Young Men in Spats

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY P.G. WODEHOUSE

TITLE PAGE

1 FATE

2 TRIED IN THE FURNACE

3 TROUBLE DOWN AT TUDSLEIGH

4 THE AMAZING HAT MYSTERY

5 GOODBYE TO ALL CATS

6 THE LUCK OF THE STIFFHAMS

7 NOBLESSE OBLIGE

8 UNCLE FRED FLITS BY

9 ARCHIBALD AND THE MASSES

10 THE CODE OF THE MULLINERS

11 THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED

COPYRIGHT

Meet the Young Men in Spats – all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes nonexistent fortunes on unlikely outcomes – that's when they're not recovering from driving their sports cars through rather than round Marble Arch.

These stories are the essence of innocent fun. In them you'll encounter some of Wodehouse's favourite characters – including, for the first time, his future hero Uncle Fred. The collection is widely regarded as one of Wodehouse's best and includes one of his own favourites, ‘The Amazing Hat Mystery'.

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.

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

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

The Golf Omnibus

The Aunts Omnibus

The Drones Omnibus

The Jeeves Omnibus 1

The Jeeves Omnibus 3

The Parrot and Other Poems

Wodehouse on Wodehouse (comprising Bring on the Girls, Over Seventy, Performing Flea)

Yours, Plum

IT WAS THE
hour of the morning snifter, and a little group of Eggs and Beans and Crumpets had assembled in the smoking-room of the Drones Club to do a bit of inhaling. There had been a party of sorts overnight, and the general disposition of the company was towards a restful and somewhat glassy-eyed silence. This was broken at length by one of the Crumpets.

‘Old Freddie's back,' he observed.

Some moments elapsed before any of those present felt equal to commenting on this statement. Then a Bean spoke.

‘Freddie Who?'

‘Freddie Widgeon.'

‘Back where?'

‘Back here.'

‘I mean, back from what spot?'

‘New York.'

‘I didn't know Freddie had been to New York.'

‘Well, you can take it from me he has. Or else how,' argued the Crumpet, ‘could he have got back?'

The Bean considered the point.

‘Something in that,' he agreed. ‘What sort of a time did he have?'

‘Not so good. He lost the girl he loved.'

‘I wish I had a quid for every girl Freddie Widgeon has loved and lost,' sighed an Egg wistfully. ‘If I had, I shouldn't be touching you for a fiver.'

‘You aren't,' said the Crumpet.

The Bean frowned. His head was hurting him, and he considered that the conversation was becoming sordid.

‘How did he lose his girl?'

‘Because of the suitcase.'

‘What suitcase?'

‘The suitcase he carried for the other girl.'

‘What other girl?'

‘The one he carried the suitcase for.'

The Bean frowned again.

‘A bit complex, all this, isn't it?' he said. ‘Hardly the sort of stuff, I mean, to spring on personal friends who were up a trifle late last night.'

‘It isn't really,' the Crumpet assured him. ‘Not when you know the facts. The way old Freddie told me the story it was as limpid as dammit. And what he thinks – and what I think, too – is that it just shows what toys we are in the hands of Fate, if you know what I mean. I mean to say, it's no good worrying and trying to look ahead and plan and scheme and weigh your every action, if you follow me, because you never can tell when doing such-and-such won't make so-and-so-happen – while, on the other hand, if you do so-and-so it may just as easily lead to such-and-such.'

A pale-faced Egg with heavy circles under his eyes rose at this point and excused himself. He said his head had begun to throb again and he proposed to step round to the chemist on the corner for another of his dark-brown pick-me-ups.

‘I mean to say,' resumed the Crumpet, ‘if Freddie – with the best motives in the world – hadn't carried that suitcase for that
girl, he might at this moment be walking up the aisle with a gardenia in his buttonhole and Mavis Peasemarch, only daughter of the fifth Earl of Bodsham, on his arm.'

The Bean demurred. He refused to admit the possibility of such a thing, even if Freddie Widgeon had sworn off suitcases for life.

‘Old Bodders would never have allowed Mavis to marry a bird of Freddie's calibre. He would think him worldly and frivolous. I don't know if you are personally acquainted with the Bod, but I may tell you that my people once lugged me to a week-end at his place and not only were we scooped in and shanghaied to church twice on the Sunday, regardless of age or sex, but on the Monday morning at eight o'clock – eight, mark you – there were family prayers in the dining-room. There you have old Bodders in a nutshell. Freddie's a good chap, but he can't have stood a dog's chance from the start.'

‘On the contrary,' said the Crumpet warmly, ‘he made his presence felt right from the beginning to an almost unbelievable extent, and actually clicked as early as the fourth day out.'

‘Were Bodders and Mavis on the boat, then?'

‘They certainly were. All the way over.'

‘And Bodders, you say, actually approved of Freddie?'

‘He couldn't have been more all over him, Freddie tells me, if Freddie had been a Pan-Anglican Congress. What you overlook is that Bodsham – living, as he does, all the year round in the country – knew nothing of Freddie except that one of his uncles was his old school-friend, Lord Blicester, and another of his uncles was actually a Bishop. Taking a line through them, he undoubtedly regarded Freddie as a pretty hot potato.'