Post by pchallinor on Nov 5, 2011 20:06:15 GMT
In 1928, the American magazine Liberty published what was to become one of PG Wodehouse's best-loved stories: "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend". All the usual Wodehousean suspects are here – the fierce aunt, the overbearing gardener, the uncomfortably stiff collar – and the plot hangs on a characteristically slight thread. Even so, this tale of friendship between a tremulous peer and a 12-year-old East Ender named Gladys has tremendous power.
Emsworth is a character known for his benign indifference. Absent-minded, cowed by those around him, he lives for his prize pig in a world of his own. But when Gladys has a bad afternoon at the Castle, we see a whole different side to the oft-oppressed peer. "Something happened, and the whole aspect of the situation changed."
"It was, in itself, quite a trivial thing, but it had an astoundingly stimulating effect on Lord Emsworth's morale. What happened was that Gladys, seeking further protection, slipped at this moment a small hot hand into his."
Contained but viscerally alive, there is a poignant reserve about this "mute vote of confidence" – the pace and rhythm of the sentences are as subtle as the emotions they convey. It is, Kipling argued, "one of the most perfect short stories ever written".
Countless readers of Wodehouse have testified to the way his novels have their own "stimulating effect" on morale, providing not just comic, but almost medicinal effects: the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm, after his defeat in the first world war, consoled himself by reading Wodehouse to his "mystified" staff; the late Queen Mother allegedly read "The Master" on a nightly basis, to set aside the "strains of the day"; more recently, news reports tell of the imprisoned Burmese comedian Zargana finding comfort in Wodehouse during solitary confinement. "Books are my best friends", he confided. "I liked the PG Wodehouse best. Joy in the Morning – Jeeves, Wooster and the fearsome Aunt Agatha. It's difficult to understand, but I've read it three times at least. And I used it as a pillow too."
Wodehouse was born in 1881, and his early years were, in many ways, highly conventional. His father, Ernest, was "as normal as rice pudding" and determined to give his sons a childhood to match. The only thing conspicuously – but critically – missing was Wodehouse's parents. Ernest had a post as a magistrate in Hong Kong, so the children were billeted with nannies and various relatives in England. Pelham Grenville had almost no parental contact for the first 16 years of his life.
"Looking back," Wodehouse wrote in his autobiography, "I can see that I was just passed from hand to hand. It was an odd life … but I have always accepted everything that happens to me in a philosophical spirit; and I can't remember ever having been unhappy in those days. My feeling now is that it was very decent of those aunts to put up three small boys for all those years. We can't have added much entertainment to their lives. The only thing you could say for us is that we never gave any trouble."
Things in Wodehouse's world are always "odd" rather than "terrible". But sadness seeps through. The Wodehouse children sound like so much unwanted luggage. Perhaps most significant is the thin comfort blanket of amnesia: "I can't remember ever having been unhappy." Even by Victorian standards, this absence was a long one. The separation was to create a coolness between Wodehouse and his mother. "We looked upon her," Wodehouse recalls, "more like an aunt." The fact that there are no extant letters between Wodehouse and his parents, either from his childhood or from his later life, may indicate something about these relationships.
Wodehouse was in many ways his father's son. Despite living through extraordinary circumstances – a self-made man, he married a sometime chorus-girl, spent time with Hollywood movie stars, endured Nazi internment and journalistic accusations of treason – he still kept up the appearance of imperturbable "normality". This was why, perhaps, he was never the most transparent of correspondents. It was Dr Johnson, one of Wodehouse's earliest literary loves, who wrote that a man's soul, "lies naked" in his letters. But Wodehouse's attitude to nudity was a wary one. "You know my views on nudes," he once wrote to a friend, "I want no piece of them." Wodehouse's correspondence is often clad in the epistolary equivalent of Bertie's heliotrope pyjamas, carefully buttoned up to disguise true feeling.
Continued
Emsworth is a character known for his benign indifference. Absent-minded, cowed by those around him, he lives for his prize pig in a world of his own. But when Gladys has a bad afternoon at the Castle, we see a whole different side to the oft-oppressed peer. "Something happened, and the whole aspect of the situation changed."
"It was, in itself, quite a trivial thing, but it had an astoundingly stimulating effect on Lord Emsworth's morale. What happened was that Gladys, seeking further protection, slipped at this moment a small hot hand into his."
Contained but viscerally alive, there is a poignant reserve about this "mute vote of confidence" – the pace and rhythm of the sentences are as subtle as the emotions they convey. It is, Kipling argued, "one of the most perfect short stories ever written".
Countless readers of Wodehouse have testified to the way his novels have their own "stimulating effect" on morale, providing not just comic, but almost medicinal effects: the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm, after his defeat in the first world war, consoled himself by reading Wodehouse to his "mystified" staff; the late Queen Mother allegedly read "The Master" on a nightly basis, to set aside the "strains of the day"; more recently, news reports tell of the imprisoned Burmese comedian Zargana finding comfort in Wodehouse during solitary confinement. "Books are my best friends", he confided. "I liked the PG Wodehouse best. Joy in the Morning – Jeeves, Wooster and the fearsome Aunt Agatha. It's difficult to understand, but I've read it three times at least. And I used it as a pillow too."
Wodehouse was born in 1881, and his early years were, in many ways, highly conventional. His father, Ernest, was "as normal as rice pudding" and determined to give his sons a childhood to match. The only thing conspicuously – but critically – missing was Wodehouse's parents. Ernest had a post as a magistrate in Hong Kong, so the children were billeted with nannies and various relatives in England. Pelham Grenville had almost no parental contact for the first 16 years of his life.
"Looking back," Wodehouse wrote in his autobiography, "I can see that I was just passed from hand to hand. It was an odd life … but I have always accepted everything that happens to me in a philosophical spirit; and I can't remember ever having been unhappy in those days. My feeling now is that it was very decent of those aunts to put up three small boys for all those years. We can't have added much entertainment to their lives. The only thing you could say for us is that we never gave any trouble."
Things in Wodehouse's world are always "odd" rather than "terrible". But sadness seeps through. The Wodehouse children sound like so much unwanted luggage. Perhaps most significant is the thin comfort blanket of amnesia: "I can't remember ever having been unhappy." Even by Victorian standards, this absence was a long one. The separation was to create a coolness between Wodehouse and his mother. "We looked upon her," Wodehouse recalls, "more like an aunt." The fact that there are no extant letters between Wodehouse and his parents, either from his childhood or from his later life, may indicate something about these relationships.
Wodehouse was in many ways his father's son. Despite living through extraordinary circumstances – a self-made man, he married a sometime chorus-girl, spent time with Hollywood movie stars, endured Nazi internment and journalistic accusations of treason – he still kept up the appearance of imperturbable "normality". This was why, perhaps, he was never the most transparent of correspondents. It was Dr Johnson, one of Wodehouse's earliest literary loves, who wrote that a man's soul, "lies naked" in his letters. But Wodehouse's attitude to nudity was a wary one. "You know my views on nudes," he once wrote to a friend, "I want no piece of them." Wodehouse's correspondence is often clad in the epistolary equivalent of Bertie's heliotrope pyjamas, carefully buttoned up to disguise true feeling.
Continued