What ho! Abbey accolade a sign of author’s rehabilitation
He was, according to his Times obituary, ‘‘a comic genius and an old master of farce’’. Next year, P G Wodehouse will receive the ultimate literary accolade when a memorial stone is laid in Westminster Abbey to the man some say was England’s greatest comic writer.
The Very Rev Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster, has given permission for a memorial to be installed in the abbey. The location has not yet been disclosed but an appropriate site may be near Poets’ Corner, close to the memorial to Noel Coward.
The decision may finally complete the rehabilitation of Wodehouse’s reputation, almost 80 years after he was criticised for innocently assisting the Nazi war effort with a series of jaunty broadcasts on German radio.
The writer affectionately known as Plum, an abbreviation of his first name, Pelham, had early success as a writer of school stories and humorous songs. He had five hit musicals on Broadway at the same time in 1917.
Wodehouse found more fame with almost 100 novels and collections of short stories about Jeeves and Wooster – that great Mayfair bromance – the inhabitants of Blandings Castle, the loquacious Mr Mulliner and the sozzled Drones Club members.
His characters will get a new lease of life next month with Jeeves and the King of Clubs, a novel by Ben Schott endorsed by the Wodehouse estate.
Evelyn Waugh once wrote in a dedication that he considered Wodehouse to be ‘‘the head of my profession’’.
The Westminster Abbey memorial may help to draw a line under the controversy of Wodehouse’s radio talks, in 1941, about life as a prisoner of war in France. A Foreign Office inquiry ruled that he had made them ‘‘in all innocence and without evil intent’’, but it was seen as a propaganda coup for the Nazis, and Wodehouse spent the last three decades of his life in the United States.
A knighthood was blocked twice before it was awarded in 1975, shortly before his death at 93.
[Westminster Abbey] is a place for forgiveness. Gyles Brandreth, broadcaster and P G Wodehouse fan
This week, British broadcaster and Wodehouse fan Gyles Brandreth wrote that he should not have been knighted. ‘‘He gave succour to the enemy,’’ he said.
Brandreth welcomed the abbey’s decision, however.
‘‘The [knighthood] didn’t feel right but Poets’ Corner is different,’’ he said. ‘‘He is undoubtedly one of our greatest comic writers, and the abbey is a place for forgiveness.’’
The news of the memorial was announced at the annual dinner of the P G Wodehouse Society by its chairman, Hilary Bruce. ‘‘His stone will deservedly lie among those of some of the greatest writers in this country’s history and his own literary heroes,’’ she said.
Sir Edward Cazalet, Wodehouse’s grandson, said he would have been thrilled to be commemorated in such august company, especially to be within the vicinity of Shakespeare, the writer he admired most.
Cazalet said Wodehouse read Shakespeare’s complete works every five years, and his books were riddled with Shakespearean references. The Code of the Woosters contains nods to several plays and Sonnet 33.
Asked for the secret to his success, Wodehouse said: ‘‘I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.’’