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P.G. Wodehouse, 1930
Perhaps the most admired humorist of the 20th century, P.G. Wodehouse was a craftsman of the English language, evident in flawlessly constructed sentences and hilarious, character-driven plots. He experienced challenging times but brought delight to millions, all while maintaining a childlike glee, his goal always to bring happiness into the lives of his readers.
He said that he rewrote each sentence 10 times, and the timing of his prose always landed the punchline so perfectly and unexpectedly that it's easy to believe. It's the comfort of reading Wodehouse and his amusing similes, analogies, contrast of diction, and riotous non sequiturs that readers love. Each line brings another witicism and few paragraphs fail to bring a smile. He often reused characters, reframing them in new directions and circumstances, and his plot structures were marvelously complex, but it is his unparalleled skill at the sentence level that make his works so fun to read and reread.
Biting satire was not in his character; instead, Wodehouse's strength was in the comic and lighthearted. "If you take life fairly easily," he said, "then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He built his work upon the world of Victorian England and the subsequent years of the idle rich and those who came in contact with them. In the words of actor/comedian/writer/director Stephen Fry:
His world of sniffily disapproving aunts, stern and gooseberry-eyed butlers, impatient uncles, sporty young girls, natty young men who throw bread rolls in club dining-rooms yet blush and stammer in the presence of the opposite sex — all may be taken as evidence of a man stuck in a permanently pre-pubescent childhood, were it not for the extraordinary, magical and blessed miracle of Wodehouse's prose, a prose that dispels doubt much as sunlight dispels shadows, a prose that renders any criticism, positive or negative, absolutely powerless and, frankly, silly.
Examples of Wodehouse's meticulous sentence construction are almost uncountable, filling the 71 novels, 42 plays, 15 scripts, and 24 anthologies that he wrote. Here are a few examples:
A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle. (The Man Upstairs 1914)
It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet. (Jeeves in the Morning 1946)
"Aunt Agatha is my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon." (Joy in the Morning 1946)
He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg. (Eggs, Beans and Crumpets 1940)
One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth (Right Ho, Jeeves 1934)
Attila the Hun might have broken off his engagement to her, but nobody except Attila the Hun, and he only on one of his best mornings. (A Few Quick Ones 1959)
She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when." (The Inimitable Jeeves 1923)
"Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag." (Summer Moonshine 1937)
The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like GK Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. (Mr Mullner Speaking 1929)
Hundreds of other examples exist. Try Googling "Wodehouse quotes" for a trove of stimulating amusement; lines like these saturate his work. In a BBC article titled, "The Man Who Wrote the Most Perfect Sentences Ever Written" (December 23, 2020), Nicholas Barber writes about his own favorite Wodehouse quotes:
To read any of those sentences is to marvel at the elaborate but elegant route it takes to a perfect punchline; to delight in how it glides between Shakespeare and race-track slang, between understatement and exaggeration, between gentle humour and stinging wit. "What Wodehouse writes is pure word music," said Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. "It matters not one whit that he writes endless variations on a theme of pig kidnappings, lofty butlers, and ludicrous impostures. He is the greatest musician of the English language, and exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day."
His ear for language was also evident in the names of his characters, such as Galahad Threepwood, Colonel Egbert Wedge, Mrs Twemlow, George Cyril Wellbeloved, Frederick Valerie Twistleton, Tipton Plimsoll, Augustus Whiffle, and Ronald Eustace Psmith, whose "P" in his name is self appointed and silent, used to differentiate himself from other Smiths.
Perhaps most memorable to readers are the comic pair, Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, who appear in 10 novels and more than 30 short stories. Wooster is an affably bemused, good-natured English gentleman, one of the idle rich, who finds himself in awkward situations and is invariably saved with comedic, deadpan efficiency by the hyper intelligent Jeeves. Even those who have not read Wodehouse may recognize that the name Jeeves has become a cliche for English butlers. Wodehouse did that.
Wodehouse's Childhood
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guilford, Surrey, England, the son of a barrister and wife who spent most of their time far away from "Plum," as he was called by friends and family. His parents lived in Hong Kong, where his father was stationed, and Wodehouse was raised in England under the care of a nanny. Wodehouse said later that he had a happy childhood, but the scarcity of parental contact and minimal socialization must have made an impression and surely contributed to his vivid imagination.
From the age of 12 his home was Dulwich College, a boarding school that he loved attending and for the rest of his life maintained affection for, especially for its sports teams. His dedication to the school was such that at the time of his death in 1975, his widow gave Dulwich some of his possessions:
After his death, Lady Wodehouse sent the school some manuscripts and complete typescripts of books, many pages of pencilled notes for books and short stories, his working desk and chair, his typewriter, a half-leather-bound set of the Autograph edition of his books, a number of other authors' books, some of them signed gift copies, two spectacle cases, half a dozen pipes in a pipe rack, two tobacco pouches and a pencil tray full of pens and pencils. (Wodehouse at Work, 1977, by Richard Usborne)
He played rugby, cricket, and boxed while a student, and remained at Dulwich for six years, after which he became a banker, a profession that he loathed. He longed for his shift to end every day so that he could write. When his first novel was published in 1902, he quit the banking profession to write full-time. Over the next seven years he wrote six novels, but they weren't what he would call good. He considered these years an apprenticeship as he learned his craft.
He longed for his shift to end every day so that he could write
He also wrote for the stage during these formative years, including lyrics for musical comedies, and he continued to write plays for the next three decades, gravitating primarily to novels and short stories afterward.
Pipes were important aspects of his characters and his writing is rife with offhand comments about lighting and puffing pipes. Richard Usborne notes their use in his biography, Wodehouse at Work (1977):
A man with a pipe in his mouth and a frown of concentration was, by the rules of fiction, more manly and heroic than someone without either. Wodehouse in his floruit decades used pipes and pipe-smoking as comic plot-makers: pipes are things for authors to be photographed with, and for other characters to give up in agony.
The War Years
He was in New York when WW1 broke out, and his poor eyesight made him ineligible for service. He continued his literary and dramatic pursuits in the U.S. through the end of the war. He had married Ethel May Wayman, an English widow, in 1914. In contrast to Wodehouse, who was shy, reserved, quiet, and impractical, Ethel was extroverted and decisive, and she made it her goal to provide an environment in which Wodehouse could write. They had no children, but Wodehouse loved his step daughter Leonora and legally adopted her. He and Ethel remained together and happy for the rest of his 93 years.
His writing was enormously popular and by the 1930s he was a well-established author. He moved to France in 1934 to reduce his taxes, and while his stories generally take place in Great Britain, he spent more of his own life in France and the United States.
The invasion of France by Germany in 1940 brought his arrest by the Gestapo in 1941 and he was interned for a year, as were all male aliens. In P.G. Wodehouse (1979) by Joseph Connolly, his hurried preparations were inadequate:
He was told to pack a few essentials ... He had very quickly to assemble what he considered to be the necessities of life, and hastily decided upon tobacco, pipes, paper, pens, a razor, tea, a Tennyson and a Shakespeare. P.G. missed tobacco more than food, for he had not brought a lot with him, and it was now all gone. He smoked his tea until that ran out too.
The invasion of France by Germany in 1940 brought his arrest by the Gestapo
In his writings about that time in his life, Wodehouse remained cheerful, despite the inadequate smoking supplies:
"When the tobacco gave out, most of us smoked tea or straw. Tea-smokers were unpopular with the rest of their dormitory, owing to the smell caused by their activities — a sort of sweet, sickly smell which wraps itself round the atmosphere and clings for hours. Tea-smoking has also the disadvantage that it leads to a mild form of fits. It was quite usual to see men, puffing away, suddenly pitch over sideways and have to be revived with first aid." (Wodehouse at War by Ian Sproat 1981)
"Tea-smokers were unpopular with the rest of their dormitory, owing to the smell caused by their activities"
Joseph Connolly reports that, "The daily ration was two mugs of coffee, one bowl of soup, and a piece of bread, It was not much, but P.G. missed tobacco more than food, for he had not brought a lot with him, and it was now all gone. He smoked his tea until that ran out too."
The largest controversy of his life occurred upon his release at age 60, before he was permitted to return home, when he made six broadcasts to the U.S. for German radio. They were humorous and apolitical broadcasts, and his motivation was to connect with his audience. He received hundreds of letters and was unable to respond, which made him feel guilty, so his radio broadcasts were his way of reassuring everyone that he was fine and appreciated their concern. As Stephen Fry notes, "Anyone who has examined the affair closely will agree with the Foreign Office official who wrote in 1947 that it was unlikely" that Wodehouse had any political agenda. However, the fact that he had broadcast over enemy radio brought robust criticism and he never returned to England, spending the rest of his life in the U.S.
Wodehouse and Pipe Smoking
His pursuits were not complex. Wodehouse loved his family, his writing, and his pipes. As long as he could write and smoke, he was happy:
He was, as you can gather, a man of simple tastes; fine food did not interest him, and nor did the elaborate cocktails of the time. Wooster he wasn't. He smoked about an ounce of tobacco a day in one of his many pipes — in his later years taking to filling them with broken cigars. (P.G. Wodehouse (1979), by Joseph Connolly)
"He smoked about an ounce of tobacco a day in one of his many pipes"
Little can be found about Wodehouse's preferences in pipe tobacco. In Joseph Connolly's biography, one tobacco is mentioned in relation to a friend traveling to London for Wodehouse with two favors in mind:
On his return to London, Muggeridge had agreed to two favours. One was to procure for P.G. some tobacco, and the other to learn of the sales progress of P.G.'s books, in the light of events. A quantity of Three Nuns was duly acquired, though it is unclear whether this was the brand specified by P.G., or simply what was available in wartime London. (A personal and recent inspection of P.G.'s tobacco pouches revealed to me a mixture of Virginia and cigar leaf).
He relied heavily upon his pipes, smoking almost constantly as he wrote. In P.G. Wodehouse: Portrait of a Master (1974), David A Jasen describes the process: "... he would think out the complications of whichever plot he was working on; and as an aid to thought he would take with him a pipe with an extra-large bowl, into which he would cram tobacco derived from crushed cigars."
"... he would take with him a pipe with an extra-large bowl, into which he would cram tobacco derived from crushed cigars"
A daily routine was a comfort to Wodehouse, and he maintained an exercise regimen every day for more than 50 years. His approach to his writing was similar and each day revolved around his customary habits, which included a pipe before starting work:
By nine o'clock, having finished a pipeful of the shredded tobacco of a Dutch Masters cigar and taken a short walk with one or more of the family's four dogs, he moves eagerly to his study and gets down to work on the novel or short story or article he is currently writing. (The World of P.G. Wodehouse 1972, by Herbert Warren Wind)
Photos of Wodehouse reveal that he smoked the occasional corn cob pipe, but primarily he's seen with a straight Pot. That observation is confirmed by Herbert Warren Wind in The World of P.G. Wodehouse (1972):
Two people in the city he keeps in close touch with are Scott Meredith, who has been his American literary agent since 1947, and Peter Schwed, the chairman of the editorial board of Simon & Schuster, which has been his American publisher since 1951. Both men were Wodehouse fans long before they became associated with him, and both are devoted to him. Schwed, among his other services, keeps Wodehouse in pipes, periodically sending him a favorite model—an Algerian briar with a huge pot-shaped bowl, made by Jobey.
Those large Pots consumed a lot of tobacco and Wodehouse's narrator in Love Among the Chickens (1978), "mused on the immortality of the soul and the deplorable speed at which two ounces of tobacco disappeared."
Like all pipe smokers, he had to fiddle with his pipes at times to keep them smoking correctly, and since his narrator in the same book used a particular technique with a straw, we may infer that it's something Wodehouse himself experienced: "As I sat there, my pipe drawing nicely as the result of certain explorations conducted that morning with a straw, my mind ranged idly over large subjects and small."
Like many of the most talented authors in history, P.G. Wodehouse depended upon and cherished his pipes. They were part of his life from early adulthood to the very end of his life, and even at 93 he continued to smoke and write. When he died, he had another manuscript working. He couldn't not write, and he couldn't not smoke. His devotion to his craft and to his pipes remained constant, and whatever magical attributes his pipes carried, it is demonstrated clearly in his many writings that they worked. Among the best loved and appreciated authors of all time, Wodehouse continues to amuse and impress us with his deft mastery of the English language as delivered through a haze of delectable smoke.
- Wodehouse.org
- Catholic Education Resource Center
- The Times Of Israel
- P.G. Wodehouse Books
- BBC
- The World of P.G. Wodehouse (1972), by Herbert Warren Wind
- Love Among the Chickens (1978), by P.G. Wodehouse
- The World of P.G. Wodehouse (1972), by Herbert Warren Wind
- P.G. Wodehouse: Portrait of a Master (1974), by David A Jasen
- P.G. Wodehouse (1979), by Joseph Connolly
- Wodehouse at War (1981), by Ian Sproat
- Wodehouse at Work (1977), by Richard Usborne
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Comments
In a book of collected letters to and from Wodehouse, it was mentioned that P.G. received a pound of chocolate and a pound of Prince Albert pipe tobacco every week while a prisoner of war in Germany. Sorry not to be able to provide a detailed reference, but I believe the details to be correct.
Wow, this piece moved me. There's just too much to touch on with such little space(and the wine & martinis don't help). I laughed: Ronald Eustace Psmith, whose "P" in his name is self appointed and silent, used to differentiate himself from other Smiths and Wodehouse's narrator in Love Among the Chickens (1978), "mused on the immortality of the soul and the deplorable speed at which two ounces of tobacco disappeared.", I cried: The invasion of France by Germany in 1940 brought his arrest by the Gestapo in 1941 and he was interned for a year, as were all male , and I related: He longed for his shift to end every day. Through no fault of your own, Mr.Stanion, I have acquired quite the list of incredible authors to play catch up on. And I feel the same way about your work: a prose that renders any criticism, positive or negative, absolutely powerless and, frankly, silly. Thank you, sir, and I hope I live long enough to catch up. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Dear Mr. Stanion, At the risk of alienating you from the affections of your employers at Smoking Pipes, I enjoy your writing as much as a good pipe or cigar. The joy is, to use an over-used word: "priceless". Thank you for your gems which always make my day. Kind regards,
My mother-in-law introduced me to P.G. Wodehouse many years ago, and I will always be grateful to her for that. This was another terrific profile of a talented man who found comfort in his pipes. Many of the people who tell us that our pipes are unhealthy have died, or will die, long before the age of 93.
Chuck,You have done it AGAIN. When you write about a "brother" in pipes, you really make him (her) really seem like we were sitting in either the parlor or his den and just sharing a bowl or two (or even three) with the person you have chosen to inform us about.
Thank you for another wonderful article. I really appreciate having the video and references to explore further. P.G. Wodehouse novels are on my iPhone - because when I am standing in a queue, or stuck waiting somewhere, I am absorbed in the wonderful world of Wodehouse. I recommend it.
Awesome Pipes story Beautiful A!!! WOW
Chuck, keep it up. These essays belong in library special collections!
I really enjoyed this wonderful story. Thank you so very much.
A great humorist writer. His novels, characters show a light-hearted humor that us sadly missing in today's world. His pipe smoking habits were as unique as his writing style.Thank you for another great article.
I've loved the Wodehouse books since first being introduced ("blessed") with them in college, especially the Bertie Wooster-Jeeves novels. Reread, they never fail to delight and cause laughter. In this age of anxiety, Wodehouse may be the best medicine of all!Thanks for this wonderful article about him.