P. G. Wodehouse: "The Man Upstairs," "Something to Worry About" and "Deep Waters"

In our last episode I enjoyed a story from the 1914 P. G. Wodehouse collection The Man Upstairs and Other Stories, so today let's read the first three stories from the book as a little break from our usual weird and science fiction fare.  I'm reading a scan of a Penguin 1958 edition you can read here, and if that link gives you trouble you can try the scan of the 1980 Barrie and Jenkins edition here or another of many other free sources of these stories available online.  All three of today's stories debuted in The Strand and were published the same year in American magazines; according to the Madame Eulalie website, "The Man Upstairs" and "Deeper Waters" were revised for American publication.  Besides in The Man Upstairs and Other Stories, "Something to Worry About" and "Deep Waters" were reprinted in The Swoop! and Other Stories.  

"The Man Upstairs" (1910)

This is a sort of undistinguished sappy story that lacks much of the humor of Wodehouse's more famous work.  We're calling this one acceptable.  

Three young creative types live in an apartment building in Chelsea.  One is a woman who is banging away at her piano trying to write waltzes.  She gets the waltzes published but they don't really sell--she even has to finance their publication herself.  We've also got two painters in the building, one who is kind of a self-important jerk, blaming the public's lack of taste if his paintings don't sell, and if something does sell, bragging about it acting better than the second painter, who seems like a real hack.  The hack is a real softy, a mild-mannered nice guy with a good attitude; the jerk painter is always explaining that this character's paintings suck, but the softy just takes it in stride, doesn't mind at all.  Maybe because he is independently wealthy and so his lifestyle or his self-worth are not tied up in making sales?

The girl composer has a temper and is always getting pissed off at the jerk painter and is often exasperated by the lame brain students she has to try to teach in order to make money.  She is initially angry at the softy because he lives directly above her and bangs the floor when she bashes away at her piano, but he quickly charms her with his good looks and good nature and stops his stomping.

The composer and the sunny-dispositioned hack painter spend time together, she visiting him to unburden herself of her problems.  The jerk painter's paintings begin to sell, and the composer's sheet music begins to sell.  The composer feels bad that the man upstairs isn't enjoying similar success, so she anonymously purchases one of his paintings.  Then another beneficiary of the hack painter's generosity accidentally lets spill the truth we readers may have suspected: the hack painter is using his terrific wealth to buy both of his friends' unsalable work and one of his properties is choked full of stacks of sheet music and boring paintings.  At first the composer is humiliated and angry, but how can she be?--she was doing the same thing on the modest scale she could afford.  Plus, the man upstairs explains that he saw her on the street and she was so good-looking he followed her and plotted how to move into her building and meet her, so the two of them decide to get married.

This story is less light-hearted than much of Wodehouse's more famous work, I think because the jerk painter and the woman with a temper are all too realistic--his smug unearned superiority and her anger feel too real for you to blithely forgive them their faults, and Wodehouse doesn't really play their anti-social behavior for laughs, so their personalities sort of weighs down the story.  As for the rich guy, he gets treated like a punching bag, which is a little disturbing, and then the way he uses his wealth to manipulate everybody else, even if it is for their own good, is also a little disturbing.  There are also far fewer jokes in "The Man Upstairs" than we are accustomed to seeing in Wodehouse stories.

Not one of Wodehouse's better stories, but not actually bad.  "The Man Upstairs" was first printed in America in Cosmopolitan, in an issue whose cover feature was on French painter Francois Flameng.  For Yankee readers, the story's setting is shifted to Washington Square.

"Something to Worry About" (1913)

"Something to Worry About" first appeared in the land of the free and the home of the brave in Metropolitan, the livest magazine in America, or so it says.  As I write this, you can read this magazine at this link, and if you do, you may be taken aback by how beautiful or fascinating each page of the magazine is; everything, from the typefaces to the illustrations to the photographs, looks great, warm or welcoming or soothing or impressive, nothing is boring or disquieting.  The people of the past, at least those who left any evidence of their passing through this vale of tears, were a bunch of tryhards, and from our vantage point we can only marvel at their works, even the quotidian ones.

"Something to Worry About" has much more of the charm and liveliness ("livestness?") we readers of Wodehouse's later work expect from the man than does "The Man Upstairs."  The fun characters whose faults don't stop us from liking them and the silly slang and the endless stream of clever turns of phrase and little jokes are all here.  Wodehouse even unleashes the word "zareba" on us in the course of a little bit of literary criticism.  Kaboom!  Thumbs up!

London girl Sally loves the cinema!  Her father, now a landlord who preaches on Sunday but who made his fortune as a servant at a big house in the country, thinks the cinema is a tool of the devil!  So Dad sends Sally to the village where he grew up and worked, a place Sally considers "the beastliest hole in existence" and "absolutely chronic," to live with his sister's family.  Life in this village is simple and peaceful...at least until Sally got there!  Sally is so beautiful that all the local yokels who fall into the "young male" demographic fall stupidly in love with her and in their simple country way try to court her and obstruct each other's pursuit of this big city beauty.  Sally accepts the proposal of a simple-minded gardener, Tom, who works at the same big house her father worked at and wooed her by giving her many cabbages and potatoes.  But when he won't do something underhanded that she, in a fit of pique, demands he do, she makes him jealous by admitting she is also engaged to another villager!  And another, and another!  Sally accepted four men's proposals in hopes word of her wild behavior would reach her father and he would summon her back to London!  Tom grows up, becomes a real man, winning Sally's love by proving his own commitment to her by challenging his rivals one after the other to hand-to-hand combat!  Fortunately, Tom's physical strength is augmented by his opponents' diminution of interest in Sally when they realize how duplicitous and troublesome a female she really is, though we are given reason to believe that Sally herself is going to grow up and stop being so selfish and flighty and manipulative once she is married to Tom.

A laugh-out-loud look at the rural-urban divide and the terrible reality of sexual relationships.  Every line of this story is good.  Recommended--five out of five cabbages!

"Deep Waters" (1910)

"Deep Waters" was published in Collier's in the United States and, apparently, that text is quite different than that to be found in the British Strand.  The Collier's text (find it here) and the The Man Upstairs and Other Stories text both include "zareba," though.  I guess people in both Britain and America all knew what a zareba was in that period of imperial adventure, the way everybody today knows what "PrEP" and "HRT" are.  

George is an expert swimmer.  He's also a young playwright, riven with anxiety because he has been watching the actors at rehearsals of his first big play and he thinks they stink!  George and the entire cast and crew of the drama are at a seaside town.  On the end of a pier, George seeks distraction from his worries, and finds it--swimming below is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen!  So distracting is she, so captivating, that leaning over the rail to get a good look he falls in the ocean!

The woman of his dreams is an excellent swimmer herself and seizes George and pulls him to shore--he pretends to be unable to swim, and she promises to spend a few days teaching him!  An ideal situation in which he can not only enjoy intimate proximity to this goddess, whose name is Mary, but even get to know her and pursue a campaign to win her hand in marriage!

George isn't the only person worried about the success of his play.  One of the actors fears the show is not getting the proper advertising, the proper publicity.  Against George's strenuous objections, this actor launches a desperate scheme, overturning a boat he and George are aboard so one can rescue the other and win a lot of publicity.  When Mary hears about the rescue she realizes it is a hoax, that George is a good swimmer, and she accuses George of using her the day before as an unwitting participant in a similar publicity stunt and gives him the cold shoulder.  But then the actor whose idea the boat-capsizing stunt was tells Mary the truth, and Mary and George make up and we are led to believe they will get married and told the play is in fact a huge success, the actors having gotten into the required groove.

"Deep Waters" is good on a line by line basis, but it feels short, truncated, with little by way of climax and a resolution that is abrupt.  I can only mildly recommend it.

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Three stories in which a guy falls in love with a woman because of her looks and, through subterfuge or violence, wins her, even if her personality maybe leaves something to be desired--presumably she will start behaving once in the bonds of holy matrimony.  The 1913 story is a direct hit, while the two 1910 stories have real problems--maybe Wodehouse just hadn't hit his stride yet.  Of course I recommend looking into these old stories and checking out the ancient magazines in which they debuted and which are full of fun advertisements and charming illustrations.