great pain.
‘You’ll
distribute it.’
‘What
beats me is where you got this preposterous notion.’
‘I
ought to have told you that. From my friend Daphne Winkworth, at whose school
Mr. Bennison was employed for quite a time. She gave me a most accurate
description of him, down to the scar you will have noticed under his right eye.
Well, I think that is all, Galahad, and you may go back to your deep thinking.
I have of course told Victoria that Mr. Bennison is leaving the castle
immediately.’
WORK IN PROGRESS
YOU HAVE just read the
last chronicle of Blandings: sixteen skeleton chapters of a Wodehouse novel
that was to have gone to twenty-two.
These
sixteen chapters, typed out on Wodehouse’s favourite old 1927 Royal and their
pages numbered 1—90, were in the hospital with him when he died on February
14th 1975. In addition, one hundred and eighty-three pages of notes and drafts
for this novel were found after his death, thirty-three of them in the
hospital, one hundred and fifty of them from among the papers in his study at home.
Practically all of these pages were in his own handwriting, but only eighteen
of them were date-lined on top. Usually Wodehouse date-lined every page, not
only of his self-communing notes in preparation of a novel’s scenario, but also
of his drafts of dialogue and narrative.
Among
the pages of notes he had with him in hospital were two, obviously consecutive,
in typescript, of which the first is dated January 19th 1975. Although these
two pages indicate that Chapter 16, which you have just read, was typed out
after that date, the January 1 9th pages carry the last date that Wodehouse put
on any page of the collection. And, if you want to know how the last six
chapters might have brought the novel to a happy ending, this January 1 9th
scenario (pages 150—155) is the key document.
You will
see that, at this stage, Wodehouse
1. is proposing to give his hero, Jeff, a less reprobate father. The
father will now be Beach the butler’s brother, and an actor rather than an
absconding company director.
2. But it is not clear from the scenario why Beach is ‘agitated’ about
this. Is it because he thinks that Lady Florence will oppose the Jeff/Vicky
romance even more strongly if she discovers that Jeff, in addition to being
penniless and an impostor, is also nephew to the castle’s butler?
3. has not decided what to do about Florence’s husband. After some
doubts (page 161) he is clearly going to be her husband, and somehow
their separation has to be changed to reconciliation and bright hopes of
happiness together in the future;
4. has left Claude Duff in the air and unattached;
5. has not decided how Jeff is going to assure himself of an income
sufficient to enable him honourably to marry the soon-to-be-rich Vicky. If
other objections (see 1 above) are overcome, Florence might believe Gally’s
enthusiastic assurances about Jeff’s future in Chapter 22, at least for long
enough to loosen the purse-strings as trustee of Vicky’s inheritance. But Jeff,
by the Wodehouse code, can’t marry and be an heiress’s kept man;
6. has not allowed for an ‘all-our-troubles-are-over’ love scene for
Jeff and Vicky;
7. has not yet ‘planted’ Brenda’s bracelet (or necklace), the stealing
of which is to bring down the curtain on Act 2, so to speak, and provide good
alarums and excursions at the beginning of the final Act;
8. has scarcely touched on the necessary romance of Sergeant Murchison
and Marilyn Poole. That chauffeur, of whom Murchison is jealous, is a dark
horse. Will he be developed?
9. has left Brenda, Piper’s sister, at a loose end. It is not like the
benign Wodehouse to leave even such an unrewarding character as Brenda
unrewarded with an autumn romance of her own. After all, Constance, who has
harassed, bullied and dominated Lord Emsworth from book to
‘You’ll
distribute it.’
‘What
beats me is where you got this preposterous notion.’
‘I
ought to have told you that. From my friend Daphne Winkworth, at whose school
Mr. Bennison was employed for quite a time. She gave me a most accurate
description of him, down to the scar you will have noticed under his right eye.
Well, I think that is all, Galahad, and you may go back to your deep thinking.
I have of course told Victoria that Mr. Bennison is leaving the castle
immediately.’
WORK IN PROGRESS
YOU HAVE just read the
last chronicle of Blandings: sixteen skeleton chapters of a Wodehouse novel
that was to have gone to twenty-two.
These
sixteen chapters, typed out on Wodehouse’s favourite old 1927 Royal and their
pages numbered 1—90, were in the hospital with him when he died on February
14th 1975. In addition, one hundred and eighty-three pages of notes and drafts
for this novel were found after his death, thirty-three of them in the
hospital, one hundred and fifty of them from among the papers in his study at home.
Practically all of these pages were in his own handwriting, but only eighteen
of them were date-lined on top. Usually Wodehouse date-lined every page, not
only of his self-communing notes in preparation of a novel’s scenario, but also
of his drafts of dialogue and narrative.
Among
the pages of notes he had with him in hospital were two, obviously consecutive,
in typescript, of which the first is dated January 19th 1975. Although these
two pages indicate that Chapter 16, which you have just read, was typed out
after that date, the January 1 9th pages carry the last date that Wodehouse put
on any page of the collection. And, if you want to know how the last six
chapters might have brought the novel to a happy ending, this January 1 9th
scenario (pages 150—155) is the key document.
You will
see that, at this stage, Wodehouse
1. is proposing to give his hero, Jeff, a less reprobate father. The
father will now be Beach the butler’s brother, and an actor rather than an
absconding company director.
2. But it is not clear from the scenario why Beach is ‘agitated’ about
this. Is it because he thinks that Lady Florence will oppose the Jeff/Vicky
romance even more strongly if she discovers that Jeff, in addition to being
penniless and an impostor, is also nephew to the castle’s butler?
3. has not decided what to do about Florence’s husband. After some
doubts (page 161) he is clearly going to be her husband, and somehow
their separation has to be changed to reconciliation and bright hopes of
happiness together in the future;
4. has left Claude Duff in the air and unattached;
5. has not decided how Jeff is going to assure himself of an income
sufficient to enable him honourably to marry the soon-to-be-rich Vicky. If
other objections (see 1 above) are overcome, Florence might believe Gally’s
enthusiastic assurances about Jeff’s future in Chapter 22, at least for long
enough to loosen the purse-strings as trustee of Vicky’s inheritance. But Jeff,
by the Wodehouse code, can’t marry and be an heiress’s kept man;
6. has not allowed for an ‘all-our-troubles-are-over’ love scene for
Jeff and Vicky;
7. has not yet ‘planted’ Brenda’s bracelet (or necklace), the stealing
of which is to bring down the curtain on Act 2, so to speak, and provide good
alarums and excursions at the beginning of the final Act;
8. has scarcely touched on the necessary romance of Sergeant Murchison
and Marilyn Poole. That chauffeur, of whom Murchison is jealous, is a dark
horse. Will he be developed?
9. has left Brenda, Piper’s sister, at a loose end. It is not like the
benign Wodehouse to leave even such an unrewarding character as Brenda
unrewarded with an autumn romance of her own. After all, Constance, who has
harassed, bullied and dominated Lord Emsworth from book to
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