'Psmith' Makes a Story

I happened to read P.G. Wodehouse's Leave It to Psmith the same week I saw my cousin's husband Jack for the first time in many years. This was helpful because in Jack I see something of a real life Psmith -- a man of expansive bonhomie who comes from wealth but likes the atmospherics of life more than the accumulation of possessions.

The protagonist Psmith -- the "P" is silent, he lets people know about his amended surname -- has lost his family money during post-World War I England and is unwilling to pursue a safe living in his uncle's fish business. So, he styles himself an agent for hire hoping to hook some sort of intrigue that it is at once adventuresome, well-meaning and profitable. As Wodehouse would have it, Psmith gets just that.

Psmith winds up at a country estate called Blandings Castle in pursuit of the lovely Eve Halliday, with a side mission -- for the best of reasons -- of heisting Lady Constance's jewelled necklace. And wouldn't you know it, with luck and charm, Psmith wins the day.

Psmith's charm -- his optimistic banter like my cousin Jack's -- is the real jewel in the book. When Eve discovers that Psmith lied about his identity in order to follow her to Blandings Castle, he rhetorically turns the deception into proof of his affection for her:

"Consider! Twice that day you had passed out of my life--may I say taking the sunshine with you?--and I began to fear you might pass out of it forever. So, loath though I was to commit the solecism of planting myself in this happy home under false pretences, I could see no other other way. And here I am!"

Eve responds that Psmith is mad to think he can pretend to be someone else while courting her for days and then just brush off the masquerade. Undaunted, Psmith proceeds to ask for her hand in marriage with this qualification:

"I merely say 'Think it over'. It is nothing to cause you mental distress. Other men love you. Freddie Threepwood loves you. Just add me to the list. That is all I ask. Muse on me from time to time. Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would give an olive."

I think that's funny. I think it sounds like my cousin Jack saying his 70-year-old mother-in-law "didn't have much" when she was practicing the Macarena dance before the family party but that we should go ahead and play the song anyway. Jack can make a party; Psmith can make a story.