Leave it to Psmith (“the p is silent, as in pshrimp”), the second book in the Blandings Castle saga is notable on several fronts. It’s the first one where we see Blandings as it is portrayed in the rest of the saga: the terraces, the flowerbeds, the yew tree alley, and the atmosphere of the house are better defined than in Something Fresh where the actual location is rather more incidental to the story. It’s the book where we meet the first of Lord Emsworth’s formidable sisters, Lady Constance. (Yes, a previous sister, Lady Anne, is mentioned in Something Fresh but she plays no part at all in the story and never appears again.) Connie appears in most of the saga from here onward and is a constant thorn in the side of her brother. It’s also the book where Angus McAllister, Lord Emsworth’s head gardener first gets mentioned; he too crops up often.

Two other points of interest: one general to the Wodehouse canon, one pertaining to the saga.

Leave it to Psmith is the last Psmith book. He first appears in one of the school books, Mike, written in 1909. There followed two other novels (Psmith in the City, 1910, and Psmith, Journalist, 1915) before this final one.

And this is the book that contains the story of Baxter and the flower pots, something that is mentioned time and again throughout the saga.

Leave it to Psmith is the story of the theft of a diamond necklace belonging to Lady Constance, for reasons too complex to mention here. It has another of Wodehouse’s finest heroines in Eve Halliday. In most discussions among the Wodehouse illuminati she ranks with Joan Valentine and Jill Mariner as the most well drawn, likeable and engaging. Clever, resourceful, intelligent, a strong and faithful friend and extremely courageous in pursuit of the necklace, Eve is one of the very finest. Her changing relationship with Psmith, from the initial gift of the umbrella in the rain outside the Drone Club, to her mistaken belief that he is married to her best friend, through the perceived betrayal over the stolen necklace before the final reconciliation is drawn with perception and insight.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the women who many would regard as Wodehouse’s finest heroines were written down between 1915, (Joan in Something Fresh) and 1923, (Eve in this volume), with Jill the Reckless (Jill Mariner its eponymous heroine) written in 1921. As his career progressed Wodehouse’s male protagonists tended to be more prominent in the stories and the women, though attractive and important, became less of personalities in their own right. Anne Benedick in Money in the Bank (1946) is the only other heroine (in my opinion of course) that stands out on her own.

Being a Blandings book it does, of course, have its share of imposters – three in this case: Psmith, Eddie Cootes and Liz (Aileen) Peavey. There is also Miss Simmonds who could be thought of as an imposter insofar as she is an undercover detective brought in by Baxter unknown to everyone else.

I would claim that Leave it to Psmith is the first truly great Wodehouse novel. It has superb humour! Chapter 11, called “Almost entirely about flower-pots” is 30 pages of narration telling the afore-mentioned story concerning Baxter and is a priceless read. The description of Baxter slowly going berserk with fury after being accidentally locked out of the house at 3am, looking for the stolen necklace and then waking his Lordship by throwing flower pots through his bedroom window is a piece of funny writing that arguably is some of the finest that Wodehouse wrote. But it’s more than that one chapter! Almost every part is funny. From Freddy conspiring with his Uncle to steal Connie’s necklace, to Psmith protecting Eve from the rain with an umbrella “borrowed” from the cloakroom of The Drones Club; from the description of Lord Emsworth’s looking for his lost glasses to the advert in the Morning Globe that gives us the title of the book – every part of this book is a sheer joy to read. I absolutely love it!

Although it is the first novel in the Blandings Castle saga, Something Fresh was one of the last that I read. As someone who had come to Wodehouse as he was approaching his prime (Heavy Weather, the first novel I read was published in 1933) initially I found the writing style of this one, which was published in 1915, only 12 years after he began writing, slightly less fluent. Not there’s anything wrong with the writing, but it does not quite have the free flowing narrative style of the Master in his pomp.

There are shades of the more erudite and conversational narration that became his style, particularly in the Jeeves and Wooster books, and occasionally he slips into the first person narrative, amongst which this is a favourite of mine:

“One of the Georges – I forget which – once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep each night – I cannot recall at the moment how many – made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory, and Baxter agreed with him”

Something Fresh starts in London and introduces us in the first chapter to the main characters of the story, Ashe Marston and Joan Valentine. In terms of character Joan is the most noteworthy and she is often considered to be one of Wodehouse’s finest heroines. She is clever, forthright, dynamic, resourceful and could fit right into a novel written a hundred years later in her arguments for women’s equality. She is not quite my personal favourite Wodehouse heroine, as that is Anne Benedick in Money in the Bank, (see my previous blog on that book) but she’s definitely in the top three.

Chapter Two introduces the Honourable Freddy Threepwood and his father, the Earl of Emsworth, both of whom are to become staples of the entire saga. There is a superbly humourous scene in the dining room of the Senior Conservative Club (a location that crops up occasionally in other books), before the action switches to Blandings Castle where all the subsequent books are set. And it is at Blandings that we are introduced to one of the saga’s most notable characters, the man we love to hate, the saturnine, bespectacled Rupert Baxter, who when we first meet him is Lord Emsworth’s secretary.

A further note on the writing: Wodehouse devotes five pages on the arrival at Blandings station to describe the moment of Ashe falling in love with Joan. It’s lyrical, tender, insightful and, as ever, slightly comic. And it is worthy of note because though described as a light and even comic writer, Wodehouse most certainly knew and could handle the finer aspect of human emotions when he wanted to.

The main thrust of the story of this book is to do with the accidental purloining by Lord Emsworth of a very rare ancient Egyptian scarab from Mr Peters, the father of Freddy’s fiance, and Mr Peters’ attempts to get it back. As ever with Wodehouse, the fun comes not so much from the events of the story but from the people who get caught up in it. Ashe and Joan meet up, both get conscripted separately to retrieve the scarab and end up falling in love. Freddy starts off being engaged and fearing a breach of promise case, and ends up as single, but relieved. The book shows an apparently well informed view of the hierarchy of life below stairs, and gives us our first introduction to Mr Beach, the butler. Interestingly, considered across the whole saga, Beach is the character that changes most in the writer’s mind and pen. In Something Fresh he is shown as a figure of immense superiority, aloof, ponderous and wholly separate. Within a couple of books he is shown as having a beer in the Emsworth Arms (one of the village pubs), and towards the end of the saga he is winning a darts tournament!

The final aspect of this book that becomes a common feature of almost all the Blandings book is the imposters. Joan and Ashe are the first of many. I can’t think of any Blandings books that don’t have at least one imposter.

It’s a fun book to read. It was written as a standalone novel in 1915 (none of the characters appears again until the second novel, Leave it to Psmith eight years later) and is very interesting to read it in that context. Emsworth, Freddy, Beach and Baxter are presented as characters with whom the reader is entirely unfamiliar and if Wodehouse fans can forget all the subsequent character development reading it is quite an exciting intellectual exercise.

Some time ago I set off with the intention of writing a blog a week about books. It went fairly well for the first few months of 2017 but then my daughter’s wedding intervened and knocked me out of my stride and sadly the whole enterprise staggered to a halt. Shortly after that another daughter announced her intention to marry, and that plus my personal project for 2018 (I’ve become a runner! Something that might well have a blog of its own at some point.) have managed to defer all thoughts of blogging.

Until now.

I want to start again, though in a manner that is less prescriptive, particularly in terms of time. I’m going to read all of PG Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle books in chronological order, and will write about each one as I go.

I was introduced to Wodehouse at the age of 10 by a friend of my father’s who, it transpired, had pretty much a complete collection of his books. He lent me A Wodehouse Miscellany, consisting of short stories, extracts from books and innumerable quotes. I greatly enjoyed it so he then gave me my first Blandings book, Heavy Weather. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this is actually the fourth volume in the canon and directly follows on from Summer Lightning, so some of the events and characters were a touch confusing. But I loved that book! The humour, the place, the style of writing and the characters all made an impression on my young mind and I was hooked. As I grew up my collection gradually expanded; I met Jeeves and Wooster; explored the wacky world of Psmith and devoured the thoughts and remembrances of both Mr Mulliner and The Oldest Member. All these books I read and re-read – still do.

Wodehouse aficionados will argue long into the night as to which parts of the Master’s oeuvre are the funniest. Some (well, ok, many!) will support the Jeeves and Wooster stories as the highest form; others are supportive of the golfing stories, the Blandings saga or the adventures of Ukridge. And I will freely admit to hugely enjoying all of these. But for me the stories of Blandings Castle, its dreamy owner Lord Emsworth, his numerous nieces and their suitors, his array of formidable sisters, his brother Gally (now there’s a bloke to go for a drink with!) and the supreme pig, the Empress of Blandings. These are the ones that pull me back most, time after time and I am greatly looking forward to reading them all again and sharing my thoughts in this blog in the weeks to come.