eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
P. G. Wodehouse, Britain’s beloved satirist and author of the famous Jeeves series, often said he wished he’d spent more time playing golf and less “fooling about writing stories and things.” Happily for all of us, the prolific writer often took his pen to the green.
In Fore!, Wodehouse expert D. R. Bensen has collected a dozen pieces to delight golfers, those who know them, and even those who have never basked in the ecstasy of a perfect putt—into a collection by this great humorist that is “almost as much fun as playing a round” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
“Sure to please Wodehouse readers and re-readers, even those who’ve never sliced or putted.” —Kirkus Reviews
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547527727 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Sales rank: | 26,651 |
| File size: | 299 KB |
About the Author
P. G. Wodehouse was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the twentieth century.
Date of Birth:
October 15, 1881Date of Death:
February 14, 1975Place of Birth:
Guildford, Surrey, EnglandPlace of Death:
Southampton, New YorkEducation:
Dulwich College, 1894-1900Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Coming of Gowf
Prologue
After we had sent in our card and waited for a few hours in the marbled ante-room, a bell rang and the major-domo, parting the priceless curtains, ushered us in to where the editor sat writing at his desk. We advanced on all fours, knocking our head reverently on the Aubusson carpet.
"Well?" he said at length, laying down his jewelled pen.
"We just looked in," we said, humbly, "to ask if it would be all right if we sent you an historical story."
"The public does not want historical stories," he said, frowning coldly.
"Ah, but the public hasn't seen one of ours!" we replied.
The editor placed a cigarette in a holder presented to him by a reigning monarch, and lit it with a match from a golden box, the gift of the millionaire president of the Amalgamated League of Working Plumbers.
"What this magazine requires," he said, "is red-blooded, one-hundred-percent dynamic stuff, palpitating with warm human interest and containing a strong, poignant love-motive."
"That," we replied, "is us all over, Mabel."
"What I need at the moment, however, is a golf story."
"By a singular coincidence, ours is a golf story."
"Ha! say you so?" said the editor, a flicker of interest passing over his finely-chiselled features. "Then you may let me see it."
He kicked us in the face, and we withdrew.
The Story
On the broad terrace outside his palace, overlooking the fair expanse of the Royal gardens, King Merolchazzar of Oom stood leaning on the low parapet, his chin in his hand and a frown on his noble face. The day was fine, and a light breeze bore up to him from the garden below a fragrant scent of flowers. But, for all the pleasure it seemed to give him, it might have been bone-fertilizer.
The fact is, King Merolchazzar was in love, and his suit was not prospering. Enough to upset any man.
Royal love affairs in those days were conducted on the correspondence system. A monarch, hearing good reports of a neighbouring princess, would despatch messengers with gifts to her Court, beseeching an interview. The Princess would name a date, and a formal meeting would take place; after which everything usually buzzed along pretty smoothly. But in the case of King Merolchazzar's courtship of the Princess of the Outer Isles there had been a regrettable hitch. She had acknowledged the gifts, saying that they were just what she had wanted and how had he guessed, and had added that, as regarded a meeting, she would let him know later. Since that day no word had come from her, and a gloomy spirit prevailed in the capital. At the Courtiers' Club, the meeting-place of the aristocracy of Oom, five to one in pazazas was freely offered against Merolchazzar's chances, but found no takers; while in the taverns of the common people, where less conservative odds were always to be had, you could get a snappy hundred to eight. "For in good sooth," writes a chronicler of the time on a half-brick and a couple of paving-stones which have survived to this day, "it did indeed begin to appear as though our beloved monarch, the son of the sun and the nephew of the moon, had been handed the bitter fruit of the citron."
The quaint old idiom is almost untranslatable, but one sees what he means.
As the King stood sombrely surveying the garden, his attention was attracted by a small, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a face like a walnut, who stood not far away on a gravelled path flanked by rose bushes. For some minutes he eyed this man in silence, then he called to the Grand Vizier, who was standing in the little group of courtiers and officials at the other end of the terrace. The bearded man, apparently unconscious of the Royal scrutiny, had placed a rounded stone on the gravel, and was standing beside it making curious passes over it with his hoe. It was this singular behaviour that had attracted the King's attention. Superficially it seemed silly, and yet Merolchazzar had a curious feeling that there was a deep, even a holy, meaning behind the action.
"Who," he inquired, "is that?"
"He is one of your Majesty's gardeners," replied the Vizier.
"I don't remember seeing him before. Who is he?"
The Vizier was a kind-hearted man, and he hesitated for a moment.
"It seems a hard thing to say of anyone, your Majesty," he replied, "but he is a Scotsman. One of your Majesty's invincible admirals recently made a raid on the inhospitable coast of that country at a spot known to the natives as S'nandrews and brought away this man."
"What does he think he's doing?" asked the King, as the bearded one slowly raised the hoe above his right shoulder, slightly bending the left knee as he did so.
"It is some species of savage religious ceremony, your Majesty. According to the admiral, the dunes by the seashore where he landed were covered with a multitude of men behaving just as this man is doing. They had sticks in their hands, and they struck with these at small round objects. And every now and again —"
"Fo-o-ore!" called a gruff voice from below.
"And every now and again," went on the Vizier, "they would utter the strange melancholy cry which you have just heard. It is a species of chant."
The Vizier broke off. The hoe had descended on the stone, and the stone, rising in a graceful arc, had sailed through the air and fallen within a foot of where the King stood.
"Hi!" exclaimed the Vizier.
The man looked up.
"You mustn't do that! You nearly hit his serene graciousness the King!"
"Mphm!" said the bearded man, nonchalantly, and began to wave his hoe mystically over another stone.
Into the King's careworn face there had crept a look of interest, almost of excitement.
"What god does he hope to propitiate by these rites?" he asked.
"The deity, I learn from your Majesty's admiral, is called Gowf."
"Gowf? Gowf?" King Merolchazzar ran over in his mind the muster-roll of the gods of Oom. There were sixty-seven of them, but Gowf was not of their number. "It is a strange religion," he murmured. "A strange religion, indeed. But, by Belus, distinctly attractive. I have an idea that Oom could do with a religion like that. It has a zip to it. A sort of fascination, if you know what I mean. It looks to me extraordinarily like what the Court physician ordered. I will talk to this fellow and learn more of these holy ceremonies."
And, followed by the Vizier, the King made his way into the garden. The Vizier was now in a state of some apprehension. He was exercised in his mind as to the effect which the embracing of a new religion by the King might have on the formidable Church party. It would be certain to cause displeasure among the priesthood; and in those days it was a ticklish business to offend the priesthood, even for a monarch. And, if Merolchazzar had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little tactless in his dealings with that powerful body. Only a few mornings back the High Priest of Hec had taken the Vizier aside to complain about the quality of the meat which the King had been using lately for his sacrifices. He might be a child in worldly matters, said the High Priest, but if the King supposed that he did not know the difference between home-grown domestic and frozen imported foreign, it was time his Majesty was disabused of the idea. If, on top of this little unpleasantness, King Merolchazzar were to become an adherent of this new Gowf, the Vizier did not know what might not happen.
The King stood beside the bearded foreigner, watching him closely. The second stone soared neatly on to the terrace. Merolchazzar uttered an excited cry. His eyes were glowing, and he breathed quickly.
"It doesn't look difficult," he muttered.
"Hoots!" said the bearded man.
"I believe I could do it," went on the King, feverishly. "By the eight green gods of the mountain, I believe I could! By the holy fire that burns night and day before the altar of Belus, I'm sure I could! By Hec, I'm going to do it now! Gimme that hoe!"
"Toots!" said the bearded man.
It seemed to the King that the fellow spoke derisively, and his blood boiled angrily. He seized the hoe and raised it above his shoulder, bracing himself solidly on widely-parted feet. His pose was an exact reproduction of the one in which the Court sculptor had depicted him when working on the life-size statue ("Our Athletic King") which stood in the principal square of the city; but it did not impress the stranger. He uttered a discordant laugh.
"Ye puir gonuph!" he cried, "whit kin' o' a staunce is that?"
The King was hurt. Hitherto the attitude had been generally admired.
"It's the way I always stand when killing lions," he said. "'In killing lions,'" he added, quoting from the well-known treatise of Nimrod, the recognised text-book on the sport, "'the weight at the top of the swing should be evenly balanced on both feet.'"
"Ah, weel, ye're no' killing lions the noo. Ye're gowfing."
A sudden humility descended upon the King. He felt, as so many men were to feel in similar circumstances in ages to come, as though he were a child looking eagerly for guidance to an all-wise master — a child, moreover, handicapped by water on the brain, feet three sizes too large for him, and hands consisting mainly of thumbs.
"O thou of noble ancestors and agreeable disposition!" he said, humbly. "Teach me the true way."
"Use the interlocking grip and keep the staunce a wee bit open and slow back, and dinna press or sway the heid and keep yer e'e on the ba'."
"My which on the what?" said the King, bewildered.
"I fancy, your Majesty," hazarded the Vizier, "that he is respectfully suggesting that your serene graciousness should deign to keep your eye on the ball."
"Oh, ah!" said the King.
The first golf lesson ever seen in the kingdom of Oom had begun.
Up on the terrace, meanwhile, in the little group of courtiers and officials, a whispered consultation was in progress. Officially, the King's unfortunate love affair was supposed to be a strict secret. But you know how it is. These things get about. The Grand Vizier tells the Lord High Chamberlain; the Lord High Chamberlain whispers it in confidence to the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog; the Supreme Hereditary Custodian hands it on to the Exalted Overseer of the King's Wardrobe on the understanding that it is to go no farther; and, before you know where you are, the varlets and scurvy knaves are gossiping about it in the kitchens, and the Society journalists have started to carve it out on bricks for the next issue of Palace Prattlings.
"The long and short of it is," said the Exalted Overseer of the King's Wardrobe, "we must cheer him up."
There was a murmur of approval. In those days of easy executions it was no light matter that a monarch should be a prey to gloom.
"But how?" queried the Lord High Chamberlain.
"I know," said the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog. "Try him with the minstrels."
"Here! Why us!" protested the leader of the minstrels.
"Don't be silly!" said the Lord High Chamberlain. "It's for your good just as much as ours. He was asking only last night why he never got any music nowadays. He told me to find out whether you supposed he paid you simply to eat and sleep, because if so he knew what to do about it."
"Oh, in that case!" The leader of the minstrels started nervously. Collecting his assistants and tip-toeing down the garden, he took up his stand a few feet in Merolchazzar's rear, just as that much-enduring monarch, after twenty-five futile attempts, was once more addressing his stone.
Lyric writers in those days had not reached the supreme pitch of excellence which has been produced by modern musical comedy. The art was in its infancy then, and the best the minstrels could do was this — and they did it just as Merolchazzar, raising the hoe with painful care, reached the top of his swing and started down:
"Oh, tune the string and let us sing Our godlike, great, and glorious King!
There were sixteen more verses, touching on their ruler's prowess in the realms of sport and war, but they were not destined to be sung on that circuit. King Merolchazzar jumped like a stung bullock, lifted his head, and missed the globe for the twenty-sixth time. He spun round on the minstrels, who were working pluckily through their song of praise:
"Oh, may his triumphs never cease!
"Get out!" roared the King.
"Your Majesty?" quavered the leader of the minstrels.
"Make a noise like an egg and beat it!" (Again one finds the chronicler's idiom impossible to reproduce in modern speech, and must be content with a literal translation.) "By the bones of my ancestors, it's a little hard! By the beard of the sacred goat, it's tough! What in the name of Belus and Hec do you mean, you yowling misfits, by starting that sort of stuff when a man's swinging? I was just shaping to hit it right that time when you butted in, you —"
The minstrels melted away. The bearded man patted the fermenting monarch paternally on the shoulder.
"Ma mannie," he said, "ye may no' be a gowfer yet, but hoots! ye're learning the language fine!" King Merolchazzar's fury died away. He simpered modestly at these words of commendation, the first his bearded preceptor had uttered. With exemplary patience he turned to address the stone for the twenty-seventh time.
That night it was all over the city that the King had gone crazy over a new religion, and the orthodox shook their heads.
We of the present day, living in the midst of a million marvels of a complex civilisation, have learned to adjust ourselves to conditions and to take for granted phenomena which in an earlier and less advanced age would have caused the profoundest excitement and even alarm. We accept without comment the telephone, the automobile, and the wireless telegraph, and we are unmoved by the spectacle of our fellow human beings in the grip of the first stages of golf fever. Far otherwise was it with the courtiers and officials about the Palace of Oom. The obsession of the King was the sole topic of conversation.
Every day now, starting forth at dawn and returning only with the falling of darkness, Merolchazzar was out on the Linx, as the outdoor temple of the new god was called. In a luxurious house adjoining this expanse the bearded Scotsman had been installed, and there he could be found at almost any hour of the day fashioning out of holy wood the weird implements indispensable to the new religion. As a recognition of his services, the King had bestowed upon him a large pension, innumerable kaddiz or slaves, and the title of Promoter of the King's Happiness, which for the sake of convenience was generally shortened to The Pro.
At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign's fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty — a title which in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.
All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as thecourtiers were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his social position all cut and dried — a man, to take an instance at random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels — it jars him, we say, to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step into favour of the Hereditary Bearer of the King's Baffy.
But it was from the priesthood that the real, serious opposition was to be expected. And the priests of the sixty-seven gods of Oom were up in arms. As the white-bearded High Priest of Hec, who, by virtue of his office was generally regarded as leader of the guild, remarked in a glowing speech at an extraordinary meeting of the Priests' Equity Association, he had always set his face against the principle of the Closed Shop hitherto, but there were moments when every thinking man had to admit that enough was sufficient, and it was his opinion that such a moment had now arrived. The cheers which greeted the words showed how correctly he had voiced popular sentiment.
Of all those who had listened to the High Priest's speech, none had listened more intently than the King's half-brother, Ascobaruch. A sinister, disappointed man, this Ascobaruch, with mean eyes and a crafty smile. All his life he had been consumed with ambition, and until now it had looked as though he must go to his grave with this ambition unfulfilled. All his life he had wanted to be King of Oom, and now he began to see daylight. He was sufficiently versed in Court intrigues to be aware that the priests were the party that really counted, the source from which all successful revolutions sprang. And of all the priests the one that mattered most was the venerable High Priest of Hec.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fore!"
by .
Copyright © 1983 Estate of P. G. Wodehouse.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Contents,
Copyright,
Dedication,
Preface,
The Coming of Gowf,
The Salvation of George Mackintosh,
High Stakes,
Chester Forgets Himself,
Tangled Hearts,
The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh,
The Heel of Achilles,
Rodney Fails to Qualify,
The Heart of a Goof,
A Mixed Threesome,
Excelsior,
The Long Hole,
About the Author,
Footnotes,
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
![The Mysterious Affair at Styles [Illustrated] (Hercule Poirot Series)](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/2940012762979_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Mysterious Affair at Styles [Illustrated] (Hercule Poirot Series)")
