 Inner Temple Hall The
Photographs The PG Wodehouse Society (UK) gathered in its usual eager mood for the Wodehouse Birthday Dinner on 21st October, 2004, at the Inner Temple. As the instructions, "7 for 7.30", hinted, there would be some convivial drinking before dinner; a good chance for the excellent international assembly to catch up with gossip since the last such occasion. After
this, the celebration had three parts:
First Oliver Wise, barrister and committee member, said the Grace (42 Latin words) with "aplomb". As the hum of chatter broke out, the smooth-footed staff dispensed a menu with distinct echoes of Monsieur Anatole (though lacking his gracious noms de plat) and we discussed the evening ahead. “I don’t know what Plum would have thought of all this”, mused a senior Egg on table B, surveying the joyous scene. “Oh, he would have been out of it, upstairs with his typewriter”, responded the mature Bean at his side. On one point they were agreed; “Ethel would have loved it”. Lady Wodehouse would not have been alone; we all loved it. The Loyal Toast was duly proposed by our Chairman, Hilary Bruce. Then Plum’s step-grandson, Sir Edward Cazalet, proposed a toast to our generous and much-appreciated sponsors, Ottakar’s. He surveyed the oil paintings round the room, some of them old friends, and was able to refer to their corridors and rooms being lined with early first editions of Wodehouse. He pointed to a portrait of the first Lord Oaksey, once Lord Justice of Appeal, and welcomed his son, a great Wodehousian, with us tonight. He paid tribute to Robert McCrum in these words: “Plum would have been so grateful for his splendid biography of a life that started in 1882”. This surely was a deliberate teaser, but we were not caught napping. Shouts of “One, One”, rang from the tables, as everyone jumped in to stress that the Master’s life started in 1881. “Robert developed a real affection for his subject over a span of eight years, coming to love Plum the man as we love Plum the writer”, said Sir Edward. He knew he was speaking for his own side of the family, and for the original Wodehouse side represented there tonight by Nigel and Patrick Wodehouse. The Society was deeply grateful to Robert and his wife Sarah for the dedication and the affection they had developed for Wodehouse. He had particular pleasure in presenting to Robert a cigarette box “which Plum had in his study for much of his life”.
Turning to Ottakar’s, Sir Edward told us that they were the country’s fastest-growing bookshop group, with nearly 130 branches across Britain, and he described how with efficiency and range of books they had challenged Waterstones, and were now “spreading like a giant soufflé” from their provincial base. He told us something of the presiding geniuses of Ottakar’s, both present: the managing director James Heneage, a man of books, and chairman Philip Dunne, who came from banking. He welcomed all the distinguished Ottakar's team there present, who had developed the market for books and for Wodehouse. We drank Ottakar’s health with enthusiasm. Robert McCrum proposed the health of both PGW and the Society. He announced that now that he had his treasured cigarette box, “I shall follow Plum, and go to Jermyn Street to open an account at Dunhill”. "I have a lot of Thank-yous tonight. First of course to the Wodehouse Society and to James Heneage and Ottakar's for this incredible occasion. I was initiated into the mysteries of this evening just four years ago. I remember thinking then that you would be a tough crowd to please. Now I've found that you are also an incredibly generous and supportive one, too. "Writing the life of a much-loved national treasure like Wodehouse is no picnic. There are some obvious hazards. I am glad we are all still friends. "I want specially to thank Patrick Wodehouse (Plum’s nephew). He was the first person I spoke to about Plum. There was something about the warmth and sweetness of his memories that has inspired everything I've written about his uncle. So, wherever you are, Patrick, thank you for setting me on the right road. "I interviewed Patrick on three occasions. Each time I learned more. And each time he entrusted me with more stuff: letters and photographs as well as priceless recollections. "I believe that in cross-examination the trick is only to ask questions to which you know the answer. So in biography, if I can let you into a secret of the researcher's art, the trick is: on each occasion, always ask the same question. "I thank Edward, Sheran and Camilla, Hal, David and Lara. To let a perfect stranger set up camp in your attic for days on end is one thing. To make him feel at ease there, supply him with home-made marmalade, and also a succession of delicious meals, with plentiful supplies of wines and spirits, is something else. So thank you, Camilla and Edward. "Edward and I travelled all over Europe in my quest for Wodehouse. We visited Low Wood, that lovely house by the fourteenth tee. We sweated up the steps of Huy. "We broke bread with the Drones Club of Belgium, something that most people only manage once. As many of you know, the Drones Club of Belgium is an organisation just one white coat short of the asylum. It makes tonight’s gathering seem practically repressed.” (We loved that bit). They had also crossed Germany and slogged out through the beet fields to Tost in driving rain. In the interviews he gave after the war, Wodehouse always called it Toast, as if it was just part of an Englishman's breakfast. "I also had a very happy month in Santa Monica, California, poring over the RKO and MGM archives, and learning to handle manuscripts wearing white gloves. "And then my travels were over, and I was home again, writing the book. In that process I have had all kinds of help from any number of generous and dedicated Wodehousians: Tom Sharpe, who alas cannot be with us tonight, Jan Piggott, Norman Murphy, Murray Hedgcock, Tom Smith, Margaret Slythe, and of course the indefatigable Tony Ring. And a special thank you to my wife, Sarah, who is sitting over there, doing her impression of a crusty roll. "Finally, there is one man whom I must single out for his wisdom, openness, charm, discretion, steadfastness and sheer joie de vivre. I mean, of course, Plum himself, who is here only in spirit. He has just had his one hundred and twenty-third birthday – and looks well set for another hundred. When I started out on this job in 2000 I was full of common-or-garden, low-grade admiration. By the time I had finished last year my admiration had become something closer to awe. "He is – I don't need to tell you – a very great writer. A supreme stylist. A wonderful humorist. A special kind of English genius. And he's the reason I wrote his life, the reason why we are all here tonight. So now I would ask you to raise your glass to his immortal memory. "Wodehouse!" After prolonged applause, our President Richard Briers rose to reply. He mused over the atmosphere in “this lovely room – very reminiscent of my own home. In Chiswick”. He recalled the great reward – and even a modest financial one – achieved in the series of BBC radio plays where he as Bertie Wooster co-starred with Michael Hordern as Jeeves. “We were probably the only people to make money out of radio, because we did six of them, and we did one a day.” Richard said his second cousin, Terry-Thomas, had coached him in How To Tell A Joke – about the cat who played the piano and composed., but who left the room “like a shot” on the suggestion that his work should be orchestrated. Then the evening changed gear to the "Entertainment", as it had been cryptically called, to the well-remembered strains of “This Is Your Life”. Stephen Higgins was at the piano, Stephen Fry (who despite his youth had been a patron of the society before Norman Murphy was Chairman), presented Wodehouse's life. And there, to help recall the events, and all the American activities that accompanied it, was Plum himself. (Some whispered that he resembled Anton Rodgers, who had acted Plum in a recent play, but most were not deceived). Illustrated with selections from the stories and novels, they traced the 71 years from Plum’s first arrival (“at an ungodly hour”) on the docks of New York, to his death at Remsenburg, Long Island. Readings and songs exactly right to mark Plum’s progress came from our favourites, Hal and Lara Cazalet and Eliza Lumley. Hal appeared also as Guy Bolton, and Tony Ring as Jerome Kern.
More songs and readings included the first words of Jeeves, taking his bow: Very good sir. Which suit will you wear? and another centenary, from Sergeant Brue at the Strand Theatre (but nobody linked it to the internment): Put me in my little cell.
Philip Dunne made a guest appearance. He had forgiven Wodehouse for casting aspersions at bookshops, putting aside his justified pride in Ottakar’s smooth and efficient service, to read of Bertie Wooster trying to buy a copy of the Annotated Works of Spinoza for Jeeves: "Good morning, good morning," I said. "I want to buy a book." Of course I ought to have known that it’s silly to try to buy a book when you go to a bookshop. It merely startles and bewilders the inmates. (from Chapter one of Joy in the Morning) We inmates were perhaps startled and bewildered by the profusion of good things that followed. Eliza Lumley sang Honeymoon Inn; our presenter said that musical comedy was the Irish stew of the Musical: anything could be included in the ingredients knowing that they would improve the general effect. Lara Cazalet suggested that we should shut all our worries in a great big box, lock it up and throw away the key. Later, the evening had a Royal touch. His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, more than once a guest on these evenings, read Plum’s thoughts on the marked difference between simple everyday murders, and the complexity which the villain embraces in the typical thriller. This is not as well known as it should be: The ordinary man, when circumstances compel him to murder a female acquaintance, borrows a revolver and a few cartridges and does the thing in some odd five minutes of the day when he is not at the office or the pictures. He does not bother about art or technique or scientific methods. He just goes and does it. But the villain cannot understand simplicity. A hundred times he manoeuvres the girl into a position where one good dig with a knife or a carefully directed pistol-shot would produce the happiest results, and then, poor man, he goes and ruins it all by being too clever. It never occurs to him just to point a pistol at the heroine and fire it. If you told him the thing could be done that way, he would suspect you of pulling his leg. The only method he can imagine is to tie her in a chair, erect a tripod, place the revolver on it, tie a string to the trigger, pass the string along the walls till it rests on a hook, attach another string to it, pass this over a hook, tie a brick to the end of the second string, and light a candle under it. He has got the thing reasoned out. The candle will burn the second string, the brick will fall, the weight will tighten the first string, thus pulling the trigger, and there you are. Then somebody comes along and blows the candle out, and all the weary work to do over again. ("Thrillers" in Louder and Funnier) Back to Fry. Of Plum, Ethel said: he was the most impossible person, and completely self-contained. This was answered when PGW listed the many things that make a man happy – not least, “a wife”. Hilary Bruce reported that Black Berkshire pigs were now an endangered breed. She showed us a photograph of one of the remaining ones: "Patience".
The Society must act. She was happy to present each of our our entertainers with certificates of their sponsorship of Patience – each carrying visiting rights. Special thanks were recorded for an evening conceived, written and directed by Tony Ring. For a similar effort on the Millennium Tour he had been give the title “Ringo Little”. The comparisons with Bingo Little’s efforts for the Twing Village School Christmas Entertainment are obvious – the difference being that Ringo Little's entertainment was a success from go to whoa. And of course, there was no Steggles to sabotage our hero: just stacks of willing helpers. Officially the proceedings ended there, but there was needed an encore. Traditionally this is Lara singing "Bill"; and we were not going to let her escape. It was fully as wonderful, mysterious, mystical, aetherial, and beautiful as ever. Then as even the paintings on the walls wept and clapped with the assembled company, came the sad acceptance that this really was the end. JAF & MBH |
