People who enjoyed a merely superficial acquaintance with my nephew Archibald (said Mr. Mulliner) were accustomed to set him down as just an ordinary pinheaded young man. It was only when they came to know him better that they discovered their mistake. Then they realized that his pin-headedness, so far from being ordinary, was exceptional.
Most P. G. Wodehouse readers are familiar with the Jeeves stories, and usually with the Blandings Castle stories too. But there is another substantial series of short stories that sometimes gets overlooked. These are the Mr. Mulliner stories, in which the venerable Mr. Mulliner sits with his drink in the bar parlor of a pub called The Angler’s Rest, regaling his audience with stories of the adventures of his innumerable relations. Often these stories involve a feckless young man of the usual Wodehouse type, who overcomes some obstacle to his marriage to the girl he loves. Usually the solution to the problem is purely nonsensical, based on some character’s unexpected personal quirks. The quality of the mirth varies from story to story, but some of Wodehouse’s best flights of fancy can be found in this category.
About half the stories in this volume, Mr. Mulliner Speaking, however, exhibit a different formula. This is because (and I was not aware of this, having not read these particular stories before) one of Mr. Mulliner’s relatives turns out to be a certain Miss Roberta Wickham. “Bobbie” Wickham is a character who pops up from time to time in the Jeeves/Wooster stories, and may have shown up at Blandings Castle too (I can’t recall). But whenever Bobbie appears, a different pattern is called for. Because marriage to Bobbie Wickham is always regarded as a fate to be dreaded, rather like running afoul of one of Bertie Wooster’s aunts.
For the red-haired Bobbie, in spite her extreme beauty, is a sort of benevolent sociopath. She never means to hurt anyone, but she has absolutely no self-control or sense of responsibility, and she generally drops her suitors into some kind of a nightmare situation, like being mistaken for a burglar by a butler with a shotgun, perhaps, or being forced to climb out of a high window with the aid of knotted-together bed sheets. If you find public humiliation hilarious, these are the stories for you.
Mr. Mulliner Speaking is a very funny book. I recommend it. My e-book version featured a number of OCR spelling errors that should have been caught and corrected.
