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WHATEVER WOULD P.G. WODEHOUSE HAVE SAID?

Anthony Gottlieb, who wrote on hedonism in this month's Intelligent Life magazine, enjoys an obituary but wonders whether "Wodehouseian" is quite the word for an English aristocrat who lived neither wisely nor well ...

THE justly famous obituaries published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph--of which there are several anthologies, including volumes devoted to “Rogues”, “Eccentric Lives” and “Heroes and Adventurers”--regularly celebrate the lives of those who seem to have inhabited worlds that vanished long before they vanished themselves. Last week’s tribute, if that is the word, to Lord Michael Pratt, described him as “one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London's clubland”, and noted that “he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale.”

The epithet “Wodehousian” is raising eyebrows, in this online newsgroup and perhaps in the more literary corners of clubland itself. The Telegraph reported that the late Lord Michael was ejected from a London club (ironically, it is called “Pratt’s”) following “a spectacular altercation with a waitress.” Do the sunny novels of P.G. Wodehouse--home to Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, the gentle Lord Emsworth and his prize pig--really have room for such an unpleasant character? Actually, yes.

Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Oofy Prosser and Gussie Fink-Nottle may have been largely harmless. But the voluminous works of Wodehouse are home to all manner of villains and reprobates.

The spineless Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie springs immediately to mind. Stanley Featherstonehaugh (pronounced “Fanshawe”) Ukridge was a famously scheming wastrel. Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe was mischievous and mad.

And towering above them all in wickedness and absurdity there is Roderick Spode, 8th Earl of Sidcup, a would-be dictator who had toiled in earlier days as the proprietor of an emporium of women’s underwear. Spode was a less than affectionate parody of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, whose followers were known as the Blackshirts. Spode’s retinue, by contrast, sported Black Shorts, for the eminently sensible reason that the supply of coloured shirts had already been exhausted to furnish the wardrobes of other fascist groups.

There are countless gangsters and extortionists in Wodehouse’s world, though some have endearing traits: Bat Jarvis was, despite his name, a lover of cats. The fine example of Jeeves notwithstanding, even a valet (Spike Mullins) could turn out to be a thief. Sir James Willoughby Pitt turned to crime after he was thrown out of Eton (where the late Lord Michael got into a scrape or two during his days there, according to the Telegraph).

Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, the poshest of Wodehouse’s reprobates, was a frightful guest--worse, in all likelihood, than the late Lord Michael, of whom the Telegraph noted that “many hostesses tired of Pratt's failure to make anything but the smallest contribution to the house or staff.” In truth, every imperfection detailed in the Telegraph’s obituary is represented somewhere in Wodehouse’s pages. Even Wodehouse, though, might have balked at introducing a character with a name like "Pratt".