ashokbhatia

If you ask a Wodehouse fan to quote the funniest situations in his works, he/she would have a tough time in choosing, because there are so many of them. Let me cite a few that come to my mind right now. (I am quoting purely from memory):

1. The exchange of telegrams between Bertie and Aunt Dahlia in the early part of ‘Right Ho, Jeeves’. Those from the favorite aunt, although full of the choicest derogatory language that can be used against an irritating nephew, always end with the word ‘Love’.
2. In the same novel, Tuppy glossop, overcome by hunger in the middle of the night (because he had returned the dishes at dinner, on Bertie’s advice, in order to impress his estranged fiance, Angela) goes to the kitchen, takes out whatever there is in the fridge and starts eating. His host, Tom Travers, his wife Dahlia, and their daughter, Angela, roused by the sound made by Tuppy, come into the kitchen and see him. Angela makes a pointed reference to a python.
3. In the same novel again, the fully sozzled Gussie Fink Nottle, when the Head Master (the bearded bloke) first mis-pronounces Gussie’s name and after being corrected, says “I should say Mr Fink Nottle”, says “Of course you should, you silly ass ” and is loudly cheered. The author says ‘that someone should be public spirited enough to call their Head Master a silly ass went straight into the simple hearts of the scholars of the Market Snodsbury grammar school.’
4. Towards the end of his famous speech on the occasion, Gussie notices Bertie standing in the back row and starts attacking him for being a pessimist and having tried to stop him (Gussie) from coming here to distribute the prizes, lest his trousers split at the back when he bends to give the prize. As the embarrassed Bertie tries to leave, a freckled kid in the row in front of him turns round and asks for his autograph.
5. In ‘Summer lightning ‘, the Private Investigator, Percy Pilbeam, is all smiles after receiving a telegram about ‘big robbery’ at Blandings Castle. However, after Lord Emsworth’s secretary, Hugo Carmody, calls on him a little later to inform him about his services being required to investigate a pig robbery, not only is the bubble burst but the detective feels it an affront to his dignity that he, Pilbeam, should be called upon to be on a case like this! He tells Carmody so in no uncertain terms.
6. In the same novel, Lord Emsworth’s younger brother, the dapper and sprightly Galahad Threepwood,(who has no right to be in the pink of health that he is in , in his fifties, after the type of life that he has led) tells Sue Brown (whom he looks upon as his own daughter) about how he hates tea, which he calls poisonous stuff, he himself being a life-long advocate of alcohol. He speaks of a friend of his “I told him with tears in my eyes not to drink it (tea) but he did not listen. He died within the year (run over by a hansom cab )”!
7. In the same novel again, Hugo Carmody and Lord Emsworth’s niece, Millicent, who were out on the grounds in the evening are caught in a sudden rain and take shelter in the game keeper’s cottage that was at hand. It soon grows dark. After some time, the frightened girl says “There is someone here. He spoke in German”. Later it turns out that the sound Millicent had heard had been made by Lord Emsworth’s prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, which was hidden in the cottage by Ronnie Fish, Emsworth’s nephew.
8. In ‘Heavy Weather’ (sequel to ‘Summer Lightning’), when it was discovered that the manuscript of Galahad’s memoirs, pilfered by Pilbeam and hidden by him in a cottage, had been eaten by the Empress of Blandings who was in the cottage unknown to Pilbeam, Lord Emsworth, instead of feeling sorry for the loss of his brother’s literary labour, feels worried about the effect of the ink on the Empress’s health.
9. In ‘Money in the Bank’, the cross examination of Lionel Green by his former school mate, Jeff Miller, the young lawyer, in a case where Green is a witness for the prosecution and Jeff is the defence lawyer, Jeff asks “Is it not a fact that we used to call you stinky at school and on the day you took bath, a half holiday was declared for the school?” When the judge asks Jeff what relevance all this has with the case, he says he wants to shake the reliability of the witness.
10. In the same novel, the eccentric peer, Lord Uffenham, asks Jeff “Do you know how you can tell the temperature ?” “Look at a thermometer?” “Simpler than that. Count the number of chirps a grasshopper makes in fourteen seconds, and add forty”‘.
11. In the golf story ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert’, the celebrated Russian novelist, whom the members of the local literary club have been fawning upon, expressing his opinion: “Tolstoy and Wodehouse not bad; not good but not bad. I am the only novelist that counts.”
12. The effect of Mulliner’s Buck-u-Uppo on the frail and timid young curate. It was actually meant for taming elephants in India but his aunt sends it to him by mistake and the effect on him after he imbibes one single does is nothing short of spectacular.

About the Author

Mr. Subbaraman is not unlike the ‘Oldest Member’ in Plum’s golf stories. He has already clocked 94 circumambulations around the sun. However, the dark clouds of wholsesome pessimism which often engulf a person at an advanced age are yet to hover upon him. He has been reading Wodehouse from his school days. Thirty-three years of slogging it out in the Archaeological Survey of India by assiduously tending to such world-famous artworks and monuments as the mural paintings of Ajanta, Lepakshi (A.P.), Brihadeeshwara Temple, Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu), Bamiyan Budha statues, Angora Wat of Cambodia etc., has failed to dull his passion for the works of the Master Wordsmith of our times. He has lived in Rome for nearly a year, studying art restoration. He has travelled in Europe. He has also studied in British Museum Research Laboratory, London. During 2023, he was honoured by the Government of India by a Padmashree award. His permission to publish this compilation of his here is gratefully acknowledged.

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