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93 pages

English

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Was PG Wodehouse really a traitor, a naive simpleton dominated by his wife and out of touch with the world around him? This book challenges many of the accepted wisdoms about PG Wodehouse and his work and skilfully entwines details of Wodehouse's life with an analysis of his work to show that, contrary to popular belief, many of the scenarios, characters and issues he wrote about came from his own, sometimes bitter, personal experience. It shows, for instance, how Bertie Wooster is a much misunderstood figure in literature and shared many of the characteristics and life story of PG Wodehouse himself. Easdale also gives fresh insight into PG Wodehouse's alleged 'treachery' during World War II and his motives for making five radio broadcasts from Germany which were to cast a shadow over the rest of his life. 'Easdale often finds an original angle with which to shatter stale, accepted perception... this book is compelling.' (Country Life). 'This fascinating examination offers a refreshing and accessible study of Wodehouse's work.' (Press Association).

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	18 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783338276
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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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