From the Shelves of the Paco Library

Overlook Press has been publishing handsome new editions of the works of P.G. Wodehouse, and I have been delighted to find several titles with which I was unfamiliar, including today’s offering, Barmy in Wonderland.

Our hero is Cyril “Barmy” Fotheringay-Phipps [Fotheringay is pronounced “Fungy”, by the way], a young man not overburdened with gray matter, but handsome and congenial. Through the good offices of his uncle, he has taken a job as a hotel desk clerk with the redoubtable J.G. Anderson, a hotelier. Barmy is sacked as the result of an incident involving himself and Mervyn Potter, a Hollywood matinee idol with an Errol-Flynn-like propensity for irresponsibility, booze and women. Potter almost absent-mindedly manages to burn down his bungalow and is pulled from the flames by Barmy. The actor induces Barmy to join him in celebrating his narrow escape, and in the wee hours of the morning, the two men, now thoroughly drunk, decide that it would be a splendid idea to wake up J.G. Anderson and present him with a small token of their affection.

We had mentioned that his night had been disturbed. What had disturbed it had been the entry into his bedroom at about 3 a.m. of this Mervyn Potter and Cyril Fotheringay-Phipps, the desk clerk. They had come, they said, to present him with a slight testimonial of their esteem. Whereupon, after a few graceful words from Mr. Potter, who seemed to have constituted himself master of the ceremonies, Cyril Fotheringay-Phipps had pressed into Mr. Anderson’s hand a large, slimy, wriggling frog.

They had then withdrawn, laughing heartily, like a couple of intoxicated ambassadors who have delivered their credentials to a reigning monarch and are off to get a few quick ones before the bars close.

Potter convinces Barmy, who has come into a small inheritance and is now at loose ends, to invest in a play in which Potter is starring. Thus begins Barmy’s roller-coaster ride in the “legitimate” theater, with ex-Vaudeville agents turned Broadway producers, finicky actresses, a sinister lawyer (is there any other kind?) and his plagiarism brief, and a play that is not quite as “boffo” as Barmy’s partners had anticipated. Along the way, Barmy meets the girl of his dreams, to whom he contrives to introduce himself through the serendipitous accident of setting her hat on fire with his cigar.

The story line will be familiar to Wodehouse fans; however, it is, of course, the marvelously inventive metaphors and the vivid comic situations that make the book so enjoyable. A last sample:

The mentality of dogs is odd. One might have supposed that a moment’s reflection would have told Tulip that even the most unbalanced man does not climb water-pipes in order to fire revolvers at himself. Nevertheless, he was firmly convinced that it was Barmy who had been responsible for the fusillade. Looking back over the evening, it seemed to him that from start to finish Barmy had been the disrupting influence, and he was resolved to settle accounts with him once and for all. He hated horseplay. He gave his paws a final strop and advanced.

Another fine comic offering from the master that you Wodehouse fans won’t want to be without.