On P. G. Wodehouse

I was just sitting here flipping through a book of stories by the late humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, and marveling at what a master he was of the English language. I may have mentioned my growing fascination with his prose to some of you, but it never ceases to amaze me. I'm glad that he wrote for over seventy years and was so prolific because it means that there will always be stuff out there I haven't read yet. As I was looking for some examples of his writing to post, I came across an interesting article written by the actor, Stephen Fry, who played 'Jeeves' in the series, Jeeves and Wooster, based on Wodehouse's most well-known characters. He praises the other-worldliness of Wodehouse's stories and explains that to try to analyze and explain it would be futile. He also admits that try as they may to bring the characters to life, "the language, however, lives and breathes in its written, printed form." Here are some examples:


Bertie and Jeeves discussing a young man called Cyril Bassington-Bassington:

"I've never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?"

"I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons."

"England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons."

"Tolerably so, sir."

"No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?"


More from Wodehouse:

- "Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons."

- "I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back."

- "What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
And after that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

- "It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

- "She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say 'when.'"

- "The Aberdeen terrier gave me an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic."

- "She gave me the sort of look she would have given a leper she wasn't fond of."

- "A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle."

- "Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse."

Bertie Wooster:

"I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast."

Another description of precisely the same characteristics in Honoria give us a very Woosteresque mixture of simile:

"Honoria... is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welter-weight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging on a tin bridge."

And here's a passage from another famouse Wodehouse character, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge (pronounced Stanley Fanshawe Ewkridge).

"Alf Todd," said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, "has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat's left ear with a red-hot needle."

As Fry says in his article, "If you are immune to such writing, you are fit, to use one of Wodehouse's favourite Shakespearean quotations, only for treasons, stratagems and spoils. You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour."