Quote of the Day (P.G. Wodehouse, on an Exceptionally ‘Pinheaded’ Young Man)

“People who enjoyed a merely superficial acquaintance with my nephew Archibald (said Mr Mulliner) were accustomed to set him down as just an ordinary pinheaded young man. It was only when they came to know him better that they discovered their mistake. Then they realized that his pinheadedness, so far from being ordinary, was exceptional. Even at the Drones Club, where the average of intellect is not high, it was often said of Archibald that, had his brains been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. He sauntered through life with a cheerful insouciance, and up to the age of twenty-five had only once been moved by anything in the nature of a really strong emotion – on the occasion when, in the heart of Bond Street and at the height of the London season, he discovered that his man, Meadowes, had carelessly sent him out with odd spats on.”—English humorist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), “The Reverent Wooing of Archibald,” in Mr. Mulliner Omnibus (1972)

Quote of the Day (P. G. Wodehouse, on a Horrifying Fiancee)

“She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says: ‘Guess who!’” — English humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Quote of the Day (P.G. Wodehouse, on Hoping for Successful First Novels)

“It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”—English humorist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), Cocktail Time (1958)

Quote of the Day (P.G. Wodehouse, on ‘The Nodder’ in Hollywood)

“It is not easy to explain to the lay mind the extremely intricate ramifications of the personnel of a Hollywood motion picture organisation. Putting it as briefly as possible, a Nodder is something like a Yes-Man, only lower in the social scale. A Yes-Man’s duty is to attend conferences and say ‘Yes.’ A Nodder’s, as the name implies, is to nod. The chief executive throws out some statement of opinion, and looks about him expectantly. This is the cue for the senior Yes-Man to say yes, He is followed, in order of precedence, by the second Yes-Man—or Vice-Yesser, as he is sometimes called—and the junior Yes-Man. Only when all the Yes-Men have yessed, do the Nodders begin to function. They nod.”—English humorist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), “The Nodder,” in The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology (2007)

Quote of the Day (P.G. Wodehouse, As a Guest Faces a German Shepherd on His Bed)

“Freddie looked at the dog. The dog looked at Freddie. The situation was one fraught with embarrassment. A glance at the animal was enough to convince him that it had got an entirely wrong angle on the position of affairs and was regarding him purely in the light of an intrusive stranger who had muscled in on its private sleeping quarters. Its manner was plainly resentful. It fixed Freddie with a cold, yellow eye and curled its upper lip slightly, the better to display a long white tooth. It also twitched its nose and gave a sotto-voce imitation of distant thunder.”—English humorist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), Young Men in Spats (1936)

Quote of the Day (P. G. Wodehouse, on the Merits of a Young Woman’s Suitor)

[The Earl of Ickenham—“Uncle Fred”—has not only convinced his nephew Pongo Twistleton, against his better judgement, to follow him into the suburb of his youth, but also to occupy, in an attempt to escape a downpour, a villa known as The Cedars. There, they encounter the Parkers, a middle-aged couple who are relatives of the house’s owner, and their 19-year-old daughter, whose suitor has just been persuaded by Uncle Fred to hide behind a settee. Mrs. Parker now vents to Uncle Fred—who she mistakenly believes is her cousin’s husband, Mr. Roddis—about the young man she can’t see.]

“ ‘I found to my horror that a young man of whom I knew nothing was arranging to marry my daughter. I sent for him immediately, and found him to be quite impossible. He jellies eels!"’

‘Does what?’

‘He is an assistant at a jellied eel shop.’

‘But surely,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘that speaks well for him. The capacity to jelly an eel seems to me to argue intelligence of a high order. It isn't everybody who can do it, by any means. I know if someone came to me and said ' “Jelly this eel!”  I should be nonplussed. And so, or I am very much mistaken, would Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill.’ The woman did not seem to see eye to eye.”—British humorist P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), “Uncle Fred Flits By,” in The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology (Everyman’s Library, 2007)

Though I have had this Wodehouse collection for several years, only now did I have the chance to read this story about “Uncle Fred.” It was brought to my attention this past Sunday, at a matinee of the one-man show, John Lithgow: Stories by Heart. The actor—first exposed to it in childhood in a 1939 anthology edited by W. Somerset Maugham, Tellers of Tales—spotlighted “Uncle Fred” in the second act, convulsing the audience with laughter.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Uncle Fred was portrayed—first on American TV, then on the BBC—by, respectively, David Niven and Wilfrid Hyde-White. (You can see Niven’s performance, in an episode of Four-Star Playhouse, in this YouTube clip.) But, as accomplished as those actors were, it is hard to see how their performances could top Lithgow’s, who managed to conjure up all the story’s characters.

Then again, what source material he had to work with! Almost any attempt to convey the quality of Wodehouse’s inspired lunacy runs the risk of overanalyzing the ineffable. But, in remarks prepared for an 80^th birthday broadcast for his friend, Evelyn Waugh—a writer of distinctly darker shadings—paid full tribute to his fellow comic master:

“Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

(The image of Wodehouse that accompanies this post was taken around 1904.)