Lord Emsworth finished his port and got up. He felt restless, stifled. The summer night seemed to call to him like some silver-voiced swineherd calling to his pig….
And suddenly, as it died, another, softer sound succeeded it. A sort of gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant.
The nuts and bolts of P. G. Wodehouse’s short story collection, Blandings Castle, are easily covered. This is a compilation of several early Blandings Castle stories, featuring Clarence, Lord Emsworth, followed by a few odds-and-ends stories, and finally a few of the Mulliner stories, in which Mr. Mulliner tells a group of pub friends stories about his various relations – in this case, relations who lived and worked in Hollywood (as Wodehouse himself did for a time).
I won’t describe most of the stories. They are what you expect, and they are delightful.
Instead, I want to indulge in a few theological observations, because that (oddly) is where my thoughts went as I read.
The Great Divide in Wodehouse is drawn, of course, between the Jeeves stories and all the rest. What I began to wonder about as I read is the fact that – although they both operate in the same fictional universe (there are even stories where characters cross over), they seem to nevertheless operate in different theological universes.
The Jeeves stories, it seems to me, take place in a fallen universe. There is “evil” (admittedly rather silly evil) in the Jeeves stories, and poor Bertie Wooster would come to ruin (usually an unhappy marriage) without Jeeves there to rescue him. Jeeves shares the first two letters of his name with Jesus. He is a very present help in trouble. Although infinitely higher and more intelligent than Bertie, Jeeves has emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. On him depends all the innocence of Bertie’s fictional life.
The Blandings Castle stories, on the other hand, seem to be set in an unfallen world. “Evil” of the same kind as in the Jeeves stories does indeed arise, but it always resolves itself without any heroic intervention. There seems to be a natural balance in this world, and the proper order reasserts itself automatically.
It occurs to me that this may be some kind of unfallen world. Perhaps Eden was like this, and Heaven will be again. Problems arise, but the natural order reasserts itself.
(I do not, I hope you understand, imagine that Wodehouse had these concepts in mind. I don’t even know what – if anything – he believed. I just think that his genius, like all great genius, drew on Eternal Things.)
I might also mention (honorably) one of the miscellaneous stories, neither a Blandings nor a Mulliner: “Elsewhere, a Bobbie Wickham Story.” This one was a gem.
Bobbie Wickham is a familiar character from the Jeeves stories – she was even engaged to Bertie on at least one occasion. Like all Wodehouse girls, she’s smarter than any of his young men, stubborn, self-willed and sweetly ruthless. Here we see her at her best; like Bertie she is being coerced into a marriage she does not wish, so she sets about manipulating the males around her. If you’re familiar with H. H. Munro (Saki), you probably remember the story, “The Open Window.” The girl there whose speciality was “romance at short notice” was a forerunner to Bobbie Wickham. Wonderful story.
In summary, this is a delightful collection of delightful stories which can only do good in the world.
