Wodehouse the Serious

BY V. V. PRASAD, M.A., Berhampore

I

Three years ago, in June 1940, a bald-headed Englishman of middle height and middle age was spending his holiday in his private villa in Northern France along with his North American wife. By an irresistible irony of fate, this man, who, in novel after novel and short story after short story, extricated the hero from a series of tight corners, found himself in a tighter corner than any in which he had previously placed any of his characters.

The Germans took this Mr. Wodehouse prisoner at the time of their advance on Le Toquet. Mrs. Wodehouse escaped arrest by virtue (yes, it was still a virtue) of her American nationality. The humour-king was reported to have told his wife that he hoped to be able to produce a serious- novel this time in prison. We then chuckled at the statement because we were reminded of a similar situation in which another distinguished humorist was involved. That was Stephen Leacock, who, as Professor of Political Economy in the McGill University, had to deliver University extension lectures. He rose to address a Texas audience: “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began. There was continued and prolonged laughter–laughter, in anticipation of jokes. Trying to make his position clear, Mr. Leacock announced, “I am serious, gentlemen.” What he said later was drowned amidst the loud guffaws of the audience, who hailed it as the most inimitable of his jokes.

Some people say that the very thought of Wodehouse writing a serious novel conjures up a vision before the mind’s eye which provokes laughter of the type which Milton described as “holding both his sides.” (Readers of the March number of Triveni know better than that, for they have seen that all the great Russian Gloom Masters were humorists of the highest order). True, the reputation of the author is against his undertaking such a venture. In fact, P.G.’s project has been described as very good material for the cutest publicity stunt ever planned, in total disregard of the note of sincerity which runs through his words.

To say that whether Wodehouse was serious when he was telling his wife that he wanted to write a serious novel or no can be seen only when actually read the novel is to try to be too clever: that is, to show a tendency of predicting nothing which is not already known to anyone who has given a moment’s thought to such things. The title itself, which has been variously trumpeted as Money for Jam and Money in the Bank, encourages us to think that it is a humorous affair: but you may say that it might be due to the fact that we associate Wodehouse with wit. Money for Jam, for all we know, may be a masterpiece on Economics. If it had been written by someone else, we could easily have mistaken it for an economic treatise on the barter system: but with Wodehouse, no. For he has written at least three other books, all brimming with hunour, bearing similar titles–Uneasy Money, Big Money, and Money for Nothing, not to mention innumerable short stories like Pots of Money. A review of Money for Nothing published in a Scottish journal contained an unconscious joke (undiscovered so far), for the Scotsman said there that Mr. Wodehouse was a public benefactor. It sounds as though the proverbial Scot’s love of money has asserted itself and found expression in that sentence, much against his will: but what the brainy Scot had in mind was not the love of filthy lucre but the greater happiness of millions all over the world to which public benefactor Wodehouse was contributing on an unprecedented scale.

II

There is yet another side to the personality of the humorist. He is capable of serious novels just as Bernard Shaw is capable of serious plays. Those who have heard and remembered P. G’s criticism of the conversation about the all-absorbing topic of the weather will not, in this life-time, enquire about the conditions of the atmosphere, even if all the elemental evidence went to show that the heavens were presently coming down crashing upon us. He says:

All day long, New York, stewing in the rays of a late August sun, had been growing warmer and warmer, until now, at three o’clock in the afternoon, its inhabitants had divided themselves sort of natural cleavages into two main bodies–the one crawling about and asking those they met if this was hot enough for them, the other maintaining that what they minded was not so much the heat as the humidity.¹
The creator of the impeccable Jeeves is one of the most thought provoking critics of to-day. Most people miss the criticism, for he is, like Chaucer, a perennial fountain of good humour; and his satire on manners, customs and institutions of modern society is even more subtle than Geoffrey’s. Almost every other time we gently smile or laugh aloud, while we read him, there is criticism of a serious tenor.

Wodehousian satire resembles in some respects Tolstoyan satire. Probably, P. G. himself is conscious of this: for he makes one of his characters pick Tolstoy and himself as unique in the firmament of authors. They simply make a remark or two at the most, in the manner of a good cartoonist making his strokes; and everything that is in their minds becomes perfectly clear without the necessity for elaborate, grammatically phrased paragraphs.

In Piccadilly Jim, sometimes regarded as his masterpiece, the character of Mr. Crocker is at one place revealed thus:

Mr. Crocker said nothing. He went on saying nothing. Constant practice had made him an adept at saying nothing when his wife was talking.

When Mr. Crocker is told that the game of cricket is exciting, he is pertinently shocked, and delivers himself as follows:

Exciting? How do you make that out? I sat in the bleachers all afternoon, waiting for something to break loose. Doesn’t anything ever happen at cricket?

We have the greatest admiration for this American’s criticism of cricket, until with one stroke, it is revealed to us that Mr. Crocker is a super-fan of baseball–a game in no way superior to cricket, though, it must be said to its credit, that something or other always seems to happen at baseball. In his shortest novel, Doctor Sally, we find that during the ‘consultation’, the world-famous nerve-specialist, Sir Hugo Drake, takes a few tips on holding the golf-club from Dr. (Miss.) Sally, and does nothing else. Can a greater admonition of the sporto-maniac possibly exist?

Such is the power of the P. G. pen. His similes and metaphors are all original and show how deeply he is interested in everything under the sun: heredity, vagaries in proper names, Napoleon (especially Napoleon), druids, dogs, patriotism, cricket and baseball and golf, newspapers (including the columns dealing with the affairs of the heart), to say nothing things like correspondence course’s and American politics.

All of which goes to confirm that Mr. Wodehouse is certainly capable of serious work.

III

Wodehouse was interned in what was once a German Mental Hospital in Northern Silesia, and he could not possibly bring out a serious novel from behind the prison-bars; for at a place where eleven hundred internees were huddled up, consisting of lorry-drivers, coalmen, sea-men Cambridge graduates, any man with an eye for the ludicrous would find cartloads of material for amusement. And Wodehouses would convert this raw-produce into finished works of humour without fantasy.

As President of the Library of the internment camp, consisting of one more volume than the ominous thirteen, all written by himself, Mr. Wodehouse had a moral obligation to his fellows, and he knew it. He had to be constantly replenishing the library with volumes which they would read. As he said, “You can imagine how flattering it is having fourteen men in one room reading your books at the same time.” And if he then wrote a serious book, we could imagine how flattering it would have been to have not one man reading that book at any time. At best it might have been a sight of just one man out of one thousand and one hundred and one sulking away his time over it. A fact, which we hasten to admit, the mirth-maker himself had recognised. For if his first book ever written in the padded cell of an asylum were a serious affair, he would have probably driven at least half his fellow-internees mad, thus necessitating the re-conversion of the camp into a mental hospital. If Wodehouse was not serious enough, he would have written his serious book without caring for the consequences. He evidently does not agree with those who think that insane people are laughing matter.

Karel Capek, the distinguished Czech writer who died three years , has classified books into favourites for different occasions. Utopian novels when you suffer from cold, Edgar Wallace for fever, Dickens and Gogol for chronic illness, and in the hour of death someone after whom he had not made many enquiries but certainly not Destojevsky.² Inside prisons and during convalescence, Wodehouse is the favourite, though Capek misses him. P. G. heroically faces in Louder and Funnier the fact that he is quite a favourite with dog-stealers. Up in the Upper Silesian prison, the honour-king was probably playing the role of the single outstanding figure, the youthful hypnotic Napoleon whose will was law, supplying them with stories, and being supplied with material for more according to the best traditions of the German barter system; though, if journalist Knickerbocker is to be believed, it is doubtful whether jam could be bought by barter, or if it could be got for love or money either. Money for Jam and Jam for Money are both slogans which can be, and often are, repeated mentally in countries where both jam and money are scarce.

In the nature of things, therefore, it was not possible for the humorist to write a serious novel from behind the barbed-wiring of the mental asylum. He probably did not know that he would be huddled up with eleven hundred others, that he would be President of the Library there, and that he would be so popular as all that. Just as he did not know he would fall into German hands, you would say. At this rate, what he did not know about the war situation before the tall of France would fill a whole library.

IV

After a year in the Silesian Camp, Wodehouse began to broadcast a weekly talk over the German Radio. There were questions about it in the House of Commons. Anthony Eden made a statement. Tit-Bits published a scurrilous attack on the humorist, saying that he never cared for his friends, that he was a miser, that he never bought a new hat, and so on. All-India Radio refrained from broadcasting talks on P. G. W. College professors (without listening, of course, to his talks), tried to draw a parallel between P. G. Wodehouse and Ezra Pound (who broadcasts from the Rome Radio). I myself held that as an admirer of Napoleon, he had something in common with Hitler, and also was probably an admirer of Hitler the man.

I have myself listened-in to a couple of his earlier efforts over the Berlin Radio. He was not much of a broadcaster, for he hadn’t the voice of a Roosevelt. He said he was being treated well in Germany (they would, when it was a writer of international reputation), that he was growing fatter and fatter every day at such a rapid rate that he was afraid his wife would not be able to recognize him when the war was over.

I myself saw no propaganda in all this: but his broadcasts created quite a flutter. The talks of Wodehouse, the Philosopher, came to be looked upon as something awfully serious. It is as it should be, for had not Plato held that Philosophy was the art of the best while statesmanship the art of the second best?

The excellent treatment which Goebbels gave to his guest. Wodehouse, was such that he could, if he wanted, most certainly afford to write a novel. Money in the Bank may not be it; but, if it is not, he would serious novel afterwards. For all we know he has written it already. Has he not written a really serious short story in the collection entitled, The Man with Two Left Feet?

We read in the newspapers the other day that on a representation from friends (for whom he did not care?) through the International Red Cross, Wodehouse decided to stop his broadcasts from Germany. Even those do not credit the serious novel theory will admit that Wodehouse was serious here.

Whether we think of how he fell into the hands of the Germans, or how he planned to write serious stuff, we are struck by that saying which P. G. is never tired of repeating: There is a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Pelham Granville Wodehouse.

¹ Sam the Sudden. Page 1.
² My father suggests here the humourous, but un-Capekian, addition: “and Bernard Shaw for nervous breakdown.”