The Mating Season

by P. G. Wodehouse

  She was right. Once a man of the Hon. Galahad Threep-wood’s antecedents starts taking pen in hand and being reminded of amusing incidents that happened to my dear old friend So-and-So, you never know where he will stop; and all over England, among the more elderly of the nobility and gentry, something like a panic had been raging ever since the news of his literary activities had got about. From Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, of Matchingham Hall, to grey-headed pillars of Society in distant Cumberland and Kent, whole droves of respectable men who in their younger days had been rash enough to chum with the Hon. Galahad were recalling past follies committed in his company and speculating agitatedly as to how good the old pest’s memory was.

  For Galahad in his day had been a notable lad about town. A beau sabreur of Romano’s. A Pink ‘Un. A Pelican. A crony of Hughie Drummond and Fatty Coleman; a brother-in-arms of the Shifter, the Pitcher, Peter Blobbs and the rest of an interesting but not strait-laced circle. Bookmakers had called him by his pet name, barmaids had simpered beneath his gallant chaff. He had heard the chimes at midnight. And when he had looked in at the old Gardenia, commissionaires had fought for the privilege of throwing him out. A man, in a word, who should never have been taught to write and who, if unhappily gifted with that ability, should have been restrained by Act of Parliament from writing Reminiscences.

  So thought Lady Constance, his sister. So thought Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, his neighbour. And so thought the pillars of society in distant Cumberland and Kent. Widely as they differed on many points, they were unanimous on this.

  ‘He wanted me to try to find out if Galahad was putting anything about him into it.’

  ‘Better ask him now,’ said Millicent. ‘He’s just come out of the house and seems to be heading in this direction.’

  Lady Constance turned sharply: and, following her niece’s pointing finger, winced. The mere sight of her deplorable brother was generally enough to make her wince. When he began to talk and she had to listen, the wince became a shudder. His conversation had the effect of making her feel as if she had suddenly swallowed something acid.

  ‘It always makes me laugh,’ said Millicent, ‘when I think what a frightfully bad shot Uncle Gally’s godfathers and godmothers made when they christened him.’

  She regarded her approaching relative with that tolerant – indeed, admiring – affection which the young of her sex, even when they have Madonna-like faces, are only too prone to lavish on such of their seniors as have had interesting pasts.

  ‘Doesn’t he look marvellous?’ she said. ‘It really is an extraordinary thing that anyone who has had as good a time as he has can be so amazingly healthy. Everywhere you look, you see men leading model lives and pegging out in their prime, while good old Uncle Gally, who apparently never went to bed till he was fifty, is still breezing along as fit and rosy as ever.’

  ‘All our family have had excellent constitutions,’ said Lord Emsworth.

  And I’ll bet Uncle Gally needed every ounce of his,’ said Millicent.

  The Author, ambling briskly across the lawn, had now joined the little group at the tea-table. As his photograph had indicated, he was a short, trim, dapper little man of the type one associates automatically in one’s mind with checked suits, tight trousers, white bowler hats, pink carnations, and race-glasses bumping against the left hip. Though bare-headed at the moment and in his shirt-sleeves, and displaying on the tip of his nose the ink-spot of the literary life, he still seemed out of place away from a paddock or an American bar. His bright eyes, puckered at the corners, peered before him as though watching horses rounding into the straight. His neatly-shod foot had about it a suggestion of pawing in search of a brass rail. A jaunty little gentleman, and, as Millicent had said, quite astonishingly fit and rosy. A thoroughly misspent life had left the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, contrary to the most elementary justice, in what appeared to be perfect, even exuberantly perfect physical condition. How a man who ought to have had the liver of the century could look and behave as he did was a constant mystery to his associates. His eye was not dimmed nor his natural force abated. And when, skipping blithely across the turf, he tripped over the spaniel, so graceful was the agility with which he recovered his balance that he did not spill a drop of the whisky-and-soda in his hand. He continued to bear the glass aloft like some brave banner beneath which he had often fought and won. Instead of the blot on the proud family, he might have been a teetotal acrobat.

  Having disentangled himself from the spaniel and soothed the animal’s wounded feelings by permitting it to sniff the whisky-and-soda, the Hon. Galahad produced a black-rimmed monocle, and, screwing it into his eye, surveyed the table with a frown of distaste.

  ‘Tea?’

  Millicent reached for a cup.

  ‘Cream and sugar, Uncle Gally?’

  He stopped her with a gesture of shocked loathing.

  ‘You know I never drink tea. Too much respect for my inside. Don’t tell me you are ruining your inside with that poison.’

  ‘Sorry, Uncle Gally. I like it.’

  ‘You be careful,’ urged the Hon. Galahad, who was fond of his niece and did not like to see her falling into bad habits. ‘You be very careful how you fool about with that stuff. Did I ever tell you about poor Buffy Struggles back in ‘ninety-three? Some misguided person lured poor old Buffy into one of those temperance lectures illustrated with coloured slides, and he called on me next day ashen, poor old chap – ashen. “Gally,” he said. “What would you say the procedure was when a fellow wants to buy tea? How would a fellow set about it?” “Tea?” I said. “What do you want tea for?” “To drink,” said Buffy. “Pull yourself together, dear boy,” I said. “You’re talking wildly. You can’t drink tea. Have a brandy-and-soda.” “No more alcohol for me,” said Buffy. “Look what it does to the common earthworm.” “But you’re not a common earthworm,” I said, putting my finger on the flaw in his argument right away. “I dashed soon shall be if I go on drinking alcohol,” said Buffy. Well, I begged him with tears in my eyes not to do anything rash, but I couldn’t move him. He ordered in ten pounds of the muck and was dead inside the year.’

  ‘Good heavens! Really?’

  The Hon. Galahad nodded impressively.

  ‘Dead as a door-nail. Got run over by a hansom cab, poor dear old chap, as he was crossing Piccadilly. You’ll find the story in my book.’

  ‘How’s the book coming along?’

  ‘Magnificently, my dear. Splendidly. I had no notion writing was so easy. The stuff just pours out. Clarence, I wanted to ask you about a date. What year was it there was that terrible row between young Gregory Parsloe and Lord Burper, when Parsloe stole the old chap’s false teeth, and pawned them at a shop in the Edgware Road? ’96? I should have said later than that – ‘97 or ‘98. Perhaps you’re right, though. I’ll pencil in ’96 tentatively’

  Lady Constance uttered a sharp cry. The sunlight had now gone quite definitely out of her life. She felt, as she so often felt in her brother Galahad’s society, as if foxes were gnawing her vitals. Not even the thought that she could now give Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe the inside information for which he had asked was able to comfort her.

  ‘Galahad! You are not proposing to print libellous stories like that about our nearest neighbour?’

  ‘Certainly I am.’ The Hon. Galahad snorted militantly. ‘And, as for libel, let him bring an action if he wants to. I’ll fight him to the House of Lords. It’s the best documented story in my book. Well, if you insist it was ’96, Clarence . . . I’ll tell you what,’ said the Hon. Galahad, inspired. ‘I’ll say “towards the end of the nineties”. After all, the exact date isn’t so important. It’s the facts that matter.’

  And, leaping lightly over the spaniel, he flitted away across the lawn.

  Lady Constance sat rigid in her chair. Her fine eyes were now protruding slightly, and her face was drawn. This and not the Mona Lisa’s, you would have said, looking at her, was the head on which all the sorrows of the world
had fallen.

  ‘Clarence!’

  ‘My dear?’

  ‘What are you going to do about this?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Can’t you see that something must be done? Do you realize that if this awful book of Galahad’s is published it will alienate half our friends? They will think we are to blame. They will say we ought to have stopped him somehow. Imagine Sir Gregory’s feelings when he reads that appalling story!’

  Lord Emsworth’s amiable face darkened.

  ‘I am not worrying about Parsloe’s feelings. Besides, he did steal Burper’s false teeth. I remember him showing them to me. He had them packed up in cotton-wool in a small cigar-box.’

  The gesture known as wringing the hands is one that is seldom seen in real life, but Lady Constance Keeble at this point did something with hers which might by a liberal interpretation have been described as wringing.

  ‘Oh, if Mr Baxter were only here!’ she moaned.

  Lord Emsworth started with such violence that his pince-nez fell off and he dropped a slice of seed-cake.

  ‘What on earth do you want that awful feller here for?’

  ‘He would find a way out of this dreadful business. He was always so efficient.’

  ‘Baxter’s off his head.’

  Lady Constance uttered a sharp exclamation.

  ‘Clarence, you really can be the most irritating person in the world. You get an idea and you cling to it in spite of whatever anybody says. Mr Baxter was the most wonderfully capable man I ever met.’

  ‘Yes, capable of anything,’ retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit. ‘Threw flower-pots at me in the middle of the night. I woke up in the small hours and found flower-pots streaming in at my bedroom window and looked out and there was this feller Baxter standing on the terrace in lemon-coloured pyjamas, hurling the dashed things as if he thought he was a machine-gun, or something. I suppose he’s in an asylum by this time.’

  Lady Constance had turned a bright scarlet. Even in their nursery days she had never felt quite so hostile towards the head of the family as now.

  ‘You know perfectly well that there was a quite simple explanation. My diamond necklace had been stolen, and Mr Baxter thought the thief had hidden it in one of the flower-pots. He went to look for it and got locked out and tried to attract attention by . . .’

  ‘Well, I prefer to think the man was crazy, and that’s the line that Galahad takes in his book.’

  ‘His . . . ! Galahad is not putting that story in his book?’

  ‘Of course he’s putting it in his book. Do you think he’s going to waste excellent material like that? And, as I say, the line Galahad takes – and he’s a clear-thinking, level-headed man – is that Baxter was a raving, roaring lunatic. Well, I’m going to have another look at the Empress.’

  He pottered off pigwards.

  Also available in Arrow

  Carry on, Jeeves

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Jeeves and Wooster collection

  These marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie’s raging hangover (‘If you would drink this, sir . . . it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’)

  And from that moment, one of the funniest, sharpest and most touching partnerships in English literature never looks back . . .

  Also available in Arrow

  The Clicking of Cuthbert

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Golf collection

  The Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course – and a great deal more besides.

  Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He’s helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes in one when she’s in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert’s prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids – but can golf redeem it?

  The kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote.

  Also available in Arrow

  Piccadilly Jim

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A P. G. Wodehouse novel

  It takes a lot of effort for Jimmy Crocker to become Piccadilly Jim – nights on the town roistering, headlines in the gossip columns, a string of broken hearts and breaches of promise. Eventually he becomes rather good at it and manages to go to pieces with his eyes open.

  But no sooner has Jimmy cut a wild swathe through fashionable London than his terrifying Aunt Nesta decides he must mend his ways. He then falls in love with the girl he has hurt most of all, and after that things get complicated.

  In a dizzying plot, impersonations pile on impersonations so that (for reasons that will become clear, we promise) Jimmy ends up having to pretend he’s himself. Does he deserve a happy ending? Read and find out.

  Also available in Arrow

  Something Fresh

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Blandings novel

  This is the first Blandings novel, in which P.G. Wodehouse introduces us to the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, his long-suffering secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and Beach the Blandings butler.

  As Wodehouse wrote, ‘without at least one impostor on the premises, Blandings Castle is never itself. In Something Fresh there are two, each with an eye on a valuable scarab which Lord Emsworth has acquired without quite realizing how it came into his pocket. But of course things get a lot more complicated than this . . .

  Also available in Arrow

  Summer Lightning

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Blandings novel

  The Empress of Blandings, prize-winning pig and all-consuming passion of Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has disappeared.

  Blandings Castle is in uproar and there are suspects a-plenty – from Galahad Threepwood (who is writing memoirs so scandalous they will rock the aristocracy to its foundations) to the Efficient Baxter, chilling former secretary to Lord Emsworth. Even Beach the Butler seems deeply embroiled. And what of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Clarence’s arch-rival, and his passion for prize-winning pigs?

  With the castle full of deceptions and impostors, will Galahad’s memoirs ever see the light of day? And will the Empress be returned . . . ?

  Also available in Arrow

  Uncle Fred in the Springtime

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Blandings novel

  Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply said, ‘There are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.’

  Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn’t really be allowed at large – especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And his fears are amply justified.

  Also available in Arrow

  Joy in the Morning

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Jeeves and Wooster novel

  Trapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably have given way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to whom Bertie had once been engaged . . . and her new fiancé ‘Stilton’ Cheesewright, who regarded Bertie as a snake in the grass . . . also Zenobia Hopwood and her guardian Lord Worplesdon, whose violent antipathy to ‘Boko’ Fittleworth amounted to obsession . . . and that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout, doing acts of kindness out of sheer malevolence.

  All Bertie’s forebodings w
ere fully justified. For in his efforts to oil the wheels of commerce, promote the course of true love and avoid the consequences of a vendetta, he became the prey of all and sundry. Complete disaster might well have followed, but for the genius of Jeeves – who extricated the young master with a ploy as smoothly executed as it was brilliantly conceived.

  Also available in Arrow

  Ukridge

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A P.G. Wodehouse novel

  Money makes the world go round for Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge – and when there isn’t enough of it, the world just has to spin a bit faster.

  Ever on the lookout for a quick buck, a solid gold fortune, or at least a plausible little scrounge, the irrepressible Ukridge gives con men a bad name. Looking like an animated blob of mustard in his bright yellow raincoat, he invests time, passion and energy (but seldom actual cash) in a series of increasingly bizarre money-making schemes. Finance for a dog college? It’s yours. Shares in an accident syndicate? Easily arranged. Promoting a kind-hearted heavyweight boxer? A snip.

  Poor Corky Corcoran, Ukridge’s old school chum and confidant, trails through these pages in the ebullient wake of Wodehouse’s most disreputable but endearing hero and hopes to escape with his shirt at least.

  Also available in Arrow

  The Code of the Woosters

  P.G. Wodehouse

  A Jeeves and Wooster novel

  When Bertie Wooster goes to Totleigh Towers to pour oil on the troubled waters of a lovers breach between Madeline Bassett and Gussie Fink-Nottle, he isn’t expecting to see Aunt Dahlia there – nor to be instructed by her to steal some silver. But purloining the antique cow creamer from under the baleful nose of Sir Watkyn Bassett is the least of Bertie’s tasks. He has to restore true love to both Madeline and Gussie and to the Revd Stinker Pinker and Stiffie Byng – and confound the insane ambitions of would-be Dictator Roderick Spode and his Black Shirts. It’s a situation that only Jeeves can unravel . . .