A Wodehouse Miscellany | Page 8

telephone booth. Trouble
begins with the third, a long dog-leg hole through the kitchen into the dining-room. This
hole is well trapped with table-legs, kitchen utensils, and a moving hazard in the person
of Clarence the cat, who is generally wandering about the fairway. The hole is under the
glass-and-china cupboard, where you are liable to be bunkered if you loft your
approach-shot excessively.
The fourth and fifth holes call for no comment. They are without traps, the only danger
being that you may lose a stroke through hitting the maid if she happens to be coming
down the back stairs while you are taking a mashie-shot. This is a penalty under the local
rule.
The sixth is the indispensable water-hole. It is short, but tricky. Teeing off from just
outside the bathroom door, you have to loft the ball over the side of the bath, holing out
in the little vent pipe, at the end where the water runs out.
The seventh is the longest hole on the course. Starting at the entrance of the best bedroom,
a full drive takes you to the head of the stairs, whence you will need at least two more
strokes to put you dead on the pin in the drawing-room. In the drawing-room the fairway
is trapped with photograph frames--with glass, complete--these serving as casual water:
and anyone who can hole out on the piano in five or under is a player of class. Bogey is
six, and I have known even such a capable exponent of the game as my Uncle Reginald,
who is plus two on his home links on Park Avenue, to take twenty-seven at the hole. But
on that occasion he had the misfortune to be bunkered in a photograph of my Aunt Clara
and took no fewer than eleven strokes with his niblick to extricate himself from it.
The eighth and ninth holes are straightforward, and can be done in two and three
respectively, provided you swing easily and avoid the canary's cage. Once trapped there,
it is better to give up the hole without further effort. It is almost impossible to get out in
less than fifty-six, and after you have taken about thirty the bird gets visibly annoyed.

THE ALARMING SPREAD OF POETRY
To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we are
becoming a nation of minor poets. In the good old days poets were for the most part
confined to garrets, which they left only for the purpose of being ejected from the offices

of magazines and papers to which they attempted to sell their wares. Nobody ever
thought of reading a book of poems unless accompanied by a guarantee from the
publisher that the author had been dead at least a hundred years. Poetry, like wine, certain
brands of cheese, and public buildings, was rightly considered to improve with age; and
no connoisseur could have dreamed of filling himself with raw, indigestible verse, warm
from the maker.
Today, however, editors are paying real money for poetry; publishers are making a profit
on books of verse; and many a young man who, had he been born earlier, would have
sustained life on a crust of bread, is now sending for the manager to find out how the
restaurant dares try to sell a fellow champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut.
Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of the community. Our children grow
to adolescence with the feeling that they can become poets instead of working. Many an
embryo bill clerk has been ruined by the heady knowledge that poems are paid for at the
rate of a dollar a line. All over the country promising young plasterers and rising young
motormen are throwing up steady jobs in order to devote themselves to the new
profession. On a sunny afternoon down in Washington Square one's progress is positively
impeded by the swarms of young poets brought out by the warm weather. It is a horrible
sight to see those unfortunate youths, who ought to be sitting happily at desks writing
"Dear Sir, Your favor of the tenth inst. duly received and contents noted. In reply we beg
to state...." wandering about with their fingers in their hair and their features distorted
with the agony of composition, as they try to find rhymes to "cosmic" and "symbolism."
And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar Lee Masters and
invents vers libre. It is too early yet to judge the full effects of this man's horrid discovery,
but there is no doubt that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces over which none
can have any control. All those decent restrictions which used to check poets have
vanished,