Wodehouse and Lewis

I’ve never read a novel or even a story by P.G. Wodehouse, but his Wikipedia biography impressed me greatly. The sad turning-point in his life was, of course, the Second World War. Stranded in German-occupied France, he was (uncomfortably) interned in various places and eventually transported to (comfortable) accommodation in Berlin. There, in 1941, he delivered a series of humorous, very ill-considered radio broadcasts (How to Be an Internee without Previous Training). These outraged the British; after the war, he emigrated to the United States, where he lived out his days, never returning to his native land.

But first he was briefly detained by the French. Malcolm Muggeridge, then with MI6, visited him in Paris and became fond of him. Muggeridge wrote:

The broadcasts, in point of fact, are neither anti- nor pro-German, but just Wodehousian. He is a man singularly ill-fitted to live in a time of ideological conflict, having no feelings of hatred about anyone, and no very strong views about anything. … I never heard him speak bitterly about anyone – not even about old friends who turned against him in distress. Such temperament does not make for good citizenship in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Wodehouse had said in one of the broadcasts:

I never was interested in politics. I’m quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I’m about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts or feelings.

Around the same time, C.S. Lewis was giving the broadcasts in England that would become Mere Christianity, in which this remarkable passage appears:

I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the First World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it.

Lewis was rather more belligerent than Wodehouse, and not only because of his stated willingness to kill. But the same spirit of chuminess was in both men.

What also struck me about Wodehouse was his work ethic. He was prolific and meticulous:

Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that “It’s the plots that I find so hard to work out.” … He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop.

Wodehouse remarked:

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.”