Not merely the number but the amazing variety and range of comic situations and characters that Plum has created entitle him to more than the appellation of a comic genius. And then there is the beauty of his language, the mot juste, the easy flow and the almost lyrical quality of the descriptions of nature, especially in the Blandings novels. It was not for nothing that Hillaire Bellock once described him as the best living writer of the English language. It is difficult to pick one’s favourites from his uniformly delightful output. One can merely endeavour to capture the broad contours of his canon here.
Take the case of the Blandings Castle stories wherein the humour is derived from such adorable absurdities as the woollen-headed peer, Lord Emsworth, whose sole passion in life is his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings; his eccentric brother, Galahad, who never went to bed till 4 am and has no business to be in the pink of health that he is in, in his fifties ; his son, Freddie, the go-getter salesman of Donadson’s Dog-joy biscuits; his secretary, the ever-suspicious Rupert Baxter; his gardener Agnes McAllister who detests any attempts by kids to pick up flaar’z from his fiefdom; the array of his formidable sisters and last, but not the least, the dignified and portly butler, Beach, whose walk reminds one of an elephant having a saunter in an Indian jungle, and one for whom it is difficult to stop once the subject of the lining of his stomach comes up.
The Jeeves-Wooster stories depend on a plethora of odd-ball characters such as the hero, Bertie Wooster, himself; his incomparable gentleman’s personal gentleman, Jeeves, who is also Bertie’s friend, philosopher and guide and rescues him from many a sticky situation, being endowed with a master brain, probably the result of his predominantly piscine diet; Bertie’s favourite aunt, Dahlia, whose telephone conversations can be heard in the next county; Sir Watkyn Basset, the ex-magistrate, who, according to Bertie, has grown rich by pocketing a five pound fine here and a five pound there, imposed on miscreants; his daughter, Madeline, who thinks stars are God’s daisy chain; his niece Stiffy Byng, a girl to be carefully avoided by all sensible gentlemen because she is always hell-bent on sending them on crazy errands; Bingo Little, who beats the record of falling in and out of love with many members of the tribe of the delicately nurtured till he walks down the aisle with Rosie M Banks, and, of course, Roderick Spode, ‘the eight foot tall’ tinpot dictator, who is once reduced from being a menace to a mouse by Bertie telling him that he knows all about Eulalie!
Not to forget one of his friends, Augustus Fink-Nottle, the bespectacled newt-fancier, whose uninhibited speech at the Market Sondsbury Grammar School, made when he was duly oiled, plastered, sozzled, whiffled, and blotto (as Roget would have it), would need another piece altogether.
Can one really blame many of Plum’s fans who bemoan the fact that Rupert Psmith, the suave Etonian, appears in very few of his works? The way in which he manages his bosses in Psmith in the City, goes about wooing Eve Halliday in Leave it to Psmith, and even tackles underworld dons in Psmith the Journalist, leaves one yearning for more.
Mr. Mulliner’s juicy tales, narrated to a devoted audience of his at The Angler’s Rest, recounting the escapades of a vide array of his nephews and nieces, are so very delightful. Whether it is Eustace who, while working at the British Embassy in Berne, earns the right to yodel in the presence of the Vice-President, or Adrian who uses his crooked smile to enrich himself with a sum of hundred thousand pounds and even win over the love of his life, the sheer range of these characters would regale as well as baffle the mind of any lesser mortal.
And then we have the inimitable Ukridge, whose amoral and dreamy schemes to earn money simply tell us how not to conceive and run a business venture. After the failure of each of his ventures, he does not take much time to rebound. A chicken farm going for a toss merely leads him to start thinking of setting up a duck farm. A great lesson in tenacity and resilience, one would say.
Besides, we have many stand-alone novels which are simply superb. If The Damsel in Distress tells us about the lives of authors and music composers and ends on a strong anti-obesity note, The Girl in Blue covers the perils of shoplifting, renovating old crumbling properties, and teaching the rozzers a lesson or two by pushing them into the refreshing waters of a brook. Of course, there are many others, but I wish to let my audience have merely a bird’s eye view, so to say.
These days, having just picked up ‘The Old Reliable’, I realize that though it is not as riotously funny as many of the above groups of stories, it is also a very nice read because of picturesque characterization and delightfully witty dialogue.
Plum had the unique skill of making the weirdest and oddest situations seem entirely laughable. His works make even a nonagenarian like me get up each morning, overcome the kind of subdued pessimism which engulfs one at a ripe age, and cheerfully look forward to the day, basking in his blissful humour while devouring one of my favourite tissue restoratives, there being no necessity to put any of Jeeves’s famous pick-me-ups down the hatch.
About the Author:
Mr. S. Subbaraman retired from the Archaeological Survey Of India (A.S.I.) in 1987 as Superintending Archaeological Chemist, having been the Head of the Southern Region of the Chemistry Branch of A.S.I. at Hyderabad, and having worked on such famous monuments as Ajanta, Lepakshi and Brihdeeshwara (Thanjavur) temples etc on the conservation and restoration of our mural painting heritage and in Belur, Halebid etc in Karnataka on stone conservation. He has led many teams to exotic monuments abroad, rendering specialized services and advice for conservation of many structures.
After retirement from A.S.I., he served as Director of the INTACH Chitrakalaparshath Art Conservation Centre, Bangalore, from 1993 to 2006. He was then responsible for the conservation and restoration of many art objects of various kinds for institutions as well as for individual owners.
He took voluntary retirement in June 2006 and settled down in Mysore to lead a life of retirement, consisting of such activities as reading. P G Wodehouse is one of his favourite authors.
Note:
I confess to having taken some liberties with the original text posted by the author on the Fans of P G Wodehouse page on Facebook recently; his permission to blog it here is gratefully acknowledged.
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