Indiscretions of Archie

(UK, Herbert Jenkins, 1921)

 

DEDICATION
To
B. W. KING-HALL

 

My dear Buddy,—

We have been friends for eighteen years. A considerable proportion of my books were written under your hospitable roof. And yet I have never dedicated one to you. What will be the verdict of Posterity on this? The fact is, I have become rather superstitious about dedications. No sooner do you label a book with the legend:—

TO
MY BEST FRIEND
X

than X cuts you in Piccadilly, or you bring a lawsuit against him. There is a fatality about it. However, I can’t imagine anyone quarrelling with you, and I am getting more attractive all the time, so let’s take a chance.

Yours ever,

P. G. WODEHOUSE.

 

 

Note:
Baldwin (“Buddy”) King-Hall and his sister Isabella (“Ella”) operated Emsworth House School in Hampshire beginning in 1900; Wodehouse’s collaborator Herbert Westbrook knew the King-Halls well, was a master at the school for a time, and married Ella in 1912. Wodehouse met them through Westbrook, first spent weekends visiting there, and in 1904 rented a nearby villa named Threepwood, eventually buying the house in 1910. Wodehouse and Ella collaborated on musical-theatre projects, and she later became his literary agent until she retired in 1935.
  Wodehouse transferred fact to fiction, placing his character Mike Jackson as a former student of the school in Jackson Junior, the source for the first half of Mike (1909) and later Mike at Wrykyn.

The transcription above reproduces the UK edition; the American edition (George H. Doran, 1921) has the same dedication with only minor formatting changes.

—Neil Midkiff