Mike and Psmith

This was the first appearance of Psmith. He came into two other books, Psmith in the City and Psmith, Journalist, before becoming happily married in Leave It to Psmith, but I have always thought that he was most at home in this story of English school life. To give full play to his bland clashings with ity he needs to have authority to clash with, and there is none more absolute than that of the masters at an English school.

Psmith has the distinction of being the only one of my numerous characters to be drawn from a living model. A cousin of mine was at Eton with the son of D'Oyly Carte, the man who produced the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and one night he told me about this peculiar schoolboy who dressed fastidiously and wore a monocle and who, when one of the masters inquired after his health, replied "Sir, I grow thinnah and thinnah." It was all the information I required in order to start building him in a star part.

If anyone is curious as to what became of Mike and Psmith in later life, I can supply the facts. Mike, always devoted to country life, ran a prosperous farm. Psmith, inevitably perhaps, became an equally prosperous counselor at the bar like Perry Mason, specializing, like Perry, in appearing for the defense.

I must apologize, as I did in the preface to Mike at Wrykyn, for all the cricket in this book. It was unavoidable. There is, however, not quite so much of it this time.