Wodehouse the Religious Fanatic

In the aforementioned essay on cricket, which I plowed through because of my devotion to my goal and with the knowledge that it was only seven pages long, comes this little entry:

                “There are misguided people who complain that cricket is becoming a business more than a game, as if that were not to be the most fortunate thing that could happen.  When it ceases to be a mere business and becomes a religious ceremony, it will be a sign that the millennium is at hand.” 

The funny thing is that this essay appears in a book that goes on at length about rugby (or, football as it is called in the book itself.  Thank goodness I am fairly fluent in early twentieth-century British English, or I would have been completely lost.).  Cricket makes a brief appearance, but only in passing.  I got the feeling that it was mentioned only because it was one of the sports that the inmates of St. Austin’s used to while away the time.  Similar mention is made of boxing and cross-country running, and those sports are also not the subject of Wodehouse’s lyrical waxing. 

Much of the drama of St. Austin’s revolves around the rugby team and various house cups, etc.  Later on in the Wodehouse oeuvre, golf makes a serious appearance.  As I have noted in earlier entries, entire books are devoted to the sport, which makes me happy that I endured watching coverage of the Ryder Cup and other tournaments with my father years ago.  At least I know what goes on in golf.  I even comprehend the notion of a handicap, although that took a couple of years to seep in to the old cranium.  While I am only just half-way through the collected works of Wodehouse, I don’t think that there are any great cricketing novels. 

This omission is puzzling.  Why would Wodehouse not write at length about a sport about which he has a religious fervor?  Is it because he holds it too dear?  That I could understand.  My first attempt at novel writing concerned a series of events loosely based on my experiences at graduate school.  I love my alma mater with a passion that mirrors Wodehouse’s feelings about cricket.  (In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this will go down as my most enduring relationship of all time, excluding, of course, the ardour I have for my son and heir, which is a beast sui generis.)  Unfortunately, the novel is crap.  My subsequent attempts at fiction have not dealt with places that I hold in the same light (frankly, there are none) and are, I think, more successful because of it.  Maybe the same hold true for Wodehouse.  Perhaps he tried to write a decent cricket story and found that they lacked that certain je ne sais quoi.  It is difficult to truly seeing something clearly when you are too close to it.  Reason and religious fanaticism have never been known to be bedfellows.