Originally published in Plum Lines: The Quarterly Journal of The Wodehouse Society (2020, v41, n1, pp. 5-8).
Socialism is said to be making a comeback. Once consigned to the ash heap of history, we now hear of it everywhere. Youth identifies with it, elders denounce it, and public opinion surveys show its rising popularity.
Do these young fans understand this new (to them) philosophy? Do they really want the government to own the means of production, ranging from chicken farms to china dog manufacturers? Or do they just want a little more taxing and spending and a little less inequality and austerity?
We will leave this debate to politicians, pundits, and political scientists. This essay will discuss Psmith and his “psocialism” (a term I first saw in Usborne), including what he said about it, what he meant by it, and how he provides a stylish role model for today’s young radical. In doing so, we examine Psmith in his family and class contexts, suggesting that he might have been more of a traditionalist reactionary than a leftist revolutionary.
Socialism at Sedleigh
We first learn of Rupert Psmith’s economic views in Mike and Psmith. As we all know, the boys meet at Sedleigh after receiving “bad” and “scurrilous” reports from Wrykyn and Eton.
“I am with you, Comrade Jackson. You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I’ve just become a socialist. It’s a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.”
This might be seen as purely humorous, but it strikes a discordant note. The last part suggests that Psmith’s definition is not that of the dictionary. A critic of such utopias might claim that Psmith sees how socialism can go wrong—someone (namely a political party) collars it all (namely the economy) and keeps it (namely for itself). Just ask George Orwell, a strong Wodehouse supporter who also knew a thing or two about socialism.
After this theorizing, Psmith becomes a man of action. He decides to steal a study, and we receive a second clue about his political philosophy:
“Might have been made for us,” said Psmith approvingly.
“I suppose it belongs to some rotter.”
“Not now.”
“You aren’t going to collar it!”
“That,” said Psmith, looking at himself earnestly in the mirror, and straightening his tie, “is the exact programme. We must stake out our claims. This is practical Socialism.”
“But the real owner’s bound to turn up some time or other.”
“His misfortune, not ours. You can’t expect two master-minds like us to pig it in that room downstairs.”
This suggests that Psmith is not averse to the redistribution of property, but the scene contains a jarring, Lord-of-the-Flies element—the character of Spiller, the victimized study owner. This smaller and outnumbered boy appeals to the rule of law, the housemaster Mr. Outwood, but unsuccessfully. Whom does he represent in the socialism of Psmith? The capitalist fat cats who get their comeuppance? Or is he a stand-in for what actually happens in a socialist paradise, where the dictatorship of the proletariat turns into Animal Farm?
These early episodes suggest that Psmith does not have standard socialist views; his “practical Socialism” is more about individual self-interest than the greater good. On the other hand, we might detect a shrewd parody of socialist reality, which undoubtedly goes right over Mike’s head but is great fun to the wise-beyond-his-years Psmith.
Socialism in the City
Psmith continues his socialism despite, or maybe because of, his involuntary foray into capitalism. At the New Asiatic Bank, he tells Mr. Bickersdyke that “I incline to the Socialist view,” an unusual statement for a new employee to make to his manager in the center of finance. He also tells Mr. Waller that “Socialism is the passion of my life,” although he declines the invitation to speak with him at Clapham Common because “my Socialism is rather of the practical sort. I seldom speak.”
Mike displays little enthusiasm for the bank but, despite his hero worship of Psmith, does not convert to socialism. He accompanies Psmith to Clapham Common to hear Mr. Waller and fights with the local window-smashing and police-kicking toughs, but that is part of his friend-to-the-end persona and not a commentary on Waller’s politics. Mike may not be “absolutely free from brain” (Mike and Psmith), but he does not have the imagination to be intrigued by ideas, good or bad, and he would be the first to admit it.
Psmith in the City is not a manifesto to fire up English youth with an enthusiasm for capitalism and the empire it embraces. After his first day, Mike ponders his situation: “He did not look forward to a career of Commerce with any greater pleasure than before; but there was no doubt that with Psmith, it would be easier to get through the time after office hours.” In P. G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography (1981), Benny Green sees the book as an anti-banking “polemic.” Mike has little comprehension of and less interest in his work. As Wodehouse writes, the only item on the daily schedule of any interest to junior City employees is lunch. And, as did Wodehouse, Mike dreads the day when he will be sent abroad. No wonder Mike dreams of a farm and Psmith dreams of we know not what.
Practical Socialism
Years later—after his experiences as a bank clerk, Cambridge student (and possible cricket Blue), New York City journalist, and dead-fish whisperer—Psmith returns to the socialist theme. This gap in years and experience suggests that his interest in socialism was not a will-o’-the-wisp that was quickly forgotten.
In Leave It to Psmith, he steals the Honourable Hugo Walderwick’s umbrella and gives it to Eve, an action he later explains as “Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.” What is this practical socialism? For Psmith, it means going about the redistribution of property wherever you are.
This sense of this phrase was not original to Wodehouse, however. The following item appeared in the “By the Way” column, edited by Wodehouse in the Globe newspaper, on October 11, 1907:
M. Lefèvre, the treasurer of the Radical Socialist Congress, found to-day, on rising to make a speech, that his pocket had been picked, and that he was the poorer by £64. M. Lefèvre is a stout upholder of the even distribution of wealth, but he did not want the thing to start quite so soon.
According to Neil Midkiff in an annotation on the Madame Eulalie website, “This comment was sparked by an item in the Daily Express of that morning, headlined ‘Practical Socialism.’ While the two words had long been used together in a positive sense, the Daily Express headline writer used them ironically in a way that must have influenced Psmith’s definition of it, which would first appear half a year later in the serialization of Mike as ‘The Lost Lambs’ in The Captain, April 1908.
Why Socialism?
Benny Green claims that Wodehouse tells us that “Psmith has embraced Socialism in a fit of pique after his father’s action in whisking him out of Eton and into Sedleigh has deprived him of the otherwise certain honour of representing Eton against Harrow at Lord’s.” He later says that Wodehouse “instructs us that the only reason for Psmith’s dangerous flirtation with Marxist dogma is the frustrating of his expectation of a career at Eton.”
This is a possible interpretation, but it is not clearly stated in the text. Nor should we conflate socialism with Marxism, as the former does not necessarily imply the latter. An alternative possibility is that the youthful world of Psmith was shaken to its core—no more Eton and no cricket matches at Lord’s. Faced with such a calamity, we might not be surprised if a young person reevaluated his old certainties. Psmith may have turned to socialism as a way to get back at the world, but he could also have been looking for a new framework to make sense of his changing environment and create some emotional distance from his past life.
Despite the “dangerous flirtation” claim, Green does not take Psmith’s political comments seriously, arguing that by the time Psmith enters the bank, “the rampant parlour socialism of the Sedleigh days has dwindled to little more than an instrument of conversational irony, if indeed it was ever very much more.”
I take Psmith more seriously, even if Green does refer to Psmith’s “eccentric interpretation of Marxism.” It is one thing to call your chums “comrade” but quite another to tell your new and unsympathetic City boss about your socialist interests. This suggests an earnestness (or recklessness) that goes beyond persiflage, as he risked getting the mitten. He also mentions his socialism to Eve, a confession that might have ended romantic proceedings quickly. More generally, young people try on various ideas and poses without being overly serious or entirely flippant. It is part and parcel of “Youth, with all its glorious traditions.”
Note that Psmith claims to be a socialist in several novels published from 1909 to 1923. This is no fleeting interest but rather a sustained character trait from Sedleigh to Blandings. It is also remarkable given the political context of agitation at home and revolutions abroad: he is discussing something controversial and contemporary, not theoretical and historical. Maybe the future Psmith of Wodehouse’s imagination, a successful barrister, will have different views, but I somehow doubt it. He is no Mr. Bickersdyke, renouncing his youthful ideals for the sake of earthly gain. I see him as continuing to shock his respectable Inner Temple friends with enthusiastic remarks about socialism, at least until the global realities of socialism, Marxism, and communism become impossible to ignore.
We might also consider the context of Psmith’s life at the bank, specifically the economic and social changes of the time. The landed gentry began its long decline in the 1870s due to free trade, competition from America, and agricultural recession. It is no wonder that Wodehouse created young people who grew up in affluence but now must work for their livings. The new industrial and merchant classes were pushing their way into politics and society, and Psmith’s circumstances encapsulate these changing times. Consider the following passage in Leave It to Psmith:
“We had hardly got married,” resumed Phyllis, blinking, “when poor Mr. Smith died and the whole place was broken up. He must have been speculating or something, I suppose, because he hardly left any money, and the estate had to be sold. And the people who bought it—they were coal people from Wolverhampton—had a nephew for whom they wanted the agent job, so Mike had to go. So here we are.”
This speculation about speculation is just speculation, and by someone who Eve would say is not very well versed in the bruising realities of life. Even if we take into account the odd passions of Psmith’s father, which could have led to bad investments, the more likely explanation is the economic difficulties facing English agriculture. A gentry that relied on the land was losing money and influence, and it may be no coincidence that the Smith estate was sold to a nouveau riche business family. The words “coal” and “Wolverhampton” were undoubtedly chosen to convey the horror of a world turning upside down.
No wonder Psmith is always making disparaging comments about push, rush, “Work, work, always work! The curse of the age,” and “these days of strenuous competition”—in other words, the capitalist mindset that has shoved aside the leisurely, old-world virtues of the Shropshire Smiths. If this is what capitalism has wrought, no wonder young Psmith is intrigued by socialism. And given the circumstances of Wodehouse’s own life, this fairly superfluous introduction of socialism may be his revenge against the global capitalism that kept him from Oriel College, Oxford, and almost forced him to go abroad in the early 1900s.
Socialist or Counterrevolutionary?
What does Psmith mean by “Socialism”? When discussing Mr. Bickersdyke’s prior run for Parliament, he tells Mike that their manager “was as fruity a Socialist as Comrade Waller is now” (Psmith in the City). According to the narrator, Waller at Clapham Common “crouched to denounce the House of Lords. He bounded from side to side while dissecting the methods of the plutocrats. During an impassioned onslaught on the monarchical system he stood on one leg and hopped.”
This suggests that Psmith believes in a moderate version of socialism. He is not about to join the Heralds of the Red Dawn. He does not “yearn for the Revolution” and seek to “massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane, and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy” (“Comrade Bingo”). He never advocates a government takeover of the New Asiatic Bank. He expresses skepticism about private property, to be sure, so he likely supports some degree of redistribution and regulation.
We might also consider an alternative theory—that Psmith advocates socialism not because he is enthusiastic about revolutionary ideologies but out of an upper-class frustration with capitalism and all its nouveau riche social climbers and pushers. His socialism might be interpreted as a push-back against the capitalism that upset his world, and in this way he is more counterrevolutionary than revolutionary. He may see the enemy of his enemy as his friend.
In the political world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, capitalism and conservatism were not the same thing (this is still true, one might point out, although it is a distinction rarely understood). In the Victorian Era, many saw the new capitalist economy as posing a threat to traditional values, virtues, and institutions. During the lifetime of Psmith and his father, the traditional pillars of conservative society— the landed gentry, the Church of England, and the monarchy—lost considerable power. The decline of agriculture squeezed the profits of the country-house set. The new factories and big cities drew workers who previously lived in a rural England dominated by the gentry and clergy. A Church of England that depended on tithes and a settled society began to lose influence. Queen Victoria’s rule cemented a constitutional monarchy that avoided politics.
The power of the traditional upper class was thereby slowly but surely displaced by a new industrial and merchant class. These upstarts, seen more positively as Thomas Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy,” pushed their way into society and politics. They invaded everything from Parliament to London clubs and from the public schools to the prestigious regiments. As the old families declined, Psmith may have seen socialism as the only way to counteract these capitalist trends. If there was no going back to the old ways, why not roll the dice with the new socialism?
Seen this way, Psmith moves from “so improbable a receptacle of revolutionary passion” (Green on Psmith’s real-life model, Rupert D’Oyly Carte) to an understandable searcher for meaning in a changing world. And he is not engaging in “precocious political posturing” but rather reacting to the very real and bruising economic transformations that disrupted his life.
This is not to claim that Wodehouse was the new Trollope, intentionally chronicling the changes wrenching English society. Nevertheless, he did write about what he knew and saw, as Norman Murphy showed, so we might not be surprised to see hints of social realism at play in his characters and plots.
Psmith as Fashion Role Model
Wodehouse once said that Psmith the character was handed to him “on a plate with watercress around it.” Did Psmith the socialist have any antecedent?
Green points out that it might have been Henry Mayers Hyndman (1842–1921), Trinity College Cambridge undergraduate, Essex County cricketer, and founder of Britain’s first socialist political party. George Bernard Shaw wrote that “he seemed to have been born in a frock coat and top hat.”
Today’s young socialist could do worse than consider Hyndman and Psmith (the above debate about the latter’s beliefs notwithstanding) as fashion role models. Throughout all recorded history, revolutionary thought seems to go hand in hand with regrettable fashion choices. The first caveman to express doubts about cave ownership undoubtedly had “a style wholly his own” (Psmith in the City). The lefty youngster who mounts today’s barricades may wear a Che Guevara T-shirt and Crocs, but the example of Psmith suggests the revolution is not incompatible with a monocle, “zippy waistcoat,” and “knife-like crease in his trousers.” If this essay does nothing but inspire a Well-Dressed Socialist Movement, it will have been worth a bite out of the author’s time.
It is notable that Hyndman supposedly converted to Marxism after reading Das Kapital, but according to Tuchman (quoted by Green), he may have “adopted Socialism out of spite against the world because he was not included in the Cambridge eleven.” The alleged parallel with Psmith is clear, and it is also reminiscent of the claim that Franklin Delano Roosevelt became a “traitor to his class” because he was passed over for membership in the Porcellian, the most aristocratic of Harvard’s Final Clubs.
History may well turn on such small events, just as a rupee fluctuation may have given us Mike, Psmith, Ukridge, Lord Emsworth, Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Uncle Fred, Mulliner, and many other friends.
References
Green, Benny. 1981. P.G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography. London: Pavilion.
Murphy, N.T.P. 2013. A Wodehouse Handbook (Revised Edition): Volume One: The World of Wodehouse. Sackville, New Brunswick: Sybertooth.
Wodehouse, P.G. 2018 [1909]. Mike and Psmith. Project Gutenberg.
Wodehouse, P.G. 2012 [1923]. Leave it to Psmith. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Wodehouse, P.G. 2008 [1915]. Psmith, Journalist. London: Everyman.
Wodehouse, P.G. 2000 [1910]. Psmith in the City. London: Everyman.
Wodehouse, P.G. 1974. The World of Psmith. London: Arco.
