Ukridge by P. G. Wodehouse

Upon my Sam! 2020 is a little hard, isn’t it, old horse? But there’s one heartening beacon to calm my soul. I’m talking about Ukridge, laddie.

Ukridge contains ten stories about this bloke knocking out in towns named Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, told in the perspective of his Wrykinian chum, James Corcoran (Corky). Ukridge is a menace of civilisation and a garrulous stripling but he’s got all potentials to be good old Galahad Threepwood or Uncle Fred 2.0. He is paternally adored by ex-butler Bowler in the household of Corky and six Pekingese in a basket but an eyesore to the dogs’ owner cum Honorary President of Pen and Ink Club, Aunt Julia. It’s easy to hear his anecdotes being told with little surprise – pinching suits and animals, bilking one pound two and threepence for a little clockwork man…you name them. Great Scot! But your scorn could only induce an eye of disappointment from Ukridge.

Now, laddie, laddie,” said Ukridge, reprovingly, “need we strike a jarring note? Is this the moment to fling your beastly socks in an old friend’s face? A broader-minded spirit is what I would like to see.”

– Ukridge

Whimsical and opportunistic Ukridge demands you and Corky to have vision, a “big, broad, flexible outlook”. All schemes would eventually lead to, at a conservative estimate, to scoop up at least four or five thousand pounds in his purposefully lucrative businesses. Nonetheless, they are businesses not only satisfy personally but expands to all altruistic notions.

Of course, Plum would not let Ukridge clean up what he wants; and while his projects are carried out in a supposedly smooth underhanded cooperation with Corky (he gets persuaded to do it every single time), things get convoluted, and them two are always getting into unprecedented and enervating scraps. What a love-hate relationship Corky shares with Ukridge. He is only a journalistic writer! How his life gets meddled with a forger!

[…] I turned from the train with a pale, set face, and, passing down the platform of Euston Station, told a cabman to take me with all speed to Ukridge’s lodgings in Arundel Street, Leicester Square. There had never, so far as I knew, been a murder in Arundel Street, but I was strongly of opinion that that time was ripe. Cecil’s society and conversation had done much to neutralise the effects of a gentle upbringing, and I toyed almost luxuriously with the thought of supplying him with an Arundel Street Horror for his next visit to the Metropolis.

– Corky

Even though Ukridge understands the undeniable power of Fate (designated by Plum), he is still a man made of steel and stone with so much fortitude in the hour of ruin that he always gets carried away by his optimism, with what Corky sees as a cataclysmic disaster. Even though his managerial fortune is thwarted by the temperamental pugilist Battling Billson once and then twice, Ukridge still seals his faith with a loving-kindness for the third time. Even though Ukridge’s schemes are so disputable that overturns all things into a pile of hullabaloo, his charms dissociate himself from repulsion and sins. Ukridge is a cheeky legend who encompasses a life of wilderness and maddness without regrets.

It just shows, laddie,” he said, exuberantly, “that one should never despair. However black the outlook, old horse, never, never despair. That scheme of mine might or might not have worked—one cannot tell. But, instead of having to go to all the bother of subterfuge, to which I always object, here we have a nice, clean-cut solution of the thing without any trouble at all.”

– Ukridge

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Some favourite quotes:

• “…No arguing or shilly-shallying. You just go and do it. It’s the spirit that wins to success. I like to see it…” (Ukridge)

• “She was wearing that blue dress when I first met her, Corky. And a hat with thingummies. It was on the Underground. I gave her my seat, and, as I hung over her, suspended by a strap, I fell in love absolutely in a flash. I give you my honest word, laddie, I fell in love with her for all eternity between Sloane Square and South Kensington stations.” (Ukridge)

• “Well, it’s not so easy to let a truck bump into you.”

“Nonsense. It only requires a little ordinary resolution. Use your imagination, man. Try to think that a child has fallen down in the street—a little golden-haired child,” said Ukridge, deeply affected. “And a dashed great cab or something comes rolling up. The kid’s mother is standing on the pavement, helpless, her hands clasped in agony. ‘Dammit,’ she cries, ‘will no one save my darling?’ ‘Yes, by George,’ you shout, ‘I will.’ And out you jump and the thing’s over in half a second. I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about.” (Ukridge)

Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P. G. Wodehouse

Although right now, it’s not springtime, this book is definitely the best one to devour during this globally uncertain climate, and so are the other Plum’s works. One of my favourite quotes is this one, when a character, Horace Davenport, intends to get funds to run an onion soup bar on the street of Piccadilly Circus. Such imagery!

And let me tell you, Mr Pott, the potentialities of that bar are stupendous. I’ve stood there night after night and watched the bottle-party addicts rolling up with their tongues out. It was like a herd of buffaloes stampeding for a water-hole.

“The risk you run, when you impersonate another man, is that you are apt to come up against somebody to whom his appearance is familiar.” – Efficient Baxter

I often think Wodehouse is the counterpart of another favourite, Wilkie Collins. Despite the fact that they shine in different spectrum, both writers have their charms in ingeniously entertaining their readers with such fascinating elements of dissimulation and disguises. The characters of Wilkie Collins’ are in disguise because they are forced to do so without a secure foothold amidst their straitened circumstances and social prejudices. With such engaging plots, Wilkie Collins always scrutinises and experiments in his novels without sacrificing his mission to convey the didactic messages that morality, equality, and individuality prevail and matter. Wodehouse, on the other hand, as a benign old bird and being sympathetic towards his chums’ love lost and bookies’ debts, he laboriously helps out and assigns guests of his country castles to assume different garments and deportment; at the same time, how Wodehouse weaves the plot so seamlessly and beautifully purely for joy is beyond me. Not only the guests in disguise are effervescent in their respective brilliance and eccentricity, but the recurring victims who fall into their traps also find a voice of their own in his stories.

To most people at whom the efficient Baxter directed that silent, steely, spectacled stare of his there was wont to come a sudden malaise, a disposition to shuffle the feet and explore the conscience guiltily: and even those whose consciences were clear generally quailed a little.

In my opinion, reading some of the Wilkie Collins’s later novels with characters in disguise, the fascination mainly centers on the protagonists’ sole helplessness, reflection and vulnerability after he or she is tempted to assume the identity without anyone to turn into when in need, and finally culminating in being self-enlightened. Dead stymies propelled majorly by fate would force to have their forlorn and regrettable pasts confessed and unveiled in the end.

Reading Blandings is an extremely different experience – a lighthearted matter. The lovelorn and helpless chums and girls are not tempted to assume identities calculated by their own decisions but rather being cajoled to do so. They often they have partners in crime and other lurkers on the grounds as well, which makes the whole situation much less lonelier and helpless. In Blandings, the characterisation is very much the same but would never be bland. Because the hosts and guests have their respective satellites and are living in prime of their lives, we extract so much farce in them. The clever ones are always the cleverest; the absent-minded could at one time be the shrewdest but constantly end up sustaining puzzled and unresponsive; the overbearing disciplinarians are the most irritated; the cheerless and suspicious ones who think of themselves as Sherlock Holmes are doomed to be victims and being rubbed in the nose now and then as the laughing stocks in the human nature of schadenfreude. Even the Empress of Blandings has her all-the-year-round innocence to fit into.

In the confined space the report sounded like the explosion of an arsenal, and it convinced the Empress, if she had needed to be convinced, that this was no place for a pig of settled habits. Not since she had been a slip of a child had she moved at anything swifter than a dignified walk, but now Jesse Owens could scarcely have got off the mark more briskly. It took her a few moments to get her bearings, but after colliding with the bed, the table and the armchair, in the order named, she succeeded in setting a course for the French window and was in the act of disappearing through it when Lord Emsworth burst into the room, followed by Lady Constance.

Reaching the solutions in Blandings, the answers and revelations are so far-fetched, the ways how those conspirators achieve their purposes and find the excuses of running away from the crime scenes always leave me fruitfully gobsmacked. In Uncle Fred in the Springtime, the mastermind Uncle Fred tries to secure £250 twice from different persons. I cannot help myself admiring him in the story!

“Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.” – Lord Ickenham (Uncle Fred) / Shakespeare

Although the young have flights of fancy and fantasy, for instance, sons of Lord Emsworth – Freddie Threepwood and Lord Bosham – who are accorded with their cheeky spirits and hearty ways, they are often thwarted by difficulties ahead. In contrast, uncles like Galahad and Lord Ickenham always sustain the lighthearted avuncular vibe of resisting affronts and instituting reprisals. They are more adventurous to do the confidence-tricks, pinching and sneaking, and disapprove of nephews’ defeatist attitudes and streaks of pessimism. Sometimes Uncle Fred would also supply some piece of advice to their nieces regarding love and pursuits,

You would have flung yourself into his arms, and he would have gone on thinking he was the boss. As it is, you have got that young man just where you want him. You will accept his chocolates with a cool reserve which will commit you to nothing, and eventually, after he has begun running around in circles for some weeks, dashing into his tailors from time to time for a new suit of sackcloth and ashes and losing pounds in weight through mental anguish, you will forgive him – on the strict understanding that this sort of thing must never occur again. It doesn’t do to let that dominant male type of chap think things are too easy.

Indeed, the uncles and aunts constantly find their nephews and nieces too socialistic, irritating, melancholic, being a slip of striplings; vice versa the young blooms find their elders and guv’nors too patrician, potty, cheeseparing, frigid, and redoubtable; but both parties are equally harmless and endings always consummating and satisfying. When consuming Wodehouse, you realise that it is not everything that might need to be taken into account too seriously, and the joy you get habitually from Wodehouse’s writing will be that, as Phil Collins now and then serenades, every day is “another day in paradise”.

Summer Half (1937) by Angela Thirkell

Left: Sidonia von Bork 1560 by Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1860. Tate, London. Right: Angela Thirkell by John Copperfield. 1910s on platinum print. National Portrait Gallery, London.

I first heard of Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) when I visited England last year and saw the “Pre-Raphaelite Sisters” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Among The Portrait of a Young Lady by John Everett Millais, and of course, many others, I was intrigued by a picture of Angela Thirkell wearing a glamorous dress that Fanny Cornforth put on to model for Edward Burne-Jones, whom she was his granddaughter. I think in the picture, she embedded the typicality of a young girl protrayed by P. G. Wodehouse in those days: vivacious, headstrong, whimsical, and energetic. My mind was conjured of Vanessa Cook in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen of Jeeves and Wooster series rather than her exact demarcation: the spoilt and sweet daughter named Gloria Salt in Pigs Have Wings of the Blandings Castle. If I were to refer a sentence in Summer Half, that young girl whom donned that glamorous dress I saw at the National Portrait Gallery was absolutely not the girl with a brain as small as a “louse”, or in other words, a “mouse”.

Summer Half (1937) by Angela Thirkell is the fifth book of her most known Barsetshire Series, inspired by the same town imagined by Anthony Trollope. (shame I still haven’t read any of his novels yet!) Although Summer Half is the fifth book, it is actually her first book I have read.

I absolutely admire Angela Thirkell’s writing. What I adore the most is getting myself absorbed in the olden days: before I read this book, I have never known such mouth-watering farmer treats like “Gentleman’s Relish” and “bread and dripping”. Considering the stockpile chores of darning socks and wringing clothes in mangles, they would be deemed no less than helpful and pleasurable conversation starters between the Matron of the Southbridge School dormitory and the demure domestic angel, Kate.

That will be Jessie. She’s a good girl, but she’s vain, and she won’t wear her spectacles. I’ve told her again and again you can’t tell navy blue from black without your glasses, Jessie, especially I said by artificial light, but it’s no good speaking. I can’t keep an eye on everything, and I shall tell Jessie it has been noticed by outsiders. There was a really dreadful affair, Miss Keith, last term, when Mr Carter’s black silk socks had a little place in them, and she simply pulled the edges together, and never tried to darn it properly.

Provided with a pastoral backdrop of an idyllic town and a boys’ school within its reach, the characters could be quite silly and ironic at times. While reading the story I totally underestimate the matter of mischief, whims and eccentricity that the boys (e.g. Tony Morland, Eric Swan) are willing to go far, how they try to drive the housemaster and assistants (e.g. Everard Carter, Philip Winter) off the wall. The students remind me of the bespectacled Baxter and newt-fanatic Gussie Fink-Nottle in Plum’s novels. For example, there is one of the boys who wears glasses as advised by an oculist always deliberately glares and irritates the assistant, that the assistant is “powerless against his monstrous regiment”. Then there is also a chameleon called Gibbon, which is owned by a student named Hacker, that

someone found it and tied it up in red paper with its head sticking out, and put it in Winter’s desk with note to say that it had gone in Red in sympathy with his political views.

Despite that, both parties share “some kind of loyalty, some real liking, and respect” for the heroic acts to which both parties are committed. For example, for the boarding house which the teachers and boys belong to, it is mutually acknowledged that winning “consolation race”, “sack race”, “reading prize”, and “scripture prize” are disgraceful to the House. Except one boy, who well deserves the first prize of sack race, by practising “with a pillow-case morning and evening all that term, without being discovered by matron”. Moreover, I am interested to read the first book, High Rising, only to read how Donk sucks an egg!

Concerning the girls in the story, apart from the angelic Kate, Lydia Keith is my favourite character in the novel. On the other hand, Rose Birkett, the daughter of the headmaster, is annoying as ever with her most used words “sickening” and “marvellous”. Similar to many P. G. Wodehouse’s stories, Summer Half involves a universal subplot of how a man desperately tries to disengage from and get jilted by his betrothed, which is funnily seen as an heroic act of Christendom, rather than him taking the initial move. “At dinner Philip behaved as well as anyone can behave who has seen a glimpse of freedom and then had his fetters more firmly riveted”.

Although the people in Summer Half might not be seen as some rambling madmen and are not on the same par as those nonconstructive, deranged, random, and erratic lunatics as the ones in P. G. Wodehouse, I still enjoy the story, and might read more of Angela Thirkell’s books in future. 🙂

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Quotes from Summer Half:

Summer Time:

“I know we had to alter the clocks five times a hour going to America,” said Mr Keith.

“Oh rot, Daddy, you couldn’t,” said Lydia.”Not five times an hour.”

“I didn’t say five times a hour, my dear,” said Mr Keith mildly. “Well, yes, you are quite right. I did. But you took me wrongly. What I meant was that I had to alter my watch five times during the voyage, an hour.”

“The captain must have been potty,” said Lydia.

“I think Father means an hour five times,” said Colin. “I mean to alter it an hour five different times.”

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Russia:

Mr and Mrs Birkett were delightful with the Rectory, and decided at once to take it for August. Their kind hearts made them invite Philip for the first fortnight of the holidays, after which he had luckily arranged to visit Russia to see what it was really like; or rather, to confirm his impression that it was exactly like what he thought it was like.

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Shakespeare:

“Seeing Hamlet fourteen times isn’t Shakespeare, it’s simply being potty about John Potter!”

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Fair play:

To see Philip’s anxiety had made it all the more amusing. Noel was not at heart unkind, but any man who let his naked emotion get beyond his control was, in Noel’s view, fair play.

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“Crazy days and reckless nights, limousines and bright spotlights…”

Title from Ringo Starr – Never Without You (song)

As the Hon. Galahad resumed his stroll, setting a course for the sun-bathed terrace, his amiable face was wrinkled with lines of deep thought. The poignant story to which he had been listening had stirred him profoundly. It seemed to him that Fate, not for the first time in his relations with the younger generation, had cast him in the role of God from the Machine.
Full Moon is again another farce which deals with Fate in a convoluted yet rollicking way; but some elements of the plot set my reading experience apart from other “hoosegow” stories. Although Freddie Threepwood is still the Nature’s prune in Guv’nor’s and aunts’ sore perspectives, he is now an junior vice-president post in Donaldson’s Inc. to promote the interests of Donaldson’s dog biscuits around the reclusive country houses in England after his nuptial ties to an American tycoon’s daughter. Despite the supposedly formulaic plot that it is Uncle Gally who saves the day, Freddie’s alacrity in nosing other people’s businesses with his silver-tongued eloquence are put into good use, and it is a joyful consolation for me to view his accelerating confidence and “potential growth” in Freddie as if reading a coming-of-age novel. “It was not often that the Hon. Galahad found himself commending the shrewdness and intelligence of a nephew whom from infancy he had always looked upon as half-witted, but he did so now…” (p. 162) One day Freddie would be fruitfully reminiscing his reckless youth like Uncle Gally.

The Hon. Galahad snorted sharply. Himself a bachelor, he was unable to understand and sympathize with what seemed to him a nephew’s contemptible pusillanimity. There is often this unbridgable gulf between the outlook of single and married men.

There are characters such as Colonel Wedge, Freddie Threepwood as the “docile” husbands under the “tyrannical governance” of Lady Hermione and Aggie, with Tipton Plimsoll the American millionaire and Bill Lister the heavyweight champion as the most ever faithful lovers to Veronica Wedge and Prudence. Women are once again depicted as powerful opponents to masculinity in the aspect of love and matrimony. Quoting what Freddie says – “I love her with a devotion which defies human speech, but if you were to place before me the alternatives of disregarding her lightest behest and walking up to a traffic cop and socking him on the maxillary bone, you would find me choosing the cop every time. And it’s no good calling me a bally serf.” (p. 211) Indeed, the imagination of analogy and juxtaposition regarding aspects of human relationships that Wodehouse draws has a very sweetening and lyrical tone to readers’ ears and inspiring to the minds. Uncle Galahad, of course, is the admirable hero, but young generations are thrown into limelight, and he functions as the strategic guardian who has the warm heart to restore perfect endings of the light-hearted and good-natured lovers back on the right track.

In this case of Full Moon, it scores ten out of ten, due to the fact that the avuncular’s tone concerning different aspects of humanity and mentality is not expressed by the Fathers, Uncles, and Butlers, but through the bright, young, clever, but sometimes unscrupulous, reckless, distrait, downcast and quixotic striplings, and they are the ones continuing to win and melt our hearts.

The Art of Theft in The Little Nugget

Perhaps it might sound ridiculous that Wodehouse makes motives of “thefts” sound all the more fun, beautiful  and reasonable! I like a sparkling of camouflage and disguises with a twinge of “fate”, so on an aesthetic level, Wodehouse’s works of contrivances and plots reach full marks on the scale of ten; on the rational ground, except the unintentional cases of Egyptian scarab (Something Fresh) and Beach’s pocket watch (Galahad at Blandings), dealing with the stealing of Empress of Blandings in Summer Lightning and Service with a Smile, or Lady Constance’s necklace in Leave it to Psmith…many of which are all committed for solicitous considerations of Lord Emsworth’s sporadic absent-mindedness, and celebration of human irrationality called “love” that befalls on those exuberant youths.

The Little Nugget is a very satisfactory read, Wodehouse yet again crochets a splendid theft. It is a plot of vengeance and kidnapping of an American brat called Ogden Ford (the only disturbance of this novel is that I fretted and appalled by peals of scream this Little Nugget had caused, and then reminiscing the docility of Empress of Blandings), which stretches in most hospitable roof within and without an English Preparatory school called Sanstead House erected in the suburbs. Normally three characters at most would play crook-in-a-cloak game in his novels; this time there is an affable character pulling off more than one disguises of identities as an adventitious occurrence and ingenious plan! As to the reason of theft, it is altruistic than ever, especially when it is done not by an amateur but in the hands of a professional’s,

• “In a sense, you might call me a human benefactor. I teach parents to appreciate their children. You know what parents are. Father gets caught short in steel rails one morning. When he reaches home, what does he do? He eases his mind by snapping at little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! (…)”

Apart from the dark deeds and illicit dealings, The Little Nugget teems with wondrous figurative expressions and inimitable depictions of daily circumstances, which I think they resonance so much in mine. Perhaps it is not the best solution to jot them all down in this post, because it definitely will not emulate the beauty of copying them down in my notebook. In this case, I’ll end this post here to leave the others intrigued and resort to get them a copy of The Little Nugget on the shelf. Enjoy! 🙂

Service with a Smile by P. G. Wodehouse (Very Spiritual Indeed!)

“It was the practice of Lord Ickenharm, when visiting a country house to look about him, before doing anything else, for a hammock to which he could withdraw after breakfast and lie thinking in deep thoughts. Though, like Abou ben Adhem (from Leigh Hunt) a man who loved his fellow men, he made it an invariable rule to avoid them after the morning meal with an iron firmness, for at that delectable hour he wished to be alone to meditate.”

This Blandings book is my first encounter with Uncle Fred (the Earl of Ickenharm) for I still haven’t got myself a copy of Uncle Fred in the Springtime. Service with a Smile contains pocketful of lies and, reading the first page of the biographical profile on Wodehouse, I surmise he was in his 80 odd years, still so levelheaded to the utmost degree, and every lie and conspiracy is invincible and convoluted indeed. If I were Duke of Dunstable, Lady Constance, Lord Emsworth, Lord Tilbury, and Archibald, every detail Uncle Fred contrives to compose would I be so gullible.

For Uncle Fred has concocted and schemed many whirlwind details in his head, not fewer then twice has his guardian angel appeared to him when lying on the hammock,

• “There had been a moment when his guardian angel, who liked him to draw the line somewhere, had shown a disposition to become critical of his recent activities, whispering in his ear that he ought not to have…”
• “He nestled into the vacated hammock, and was in the process of explaining to his guardian angel, who had once more become critical, that there is no harm in deviating from the truth a little…”

Apart from that, I found there are bountiful bits of fate concerned here, but somewhat every character is getting devout and spiritual in the novel as well! As you could see from the title, “Service with a Smile”, says a lot already! First of all, never have I realised Lord Emsworth is a member of Freemason (stated by his grandson George), though he somehow attacked the Church Lads when agitated by their mischievous deeds; secondly Duke of Dunstable, curious as a cat and irritable like Edwin the boy scout, has himself resonated and linked to the idea of Providence (p. 191) rather than fate for his fortune and luck; thirdly, the rich infiltration of Church Lads sprawling and in a tent of the Blandings Castle (messuage of Lord Emsworth); last but not least, another character named Bill Bailey (incognito Cuthbert Meriweather) is a much respected curate who gives service in Bottleton East (girls in the 19th century would be so inclined with this clergyman with the stature like a military officer),

“A captious critic might have felt on seeing the Rev Cuthbert that it would have been more suitable for one in holy orders to have looked a little less like the logical contender for the world’s heavy-weight championship, but it was impossible to regard his rugged features and bulging shoulders without an immediate feeling of awe.” (one of my favourite lines of the Book 🙂 ! Cuthbert was also name of a saint with historical background as well.)

Apart from that, comparing Archibald’s engagement with polygamy of Brigham Young is quite an innovative one.

In this case, this Blandings book and very enriching and spiritual which exacts my taste, and through it I hope to know some information regarding the motives and religious background of Wodehouse when he was writing this masterpiece in his time. It is interesting when I overlook the farce and miseries each character incurs, and delve into this spiritual world of Wodehouse in Service with a Smile! More highlighting and note jotting on the way, which has sent me to cloud nine already!

Leave It to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

I cannot recall saying anything calculated to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty.

I feel such an urge to say that Leave It to Psmith by Wodehouse has undoubtedly the most winding and giddiest plots I have ever read of a Blandings Castle. All those untrammeled possibilities lying before me and I absolutely lose count on the immensity of the crimes as well as innumerable purloiners and impostors who devilishly lurk around the Castle. Although the novels in Blandings Castle always are teeming with blighters and plotters, never up to reading this one have I been aware of some incurring plots and themes that might somehow echoes the memories I have had in reading other novels by others authors (providing the limited stock of books I have read, clearly I know whom and which I am talking about). But I don’t tend to “analyse such sunlit perfection”, I merely read and observe!

• For an instant she debated with herself the chances of a dash through the darkened hall up the stairs to her room. But the lights might go on again, and she might meet someone, Memories of sensational novels read in the past told her that on occasions such as this people were detained and searched…Suddenly, as she stood there, she found the way, close behind her, lying on its side, was the flower-pot which Psmith had overturned as he came to join her on the terrace wall.

I think this remind me of a big 4 novel by Wilkie Collins’s called The Moonstone. Nothing similar concerning the plots but it is also about the disappearance of the necklace and the veiled mystery each character is endeavouring to bury within! However Lady Constance Keeble’s one is without the curse and somehow makes it no less delightful than any other ones! Apart from that, there are also some resemblances of Wilkie Collins’s works and Wodehouse’s novels, for instance, the skulduggery of prying and swapping identities with different walks of lives in the House…makes them more or less a brain-twisting and spinning stories.

I also like the mentioning of “Fate” throughout the novel.  It is my favourite notion in relation to lives on various insuperable books and fiction, ranging from light or heavy, classical and modern. They all interestingly instill and involve this precious idea within and gets them very thought-provoking indeed. It is just the matter that incomparable Dickens used to be brooding as observed by John Forster,

• On the coincidences, resemblances, and surprises of Life Dickens liked especially to dwell, and few things moved in fancy so pleasantly. The world, he would say, was so much smaller than we thought it; we were all so connected by fate without knowing it; people supposed to be far apart were so constantly elbowing each other; and to-morrow bore so close a resemblance to nothing half so much as to yesterday.

or Wodehouse,

• The fact that many writers in their time have commented at some length on the mysterious manner in which Fate is apt to perform its work must not deter us now from a brief survey of this latest manifestation of its ingenious methods…(Chapter 11, Leave it to Psmith)

Compared with Something Fresh (the first Blandings Castle), which in the end there is also an interesting conversation pertaining to the idea of lives and fate,

• Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It’s like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it’s about nothing–just a jumble.

Leave It to Psmith culminates the idea into a higher level, from beginning to the end. Although Fate without gainsaying plays a heavy part in all his novels, I find this one amazes me tremendously and feverishly on different characters and occasions. I would not delve on quoting more references, lest I would unveil more plots right away.

Anyhow, it is the most joyous and heart-soothing moment to read this book at any time; and as long as there is Efficient Baxter prowling around I am satisfied. Of course, I am attracted to the charisma of Psmith as well with his likable and eccentric character, and it is always an entertainment to indulge in his seemingly self-loving tirades. After writing this review, I am going to highlight and copy more lines of Leave It to Psmith onto my notebook, for instance, 

• Lady Constance conveyed the impression that anybody who had the choice between stealing anything from her and stirring up a nest of hornets with a short walking-stick would do well to choose the hornets.

and by the by, I have borrowed Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh from the library, as I think there are still more thoughts to be deluged in with the book after watching the movie. It will be my first read on Evelyn Waugh. Better exhume them soon!

Fie! Fie! Or the Fair Physician (1882) by Wilkie Collins

“I have merely to add (speaking from my own experience) that he is an exceedingly shy man. He is also — according to his own account of it — subject to some extraordinary delusion, which persuades him that he can never marry. My own idea is, that this is a mere excuse; a stupid falsehood invented to palliate his conduct to my sister.”

painted by John Everett Millais

Read the short story before the day of Wilkie Collins’s birthday. This story, by far, is the most light-hearted one I have ever read by him; it has no concerns of fatality and poignancy certain characters, with a backdrop set in a residency of detached house located in the suburb of England; yet without those classic traits of Wilkie Collins, still comes out as an enjoyable read and putting a crack of smile on one’s face.

It is about a story narrated by Mrs Lois Crossmichael but under the instruction of herself that it is to be revised and edited by Wilkie Collins. Mrs Crossmichael is not the chatelaine of the house, which is occipied by her father and mother, Reverend Skirton and Mrs Skirton, as well as her younger sister Salome Skirton. However, she is the spotlight of the abode aside them, being the autocratic one and taking in charge of the house affairs as possible. Here is the synopsis:

Mr Otto FItzmark, who has just returned to England from America to get back to his family who live in the suburb of London, as well as to visit his next-door neighbour and love interest, Miss Salome Skirton, “a kind of sleeping Venus was Dudu, grey eyes, plentiful hair, bright with the true golden colour”, but hindered by a pure pale complexion, mild smile and weak little chin. However unexpectedly Miss Skirton’s love and promise of marriage is at stake by a girl who was a fair physician attending Otto’s father, named Sophia Pillico (an activist in Woman Movement), “a finely developed young woman, with brown hair and eyes, warm rosy cheeks, dressed to perfection in a style of simplicity”. A connoisseur would have recognised the discrepancy of beauty defined by the two women. Anyway, it is within the officious Mrs Crossmichael’s obligation to protect her sister’s love affair and nuptials by plotting a plan against the cunning fair physician.

After reading the synopsis, does that remind you of an author who famously good at writing farce? I thought of Wodehouse instantly while reading the story:

“I have been carefully watching Sophia and your young man, and I have arrived at the conclusion that his doctor is certainly in love with him. (Haven’t I told you to listen? Then why don’t you let me go on?) I am equally certain, Salome, that he is not in love with her. (Will you listen?) But she flatters his conceit — and many a woman has caught her man in that way. Besides this danger, she has one terrible advantage over you: she is his doctor.”…

” ‘There’s one thing more you must do — provoke his jealousy. The mother of that other young fellow who is dangling after you is just the person you want for the purpose. I heard her ask you to fix a day for visiting them at Windsor…In the language of Miss Pillico, my dear, he wants a stimulant. I know what I am about. Good night.“

Still not satisfied? I’ll write out a checklist:

Autocratic chatelaine: Mrs Crossmichael

Rivalry: Sophia Pillico

Feeble / Distraught / Distrait young man: Otto Fitzmark

Mischievous youngsters on eavesdropping: Sulking Young John and Sour Bess

Hero (heroine) to save the day: Mrs Crossmichael

Lord Emsworth-like master of the house good at wool gathering: Old John (Otto’s father)

Tiff-tiff and bickering couple actively involved in the story.

The bit I like the most is of course the epistolary writing by the characters, but not least the plots and mischief of Sophia in trying to postpone Otto’s thought of marrying Salome.

It is a cheeky comical story and rare gem of Wilkie Collins’s work, with obviously the classic trait of underpinning the strength and empowerment of femininity in neglect and expense of male characters. Great read and cornucopia of plots and prying to liven you up! (However not so many delightful metaphors as to Plum’s ones) 

Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere

Wodehouse’s earlier works on college short stories consisting of a few public schools. Before reading this book I never realised that there are such terms actually indicating the levels of education preceding sixth form: Lower-fifth, Middle fifth and Upper fifth!

To be honest, I have not read the cricket stories. I never get myself familiarised with sports from childhood. However, the stories on planks played out by fellow classmates, fagging of the lower forms for normal human being and going through adversity against the ministrations of form-, house- and headmasters are enjoyable ones to chew at bedtime! These stories bring out the reminiscence of my reading The Boy by Roald Dahl many years ago – the Great Mouse Plot to the confectionery store proprietor, the nemesis between Dahl and Captain Hardcastle (the bit which I laughed out the most); the friendly Mathematics teacher who likes crosswords and farting in the class; as well as the fagging years in Repton (make me want to re-read the book again!).

As to Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere, I like many of them; but there are some short stories and characters which are actually rooted in my mind the most, for example, Ruthless Reginald, The Politeness of Princes, Educating Aubrey, and An International Affair from Wrykyn; St Asterisks’s Rose and Wotsing in playing out parodies on Sherlock Holmes and Watson; the never-ending poignancy of Pillingshot caused by the sudden whim of the  Scott in St Austin’s; and last but not least, Thomas, the boy with angelic expression yet aggressive in mind. But to me I especially like the stories of Locksley, as I think Plum constructed an ingenious plot on the resourcefulness and cleverness of Dunstable and his fellow housemate in the stories A Corner in Lines and The Autograph Hunters.

From this book, you could be immersed in the stories and ploughed it through with fun. You can actually find out how new kids settle themselves fully into the public boy schools without a smack in the face,  junior miscreants endeavour to break the monotony of school life with the hard work, the fun and method to fawn on the masters, the pain of the imposition that teachers set them through including writing Greek numerals for a hundred lines and Greek/Latin translations (square manners are unlikely in most cases).  Happy reading!

Galahad at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse

Tally ho! Great frivolous follies! Exuberant Amusement! The eccentricity of characters, their roles and merits to me have reached another whole new level from other Wodehouse’s books I have read! I think at this stage I may not laugh in stitches but left with a warm feeling and blithely mood with full of imagination of the Castle. Really admired his beautiful English writing, in my lifetime don’t think I would be up to par with this level.

Checklist of characters to uphold Lord Emsworth’s nightmares and get his pince-nez go into jazz dance routine at Blandings in Shropshire

Faces like prunes ran over by a motor bus: Huxley Winkworth (much annoying and irritating than Edwin the boy who does Friday Acts of Kindness from Jeeves and Wooster)

Autocratic chatelaine: The redoubtable Lady Hermione (Apart from Sisters Constance and Dora, this woman is second-to-none according to her determination and practicalities in attempting to get her brother Clarence fixed and sound, waylay her enemies in actions rather than words)

Curious zeal: Butler Beach in replacement of Efficient Baxter in carrying out his justice and crash the impostor in pieces, snorty and smug than ever

Exuberant/Distraited gents (or in other words, the dull-eyed stripling): Wilfred Allsop (also functioned as a victim of fearsome aunt Lady Hermione; poignant in love); Sam Bagshott (also functioned as the impostor (Augusta Whiffle) of the novel, repairing the rift of love); Tipton Plimsoll (blithe chap from America)

Helpmates: Sandy Callender (red-head insidious secretary); Monica Simmons (a new favourite in lieu of George Cyril Wellbeloved); Veronica Wedge

Eyesore: Daphne Winkworth (a sparkler for old romance, ready to be hummed Indian Love Lyrics)

Hero to save the day: Galahad Threepwood, younger brother of 9th Earl of Emsworth, with gleaming spectacles in spellbinding qualities

While checklist is complete, I could go on with my drooling parts of the novel, one of which is the telling of anecdotes about the members belonging to Old Pelican Club by Galahad. He is really an amazing raconteur of tale telling, the anecdotes sprout up here and there in the stories that make the novel much more entertaining provided with the easy-to-guess-long plots:

• The stakes and game of guessing which member would be the next to die
• Abdominal belt worn by Chet Tipton (Uncle of Plimsoll)
• Puff Benger (the member who admits defeat to Indian Love Lyrics)
• Buffy Struggles (picked up by Galahad on his theories of weakening the system and reaction of dodging by having tea rather than alcohol, surely been mentioned in Summer Lightning already!)
• Freddie & Eustace in Hedgehog incident, another example of good potation

Another bits are the sardonic dual rivalries, the stitch-ups to one another and interactions between the characters, for example, the mission conducted and plotted by Aunt Hermione to Wilfred the nephew:

“Lady Hermione had often heard of secret societies where plotters plotted plots together, but she wondered if any plotter in any secret society had ever had so much difficulty as she was having in driving into the head of another plotter what he, the first plotter, was trying to plot.”

Wilfred is actually stunned and shocked that his aunt would not be equal without a supporting assistance and accomplice for her required mission, and thinks she wants him to waylay the plank with an axe!

Apart from that, there is an interesting confrontation between Huxley and Wilfred when he caught him drinking. That little brute is the most annoying kid I have ever come across in Wodehouse’s novels.

The conversations between Monica and Tippy are good ones in which he tries to lay all cards on the table and talks turkey to her about Wilfred.

As usual, there are false starts and imbroglios happening in the Castle till the last page but all resolved in merrily sentiments without abrupt endings. The rewarding point is that I could finally recall and get the resonance mentioned in this book concerning the plots of other stories preceding this one, for instance, the short story of Pig-hoo-ey from The World of Blandings. I am in love with Blandings Castle with its residents and guests. It is my future stamping ground for many years to come!

By the way, I really like the covers of Wodehouse’s works by Everyman’s Library, because when you finish the story and close the book, you would be reminded of the plots and the good bits of it! (Exactly true with this one!) However when I was wandering through Waterstones of my recent trip to England last month, the prices of these publications are a bit expensive because they are hardbacks? Never mind! all Wodehouse’s works are stocked and piled up in line on the shelves make the overall effect look so amazing!

The next one by Wodehouse I am going to read is The Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere, hope it is fun!

Handling of an angry swan

”Every young man starting life ought to know how to cope with an angry swan, so I will briefly relate the proper procedure. You begin by picking up the raincoat which somebody has dropped; and then, judging the distance to a nicety, you simply shove the raincoat over the bird’s head; and taking the boat-hook which you have prudently brought with you, you insert it underneath the swan and heave. The swan goes into a bush and starts trying to unscramble itself; and you saunter back to your boat, taking with you any friends who happen at the moment to be sitting on roofs in the vicinity.”

Love among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (Part 3)

There are some lines which I find quite amusing, very philosophical!

• The mentioning of Gretna Green

• One can pardon any injury to oneself, unless it hurts one’s vanity. Moreover, even in a genuine case of rescue, the rescued man must always feel a little aggrieved with his rescuer, when he thinks the matter over in cold blood. He must regard him unconsciously as the super regards the actor-manager, indebted to him for the means of supporting existence, but grudging him the limelight and the centre of the stage and the applause. Besides, every one instinctively dislikes being under an obligation which they can never wholly repay. And when a man discovers that he has experienced all these mixed sensations for nothing, as the professor had done, his wrath is likely to be no slight thing.

• Hours after–or so it seemed to me–we reached the spot at which our ways divided. We stopped, and I felt as if I had been suddenly cast back into the workaday world from some distant and pleasanter planet.

• Instinct prompted me to join the fray; but prudence told me that such a course would be fatal.

• The fowls had had their moments of unrest since they had been our property, but what they had gone through with us was peace comparedwith what befell them then. Not even on the second evening of our visit, when we had run unmeasured miles in pursuit of them, had there been such confusion.