Notes:

Readers familiar with Wodehouse will recognize much in the present installment. Most important, we catch our first allusion to Smith in Wodehouse, a journalist character (or perhaps just a convenient cover) who will later appear as Psmith in “The Lost Lambs” (serialized in The Captain between April and September 1908, and forming the second half of the book Mike [1909], later appearing separately as Mike and Psmith) and in “The New Fold” (serialized in The Captain between October 1908 and March 1909 and published as Psmith in the City in 1910). More strikingly still, the character reappears between October 1909 to March 1910 in the serial “Psmith, Journalist” (The Captain), which A & C Black (UK) published in September 1915. Wodehouse further reworked the Psmith material from The Captain (together with a romance story from Ainslee’s Magazine) into an American novel published by W. J. Watt & Company titled The Prince and Betty (14 February 1912). (The UK and US serial of The Prince and Betty, in The Strand Magazine and Ainslee’s Magazine respectively, reveal further differences in setting and character, as do their novel publications in the UK and US, the former by Mills & Boon on 1 May 1912.) The American novel is interesting because Psmith appears there as Smith, the same character alluded to in the closing moments of our current Pearson’s Magazine installment: “Smith’s stuff is always [bitter] . . . he thinks the proprietor likes it.”
 Here in “How Kid Brady Joined the Press” readers discover a sketch of much of the later Psmith material, with sometimes subtle and sometimes less subtle variations. Because readers are most familiar with that material from Psmith, Journalist, our notes here will have recourse to the novel to better illustrate how ideas and characters get recycled in Wodehouse, particularly early Wodehouse. The informed reader, however, or the reader undertaking a dissertation in early Wodehouse, would do well to lay these various stories in UK and US periodical form and UK and US novel form side by side and develop a thesis from there.
 Readers should be aware, though, that such recycling extends even to the minutiae of Wodehouse’s imagination. For instance, the Kid’s fighting career in Psmith, Journalist (though Kid Brady there is from Wyoming and not “English born” as in our current serial) has odd recourse to unrelated snippets from the earlier fiction, as when Wodehouse names an early opponent “the Cyclone” and tells readers, in an aside, “Like the month of March, the Cyclone, who had come in like a lion, was going out like a lamb” (ch. XIV). In the concluding moments of the previous number of Pearson’s Kid Brady serial, Wodehouse referenced the devastating cyclone in the Midwest that likely destroyed Snyder, Oklahoma on 10 May 1905, one of the best indicators of historical time yet in the Brady stories. The allusion might possibly suggest that the Psmith or Smith material occupied Wodehouse’s imagination already as early as 1905 or 1906, an interesting fact when reconstructing both character and historicity in Wodehouse’s imagination.
 
broken down after the manner of automobiles: given the quality of motor vehicles and motor travel during this era, a “phase of automobilism” hated by the Kid (and presumably by his creator), readers likely see Wodehouse’s appropriation of the slang term “bubble” for automobile. Farmer and Henley’s 1905 Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English lists “bubble” as a dupe or gull, or, in its verbal usage, to cheat, humbug, or overreach. A new automobile that habitually breaks down, as here, would encourage the association of automobile for “bubble.” Moreover, Maitland’s 1891 American Dictionary of Slang (p. 50) identifies “bubble” (Old Eng.) as “to swindle” or deceive, and therefore, as a noun, a deception, as with the reputation of automobiles at this time.
Shop!: in British speech, a customer’s exclamation used to summon a shopkeeper or sales attendant when no help is visible [NM]
Garth. Tom Garth: the same reporter from the November 1905 (second) installment of the current serial; suggested earlier as likely modeled on sports journalist Damon Runyon. Given that Garth forged the article on fruitarianism that nearly cost Brady his training, readers might imagine a somewhat frosty reunion here. Garth’s subsequent attitude suggests a more developed character than we catch in the serial. In fact, Garth’s sangfroid here closely resembles Psmith’s, at least in the journalist phase of his career.
You got outside your breakfast: one of the earlier instances so far uncovered of Wodehouse’s frequent use of this humorous inversion of putting a meal inside oneself; see “How Pillingshot Scored” (Captain, May 1903) for an earlier use: “Scarcely was he outside the promised ice…”. The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D. (2007) cites this usage from 1888 onward, so Wodehouse was not the inventor of the turn of phrase, but he can certainly be said to have implanted it into the minds of a century of readers. [NM] Karen Shotting finds it in Jerome K. Jerome’s Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891), which Wodehouse certainly would have read.
“Mosquito’s Parade”: the 1899 “Mosquito Parade” (alternately “Mosquitoes’ Parade”) attributed in 1900 to Howard Whitney. An unknown 1899 orchestral rendering can be heard online at this link. The 1900 piano solo sheet music is online at this link, courtesy of the Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins.
 (Though considerable work has been done on Wodehouse and music, one senses still an academic void in this field.)
I’ve heard of hearts unkind . . . oftener left me mourning: last four lines of the concluding stanza of William Wordsworth’s “Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman,” detailing an offer of help to an overtasked old man whose thanks and praise give occasion for sorrow, because the once hale and vibrant life has been sadly reduced by age and the times.
 Here the suggestion is very roughly that Garth, who perhaps in an earlier era where truth rather than humbug was preferred, would not require the Kid’s services, here, in the modern early twentieth century, where culture was more concerned with humbug than truth, Wodehouse suggests the need to accompany the publication of truth with a bit of muscle. Alternately, the suggestion here might be, again given the modern world, that Garth must initially appeal, though unnecessarily it will turn out, to coercive blackmail to get what he wants; the Kid’s character, however, being properly sporting and old school will do the sporting thing without being forced. Either way, the allusion seems to comment on the modern era, for which Wodehouse already professes a distaste. Interestingly, Simon Lee in a sportsman, as is the Kid, and sport, particularly in early Wodehouse, seems the likeliest vehicle for preserving old-world ideals.
He held the championship belt for poetry at one time: Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate, from his appointment by Queen Victoria in 1843 till his death on 23 April 1850.
A thoughtful study of our New York papers: from colonial times, American newspapers were established on partisan lines and typically published highly biased accounts of political events and personages. Much early material, in fact, was published under pseudonyms to protect writers from libel charges. New York was particularly involved in such practices, and an early legal case there set precedent for greater journalistic freedoms in America than were typically enjoyed elsewhere. In fact, The New York Weekly Journal was founded in 1733 in direct response to libel charges brought against The New York Gazette, and American newsprint has enjoyed freedoms of expression particular to America from that time, freedoms that were later entrenched in the Constitution of America.
left him with the impression . . . no law of libel in the land: unlike in the UK, the Constitution of America guaranteed absolute freedom of the press via the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
 Perhaps the most famous libel case in America, the precedent in fact for subsequent law, involved a political attack on the colonial governor of New York in 1734. Publisher John Peter Zenger printed an attack on New York governor William Cosby, for which he was subsequently imprisoned and stood trail. The ensuring case established in American jurisprudence the absolute burden of proving falsehood in prosecuting cases of libel. Libel in America, unlike defamation of character charges elsewhere, had to establish that accusations brought against a party were false. As a result of the Crown versus John Peter Zenger, charges that were determined not to be false, either in print or in the spoken word, could not be considered libelous. A 1738 “brief narrative” of the case of Crown versus John Peter Zenger can be viewed at this link.
The greater the truth the greater the libel: a maxim which once applied in British jurisprudence (attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the King’s Bench from 1756 to 1788) but not in America; see previous note. [NM]
Let’s start a weekly that tells the unvarnished truth . . . in Wall Street, and so on: Technically what is being proposed here is called muckraking, watchdog journalism that investigates and exposes social and particularly corporate and political corruption at all levels. It was essentially a journalism of social reform, though typically associated with larger and more established periodicals. The early twentieth century was a golden age of sorts for such journalism, which ran largely unchecked until the advent of the Great War and the need for solidarity across the controlling interests of America.
 Wodehouse’s interest in such journalism at the height of the muckraking craze again shows him not merely up to date with the political and cultural affairs of America but largely at the helm of such affairs, informing his readership through a popular forum. In fact, it might be interesting to consider Wodehouse’s position in the professionalization of journalism in America. Most media authorities attribute the rise in American journalistic professionalism to 1908, with Columbia University and the University of Missouri establishing highly reputable schools for journalism in that year. The National Press Club was also founded in 1908, and subsequent years saw professionalization innovations such as the objective newsreel and photographic halftones rather than caricatures to accompany stories.
 The Kid Brady material obviously predates these expressions of American journalistic professionalism by some two years, and Wodehouse’s interest in muckraking and in exploring newsprint as a vehicle for social change by no means ended here. In fact, the same material and themes will occupy a large part of his professional energy during the decade, culminating in the publication of Psmith, Journalist. See headnote above.
 For a particular comparison of the above passage with Psmith, Journalist, see Chapter V, “Planning Improvements,” of which the following excerpt is representative:

. . . briefly, my idea is that Cosy Moments should become red-hot stuff. I could wish its tone to be such that the public will wonder why we do not print it on asbestos. We must chronicle all the live events of the day, murders, fires, and the like in a manner which will make our readers’ spines thrill. Above all, we must be the guardians of the People’s rights. We must be a search-light, showing up the dark spot in the souls of those who would endeavor in any way to do the PEOPLE in the eye. We must detect the wrong-doer, and deliver him such a series of resentful biffs that he will abandon his little games and become a model citizen. The details of the campaign we must think out after, but I fancy that, if we follow those main lines, we shall produce a bright, readable little sheet which will in a measure make this city sit up and take notice.

the best rag since Oxford: from the context of Lord Worfield’s and Garth’s shared experiences at school and university, one is tempted to read “rag” here in the sense of “schoolboyish prank”; Wodehouse uses that sense repeatedly in the school stories contemporaneous with this series. Later in this story, Wodehouse uses the same word for a publication, especially a disreputable one; see note below. [NM]
Join the staff of Candor as fighting-editor: the Wyoming Kid Brady gets the very same offer in Psmith, Journalist: “what we want is some one to help in case they try to rush us [in the office],” explains Billy Windsor, to which Psmith adds: “In brief, a fighting-editor . . . At all costs we must have privacy. No writer can prune and polish his sentences to his satisfaction if he is compelled constantly to break off in order to eject boisterous hooligans. We therefore offer you the job of sitting in the outer room and intercepting these bravoes before they can reach us” (ch. XV).
“I’m not next to the game yet”: readers remember this particular slang phrase from Clancy’s Saloon, where a Bowery conman complains of being out of the loop with regards to fixing the Brady-Garvis (Garvin) fight. Here, the repetition of the phrase in relation to Brady is interesting for its further relation to Kid Brady in Psmith, Journalist. In the later work, precisely in the novel when Brady is invited to join Cosy Moments, he adopts the phrase “Say, this gets past me . . . Put me wise” (ch. XV). The repetition suggests that Wodehouse worked very closely with his former material, recycling even key elements of dialogue.

Further linkages between the works and later works featuring journalism abound. A paper remarkably close to both Cosy Moments and Candor appears in Heavy Weather (1933), titled Society Spice. Lord Tilbury owns the “nasty little paper” (ch. I) along with Tiny Tots, and Monty Bodkin writes for Tiny Tots while its regular contributor is on holiday. The article that Bodkin contributes occasions his dismissal from the paper, an article on both alcohol and betting for the section “Uncle Woggly to His Chicks.” (Bodkin of course misplaces the spice in an article and paper intended for mothers, nannies, and children. He forgets his audience.) Not only, then, does Candor link to Cosy Moments in Wodehouse’s later imagination, but the minor character Aubrey Bodkin here in “How Kid Brady Joined the Press” links to Monty Bodkin later on, both marginally associated with the popular press in negative, albeit different ways.
worrying me: sporting metaphor; to worry an intended quarry is to tear it to pieces, typically with the teeth of the attacking animals; often reserved for blood sport involving pack animals, such as hounds in foxhunting or wolves in their natural hunting practices; without the sporting application, worry can also mean to strangle or suffocate.
bounce: US colloquial, to eject from the premises
a fighting-man’s got to be more careful than most: in the carnival and vaudeville wrestling days—Wodehouse loves the locution “all-in wrestler”—showmen boasted of possessing registered weapons in their skilled hands. My hands are registered weapons in ten states, one might boast, by way of conversation opener. The hands of professional fighters from that time have been proverbially considered registered weapons. No law or statue would confirm such a belief; however, professional fighters charged with assault against non-professional fighters typically receive much stiffer punishments in court, lending some credence to the popular belief.
Approach me, Bucephalus, if you have finished your meal. Whoa!: addressed to Garth’s horse, using the name of the horse of Alexander the Great
Mr. Bodkin, Mr. Aubrey Bodkin: as with the reference below to Smith, the first mention in Wodehouse of the surname of a later, major character in the literary canon; Aubrey and Monty indeed share little more than a last name, though given the place of the material above in Wodehouse’s larger and later imagination, the repetition is perhaps more than mere coincidence. (Or perhaps the appearance of ‘bodkin’ in Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy justifies the use in a theatrical context here. [NM])
the National Theater: founded 7 December 1835 in Washington, DC and located three blocks from the White House. Frequent entertainment venue for American presidents and hence associated with the social elite. Bodkin’s performances on the boards of the National Theater strongly denote his significance.
Contemporaries in Chicago and St. Louis . . . in their Sunday editions: syndication, whereby papers acquire reprint rights for articles or article excerpts not otherwise part of their own copyrighted material.
a trenchant leader: a leading article, also called an editorial or opinion piece; since leaders typically voice the opinion of the paper, usually undertaken by a senior editor, the “trenchant” nature of this particular leader perhaps further testifies to Lord Worfield’s “impression that there was no law of libel in the land; or, if there was, that you couldn’t say anything about a person bad enough to make a jury give damages.”
 Trenchant: cutting, sharp-edged, piercing, incisive, vigorous, energetic; often with the connotative suggestion of being acerbic, caustic, venomous.
There is a line, Kid, and we draw it: these lines are beautifully ironic, given that in them Garth professes a typically chivalric attitude toward women even as Wodehouse undermines that attitude by exposing women (in a definite instance of line crossing) both in the tone and tenor of the following interview and in the citation from Otway and subsequent commentary to close the installment.
’Gratulate you: clipped form of “I congratulate you”; Tom here is murmuring or uttering faintly or indistinctly.
Smith: this reference, though obscure and apparently merely opportunistic, can scarcely be coincidental given the close affinity of this work with the later Psmith material, particularly Psmith, Journalist; this reference to Smith and his “stuff” is the first we have in the Wodehouse canon.
Candor generally ceases with marriage: Not quite the innocent fun we expect in our Wodehouse. However, although such grit, as here, isn’t always present, or as overtly present, in Wodehouse’s later work, the Wodehousian wink is something all readers should recognize. Here a fiancé has just lied to his betrothed to escape detection of a compromising secret, after which we read this extraordinary (and extraordinarily dark) pun playing on the title of Jimmy Worfield’s weekly: “Candor generally ceases with marriage.” Of course readers need not attribute the championing of such an idea to Wodehouse—to do so, in fact, would be to oppose a critical tradition that views Plum largely as a consummate gentleman, if not a bit submissive or even dominated by the women in his life and fiction. The critical tradition does not often speak of a naughty, a properly naughty Wodehouse! And yet here in Kid Brady readers catch quite another side of the master, particularly with this proverbial knowing wink: “Candor generally ceases with marriage.” Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, will still advocate such a wink in his policy of stout denial forty years later. “Heaven knows,” he explains in Uncle Dynamite (1948), “that there are few more fervent apostles of the creed of stout denial than myself—I have been practicing it for thirty years with [Jane] . . .” (ch. IX, §ii). Somehow, however, Uncle Fred manages the knowing wink with less of a leer than readers undoubtedly catch in the above scene from “How Kid Brady Joined the Press.” In the smiling irony of Wodehouse’s fiction, advocates of stout denial are unquestionably guilty, even habitually guilty parties—think George Cyril Wellbeloved, “not in all Shropshire—and probably not in Herefordshire and South Wales—a more gifted exponent of stout denial” (Pigs Have Wings, ch. 6, §2)—and their denials run to confession every time.
 In the critical tradition, Wodehouse is generally accepted as closed-mouthed about personal affairs and beliefs; his writings, as Robert McCrum explains, “accumulate into an iceberg of self-denial and self-discipline. He is, as I’ve said, in my biography, the laureate of repression.” Overall, however, our Kid Brady serial sheds interesting perspective on the secret life of Wodehouse: his interest in the Bowery, in bohemian culture and subcultures generally, and, here, his candid diplomacy in matters of matrimonial bliss—no candor in marriage, stout denial!
the rag: pejorative term for a sensationalist or tabloid newspaper; the original edition of the OED describes “rag” as a contemptuous term for such items as “a flag, handkerchief, theatre-curtain, newspaper, paper money, etc.” Robert L. Chapman’s American Slang (1987) gives one definition as simply “a newspaper or magazine, esp. one that the speaker does not like.” [NM]
What mighty ills have not been done by . . . Woman!: from Otway’s The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage, a domestic tragedy, 1680. One of two celebrated works by Otway, and popular on the stage into the nineteenth century. Wodehouse’s characters cite this passage repeatedly, including Eustace Hignett (ch. II, §2) in The Girl on the Boat/Three Men and a Maid (1922), Mervyn Potter (ch. 13) in Barmy in Wonderland/Angel Cake, and Kipper Herring (ch. 9) in How Right You Are, Jeeves/Jeeves in the Offing (1960).
Thomas Otway: b. 3 March 1652, d. 14 April 1685, English Restoration dramatist noted for obscenity and dissolution. Though his tragic works, see above, were better received, his comedy, as was the case, Samuel Johnson tells us, with Friendship in Fashion, 1678, was “hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity.” Johnson further tells us in his Lives of the English Poets that:

Want of morals, or of decency, did not in those days exclude any man from the company of the wealthy and the gay, if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been at this time a favourite companion of the dissolute wits. But as he who desires no virtue in his companion has no virtue in himself, those whom Otway frequented had no purpose of doing more for him than to pay his reckoning. They desired only to drink and laugh: their fondness was without benevolence, and their familiarity without friendship. Men of wit, says one of Otway’s biographers, received at that time no favour from the great, but to share their riots; “from which they were dismissed again to their own narrow circumstances. Thus they languished in poverty, without the support of eminence.”

In his Session of the Poets, Rochester calls Otway “the scum of the playhouse.” See link above, page 153.
 Wodehouse’s interest in Otway again revels a side of his aesthetics seldom noted or explored. Indeed, as newspaperman and pugilist comment upon dramatic literature (and misogyny generally), readers might almost fancy early Wodehouse conjuring his ideal audience: practical men of the world who appreciate the practical in literature rather than the polemic or obtuse. If so, then Wodehouse establishes his noted departure from modernist writings even at the outset of his career.

—Notes by Troy Gregory, with contributions from Neil Midkiff

Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine had extraneous opening quotation marks on paragraphs beginning “Candor created a considerable sensation”, “Garth clicked with his tongue doubtfully”, and “From the direction of the stairs”
Missing closing quotation marks added to “no one else gets through” and “No, no, it’s nothing”
Magazine had “Only this it different”; corrected to “is”