The Captive Reader

Over the weekend I finished off P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe.  It’s less full of bon mots than you might expect (but rather full of balance sheet considerations) however it does contain some rather wonderful letters to or remarks about contemporary authors of Wodehouse’s acquaintance that must be shared.

My favourite letter was the one below, written to Denis Mackail on the publication of the entirely wonderful Greenery Street (still one of my favourite Persephone titles).  Whatever issues I may have with Wodehouse, his taste in books is not one of them!

Dear Denis,

I started the sale of Greenery Street off with a bang this afternoon by rushing into Hatchard’s and insisting on a copy.  They pretend it wasn’t out.  I said I had seen it mentioned among “Books Received” in my morning paper.  They said in a superior sort of way that the papers got their copies early.  I then began to scream and kick, and they at once produced it.

When I had got to page 42, I had to break off to write this letter.  No longer able to hold enthusiasm in check.  It is simply terrific, miles the best thing you have ever done – or anyone else, for that matter.  It’s so good that it makes one feel that it’s the only possible way of writing a book, to take an ordinary couple and just tell the reader about them.  It’s the sort of book one wishes would go on for ever.  That scene where Ian comes to dinner is pure genius.

The only possible criticism I would make is that it is not the sort of book which should be put into the hands of one who ought to be working on a short story.  Ethel [Wodehouse’s wife] got skinned to the bone at Ascot yesterday – myself present, incidentally, in a grey tophat and white spats – and I promised her I would work all day today at something that would put us square.  So far I have done nothing but read Greenery Street.

…

Yours ever,

P.G. Wodehouse (18 June 1925)