Love among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (Part 2)

Apart from Ukridge, there are many characters who make me laugh hysterically throughout the novel.

Dr. Derrick

The first character that emerges from my mind would be Dr. Derrick. This irascible professor is showing his emotion so conspicuously at all times, who reminds me of another character: Lord Worplesdon in Jeeves and Wooster. He appears driving his gears especially when seeing Ukridge and his fellow chap Garner. There is a scene which I think shows his annoyance and irritability towards these two scoundrels in its utmost effect, as he absolutely has no chance to be held at bay and let them explain and talk as long as they like in amusing disturbance:

“And so it came about that, having reached the Cob and spying in the distance the grey head of the professor bobbing about on the face of the waters, we dived in and swam rapidly towards him…

……………………

This he seemed to realise, for, as if to close the interview, he proceeded to make his way as quickly as he could to the shore. Unfortunately, his first dash brought him squarely up against Ukridge, who, not having expected the collision, clutched wildly at him and took him below the surface again. They came up a moment later on the worst terms.

“Are you trying to drown me, sir?” barked the professor.

 “My dear old horse,” said Ukridge complainingly, “it’s Dr. Da little hard. You might look where you’re going.”

 “You grappled with me!”

 “You took me by surprise, laddie. Rid yourself of the impression that you’re playing water-polo.”

……………………

“You–you–you–” So far from cooling the professor, liberal doses of water seemed to make him more heated. “You impudent scoundrel!”

(Echoes of Lord Worplesdon’s “What…? What…? What…?”)

…………………..

“Then may I consider,” I said, “that your objections are removed? I have your consent?”

He stamped angrily, and his bare foot came down on a small, sharp pebble. With a brief exclamation he seized his foot in one hand and hopped up the beach. While hopping, he delivered his ultimatum. Probably the only instance on record of a father adopting this attitude in dismissing a suitor.

 “You may not!” he cried. “You may consider no such thing. My objections were never more absolute. You detain me in the water, sir, till I am blue, sir, blue with cold, in order to listen to the most preposterous and impudent nonsense I ever heard.”

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Aunt Elizabeth

Wodehouse in this novel really thought of a clever trick to to introduce Aunt Elizabeth, a lady who is exceptionally capable of character delineation. Although we couldn’t meet her in person, her appearance is substituted and reflected by a fowl , together with the end of her consenting the financially assistance to Mrs. Ukridge complete the look.

• “I had wandered into the paddock at the moment. I looked up. Coming towards me at her best pace was a small hen. I recognised her immediately. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his wife’s nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg.”
• “Rather! And I’ll tell you another thing, old horse. I scored heavily at the end of the visit. She’d got to the quoting-proverbs stage by that time. ‘Ah, my dear,’ she said to Millie. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ Millie stood up to her like a little brick. ‘I’m afraid that proverb doesn’t apply to me, Aunt Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘because I haven’t repented!’ What do you think of that, Laddie?”

Mrs. Beale

• For the last week monotony had been the keynote of our commissariat. We had had cold chicken and eggs for breakfast, boiled chicken and eggs for lunch, and roast chicken and eggs for dinner. Meals became a nuisance, and Mrs. Beale complained bitterly that we did not give her a chance. She was a cook who would have graced an alderman’s house and served up noble dinners for gourmets, and here she was in this remote corner of the world ringing the changes on boiled chicken and roast chicken and boiled eggs and poached eggs.

Harry Hawk

• Phyllis would meet me in the village, on the Cob, on the links, and pass by as if I were the Invisible Man. And why? Because of the reptile, Hawk. The worm, Hawk. The dastard and varlet, Hawk.

A  tall thin young man in a frock coat and silk hat from Whiteley’s

“Disgraceful, sir. Is it not disgraceful!” said a voice in my ear.

The young man from Whiteley’s stood beside me. He did not look happy. His forehead was damp. Somebody seemed to have stepped on his hat, and his coat was smeared with mould.

Love among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (Part 1: Ukridge)

It’s been so long since I have last read Wodehouse’s novels. I guess part of it is to cure my lovesickness resulted from my trip to England. I want to get some books full of sense of humour and British vibe, so I borrowed some works by Wodehouse last week: Love among the Chickens, Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere, and Galahad at Blandings. Love among the Chickens is the first story on Ukridge’s adventures of mercantile businesses which I as of yet untapped. Although I get rusty of not having read his works for a long time and not familiar with the innovative metaphors, informal idioms and styles, but upon my Sam! It gets better along the pages and I feel a sense of pure joy after the read.

In the first few pages, we are introduced by Lickford, who is a friend of first-narrative person (hero) Jeremy Garnet, to meet the profligate and harmless rogue named Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge:

“…S.F.U. clad in a villainous old suit of grey flannels (I’ll swear it was the one he had on last time I saw him), with pince-nez tacked on his ears with ginger-beer wine as usual…He also wore a mackintosh, though it was a blazing day.”

and yes, as Garnet the old horse says, “His whole career, as long as I had known him, had been dotted with little eccentricities of a type which an unfeeling world generally stigmatises as shady.” Ukridges always borrows couples of bobs from his friends and other parties, then slurs over and prolongs the decision of not paying them back with subtle and cunning excuses that Garnet could recall his mischievous classmate’s/colleague’s anecdotes very well.

However, just as disagreeable his character may be and no matter how cloistered friends contrive to run away from him, he is ubiquitous and none could escape on being clung by him on working in concert with his fun and whimsical thoughts. This time Ukridge is planning to operate a chicken farm in Combe Regis in Dorset.

To my opinion, I in the beginning don’t really bring myself to draw into Ukridge character, I think he, who is exactly a rogue, is not that likeable compared to other Wodehouse’s prunes. But then when I read up to this page, I realise how eccentric and wild his mental engine is absorbing, possessing information from and reacting to the outside world (which can kind of be elicited from his name), he really interests me and I couldn’t wait to see more of this chump:

(as told by Garnet)“…Have you ever played a game called Pigs in Clover? We have just finished a merry bout of it, with hens instead of marbles, which has lasted for an hour and a half…He likes his manoeuvres to be on a large, dashing, Napoleonic scale. He said, ‘Open the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the open; then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back door into the basement.’ It was a great idea, but there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn’t allow for the hens scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience coming out of a theatre…Then Bob, the Hired Man’s dog, an animal who likes to be in whatever’s going on, rushed out of the house into the middle of them, barking. There was a perfect stampede, and Heaven only knows where some of those fowls are now…

“We also arranged Ukridge’s sugar-box coops in a row, and when we caught a fowl we put it in the coop and stuck a board in front of it.” Not only that, other chickens are put under the basement of the house. How crazy and unconventional is the method in operating a chicken farm!

Apart from his most random thoughts and money-laundering habits, Ukridge this lunatic is also undoubtedly an accredited blighter and nuisance of what I have gathered from the story; he is no less disturbing compared to other prunes like Bertie Wooster and Freddie Threepwood. Ukridge is again another fervent and frivolous companion to other characters; he gives out the most avuncular and sunniest solution to his friends, with fulsome hope but to expect no hopeful results. He once said, “Bachelors are excrescences!” and once Garnet is on the brink of getting engaged, the advice he seeks from Ukridge to deal with the fearsome father-in-law would not be the best as we could all expect:

“Ukridge,” I said, when I got back, “I want your advice.”

 It stirred him like a trumpet blast. I suppose, when a man is in the habit of giving unsolicited counsel to everyone he meets, it is as invigorating as an electric shock to him to be asked for it spontaneously.

“Bring it out, laddie!” he replied cordially. “I’m with you. Here, come along into the garden, and state your case.”

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“Reviewing the matter later, I could see that I made one or two blunders in my conduct of the campaign to win over Professor Derrick.

“My second mistake – and this was brought home to me almost immediately – was in bringing Ukridge along. I confess that my heart sank… Unfortunately, all my efforts to dissuade him from accompanying me were attributed by him to a pardonable nervousness – or, as he put it, to the needle.

‘Buck up, laddie!’ he roared encouragingly. ‘I had anticipated this. Something seemed to tell me that your nerve would go when it came to the point. You’re deuced lucky, old horse, to have a man like me at your side. Why, if you were alone, you wouldn’t have a word to say for yourself. You’d just gape at the man and yammer. But I’m with you laddie, I’m with you. If your flow of conversation dries up, count on me to keep the thing going.'”

However, as most typical Wodehouse’s ending of solving a problem in the most sunniest manner and solution as well as in a rush, we may probably count on this prune Ukridge who must not be showing in despair and distrait, but to prepare an heroic and gallant action and tirade to steal the show!

I’ll see you soon m’lord…

Finished The World of Blandings and the short stories therein: The Custody of the Pumpkin, Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best, and Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey! Love all the three and the last one stands out as my favourite. Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best is also full of silly jokes; the scenario by Freddie is also interesting composition. I am as stunned as the guv’nor when the script involves a black jaguar.

However my brain cannot accommodate too many distrait prunes at one go as there are, I think, so many similar “spirited escapades” to get them digested. I have be granted a leave from Plum for now. But here below is my favourite paasage from  Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey. So beautifully declared by James Belford:

“You need a voice that has been trained on the open prairie and that has gathered richness and strength from competing with tornadoes.

You need a manly, sunburned, wind-scorched voice with a suggestion in it of the crackling of corn whisks and whisper of evening breezes in the fodder.”

Love Blandings Castle. Definitely will look in on Lord Emsworth and the Empress soon!

Something Fresh by P. G. Wodehouse

“Right ho! What a jolly read!  It is a plot-laden novel, but light-hearted, funny and entertaining; moreover, its ending leaves you with a warm-fuzzy feeling.” – Such tedious talking isn’t it? For all the Wodehouse fans here, surely you have all come across such comments on links, but right now I just can’t think of anything more suitable and cleverer to bolster this post. I have been lazy this week, and my brain is jammed all over. But seriously I am really into this novel.

I read Something Fresh as a one of the stories in an omnibus called The World of Blandings.  Before that I have read Summer Lightning as my first try on Blandings Castle novels, and found it just as amusing as first reading Jeeves and Wooster. I started to transform myself into a bait on  Wodehouse’s writing, and I also prodded myself into reasoning why I love his formula so much. All his characters, no matter great and small, have a common trait, that is often being lunatic and paranoid in their situations that they often end up contriving plans that they think wise and sophisticated; however all their plots would just cram into places where they don’t fit. It happens in the case of Invaluable Efficient Baxter – “a chappie can’t take a step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller Baxter”- being all there in the business and often plunges into action; he always crashes and fails. I just could not wait reading Leave it to Psmith and see how he leaves himself a blot by “committing a vile flower-pot crime” against Lord Emsworth!

Apart from the misfortune of Efficient Baxter, I also love how the younger and  aristocratic generations are always considered as eyesores to the elders. The  Hon. Frederick Threepwood is one of my favourite Nature’s prune in this novel. He, rather than competing against George Emerson for the rapture of Aline Peters, slips over the stairs for the cat and ends up staying in bed reading Gridley Quayle in afternoons. Even the elopement does happen, he just searches for something adequate to say to the deputation to suppress his dream state of mind, just like his father. What I like about the prestigious aristocrats are that they all are not in the prospect of  the promise of marriage and wandering about like mad hatters!

As much as the omnipresent playful prunes and plots, I also like the deception bits that prevails throughout the story. Ashe Marson, the writer of the detective stories of Gridley Quayle, is one of the interesting characters in the novel. At the opening chapters we see him doing the Swedish Exercise that arouses all laugh and finger-pointing attitude of other spectators in the hotel in Leicester Square. But who can guess that he would get embroiled in a maelstrom in disguising himself  as the valet of the dyspepsia Mr. Peters, and carry out the task of recovering a sought-after Scarab with Joan Valentine who, on the other hand, camouflages as the maid of Aline Peters as Miss Simpson.

Moreover, I have gained more knowledge of the aristocratic household, for example, in where the servants and staff located at dinner, whether of the Steward’s Room or the Servants’ Hall; when the breaking down the social barriers could take place (occurs 2 times, one in abusing Baxter and the elopement case);  the  servants’ honourable disagreement with another feller on “getting Above Himself”, and also the method in addressing one another,

“Ashe noted as curious fact that while the actual valet of any person under discussion spoke of him almost affectionately by his Christian name, the rest o the company used the greatest ceremony and gave him the title with all respect.”

The ending of this story, so philosophical, just to examine the circle of life bumping and going of the gong you met in life. Such are the aberrations and the funny narration of human nature I love in the stories of Blandings Castle. I can’t wait to read other shorter stories in The World of Blandings!

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Excerpt:

Joan was nowhere to be seen. In none of the spots where she might have been expected to be at such a time was she to be found. Ashe had almost given up the search when, going to the back door and looking out as a last chance, he perceived her walking slowly on the gravel drive.

She greeted Ashe with a smile, but something was plainly troubling her. She did not speak for a moment and they walked side by side.

“What is it?” said Ashe at length. “What is the matter?”

She looked at him gravely.

“Gloom,” she said. “Despondency, Mr. Marson – A sort of flat feeling. Don’t you hate things happening?”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, this affair of Aline, for instance. It’s so big it makes one feel as though the whole world had altered. I should like nothing to happen ever, and life just to jog peacefully along. That’s not the gospel I preached to you in Arundel Street, is it! I thought I was an advanced apostle of action; but I seem to have changed. I’m afraid I shall never be able to make clear what I do mean. I only know I feel as though I have suddenly grown old. These things are such milestones. Already I am beginning to look on the time before Aline behaved so sensationally as terribly remote. To-morrow it will be worse, and the day after that worse still. I can see that you don’t in the least understand what I mean.”

“Yes; I do – or I think I do. What it comes to, in a few words, is that somebody you were fond of has gone out of your life. Is that it?”

Joan nodded.

“Yes – at least, that is partly it. I didn’t really know Aline particularly well, beyond having been at school with her, but you’re right. It’s not so much what has happened as what it represents that matters. This elopement has marked the end of a phase of my life. I think I have it now. My life has been such a series of jerks. I dash along – then something happens which stops that bit of my life with a jerk; and then I have to start over again – a new bit. I think I’m getting tired of jerks. I want something stodgy and continuous.

“I’m like one of the old bus horses that could go on forever if people got off without making them stop. It’s the having to get the bus moving again that wears one out. This little section of my life since we came here is over, and it is finished for good. I’ve got to start the bus going again on a new road and with a new set of passengers. I wonder whether the old horses used to be sorry when they dropped one lot of passengers and took on a lot of strangers?”

A sudden dryness invaded Ashe’s throat. He tried to speak, but found no words. Joan went on:

“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.”

“There is one thing,” said Ashe, “that knits it together.”

“What is that?”

“The love interest.”

Their eyes met and suddenly there descended on Ashe confidence. He felt cool and alert, sure of himself, as in the old days he had felt when he ran races and, the nerve-racking hours of waiting past, he listened for the starter’s gun. Subconsciously he was aware he had always been a little afraid of Joan, and that now he was no longer afraid.

“Joan, will you marry me?”

Her eyes wandered from his face. He waited.

“I wonder!” she said softly. “You think that is the solution?”

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?” she broke out. “We scarcely know each other. I shan’t always be in this mood. I may get restless again. I may find it is the jerks that I really like.”

“You won’t!”

“You’re very confident.”

“I am absolutely confident.”

“‘She travels fastest who travels alone,'” misquoted Joan.

“What is the good,” said Ashe, “of traveling fast if you’re going round in a circle? I know how you feel. I’ve felt the same myself. You are an individualist. You think there is something tremendous just round the corner and that you can get it if you try hard enough. There isn’t – or if there is it isn’t worth getting. Life is nothing but a mutual aid association. I am going to help old Peters – you are going to help me – I am going to help you.”

“Help me to do what?”

“Make life coherent instead of a jumble.”

“Mr. Marson – “

“Don’t call me Mr. Marson.”

“Ashe, you don’t know what you are doing. You don’t know me. I’ve been knocking about the world for five years and I’m hard – hard right through. I should make you wretched.”

“You are not in the least hard – and you know it. Listen to me, Joan. Where’s your sense of fairness? You crash into my life, turn it upside down, dig me out of my quiet groove, revolutionize my whole existence; and now you propose to drop me and pay no further attention to me. Is it fair?”

“But I don’t. We shall always be the best of friends.”

“We shall – but we will get married first.”

“You are determined?”

“I am!”

Joan laughed happily.

“How perfectly splendid! I was terrified lest I might have made you change your mind. I had to say all I did to preserve my self-respect after proposing to you. Yes; I did. How strange it is that men never seem to understand a woman, however plainly she talks! You don’t think I was really worrying because I had lost Aline, do you? I thought I was going to lose you, and it made me miserable. You couldn’t expect me to say it in so many words; but I thought – I was hoping – you guessed. I practically said it. Ashe! What are you doing?”

Ashe paused for a moment to reply.

“I am kissing you,” he said.

“But you mustn’t! There’s a scullery maid or somebody looking through the kitchen window. She will see us.”

Ashe drew her to him.

“Scullery maids have few pleasures,” he said. “Theirs is a dull life. Let her see us.”

Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse

It is my first try on Blandings Castle Series; however I didn’t get into the first one, Something Fresh; instead I got myself this one – Summer Lightning. This is out of my expectations! I shouldn’t be saying that because I know all works by Sir P. G. Wodehouse are all gems, but this one just totally blows me off!

Summer Lightning, as we could all imagine, starts with a peaceful, picturesque atmosphere setting in a castle located in Shropshire. Everything seems calm but soon the characters emerge one by one – Beach the Butler, Clarence Threepwood (9th Earl of Emsworth, the first Emsworth who has ever won a pig pageant silver prize in a row), Hugo Carmody (the secretary whom Lord Emsworth so approves of), Aunt Constance (yet again another formidable aunt), Baxter (former secretary of Lord Emsworth whom Aunt Constance so approves of), and Sir Galahad Threepwood (brothers to the Threepwoods, the only one I consider to be the only normal entity in this book), etc. – with those unsound people residing in the castle and some other charming heroines and romances that aren’t favoured by the relatives, you could expect some lunatics will be going to contrive some “clever” plots and turning out to be consecutive predicaments and unbearable farce! And this time, two romantics pairs are trying to take advantage of the pig, the Empress of Blandings, in order to let their wedding bells ring!

There are so many parts of the story which set me in laughing fart, and the one which I appreciate the most is the series of unfortunate events of Baxter. Lord Emsworth, the rambling aristocrat and proprietor of Blandings who regards Baxter “as mad as a coot”, always has to bear and conquer his former secretary and ending up in frightening and unpredictable look because every time Baxter would conjure himself up of nowhere and evidence of himself madness! First time Lord Emsworth suspects himself of seeing an apparition of Baxter, second time thinks of him of committing suicide, then he carries an ivory stick to avoid being attacked in a rampage, and finally pointing at him with a gun! The Misunderstandings and disputes and confrontation of the two that Wodehouse portrays in his works are classic trademark trigger of laugh and chuckle.

None of its three members seemed really in the mood for a ramble through the woods. Beach, though face of a good man misjudged. Baxter was eyeing the sullen sky as though he suspected it of something. As for Lord Emsworth, though dark and deserted ways one who, though one this afternoon’s evidence the trend of his tastes seemed to be towards suicide, might quite possibly become homicidal.

Apart from that, the Butler Beach of Blandings Castle is of course not to be overlooked! The rivalry and dialogues between Beach and Baxter is clever plot. It is like a hilarious version of Wilkie Collins’s dual rivals. Moreover, I enjoy the point that everyone is really trying to be clever in deducing the conspirator behind this surreptitious act (Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe? Hugo Carmody? Beach?), and whereabouts the Empress is. The plot is seamless and superbly funny in Wodehouse’s narration and description in his story-telling.

After I finish the book and flip back the pages of the preface, I find that Wodehouse actually mentions Thackeray’s Vanity Fair concerning the naming of the Title and the “puppets” in his book! Amazing! Great read!

Joy in the morning…Right ho here!

It’s been a long time seen I last read Jeeves and Wooster novels, and it appeared to be a sudden urge of me to borrow this book from the library as I already have a long queue of books awaiting me in my room.

To simply put it, Jeeves and Wooster novels never disappoint me, including this one. I like all the farce in them. Why does Bertie have to make everything that is supposed to be serious – turns out to be something so invariably ludicrous? This keeps me wondering for so long and gets me, each time, thinking of eliciting the code and formulas of the concatenation. However, of course, I would not do that, and instead I might as well immerse in the humor of the gems

Something I love in reading Jeeves and Wooster novels is that not only these two main characters have got the charisma but as well as the others. The ever-present Lord Worplesdon (second husband to Aunt Agatha, henpecked funny man, issue: Florence (1st wife), and Edwin) and Master Edwin always guarantee a laugh from me. They are the cynosures of this novel. When reading it in bed, once “What? What? What…?”, or “Friday act of kindness” appear between lines of the novel, next minute I will be in a position of holding up my stomach in stitches.

But a longish experience has taught me that on these occasions innocence pays no dividends. Pure as the driven snow though he may be, or even purer, it is the man on the spot who gets the brickbats.

I can’t wait to explore more of Wodehouse’s novels. I have already requested the library to have Aunts aren’t gentlemen and The Mating Season on hold! Hurray!