A Wodehouse a Week #17: Mr Mulliner Speaking

In a perfect world, here's how "A Wodehouse a Week" is supposed to work:

Monday: Post the weekly review. Bask in it for a wee bit, then trot over to the Wodehouse Bookshelf and choose a volume for next week.
Tuesday through Thursday: Read the chosen book carefully, savoring its delight. Take careful notes and begin to write an outline of the weekly review.
Friday: Do a little research online and in my Wodehouse reference books. Find an old book jacket image to create the week's banner. Look over and edit notes and outline.
Saturday: Write first draft of review. Pose for photo with book. Research Amazon links for readers to buy the book.
Sunday: Revise and finish writing review. Upload images and photos. Enter entire final review into Blogger to be published on Monday.

And here's how it usually works out in real life:

Monday: Post the weekly review. Bask in it for a wee bit, then trot over to the Wodehouse Bookshelf and choose a volume for next week.
Tuesday through Friday: Watch TV. Listen to iPod on subway instead of devoting time to reading. Play some PSP.
Saturday: Trot back to bookshelf and choose a shorter book. Vow to read it all tomorrow.
Sunday: Watch TV.
Monday: Read first half of book on subway in morning. Make notes by sticking Post-It™ tags on passages. Read some more at lunchtime. Finish reading book on subway ride home. Eat dinner and watch TV. Sit down and write and post entire review from scratch in a couple hours. Struggle to remember what I was going to write about that passage that seems to be marked by that Post-It™ tag. Vow not to do the same thing again next week. Post and publish review on Blogger. Trot over to the Wodehouse Bookshelf and choose a volume for next week.

And so it goes.

Now, don't get me wrong: this isn't a chore. Reading Wodehouse is a delight. I'm a pretty fast reader and his books are breezy and quick, so even reading an entire one in a matter of a couple hours on Monday isn't glossing over it. And anyway, I get my best inspiration when the book is still crispy-fresh in my mind, Wodehouse's distinct language echoing through my fluffy brain. Most important, reading Wodehouse makes me feel giddy and happy and joyful and on top of the world, and there's no day of the week I need to feel that way more than on Monday. In other words, I procrastinate because I love.

This morning I cracked (not literally) the cover of Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929), the second of three Wodehouse short story collections consisting of tales of adventure and romance as told by the loquacious (you guessed it) Mr Mulliner. The Mulliner collections were all published in the late 1920s and early 30s, so they're excellent examples of early-middle Wodehouse. Between these three collections (the other two of which I shall get to in the course of this Wodehouse a Week project) and some other stories contained in anthologies and collections, the Mr Mulliner stories number exactly 42, which is a portentous number for those of us who are Douglas Adams or Mark King fans. Mr Mulliner Speaking contains nine of these, oh hoo boy, what delights every one of them is, like a fine box of nine creamy chocolates without a single lemon crème in the lot of 'em. In each of them, the titular Mr M holds court at the Anglers' Rest Pub and tells fast-paced but intricate tales of romances of members of his family to anyone who will listen (and quite a few who are trying to get away). Those of you who've been reading my reviews might find the structure of the stories oddly familiar: they're much in the vein of The Oldest Member telling tales at the golf club in The Heart of a Goof and other collections, without the golf specialization (altho' Mulliner's heroes often golf and one story in this collection is spun around a golf game) and always with a familial focus: most stories spun are about a Mulliner of some sort: a nephew or niece, cousin or second cousin. There are so many of 'em here and in the other Mr Mulliner books that it might be fun to draw an involved and detailed Mulliner family tree. (I'm not doin' it, but you may feel free to do so. Please get your parents' permission to use scissors beforehand!)

The audience for each of the stories is charmingly described by its drink orders rather than name—not that Wodehouse even had trouble coming up with character names, but isn't it more charming to read the following rather than "Smith said" or "Jones queried"?:

The conversation in the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest, which always tends to get deepish towards closing-time, had turned to the subject of the Modern Girl; and a Gin-and-Ginger-Ale sitting in the corner remarked that it was strange how types die out.

'I can remember the days,' said the Gin-and-Ginger-Ale, 'when every other girl you met stood about six feet two in her dancing-shoes, and has as many curves as a Scenic Railway. Now they are all five foot nothing and you can't see them sideways. Why is that?'

The Draught Stout shook his head.

'Nobody can say. It's the same with dogs. One moment the word is full of pugs as far as the eye can reach; the next, not a pug in sight, only Pekes and Alsatians. Odd!'

The Small Bass and the Double-Whisky-and-Splash admitted that these things were very mysterious, and supposed we should never know the reason for them. Probably we were not meant to know.

I love passages like these for so many reasons. They're wild and whimsical in the very best Wodehouse tradition. They segue into the main story as smoothly as bourbon (Mr Mulliner chimes in at the very next para. and begins his tale). They give a picturesque and idealized view of what a pub should be—and yet I've been in pubs in Britain, especially country pubs outside London, where I've found myself drawn into conversations like this without introduction, at the drop of a bar coaster. In a tale like this I might be referred to only as The Pint of Guinness, but I love the often-easy camaraderie of a good pub, and Wodehouse captures that to a T.

Each of the stories follows a fairly similar formula: boy meets girl, boy's eyes go ga-ga out of his head over girl (in more cases than one popping out his monocle). Boy's attempts to win girl fail spectacularly until he reverses his usual modus operandi, usually having given up on girl by then. Girl coos with delight at boy's actions, which is what she wants in a lover after all, and arms are wrapped around each other. Fade out on cupids and flowers. A few of the stories don't follow that exact pattern: the last three concern the suitors of Roberta "Bobbie" Wickham, one-time fiancée to Bertie Wooster himself, a cheerful and enthusiastic girlfriend from heck whose boyfriends consider themselves lucky to have escaped her clutches, and there's a wonderfully wild golf story where two suitors battle on the links to both lose a golf game to avoid marrying a overbearing girl. The other six, however, steer pretty close to the same trail, and yet even reading them in rapid succession (say, on a subway, at the eleventh hour before having to write about them), they don't seem hackneyed or clichéd even by the time you reach the last of them. Even if the same trail is being blazed in love and war, there're always different sets of unique and unusual characters and turns of phrases that make each story distinctive. For instance, only one story features a simile that made me howl with laughter on the F train by stringing together carefully-considered words with such a lyrical and musical elegance as:

At that moment, however, the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G.K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.

Or, this masterful twist of juxtaposition within a single short paragraph:

The sky was blue. The sun was shining. All Nature seemed to call to her to come out and kill things.

And like an expert bowler, Wodehouse can pick off a seven-ten split with such ease and casual grace in this bisected sentence:

'Not at all, Mr Finch. I am only too delighted,' said Lady Wickham, looking at him as if he were a particularly loathsome slug which had interrupted some beautiful reverie of hers in the rose-garden, 'that you were able to come.'

In many ways Wodehouse's short stories are a world in miniature: the same up and down fortunes and romantic troubles as his full-size novels, but with a smaller cast and fewer bumps on the ride. There's enough material in, say, the story "The Reverent Wooing of Archibald," to expand and grow into a full-length novel, but Wodehouse is speedy and precise: there's a paragraph in the story where Archibald's prospective mother-in-law expounds on her theory of Bacon writing Shakespeare's plays that takes up a mere seven lines, but which could easily be expanded to a fully-dialogued chapter. Weeks are summarized in a few lines of prose and events take place offstage in his short stories that he'd surely build up in a novel, but the stories are none the poorer for the compression and compactness. Not everybody can do it, but Wodehouse joins the pantheon of the great writers who can write both novels and short stories well.

Which is not to say there isn't room, even in a short story, for a bit of fun foolishness that takes up some space on the page. When Osbert Mulliner finds two burglars gorging themselves in his house on his food and drink, he eavesdrops for a while on the pair's discussion and eventual argument. It would have been economical and reached the same end result if Wodehouse had summed up their revels in two or three lines and then mentioned that they come to blows in an argument over the spoils, but he's got a longer, more unique and clever way to put the two thugs in disagreement with each other:

'Nice little crib this, Ernest,' he said.

'R!' replied his companion—a man of few words, and those somewhat impeded by cold potatoes and bread.

'Must have been some real swells in here one time and another.'

'R!'

'Baronets and such, I wouldn't be surprised.'

'R!' said the second burglar, helping himself to more champagne and mixing in a little port, sherry, Italian vermouth, old brandy and green Chartreuse to give it body.

The first burglar looked thoughtful.

'Talking of baronets,' he said, 'a thing I've often wondered is—well, supposed you're having a dinner, see?'

'R!'

'As it might be in this very room.'

'R!' 'Well, would a baronet's sister go in before the daughter of the younger son of a peer? I've always wondered about that.'

The second burglar finished his champagne, port, sherry, Italian vermouth, old brandy and green Chartreuse, and mixed himself another.

'Go in?'

'Go into to dinner.'

'If she was quicker on her feet, she would,' said the second burglar. 'She'd get to the door first. Stands to reason.'

The first burglar raised his eyebrows.

'Ernest," he said coldly, 'you talk like an uneducated son of a what-not. Haven't you never been taught nothing about the rules and manners of good Society?'

And as you well know, as with all arguments about matters that should be referred to Burke's Peerage, the two burglars come to blows and beat each other into unconsciousness. Handy that, as it gives Osbert an excuse to claim credit for thrashing the intruders. Even handier that, as it frightens off Bashford Braddock, the muscled bully rival for the hand of his beloved Mabel Petherick-Soames.

You or I may complain about intruders eating our ham and swilling our drink, but it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the Mulliners usually get or make a fair wind for themselves by the ends of these stories. If there's a moral to these stories—and I'm not entirely certain that Wodehouse intended one—it's that fortune favors the bold. Or maybe just be yourself. Many of the stories involve a plan of the hero to ingratiate himself with his lady love and her family by becoming someone different than what they are at heart. Archibald Mulliner tries to pretend to be interested in Shakespeare to impress the family of improbably but wonderfully-named Aurelia Cammarleigh, only to discover on the last page she loathes all discussion of things literary. Thinking Hermione Rossiter loathes his tobacco habit, Ignatius Mulliner gives up smoking, which makes him cranky an outspoken enough to tell off Hermione's bossy mother and discover that she doesn't mind his pipe habit at all. In fact, Wodehouse gleefully celebrates all sorts of non-PC behavior (in moderation): drinking, eating, smoking, hunting, and kicking annoying children. And putting snakes in other people's beds. Never forget the snakes.



I've got two versions of Mr Mulliner Speaking on the ol' Wodehouse bookshelf. For easy subway consumption I read it in a British mass-market paperback reissue published by Coronet, which features a delightful cover illustration of the golf match between John Gooch and Frederick Pilcher, Frederick dressed in top hat, tie and tails in order to purposefully ruin his game (and yet ironically golfing better due to his unusual outfit). I've also got the ubiquitous Everyman Wodehouse hardcover edition featuring on its dust jacket...well, it's Archibald Mulliner doing his impression of a chicken laying an egg, the performance of which wins him the heart of Aurelia. (Trust me.) You can pick up this edition tout suite by clicking on the Amazon banner below...



...Crickey! It's an entire extravaganza of Amazon links! Why all the links, Bully (you're asking)? Which one should I click on? Well, gentle reader, that all depends on in which medium you would like to experience the Wonderful World of Mulliner. You've actually got your choice of three this time: not merely the book, but also an audio CD set of wonderful BBC full-cast dramatizations of six of the stories from this and the other Mulliner books. (If you like that one, you can get a second CD of four more stories here.) Those of you with modern televisual videophone type gadgets will also enjoy the DVD collections of the classic TV series Wodehouse Playhouse. Originally broadcast in the mid-to-late 1970s, these are half-hour dramatizations of many of the Mulliner stories and star John Alderton and Pauline Collins from No, Honestly! (another wonderful romance!) Years before the Beeb produced Jeeves and Wooster with the incomparable Fry and Laurie, they were doing Wodehouse right in these low-budget but charming productions. The Wodehouse Playhouse shows were well-loved by Wodehouse himself and he filmed introductions for the first and second series which are truly a delight to see. He's quite elderly by the time these were made, but there's a sparkle in his eye and a clever quip on his lips as he introduces each tale. The link above will take you to a boxed set of all three series of Wodehouse Playhouse; if you want to dip your toe in the pool first you may want to start by picking up Series One.

And as for me on this fine Monday night? Let me quote one more time from Mr Mulliner Speaking:

'Something attempted, something done,' he said to himself, as he climbed into bed some hours later, 'has earned a night's repose.'

Truer and more brilliantly apt words have never been written, Mister Wodehouse. Off to bed go I, with a song in my heart.