If at First

A few years ago I was still managing to keep my mother – elderly and frail – living in her own home, which was what she wanted. But she had a collection of medical problems any one of which could flare up into a crisis without notice. Every now and again, I would get a call from one of her carers telling me that her GP had called an ambulance. I would then rush to the hospital to ensure she was properly attended to and to give her comfort. Deep down I was worried that she would never be able to return home again but instead would be cooped up in hospital or a nursing home for the rest of her life.

In this period of acute anxiety I had two sources of comfort. One, naturally, was my family. The other – and I’m afraid this will seem a dreadful moment of bathos – was The Clicking of Cuthbert, a book of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. As it happens these stories are about golf, which might put you off. But actually they are about rather more than that. I suppose all novels – perhaps all books – have an implicit message about what life means and what it’s about. These humorous stories have an implied idea too – an idea I found wonderfully cheering at the time, and still do: that there is something rather heroic about a chap who keeps struggling against the odds, like Cyrano de Bergerac or Don Quixote. My particular image of heroic and, in the end, pointless endeavour is that of a golfer playing alone during the twilight of a cold wintry day. There he is in a dark, distant part of the course taking twelve shots at every hole. But he still keeps at it. He fails and fails again but he keeps trying. It is only a game, but he loves it. And that, in a few sentences, is life. Ridiculous? Well, in life we flog our guts out and try to achieve things or find true love or just get the kitchen clean and finally it all ends in nothingness. In a hundred years, none of us will be here and hardly anyone will remember us. Yet we keep on putting our heart and soul into things with remarkable enthusiasm. These short stories by Wodehouse celebrate that spirit – our willingness to keep plugging on regardless. A classic example of Wodehouse’s dogged hero is Cuthbert Banks. Cuthbert is in love with Adeline. She thinks he is nothing special although she is not so superior that she minds his admiration. She is pleased when he agrees to join the suburban literary society of which she is a member. He only joins, of course, in order to be close to her: he is totally bemused by the debates and lectures he attends about vers libre, the seventeenth-century essayists, the Neo-Scandinavian Movement in Portuguese Literature and other similar subjects. But he keeps going, such is his ardour for the lovely Adeline. She, unfortunately, only has eyes for Raymond Parsloe Devine, an up-and-coming author who has been influenced by the great Russian novelists. She thinks Devine is ‘deep’ and takes him at his own, high estimation. Poor Cuthbert is reduced to being squashed against the wall of the hostess’s sitting-room at the literary society events, only making the effort to ensure that he can still get a view of Adeline. Then comes the totally unexpected turning point of the story. A great Russian novelist, Brusiloff, is persuaded to give a talk at the literary society. Raymond Parsloe Devine is introduced to him as the rising local star. Devine tells the visiting Russian that he has been greatly influenced by his compatriot, Sovietski. But instead of giving a bland reply, Brusiloff announces, ‘Sovietski no good!’ and, a little later, to emphasize the point, ‘I spit me of Sovietski!’ Suddenly the reputation of Devine falls a few notches. He tries to rally and claims that it was only a passing phase. Now he belongs wholeheartedly to the school of Nastikoff. For a moment it seems as if he has cleverly rescued himself, but Brusiloff announces, ‘Nastikoff no good!’ and, for good measure, ‘Nastikoff worse than Sovietski.’ Suddenly, Devine’s reputation has collapsed. The hostess tries to rescue the situation, asking Brusiloff who he has met during his visit to Britain. The Russian mentions Lloyd George but regrets he has not met any of Britain’s really great men, ‘your Arbmishel, your Arreevadon’. The hostess hasn’t a clue who these people are. Could they be great, avant-garde novelists whom she has failed to notice? Suddenly her own reputation is also at risk. And that is when our hero, Cuthbert, clears his throat and dares to suggest, ‘I think he means Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon.’ This still leaves most of the literary society – and many readers of this article, no doubt – entirely in the dark. But they were the British golfing giants of the time and Cuthbert had played alongside them, being, on the quiet – one doesn’t boast, you know – a top-rate amateur golfer himself. Immediately Brusiloff only wants to speak to Cuthbert, telling him he is ‘Great! Great! Grand! Superb! Hot stuff and you can say I said so!’ Suddenly Adeline sees Cuthbert in a new light and soon after she agrees to marry him. She even takes up golf. Yes, I know it is contrived and ridiculous. But it is the spirit of the thing that is so cheering. It is the way poor Cuthbert still loves Adeline despite getting nowhere with her. It is the way the heroes of literature mean nothing to Cuthbert and the heroes of golf mean nothing to the literary society. Nobody is truly a hero. We are all in our own little worlds of esteem that mean nothing to others. There is philosophy in this humour, or a sense of perspective at least. And if I was going the whole hog in championing these stories, I would say I enjoy the Brechtian moments when Wodehouse lets you know that he can imagine you reading them. He knows we reckon we are reading humorous stories which, as such, are never going to be regarded as ‘great’. Perhaps he regrets that. But he will make fun of it, too. When Brusiloff is slagging off his rivals, he adds, ‘I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.’ Now you might think, ‘But I know about P. G. Wodehouse. He is famous for his Jeeves stories not for stories about golf.’ It is true, though he also wrote many books about Blandings Castle, the Drones Club, Psmith and Mr Mulliner. Actually I don’t much like the Jeeves stories. I find Jeeves supercilious and Wooster too stupid to be a sympathetic hero. But these golf stories, especially the two collections entirely made up of golf stories – The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922) and Heart of a Goof (1926) – are different in tone and spirit. The Jeeves stories are witty, of course, but what the golf stories have is a keen sense of heroic failure – and of the ups and downs of life. Somehow at the end of reading one, I get the feeling that, frankly, life is all a bit of a farce anyway and you should not take it too seriously. You should try your best, of course. But failure is part of the system and you might as well laugh at it. Suffering is part of the deal too. But life is a mish-mash, with some delicious bits as well as some indigestible lumps. Smile and keep going. It is the spirit that was about in Britain at the time Wodehouse was writing – a spirit that many of that generation had. Frankly I admire it and I would love some of it to rub off on me. I should add a word about golf. I know the game is regarded by sophisticated people as a vulgar abomination. It involves Nick Faldo and loud jerseys. Taxi drivers play it. In fact I was once soundly beaten by a young kitchen hand who was a washer-upper at a McDonalds (my goodness he had a formidable drive). But I challenge you to think of any other enterprise which is more likely to put you regularly in touch with effort, failure and frustration and to which you return because of occasional moments of triumph.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 27 © James Bartholomew 2010