Nobbled Empress

HEAVY WEATHER --P. G. Wodehouse-- Little, Brown ($2).

You might be puzzled if you were to pick up this piece of intentionally featherweight fiction and, opening by chance to page 125, read the following sentences from the beginning of paragraph three:

"The Empress, after a single brief but courteous glance at this newcomer, had returned to the business which had been occupying her at the moment of Lord Tilbury's arrival. She pressed her shapely nose against the lowest rail of the sty and snuffled moodily."

But if you knew what you were doing when you bought the book, and began at the beginning, your sensation would be one of gratitude rather than perplexity. You would know that "the Empress" was Empress of Blandings, that she was probably the finest sow in Shropshire, that she was the rotundly ridiculous centre of Author Wodehouse's absurdly complicated plot, and that Lord Tilbury--a figure long familiar to addicts of Wodehumor--was, through a curious weakness in his otherwise adamantine character, about to become involved in that plot far beyond his dreams or his patience. Your sense of gratitude would be great because you would suspect, by the characteristic solemnity of its beginning, that the paragraph would end like this:

"And Lord Tilbury, looking down, saw that a portion of her afternoon meal, in the shape of an appetizing potato, had been dislodged from the main convert and had rolled out of bounds. It was this that was causing the silver medalist's distress and despondency. Like all prize pigs who take their career seriously, Empress of Blandings hated to miss anything that might be eaten and converted into firm flesh."

The Empress belongs not to that eminent and bulldoggish publisher, Lord Tilbury but to Clarence, the sleepy and pig-mad Earl of Emsworth, whose brother. Hon. Galahad Threepwood, has written and suppressed a book of racy reminiscences which Lord Tilbury yearns to publish, and whose Empress has lately been nobbled (kidnapped) and is by way of being nobbled again. Which is why Lord Tilbury is seized by his beefy scruff and thrust into a dark and dirty shed. And why young Monty Bodkin, his discharged subeditor, regains employment with His Lordship. And why, since the ms. of the racy reminiscences is the other jewel of the plot, the Empress ultimately makes a meal of said ms. and, one complication having thus consumed another, the agreeable young people involved (the other young man is Ronnie Fish; the girls, "good old" Gertrude Butterwick and Sue Brown) are free to marry and the reader's ribs to recuperate.

The Author. Writing funny stories is not all sherry and biscuits to Pelham ("Plum") Grenville Wodehouse, 51. He started it as a release from the tedium of a high stool in the Bank of England where his father's sudden retirement landed him instead of in Oxford. His scribbling soon persuaded the head clerk ("dark" in

Threadneedle Street) to release him for the headier air of Fleet Street where he has been appreciated ever since.

That was in 1903, and for 20 years P. G. Wodehouse has been quite as well known in Collier's, Satevepost, Liberty and American Magazine as in the London Globe and Strand Magazine. He used to tear off hundreds of short stories a year, but now confines himself to seven or eight, with one or two full-length ones on the side. He "taps" (typewrites) methodically from 10 a. m. until one, rewriting everything at least three times to concentrate and sharpen the effervescent prolixity of his style. Like most humorists he folds inward in public but is seldom without a rejoinder when pressed. An infirmity kept him, to his deep chagrin, from active service in the War. When queried about it rather nastily once he swallowed his anger and coolly replied: "I'm awfully busy just now, but I think I can manage to give them a week or two in June."

Author Wodehouse married in 1914 (Mrs. Ethel Rowley), has a daughter, smokes pipes, loves golf, plays bridge by ear. Other books: Leave It to Psmith, The Inimitable Jeeves* Summer Lightning, Big Money. With Guy Bolton, Jerome Kern. George Grossmith and Ian Hay he has done more than two dozen stage comedies among .them A Damsel in Distress, Baa, Baa Black Sheep, Kissing Time.

*It may be either Art or Fate that the head clerk in the London branch of J. P. Morgan & Co. is, like a most celebrated Wodehouse character, named Jeeves.

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