Welcome to Part Six of our nightly audio entertainment - The Girl on the Boat, P G Wodehouse's comic diversion of 1922.
On Monday I responded to Richard, a Wodehouse Society member, about whether Plum was doomed to fade.Veronica, a Kiwi member of The Mark Steyn Club, gives us her take:
Wodehouse's humor still stands up pretty well however his stories were originally intended for a sophisticated, cosmopolitan and bookish readership, well-versed in poetry, classical history, music, courtship rituals, proper dress and behaviour, foreign travel etc.
In short, about as different from 'our' society as you can get.
Have most people nowadays ever seen a bowler hat or a ship's steward before let alone be able to understand why it was not acceptable for poor old Eustace to simply get married in his pyjamas when his trousers unaccountably 'vanished'?
They probably can't see what his problem was, and why he doesn't just do what he wants anyway and tell his mother to get lost, and hence they can't 'relate' to him or the story and switch off.
And then there's the particular emphasis in this book on Tennyson plus casual references to works by Kipling, Longfellow and even the thoroughly obscure Thomas Otway (!), which again many new readers, thoroughly unsophisticated and non-bookish types, would find it hard to connect with.
They simply don't know who those chaps are (were?) and as for 'The Idylls of the King', well their reaction would no doubt echo that of Sam Marlowe (another literary reference)... the 'which of what'!?
It's always the 'serious stuff' that gets you in the end.
PS. Thankfully none of the above applies to me, as I am very sophisticated and bookish, and so I am enjoying this story immensely thus far. It's not quite as good as 'Das Kapital', very funny in its own way you know, but it'll do. Thanks MS :)
Actually, you left out the big one, Veronica: as recently as, oh, thirty years ago, even non-believing readers would have gotten all Wodehouse's Biblical references.
However, in tonight's episode of The Girl on the Boat, the above-mentioned Tennyson having done the trick for Sam, the poor chap finds himself unable to quit the rhymes:
"Until this voyage began," he went on, "I did not know what life meant. And then I saw you! It was like the gate of heaven opening. You're the dearest girl I ever met, and you can bet I'll never forget...." He stopped. "I'm not trying to make it rhyme," he said apologetically. "Billie, don't think me silly ... I mean ... if you had the merest notion, dearest ... I don't know what's the matter with me ... Billie, darling, you are the only girl in the world! I have been looking for you for years and years and I have found you at last, my soul-mate. Surely this does not come as a surprise to you? That is, I mean, you must have seen that I've been keen.... There's that damned Walt Mason stuff again!" His eyes fell on the volume beside him and he uttered an exclamation of enlightenment. "It's those poems!" he cried. "I've been boning them up to such an extent that they've got me doing it too..."
The name of Walt Mason may baffle even Veronica. He was born in what's now Oshawa, Ontario, and became a widely syndicated columnist down south, known to Americans as "the Poet Laureate of Common Sense". Like Sam Marlowe's above, Mr Mason's rhymes were published in prose form:
I like to watch the children play, upon a wintry, snowy day; like little elves they run about, and leap and slide, and laugh and shout. This side of heaven can there be such pure and unmixed ecstacy? I lean upon ye rustic stile, and watch the children with a smile, and think upon a vanished day, when I, as joyous, used to play, when all the world seemed young and bright, and every hour had its delight; and, as I brush away a tear, a snowball hits me in the ear.
That "damned Walt Mason stuff" indeed.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Six of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier installments can be found here.
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