You Said a Mouthful, Mr Waugh

Early on in the 2020 lockdown a neighbour and fellow book group member roped in a few of us to contribute to an email trail about what we were reading in lockdown. I hadn’t been reading anything terribly profound or impressive. I’d done a good bit of rereading, in particular the Sherlock Holmes stories, which are great comfort reading, but they are a lot more than that. It is difficult to think of more perfectly crafted stories. And during lockdown, it is pleasant to think of Victorian and Edwardian London, hansom cabs rattling through the fog, Holmes and Watson biting a chop at the Savoy, Watson taking his service revolver just in case…

Another comfort reread was a couple of collections of Patrick Campbell’s very funny Sunday Times pieces from the 1960’s and 1970’s, about which I had something to say last week.

Someone sent me a Kindle copy of Hitler’s Peace, by Philip Kerr, imagined around the Tehran conference of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, in which Hitler arrives at the conference. A very good thriller. What with that and the Bernie Gunther novels, Kerr must have done tons of research on the history of the third Reich and the second world war. So it was very impressive in getting the environment right and all that. I do admire the research, but I am also quite impressed by JB Priestley’s response to the person who complained of Angel Pavement that it got all the nuts and bolts of the veneers industry wrong. ‘Good,’ said Priestley, ‘I’m all the more pleased that I wrote a readable story set in an industry that I know nothing about.’ Or words to that effect.

I also read North Water by Ian McGuire. I had picked it up in a jumble sale a few months before the pandemic. I think it was booker longlisted when it came out, and it had all sorts of plaudits from Hilary Mantel, Colm Toibin and others on the cover, but it was essentially a thriller. It was a good story and very well written, set on a whaling vessel in the 19^th century, on which there is a particularly unpleasant serial killer (as opposed to a nice serial killer). It was very erudite and stylish. But what I found difficult was that it was pretty nearly all shade and no light. The unrelenting brutishness of everything was a bit wearing. I realise that life on board a 19^th century whaling ship wouldn’t be the same as a tea party on the lawn of an Oxford college, but all the same… And it didn’t strike me as the sort of book that Hilary Mantel and Colm Toibin would rave about. But I might be all wrong about that.

Over the Spring of 2020 I also revisited the short stories of John Cheever. They are amazingly good, again exquisitely crafted short stories, but often rather sad. Terrific vignettes of American life in the mid twentieth century, beautifully written. I suppose the closest comparison on this side of the Atlantic is William Trevor, but Cheever’s stories aren’t quite as heartbreakingly sad as Trevor’s, which I can’t read any more. All those pathetic drunks are too close to home.

So that was my reading early in the 2020 lockdown. This time around, I have been doing even more comfort rereading, notably Rumpole of the Bailey and PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories. The latter are hilarious, mainly because of the narrative voice of Bertie Wooster, which is why television adaptations have never worked very well. However, there are also some very good bits of dialogue, mainly illustrating how no-one has any concern whatever for the feelings of Bertie. Here is a conversation among Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and Roberta Wickham, about the necessity to keep a visiting child happy, in order to tickle some investment out of his father. Bertie is saying:

‘He told Cyril Bassington-Bassington, a fellow to whom he had never been formally introduced, that he had a face like a fish… … I give you fair warning that if he tells me I have a face like a fish, I shall clump his head.’

‘Bertie!’ cried the Wickham, contorted with anguish and apprehension and what not.

‘Yes, I shall.’

‘Then you’ll simply ruin the whole thing.’

‘I don’t care. We Woosters have our pride.’

‘Perhaps the young gentleman will not notice that you have a face like a fish, sir,’ suggested Jeeves.

‘Ah! There’s that, of course.’

‘But we can’t just trust to luck,’ said Bobbie, ’It’s probably the first thing he will notice.’

This was one of the occasions when I laughed my head off, out loud, while reading. But what is this working up to, apart from the need for something to cheer you up during lockdown? Well, on the back of the 1960’s and 1970’s Penguin editions of Wodehouse, there is often a quotation from Evelyn Waugh. I am sure he did not have the current pandemic in mind, but the quote seems eerily prescient: ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own.’

Right enough.