P.G. Wodehouse in his Own Words
Page 8
‘She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.’ (‘The Pride of the Woosters is Wounded’ from The Inimitable Jeeves). Honoria Glossop’s was ‘the sound of the Scotch Express going under a bridge.’ (‘Jeeves and the Greasy Bird’ from Plum Pie) … ‘a lion-tamer making an authoritative announcement to one of the troupe’ … ‘like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge’ (‘The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy’ from Carry On, Jeeves). Or ‘waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast’ … while Madeline Bassett – ‘one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy’ – ‘laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh that had got her so disliked by the better element.’ (The Code of the Woosters). Though, to be fair, if one is in love with the girl, a silvery laugh can also evoke ‘the sound ice makes in a jug of beer on a hot day in August’ (The Girl in Blue).
And Wodehouse women were inclined to be high minded …
Florence Craye was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose.
(‘Jeeves Takes Charge’ from Carry On, Jeeves)
… and, of course, by definition, they were all totally illogical …
‘Is it quite hopeless to reason with you?’
‘Quite. I’m a blonde.’
(Baa, Baa, Black Sheep)
*
‘Could you tell me the correct time?’
‘Precisely eleven.’
‘Coo!’ said the girl. ‘I must hurry, or I shall be late. I’m meeting a gentleman friend on the pier at half-past ten.’
(‘Bramley is So Bracing’ from Nothing Serious)
*
Veronica … is just a sweet simple English girl with about as much brain as would make a jay bird fly crooked, and that’s the way I want her!
(Galahad at Blandings)
*
Nature had not given her more than about as much brain as would fit comfortably into an asprin bottle, feeling no doubt that it was better not to overdo the thing …
(Galahad at Blandings)
… quite likely whimsical …
She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hand over her husband’s eyes, as he is crawling into breakfast with a morning head, and says: ‘Guess who?’
(The Code of the Woosters)
… unrealistically romantic …
Betty was one of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for hero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in the nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has to take the best she can get.
(‘A Mixed Threesome’ from ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert’)
… not to mention devious …
He had studied Woman, and he knew that when Woman gets into a tight place her first act is to shovel the blame off onto the nearest male.
(‘Trouble Down at Tudsleigh’ from Young Men in Spats)
*
The male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and doormice.
(Jeeves in the Offing)
*
She made one of those foolish remarks which do so much to confirm a man in his conviction that women as a sex should be suppressed.
(Joy in the Morning)
But perhaps the most damning verdict comes from that serial fiancé, Bertie Wooster:
The more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter the earth. Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn’t do … What a crew! What a crew! I mean to say, what a crew! … I think that there ought to be a law, something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.
The whole fact of the matter is that all this modern emancipation of women has resulted in them getting it up their noses and not giving a damn what they do. It was not like this in Queen Victoria’s day. The Prince Consort would have had a word to say …
(The Code of the Woosters)
*
Women may be ministering angels when pain and anguish wring the brow: but if at times she sees a chance to prod the loved one and watch him squirm, she hates to miss it.
(The Small Bachelor)
*
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – girls are rummy. Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being d. than the m.
(Right Ho, Jeeves)
All in all, this love business was overrated …
‘Love is a wonderful thing.’
Mr Todhunter’s ample mouth curled sardonically.
‘When you’ve seen as much of life as I have,’ he replied, ‘you’d rather have a cup of tea.’
(Sam the Sudden)
… and as for marriage …
‘I nearly married for love when I was young and foolish, but I came out of the ether in time.’
(The Girl in Blue)
*
Warm though the morning was, he shivered, as only a confirmed bachelor gazing into the naked face of matrimony can shiver.
(The Old Reliable)
*
‘Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir, it merely mummifies the corpse.’
(The Small Bachelor)
All this and much more in the same vein in the fiction, where the conventions of the printed page allow the reader to stand back and appreciate the individual lines being placed one on top of the other.
But it must be remembered that throughout the early part of his career, at least, he was operating in parallel in other very different conventions – those of the straight play and the musical comedy.
On the stage, for instance, effects had to be much broader. The almost ‘musical’ construction of much of Wodehouse’s prose – and his imagery in particular – would not translate. His work (to use a favourite Wodehouse word) would have to be a good deal more ‘raw’. Writing to Guy Bolton in 1939 he says – ‘I believe that if we could work up a reasonably dirty Jeeves story, [producer] George Abbott would do it … but a Jeeves plot that is all right for a novel isn’t rough enough for the New York stage.’
Which meant that the dialogue had to be ‘rougher’ and more cynical, too …
‘My motto is “Love and Let Love” – with the one stipulation that people who love in glasshouses should breathe on the windows.’
(Monica in Come On, Jeeves)
*
‘Love is like life insurance. The older you are when you start it, the more it costs.’
(Daniel in Don’t Listen, Ladies)
*
‘Some men decorate their home with old masters and others with old mistresses.’
(Michael in Don’t Listen, Ladies)
*
‘I’m going to pay you the rarest compliment a woman can pay a man. I’m going to tell you the truth.’
(Lady Maud in the play, A Damsel in Distress)
*
DR SALLY: Now tell me about your sex-life.
BILL: Well, naturally, I have had experiences, like other men. I admit it. There have been women in my life.
DR SALLY: (at stethoscope) Say ‘Ninety-nine’.
BILL: Not half as many as that!
(Good Morning, Bill)
The world of musical comedy was more romantic and Wodehouse was equally capable of turning on the charm. In Oh, Boy! (1917) George and Lou Ellen wonder what might have been, had they met earlier. In a song called ‘I Never Knew About You’. George sings:
Life might have been Heaven,
If I, then aged seven,
Had met you when you were three.
We’d have made mud pies like affinities,
We’d have known what rapture may be.
I’d have let you feed my r
abbit
Till the thing became a habit, dear!
But I never knew about you
And you never knew about me.
to which Lou Ellen replies:
I was often kissed ‘’neath the mistletoe’
By small boys excited with tea.
If I’d known that you existed,
I’d have scratched them and resisted, dear,
But I never knew about you
And you never knew about me.
Wodehouse was most at home when he was talking in simple, colloquial language about the way ordinary people felt in their ordinary, realisable lives. So the man of a girl’s dreams probably won’t ride up on a white charger and carry her off – but the boy next door may steal her heart anyway.
In ‘What I’m Longing to Say’ from Leave it to Jane (1917):
Somehow, whenever I’m with you I never
Can say what I’m longing to say.
When it’s too late and you’re not near me,
I can find words, but you’re not there to hear me.
That’s why, when we are together
I just talk of the weather,
Simply because,
When I’m with you, I never
Can say what I’m longing to say.
… or in ‘A Pal Like You’ from Oh, Boy!:
Dozens and dozens of girls I have met,
Sisters and cousins of men in my set;
Tried to be cheerful
And give them an earful
Of soft sort of talk, but,
Oh, gosh! the strain – something fearful!
Always found, after a minute or two,
Just to be civil was all I could do.
Now I know why I
Could never be contented.
I was looking for a pal like you.
And in a rare lapse into romantic sincerity – admittedly in an early work – Wodehouse the novelist shows himself perfectly capable of describing the first, fine careless rapture:
Just when the outstanding change had taken place, it would have been beyond him to say. It had come so gradually and imperceptibly, first one feature then another ceasing to offend the eye – here a leg shortening to a decently human length, there a mop of amber hair miraculously tidying itself. He supposed vaguely that it was always this way with girls.
(Bill the Conqueror)
* * * *
In his best-known song, ‘Bill’ – cut from two earlier shows before it stopped the show in the 1927 Showboat – Wodehouse makes the ordinary extraordinary, as the heroine sings:
I used to dream that I would discover
The perfect lover
Some day:
I knew I’d recognise him
If ever he came round my way:
I always used to fancy then
He’d be one of the godlike kind of men,
With a giant brain and a noble head
Like the heroes bold
In the books I read.
He’s just my Bill,
He has no gifts at all:
A motor car
He cannot steer
And it seems clear
Whenever he dances,
His partner takes chances.
Oh, I can’t explain
It’s surely not his brain
That makes me thrill.
I love him
Because he’s – I don’t know –
Because he’s just my Bill
* * * *
Of course, one thing all comedy – musical or otherwise – has in common is the romantic conceit so concisely expressed in the Irving Berlin song ‘A Man Chases a Girl (Until She Catches Him)’ and Wodehouse rang many lyrical changes on it.
For example, the girls in a Wodehouse show were invariably versed in the more traditional feminine wiles. In ‘A Little Bit of Ribbon’ from Oh, Boy! Jane sings:
For a little bit of ribbon
And a little bit of lace,
And a little bit of silk that clings,
When together they are linking,
Always sets a fellow winking,
And they also set him thinking things.
It’s a useful combination for
Assisting a flirtation
If you want to get a man beneath your spell,
And although I’m hardly twenty,
I believe I could do plenty –
With a little bit of ribbon,
And a little bit of lace,
And a little bit of silk as well.
Somehow one can’t hear Madeline Bassett or Honoria Glossop singing those lyrics.
Nor are the men recognisable from the fiction. With the exception of Bertie, the young men in Wodehouse are pathetically anxious to tie the knot and only the hard hearts of those who hold the purse strings stand in the way. In the show lyrics the situation is usually reversed:
It’s a hard, hard world for a man,
For he tries to be wise and remain aloof and chilly,
But along comes something feminine and frilly,
So what’s the use?
Though long you’ve been a gay and giddy bachelor,
There’ll come on the scene a girl not like the rest.
You’ll notice something in her eye that fills you with dismay;
You’ll find that when you’re with her you can’t think what to say.
That’s a sure, sure sign
You have ceased to be a rover
And your single days are over.
You had best begin rehearsing
For the better-and-the-worsing …
(Oh, Lady! Lady!!, 1918)
But women haven’t any sense of pity
For, if they had, the bride would stop and think,
She’d say – ‘Why should I marry this poor fathead?
What have I got against the wretched gink?’
But no! She fills the church with her relations,
Who would grab him by the coat tails if he ran;
All his pals have been soft-soaped,
And his best man he’s been doped.
Women haven’t any mercy on a man.
(The Girl Behind the Gun, 1918)
The Hen-Pecked Male as counterbalance to the Mother-in-Law joke.
For some girl’s going to come and grab you
Sooner or later! Just wait!
Yes, in a while
With frozen smile
Along the aisle you’ll stagger –
That wedding cake will soon be sitting grimly
Upon the plate.
(Sitting Pretty, 1924)
* * * *
If one had to guess, it would seem probable that Wodehouse’s remarks on love and marriage are a cocktail that was one part autobiography to nine parts the established comic tradition that provided the ‘good laugh’. Certainly, one can hardly see him as the ‘rover’ whose ‘single days are over’ but neither would marriage have seemed a threat. Until he met Ethel Rowley it had probably never really crossed his mind as a real life option.
As far as offspring were concerned, fact, again, probably preceded fiction. Babies were most certainly not on the bill of fare – but children … fully-grown and dribble-free … well …
‘Jeeves, I wish I had a daughter. I wonder what the procedure is.’
‘Marriage is, I believe, considered the preliminary step, sir.’
(‘Bertie Changes His Mind’ from Carry On, Jeeves)
Marriage had always appalled him, but there was this to be said for it, that married people had daughters.
(Jill the Reckless)
For Wodehouse marriage proved to be both the preliminary and the ultimate step, since in marrying Ethel he acquired as part of the package the ten-year-old step-daughter, Leonora. It was a second case of love at first sight for the confirmed ex-bachelor and within weeks of meeting the girl who become his beloved ‘Snorky’ he had adopted her.
1ST INTERMISSION
Writing … and Writers
From my earli
est years I had always wanted to be a writer. I started turning out the stuff at the age of five. (What I was doing before that, I don’t remember. Just loafing, I suppose.)
*
I sometimes wonder if I really am a writer. When I look at the sixty-odd books in the shelf with my name on them, and reflect that 10 million of them have been sold, it amazes me that I can have done it. I don’t know anything, and I seem incapable of learning … I feel I’ve been fooling the public for fifty years.
(Letter to William Townend, 18 November 1952)
*
Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realise the heights to which he has climbed.
It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though … humanity will remain a message short.
* * * *
Just why a writer writes has been debated endlessly and inconclusively. With Wodehouse it was a joyful compulsion. There was simply nothing he ever wanted to do more.
Between 1901 and 1910 his work was published in around forty UK periodicals and – as we have seen – during that time he also began to make inroads into the US market. From 1902 to 1908 he kept a notebook in which he listed his earnings – ‘It’s very interesting, though I find it slightly depressing, as it shows the depths I used to descend to in order to get the occasional ten-and-six. Gosh, what a lot of slush I wrote! … What a curse one’s early work is. It keeps popping up.’
Early on – like a lot of other fledgling writers – he slavishly followed J. M. Barrie’s advice to write exclusively what editors wanted to publish. ‘I avoided the humorous story, which was where my inclinations lay, and went in exclusively for the mushy sentiment which, judging from the magazines, was the thing most likely to bring a sparkle into an editor’s eyes. It never worked.’ (Later he liked to quote Barrie’s contrary dictum – ‘that he had made all his money out of smiles, not laughter’.)