Home / Browse / Autographs & Signed Books / Typed letter signed to his editor J. Derek Grimsdick ("J.D.") concerning the Berlin broadcasts.
WODEHOUSE, P. G.
Typed letter signed to his editor J. Derek Grimsdick ("J.D.") concerning the Berlin broadcasts.
Publisher: 1000 Park Avenue, New York, March 28, 1953
Stock code: 49553
Price: £7,500 Currency Conversion
Highly important typed letter, with autograph corrections and signed by him with initials, to his English editor, J. Derek Grimsdick of Herbert Jenkins, concerning Wodehouse's notorious wartime broadcasts. In spring 1953 Wodehouse was in New York finishing off two volumes of memoirs simultaneously. The first - Bring On the Girls!, written in collaboration with Guy Bolton - avoided controversy by dealing with Wodehouse's successful pre-war career in American musical theatre, but the second, Performing Flea, subtitled "A Self-Portrait in Letters", would be much more closely examined. For those in the know, the title itself recalled controversy: it dated from the time of the Berlin broadcasts when, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (8 July 1941), Sean O'Casey had referred to Wodehouse as English literature's performing flea. Wodehouse's letter to Grimsdick shows how the Berlin broadcasts still haunted him over a decade later. Immediately after the liberation of Paris in 1944, MI5 had sent Major E. J. P. Cussen, later a judge, to interrogate Wodehouse and examine his actions. Unfortunately for its subject, Cussen's report, which fully exonerated Wodehouse from charges of treason, was never made public in Wodehouse's lifetime. But in 1953 Cussen still dogged Wodehouse. The letter shows exactly that incompatibility between the roles of comedian and historian which so damaged Wodehouse's attempts to rehabilitate his reputation. Wodehouse had proposed to include transcripts of his Berlin talks in the book in order to demonstrate their essential innocence, but the letter reveals that Cussen had read the book at draft stage and confronted the publisher with the inescapable fact that Wodehouse had not supplied accurate transcripts of the original broadcasts. Wodehouse flounders to explain this to his editor: "I certainly agree with you that we ought to print the broadcasts exactly as they were spoken ..." But then he proceeds to outline a number of exceptions to this general rule that must have exasperated his editor: "What happened was that when I wrote the Camp book, I elaborated the broadcasts and made them separate chapters. That is to say, I added funny material wherever I saw an opportunity. An instance of this is in the first broadcast, where what I actually said >on the radio< was 'Algy the human sunbeam said we should be put in villas and >asked to< give our parole and then be allowed to go where we liked' (or something like that), and I added >in the letter book< [i.e. the manuscript of Performing Flea] something like "Villas, Algy? With honeysuckle climbing over the porch?" Well he was not quite sure about that. There might or might not be honeysuckle ...' etc. You see what I mean? The stuff is the same, but I added comic material. It was very difficult, when I came to work on the Letter book [Performing Flea], to remember what I had actually said and what I had added. I suppose it is safest to be absolutely accurate, though it does seem a pity to cut out funny stuff. I can't make out from your letter what Cussen actually turned up with? Had he a typed script in addition to the script I gave him in Paris? The latter is accurate, it being my own typing." Wodehouse goes on at some length to discuss another anecdote in which for comic effect he had given Algy a morning greeting purloined from a Jeeves novel, suggesting to Grimsdick that "It all turns on whether you think that the authorities, reading this passage … will publish a manifesto in all their papers saying 'It's a lie! Algy did not say "The lark's on the wing etc. …"' " Wodehouse ends by deferring to Grimsdick: "Use your own judgment about this - I will agree to whatever you decide - but, as I said before, it does seem a pity to sacrifice laugh lines which don't alter the sense." At the end of the letter, personal irritation breaks through: "Didn't you think Cussen was a priceless ass? But you ought to have seen him in uniform with his little wooden stick!" And the triumphant coda: "Fox Twentieth Century very interested in BRING ON THE GIRLS." The first edition of Performing Flea was published in London by Herbert Jenkins on 9 October 1953, with the disputed transcripts of the Berlin broadcasts omitted from the book.
2 pages, American letter, lightweight Saxon Onion Skin paper, creased where folded twice for posting, typed on one side only. Custom red morocco-backed slipcase and chemise. One erasure and 9 words added in blue ink in Wodehouse's autograph, signed with his initials. A few short closed tears and small chips not affecting text, the condition overall good.
