Leave it to Psmith — P.G. Wodehouse

A gem of a novel, so quintessentially British, so classically Wodehouse.

Those mortals who have not read Wodehouse have missed a unique English writer. To define him as a comic genius belittles his mastery of language and of character.

Indeed, P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) remains in a class of his own. His books are set in world not so much long vanished, but as never existed: an England unsullied by war, where trains run on time and take travellers to old village towns unchanged with the centuries, a place where delightfully absent-minded earls live in grand country estates whose sweeping vistas hide secretaries to be feared and domestic staff are hatching plots. Love is always in the air, and one has a crisp fiver in the pocket.

In every idyll a devil always lurks, yet however complex the plots, they always finish with life in balance, the demons resolved, and a glorious summer shining over an English countryside in full bloom.

Wodehouse wastes not a word, each landing on the page with an effortless beauty balancing all he writes. His skill reflects a honing and perfection achieved by a lifetime of writing. As he once said in an interview, “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”

In publishing almost a hundred novels (as well as plays and musicals), Wodehouse created the immortal Jeeves, the world of Blandings, and the likes of Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred, Mr Mulliner and the Empress of Blandings. (Spoiler: the Empress is a prize-winning pig.)

Within these works lie similes and metaphors which last in the memory a life time. Each is presented with the balance and rhythm of an expert craftsman, in a tone both gentle and loving.

Idyllic English countryside © A. Harrison

Each reader will have their favourite Wodehouse, and mine is Leave it to Psmith, (published 1923) for it unites Psmith, the Eton-bred practical socialist, with the world of Blandings. Wodehouse apparently based the character of Psmith (‘the p is silent — as in pshrimp’ ) on a school acquaintance Rupert, the son of Richard D’Oyly Carte (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Wodehouse later wrote, it was “the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it”.

Like many Wodehouse novels, the plot line of Leave It To Psmith is delightfully convoluted. The opening sets the tone:

At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.

The Earl has misplaced his glasses. He misplaces them again while in London, reducing the world to a blur, which gives Psmith the opportunity to impersonate the Canadian poet Ralston McTodd and so arrive at Blandings in the pursuit of Eve ­– and, at the behest of Freddie (Lord Emsworth’s son) a diamond necklace. Freddie plans to steal his aunt’s necklace on behalf of his uncle, who needs some ready cash for his stepdaughter, Phylliss (who just happens to be a friend of Eve’s and is married to Psmith’s best friend). Freddie, banished to Blandings after loosing a fair amount of money on the races, plans to use his cut of the robbery to open a gaming business.

Confused?

From such a beginning, the tale becomes ever more twisted; the efficient Baxter suspects all (even his boiled egg of a morning); McTodd (whom Psmith is impersonating) just happens to be married ­to a friend of Eve’s; two more burglars arrive to steal the necklace, Freddie tried desperately to propose to Eve, and in between battling his head gardener, the delightful Earl tries just as desperately to rid himself of Baxter.

And this is just a simple précis.

Wandering an English garden © A. Harrison

Domestic staff feature largely in Wodehouse’s works. A new parlour maid may be a detective, and Psmith’s new valet totes a gun and is missing the tip of finger, a consequence of his former career as a card-sharp. Beach, the head-butler, struggles to maintain the decorum befitting his post:

‘Very good, sir. The matter shall be attended to,’ said Beach. And with a muffled sound that was half a sigh, half a death-rattle, he tottered through the green-baize door.

Yet to reproduce Wodehouse as a series of quotes merely reduces his skill. As Punch once wrote, criticising Wodehouse ‘is like taking a spade to souffle’. Analysing him does much the same. Delightful as are so many of his sentences, the beauty and the skill lies in the melody of the whole.

His lordship was no novice in the symptoms of insanity. Several of his best friends were residing in those palatial establishments set in pleasant parks and surrounded by high walls with broken bottles on them, to which the wealthy and aristocratic are wont to retire when the strain of modern life becomes too great. And one of his uncles by marriage, who believed that he was a loaf of bread, had made his first public statement on the matter in the smoking-room of this very castle. What Lord Emsworth did not know about lunatics was not worth knowing.

Once Wodehouse has been discovered, I believe it is impossible to restrict yourself to just one novel. Although it’s the last in the Psmith series, Leave It To Psmith serves as the perfect starting platform for discovering P.G. Wodehouse and the idyllic world he created as our own tumbled between two world wars.

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