Mr. Marlowe, the novelist, sent AD this story of his one encounter with P. G. Wodehouse half a century ago. The story is printed with his permission. --OM
Early in November, 1997, I met Jim Goodrich of Albuquerque at the Bouchercon in Monterey, where I was an invited guest after receiving an award for work I'd done in the mystery genre early on in my career as a novelist. While being interviewed at the Bouchercon, I related an experience I'd had in which I'd come into contact with P. G. Wodehouse at a crucial time in his career. After the interview, Jim Goodrich came up and said that you absolutely had to have this information for Plum Lines, the Wodehouse fanzine, since it sheds new light on the man and his work.
This is what transpired:
Fresh out of college in 1950, I got a job as executive editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Meredith was a humor buff and, especially, a Wodehouse fan. He represented Wodehouse who, as you know, went through a rough period after World War II when his frank and probably ingenuous answer to the question of how he'd been treated by the Germans was misinterpreted by the press. At any rate, Wodehouse, then living in New York, was not finding it easy to sell his work.
In either 1950 or 1951 (I'm sorry I can't be more precise, but it was a long time ago), Meredith asked me to accompany Wodehouse to Collier's magazine, where the fiction editor, Knox Burger, was looking for a light serial to sandwich between a mystery and a western.
I met Wodehouse in the lobby of his apartment building. There was an elevator strike in New York City that week, and he'd come down twelve (I think) flights of stairs on foot. Meredith had apprised him by phone of the situation, and I asked him if he had an outline or perhaps some sample chapters of a novel-in-progress. He smiled that splendid Wodehouse smile and said he hadn't a thing, but was quite willing to talk to Mr. Burger at Collier's.
Knox Burger turned out to be a World War II combat vet with a gimlet eye, and he at once asked Wodehouse what he had to offer. A silence followed. Burger demanded: "An outline? What?" Wodehouse and I exchanged a swift glance. I can't say for sure all these years later who brought the elevator strike into play, the twenty-two-year-old wet-behind-the-ears executive editor or the urbane, splendidly aging writer.
But soon, between us, we had Burger half believing that there was indeed an outline (and even a few opening chapters) for Wodehouse's new novel--which, unfortunately, in our eagerness to meet with Burger, we'd left in the Wodehouse apartment, all those floors up in a tall building, right in the middle of an elevator strike.
Burger's gimlet eyes looked at us. We looked at him and at each other. "You trying to say," he asked grimly, "there's nothing to show me? I told Meredith I had to make a scheduling decision right away."
There was an uneasy silence. Then I spoke up, probably in a small voice.
"Why don't you give Mr. Wodehouse the use of an office and a typewriter? He could do the outline right here from memory."
Burger nodded grudgingly, his eyes boring into mine.
Wodehouse's eyes bored into mine even harder. But it is entirely possible that he was also trying not to grin.
"Well?" said Burger.
And Wodehouse nodded, and I could breathe again. "Shouldn't be any problem," he said.
Soon he disappeared into a small room near Burger's corner office. The silence built. Burger's eyes never left my face. I tried for a nonchalant look, no doubt failing dismally.
More minutes dragged themselves by. Then in the small adjacent room the typewriter made a few tentative noises. Then it made a few more. Then it paused to collect itself. And then it went like a pneumatic drill.
Wodehouse emerged less than an hour later with a beatific smile on his face and an outline written off the top of his large bald head. The serialized novel would be, as far as I knew, his first new work published in the States since the war had ended and he'd started living unfairly under the cloud.
I never saw him again, but I'll
always remember that encounter, especially the smile wreathing
his face and the sheaf of paper clutched in his big fist.
The serial was probably Phipps to the Rescue, published in Collier's in June and July of 1950, and in book form as The Old Reliable, 1951. It was based on a Wodehouse play, never produced, which he had been working on recently. Having the play freshly in mind surely aided the production of that magical outline. (See Jasen's biography, pp. 219-221.)
--OM