One of the fun mental exercises in which I enjoy indulging myself while reading a Wodehouse book is casting a movie of that plot using contemporary actors. Ian Carmichael (Lord Peter Wimsey) has played Gally on BBC radio, and one of my favorite British actors of all time, Richard Briers (right), has played him in the seldom-seen 1995 BBC adaptation of Heavy Weather, alongside Peter O'Toole's Lord Emsworth. Briers is a brilliant choice and no stranger to Wodehouse—he's played Bertie Wooster on the wonderful What Ho, Jeeves BBC radio series alongside Michael Hordern's Jeeves, and his work with Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean troupe, appearing in all his Shakespeare movies (including the recent As You Like It). And of course, he was married to the lovely and delightful Felicity Kendal, one of the subjects of my affection, in the cult classic comedy The Good Life. Pretty good casting after all. But for my money, let's try someone a little different, a little more debonair and sophisticated as Gally. In my little stuffed head, at least while reading A Pelican at Blandings, I kept picturing him as Roger Moore. Oh, no, not the young, mop-topped mod Roger Moore of The Saint or The Persuaders...
Of course, the painting's this novel's Silver Cow Creamer, and as such it's macguffinly stolen and swapped in the dead of night by the clever Galahad, but with a typical Wodehouse twist: the real painting is substituted for a fake after it's discovered that the art gallery accidentally sold Dunstable a copy and to preserve their good name, need to swap out the original. That leads, of course, to Clarence (visiting Empress of Blandings in the middle of the night) being locked out of the house, climbing in through Dunstable's bedroom window, with suitable hoopla and hurrahs for the chaos and calamitous comedy that continues. And of course, nobody is quite who they seem to be. Galahad implants Johnny in the household posing as a psychiatrist (associate of Bertie Wooster's nemesis Roderick Glossop) sent to examine the perhaps-delusional Clarence, and American millionairess Vanessa Polk (you know, I can see Bea Arthur in her role) ain't quite who everyone thinks she is—although she is a true Polk, she's not the one they've taken her for. Or, as Galahad muses:
'It turns out that she's an imposter. It's an odd thing about Blandings Castle, it seems to attract imposters as catnip does cats. They make a bee line for the place. When two or three imposters are gathered together, it's only a question of time before they're saying "Let's all go round to Blandings", and along they come. It shakes one. I've sometimes asked myself if Connie is really Connie. How can we be certain that she's not an international spy cunningly made up as Connie? The only one of the local fauna I feel really sure about is Beach. He seems to be genuine.'(Oh yes. Beach the butler. Hmmm. It really is too bad Sebastian Cabot is dead, isn't it? Well, p'raps Beach could be created by CGI or perhaps other Hollywood wizardry.)
'Not that we don't have some remarkable names over here. I was reading my Debrett the other day, and I came on a chap called Lord Orrery and Cork. I wondered how you would address him if you met. One's natural impulse would be to say "How do you do, Lord Orrery?", but if you did, wouldn't he draw himself up rather stiffly and say "And Cork"? You'd have to apologise.'Connie's scolding does no good, because Clarence immediately digresses into a long paragraph about potato chips (incidentally showing how long Wodehouse had been in America by this point that he didn't type 'crisps') and how extraordinary it is that some companies claim you can't eat just one. It's something remarkable about nothing, predating Seinfeld by decades with a pleasantly hazy British peer of the realm instead of a Jewish stand-up comedian.
'Clarence!'
'...But all that's over now. It makes me feel as if I were sitting in at the end of a play, one of those charming delicate things the French do so well. You know the sort of thing I mean—lightly sentimental, the smile following the tear. I am having my dinner. The storm is over, there is sunlight in my heart. I have a glass of wine and sit thinking of what has passed. And now we want something to bring down the curtain. A toast is indicated. Let us drink to the Pelican Club, under whose gentle tuition I learned to keep cool, stiffen the upper lip and always think a shade quicker than the next man. To the Pelican Club,' said Gally, raising his glass.
'To the Pelican Club," said Lord Emsworth, raising his. 'What is the Pelican Club, Galahad?'
'God bless you, Clarence,' said Gally. 'Have some more roly-poly pudding.'
Hard work and no horseplay make Bully a very dull little stuffed animal indeed, so I'm off to the Great White Pacific Northwest to kick up my hooves in a woodland cabin for the next week an' a half, sans TV, sans phone, sans DVDs, sans internet, to get in touch with my inner beans and to just relax. That means I'm "off the grid" as the mountain men say, so have fun and play nice with the World Wide Web while I'm gone. (Don't split it in half!) I'll be back with the usual weekend features on Saturday, September 15. (For those of you who follow "A Wodehouse a Week" and are worried I'm gonna get off schedule, I'll plug #20 into 9/10, but only after I get home.) Please play nice, enjoy the cake, stay off the goofballs, and as always, be good to yourselves and others. See you on 9/15!
'Tell us what happened.'Sport and fair play both endanger and save Charteris in this story—he risks discovery by slipping off school grounds to participate in a foot race in a neighboring town and misses his train back when he stops a pack of bullies harassing a young girl. His salvation from punishment comes when it's revealed the girl is the niece of St Austin's headmaster, and Charteris gets off with a minor punishment of a handful of lines to copy out and a warning:
'I'll tell thee everything I can,' said Charteris. 'There's little to relate. I saw an aged, aged man a-sitting on a gate. Where do you want me to begin?'
'At the beginning. Don't rot.'
'I was born,' began Charteris, 'of poor but honest parents, who sent me to school at an early age in order that I might acquire a grasp of the Greek and Latin languages, now obsolete. I—'
'How did you lose?' enquired the Babe.
'The other man beat me. If he hadn't, I should have won hands down. Oh, I say, guess who I met at Rutton.'
'Not a beak?'
'No. Almost as bad, though. The Bargee man who paced me from Stapleton. Man who crocked Tony.'
'Great Scott!' cried the Babe. 'Did he recognize you?'
'Rather. We had a very pleasant conversation.'
The Head extended a large hand. Charteris took it, and his departure.There's no (excuse the phrase) bullies or tormentors along the lines of Flashman or Malfoy at St Austin's; the worst the boys have to deal with are meddling uncles who destroy cricket grounds and a thieving cat who steals teatime sardines. There's a genesis-glimmer of Drones Club banter in the discussion of these schoolboys:
The Headmaster opened his book again, and turned over a new leaf. Charteris at the same moment, walking slowly in the direction of Merevale's, was resolving for the future to do the very same thing. And he did.
...the cat was in excellent training, and was, moreover, backed up by a strong temptation. It pocketed the stakes, which consisted of most of the contents of a tin of sardines, and left unostentatiously by the window. When Smith came in after football, and found the remains, he was surprised, and even pained. When Montgomery entered soon afterwards, he questioned him on the subject.These bright, quicksilver minds surely must have grown up into other Wodehouse heroes (we see that Psmith fits right in during his school novel, aptly bridging the two Wodehouse eras). It is, of course, before the wars, and surely a number of these fine fictional men perished in Flanders Fields, but for Wodehouse their school histories are ever of football victories, cricket centuries, and slogging their way through examinations:
'I say, have you been having a sort of preliminary canter with the banquet?'
'No,' said Montgomery. 'Why?'
'Somebody has,' said Smith, exhibiting the empty tin. 'Doesn't seem to have had such a bad appetite, either.'
'This reminds me of the story of the great bear, the medium bear, and the little ditto,' observed Montgomery, who was apt at an analogy. 'You may remember that when the great bear found his porridge tampered with, he—'
At this point Shawyer entered. He had been bidden to the feast, and was feeling ready for it.
'Hullo, tea ready?' he asked.
Smith displayed the sardine tin in much the same manner as the conjurer shows a pack of cards when he entreats you to choose one, and remember the number.
'You haven't finished already, surely? Why, it's only just five.'
'We haven't even begun,' said Smith. 'That's just the difficulty. The question is, who has been on the raid in here?'
'No human being has done this horrid thing,' said Montgomery. He always liked to introduce a Holmes-Watsonian touch into the conversation. 'In the first place, the door was locked, wasn't it, Smith?'
'By Jove, so it was. Then how on earth—?'
'Through the window, of course. The cat, equally of course. I should like a private word with that cat.'
Now I have remarked already that I dare not say what I think of Thucydides, Book II. How then shall I frame my opinion of that examination paper? It was Thucydides, Book II, with the few easy parts left out. It was Thucydides, Book II, with special home-made difficulties added. It was—well, in its way it was a masterpiece. Without going into details—I dislike sensational and realistic writing—I may say that I personally was not one of those who required an extra ten minutes to finish their papers. I finished mine at half-past two, and amused myself for the remaining hour and a half by writing neatly on several sheets of foolscap exactly what I thought of Mr Mellish, and precisely what I hoped would happen to him some day. It was grateful and comforting.If the world of boarding schools is a mystery for you and thus turns you away from the joys of Tales of St Austin, well, I feel sorry for you. If you don't know the difference between a tuck shop and a touchline, if you think fagging is something unbearably unspeakable, if you're wondering why the boys refer to each other by their last names instead of first, well, you may not get as much enjoyment out of these cheerful and energetic stories. But skim quickly over the terms you don't understand and there's still delight to be found, even if, like me, you're all at sea in this passage about cricket:
I had made about sixty then, and was fairly well set—and he started simply mopping up the bowling. He gave a chance every over as regular as clockwork, and it was always missed, and then he would make up for it with two or three tremendous whangs—a safe four every time. It wasn't batting. It was more like golf. Well, this went on for some time, and we began to get hopeful again, having got a hundred and eighty odd. I just kept up my wicket, while Scott hit. Then he got caught, and the last man, a fellow called Moore, came in. I'd put him in the team as a bowler, but he could bat a little, too, on occasions, and luckily this was one of them. There were only eleven to win, and I had the bowling. I was feeling awfully fit, and put their slow man clean over the screen twice running, which left us only three to get. Then it was over, and Moore played the fast man in grand style, though he didn't score.
I figured Tales of St Austin's would be long out of print and would pose a problem in recommending an edition to you, but to my surprise, it must be out of copyright, because there's several rather generic-looking editions available (the least-expensive edition is at the right in the usual Amazon.com order box). There's also a few e-texts of the book available online; I won't point you directly to them but they're easily found on Google—the price certainly is right. I myself am more a fan of having the physical book in my hooves for easy reading in bed with a mug of hot cocoa by my side, but it's clearly a scheme that would have appealed to the clever and thrifty young lads of St Austin's, and three cheers to them all.
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