"To be a humorist," P.G. Wodehouse once wrote, "one must see the world out of focus. You must, in other words, be slightly cockeyed." Wodehouse shared with countless millions of delighted readers his own slightly cockeyed, out-of-focus vision of the world in 70-odd novels, more than 300 short stories, 500 essays and articles, 40 or so plays and musicals and numerous movies—not to mention snippets of some of the funniest verse ever written in English. Many people grew up on Wodehouse and grew old on Wodehouse; his literary output, as reliable and regular as the seasons, never faltered or faded. Until he died of a heart attack in his home on Long Island, N.Y., at the age of 93, many of his readers must have assumed that Wodehouse—like Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, his best-known literary creations—was immortal.
Forbidden Fruit. Irish Playwright Sean O'Casey dismissed Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse) as English literature's "performing flea," an acidulous comment that P.G. himself ("Plum" to friends) loved to repeat. But other writers, ranging from Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell to Bertrand Russell and Evelyn Waugh, recognized that Wodehouse was a good bit more. Waugh, an indisputable master of the comic novel, would reread his favorites from the Wodehouse canon every year, as some people go back for spiritual sustenance to Shakespeare or the Bible. "For Mr. Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man, no 'aboriginal calamity,' " Waugh wrote. "His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled."
Wodehouse—the P.G. stood for Pelham Grenville—had no halfhearted readers. He was either admired to the point of addiction or not admired at all. Like all fanatics, Wodehouse readers could only feel sorry for those who lacked the special sense of humor that allowed them to wander through the sunlit gardens of that little Eden at Blandings or to guffaw as the omniscient Jeeves pulled addlepated Bertie Wooster out of the clutches of his Aunt Agatha or the local constabulary. Wodehouse addicts had their own favorite characters. The author himself confessed he bent toward Lord Emsworth, the daffy ninth Earl of Blandings, who spent most of his time escaping through the hedges from his domineering sister Constance or making sure that his beloved pig, the Empress of Blandings, won first prize at the local fair. Others, perhaps a majority, preferred the stories about Jeeves, who, with a "voice as dignified as tawny port," was unquestionably the most famous gentleman's gentleman in history. Wodehouse, who had a firm and unchanging sense of priorities, was mildly horrified when anyone would mistake that fictional paragon for a mere butler.