Company for Henry (The Purloined Paperweight)
In one of his forewords in the Penguin edition of his works (the editions with the Ionicus or Riddel covers have them &mdash makes those editions the most desirable ones), Wodehouse remarks on that saga habit of his. You write one book with an interesting set of characters, you find yourself writing another of them — saves yourself a bit of work &mdash and then the public wants a third. And suddenly you are an author who, when he writes a book outside any series, is introduced with 'author of the JEEVES series' on the cover. Company for Henry, a clear post-WW-II book, is not in any series. And I think that's something of a pity, because there are people in there that I've grown very fond of over the span of several re-readings. I am thinking especially of Aunt Kelly.
A very impoverished English nobleman, Henry Paradene. With a very nice niece, Jane. And a very useless, impecunous, but cheerful nephew Algernon (Algy) who has a friend who might be described by the right female as a baa-lamb, even though his map has been edited in the course of several boxing matches. Add an American millionaire who collects paper-weights and Aunt Kelly (if you want to know what she is, read the book), and I think that you can sketch out the plot yourself. I probably even don't have to tell you that Paradene has a paperweight that the millionaire covets but that Paradene cannot sell because it's entailed.
Not even when the broker's man, from Duff and Trotter (see! at least a hint of continuity, because we know Duff and Trotter, and especially Duff, from Quick Service) appears can Paradene raise the money.
It all ends, naturally, with marriage vows being exchanged between deserving parties. That's a given, not a spoiler. It would have been a spoiler if they hadn't — would have spoiled the whole book for me. But then, I like my novels to resemble a musical comedy more than the grim life that is presented us by the more literary authors of our age. All this autobiography is a sad mistake, meseems
On a more practical note: I've got this book, but you probably don't. And if you try and click on the nice cover (which is pretty rare, I guess, since I had to scan it myself instead of ripping the picture from one of the collection-of-covers websites.), you'll arrive at Amazon all right, but they'll tell you they cannot get the book for you. Try under the alternative title, The Purloined Paperweight.
