P G Wodehouse, perhaps more than any other writer, created the myth of the English gentleman. His characters, well-educated goofs all, became ambassadors around the world for the tweedy, well-bred, public school educated sort of chap who used to run our empire.
In fact the real chaps who ran our empire were entirely tougher, more uncompromising than any Wodehouse creation but it suited us to be thought of as effete, tea-drinking fops.
Lord Emsworth, Mr Mulliner and Wodehouse’s best-known creation Bertie Wooster were in essence avatars for Wodehouse himself – an agreeable, eager-to please character entirely in thrall to the women in his life. He was overseen as a young man by a regiment of aunts who were later immortalised in his books and as an adult abdicated all responsibility to his beloved wife Ethel. And he was happy that way.
Somewhat ineffectual in real life he revealed his power in his prose. Wodehouse’s gift was not necessarily as a crafter of great plots – few would contest that his stories are somewhat repetitive in nature – but in his mastery of language. His words dance off the page and into the brain where they fizz around like the bubbles in fine champagne.
One need not have had the benefit of Plum’s classical education to enjoy the giddy cocktail of allusion and reference that pervades his work. Indeed, by stealth, he inculcated into readers without the remotest chance of enjoying his academic wealth enough knowledge of Cicero, Shakespeare and Spinoza to get them through the most demanding cocktail party.
But you couldn’t teach someone to be Wodehouse. He is more poet than humourist. Although one might draw parallels with Waugh or Thurber PG Wodehouse is closer, I’d suggest, to TS Eliot. Only funny. He’s a poet, not a plotter. And imitating him is frankly a fool’s errand.
And Sebastian Faulks is no fool. Many writers, myself included, were mildly surprised that Faulks opted to write a James Bond novel in 2008. But equally many writers, myself included, will write more or less anything to pay the mortgage so having raised a collective eyebrow we allowed it as an aberration and got on with our quotidian business of harassing editors and railing at accountants.
Faulks displayed admirable technique in writing as Ian Fleming. He evinced a keen awareness of Fleming’s stylistic tropes and crafted a neat pastiche of which a creative writing student might justifiably be proud. From a fêted novelist it was an odd move, but impressively done.
The announcement that Faulks is now to pour his inarguable gift into a new Jeeves novel – Jeeves And The Wedding Bells , to be published in November – is a fish of altogether different odour. I don’t describe Wodehouse as inimitable because I like his stuff. I describe Wodehouse as inimitable because he cannot be imitated. One might imagine Craig Brown or Hugo Rifkind making a decent fist of a Wodehouse knockoff for a page or so but a whole novel? This is hubris. We already have in the 11 Jeeves novels and 35 short stories an ample supply of Wodehouse’s wit. We have no need of ersatz Plum.
The Wodehouse canon cannot, should not, must not be material for a literary version of Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes. Faulks is quoted as saying ‘Wodehouse is inimitable but I will do the very best I can’. I will never be the writer that Faulks is, but as an editor I can tell you that that sentence is precisely nine words too long.
At the end of every episode of his long-running impressions show Mike Yarwood would say “…and this is me” and sing a few bars of a song in his own voice. Sebastian, as an admirer I would say – lay off the impressions. Let’s have a bit more “…and this is me.”
Michael Moran is the television columnist for the Lady magazine and the creator of the literary spoof “100 Books I’ll Never Write“
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