Plum Lines The quarterly newsletter of The Wodehouse Society Vol. zi No. 4 W inter 2000 Lady Constance’s Lover: Romance and Sex a la Wodehouse By Elin Woodger A talk delivered at the Houston convention of the Wodehouse Society, October, 1999. Klin is, as all right-minded members know, president of our society, co-editor of Plum Lines, and an All-Around Indispensable. — OM nd now for the juicy stuff. Here is some advice from Look closely at some o f his early work, for example, and A Lord Uffenham for all you lovelorn men out there: you will find a lot of talk about affinities—the instant at­ traction of, as he described it, “soul-mates destined for Grab her! Seize her! Fold her in a close em­ each odaer from the beginning o f time.” No wonder so brace. A really close embrace. One that’ll make many characters in Wodehouse fall in love at first sight— her ribs creak. Kiss her, too, of course. Kiss her and you will usually find that it is the men doing the fall­ repeatedly. At the same time saying “You are my ing. The male of the species has only to take a single look, mate, dash it,” or something to that effect. That’ll and he knows, as in this example from Hot Water: do the trick. Walking before him, like a princess making The trick, of course, is for a Wodehouse hero to win her way through a mob of the proletariat, came a the woman of his dreams, a situation that we encounter girl. And at the sight of her, Berry’s eyes swelled repeatedly in Plum’s novels and stories —and one that al­ slowly to the size of golf-balls. His jaw dropped, most always meets with success in the end. It is this as­ his heart raced madly, and a potato fell from his pect of the Master’s vast canon that we shall put under trembling fork. the microscope today, touching on matters of romance For it was the girl he had been looking for all and sex—yes, sex—that make his works so dashed enter­ his life—the girl he had dreamed of on summer taining, and, at times, titillating—yes, titillating. evenings when the western sky was ablaze with Any dedicated reader knows that romance is para­ the glory of the sunset, or on spring mornings mount in Wodehouse. Wherever we are in Plum’s imagi­ when birds sang their anthems on dewy lawns. nation, whether in the Drones Club or on the idyllic He recognized her immediately. For a long time grounds of Blandings Castle, whether on the golf links now he had given up all hope of ever meeting or out in Hollywood, there is one overpowering theme her, and here she was, exactly as he had always that is constant in almost all of his stories and novels. And pictured her on moonlight nights when fiddles that theme is Love. Love sells—it always has—and Plum played soft music in the distance. knew it and milked it for all it was worth. Rarely will you read a Wodehouse novel or story and not find love at the All right, so it’s a bit sappy—but still romantic. And root o f the story-line. it proves a point Plum loved to emphasize, time and again: Yet beyond the monetary rewards of writing about Love strikes us when we least expect it. It is efficiency love, I believe diat Plum was truly a romantic at heart. expert Hamilton Beamish who learns this in The Small Bachelor, A practitioner of a philosophy he calls Sane Love, “Yes” which is followed in due course by Sane Marriage, “Though, as a matter of factsaid Hamilton Hamilton informs us that “The mating of the sexes should Beamish, “ I always say that what one objects to be a reasoned process, ruled by die intellect .” Early on, he is not the heat but the humidity” explains his ideal plan for marriage, a scientific approach Which simply goes to prove that even effi­ that involves careful consideration and sorting o f the ap­ ciency experts, when diey fall in love at first sight, propriate candidates until he chooses his ideal mate—and can babble like any man o f inferior intellect in he will not, he says, allow passion to blind him to any die same circumstances. Strange and violent emo­ faults in her disposition. tions were racking Hamilton Beamish’s bosom: But Fate has another plan for Hamilton, who, like so and, casting away the principles o f a lifetime, he many Wodehouse characters, is not immune to the power recognized without a trace o f shame tiiat love had of affinities. It is on a bus that he notices “a girl o f chic come to him at last—not creeping scientifically and elan. One may go still further—a girl of espieglerie into his soul, as he had supposed it would, but and je ne sais quoi.” He studies her closely, approving elbowing its way in with the Berserk rush o f a highly of her apparel and her schoolgirl complexion, com­ commuter charging into the five-fifteen. Yes, he plete with “ the skin you love to touch.” was in love. And it is proof of the completeness with which passion had blunted his intellectual . But it was her face that he noted most faculties that he was under the impression that in particularly. It was just the sort of face which, if the recent exchange of remarks he had been talk­ he had not had his policy of Sane Love all care­ ing rather well. fully mapped out, would have exercised the most disturbing effect on his emotions. This, then, is the position in which many a Wode­ Sad, reflected Hamilton Beamish, as he stood house hero has found himself: Hopelessly, dizzily in love upon the steps of Number 16 and prepared to in one fell swoop, to such an extent that it affects his en­ ring the bell, that he would never see this girl tire life, not to mention his golf game. But what o f the again. Naturally, a man of his stamp was not in female of the species? Rarely do we witness her falling so love at first sight, but nevertheless he did not con­ hard all at once. Rather, she is mixed up with some other ceal it from himself that nothing would suit him man who is all wrong for her; or she is so bally indepen- better than to make her acquaintance and, after dent-minded that she is initially immune to our hero’s careful study o f her character and disposition, charms; or she has certain romantic notions about desert possibly discover in a year or two that it was she sheiks and heroes that rather intimidate her would-be whom Nature had intended for his mate. suitor; or for her it may simply be a case of dislike-at- It was at this point in his reflections that he first-sight—until she learns better. It seems to take longer perceived her standing at his elbow. for your typical Wodehouse heroine to realize that her predestined mate is right there, and she has only to open After Hamilton takes a bit of dust out of the girl’s her arms to him to experience a lifetime of joy and fulfill­ eye, the two proceed to have die sort of stimulating con­ ment. Or so Wodehouse would have us believe. versation one often has when meeting one’s affinity for How, then, to get the woman to sit up and take no­ the first time: tice of the man? Like Lord Uffenham, Uncle Fred advo­ cates the caveman sort of approach, something that he “I saw you on the omnibus,” he said. calls the Ickenham system: “Did you?” “Yes, I was sitting in the next seat.” “It’s a little thing I knocked together in my “How odd!” bachelor days. It consists of grabbing the girl, “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it.” waggling her about a bit, showering kisses on her “Beautiful.” upturned face and making some such remark as “The sun.” cMy mate!’ Clench the teeth while saying that, of “Yes.” course. It adds conviction.” “The sky.” “Yes.” In Service With a Smile, Lord Ickenham offers thus “I like the summer.” advice to a reluctant Jimmy Schoonmaker, who has a han­ “So do I.” kering for Lady Constance. “You needn’t stick too closely “When it’s not too hot.” to the script if you feel like gagging,” he tells Jimmy, “ but 2 Plum Lines Vol. 21 No, 4 Winter 2000 on no account tamper with the business. That is of the was uneasy with the subject o f sex, that he had no real feel essence” for women, even that he was himself asexual. Those who Indeed, the “ business” portion of the proceedings — adopt this view point to such blots on die landscape as die that is, physical contact—is the crux o f the Ickenham sys­ numerous dragon aunts, the dictatorial Florence Crayes, tem. In “ Life With Freddie,” Freddie Threepwood ex­ the overbearing Honoria Glossops, and the gooey, goofy plains to Joe Cardinal that any struggles on the part of females like Madeline Bassett. Even Frances Donaldson the female half should be ignored, “ ...And in grabbing has contributed to the myth, writing in her biography of her by the wrist don’t behave as if you were handling a Wodehouse that he was “ out o f reach o f the female sex” delicate piece o f china.