page_title: Reggie Pepper
section_title: "Concealed Art"
hierarchical_section_title: Reggie Pepper / The Reggie Pepper stories / "Concealed Art"
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration by Will Grefé for the short story "Concealed Art" written by P. G. Wodehouse. Published in Pictorial Review, July 1915.
context_page_description: Reginald "Reggie" Pepper is a fictional character who appears in seven short stories by English author P. G. Wodehouse. Reggie is a young man-about-town who gets drawn into trouble trying to help his pals. He is considered to be an early prototype for Bertie Wooster, who, along with his valet Jeeves, is one of Wodehouse's most famous creations.
  The Reggie Pepper stories were originally published in magazines. Four were included in My Man Jeeves, and the other stories appeared in later miscellaneous collections. The stories were not all collected in one short story collection until they were featured, along with several early Jeeves stories, in the 1997 collection Enter Jeeves.
  Two of the four Reggie Pepper stories published in My Man, Jeeves were later rewritten by Wodehouse as Jeeves stories, and one was rewritten as a Mr. Mulliner story.
context_section_description: UK: Strand Magazine, February 1915
  US: Pictorial Review, July 1915
  Plot
  Reggie has a friend named Archibald "Archie" Ferguson, an artist whose abstract works are ahead of his time, though Reggie finds them ugly. Archie has not sold any paintings. He confesses to Reggie that to earn a living, he illustrates slapstick cartoons about the "Doughnut" family in a magazine called Funny Slices. Reggie enjoys the cartoons and congratulates Archie, but Archie is afraid of telling his fiancée, the spiritual poet Eunice Nugent, that he draws cartoons.
  Meeting Eunice, Reggie quickly perceives that she is indeed serious and spiritual. He thinks Archie should not tell her about the cartoons and suggests that Archie claim his money comes from B. and O. P. Rails, a company that Archie really has invested in. Archie follows this advice and soon Archie and Eunice get married. Around seven months later, Archie comes to Reggie in distress. The value of B. O. and P. stock has plummeted, and Archie has lost his savings, but his true problem is that he cannot explain his continuing income to Eunice. Archie is unwilling to tell her about the money he makes from cartoons, so the couple lives off Eunice's small private means and moves to a less expensive residence.
  Reggie thinks hard about the problem, his manner becoming so distrait as a result that he inadvertently hurts the feelings of his valet Wilberforce, which Reggie makes up for by tipping him two pounds. Eventually, Reggie comes up with an idea. He calls Archie and tells him to claim he obtained his money by selling his painting "The Coming of Summer" to the American millionaire J. Bellingwood Brackett, who lives in London and often buys artwork. Archie follows through on this plan and decides to tell Eunice he was paid two thousand pounds, a remarkably large sum.
  A newspaper reports that Brackett paid two thousand pounds for Archie's painting. Eunice had told the papers about the story. Renshaw Liggett, Brackett's representative, visits the Ferguson home to tell Archie to publicly deny the story. Liggett leaves after Archie agrees. He reveals to Eunice that his money comes from the Doughnut cartoons, which he shows to her. Surprising Reggie and Archie, Eunice finds the cartoon hilarious. She admits that she lied about her private means and is in fact an advertisement copywriter. Archie and Eunice share a heartfelt embrace, and Reggie sidles out.
  In the American edition, the story takes place in New York instead of London and Archie's painting is reportedly sold for ten thousand dollars rather than two thousand pounds.
caption: Archie and Reggie Pepper in "Concealed Art", illustrated by Will Grefé (Pictorial Review, 1915)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2012:09:29 07:07:10", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5683", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "619"}