I just finished a free ebook version (functional formatting and scattered erroneous letters) of P.G. Wodehouse’s trans-Atlantic rom-com Jill the Reckless. It was published in 1921 in the United Kingdom after a couple serializations, under the name, The Little Warrior, in American and Canadian magazines the year before. To cut to the chase, I enjoyed it overall, but I can’t say I lapped it up.
Jill, a delightful young lady with far more impetuous bravado than ladies usually indulge at her age, is the focus on Sir Derek Underhill’s affections and anxiety. He loves her, but he’s worried his mother will not accept her. Derek’s close friend and life-long admirer, Freddie Rooke, understands the unyielding terror that Derek’s mother is and hopes to rally round his friend to support him against this maternal fiend. No, it doesn’t go well. Well is precisely how it doesn’t go, but that isn’t the event that turns Lady Underhill against Jill. That event occurs later that evening when a theatre burns to the ground and Jill, becoming separated from the Underhills, ends up dining with another man a couple tables away from her finance.
That’s the first half of act one, so there’s a lot more to love. In acts two and three, Wodehouse draws us into the world of musical theater, where most managers are human and no one expects to be treated fairly. Wodehouse worked in this world with some famous names, so I can’t help thinking he is revealing some of his personal experiences. His description of the office boy species sounds informed by an explorer’s chronicle.
I say I didn’t lap it all up, because this work doesn’t carry the light-hearted air consistently throughout. At a couple points, it gets rather serious. I can’t say I have any favorite scenes, though Bill the Parrot’s Big Adventure comes to mind. Still it’s as charming reading as I’m sure Jill is herself. If you don’t mind paying for it, I recommend the print version for ease of use.
Seems characteristic of Wodehouse’s early work, when he still hadn’t entirely worked out his formula. Wodehouse, with his friend Guy Bolton, in fact invented American musical theater. They were the ones who made the jump from just re-writing Viennese operettas to producing original stories. Of the songs they wrote, only one remains marginally in the American songbook — “Bill,” which found a home in “Showboat” (I think).
Yes, and he wrote “Bill” for another work and cut it out b/c it didn’t flow with everything else. Did you see that his book, A Damsel in Distress, was made into a movie twice, the second time with Fred Astaire, and the ending music in Damsels in Distress is from that Astaire movie? I love it.
I had guessed at some of that, but hadn’t checked it out. Cool. I think Wodehouse would have liked Stillman.