P.G. Wodehouse, Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929
Another P.G. Wodehouse? Damn right. The funniest writer of the 20th century deserves all the attention I can muster. "I must warn the reader," Wodehouse wrote about his Mulliner stories, "I am writing as funny as I can, and I can only hope that there will be no ill results." Don't worry, Plum, there aren't.
These are short stories told by Mr. Mulliner, a raconteur who holds court at the Angler's Rest pub. They all begin with some pub customer relating on a random topic and, inevitably, Mr. Mulliner has a niece, nephew, cousin, aunt, or uncle who found themselves in a similar situation. He then recounts the tale to the delight of the pub patrons and the reader.
The Mulliner stories were often published in Strand Magazine (home of Sherlock Holmes) in the UK and Liberty magazine in the US. One reader wrote to Liberty in 1929:
If you are wondering, $5 in 1929 is about $100 today. Thanks, Obama!
Mr. Mulliner has an endless supply of eccentric relatives who find themselves in eccentric circumstances. Wondering about how young people today court each other? Mr. Mulliner relates the tale of his nephew, Archibald, who is not terribly bright. Not that Wodehouse skimps on his description of how not-bright Archibald is:
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 realised 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 brain 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.
Are yellow shoes appropriate to wear to a church service? It so happens that Mr. Mulliner's cousin Cedric, to his horror, was forced into a pair of yellow shoes "at the height of the Season" no less! To retrieve his own proper black shoes, Cedric had to steathly creep into someone's house to get them. The stealth aspect is almost broken when:
At this 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. It was, as a matter of fact, only his hat dropping to the floor, but in the highly nervous state of mind into which he had been plunged by recent events it nearly deafened him.
Someone is thinking of giving up smoking? Mr. Mulliner's nephew Ignatius provides a cautionary tale about the subject. Within a day of giving up smoking, Ignatius, a portrait artist, goes through extreme mood swings that end with him chasing a client around his easel with a knife:
Illustration from Liberty Magazine
The victim escapes with no more than a kick in the seat of the trousers. Death is not a thing in Wodehouse stories.
Wodehouse loved smoking. He also loved golf. He was also deeply suspicious of teetotalers and vegetarians. My views on these subjects are entirely in opposition to his, yet I am unbothered by his championing of cigarettes and rest. That is his gentle genius. With Wodehouse, I can be suspicious of those who do not drink liquor even though I don't myself. Wodehouse was a different generation as evidenced by this 1897 picture of the young Wodehouse his older brothers. Wodehouse is on the right of the photograph:
His advocacy of those things is largely offset by his love of animals. Mr. Mulliner relates the tale of his niece Charlotte who falls in love with a gentle poet. Against his better judgment, she goes with him to his family home: Bludleigh Court, Lesser Bludleigh, near Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bedfordshire. She is warned that, unlike her beloved, his entire family consists of big-game hunters. Bludleigh Court itself has a malevolent effect on all who visit, they soon become bloodthirsty slaughterers of innocent animals. Sure enough, within a day he sets upon an innocent rat he spied in a bush:
Within a day, Charlotte herself falls to the madness and sets to hunting Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, the most vile of the big-game hunters:
While he is sunbathing, she succeeds in scoring a direct hit in the euphemistically-named "fleshy part of the leg." Fortunately, the hit is with an air gun rather than a hunting rifle.
Mr. Mulliner stories are the master at work being as funny as he can. Go read them.
Free Ebook: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70222
Free Audiobook: https://librivox.org/mr-mulliner-speaking-by-p-g-wodehouse/
Reading Gutenberg by John Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
