Source of book: I own this
Hey, what’s better than a shipboard romance? How about THREE shipboard romances that threaten to go wrong, a bumbling steward, a Mickey Mouse doll, a smuggled necklace, AND a baby alligator?
If that doesn’t sound like a Wodehouse plot, well…
The Luck of the Bodkins is a sort of a spin-off. The titular character, Mr. Montague Bodkin, aka “Monty,” plays a role in an earlier Lord Emsworth book, Heavy Weather. More than 30 years later, at the end of his life, Wodehouse would write a sequel to The Luck of the Bodkins, The Plot that Thickened. (As is the case with many Wodehouse books, there is an alternate title to that one, Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin.)
Poor Monty has a problem. Sure, he is fairly rich, and has no need of ever doing any work for the rest of his life. But he wants to marry Gertrude Butterwick, a star hockey player. The problem? Her father insists that he hold a job for at least a year before he will consent to the marriage.
Gertrude and her team is leaving for America on the Atlantic for a tournament, and she has just summarily broken up with Monty. He quickly books a ticket himself, with the aim of finding out what went wrong, and win her back.
Meanwhile, Gertrude’s cousins, the brothers Reginald and Ambrose Tennyson, are also on the boat. Ambrose is a novelist of limited success, who, until recently, had a steady job at the Admiralty. Reggie, on the other hand, has dodged employment for years, but has finally been sent to Canada to work at a boring job far from anyone he knows. Reggie and Monty went to school together, and are old friends, although Reggie’s sense of humor is creating a problem - he jokes about how much of a player Monty is to Gertrude, and she takes him seriously.
And what about Ambrose? Well, he quit his job because he was offered a job as a screenwriter by Ivor Llewellyn, the famous Hollywood studio boss, which is why he is going to America. He has also fallen in love with one of the studio’s starlets, Lotus “Lottie” Blossom, who is also returning…with a pet alligator.
Problems arise soon after departure. Monty finds that someone has written romantic messages on his stateroom bathroom wall in lipstick - probably the notoriously flirtatious Lottie - whose stateroom is right next to his.
Mr. Llewellyn, meanwhile, has problems of his own. Traveling with his sister-in-law, he has been tasked with smuggling a fabulously expensive necklace through customs for his wife - who threatens divorce if he doesn’t do the deed.
And then it gets worse for him: he discovers, to his horror, that Ambrose is not THAT Tennyson…the one who wrote, well, let’s see, that poem about “The Boy on the Burning Deck.”
Okay, all the serious literature fans are saying, what??? I mean, it’s one thing to not realize that Alfred, Lord Tennyson was long deceased, but who seriously thinks that he wrote that bit of melodramatic dreck?
That is one of the running jokes in this book: everyone knows the poem, but has no clue who wrote it. Was it Tennyson? Shakespeare? Milton?
For those of our modern times, the poem is “Casabianca,” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, who was from the generation before Tennyson. It is a story (possibly apocryphal) of a ship boy who was told by his father to stay on deck and keep watch. The ship burns to the water along with him, but he stood fast because his daddy said to.
Apparently, this was the sort of staple for British schoolkids that “The Ride of Paul Revere” was to us Americans. Everyone learned it. A million parodies were written. And it became the butt of many a joke.
In any event, Ivor’s unpleasant realization leads him to fire Ambrose midway across the Atlantic.
Reggie, in the meantime, has fallen in love with Ivor’s sister-in-law Mabel, but he needs to have money or he will be stuck in Canada far from her.
Making things exponentially worse at every possible turn is the fastidious but clueless steward, Albert Peasemarch. Honestly, the book could have ended after the first quarter of the story but for his bumbling. Which, of course, is part of the humor. Peasemarch takes himself so damn seriously, and thinks immensely of his talents. In fact, the book nearly ends in an impossible mess due to his actions, but his decision to break an ethical rule restores order.
But what will happen to everyone? Will Gertrude finally believe that poor Monty is faithful to him? Will Lottie stop flirting with everyone long enough to see that she is jeopardizing her own love life? Will Reggie ever get enough income to marry Mabel? And how does a Mickey Mouse doll fit into all this?
Well, you will have to read the book to find out.
As usual, there are so many delicious lines. The first time we meet Llewellyn:
As he sat there in conference with his wife’s sister Mabel, his brow was furrowed, his eyes bulged, and each of his three chins seemed to compete with the others in activity of movement. As for his hands, so briskly did they weave and circle that he looked like a plump Boy Scout signaling items of interest to some colleague across the way.
And, our introduction to Reggie, after a night of celebration at the Drones Club:
In this, it differed substantially from the young man with the dark circles under his eyes who was propping himself up against a penny-in-the-slot machine. An undertaker, passing at that moment, would have looked at this young man sharply, scenting business. So would a buzzard. It would have seemed incredible to them that life still animated that limp frame. The Drones Club had given Reggie Tennyson a farewell party on the previous night, and the effects still lingered.
Ambrose, a bit melodramatic after getting fired, being subjected to an effusive Monty:
This caused Ambrose to grind his teeth a little. The panegyric had cut into his valuable time. Every minute spent in this state-room meant a minute when he was not on the promenade deck contemplating suicide.
Monty, who cannot seem to escape the company of the flirtatious Lottie:
He was also wishing that if Miss Blossom found it necessary to invade his privacy, she would not bring her alligator with her.
Monty, contemplating the problems of a civilized society, after Peasemarch runs amok again:
As he dragged his stumbling feet along the corridor, he was musing on Albert Peasemarch and the grave social problem which such men as Albert Peasemarch presented. You could not murder them. You could not even have them shut up in asylums. Yet, left to run around loose, what a gangrene in the body politic they were. He seemed to picture the world as a vast cauldron of soup, with good men like himself for ever standing on the brink and for ever being shoved into it by the Albert Peasemarches.
Monty, trying to retrieve the Mickey Mouse doll that the meddling Peasemarch has given to Lottie, and taking up Reggie on his offer to steal it for the right price:
This was not the first time that Monty Bodkin had found himself in the role of the capitalist who hires underlings to do sinister work for him.
This is a reference to the previous book, wherein he becomes involved in a plot to purloin a manuscript.
Reggie, out to steal the item in question:
What he was giving at this moment was a perfect representation of one of those men who are always getting arrested by the police for loitering with intent. A policeman, had one been present, might have been uncertain as to whether Reggie was meditating murder, arson, robbery from the person with violence, or the purchase of chocolates after eight p.m., but he would have known it was something pretty bad.
And, finally, one that warms my lawyer heart.
Whatever soul a motion-picture magnate possesses always revolts against the heretical suggestion of a contract without options.
“No options?” he said wistfully, for he loved the little things.
“Nary a one.” said Mabel.
Since discovering Wodehouse back in high school, I have read quite a few. His books are still hilarious, and have the kind of harmless, venomless humor that makes for a good vacation read, or an escape into a world where even dim-witted aristocrats can come out all right in the end.
***
Here is the Wodehouse list for the blog - the last 13 or so years of Wodehouse reading:
No comments:
Post a Comment