In this short comic novel we find a number of characters centered around Tony, the Fifth Earl of Droitwich. After some comic interludes we find that there is a fundamental problem to his claim to nobility. The Cockney Syd Price, barber at large, is the real Earl of Droitwich. Hilarity ensues and P. G. Wodehouse has another novel notched up.
To say it very simply: just because your characters are high-class doesn’t mean your book is high-comedy. If there isn’t such a thing as high-comedy please inform me,> evankerry@yahoo.com or feel free to comment below.
Wodehouse’s book kind of limps along like Ma Price, the woman who shares the secret in the novel. It reaches its zenith, and is the one really memorable bit of prose, when the butler Slingsby is caught in an episode of deception:
“Having known the butler hitherto only in his professional capacity, with the suave mask of office concealing anything in the way of the more tempestuous emotions, he found matter for astonishment in this new Slingsby. He had not supposed that a butler could get off anything half as snappy as that last crack: and he was impressed, as one always is when one’s fellow-man reveals unsuspected depths.”
If you can’t sense it from the excerpt you should pick up If I Were You and find out for yourself about its’ sentiments for the different classes of society. I just might have caught Wodehouse at low tide, but since I don’t have any context for the books’ publication history and critical reaction, what has been recorded here will have to do for now. Don’t worry intrepid reader I am not in the least daunted by one mediocre novel. I will soldier on and attempt some Wodehouse in the future, probably in the Jeeves series.
