London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Pablo Picasso worked fast. He’d often do three paintings in a day.
He painted Head of a Faun in five minutes.
His famous painting Le Reve – English translation The Dream – took him longer. But not much longer. Le Reve was a portrait of Picasso’s 22-year-old mistress, Marie Therese Walter. It took Picasso an afternoon. For the record, it was the afternoon of January 24, 1932. And in case you’re wondering, Picasso was 50 years old at the time.
And then there’s the story of Picasso and the napkin. Picasso was at a Paris market. An admirer recognised him. Asked him if he’d do a quick sketch on a paper napkin for her. Picasso obliged her. Did a quick sketch on the napkin. Handed it to her. And asked her for a million Francs. The woman was shocked. “How can you ask for so much? It took you five minutes to draw this!”
Picasso’s reply: “No, it took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes.”
So howzabout a few quick brush strokes on P.G. Wodehouse.
What’s prompted this is the latest edition of the London Walks Newsletter. The mid-month, snappy, abbreviated, tapas edition of the Newsletter. The grab-a-sandwich-and-go edition – just four items. I produced it yesterday, October 15th. It’ll go out today. Go out to some 16,000 subscribers. Which in itself is a source of considerable amazement to me.
Anyway, one of the items in the newsletter is a mention of Richard IV’s niche walk What Ho, Jeeves! – The London of P.G. Wodehouse. It’s an exotic bloom – a niche walk par excellence. Only goes a couple of times a year. And as it happens, one of those times is coming up. Richard will be guiding What Ho, Jeeves! on October 26th.
Anyway, that was the touch of the spur. Out of more or less idle curiosity I wandered over to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For a quick refresher on my – and as it happens, the late, lamented Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite author. Wandered over to the DNB to discover, happily, that yesterday, October 15th was the anniversary of Plum’s – that was P.G. Wodehouse’s nickname – birthday. October 15th, 1881. So he’d be what, a 143-year-old today. I remember how thrilled I was when I discovered – this was back in the 1970s – that P.G. Wodehouse was still alive, still writing comic masterpieces. Anyway, my big find – my favourite brushstroke – from yesterday’s quick pas de deux with the life of the Master was that P.G. Wodehouse had 20 aunts. That’s a penny-dropping moment for anybody who knows and loves P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. It almost goes without saying that herd of aunts inspired the title of one of his Jeeves novels, Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.
What else? Well, turns out P.G. Wodehouse was born in Guildford. So he was very home counties. As you’d expect.
Also as you’d expect, the Wodehouse’s were landed gentry – the greatest English prose stylist of the 20th century was to the manner born. His family traced its history back to the time of William the Conqueror. The lineage included 18 knighthoods, a baronetcy, a barony, and an earldom. P.G. Wodehouse in the end was himself Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. He was very funny about that handle Pelham Grenville. He called it a ‘frightful label.’ When he was a toddler he couldn’t pronounce his own name. Garbled it. It came out as Plum. And that of course became the affectionate nickname by which he was known for the rest of his life.
What else? Well, he begins to close in on London as a kiddiewink. When he was five years old he went to a Dame School in Croydon. And then – when he turns –13 it’s Dulwich College. He was there for six years. Six of the happiest years of his life. P.G. Wodehouse said it was like heaven. What a wonderful schoolboy he must have been. He was a gifted athlete, footballer, cricketer, and boxer, had a fine voice and sang at school concerts, and edited the school magazine, The Alleynian.
Anything else? Yes, it intrigued me no end that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also yields up a Bertram Wodehouse. Again, P.G. Wodehouse fans will see the connection instanta. This was one Bertram Wodehouse Currie, a Victorian City of London banker of some note. When our Wodehouse left school he worked for two years in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in the City of London. But enough was enough. He was a fish out of water. And as a very young man – he was only 20 – he gave up his job at the bank and became a full-time writer.
All well and good. But, as usual, I wanted to dig deeper. Wanted some background. Wanted to know something about the world Plum was born into.
Here’s what I found out. About the year. And indeed October 15th. Turns out October 15th is, well, an auspicious day. If October 15th were a Christmas Tree there are lots of very special ornaments you’d hang on it. By way of example, on October 15th 70 BC the great Roman poet Vergil was born. On October 15th, 1581 the first ballet was performed. On October 15th, 1666 King Charles II wore the first waistcoat. On October 15th, 1839 Queen Victoria proposed to Prince Albert. On October 15th, 1895 the first motor show was held at Tunbridge Wells in Kent. On October 15th, 1928, the German airship Graf Zeppelin completed its first transatlantic flight.
You can see our world – the modern world – taking shape on October 15th, coming out of time’s chrysalis.
And as for the year – 1881 – P.G. Wodehouse was born, well, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were ructions. The Boers were giving the Brits fits in the Transvaal. And there was a nationalist rising in Egypt. And the Irish were playing up. To which the British response – predictably – was repressive legislation. And an American president – James Garfield – was assassinated. The French had their hands full in Algeria and Tunis. New Zealand passed a law restricting Japanese immigration. Jews were being persecuted in Russia. On a happier note, flogging was abolished in the British Army. Louis Pasteur came up with a vaccine that laid a smackdown on Anthrax. And A. A. Common in England and H. Draper in the U.S. did something that wasn’t common: they each photographed a comet.
And needless to say, there were some notable deaths. Thomas Carlyle, Feodor Dostoevsky and Benjamin Disraeli spring to mind. On a jollier note, that baby boy in Guildford – the future novelist and short story writer – had some company. Sure enough, Pablo Picasso pitched up just ten days later. On October 25th, 1881. And just ahead of Plum, on August 6th, Alexander Fleming, he of penicillin fame, came into the world.
And what about London? The Natural History Museum opened when P.G. Wodehouse was in the womb. And D’Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre, the first public building in England lit by electricity.
All well and good. But I thought, I’m going to drill down even deeper. It seemed a reasonable assumption that P.G. Wodehouse’s father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse, probably had a glance or two at the Times while his wife was labouring away, bringing his third son into the world. So I joined him. I went there. What was in the papers that day? Well, as it happens, there was another new arrival that week. It must have been electrifying. For the first time ever a railway carriage was lit by electricity. The Brighton Railway did the honours. It was on the 3.25 pm Victoria to Brighton run. And then back to London. The run down to Brighton was in the afternoon. But sure enough, going through the tunnels, the lights were switched on. And coming back to London it was evening. It was dark. The specially prepared Pullman carriage – fitted out with 12 little incandescent lamps – was, in the words of the Times, kept lighted the whole of the distance from Brighton to Victoria. Wunderbar. Which of course was exactly the response of the audiences at the Savoy Theatre. That first night ever there was a standing ovation. But it wasn’t for the performance. It was for the electric lighting.
And finally, P.G. Wodehouse was – this always bears repeating – the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century. So, reasonably enough, I wanted to find out what book buyers were thumbing through on the day he was born. That itch sent me haring to the Times Column of New Books and New Editions. The immediately striking thing was how catholic, how international the gamut of books was. That generation of readers – P.G. Wodehouse’s parents and grandparents – weren’t local, weren’t parochial. When they reached for a book on a shelf they were often reaching for the world.
The Times Column of New Books on the day P.G. Wodehouse came into the world was headed up with a book called The Head Hunters of Borneo. And there was The Egypt of the Past. And a book called Norsk, Lapp and Finn by one Frank Vincent, author of The Land of the White Elephant. There was Our Ride Through Asia Minor. And going in the other direction, Through Cities and Prairie Lands – Sketches of An American Tour. For history buffs there was The Great French Revolution. Slightly closer to home – slightly tamer – Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales.
So stay-at-home Brits those Brits weren’t, even if they were staying at home.
But then a hand brake turn, 1881 publishers were also pumping out books of sermons. And books on Dieting and the Analysis and Adulteration of Foods. I think my favourites, though, were the following two titles: Occasional Thoughts of an Old Invalid and George Manville Penn’s novel, The Vicar’s People – the Story of a Stain.
Some – perhaps most – of those books will be in the British Library. I’m girding my loins to go there and read a couple of them. Take some deep draughts of the mental air of the British world P.G. Wodehouse was born into. Watch this space. If it happens – when it happens – I’ll report back. Sermons, the Head Hunters of Borneo, the Story of a Stain – has to be some sort of corrective to the muck we’re drowning in on the wretched Internet.
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You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature
walking tour company.
London’s local, time honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size
walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it,
London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science:
you get what you pay for.
And just as surely,
you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started
we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:
Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world
you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep
the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you,
not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured –
a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,
a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases
distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –
Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa –
both of them CBEs –
are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,
a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.