake, but you can't go wrong either way.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Ten of a Kind: There's No Police Like Holmes (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

No, not comics about Sherlock Holmes...



...but comics inspired by the image and legacy of Sherlock Holmes:




















(More Ten of a Kind here.)

Sunday Morning Sherlock Cartoon: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: The Murder of Lord Waterbrook, Part One (Russian cartoon with subtitles, 2006), directed by Aleksandr Bubnov

Here's Part Two.

Separated at Birth: Look what you gain when you travel by train (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

L: "Holmes Gave Me a Sketch of the Events" from "Silver Blaze" by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in The Strand (December 1892), art by Sidney Paget
R: Ruse #7 (May 2002), art by Butch Guice, Mike Perkins, and Laura DePuy
(Click picture to gigantic hound-size)

Saturday Morning Cartoon: The Pink Panther in "Sherlock Pink" (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Continues!)

The Pink Panther in "Sherlock Pink" (1976), directed by Robert McKimson

Friday Night Fights: The Adventure of the Stone-Fisted Sleuth (Sherlock Holmes Weekend Begins!)

Mister Sherlock Holmes. You know him, I bet. Hawk nose, deerstalker cap, nasty cocaine habit. The world's greatest detective (until Batman, Elongated Man, and Columbo came along, at least). Your image of Holmes is probably shaped by the Basil Rathbone films, or the Jeremy Brett TV series, or perhaps by the wonderful original Sidney Paget illustrations:


Lookin' at these you might say to yourself "That Holmes is a slacker! Always kicking back, relaxing, smoking his meerschaum pipe or three and thinking about murders." Well, that's where you're wrong, Lestrade! Sure, Holmes is a deep thinker. But don't forget he put in a solid kickassing on Professor Moriarty on the cliffs of the Reichenbach Falls:


Holmes is no frail, wasted, intellectual. He's a keen student of fighting and boxing, and casually shows off his strength in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band":

Holmes chuckled heartily. "Your conversation is most entertaining," said he. "When you go out close the door, for there is a decided draught."

"I will go when I have said my say. Don't you dare to meddle with my affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her! I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here." He stepped swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.

"See that you keep yourself out of my grip," he snarled, and hurling the twisted poker into the fireplace he strode out of the room

"He seems a very amiable person," said Holmes, laughing. "I am not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own." As he spoke he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again.

How much of an all-out action guy is he? How tough is Sherlock Holmes? So tough he beats up cadavers:

"Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge."

"Very right too."

"Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape."

"Beating the subjects!"

"Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes."

Man, even Batman ain't that crazy.

But I can hear you now. Sure, Bully, you scoff. Mister Sheer-Luck Holmes is soooooo tough. But all you've shown us is words, little stuffed bull, paltry feeble words. We're comic book fans from the Show-Me State. Show us that Holmes could hold his own against the other two-fisted heroes of the four-color world. Hah!

Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?








For best results, read that last panel and then immediately click here.

All these panels are from DC's rather spiffing Sherlock Holmes #1 (cover-dated October 1975), written by Denny O'Neil with art by E. R. Cruz. Despite the "Next issue on sale during the last week in August" blurb at the bottom of the final panel, it's the only Holmes issue published by DC, so it's likely the issue didn't sell well enough to warrant a series. That's kind of a pity. It was obviously published to capitalize on the massive increase in Holmes fandom thanks to the publication of Nicholas Meyers's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution only the previous year, which inspired dozens if not hundreds of imitation novels and new Holmes pastiches. This little stuffed Holmes fan declares that the DC comic version ain't half bad: bold and dynamic art, an abridged but skillful retelling of two Conan Doyle stories ("The Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House"), and, aside from portraying Holmes in deerstalker throughout (Holmes would have only worn such wear when traveling to the country, Holmes scholars tell us), does a pretty solid job of fitting the general visual image of Holmes, Watson, and Victorian London. There's also a be-yoo-tiful Walt Simonson cover:


Maybe it's for the best. Not every Holmes story might have lent itself so well to the action-packed, visually-oriented medium of comic books. But for one issue at least, Holmes totally scores a knockout:






"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of Bahlactus in the night-time."
"Bahlactus did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Un Más Día

Y'know, in many ways Spider-Man's "One More Day" storyline is a Faust play...the story of one man struggling against damnation after being entangled in a sinister deal with the Devil. And like the unhappy ending of that certain Spidey-saga, a Faustian bargain usually ends in tears. Spidey would have been smart to pay attention to the lyrics of the classic Big Daddy Kane song:

What we need is peace and love and more love
But I don't see none of the above
So one for the bass and two for the treble
C'mon y'all, don't dance with the devil!

Words to live by.

But in another way, "One More Day" reminded me of another, equally popular form of theatrical entertainment, one with costumes reminiscent of superheroes, featuring heroes, villains, and epic battles for right and justice: lucha libre, Mexican free fighting wrestling. The colorful masks and muscular physiques of the great Mexican wrestlers is virtually straight out of superhero comics, and frequently the ring battles pit a hero against "El Diablo"—a devil-masked villain. It's like a passion play, except with more body grease.

Which got me thinkin'...

What If™..."One More Day" Had Been a Mexican Wrestling Grudge Match?

Well for one thing, it woulda been hecka cooler. And I think it woulda gone something like this....



There would be sweaty battles a-plenty:



And strange, dramatic, reversals of fortune...



But in the end, the day would be saved the way it always should: with good old-fashioned supermodel smarts:

(Cuadro del tecleo para hacerlo más grande)


Puedo apenas ser un pequeño toro relleno que no habla español, pero compraría eso.

Con las gracias por el estímulo de Chris Sims

A Wodehouse a Week #36: The Pothunters

It's a Happy New Year here at A Wodehouse a Week, so let's celebrate with A Month of Firsts—an entire double-fortnight of famous premieres in the Panoply of Plum. Stay tuned this month for first appearances of Wodehouse's most famous characters! And what better place to start than with his first published book, The Pothunters, which was originally released in (take a deep breath) nineteen-oh-two. Golly. That's (does some quick calculations on my hooves; takes off my socks to count a little higher) over twenty years ago! And y'know, it's as fresh as today, a reference to jellygraphing or two aside.

The Pothunters is a school story, like Wodehouse's other early books, populated with quick and clever young lads attending St. Austin's public school—many of the same cast of characters Wodehouse later used in Tales of St. Austin's, which I reviewed back in September. Unlike that collection of school short stories, The Pothunters is a novel—although the individual chapters can be read separately (and in fact were first published in British boys' magazine The Captain that way), there's a continuing plot here of the theft of two sporting prize trophies (the 'pots' that are hunted) from the school, plus the disappearance of two pounds. Consternation uproar! Such an event would, in a different author's work, set Boy Wizard™ and his pair O'Pals® snooping about Chambers of Secret and the like, but the boys of St. Austin's are happy to sit around their rooms, making toast and tea and chatting wittily:

'Now we're complete,' said Charteris, as Jackson presented himself. 'Gentlemen—your seats. There are only four chairs, and we, as Wordsworth might have said, but didn't, are five. All right, I'll sit on the table. Welch, you worm, away with melancholy. Take away his book, somebody. That's right. Who says what? Tea already made. Coffee published shortly. If anybody wants cocoa, I've got some, only you'll have to boil more water. I regret the absence of menu-cards, but as the entire feast is visible to the naked eye, our loss is immaterial. The offertory will be for the Church expenses fund. Biscuits, please.'

'I wish you'd given this tea after next Saturday, Alderman,' said Jim. Charteris was called the Alderman on account of his figure, which was inclined to stoutness, and his general capacity for consuming food.

'Never put off till tomorrow—Why?'

'I simply must keep fit for the mile. How's Welch to run, too, if he eats this sort of thing?' He pointed to the well-spread board.

'Yes, there's something in that,' said Tony. 'Thank goodness, my little entertainment's over. I think I will try one of those chocolate things. Thanks.'

'Welch is all right,' said Jackson. 'He could win the hundred and the quarter on sausage-rolls. But think of the times.'

Gosh. My tummy is rumbling just reading that, which shows how well Wodehouse knew his audience: schoolboys obsessed with rich, filling tuck. Not to mention sport, of course, and the mystery comes into it later, but quite by accident: one boy sneaks into the scene of the crime to retrieve his schoolbook; another accidentally discovers the pots in a hollow tree in the off-limit woods, and poor Thomson is falsely accused of the theft—but while a the forefront of the goings-on, the mystery is almost always secondary to other activities: running races, sneaking out of bounds, publishing a clandestine school literary journal. And betting, betting, betting.

'Shouldn't wonder, you know,' said Dimsdale, one of the two School House fags, judicially, 'if the kid wasn't telling the truth for once in his life. Those pots must be worth something. Don't you think so, Scott?'

Scott admitted that there might be something in the idea, and that, however foreign to his usual habits, Robinson might on this occasion be confining himself more or less to strict fact.

'There you are, then,' said Robinson, vengefully. 'Shows what a fat lot you know what you're talking about, Morrison.'

'Morrison's a fool,' said Scott. 'Ever since he got off the bottom bench in form there's been no holding him.'

'All the same,' said Morrison, feeling that matters were going against him, 'I shan't believe it till I see it.'

'What'll you bet?' said Robinson.

'I never bet,' replied Morrison with scorn.

'You daren't. You know you'd lose.'

'All right, then, I'll bet a penny I'm right.' He drew a deep breath, as who should say, 'It's a lot of money, but it's worth risking it.'

'You'll lose that penny, old chap,' said Robinson. 'That's to say,' he added thoughtfully, 'if you ever pay up.'

I'm only a schoolbull and not a schoolboy, but gosh by golly, I think I'd love to go to St. Austin's (or Wrykyn, Wodehouse's other series school) even more than Hogwart's. More sausages, less chance of being zapped clean through by a Death Eater.

It's very early in Wodehouse's career and while the prose is clever and polished, it's by no means as lyrical and elegant as his later works, of course. It's very fast-paced and the dénouement comes a bit abruptly (the theft is solved off-screen, committed by a character we've never heard of before and never will again)—the later Wodehouse would have tied this all more neatly together to make as elegant a mystery adventure as his later romantic comedies are. But it's still bright and witty, and there's a few good chuckles in his early prose:

'We had a burglary at my place once,' began Reade, of Philpott's House. 'The man—'

'That rotter, Reade,' said Barrett, also of Philpott's, 'has been telling us that burglary chestnut of his all the morning. I wish you chaps wouldn't encourage him.'

'Why, what was it? First I've heard of it, at any rate.' Dallas and Vaughan, of Ward's, added themselves to the group. 'Out with it, Reade,' said Vaughan.

'It's only a beastly reminiscence of Reade's childhood,' said Barrett. 'A burglar got into the wine-cellar and collared all the coals.'

'He didn't. He was in the hall, and my pater got his revolver—'

'While you hid under the bed.'

'—and potted at him over the banisters.'

'The last time but three you told the story, your pater fired through the keyhole of the dining-room.'

I'm especially fond of droll, wisecracking student Charteris, who had some of the best lines in Tales of St. Austin's and provides a corker here during the search for a lost boy:

...after inviting them to step in, the servant disappeared, and the Babe came on the scene, wearing a singularly prosperous expression, as if he had dined well.

'Hullo, you chaps,' he said.

'Sir to you,' said Charteris. 'Look here, Babe, we want to know what you have done with Jim. He was seen by competent witnesses to go off with you, and he's not come back. If you've murdered him, you might let us have the body.'

And there's a touch of the later Wodehouse whimsy in this scene where the Headmaster confronts a troublesome student:

'Plunkett,' he said, suddenly, 'you are a School-prefect.'

'Yes, sir,' murmured Plunkett. The fact was undeniable.

'You know the duties of a School-prefect?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And yet you deliberately break one of the most important rules of the School. How long have you been in the habit of smoking?'

Plunkett evaded the question.

'My father lets me smoke, sir, when I'm at home.'

(A hasty word in the reader's ear. If ever you are accused of smoking, please—for my sake, if not for your own—try to refrain from saying that your father lets you do it at home. It is a fatal mistake.)

Like the best of school stories, it's educational too! There's an extensive section in which the boys are creating their secret school journal to sell and raise money for one of the other lads, and they work diligently throughout the night by candlelight inscribing the journal onto "jellygraph." Mmmmm, said I when I first read that, jelly! A quick trip to the not-around-in-1902 internet taught me, however, that a jellygraph is " is a printing process which involves transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame." I picture one of those ditto machines in my head, but I guess even messier, smellier, and more manual and complicated. I would have liked to go to school at St. Austin's, but I guess it would be difficult to blog on a jellygraph.

In the end, however, there's no real lesson or moral to be learned from The Pothunters except for the very simple one of stand by your mates. I can imagine that this made Wodehouse a very popular author indeed among the schoolboys of his time: no preaching, no parables, no moral lesson to be learned: just some Ripping Yarn-type adventure and brawling sport, followed up with a warm cup of tea and toasted sandwiches. There's a lovely bit about half-way through featuring two of the boys curling up with books:

'Half the staff have gone. Good opportunity for a chap to go for a stroll if he wanted to. Shall we, by the way?'

'Not for me, thanks. I'm in the middle of a rather special book. Ever read Great Expectations? Dickens, you know.'

'I know. Haven't read it, though. Always rather funk starting on a classic, somehow. Good?'

'My dear chap! Good's not the word.'

'Well, after you. Exit Livy, then. And a good job, too. You might pass us the great Sherlock. Thanks.'

He plunged with the great detective into the mystery of the speckled band, while Vaughan opened Great Expectations at the place where he had left off the night before. And a silence fell upon the study.

I think it's fair to say that many, many a schoolboy would rate a Wodehouse as just as much a rather special book—mere "good" was not the word to describe it. As an Old Boy himself, he knew his audience well.



All that reading by schoolboys in candlelight might account for how hard it is to find a mint copy of the first edition of this, Wodehouse's first book. I'm sure many of them were well-read and re-read and loved to pieces. Used first editions of this are of course not cheap. (Check it out!) No, I'll never own a first edition of this book, but I'm pleased to have picked it up...as a remainder, no less...in a 1985 Penguin paperback omnibus collecting this, A Prefect's Uncle, and Tales of St. Austin's in one handy volume. While you may not be able to buy it at the amazing low-low price of $1.98 that I got mine, a paperback edition is still incredibly affordable by clicking the handy Amazon link to the upper right. Or, if the Yule-tide credit card bills are landing on your doormat with a whack and a bang, why not opt for the free online text edition of The Pothunters and save your silver for a jam butty at the tuck shop instead? See, just like a public school boy, I'm very thrifty and wise with my pounds and pence.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Ten of a Kind: Happy New Year!

(More Ten of a Kind here.)