Wodehouse and the Comic Concussion

The quarterly journal of The Wodehouse Society Volume 30 Number 2 Summer 2009 See pages 16–19 for some last-minute convention news. We hope to see you in St. Paul on June 12–14! Wodehouse and the Comic Concussion by David Landman Who would these swings and parries take When he might a quietus make With a bare knuckle? —Willie “The Shaker” Shakespeare nce, when reconnecting a loose wire under the dash Oof my Hudson Hornet, I stretched out on my back the length of the front seat. Made aware that the open door was blocking traffic, I reached back to the armrest and, forgetting that it extended a good three inches beyond the plane of the door, slammed it shut. When I regained consciousness my first thought was that Stumpf, who spoke of the “falscher Schmuck und nutzloser Plunder” of feudalism, was talking through his Kaiser Bill pickelhaube. After that, I thought no more for a week as I wandered aimlessly along Slaphappy Street. A concussion is not a funny thing. Except in Wodehouse. Setting aside the sagas of professional bruisers like Kid Brady, I speak here only of the collateral havoc wreaked upon itself by the civilian population. It is remarkable how many of them are flattened and how readily they bounce up off the canvas, not much the worse for wear, in that martial arts academy known as the English country house. I do not complain. It is mostly the deserving who get their comeuppance. I remark only how smoothly the scorched-earth policy goes David Landman, fully recovered (we think) from his down thanks to the effervescence of the Wodehouse touch. Hudson Hornet concussion, looks on with amusement. In his novels, not a few neck-high soups are traversed dry (Photo by Elizabeth Landman) shod by the deft application of cosh, knuckle, and priceless Meissen. And the knockees always come up to scratch with a heart for all fates when the bell sounds for the next chapter. Take, for example, that premier fight card known asStiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963) where Gussie Fink-Nottle, attempting to flee the wrath of the eight-foot gorilla Spode, collides with the very aesthete who seeks to ascertain the color of his insides. This Spode affixes a meat hook onto Fink-Nottle’s scruff and utters the freighted word “Ha!” But before Spode can commence excavations, the Rev. “Stinker” Pinker that probably account for the “apnea and bradycardia intervenes, and in the Gandhi spirit lays an irenic hand that immediately follow the blow as well as for the on Spode’s shoulder while uttering a mild “I say.” To the unsteadiness and giddiness with change in position run-amok Spode, them’s fightin’ words, and he responds of which patients often complain for a time. Amnesia, by plugging the curate on the schnozzola. This, in turn, forgetfulness, irritability, fatigue, and impaired memory induces a degree of resentment in the man of the cloth, are attributed to neuronal damage in the cerebrum.” and discovering that his curatical inhibitions have been Tommyrot, as anyone who has read Wodehouse knows. washed away in the blood of the wham, he uncorks a Cecil was probably making up excuses for forgetting his seismic lollapalooza. The resultant tremor that shakes wedding anniversary. the would-be dictator’s frame can be traced to the Take the case study reported in Bertie Wooster Sees tectonic superimposition of Pinker’s interphalangeal It Through/Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1955), where joints upon Spode’s maxilla (i.e., a knuckle sandwich Spode is coshed by Aunt Dahlia, and next morning on the chops). We applaud because, after all, it was Bertie observes only that he was “looking a little Spode’s fault. “The next thing one observed,” says the paler” and discomfited when “oscillating the bean,” bemused Bertie, “was Spode on the ground looking like but otherwise none the worse for wear. Since neither the corpse which had been in the water several days.” of those mild symptoms manifested eight years later For his part, Pinker, as fine a specimen of muscular when he was treated to the doubleheader recorded Christianity as one could wish, retires “to staunch the above, the Hippocratic oath obliges us to conclude that vital flow which was considerable.” Spode’s post-concussive sentience improved with use. Just the ordinary skylarking of Bradycardially speaking (and a day in the country one might say, apneatically as well), Spode’s but there’s a sequel that makes my tentorial notch, uncus, and point. Spode, having returned from ipsilateral third cranial nerve his sojourn in the Isles of the Blest, improved with regular exercise. comes crashing into the kitchen An energetic pugilist for “like a herd of hippopotami going Dulwich College, Wodehouse through the reeds on a river bank,” was eventually barred from with the aggravated intention lacing up the Everlasts because of resuming his researches into of bad eyesight. There are, as far Gussie’s sweetbreads. No dull throb as I am aware, no records of his in the lemon, no invisible blue bird performance in the ring, but one twittering in the ears, no punch- doubts he ever kissed the canvas drunk shuffle, just the familiar, for dear old Alma Mater, or gale-force Spodean frenzy. This spilled a half pint of nose-claret time—in a page Norman Murphy calls one of Plum’s on its well-rolled lawn. Had he done so, I wonder if he best—he is spiflicated by Emerald Stoker with a thick would be so cavalier about hanging widow-makers on china basin filled with beans, and once again is tumbled the vitreous front porches and domes of his creations. in the spin cycle of life. Yet a few pages later, a second We know that he once witnessed a brutal schoolboy time risen from the dead, he is sufficiently compos fight in which one of the contestants was nearly beaten mentis to transfix Bertie with the famous eye that could to death, but apparently that did not diminish his open an oyster at sixty paces and growl, “So!” Only enthusiasm for the fictional roundhouse as a way of slightly less menacing than “Ha!” one supposes, but for resolving divergent opinions. a man twice consigned to cold storage within a matter It was so from the start. If his schoolboy novels of minutes, not bad, not bad at all. are as close to truth as they are reputed to be, it seems “Even mild concussions occurring within hours that in English public schools the monotony of parsing or days or weeks of each other,” writes Thomas A. Ammonius Saccas was regularly relieved by bare- Hammeke, Professor of Neuropsychology, Medical knuckle dustups. In Mike, the scrappy Adair, keen College of Wisconsin, “can result in ‘second impact captain of the cricket eleven, eschews the diplomatic syndrome,’ which can be fatal.” But not to worry. approach and finds he achieves much swifter assent Wodehouse’s characters, as we know, are immortal. to his views by dotting the opposition in the mush. TheCecil Textbook of Medicine is of the opinion that This tactic brought the reluctant cricketeers Stone and a concussion is the result of changes in the brainstem Robinson to see things his way before you could count 2 Plum Lines Vol. 30 No. 2 Summer 2009 ten. If you seek the school of hard knocks, Sedleigh Since it’s all harmless fun, we are free to back the would be a good place to start. gladiator or gladiatoress of our choice, and my money’s Even when he lost in fisticuffs, Adair’s hard-sell on the delicately nurtured. In that division there are technique was effective. While attempting to reform two main contenders, and I waver between raising the Mike’s negative views on Sedleigh cricket, Adair manicured mitt of Dora “Dolly” Molloy or the pampered carelessly Leipziged when he should have Zagrebed, and paw of Gertrude “Sweetie” Carlisle. In Hot Water, Mike delivered a bouquet of fives to his gob whereupon Gordon “Oily” Carlisle is, from poignant personal Adair folded like a do-it-yourself deck chair. Worried experience, well aware of his loved one’s virtuosity with because “Adair looked unpleasantly corpse-like,” Mike a vase, and he notes with satisfaction that the one with asks the onlooking Psmith, “Is he hurt much, do you which she lays out Soup Slattery is a particularly “large, think?” And Psmith, whose degree in neuroscience had hard, thick, solid vase in every way superior to the one to this point been concealed from the reader, answers, which a year ago she had bounced on his own head.” “He’s all right. In a minute or two he’ll be skipping about In Cocktail Time, Sweetie soaks Cosmo Wisdom on like a lambkin.” And, of course, he is. The next morning the napper with a blackjack. Three bouts, three KOs, a a bright-eyed Adair is up with the rathe lambs and, most impressive record, but, after carefully calculating meeting Mike on the way to class, discovers that the the points, the decision of the judges goes to that mere fact of having heard the bells of the cosmic Good bantamweight patootie, Dolly Molloy. Sweetie may take Humor man at the hands of his schoolmate has created the full Vardon swing with plenty of follow-through, an eternal bond. Concussion, as the saying goes, macht Emerald Stoker may swing a mean basin of beans, and chums. there is no gainsaying the Gentleman Jim elegance with Of the scholar pugs one regrets not having followed which Jeeves put the kibosh on Constable Dobbs, but it their bliss, one is the Rev.

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