The Saturday Morning Post (No. 13)

This is the third installment of my reviews of P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga. This time around we have four books.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Full Moon by P G Wodehouse  B

In this installment of the saga we have Lord Emsworth's sister Hermione Wedge (who looks like, and is often mistaken for a cook) and her husband Colonel Wedge along with their beautiful but dimwitted daughter, Veronica staying at Blandings. In London we have another of Lord Emsworth's sisters, Dora Garland whose daughter, Prudence, intends to elope with Galahad's godson, Bill "Blister" Lister who is an artist that has just inherited a pub outside of Oxford, one that Freddie Treepwood used to frequent back before he was sent down from Oxford. Prudence wants Bill to give up being an artist and become a businessman and run the pub, for which they would need money to make it modern. Bill has a face like "a kindly gorilla," or as a Victorian era novelist would say, "a magnificent ugly man." Freddie runs into Prudence on his way to sell Aunt Dora on Donaldson's Dog-joy and learns that she and Bill are going to get married at the Registry office that day. She invites Freddie to be their witness. Freddie then runs into Tipton Plimsoll, a young American chain store owner who's been on a several month long spree after inheriting the chain stores, and he invites him to the wedding as well. Before the wedding Tipton sees a doctor about some spots on his chest, and is told that he is in grave danger of alcohol poisonings, and is on the brink of a breakdown where he could start seeing things unless he stops drinking... What he ends up seeing is the ugly face Bill, here and there before the wedding, a wedding that doesn't take place because Aunt Dora caught wind of Prudence's unknown lover, and whisked her off to Blandings, "I ought to mention that all the younger generation of my family get sent to Blandings when they fall in love with the wrong type of soul mate. It's sort of Devil's Island." Freddie also invites Tipton there to affect a cure, and Bill gets invited down by Lord Emsworth, with the help of Galahad, to paint a portrait of the Empress of Blandings. Learning that Tipton Plimsoll is very rich, Aunt Dora and Colonel Wedge want Veronica to marry him... but Tipton learns that Freddie and once been briefly engaged to Veronica, and even though Freddie is happily married, he knows how easy marriages come and go in America, and thinks the worst of their now merely cousinly comradery, as well as still being haunted by Bill's face, as he's at Blandings as well... And so it goes.

Pigs Have Wings by P G Wodehouse  B

Wodehouse stories tend to have complicate plots, so let's break out the set up for this story as an example. The usual suspects; Lord Emsworth, Galahad, Aunt Connie, Beach, and the prize fat pig, the Empress of Blandings are all in attendance. The story opens with two guests on hand, Penelope (Penny) Donaldson, the younger sister of Freddie's wife and the young and rich Orlo Vesper who Aunt Connie is pushing Penny to hitch up with. However Penny met Jerry Vail, on the boat from America to England and fell in love with him. However, he is not well off; 

'Well, he gets by. He's self-supporting.' (says Penny)

'What does he do?' (asks Galahad)

'He's an author.'

'Good heavens! Oh, well, I suppose authors are also God's creatures.'

'He writes thrillers. But you know the old gag. "Crime doesn't pay... enough," We couldn't possibly get married on what he makes, even in a good year.'

'But your father, the well-to-do millionaire. Won't he provide?'

'Not for an impecunious suitor. If I were to write and tell Father I wanted to marry someone with an annual income of about thirty cents, he would whisk me back to America by the next boat, and I should be extremely lucky if I didn't get interned at my old grandmother's in Ohio.'

This Jerry Vail, however has a chance to get in on a new health spa for the rich scheme, but he needs 2000 pounds... Penny asks Galahad, but he explains that as the younger son, all he gets a meager allowance.

Also in attendance at Blandings is the new pig girl. Monica Simmons. (The old pig man won a football lottery and retired.) She was hired by Aunt Connie, and is the niece of their neighbor, Sir Gregory Parsole, who is the owner of a formidable rival pig that he just purchased from Kent, that intends to enter in the Fat Pig contest to be held in a few weeks, there being nothing in the rules to prevent him from entering an importing a fat pig. Sir Gregory has recently got engaged to one Gloria Salt, who thinks he's too fat, and has him exercising. Disliking exercise, he takes up the suggestion of his Butler to try a weight reducing concoction called Slimmo, and orders half a dozen economy sized bottles of the stuff while Beach was in the shop getting a bottle of the stuff for himself. Beach brings news of this development back to Blandings. Putting two and two together, Monica and Slimmo, sets off alarm bells with Lord Emsworth, Galahad, Beach (both of whom have money wagered on the Empress of Blandings) and Penny. They decide to call in professional help to guard the Empress in the form of Maudie, Beach's niece, who is running a detective agency left to her by her late husband. And it seems that, in her youth Maudie, was an acquaintance of Sir Gregory in his poor, wild youth. 

The plot thickens, when we learn that Sir Gregory's fiancée, Gloria Salt, is not only an old friend of Jerry Vail, but until recently had been engaged to Orlo Vesper, who also happens to be an old school mate and friend of Jerry. Gloria has been invited down to Blandings and asked by Aunt Connie to find a suitable private secretary for Lord Emsworth. Gloria invites Jerry to dinner dangling the hope of landing the 2,000 pound loan he needs. Given the prospect of a chance to get the money, he cancels a previous agreed dinner date with Penny who was up to London for a day. Over dinner Gloria informs him that according to Hugo Carmony, Lord Emsworth's private secretary in Summer Lightning, if he learns to love and talk up pigs, he may be able to endear himself with Lord Emsworth after a few weeks in Blandings, and touch him for the loan of 2,000 pounds which he needs, so he accepts the post. And of course, seeing that Penny, Orlo, and Gloria all staying at Blandings Castle... the fuse is lit.

Service With a Smile  by P G Wodehouse  B

The story opens with one Myra Schoonmaker, the daughter of an American millionaire friend of Aunt Connie who has her staying at Blandings on account of an "unfortunate love affair" i.e. falling in love with a poor London East End curate the Rev Cuthbert "Bill" Bailey, along with the always rude Duke of Dunstable. We also have a new private secretary, Lavender Briggs for Lord Emsworth. As the story opens, Lord Emsworth has to go up to London for the opening of Parliament. When Myra learns that Aunt Connie will also be away from the castle for a day, she calls Bill and arranges to get married at of London's the register's offices... but over the phone Wilton Street is mistaken for Milton Street by Bill, and they end up standing each other up, they think. Bill Baily is an old friend of Pongo Twistleton, who along with his Uncle Lord Ickenham, were with Bill when Myra failed to appear at the Milton Street registry office. It seems that Lord Ickenham was a good friend of James Schoonmaker during his youth in America, so he has a great interest in the happiness of both Myra, and the Rev Cuthbert who he approves of, and so, when he meets Lord Emsworth as they return their costumes from the opening, he accepts Lord Emsworth's invite to Blandings, and his "friend", Bill, under an assumed name, of course, with the idea of mending the rift in Bill and Myra's love affair... And so it goes. We also have the Church Lads camping around the lake on the castle ground, much to Lord Emsworth's annoyance, the handsome, nephew of the Duke also arrives as Aunt Connie's alternative to Bill Bailey for Myra. He is an artist recently fired from the Mammoth Publishing Company who now needs a thousand pounds to get into his brother's onion soup stall business, plus a plot to, you guessed it, steal the Empress of Blandings. In short, a Blandings Castle Saga novel.