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Evelyn Waugh, in a tribute to P. G. Wodehouse delivered on the BBC on July 15, 1961, zeroed in on a theological ground for the unmatched appeal of Wodehouse's fiction:
Wodehouse: |
For Mr. Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man; no "aboriginal calamity." His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled. The chef Anatole prepares the ambrosia for the immortals of high Olympus. Mr. Wodehouse's world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
A deeply Catholic novelist such as Waugh knows what sin is and notices its absence. The first time I read this often-quoted praise, I immediately thought, "Of course," and I understood why Wodehouse is a writer who is not merely enjoyed but deeply loved.
I had for many years been a Wodehouse lover, beginning with Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, moving on to Lord Emsworth, the Empress of Blandings (a pig) and the Blandings Castle stories, and experiencing sheer bliss when I discovered that Wodehouse had actually written some golf stories. For several years I struggled with a phobia about flying, and there were many times when the only way I could get myself to board a plane was to walk onto the jetway clutching an unread Wodehouse novel. Waugh had it exactly right; to enter the Wodehouse world is to enter a world with no sin, and no real horrors. In that world no planes fall from the skies.
I am certainly not alone in my love of Wodehouse. According to Robert McCrum's biography, there is a long roster of distinguished admirers in addition to Waugh, including T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Arthur Balfour, Hilaire Belloc, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eudora Welty, Ogden Nash, John le Carré, and Salman Rushdie. Incredibly, all of Wodehouse's books—of which there are more than 100—are still in print. How does one explain this level of devotion towards a writer of comic "light fiction," who viewed his own work (at least initially) simply as a way to make a living that would be more satisfying than working in a bank?
Like many Wodehouse readers, I knew little about the man behind the books, and so, when given a copy of McCrum's highly praised Wodehouse: A Life for Christmas last year, I dove into the book with much anticipation. McCrum's biography was not a disappointment, unless one measures it by the pleasures obtained from one of Wodehouse's own works.
McCrum has done his homework, and knows how to tell a tale; his version of Wodehouse's life contains many fascinating vignettes. Guided by McCrum's authorial governance, Wodehouse moves before our eyes from what appears to be a sad and lonely childhood, through the experiences of a typically English "public school" (Dulwich), to the crushing news that he would not be allowed to go up to Oxford as he had thought, but would have to enter the "real world" of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. As a young man of about 21, Wodehouse courageously quit his day job and resolved to make a living with his typewriter, churning out light verse, short stories, lyrics for songs in musical comedies (both in London and on Broadway), and of course comic novels.
McCrum gives a balanced treatment of perhaps the saddest episode in Wodehouse's life: his tragic decision, after being captured and interned by the Nazis during World War II, to give some radio broadcasts over German radio to be aimed at his American readers. (The United States was not yet in the war.) Though politically naïve, Wodehouse was absolutely not a Nazi sympathizer, and the biggest mistake of his life is best explained by Wodehouse's innocent—yet somehow still culpable, if innocence can be culpable—inability to see that his desire to thank his American audience for their continued loyalty would be used by the Nazis for their own ends. The broadcasts themselves are hilarious in the typical Wodehouse manner:
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