P. G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Dynamite: The Title Says It All

I’m a huge fan of P. G. Wodehouse. He is one of the funniest authors in the history of literature, while at the same time maintaining an extraordinarily high quality of writing. Very few writers can turn a phrase as cleverly or more beautifully than Wodehouse.

The uncle in Uncle Dynamite is Lord Frederick Ickenham who has been featured in several Wodehouse tales along with his nephew, Pongo Twistleton. Traveling on a train to visit Pongo, Lord Ickenham meets Bill Oakshott and engages him in conversation. Bill is returning from South America where he went to try to forget the love of his life, Hermione Bostock, the daughter of an annoying uncle of Bill’s who has moved in and made himself at home in Bill’s manor. The modest Bill confides in Fred how much he dislikes his uncle, but refrains from disclosing his affection for Hermione. Which is a good thing, since Fred casually mentions that his nephew Pongo has recently gotten engaged to a young woman named Hermione Bostock!

Uncle Fred would like Pongo to rekindle his engagement to a protégée of his, the young sculptor Sally Painter, but Pongo is dead set on Hermione, despite her preventing him from drinking any alcohol and disapproving of Uncle Fred. And so the stage is set for another complicated farce in which Uncle Fred will work his magic to ensure all the young lovers are paired up properly.

Of course, there is lots of hilarious wordplay throughout. Right off the bat in Chapter 1, Uncle Fred explains that he is enjoying some freedom, because his wife has left England to attend a relative’s wedding:

‘Yes, my dear wife, I am glad to say, continues in the pink. I’ve just been seeing her off on the boat at Southampton. She is taking a trip to the West Indies.’
‘Jamaica?’
‘No, she went of her own free will.’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 8). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Uncle Fred has a penchant for posing as someone he’s not, which invariably leads to lots of hilarious encounters with people who actually know him. Pongo has learned not to trust him to behave himself, and has left him at Ickenham to spend the weekend at Oakshott, where Hermione, her parents, and Bill live. Through a series of event too complicated to explain here, Uncle Fred shows up, pretending to be Bill’s friend from his Brazilian adventures, Major Brabazon-Plank. The fly in the ointment is the fact that practically everyone at Oakshott either knows Uncle Fred or the real Major Brabazon-Plank, including the hapless village policeman, Officer Potter. Bill’s Uncle Aylmer Bostock is convinced Pongo is an imposter trying to steal his priceless “African curios”, when poor Pongo is practically the only person who is who he says he is.

Uncle Fred brazenly and breezily adjusts his story and his identity depending on circumstances to the point of absurdity. And that’s the point of reading a Wodehouse novel: the plot depends on utterly absurd coincidences and setbacks that could be overcome if someone actually came clean and told the truth, but it wouldn’t be such nearly so much fun. As always with Wodehouse, there are laugh-out-loud scenes and incomparably witty prose.

When Officer Potter remembers Uncle Fred from a previous time when he collared him at the dog races, Frederick Ickenham remains unflappable:

‘Brabazon-Plank, eh? You call yourself Brabazon-Plank, do you? Ho! You look to me more like George Robinson of 14 Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich.’

Lord Ickenham stared. He removed the cigar from his mouth and stared again. ‘Don’t tell me you’re the cop who pinched me that day at the dog races!’

‘Yus, I am.’

A bubbling cry like that of some strong swimmer in his agony proceeded from Pongo’s lips. He glared wildly at the helmeted figure of doom. Lord Ickenham, in sharp contradistinction, merely beamed, like one of a pair of lovers who have met at journey’s end.

‘Well, I’ll be dashed,’ he said cordially. ‘What a really remarkable thing. Fancy running into you again like this. I’d never have known you. You’ve grown a moustache since then, or something. My dear fellow, this is delightful. What are you doing in these parts?’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (pp. 125-126). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Eventually, the real Major Brabazon-Plank shows up, as well as Sally’s brother, Otis, who is a nascent book publisher. He is eager to publish Hermione’s next book, so her father will call off the lawsuit he threatened. Like I said, it’s complicated. However, Uncle Fred comes out on top, “spreading sweetness and light”, and everyone ends up engaged to the one he or she truly loves, including Officer Potter.

Here is a small sampling of the understated but hysterical humor Wodehouse employs liberally throughout:

[Pongo] beamed on the girl, and having released his tongue, which had got entangled with his uvula, spoke in a genial and welcoming voice.
‘What ho, Bean.’
‘What ho, sir.’
‘It’s you, is it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You gave me a start.’
‘You gave me a start, sir.’
‘Making two starts in all,’ said Pongo, who had taken mathematics at school.

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 136). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

‘I want to tell you about Pongo.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s worried to death, the poor pet. My heart aches for him. He was in here not long ago, and he just sat in a chair and groaned.’
‘You’re sure he wasn’t singing?’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 207). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

‘It happened just after breakfast. My aunt was waiting for me to bring the car round, and Uncle Aylmer made some unpleasant cracks about the hat she was wearing. So she went up to her room to get another, and as she reached the door she heard someone moving about inside. When she went in, there was nobody to be seen, and then suddenly there came a sneeze from the wardrobe, and there was Pongo, crouching on the floor.’
‘She was sure?’
‘Sure?’
‘It wasn’t a shoe or a bit of fluff?’
‘No, it was Pongo.

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (pp. 211-212). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Wodehouse wrote several novels featuring Uncle Fred, Lord Ickenham, and you can pick them up and read them in any order. If only we could all live in a world where we each had an Uncle Fred who could step in and fix all of our financial and romantic troubles!

P. G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred In The Springtime

P. G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred In The Springtime has all the elements that make his books so much fun: mistaken identities, eccentric Earls and Dukes, love-stricken young persons who face insurmountable odds to getting married, and endless plot complications that all manage to get solved. It is set in Blandings Castle, where Clarence, the Earl of Emsworth, only seeks peace and quiet to raise his prize-winning pig, The Empress of Blandings. Alas, peace and quiet are the last things he gets in this tale.

It begins with Pongo Twistleton (no one since Charles Dickens is as good at creating characters’ names as Wodehouse) visiting his friend, Horace Davenport to touch him for 200 pounds. He has a bookie’s enforcer breathing down his neck, and he has to raise the funds to save it. Horace is engaged to Pongo’s sister, Valerie. Unfortunately, while she was vacationing in France, the jealous Horace hired a private investigator, Claude “Mustard” Pott, to tail her. She found out and was justifiably furious, breaking their engagement.

Horace had lately been spending his evenings taking dancing lessons, because Valerie insisted he improve his dancing before their wedding. His instructor is one Polly Pott, who just happens to be Claude Pott’s daughter. (By the way, the cover illustration shown above is Horace after attending a masquerade ball with Polly.) She is engaged to Ricky Gilpin, who needs 250 pounds to open an onion soup stall in London. His uncle (and Horace’s) is Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, who is adamantly opposed to Ricky getting any money and marrying Polly. He has invited himself to stay at Blandings Castle. He has an explosive temper and is liable to destroy furniture with a poker if he doesn’t get his way. He’s nuts, and he insists everyone around him is “potty”. His personal secretary is one Rupert Baxter, who was once Clarence’s secretary, except he kept getting into situations – through no fault of his own, except that he’s an “extremely unpleasant tick” – that make him look like he’s off his rocker. Anyway, Dunstable mentions to Clarence that he would do a better job caring for The Empress, so he should give her to him. Clarence is speechless with shock, but his sister, Constance, insists he must hand over his beloved pig, or else their furniture is liable to be destroyed.

The Uncle Fred in the title is The Earl of Ickenham and uncle of Pongo and Valerie. He’s also an old friend of Claude Pott. He meets Polly and immediately decides to help her and Ricky get the money for his onion soup venture by pretending to be Sir Roderick Glossop, the famous brain specialist, and visiting Blandings Castle to treat Dunstable. Polly will pose as his daughter and charm Dunstable to the point that he has to give her and Ricky his blessing (and money). Pongo will pose as the fake Glossop’s secretary. Unbeknownst to them, Horace is already at Blandings, where he is hiding from a jealous Ricky who saw him dancing with Polly.

Polly’s father Claude may be a detective, but he used to be a racetrack bookie, and he is always on the lookout for an easy mark to score money off of. As Uncle Fred explains,

   “I wouldn’t for the world say a word against Mustard – one of Nature’s gentlemen – but his greatest admirer wouldn’t call him a social asset to a girl. Mustard – there is no getting away from it – looks just what he is – a retired Silver Ring bookie who for years has been doing himself too well on starchy foods. And even if he were an Adonis, I would still be disinclined to let him loose in a refined English home. I say this in no derogatory sense, of course. One of my oldest pals. Still, there it is.”
   Pongo felt that the moment had come up to clear up a mystery. Voices could be heard in the passage, but there was just time to put the question which had been perplexing him ever since Polly Pott had glided imperceptibly into his life.
   “I say, how does a chap like that come to be her father?”
   “He married her mother. You understand the facts of life, don’t you?”

Uncle Fred’s scheme goes off the rails from the beginning, when the real Sir Roderick Glossop boards their train bound for Market Blandings and joins them in their compartment. To avoid any further spoilers, suffice it to say that every single person whom Uncle Fred wouldn’t want to show up at Blandings Castle, eventually does show up. Despite everything going wrong that possibly could, Uncle Fred remains unflappable and manages to rise above the chaos he creates. The book is laugh-out-loud funny in many places, and, of course, there is a happy ending.

One of the delights of reading Wodehouse is his wonderful use of the English language to elevate the most mundane things. Here’s Uncle Fred opining on lorgnettes (a pair of glasses with a long handle):

God bless my soul, though, you can’t compare the lorgnettes of today with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said that the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped out her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.”

Here Wodehouse extols the quality of the local beer:

Nothing can ever render the shattering of his hopes and the bringing of his dream castles to ruin about his ears really agreeable to a young man, but the beer purveyed by G. Ovens, proprietor of the Emsworth Arms, unquestionably does its best. The Ovens home-brewed is a liquid Pollyanna, forever pointing out the bright side and indicating silver linings. It slips its little hand in yours, and whispers, “Cheer up!” If King Lear had had a tankard of it handy, we should have had far less of that ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks’ stuff’.

Every Wodehouse novel is great fun, and Uncle Fred In The Springtime is especially wonderful. Wodehouse set several tales at Blandings Castle, and you can read them in any order. Uncle Fred is a perfect introduction to that idyllic estate.