Autograph letters signed (4) and typed letter signed : various places, to "Jeames" or "Jimmy" (probably Eric Beardsworth George), 1899-1954 | WorldCat.org (original) (raw)

Summary:Friendly, joking letters about school, ambitions, and reading, including references to Browning and Tennyson [authors he later wrote about in "The Babe and the Dragon" and "Trouble Down at Tudsleigh"]; of Browning he writes, "he is not nearly so obscure as a bloke called Henley. Have you read any of his rot"; praising Thackeray's "Esmond" but critizing his depictions of women ("Have you ever noticed that Thackeray can't draw a good woman without making her a lunatic like Mrs. Pendennis, who never says anything without raising her eyes in soulful ecstasy or silent pain to the ceiling"); including some silly verse; about a plan to launch a paper; expressing his disappointment at being unable to go to Oxford and his determination to become an author in the two years that will elapse before the Bank sends him to the far east. In the last letter, written when both are in their seventies, Wodehouse notes that he is healthy due to "clean living" and "sweating away at at a new novel."