What? P. G. Wodehouse… ghost story? Are we maybe in an alternate universe? Should we allow… [lowered voice] comedy?

Think of it as something light and refreshing after the challenging perplexities of Henry James. Purists will not allow “Honeysuckle Cottage” into the genre, but … OK, I will.

We begin with Mr. Mulliner, a regular and well-known raconteur at the Angler’s Rest, who has a limitless supply of relatives about whom he can tell a tale, and this evening’s tale is about his cousin, Mr. James Rodman, a writer of sensational mystery stories, i.e., “revolvers, cries in the night, missing papers, mysterious Chinamen, and dead bodies — with or without a gash in the throat.” James learns that an aunt, Leila J. Pinckney, writer of romances, has passed away and left him her home, Honeysuckle Cottage. Nice! No sooner has James moved in, though, than a strange influence seems to be exerting itself, causing him to insert romantic, sentimental heroines into his work-in-progress. Where he intends to have the hero’s door open and a dying man fall in, gasping “Tell Scotland Yard that the blue beetle is –” and then expiring, he writes

Then the noise came again, faint but unmistakeable — a soft scratching at the outer panel … he tiptoed to the door; then, flinging it suddenly open, he stood there, his weapon poised.
On the mat stood the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld … then with a pretty, roguish look of reproof, [she] shook a dainty forefinger at him.

It is, of course, the spirit of the dead aunt, haunting the cottage and spreading her baleful, romantic influence over her nephew, slowly driving him, not insane, a la “Turn of the Screw,” but to an extreme of soupiness. Will James escape the creeping sentimentality — or will he be inexorably drawn into an engagement with the sweet, wholesome girl who shows up on his doorstep?

You can find this story in Meet Mr. Mulliner, and probably a number of other collections. And if you haven’t read anything by Wodehouse, you should not stop at that book, but go on and read Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), Code of the Woosters (1938), Joy in the Morning (1946), and The Mating Season (1949) — and as many others as you can get your hands on. Enjoy!

P.S., for an excellent introductory essay, see “What Ho! My Hero, P. G. Wodehouse” by Stephen Fry, here.