[157], Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for suburban Long Island. "[5][n 1] The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends. “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'" [71] Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books." Wodehouse often referred to their screams and love of food, in their person and in his use of similes. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, Brother Alfred. Wodehouse's maternal grandmother, Louisa Elizabeth Fourdrinier, was the daughter of Sealey Fourdrinier, who invented the paper machine (also known as the Fourdrinier machine) alongside his brother, Henry. Bolton and Kern had a musical, Very Good Eddie, running at the Princess Theatre in New York. [128], The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward",[16] although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. [57] He resigned from The Globe and stayed in New York for nearly a year. [222] The president of the society as at 2017 is Alexander Armstrong;[223] past presidents have included Terry Wogan and Richard Briers. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that Those Three French Girls (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. It’s this intense respect for the conventions of storyline that make his many novels each similar enough to attract repeat readership, but each unique enough to reward it. Levin, Bernard. He hasn’t an ill-tempered, mean-spirited bone in his body, and apart from some mischievous penchant for purloining policemen’s helmets, is always a gentleman. Most abhorrent are the female writers, young and old, such as Ukridge's Aunt Julia, Bertie Wooster's cousin (and sometime fiancée) Florence Craye and, when the evil fit is upon her, Bingo Little's wife Rosie M. Banks. [2], The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford,[3] and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. LoveThisPic offers Hell Hath No Fury Like Me When.... pictures, photos & images, to be used on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter and other websites. Goodreads members who like this author also like: Sebastian Faulks. Wodehouse", "When Plummie Met Sally—The Other P.G. [124] Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. Writing Tips From P.G. Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film;[16][216] Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times. 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. [original research?]. "[176][187] Many of Wodehouse's parts were stereotypes,[182] and he acknowledged that "a real character in one of my books sticks out like a sore thumb. [40], Wodehouse's characters, however, were not always popular with the establishment, notably the foppish foolishness of Bertie Wooster. [209][n 31] Two former British prime ministers, H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair, are on record as Wodehouse aficionados, and the latter became a patron of the Wodehouse Society. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Bertie asks Jeeves "Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disaster and ... what's the word? [184] Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It seemed desperately unlikely, given the circumstances: the transplantation, the second language, the lack of education, the necessity of making a living and supporting a family, the indifference of the literary world, not to mention my doubts about my talent. 'Yes, sir.' Wodehouse wrote the screenplay for the musical film A Damsel in Distress released in 1937, starring Fred Astaire, George Burns, Gracie Allen and Joan Fontaine, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. [32][n 5], Between the publication of The Pothunters 1902 and that of Mike in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. [6], Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). They include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls. Typically, a relative or friend makes some demand that forces a character into a bizarre situation from which it seems impossible to recover, only to resolve itself in a clever and satisfying finale. [225] Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from Ben Jonson to Oscar Wilde, writes: [I]t is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. Wodehouse enjoyed the traditional British thriller: one of his characters declares that "It is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace",[37] and he dedicated Sam the Sudden to Wallace, while Agatha Christie dedicated her Hallowe'en Party "To P G Wodehouse – whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. It isn’t easy, but it is more easy, to amount to Barbara Cartland levels of productivity when your world wants it. [2] Seán O'Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920s, thought little of Wodehouse; he commented in 1941 that it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature. [206] In a 2010 study of Wodehouse's few relatively serious novels, such as The Coming of Bill (1919), Jill the Reckless (1920) and The Adventures of Sally (1922), David Heddendorf concludes that though their literary quality does not match that of the farcical novels, they show a range of empathy and interests that in real life—and in his most comic works—the author seemed to lack. Learn the trade. "[2], In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. A recurring motif is the theft of policemen's helmets. His works include novels, collections of short stories, and musical comedies. It's an austere, almost bloodless preference for pristine artifice over the pain and messy outcomes of actual existence, but it's a case of Wodehouse keeping faith with his own unique art. [224] There are also other groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US. Wodehouse continued to write novels and to follow an exercise regime into his nineties. Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when Wodehouse was recommended in 1967 for the Order of the Companions of Honour, Sir Patrick Dean, the British ambassador in Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate. Wodehouse from Amazon's Fiction Books Store. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. 17 Dunraven Street. [4], Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies, many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled. Wodehouse spent the last decades of his life in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1955, because of controversy that arose after he made five light-hearted broadcasts from Germany during World War II, after he had been interned by the Germans for a year. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Wodehouse (Broadcasts, Germany)", "Cooper, (Alfred) Duff, first Viscount Norwich (1890–1954)", "Wodehouse denied a knighthood by Wooster", P.G. [119] After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. Wodehouse. He also often referred to snails and slugs, though he was wont to treat them rather generically, as Phipps criticised in his foreword when he said, "Unfortunately he is sometimes unspecific, referring only to a 'snake' or a 'parrot' and is frequently guilty of adopting a stereotyped view of snakes, parrots, rabbits and rats.". It may be shorter than those flappy textbooks in Psy 101, but it’s all in there, believe me…. Usborne cites as an example a sentence from. It's probably because you were born that way. (After two years of clerking in London, trainees were dispatched to the bank’s outposts in the Far East, a prospect that terrified him.) Unsurprisingly, this has prompted many people to explore the writings of P.G. [34] Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all. 42–43, 274 and 278; and "Savoy Theatre". [46], Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel Love Among the Chickens contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. No doubt about it. [30], The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, given annually for the finest example of comic writing in the UK, was established and named in his honour in 2000. Some libraries banned his books. [44] His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse;[45] it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades. Herbert, W.S. [194] Robert A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson. P. G. Wodehouse Writing Styles in The Most of P.G. "[46] He returned to MGM in 1937 to work on the screenplay of Rosalie, but even though he was now being paid $2,500 a week and living luxuriously in Hollywood, he said "I'm not enjoying life much just now. This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Animals of many types play major roles in his works and are the unifying force in A Wodehouse Bestiary, published by Dorset Press in 1985, Foreword by Howard Phipps, Jr., President, New York Zoological Society. [11] Wodehouse grew very close to his brother, who shared his love for art. [29] His last novel, Sunset at Blandings, was unfinished at his death and was published posthumously in 1977. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years, and his many writings continue to be widely read. This section contains 768 words (approx. From 1947 until his death he lived in the US, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; Leave it to Psmith (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. "[W]hile not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled". [109][n 21] His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land. Wodehouse was known for his consummate skill at their detailed construction and development. [180], Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. In fact, there are times when you can't help feeling that Wodehouse has been surpassed. The notebooks are full of instructions to himself. Other examples of simple 'misguided youth' occur in Laughing Gas (1936), where the child Hollywood star Joey Cooley is viewed in (at times) a very sympathetic light, and in Service with a Smile, where the boy George Threepwood (grandson to the Earl of Emsworth) is viewed as mischievous, rather than villainous. [127] The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey. GS doesn’t mention that it takes hard work for years on end before you get to where he is now. Is this a thing? There are pleasant little spots my heart is fixed on, One of the other lyricists on the show was his fellow Globe newspaperman C.H. For other uses, see. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories;[n 12] Psmith made his fourth and last appearance;[n 13] two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories,[78] and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. [203], Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman[16] and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page. [93] He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire. As Sophie Ratcliffe’s new “P. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. "[41], Wodehouse's characters are often eccentric, with peculiar attachments, such as to pigs (Lord Emsworth), newts (Gussie Fink-Nottle), antique silver (Bertie's Uncle Tom Travers), golf collectibles (numerous characters) or socks (Archibald Mulliner). As a boy, Wodehouse received a classical education at Dulwich. "Never oblivious to grief and despair, he opts in clear-eyed awareness for his timeless world of spats and woolly-headed peers. Author of 40 books including Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War. The very first Jeeves story ("Jeeves Takes Charge") concerns an attempt to prevent publication of an old man's memoirs, which contain embarrassing stories about aristocrats and other prestigious persons in their youth.[42]. The plot of "Jeeves Takes Charge" revolves around the memoirs of Sir Willoughby, Bertie Wooster's rich uncle. Wodehouse worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. [18] By their account, the money was Wodehouse's legitimate earnings, including an advance from his Spanish publisher, that because of the war had to be channelled via the German Central Bank.[26]. Wodehouse's use of language was outstanding, including coining new words. And some other thoughts besides. During the 1930s, he had two brief stints as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he controversially claimed he was greatly overpaid. On both occasions the block was at the behest of the British ambassador to the US, Donaldson, p. 43 (Kipling); Hart-Davis, p. 20 (Walpole); and Usborne, p. 43 (Thackeray and Saki), Jason, p. 34; Green (1981), p. 98; and McCrum, p. 70, McCrum, p. 70; and Wodehouse and Ratcliffe, p. 55. For security reasons the results of Major Cussen's investigation were not published during Wodehouse's lifetime. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse is, many say, the greatest comic author ever. Wodehouse, but occasionally used other names, including P. Brooke-Haven, Melrose Grainger, Pelham Grenville, J. But once Wodehouse did go full time – only two years after leaving school – he used the extra time available to him to repeat what had been his evening routine across the rest of the day. Wodehouse. tips. Wodehouse was an acknowledged master of English prose admired both by contemporaries like Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh, and Rudyard Kipling — Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea… Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. He also wrote stories for schoolboys' magazines (The Captain and Public School Magazine) that were compiled to form his first published novels and four playlets with his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson. [159] In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. It boggled. Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his time between Britain and the United States. Wodehouse was determined from his schooldays that he was going to be a writer and nothing else. Bertie always has a nice detachment from his problems, an ability to see them from the outside, to put himself in the third person. 209–210; and Green (1981), pp. One of the most dislikable characters in the entire opus is a magistrate, Sir Watkyn Bassett. [165], Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. Impersonations, and resulting confusion, are particularly common in the Blandings books, but also occur in other works. Wodehouse". Early in his career he would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. Wodehouse lived with a dog on his lap at most times and usually lived with several Pekes. "[88], Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. In The Mating Season, he enumerated what many people consider as the definitive list of hangovers: the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie. [14], During 1909, Wodehouse stayed in Greenwich Village and "sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's for a total of $500 – much more than I had ever earned before." [4] The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. [186], When dealing with the dialogue in his novels, Wodehouse would consider the book's characters as if they were actors in a play, ensuring that the main roles were kept suitably employed throughout the storyline, which must be strong: "If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them. “I do seem to have been monstrously productive” wrote George Szirtes here. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). No shit in shuttered chateau he, and no doing his hundred words before spinning out the rest of the day in birds and booze . During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running Sally (1920, New York), The Cabaret Girl (1922, London) and Rosalie (1928, New York). [51], The Fourdriniers are of French Huguenot origins, allegedly fleeing from Caen to Groningen, Holland before coming to England in the early-18th century. 241 and 275; and Wodehouse and Ratcliffe, p. 472. After his release from internment, he lived for a time at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, before moving to Paris, which was still under German occupation. [13] Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. He had no biological children. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. [27] At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for Public School Magazine. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The most egregious is Edwin the Boy Scout, whose attempts at "acts of kindness" cause disasters of widely varying severity in several Jeeves novels and short stories. [31] He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time. He spent quite a few of his school holidays with one aunt or another; it has been speculated that this gave him a healthy horror of the "gaggle of aunts", reflected in Bertie Wooster's formidable aunts Agatha and Dahlia, as well as Lady Constance Keeble's tyranny over her many nieces and nephews in the Blandings Castle series. There’s a powerful curiousity there, especially in his earlier years. [40], Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. [92], Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. His doctor advised him not to travel to London for the investiture and his wife later accepted the knighthood on his behalf from the British consul. A 1962 film adaptation of The Girl on the Boat starred Norman Wisdom, Millicent Martin and Richard Briers. [n 29] He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. The two countries had not at that time reached the agreement that income tax is payable in one country or the other, but not in both. Buy Summer Lightning: (Blandings Castle) by P.G. [201] At the outbreak of the Second World War he was earning £40,000 a year from his work, which had broadened to include novels and short stories. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse. Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing 96 books in his remarkable seventy-three-year long career (1902 to 1975). [54] Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. "The first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an uncouth forefinger." In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S. Comedy series adapted from PG Wodehouse, starring Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders. Wodehouse appears to have been willing to talk to almost anyone about anything. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg's music for the Gershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928) and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928). His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. [83], There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when A Gentleman of Leisure was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in. Lady!! In 1996, it was rewritten as the more successful By Jeeves, which made it to Broadway, and a performance recorded as a video film, also shown on TV. "[87] Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. A friend and I were talking about literary critique, you know, like you do. Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week.          Political / Social. [146] On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. (In the Forties Wodehouse wondered out loud how young writers got started anymore..) By the time GS began his career, poetry’s popular audience had all but gone. He was right. Many characters and locations appear repeatedly throughout his short stories and novels, leading readers to classify his work by "series": Almost all of these series overlap: Psmith appears in a "School" story and a Blandings novel; Bertie Wooster is a member of the Drones Club; Uncle Fred and Pongo Twistleton appear in both the Blandings Saga and the Drones club stories; Sir Roderick Glossop, one of Bertie's nemeses, visits Blandings in one story; Bingo Little is a regular character in the Jeeves stories and the Drones Club stories, etc. These include Frank Sullivan, A.P. This would soon change, and by the 1920s his novels were already showing off his genius for creating multiple layers of comedic complications that the characters must endure to reach the invariable happy ending. I never was interested in politics. Around this time he began collaborating with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern on (eventually eighteen) musical comedies, including the innovative Princess Theatre musicals.[15]. He then drafted several humorous talks, based on his life at Tost, as the basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America, which was not then at war with Germany. [61] In the same year The Saturday Evening Post paid $3,500 to serialise Something New, the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. And Wodehouse’s parents had been both lucky and rich; Wodehouse was born middle class English at a time when that was an even greater piece of unlikely fortune than it is now; Wodehouse was educated expensively by men passionate about his passions. Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently. [90] Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system,[91] but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable. Although an MI5 investigation later cleared him of any such crimes, he never returned to England. [85] This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. And here he says “When I was twenty-five I thought nothing could be better and more impossible than having a book of poems published. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. Clearly, most of these would have been rejections. "As Jeeves would have said: Perfect music, Sir". He will describe another character as looking “like a seal waiting for a slice of fish,” or “a tiger after his morning ration of coolie.” He clearly enjoyed the benefits of a fine education at Eton and Oxford, particularly in the early novels, when he can spout a Shakespearean line to suit the occasion, or revert to the Latin citation, rem acu tetigisti, when putting his finger on the problem. [30] Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining The Globe and also contributing regularly to The Strand Magazine. The entries in Wodehouse’s notebooks and commonplace books are numbered for future reference. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. He was released from internment a few months before his 60th birthday when, under the Geneva Convention, he should have been released anyway; the early release led to allegations that he had made a deal with the Nazi authorities. Everyone knows at least some of his many works and has felt all the better for the gaiety of his wit and the freshness of his style. [20][n 3], Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven. Other characters in this vein are Lord Ickenham ("Uncle Fred") and Galahad Threepwood, who perform much the same role in the Blandings Castle stories—though never both at the same time—and Psmith, who does the same thing in the stories that bear his name. It is unclear why Grenville was chosen for Wodehouse. [177] 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. He wrote part-time while working in the bank and in 1902 became a journalist with The Globe (a now defunct newspaper), taking over the comic column from a friend who had resigned. When he was just three years old, Wodehouse was brought back to Britain and placed in the care of a nanny. [2] He continued to work in the theatre. Nor can I close without saying, once again, that Right Ho, Jeeves! [163] He did not complete one until 1951. I don't like doing pictures. Examples include Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha; Lord Emsworth's many sisters, notably Lady Constance Keeble; Headmistress Mapleton in "Jeeves and the Kid Clementina"; Lady Bassett in the Mulliner short story "Strychnine in the Soup" and the poisonous Princess von und zu Dworniczek in Summer Moonshine.