Until the original item from this weekly is found, we present a reprinting of it from The Daily Standard of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, May 16, 1922, archived at the National Library of Australia.

 

CREATOR OF JEEVES.

——♦——

HUMOR OF P. G. WODEHOUSE.

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Mr. Wodehouse is without doubt the most successful of the younger English humorous writers (writes Sidney Dark, in “John o’ London’s Weekly”). We have a very special interest in him because it was in one of the magazines published by the House of Newnes that his first stories appeared. Messrs. Newnes have always had the closest and most friendly associations with Mr. Wodehouse, and he is still one of the most constant and successful contributors to the “Strand Magazine.” It is a good deed in these days to be responsible for the discovery and encouragement of a man who has made millions of his fellows laugh. Mr. Greenhough Smith, the editor of the “Strand,” may well preen himself on the fact that he has given so much of Jacobs and Wodehouse to a harassed world.

LIKE DICKENS.

Mr. Wodehouse’s method is something like that of Dickens. Mr. Alec Waugh recently said of him: “P. G. Wodehouse takes a humorous character, a ‘Psmith,’ or an ‘Archie,’ some quaint, original creature, plants him in a conventional environment, and selects situations that will accentuate the humor of his presence there.”

The Wodehouse characters are as commonplace as Mr. Winkle or Mr. Snodgrass—a vacuous young man about town, an imperturbable butler, an ordinary American citizen kicking against European culture. Mr. Wodehouse takes these characters, places them with great skill in some perfectly possible situation, and lets them talk in their own dialogue, demonstrating, as Dickens demonstrated over and over again, how essentially funny all men, and particularly all commonplace men, really are.

BERTIE AND BINGO.

Here is a conversation between vacuous Bertie and his still more vacuous friend Bingo. There is only the smallest amount of exaggeration in the dialogue. It is absolutely apropos, evidently written by a man who has observed and listened and is able to reproduce with just that touch of humorous exaggeration that gives distinction.

I was still brooding when I dropped in at the oyster-bar at Buck’s for a quick bracer. I needed a bracer rather particularly at the moment, because I was on my way to lunch with my Aunt Agatha. A pretty frightful ordeal, believe me or believe me not. Practically the nearest thing to being disembowelled. I had just had one quick and another rather slower, and was feeling about as cheerio as was possible under the circs, when a muffled voice hailed me from the north-east, and, turning round, I saw young Bingo Little propped up in a corner, wrapping himself round a sizable chunk of bread and cheese.

“Hullo-allo-allo!” I said. “Haven’t seen you for ages. You’ve not been in here lately, have you?”

“No. I’ve been living out in the country.”

“Eh?” I said, for Bingo’s loathing for the country was well known. “Whereabouts?”

“Down in Hampshire, at a place called Ditteredge.”

“No, really? I know some people who’ve got a house there. The Glossops. Have you met them?”

“Why, that’s where I’m staying!” said young Bingo. “I’m tutoring the Glossop kid.”

“What for?” I said. I couldn’t seem to see young Bingo as a tutor. Though, of course, he did get a degree of sorts at Oxford, and I suppose you can always fool some of the people some of the time.

“What for? For money, of course! An absolute sitter came unstitched in the second race at Haydock Park,” said young Bingo, with some bitterness, “and I dropped my entire month’s allowance. I hadn’t the nerve to touch my uncle for any more, so it was a case of buzzing round to the agents and getting a job. I’ve been down there three weeks.”

“I haven’t met the Glossop kid.”

“Don’t!” advised Bingo, briefly.

WRITING AMERICANESE.

It is said that Mr. Wodehouse is the only Englishman who ever learned to write Americanese. There is a fine example of this power in his American exiles thrilling account of a baseball match:—

“. . . . Now pay attention. Play ball! Pitcher’s winding up. Put it over, Mike, put it over! Some speed, kid! Here it comes right in the groove. Bing! Batter slams it and streaks for first. Outfielder—this lump of sugar—boots it. Bonehead! Batter touches second. Third? No! Get back! Can’t be done. Play it safe. Stick round the sack, old pal. Second batter up. Pitcher getting something on the ball now besides the cover. Whiffs him. Back to the bench, Cyril! Third batter up. See him rub his hands in the dirt. Watch this kid. He’s good! Lets two alone, then slams the next right on the nose. Whizzes round to second. First guy, the one we left on second, comes home for one run. That’s a game! Take it from me, Bill, that’s a game!”

THE UNEXPECTED “LAST WORD.”

The Wodehouse humor depends far more on incongruity of character than on incongruity of situation. In this again he resembles Dickens. Many of his laughs are gained by what I may call the unexpected last word. For example, the handy boy’s advice to his master when the fowls were all ill and refused to lay eggs:—

“Well, my aunt, sir, when ’er fowls ’ad the roop, she give them snuff.”

Thinking that he spoke in metaphor, I could not help feeling that it was brutal on the part of his aunt, an estimable lady in other ways, I had no doubt, to punish the birds for what was after all no fault of their own.

But it seemed that he spoke literally.

“Give them snuff, she did,” he repeated, with relish, “every morning.”

“Snuff!” said Mrs. Ukridge.

“Yes, ma’am. She give them snuff till their eyes bubbled.”

Mrs. Ukridge uttered a faint squeak at this vivid piece of word-painting.

“And did it cure them?” asked Ukridge.

“No, sir,” responded the expert, soothingly. “They died.”

The “last word” is unexpected. Snuff is recommended, presumably for a cure. Its cruelty must surely be excused by its beneficence. But no, the chickens died, and one is left in doubt whether the boy or his aunt was the chicken hater.

 

 

Notes:
Sidney Dark (1874–1947), English journalist and critic, editor of the Church Times, and author of more than 30 books including a biography of W. S. Gilbert.
first stories appeared: In The Captain.
Strand Magazine: See the Strand menu on this site.
Jacobs: W. W. Jacobs (1863–1943), English author and dramatist, frequently quoted or cited by name in Wodehouse.
The line beginning “Don’t” was not indented in the original.
The Bertie–Bingo dialogue is from “Scoring Off Jeeves”; the baseball quotation is from Piccadilly Jim; the Ukridge dialogue is from Love Among the Chickens, ch. 10.