From the shelves of the Paco library

What ho! Time for another Wodehouse review.

I have been very fortunate over the last few months in finding some of the Master’s novels that had eluded me until recently. Today’s pick is Indiscretions of Archie. The circumstances are similar to those occurring in many of Wodehouse’s books featuring non-recurring characters: young man marries rich girl (in this case the daughter of yet another hotelier), young man experiences numerous unhappy run-ins with stern father-in-law, young man makes everything all right in the end.

The young man this time around is Archie Moffam (pronounced “Moom”) – genial, kind-hearted, not extraordinarily intelligent (one instantly recognizes one of Wodehouse’s basic “types”). The novel opens with an encounter between Archie and his future father-in-law, the intimidating American millionaire, Daniel Brewster, in the lobby of the latter’s New York Hotel, the Cosmopolis. Archie complains about the service – he had left his boots outside the door of his room overnight and was miffed at finding them untouched the following morning, unaware that this was not the custom in American hotels – and sets the stage for the unpromising beginnings of his absorption into the Brewster family.

‘There is a shoe shining parlour in the basement. At the Cosmopolis shoes left outside bedroom doors are not cleaned.’

‘Then I think the Cosmopolis is a bally rotten hotel!’

Brewster’s compact frame quivered. The unforgivable insult had been offered. Question the legitimacy of Mr. Brewster’s parentage, knock Mr. Brewster down and walk on his face with spiked shoes, and you did not irremediably close all avenues to a peaceful settlement. But make a remark like that about his hotel, and war was definitely declared.

‘In that case,’ he said, stiffening, ‘I must ask you to give up your room.’

‘I’m going to give it up! I wouldn’t stay in the bally place another minute.’

Two weeks later, of course, Brewster receives the explosive news that his daughter has gotten married. And, lo! when he finally meets his new son-in-law, it is none other than Archie.

There was one of those silences. Mr. Brewster looked at Archie. Archie gazed at Mr. Brewster. Lucille, perceiving without understanding why that the big introduction had stubbed its toe on some unlooked-for obstacle, waited anxiously for enlightenment. Meanwhile, Archie continued to inspect Mr. Brewster, and Mr. Brewster continued to drink in Archie.

‘Lu!’

‘Yes, father?’

‘Is this true?’

‘True?’

‘Have you really inflicted this - this on me for a son-in-law?’ Mr. Brewster swallowed a few more times, Archie the while watching with a frozen fascination the rapid shimmying of his new relative’s Adams-apple.

Mr. Brewster comes around, very grudgingly, to putting up his daughter and Archie in his hotel until his son-in-law finds work (not an imminent prospect, given Archie’s somewhat vague strategy: ‘The general scheme was that I should kind of look round, you know, and nose about and buzz to and fro till something turned up.’) Thus commences Mr. Brewster’s long nightmare.

As usual, it is not the plot that intrigues us so much as it is Wodehouse’s sheer inventive zaniness and the multitude of comic touches: A few samples:

Professor Binstead had picked up a small china figure of delicate workmanship. It represented a warrior of pre-khaki days advancing with a spear upon some adversary who, judging from the contented expression on the warrior’s face, was smaller than himself.

* * * *

It would have pained Peter deeply, for he was a snake of great sensibility, if he had known how much his entrance had disturbed the occupant of the room. He himself had no feeling but of gratitude for the man who had opened the window and so enabled him to get in out of the rather nippy night air…He was a snake who took things as they came, and was prepared to rough it a bit if necessary…When at home, he had an eiderdown quilt to sleep on, and the stone of the window-sill was a little trying to a snake of regular habits. He crawled thankfully across the floor under Squiffy’s bed. There were a pair of trousers there…They were not an eiderdown quilt, but they would serve. He curled up in them and went to sleep. He had had an exciting day, and was glad to turn in.

* * * *

Much has been written of the emotions of the wanderer who, returning to his childhood home, finds it altered out of all recognition; but poets have neglected the theme – far more poignant – of the man who goes up to his room in an hotel and finds it full of somebody else’s dressing-gowns and bulldogs.

It’s all great fun, and a welcome distraction from our current woes.