The point being that, littered as many Wodehouse tales as
with a brilliant array of characters, there is always one constant presence:
that of Plum himself. It comes out the
most when he writes in the third person and often takes the form that nowadays
would be called meta. For instance, on
page eighty-one of this month’s selection, he starts out a chapter with an
amusing reflection on the role of pacing in a story. The feeling imparted by such moments comes
across as confidences from an old friend.
Perhaps that is only my feeling, especially since I am two books away
from the end of this project, but it is a comforting one. Wodehouse wrote this book when he was 90, and
while I’ve noted the strength of this voice in many of his books, it was at its
strongest here. If books ever had end
credits, The Voice of Wodehouse would be a frequent name on the lists.
Speaking of Wodehouse being 90 when he authored this book,
there is a passage that I would bet a tidy sum reflects conversations he had
with the publishing people: “‘Well, this is certainly the happy ending. I had a feeling everything would come right
in the last reel. Old-fashioned, yes,
but it still sells tickets.’” I can only
imagine how trying it was to sell the land of Bertie and Blandings Castle in
the age of bell-bottoms and questionable facial hair.** Was Wodehouse seen more of an historic
anachronism then? There was a television
show, The World of Wooster, that ran from 1965 until 1967, but that was five
years in the past by the time this book came around. Certainly, it took until the 1990s with the
Fry & Laurie adaptation for I think a true reexamination by the general
public. It can be hard to be a legend
when one is still alive.
*Read February 2017
**Of course, I am writing this in the era that has seen the reemergence
of Victorian facial hair and the man-bun, so who am I to cast shadows?
