A Weekend with Bodfish

Over the years I have, as the Oldest Member would put it, seen P. G. Wodehouse steadily, though by no means seen him whole: with Jeeves, Bertie, and Bertie’s whole menagerie of aunts (ground-glass-eating and otherwise), uncles (one of whom looks like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow), and fiancées, I am tolerably familiar; but I have barely scraped acquaintance with Lord Emsworth, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, and the other inmates of Blandings Castle; I have met Psmith and Monty Bodkin but once each; and I don’t even know whose Uncle Fred it was who was in springtime. For Wodehouse’s quality was matched only by his quantity: no two sources agree as to exactly how much he wrote in the course of his 93 years, but the figures work out to around a hundred novels and short-story collections, a score of plays, and two or three dozen musicals, in a career that continued with only one interruption for 75 years.

But that one interruption was a corker. When the Nazis invaded France, Wodehouse and his wife, who didn’t seem to have noticed that there was a war going on, continued to live happily on the Riviera, until one day they found themselves interned. They were eventually taken to Berlin, where an American radio correspondent persuaded Wodehouse to make some humorous broadcasts to the United States. He was thereupon blacklisted for a decade by Englishmen who, being very political themselves, wouldn’t believe the truth: that a grown writer could actually not have realized he was being used as wartime propaganda. His novels were forcibly removed from bookstores and public libraries, and several members of Parliament suggested that he be tried for treason; meanwhile, he was defended by, of all people, George Orwell, who explained that Wodehouse simply didn’t understand the Nazis, because he was as “dated” as his characters.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

Featured Tags

Over the years I have, as the Oldest Member would put it, seen P. G. Wodehouse steadily, though by no means seen him whole: with Jeeves, Bertie, and Bertie’s whole menagerie of aunts (ground-glass-eating and otherwise), uncles (one of whom looks like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow), and fiancées, I am tolerably familiar; but I have barely scraped acquaintance with Lord Emsworth, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, and the other inmates of Blandings Castle; I have met Psmith and Monty Bodkin but once each; and I don’t even know whose Uncle Fred it was who was in springtime. For Wodehouse’s quality was matched only by his quantity: no two sources agree as to exactly how much he wrote in the course of his 93 years, but the figures work out to around a hundred novels and short-story collections, a score of plays, and two or three dozen musicals, in a career that continued with only one interruption for 75 years.

But that one interruption was a corker. When the Nazis invaded France, Wodehouse and his wife, who didn’t seem to have noticed that there was a war going on, continued to live happily on the Riviera, until one day they found themselves interned. They were eventually taken to Berlin, where an American radio correspondent persuaded Wodehouse to make some humorous broadcasts to the United States. He was thereupon blacklisted for a decade by Englishmen who, being very political themselves, wouldn’t believe the truth: that a grown writer could actually not have realized he was being used as wartime propaganda. His novels were forcibly removed from bookstores and public libraries, and several members of Parliament suggested that he be tried for treason; meanwhile, he was defended by, of all people, George Orwell, who explained that Wodehouse simply didn’t understand the Nazis, because he was as “dated” as his characters.