The Novel Life of PG Wodehouse, page 1
Title Page
THE NOVEL LIFE OF PG WODEHOUSE
Roderick Easdale
Publisher Information
This edition published in 2014 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2014 Roderick Easdale
The right of Roderick Easdale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Dedication
For my mother and father
Acknowledgments
Chris Pearson for editing my original manuscript; my mother for introducing me to PG Wodehouse, and my eldest brother, Peter, for allowing me to raid his bookshelves when I was young—and not-so-young; Elizabeth Boardman and Dr Michael Stansfield for helping with my research, also my elder brother, Andrew, for the same reason. Stuart Watson and Pam Rintoul for their help, Dr Julie Ford for all her support, Tony Ring for reading my initial manuscript and Emma Jane Connolly for the cover illustration. This work was first published by Superscript in 2004.
Traitor?
During the Second World War PG Wodehouse broadcast over the German radio. This bald fact came to dominate everything to do with the man and his works. It skewed appreciation and understanding of his works and cast a cloud over the rest of his life.
For broadcasting on enemy radio, albeit that his talks were intended for neutral America, Wodehouse was denounced as a traitor, a quisling, a fascist, a simpleton, a poor writer, weak-willed, selfish - it seems anything that could be chucked at him in those feverish times was. Few of his detractors had actually heard the broadcasts. But that did not matter. Indeed, ignorance on a subject often serves to clarify someone’s views upon it. The man put up to demolish Wodehouse’s character on BBC radio had not heard the broadcasts. But this did not prevent - in fact, it probably facilitated - his vituperative decimation of Wodehouse’s character on the wireless. Nor did this attack prevent him from becoming good friends with Wodehouse a few years after the end of the war.
Wodehouse was reviled, both during the war and after. Critics confused the man and the message, and judged the work by the worker, some pronouncing him No Longer Funny. His work was deemed by others to be, to use a modern term, politically incorrect. In this, his critics showed as little understanding of his works as they did of the man and the circumstances which lead him to make his broadcasts. One such critic was George Mikes, who wrote in Eight Humorists, published in 1954:
Mr PG Wodehouse is the court jester to the upper classes. He is often irreverent - this is the privilege of court jesters - but there is no doubt about his basic loyalties and, at the bottom of his heart, he is always full of admiration for his titled fools… Mr Wodehouse is supposed to be a critic of, or at least, a caricaturist of the upper classes but, in fact, he is their sycophant, just like the gossip-writers in the evening papers… His childish snobbishness, however, is always out there and always irritating. He accepts the position of ‘our betters’ in society. Jeeves is a feudal figure - one of the greatest virtues being his fidelity.
In his analysis, Mikes makes error upon error. He misunderstands Jeeves’ motives - and thus cannot grasp a lot of the comedy in the Jeeves stories - and in claiming that Wodehouse is ‘always full of admiration for his titled fools’ he misses the point. But in doing this, Mikes is not alone. There is a strain of opinion that holds that because Wodehouse wrote of the upper classes he must be on their side. By which logic, detective story writers writing about murderers are on the side of the killers.
Lord Emsworth is Wodehouse’s most redoubtable figure from the aristocracy, appearing in eleven novels and several short stories. Lord Emsworth has mutated over the course of these chronicles into a sort of hero. Perhaps this is out of readers’ sympathy for him, bullied as he is by the female members of his family. Maybe, too, Wodehouse softened his views towards this character as he got older. Indeed, later in life, Wodehouse liked to identify himself with this bumbling old man put upon by female relatives (as with much to do with Wodehouse, it would be unwise to take this at face value). But the portrayal of Lord Emsworth is not all that sympathetic. In the novels, he is normally one of the supporting cast; it is in the short stories that he is more often given a starring role. The first of these to be published was The Custody Of The Pumpkin in the Saturday Evening Post, and then The Strand, in 1924. Lord Emsworth sacks his head gardener over an argument as to whether his niece can stay with him and ‘No tinge of remorse did he feel at the thought that Angus McAllister had served him faithfully for ten years. Nor did it cross his mind that he might miss McAllister.’
The sub-plot of this short story concerns Freddie’s engagement. When Lord Emsworth learns that his younger son Freddie - and ‘practically any behaviour on the part of his son Frederick had the power to irritate him’ - is to marry and move abroad, he is puzzled as he ‘could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster’, but above all, he is delighted: ‘The getting rid of Freddie, which he himself had been unable to achieve in twenty-six years, this godlike dog-biscuit manufacturer had accomplished in less than a week.’
In The Custody Of The Pumpkin, Lord Emsworth, as a representative of the British aristocracy, is painted in an unflattering light. Over the course of the books the social critique lessens, but he is never an admirable figure. He is weak, cares little for anyone else and evades his responsibilities. Of these characteristics, the second is the more damning. Asked whether his pig matters more to him than his son, he is surprised at the question: obviously the pig is more important. We, the outsiders, can laugh - but would we want a father like that?
‘Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.’ [The Custody Of The Pumpkin]
The Custody of the Pumpkin was collected into Blandings Castle And Elsewhere, as the opening story. The second story in this collection is Lord Emsworth Acts For The Best. In this his butler, Beach, decides to tender his resignation because Lord Emsworth has grown a beard:
‘That beard is weakening his lordship’s position throughout the entire countryside. Are you aware that at the recent Sunday school treat I heard cries of ‘Beaver’?’
‘No.’
‘Yes! And the spirit of mockery and disrespect will spread. And, what is more, that beard is alienating the best elements in the County.’
It is one of the aspects of Wodehouse’s world that the aristocracy is supported from below. It is the butler, not the lord, who cares about his lordship’s place in society. It is Jeeves who is more alive to what is proper in Bertie Wooster’s attire than the wearer. In Something Fresh, the servants are shown to be more concerned with subtle divisions in rank and status than those above stairs. Beach looks down upon the lower classes and deplores that ‘the modern tendency of the Lower Classes to get above themselves is becoming more marked every day.’ When Bertie’s valet, then going under the name Brinkley, tries to murder him in a drunken rage he still dutifully calls him ‘Sir’.
When, in Lord Emsworth And The Girl Friend, an emboldened Lord Emsworth defeats McAllister in argument and suggests that if he is not happy then he could tender his resignation,
It had never occurred to him that his employer would voluntarily suggest that he sought another position, and now that he had suggested it, Angus McAllister disliked the idea very much. Blandings Castle was in his bones. Elsewhere, he would feel in exile.
Another of the themes in Wodehouse’s fiction is how the aristocracy themselves are trapped by their social position. Lord Emsworth has no real desire to be in the situation he is. He wants no responsibility to the neighbourhood, no role in one of Britain’s two legislative assemblies, and is only ever recorded as attending Parliament for the ceremonial opening, never of actually voting in it. His role in society, through an accident of birth, obliges him to have responsibilities he does not care for. One can either criticise him for having no sense of civic duty, or sympathise with him for his accident of birth. Would Lord Emsworth not be happier living the simpler life of a pigman-cum-gardener? In some of the later Wodehouse works, though not in the Blandings series, the aristocracy are seen as being literally imprisoned in their grand houses. They do not want them, finding them too expensive to keep up and uncomfortable to live in, but they are forced to remain there unless they can offload to a buyer wanting to buy into an empty dream, or a dream which can only be realised through the injection of money from the New World.
Willoughby, the younger son, who after the fashion of younger sons had been thrust out into the world to earn his living, was now in the highest tax bracket: Crispin, the heir, was forced to take in paying guests in order to make both ends meet: and now there was a yawning between them of two hundred and three pounds six shillings and
‘Who wants a house nowadays that’s miles from anywhere and about the size of Buckingham Palace? And look at the way it eats up money. Repairs, repairs, everlasting repairs - the roof, the stairs, the ceilings, the plumbing, there’s no end to it. And that’s just inside. Outside, trees need pruning, hedges need clipping, acres of grass that doesn’t cut itself, and the lake smelling to heaven if the weeds aren’t cleaned out every second Thursday. And the tenants. Those farmers sit up nights trying to think of new ways for you to spend money on them. It’s enough to make a man dotty. I remember, when I was a boy, Father used to take me round the park at Mellingham and say “Some day, Crispin, all this will be yours.” He ought to have added “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul”.‘ [The Girl In Blue]
In A Damsel In Distress Lord Marshmoreton regrets his accession to the peerage, and what it has transformed him into:
‘A lot of silly nonsense!’ grumbled the earl.
‘What is?’
‘This foolery of titles and aristocracy. Silly fetish-worship! One man’s as good as another…
Damned silly nonsense! When I was a boy I wanted to be an engine driver. When I was a young man, I was a Socialist and hadn’t an idea except to work for my living and make a name for myself. I was going to the colonies. Canada. The fruit farm was actually bought. Bought and paid for!’ He brooded a moment on that long-lost fruit farm. ‘My father was a younger son. And then my uncle must go and break his neck hunting, and the baby, poor little chap, got croup or something… And there I was, saddled with the title, and all my plans gone up in smoke… Silly nonsense! Silly nonsense!’ He bit the end of a cigar. ‘And you can’t stand up against it,’ he went on ruefully. ‘It saps you. It’s like some dammed drug. I fought against it as long as I could, but it is no use. I’m as big a snob as any of them now. I’m afraid to do what I want to do. Always thinking of the family dignity. I haven’t taken a free step for twenty-five years.’
In A Damsel In Distress, it is Lady Caroline who is the grande dame determined to thwart young love:
‘Money,’ resumed Lady Caroline, ‘is immaterial. Maud is in no position to be obliged to marry a rich man. What makes the thing impossible is that Mr Bevan is nobody. He comes from nowhere. He has no social standing whatsoever.’
‘Don’t see it,’ said Lord Marshmoreton. ‘The fellow’s a thoroughly decent fellow. That’s all that matters.’
There is a mistaken view that Wodehouse’s work contains no satire. When the book opens, Lady Caroline is going away from the castle for a night so as to give a short talk to the Social Progress League at Lewisham.
Wodehouse always sided with those who challenge snobbishness. If the leading lady of the family forbids a marriage to someone unsuitable, according to her narrow view of what is acceptable - which is inevitably money, breeding, or both - it is guaranteed that they will be overcome. In Heavy Weather and Summer Lightning the females of the family are opposed to the chorus girl Sue Brown marrying Ronnie Fish. However, as Wodehouse makes clear, it is Sue Brown who is the catch, not Ronnie Fish, nephew of Lord Emsworth. Ronnie is lucky to get her, and probably does not deserve her. Wodehouse makes this clear, too.
You do not have to snarl to insult. That Wodehouse writes with charm and wit and with a smile on his face does not prevent him from putting the boot in on occasion, albeit elegantly and gently. Too much can be made of this. Wodehouse is not a writer principally concerned with a message. He wrote to entertain, to amuse, progressively so. But if one is determined to find a message in his work, it is most definitely not one of uncritical worship of the upper classes.
But Wodehouse’s analysis was not prescriptive. If he could be censorious of the inherited political class, he certainly had little time for the elected political class. In Psmith, Journalist, Psmith hunts for a particular slum landlord. When he finds his man, it is a Mr Waring, who is standing for alderman in New York. But Psmith is not interested in exposing him, only in getting the tenement improved by Mr Waring as ‘it seems to me that it doesn’t much matter who gets elected…the other candidates appear to be a pretty fair contingent of blighters.’
In Uneasy Money, Wrench the butler, who had previously been in service to Dowager Duchess of Waveney, is now in service to Lady Wetherby, who has a pet monkey, Eustace. We are told:
He disapproved of Eustace. The Dowager Duchess of Waveney, though she kept open house for members of Parliament, would have drawn the line at monkeys.
Often, as with this example, Wodehouse’s comments on politicians are purely abusive. When he justifies his contempt it normally surrounds their hypocrisy. In Hot Water the plot revolves around Senator Opal, eminent as a ‘dry’ senator who had proposed severe legislation in support of this aim, trying to retrieve a letter he wrote to his bootlegger. During the action of the story, the holidaying senator goes to a hotel each afternoon to have a snifter.
In Jill The Reckless, Wodehouse paints one of his most unflattering characters in the MP Sir Derek Underhill. Interestingly, the aristocracy are criticised for not taking their positions seriously, but Underhill gets it in the neck for viewing his position too earnestly. Seeking to condemn the MP, Wodehouse gives the words to Freddie Rooke, one of the biggest stage dudes to find his way into Wodehouse’s fiction. Underhill decides not to marry Jill, despite having travelled to New York to reclaim her after he had broken their engagement, because she is in the chorus:
‘I have to be sensible,’ he said chaffing as the indignity of his position intruded more and more. ‘You know what it would mean… Paragraphs in all the papers… photographs… the news cabled to England… everybody recording it and misunderstanding… I’ve got my career to think of… It would cripple me…’
His voice trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. Then Freddie burst into speech. His good-natured face was hard with unwonted scorn. Its cheerful vacuity had changed to stony contempt. For the second time in the evening the jolly old scales had fallen from Freddie’s good old eyes, and, as Jill had done, he saw Derek as he was.
‘My sainted aunt!’ he said slowly. ‘So that’s it, what? Well I’ve thought a dashed lot of you, as you know. I’ve always looked up to you as a bit of a nib and wished I was like you. But, great Scott! If that’s the sort of chap you are, I’m dashed glad I’m not! I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and think how unlike you I am and pat myself on the back! Ronny Devereux was perfectly right. A tick’s a tick, and that’s all there is to say about it. Good old Ronny told me what you are, and, like a silly ass, I wasted a lot of time trying to make him believe you weren’t that sort of chap at all. It’s no good standing there like your mother,’ said Freddie firmly. ‘This is where we jolly well part brass-rags! If we ever meet again, I’ll trouble you not to speak to me, for I have got a reputation to keep up!’
But the politician Wodehouse is most famous for having a go at is Roderick Spode, a character based upon Sir Oswald Mosley. Wodehouse would incorporate actual people onto his stories under a loose disguise, such as the preacher Billy Sunday appearing as Jimmy Munday.
Sir Oswald Mosley, once a Conservative supporter, then a Labour MP and minister, set up the British Union of Fascists in 1932. When he did so the Evening Standard ridiculed him as ‘an obscure member of the disappearing and politically impotent landowning classes.’ These are the people Wodehouse made a career in writing about.
Mosley asked Major-General JFC Fuller, formerly chief of staff to the British Tank Corps, to produce a report on the way that the BUF should be reorganised. Part of this report stated: ‘Though the wearing of the blackshirt appeals to young people, it must not be overlooked that this is still an old country, very solid, stable and matter of fact. It is still instinctively a feudal country.’ This instinctive nature of British society was something Wodehouse also understood, and mined effectively in his plots.
Using again the technique whereby, for impact, the condemnation of a character is given to someone not normally fluent with the spoken word or deep of thought, he gives the words to Bertie Wooster.
‘The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine that it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”‘ [The Code Of The Woosters]
