The Order of Lunacy
First Class
" LOUDER, please," urged a voice from the back of the room during an after-dinner speech. " Louder and funnier."
A ton of feathers (though I am still rather sceptical about this) is said to be no heavier, and is obviously no lighter, than a ton of lead ; they are both a ton. To me it is rather the same with the works of Mr. Wodehouse. One book by this author can hardly be either funnier or less funny than another ; they are both Wodehouse. (This estimate does not, of course, take into account the little-known, and now very rare, products of his Early Romantic Period.) But Louder and Funnier, which is a collection of essays written during the last twelve years, will, by virtue no less of its contents than of its title, provoke animated discussion—and I hope nothing worse— among Wodehouse-addicts. Those who hold that the maestro's genius flowered at its finest during the Neo-Psmith period will have sharp things to say to the " Wooster First " school. The Mulliner-fans will come into conflict with the small (but powerful) Ukridge sect. The deutero-Jeeves heresy may even be revived. Wodehouse. Societies all over England will be in a ferment. One word will be on every one's lips. "Fun- nier ? "
I am not going to involve the Spectator in what promises to be a first-class literary controversy by coming out with a Yes or a No. It will suffice to say that Mr. Wodehouse is, once more, on top of his form. In the unfamiliar role of a Shakespearean critic he is, indeed, slightly above it. How acutely, and yet how charitably, he analyses a peculiarity in the man's (Shakespeare's) work to which few, if any, of our leading scholars have given a due prominence—" the fact that, while his stuff sounds all right, it generally doesn't mean any- thing." The Wodehouse theory is that Burbage and people were always holding up rehearsals and complaining about this.
Oh, it's all in the acting,' Shakespeare would say. "'You just speak the line quick and nobody'll notice anything.' And that would be that, until they were rehearsingPericles, Prince of Tyre, and somebody had to say to somebody else, I'll fetch thee with a wanion.' Shakespeare would get round that by pre- tending that a wanion was a sort of cab, but this only gave him a brief respite, because the next moment they would be asking him what a geek ' Wag, or a loggat,' or a cullion,' or au egma,' or a panto' . ; ."
Mr. Wodehouse*s reputation as a literary critic will be con- siderably enhanced by his dissertation on Thrillers. He is all against the inclusion in such books of a heroine, who, " although beautiful, with large grey eyes and hair the colour of ripe corn, is almost never a very intelligent girl." She has an insidious effect on the villain, undermining his efficiency, and aggravating the " fatal excess of ingenuity " from which he suffers.
" The average villain's natural impulse " (says Mr. Wodehouse,) " if called upon to kill a fly, would be to saw away the supports of the floor, tie a string across the doorway, and then send the fly an anonymous letter urging it to come at once in order to hear of something to its advantage. . . . That, to the villain's mind, is not merely the simplest, it is the only way of killing flies."
It is when dealing with the heroine that this tendency to super-subtlety afflicts the villain worst.
" Give him a baronet and he will stick a knife in his back without a second thought. But the moment he finds himself up agitinst a heroine he seems to go all to pieces, and we got all this stuff of suspending snakes from the chandelier and fooling about with bombs which can only he exploded by means of a gramophone record with an A in alt on it But I think I have said enough. I should like to register discernment as well as rapture by analysing Mr. Wodehouse's mastery of the essay-form ; and I feel inclined to add a few profound remarks about the quality of Wodehouse humour. But the only thing that absolutely has to be said is that, as popular humour, it is as good as anything there has ever been in England : if not better.
R. P. F.
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