Wodehouse on Wodehouse. By P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and W. Townend

Wodehouse on Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and W. Townend

Penguin Books. First published 1954, 1953 and 1957.

There are three books in this one volume, all autobiographical. 'Bring on the Girls' (1954) was written by Wodehouse together with Guy Bolton; 'Performing Flea' is a collection of letters written by Wodehouse to his friend W. Townend, the collection was published in 1953; 'Over Seventy' was published in 1957, when PGW was more than 75 years old.

Wodehouse was a shy man. He shared the English Public schoolboy hatred of appearing to 'swank'. So, in all three books, nominally about his own life, he talks very little about himself, filling up the pages instead with jokes and anecdotes, some heard, some he experienced himself. The bare facts about his life come through, though. He had a mixed childhood, not lonely, but not richly full of family life, spending most of the time away from his parents who were working in India. He attended Dulwich College, alma mater not only to PGW, Raymond Chandler and C.S. Forester, but also slightly unsavory characters like Nigel Farage and Raj Rajarathinam. PGW himself loved his time at Dulwich, and his early stories are set in schools that are thinly disguised versions. After school, family finances did not allow him to go to University, so he joined a bank as a clerk, writing stories and humorous essays in his free time and selling a few of them. At some point during these initial years, in the early part of the twentieth century, he made a trip to America, where he found a better market for his stories. Soon he quit his bank job and took to writing full time, relocating to New York. Then follows a long period of time, where he completed one piece of writing - a play, or a novel, or a short story, or a lyric - and then another and then another and so on, until he found himself rich and famous. He got married, but no other details are given. He continued this life of reading and writing until his death in 1975. There was only one major incident that disturbed this apparently placid life. When World War II broke out, PGW and his wife were in France. The Germans, when they occupied the country, placed all British and American citizens in internment camps. PGW spent about a year in such prisons, and just before he was due for release owing to his age, he agreed to give a series of very funny radio talks on his prison experiences. The war was still in progress and these talks were seen in Britain as aiding the enemy, i.e. as treason. On closer scrutiny, the British govt. decided that there was nothing to this charge, and he was not formally acted against. The public opinion however was so bad against him that he never went back to England, but spent the rest of his life mostly in New York, where he died in 1975. I remember hearing about his death from a friend while having a cup of coffee at the then-extant Woodlands Drive-in restaurant on Gemini corner. We mourned, but then made up for it by trying to obtain and read everything he had written. That project could be completed only with the help of the Internet, which, through the Gutenberg project, gave access to some of his very early work. (My reactions to those pieces are given elsewhere in this blog). Last year, on a very cold, but sunny, January day, my niece took me to visit his grave in the graveyard of a small, pretty church in Remsenburg, New York.

'Bring on the Girls' is co-written with Guy Bolton, with whom he collaborated on many musicals. It describes the part of his life devoted to theater. PGW mainly wrote the lyrics to the songs, though he also frequently helped in laying out the plot. The dialogue, i.e. the 'book' of the play, was usually written by Bolton, though both PGW and Bolton independently collaborated with others as well. There are a lot of very funny stories, a great deal of name-dropping, but names that mean nothing to me across this distance of time and space. I could see that PGW had reworked many of the plays into books, and perhaps vice versa. By the time this book was written, Wodehouse was fully in his stride, at the top of his form, and the book flows as smoothly, as thickly and as sweetly as honey.

'Performing Flea' shows just how much effort PGW put in to ensure that all his books flowed like honey. From detailed plots, to multiple drafts and corrections, to regular working hours, to avoidance of distractions, in this book, made up of letters to his struggling writer friend, PGW shows just how a professional author works. A method artist, Wodehouse did not just wait for inspiration, but wrote diligently and regularly everyday. He also set time apart for reading, which might explain his easy familiarity with Shakespeare, the Bible and contemporary popular culture. Apparently his social skills were rather poor, and that part of his life was managed almost entirely by his wife Ethel. 'Performing Flea' is not only a kind of manual for aspiring writers, but also a portrait of a very talented author who did not overreach himself, but lived wisely and well, enjoying his work, and becoming immensely successful at it. As a kind of bonus, the book also incorporates an edited version of a diary he kept as an internee. Apart from being immensely funny, what strikes a reader is the amount of good humor and goodwill with which he treats what must have been a terrifying year. He's almost sixty, and used for about three decades to a very comfortable life, when suddenly he's treated as a war prisoner, and deprived of almost every necessity to a minimally bearable life. Apparently his only luxury was that he was allowed to continue writing his books, and he completed a few of novels that he was working on when he was taken away. I have read all these books, and none of them show any signs of the stress he must have been under. Two of them especially - 'Joy in the Morning', and 'Full Moon' - I would rate among his top ten.  

'Over Seventy' is again a collection of anecdotes that vaguely compare how it used to be with how it was as an septuagenarian. In the different chapters PGW makes a comparison between then and now of all the aspects of his work, and as much of his personal life as he is willing to allow. Each chapter is only briefly serious, before it smoothly segues into self-deprecatory jokes and humorous stories from around the world, gleaned from friends, from radio and TV and of course the newspapers.

I bought the volume in 1982. This must be the fifth or sixth time I am reading it, but all three books are still great fun.