Psmith, JournalistWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
Psmith, Journalist
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories
The section of the paper devoted to Kid Brady was attractive to all
those with sporting blood in them. Each week there appeared in the
same place on the same page a portrait of the Kid, looking moody
and important, in an attitude of self-defence, and under the
portrait the legend, "Jimmy Garvin must meet this boy." Jimmy was
the present holder of the light-weight title. He had won it a year
before, and since then had confined himself to smoking cigars as
long as walking-sticks and appearing nightly as the star in a
music-hall sketch entitled "A Fight for Honour." His reminiscences
were appearing weekly in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave
Psmith the idea of publishing Kid Brady's autobiography in _Cosy
Moments_, an idea which made the Kid his devoted adherent from then
on. Like most pugilists, the Kid had a passion for bursting into
print, and his life had been saddened up to the present by the
refusal of the press to publish his reminiscences. To appear in
print is the fighter's accolade. It signifies that he has arrived.
Psmith extended the hospitality of page four of _Cosy Moments_ to Kid
Brady, and the latter leaped at the chance. He was grateful to
Psmith for not editing his contributions. Other pugilists,
contributing to other papers, groaned under the supervision of a
member of the staff who cut out their best passages and altered the
rest into Addisonian English. The readers of _Cosy Moments_ got Kid
Brady raw.
"Comrade Brady," said Psmith to Billy, "has a singularly pure and
pleasing style. It is bound to appeal powerfully to the
many-headed. Listen to this bit. Our hero is fighting Battling Jack
Benson in that eminent artist's native town of Louisville, and the
citizens have given their native son the Approving Hand, while
receiving Comrade Brady with chilly silence. Here is the Kid on the
subject: 'I looked around that house, and I seen I hadn't a friend
in it. And then the gong goes, and I says to myself how I has one
friend, my poor old mother way out in Wyoming, and I goes in and
mixes it, and then I seen Benson losing his goat, so I ups with an
awful half-scissor hook to the plexus, and in the next round I seen
Benson has a chunk of yellow, and I gets in with a hay-maker and I
picks up another sleep-producer from the floor and hands it him,
and he takes the count all right.' . . Crisp, lucid, and to the
point. That is what the public wants. If this does not bring
Comrade Garvin up to the scratch, nothing will."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account