In a previous Plum Lines essay (“P. G. Wodehouse as Political Humorist,” Spring 2022), I argued that Wodehouse deserves a place in the top rank of English political satirists. This is not often recognized by the “cognoscenti” (Bill the Conqueror), as his many references to Parliament, elections, political parties, politicians, and ideologies, not to mention the Empire, history, and diplomacy, are easy to overlook amid all the “sweetness and light” (Cocktail Time). Nevertheless, discerning readers should recognize that for “twelve shillings and sixpence” (again, Cocktail Time), they are receiving not only comic gold but also “extra tuition” (The Pothunters) in politics and political history.

This essay examines the transatlantic nature of his political knowledge, specifically references to American politics, history, and the Special Relationship. While this reflects the emergence of a United States that would displace Britain as global leader, it was also natural to one who spent many years in that “growing country.”

Who, we might ask, was in a better position to write satire about America and the changing U.S.-British relationship than Plum? He was among a select group of Brits with frequent and direct experience of America and Americans. In our age of budget travel, we may pass lightly over references to transatlantic crossings, but experiences of America, not to mention living in New York City, would have been exotic occurrences even after World War II.

The quotations in this essay are from the four Uncle Fred novels and the following comic romances: Uneasy Money (1916), Bill the Conqueror (1924), Money for Nothing (1928), The Luck of the Bodkins (1935), and The Girl in Blue (1970). This literary sample was not selected according to any scientific principle; it merely constitutes books I wanted to read or reread this year. As the Everyman/Overlook collection consists of 99 volumes, the following references undoubtedly constitute a floor, not a ceiling, of his knowledge on the topic. I will leave it up to an enterprising future PhD student to collect every last one of Wodehouse’s references to American politics and write the dissertation we have all been awaiting. In the meantime, enjoy how Plum regularly stirs political and historical morsels into his comedy stew.

The Special Relationship

In Cocktail Time, we learn that in his youth, Frederick Twistleton was interested in politics, or at least American politics. If only we knew which burning local, state, or national question led to the following incident:

As a young man, in the course of a political argument in a Third Avenue saloon in New York, I was once struck squarely on the topknot by a pewter tankard in the capable hands of a gentleman of the name of Moriarty—no relation of the Professor, I believe—and it was days before I was my old bright self again.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by his early adventures in America. His full name—Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton—includes two transatlantic references. The first, Altamont, refers to Sherlock Holmes in “His Last Bow” (1917), in disguise as Altamont, “a real bitter Irish-American” who is supposedly spying for Germany because he hates England. The second refers to Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, who is remembered for surrendering to the Americans at Yorktown.

His full name first appears in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939) and not in his debut story, “Uncle Fred Flits By” (1935). At that time, America was already proving to be a handful for Britain. The landowning classes had long been feeling the pinch from agricultural competition with the USA, and by the time of the post-war Uncle Dynamite (1948), many thought Britain had “won the war but lost the peace.”

For example, the plot point involving Sally’s friend Alice Vansittart, who wants to smuggle jewels through American customs, says something about who is taking the lead in the transatlantic relationship. Who could imagine the opposite situation, a British heiress buying jewelry in New York City and attempting to smuggle the boodle through customs in Southampton? Also, the name Alice Vansittart is reminiscent of Alice Roosevelt and the Dutch aristocracy of New York City (originally Nieuw Amsterdam).

In the following line from Uncle Dynamite, the great earl assesses the relative power of the two nations: “If I can’t outsmart an ex-Governor, what was the use of all my early training in the United States of America?”

Competition between the U.S. and the U.K. even extended to the issue of gut stamina, as we discover in Uneasy Money:

It has been claimed by patriots that American dyspeptics lead the world. This supremacy, though partly due, no doubt, to vast supplies of pie absorbed in youth, may be attributed to a certain extent also to the national habit of dancing during meals. Lord Dawlish had that sturdy reverence for his interior organism which is the birthright of every Briton.

The transatlantic relationship does not always run smoothly. In Money for Nothing, Soapy Molloy despairs after failing to fool Lester Carmody:

The little spurt of consolation caused by the reflection that some hundred and fifty years previously the United States of America had severed relations with a country which was to produce a man like Lester Carmody had long since ebbed away.

Sometimes it is the English who disapprove of America. The butler in Uneasy Money, imported from England to ease Lord Wetherby’s homesickness, expresses the following opinion:

Wrench also disapproved of America. That fact had been made plain immediately upon his arrival in the country. He had given America one look, and then his mind was made up—he disapproved of it.

In Money for Nothing, Plum pushes forward the Special Relationship, one address at a time: “She is at the Lincoln Hotel, Curzon Street.”

American Politics

In Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), Pongo contemplates the possibility of Uncle Fred extracting him from financial embarrassment: “It was stimulating, of course, to think that by his arts the other might succeed in inducing Horace Davenport to join the Share-The-Wealth movement.”

This is undoubtedly a reference to U.S. Senator Huey Long’s (D-La.) “Share Our Wealth” movement, which he started during the Great Depression. It began with his 1934 “Share Our Wealth” speech, which was five years before the publication of Uncle Fred in the Springtime. According to Wikipedia, “To stimulate the economy, the Share Our Wealth program called for massive federal spending, a wealth tax, and wealth redistribution. These proposals drew wide support, with millions joining local Share Our Wealth clubs. Roosevelt adopted many of these proposals in the Second New Deal.”

Long was considered a dangerous demagogue by some, and Plum certainly understood that politicians could be involved in all manner of shenanigans. The following sentence in Money for Nothing nicely combines Sherlock Holmes (“The Adventure of the Gloria Scott”) with turn-of-the-century corruption in American politics.

Chimp Twist was looking like a monkey that has bitten into a bad nut, and Soapy Molloy like an American Senator who has received an anonymous telegram saying “All is discovered. Fly at once.”

In Service with a Smile, Plum also noticed the role of Congress in investigating wrongdoing:

“I expect by this time he’s the Wolf of Wall Street, and is probably offended if he isn’t investigated every other week by a Senate commission.”

“What happens next time the Senate Commission has you on the carpet and starts a probe? You say ‘As proof of my respectability, gentlemen, I may mention that my daughter is married to a curate’ . . . and they look silly and apologize.”

The Great Depression and the subsequent growth of federal government power make several appearances. In Uncle Dynamite, Hermione Bostock’s opinion of “the pinhead Twistleton” is described as follows:

People still speak of the great market crash of 1929, asking you with a shudder if you remember the way U.S. Steel and Montgomery Ward hit the chutes during the month of October: but in that celebrated devaluation of once gilt-edged shares there was nothing comparable to the swift and dizzy descent at this moment of Twistleton Preferred.

In The Luck of the Bodkins (1935), Monty Bodkins is unsure about how to spell “sciatica” and Mabel Spence replies: “Well, unless the New Deal has changed it, it ought to be s-c-i-a-t-i-c-a.”

In the same story, when film magnate Ivor Llewellyn is tasked by his formidable sister with smuggling a pearl necklace through U.S. customs, her logic is explained by his sister-in-law: “The way she feels is that it would be sinful wasting money paying it over to the United States Government, because they’ve more than is good for them already and would only spend it.”

That Wodehouse will try to make anything funny is found in a reference to voter suppression. The literacy test was a key part of the Jim Crow regime that disenfranchised African Americans in the South for a century after the Civil War. It was also used outside the South to reduce the number of immigrants, and their political power, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Bill the Conqueror, Judson Coker is amazed that Roberts the butler has never heard his name. He then references some sensational literature in which he is cited:

“Don’t you ever read Broadway Badinage?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor Town Gossip?”
“No, sir.”
“Good God!”
The failure of this literacy test seemed to discourage Judson.

While I would not dream of introducing partisan politics into this essay, Plum’s use of the word “trump” is an example of how the political implications of words can change over time. One example is in Uncle Dynamite, as we overhear Sir Aylmer communicating with Pongo in the following way:

A voice, having in it many of the qualities of the Last Trump, suddenly split the air.

“REGINALD!”

National Character

In Uncle Dynamite, we find a reference to the rags-to-riches mythology so central to America’s identity. Uncle Fred explains to Sally how he escaped the wretched state of being a “worm of an Hon.” and is now an earl:

“In the end, by pluck and perseverance, I raised myself from the depths and became what I am to-day. I’d like to see any Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatinate of Lancaster try to squash in ahead of me now.”

“It’s like something out of Horatio Alger.”

This understanding of America as the land of opportunity, where today’s mail room clerk can become tomorrow’s CEO, has had myriad implications for U.S. politics and economic policy.

By contrast, Bill, Lord Dawlish, expresses a core component of British national character in Uneasy Money when Claire urges him to engage in unethical behavior: “It wouldn’t be playing the game.” He later elaborates: “‘Er—well,’ he said, ‘noblesse oblige, don’t you know, what?’”

We later hear the following realization from Bill, as the scales fall from his eyes about Claire: “The worst accusation that he could bring against a man was that he was not square, that he had not played the game. Claire had not been square.”

This understanding of British character is crucial to understanding how the nation has survived political ups and downs without a codified constitution. The “good chaps theory of government” is that formal rules are not necessary when the right people are in charge, particularly the public-school class. They know how to “play the game” of political and civic life and can be trusted to follow cultural norms that limit the exercise of power in the highly centralized Westminster system. Whether British politics today can rely on “good chaps” is a topic of vigorous debate. In America, individual ambition is paramount but the Horatio Algers of politics are constrained by constitutions and laws.

Lastly, in The Girl in Blue (1970), Jerry West is hit on the head by a statuette wielded by American shoplifter-in-exile Bernadette “Barney” Clayborne. In reminiscing about this event, fake butler Reginald Chippendale says the following: “I like women to be feminine. American, isn’t she? I thought so. They get that way in America from going on all those demonstration marches and battling the police.”

This is likely a contemporaneous reference to 1960s-era political activism, as the novel was published in 1970. However, in Plum’s timeless way, he may also be recalling the direct-action suffragettes from the early twentieth century, who were no slackers when it came to fighting authority.

American History

Plum sprinkles in references to people and events from throughout American history. In Uneasy Money, Bill may be a stand-up guy, but his knowledge of history is scant:

Bill’s knowledge of the great republic across the seas was at this period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been unpleasantness between England and the United States in seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that things had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May and her fellow missionaries of the Belle of New York Company.

These hazy references to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 stand in contrast to Bill’s precise knowledge of the theater. According to Wikipedia, The Belle of New York was a musical comedy “about a Salvation Army girl who reforms a spendthrift, makes a great sacrifice and finds true love.” It was not a success on Broadway but “subsequently transferred to London at what was then called the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1898, where it was a major success, running for an almost unprecedented 674 performances, and became the first American musical to run for over a year in the West End.”

Speaking of wars, we later read the following account of the priorities of the American press:

“Why, for the next few days there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her puma. There was a war on at the time in Mexico or somewhere, and we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before it could get back.”

This is a reference to the Mexican Border War, which started in 1910 and lasted intermittently for almost a decade. It was not a declared war but a series of armed incursions and conflicts that resulted from the violence and instability of the Mexican Revolution spilling over into the U.S. It included famous and infamous participants such as Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Buffalo Soldiers, General John Pershing, and future general George Patton Jr.

On the American Revolution note, we read the following statement by Pongo to Uncle Fred in Uncle Dynamite: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren’t possible when you’re around.”

When a despairing Mr. Schoonmaker is too overawed by Lady Constance to woo her in Service with a Smile, Uncle Fred rebukes him with these words from the Revolution:

“There’s no hope for me. I know when I’m licked.”
“Scarcely the spirit of ’76.”

Uncle Fred visits Blandings, accompanied by Pongo, in the guise of Sir Roderick Glossop in Uncle Fred in the Springtime. He references Bunker Hill in this question to his nephew as they wait for Lord Bosham to meet them: “Tell me—I don’t want to turn till I can see the whites of his eyes—where is our friend? Does he approach?”

In Money for Nothing, we find two references to George Washington. After he is outsmarted by Lester Carmody, Soapy Molloy is proud of American’s independence and “conscious of a glow of patriotic fervour. If General Washington had been present at that moment Soapy would have shaken hands with him.”

And as Ronnie Fish, Soapy, and Lester Carmody discuss investments, we hear the following from that eternal American optimist: “Give me oil. Oil’s oil. First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of its countrymen, that’s what Oil is.” This, of course, is a paraphrase of what Henry Lee—Revolutionary War leader and father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee—said about George Washington.

We find a more direct reference to Robert E. Lee when, in Uneasy Money, Claire packs for her journey to the United States and is exasperated by the cook’s singing: “A girl has to be in a sunnier mood than she was to bear up without wincing under the infliction of a duet consisting of ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.’” The latter was a popular song, written in 1912 and sung by performers such as Al Jolson. The name refers to a real-life steamboat on the Mississippi River.

Plum also mentions Christopher Columbus more than once. In Uncle Dynamite, Sally and Uncle Fred plot to retrieve the jewels hidden in a misplaced bust:

“And don’t say ‘How.’ It’s the sort of thing the boys in the back room used to say to Columbus when he told them he was going to discover America, and look how silly he made them feel.”

We also overhear the following conversation between Polly and Uncle Fred in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, as the latter seeks to reconcile her with “plug-ugly” poet Ricky Gilpin:

“I’m on my way to interview him now.”
“It won’t be any use.”
“That’s what they said to Columbus.”

In Uneasy Money, as Bill ponders how to make more money at the urging of his greedy fiancée, Claire, he considers going to America:

“Hang it!’ said Bill to himself in the cab, “I’ll go to America!”
The exact words probably which Columbus had used, talking the thing over with his wife.

Uneasy Money includes a reference to Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who ran unsuccessfully for president three times in the late nineteenth century. Polly (Lady Wetherby) hires a publicity agent with the unlikely name of Roscoe Sherriff, who is on the lookout for sensational stories to give the press. He is skeptical that an incident involving the Detroit automaker Dudley Pickering and Eustace the monkey is the right stuff:

“The public doesn’t know Pickering. If it had been Charlie Chaplin or William J. Bryan, or some one on those lines, we could have had the papers bringing out extras. You can visualize William J. Bryan bitten in the leg by a monkey. It hits you. But Pickering! Eustace might just as well have bitten the leg of the table!”

This is not the only reference to that populist politician. Eighteen years later, in The Luck of the Bodkins, Lottie Blossom says about Albert Peasemarch in answer to a question from Reggie Tennyson: “No, I had it from the Boy Orator—that steward guy.” According to Wikipedia, Bryan received this nickname due to his rhetorical skills as well as his status as the youngest person at the time to have run for president (at the age of 36); “Bryan remains the youngest person in United States history to receive an electoral [college] vote for president.”

Taken together, the above passages (from just a selection of his work) show that Wodehouse was not only aware of American politics and political history but was able to turn it into comedy. Given that politics is a serious business and the setting for tomfooleries of all descriptions, it takes talent to weave this raw material into something that makes us smile. And he did so without the worries, doubts, and even fears that many Britons felt about this pushing former colony. Plum’s lifetime encompassed the rise of a USA that displaced the U.K. in politics, economics, culture, and international relations. Despite these national changes in fortune, I can detect only love for America in his writing. He was fascinated by the energy and opportunity of this young nation, and it repaid the compliment by welcoming him with open arms after World War II. So three cheers to Plum for allowing Yanks and Brits to laugh at each other and themselves, and thereby doing the work of a thousand diplomats by advancing the Special Relationship, one jest at a time.

This essay is reprinted with permission from Plum Lines: The Quarterly Journal of The Wodehouse Society.

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