Book review THE ARTS 3y P. G. Wodehouse (Hutchinson, ?9.95) The chappie wNho wrote " Si monumentum requiris, circum- spice ", referring to the Wren- St Paul's Cathedral venture, knew a thing or two. He went straight to the nub, the crux of the matter. It is tempting to sav the same of P. G. Wodehouse. The books describing the delightful wvorld he created are all you need. But it is not so. Jeeves, looking up from his favourite volume of. Spinoza, might well have raised half an eyebrow and advised on the desirability of studying the psychology of the individual, and the three semi-autobiographical books which form this volume cer- tainly give an insight into the man and go some wvay to ex- plain his gemius. Bring on the Girls. written with Guv Bolton with wlhom he collaborated on musical comedies, Performing FZecr, a selection of letters written to his friend, Bill Townend, and Over Seventy, which he de- scribed as an autobiography wvith digressions. were pub- lished between 1953 and 1957. An immediate relief is that he writes just as wittily here as he does in his fiction. An immediate difficulty is believ- ing some of the escapades of his life to be true, mirroring as t'hey do episodes given eternal life in his stories. Thus, in The Inimitable Jeeves, there is the tale of the thieatre impresario Blumenfield w-ho uses his 12-vear-old son as a critic of his productions be- cause he believes the boy has the same intelligence as the average member of the aud- ience. In Bring on the Gir7.s, Bolton and Wodehouse describe Abraham Lincoln Erlanger; " Tsar of the New York Theatre " early this century, and his son Plymouth, anticipat- ing the fiction. Wodehouse's life, it seems, was made up of good stories, and the anecdotes tumble after each other throughout the vol- ume. The numerous kidnap- pings chronicled in his work must have had their origin in an incident at Victoria Station where he and Bolton succeeded in meeting the wrong child, taking him away despite his protests, and-not surprisingly -being. accused of kidnapping. For the period up to the Second World War Wodehouse mixed novels widt his career as film writer and lyricist. The money was good, for just one song-"Bill" from Showboat- kept him in tobacco and martini for the rest-of his life. The letters in Performing Flea. a title bestowed by Sean O'Casey, include references 'to less happy times in the war, when he -was interned and when he made his notorious broadcasts. He is ty,pically reti- cent- about defending himself, though the criticism hurt him badly. He comments simplv: ",Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the G;erman radio for even the most harm- less stuff, but I didn?t. I sup- pose prison life saps the intel- lect." With nearly 40 books still to come, his intellect cannot have remained sapped for long, and it wvas in tip-top shape-as if he shaired a fish. diet with *eeves-for his comments on important matters of everyday life. Take beards, for instance. Re- calling that a lot of chaps in the war grew them, WModehouse ouickly puts the record straight. " Not me. What I felt was that there is surely.enough sadneds in life w-ithout going out -f one's tway to increase it by sprouting a spade-shaped beard." Critics, too. He could take or leave them, but when he received a bad press cutting. " an icy look comes into my hard grey eyes, and I mark my displeasure by not pasting it into my scranbook "-harsh indeed, and no doubt he mieant it to sting. Tust how did he achieve that effortless prose and - be - so funny ? Did the muse simply perch on his shoulder and give him the go-ahead ? Alas, no. Even he had to work hard at it, making hundreds of pages of notes, rewriting sentences up to 20 times. A modest man, he doubted that anybody would be interested either in an auto- biography or an explanation of his methods. He had just one hope. " When in due course Charon ferries me across the Styx and everyone is telling everyone else what a rotten writer I was, I hope at least one voice will be heard piping up, 'But he did take trouble '." Sir Plum-b need not have worried. He remains the Master. Christopher Warman Book review I 'Performing flea' with a lifetime of good stories Wodehouse on 7Wodehouse