Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be hosting another edition of our Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Clubbers live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European.
~Welcome to Episode Nineteen of our latest Tale for Our Time: P G Wodehouse's comic novel The Girl on the Boat. We selected this tale as pure escapism, but Ross Spence, a First Month Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, finds it strangely relevant to the passing scene:
This morning I heard senator John Kennedy making the point that a single federal district judge does not have the power to enjoin the entire executive branch nationwide; not under 1) the Constitution, 2) any statute, 3) any Supreme Court opinion, or the practice of equity in England when the US adopted the common law of England as American law (very aggravating).
Then I turned on an episode of The Girl on the Boat and listened to a lawyer trying to plow through a treatise on nisi prius evidence in English Courts of Equity (hilarious). Thank you for spraying a can of air freshening humor on the dirty rotten stinking corrupt news of the day.
It is a melancholy reflection on our time that Wodehouse's whimsical musings on English law make far more sense than the average district court judge.
In tonight's episode of The Girl on the Boat, you may find that the rapidly evolving relationship between Sam, an addle-brained gentleman, and Webster, an ingenious manservant, prefigures that of a certain Bertram Wooster and Jeeves:
"Will you take this to Miss Bennett?" he said, holding it out.
Webster took the missive, because he wanted to read it later at his leisure; but he shook his head.
"Useless, I fear, sir," he said gravely.
"What do you mean?"
"I am afraid it would effect little or nothing, sir, sending our Miss B. notes. She is not in the proper frame of mind to appreciate them. I saw her face when she handed me the letter you have just read, and I assure you, sir, she is not in a malleable mood."
"You seem to know a lot about it!"
"I have studied the sex, sir," said Webster modestly.
"I mean, about my business, confound it! You seem to know all about it!"
"Why, yes, sir, I think I may say that I have grasped the position of affairs..."
To be sure, when Wodehouse wrote this novel in 1921, Jeeves and Bertie had appeared in a handful of short stories for The Saturday Evening Post, but not yet a full-length novel. So there was nothing to say that some entirely different master-valet combo - such as Sam/Webster - might not emerge as Plum's breakout characters.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Nineteen of The Girl on the Boat simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We're now well into our eighth season of Tales for Our Time and have built up quite an archive. So, if you've a chum who's a fan of classic fiction in audio form, don't forget the perfect birthday present: a Mark Steyn Club gift membership.
Please join me tomorrow both for Clubland Q&A and for Part Twenty of The Girl on the Boat.