Life at Blandings by PG Wodehouse

Around the World in 80,000 Pages - Book 1

Life at Blandings by PG Wodehouse

You can read about my Around the World in 80,000 pages challenge here.

Miles travelled: 0
Pages read: 606

Shropshire is in the so-called Welsh Marches, the area of England which borders Wales. At one time it was an important hinterland, where castles were erected and and the latest lords installed, so they could protect the king against those dastardly celtics. These day it relies largely on agriculture and is the home of yours truely, which is why we are starting our journey here.  

For some of us (332,000 at the last count), Shropshire may be the centre of the world, but in popular culture it is usually depicted as a parochial backwater. A vague place just beyond the boundaries of civilisation, it is a land of green and bumpkins, in contrast to the sophisticated, grey modernity of London. In Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, Christopher is packed off to his aunt in Shropshire. When Only Fools and Horses' Boycie moves to the country for his own spin-off, it is Shropshire he chooses. PG Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, the stately home which plays host to many of his novels and short stories, is cut from the same cloth. It is a tranquil incarnation of the green and pleasant land, which exists mostly in the public imagination. But Wodeshouse had other reasons for choosing Shropshire, indeed maybe his reasons were his own, and it was his influence which made Shropshire a literary, bucolic paradise. 

Wodehouse spent some of his youth living in south Shropshire, and in the introduction to Life at Blandings states how he "placed Blandings Castle in Shropshire because my happiest days as a boy were spent near Bridgnorth" It is generally held that the model for Blandings Castle is Apley Hall, a Gothic Revival pile located just outside Bridgnorth. Although there are a few differences, most of the details of Blandings (crenulated battlements, view of the Wrekin, distance from Shrewsbury, etc) fit with Apley.

A photo from Apley's days as a school
- with my dad circled in red

By 1962 the main branch of the Foster family (who had purchased the estate in 1867 for a record-breaking half a million pounds, equal to somewhere in the region of £70m-£100m in 2026 money) had died out, and the estate passed sideways. Due to the astronomical upkeep costs, the hall was leased to Shropshire County Council as a state boarding school. The pupils who attended Apley generally fell into one of three categories: 1) children of military personnel; 2) children who weren't wuite bad enough for borstal; 3) local farmers' sons.  My dad was one of the last category. Although his mum insisted it was a good school, more alumni went into the SAS than university.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse is generally regarded as one of the best English humourists of the 20th century. To my mind, his farces are on a par only with those of Richmal Crompton. Although he is considered quintessentially English, he moved as a young man to the USA, where he spent most of his life.

Between 1902 and 1974 Wodehouse wrote more than 70 novels, 200 short stories and lyrics for numerous Broadway musicals, as well as enjoying a brief stint at Hollywood.

Like Knut Hamsun, Wodehouse's reputation was somewhat tarnished by association with the Nazi party. Unlike Hamsun, he was not a supporter of their ideology, and is probably guilty only of naivety. By 1940 Wodehouse was, for tax reasons, living in France, and found himself behind enemy lines after the Third Reich's rapid Gallic conquest. He was taken prisoner and invited by the Nazi party to record a series of broadcasts aimed at the allies. For reasons unknown, Wodehouse agreed and narrated what he thought was an example of British humour, seeing the funny side in the darkest of situations. However, Goebbels goon's framed it as an illustration of the fact that Nazi Germany really wasn't too bad at all, and what was everyone making such a fuss about? Wodehouse's audiences in both the UK and the US were outraged at his flippant take, when men less lucky than he were being blown to pieces on the Western Front.

Not even the sublime Timothy Spall could save
the TV adaptation of Blandings, which leaned
far too far into the slapstick

And now, I suppose, we should get on to the actual review. Life at Blandings is an omnibus of three novels: Something Fresh was first published in 1915, and was the first Blandings novel; Summer Lightning, the third Blandings novel was originally published in 1929; and its sequel, Heavy Weather, the fourth Blandings novel, in 1933. Obviously missing here is the second instalment, Leave it to Psmith, which has been lumped into the Psmith omnibus.

The three books all follow the meandering shenanigans of Lord Emsworth, his family, his staff, and, of course, his pig, Empress of Blandings. There are breaches of promise, accidental thefts of scarabs, deliberate re-thefts of the same, porcine abductions and young honourables smitten with chorus girls. 

As unlikely as it may seem Lemmy (of
Motorhead) fame used to unwind on the
tourbus with a Wodehouse novel.

Early on in his career, Wodehouse found a formula that worked, and stuck with it. His style utilises Edwardian slang, elaborate asides and a self-aware flippancy to create a literary landscape that evokes the mythical other-Eden of interwar Britain. We are not to suppose that the cricket-flannel-clad, cucumber-sandwiches-on-the-front-lawn-nibbling, endless-summered, tom-foolery of Blandings ever actually existed. Wodehouse's writing is not the kind of fiction which shines a light on the truths of our own lives. Rather, it is a self-contained diversion from the latter. It is the literary equivalent of a night at a jazz club, where real life can wait until Monday, and we need only concern ourselves with idle gossip and mint juleps.

Of interest to our side quest, Life at Blanding contains several references to Sherlock Holmes. Wodehouse was a confessed fan of Conan Doyle and wrote a few pastiches, one of which is in my TBR pile. I will have to try and look up some of the others.

If you like Wodehouse, you will like Life at Blandings. If you don't, you won't. Something Fresh is interesting in that it is obviously an earlier work, and Wodehouse hasn't quite got everything down pat: the plot is a little looser, the characters not quite as well sketched, it feels a little like a short story stretched out to a novel. But by Summer Lightening, Wodehouse has well and truly hit his stride, with his destinctive insouciant, frenetic prose and ridiculous but lovable characters. If you don't know whether or not you like Wodehouse yet, this book would be as good a place as any to start.

Wodehouse does what he does very well, and I thoroughly enjoyed my sojourn at Blandings. 94/140 ★★★★☆

For our musical match, I've gone with Side by Side by the Savoy Havana Band. During the 1920s, The Havana Band were one of the two house bands at the Savoy Hotel situated (as it still is) on The Strand in London. Side by Side is a standard, written in 1927.