Fresh As the First Time I Read It

Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I dearly love this book and its author, so take that into consideration when you read the review.  I also used it for a dramatic reading in college (just happened to see the notes for that in my paperback copy) and managed to get through what I thought was the funniest part without breaking up.  To my best recollection, the listeners did not fall over in paroxysms of hilarity, but I may have been numbed to their reaction in order to get through it.

Yes, it's as funny as it was the first time. 

The Hon. Freddie Threepwood is engaged to Aline Peters, but his father (Clarence, the third Earl of Emsworth) has just "stolen" her father's prized scarab in a typical fit of forgetfulness. He now wants to retrieve some letters he wrote to Joan Valentine when she was on the stage but his go-between, R. Jones, has decided to milk more out of him than the 500 pounds he didn't need to give Joan because she said she threw the letters away.  Joan is an old friend of Aline and promises to help her retrieve the "stolen" scarab, however, Joan's new friend, Ashe Marson has been hired by Aline's father for the same dark purpose.  George Emerson fell in love with Aline on board ship and is using his friendship with the Hon. Freddie to get close to her again.  Got all that, or do you need a diagram?  They all convene (save R. Jones) at Blandings Castle where they land under the beetling brow and jaundiced eye of Freddie's father's secretary, the Efficient Baxter.

Wodehouse tackles the theme of equality of the sexes with a deft hand one would not expect from an author of that time period (ah, but it's comedy, so he can get away with that).  Sadly, it's not developed fully and it does wobble at the end when Joan succumbs to Ashe's petition for marriage.  We don't get to see her fall in love with him the way we see him fall for her and her sudden craving for dullness in place of adventure doesn't ring true.  We do get to see Aline fall in love with George and we are with her when she does.  She is obstinate in her keeping the engagement to the Hon. Freddie in the face of George's high-handedness, but begins her melt when he realizes that it rightly doesn't work to badger the one you love into loving you.  Her subsequent interview with her fiance gives her the opportunity to view what life would be like married to a complete ass.  The romance of living in an English castle among the peerage loses its appeal. 

One of Wodehouse's earliest successes, Something New (or Something Fresh) introduces the third Earl of Emsworth and the gang at Blandings.  It is also rich in over a dozen Biblical references and about 40 other literary and Classical references (at least according to the annotations I found online).  Unlike the Bertie and Jeeves stories, it is narrated by what is normally called an omniscient narrator, but you can see an inkling of Bertie in the narrator's casual forgetfulness as well as the Biblical saltings (Bertie having won a Bible verse contest of some kind in his youth).  The novel also demonstrates the winning formula Wodehouse finally developed and delightfully abused for another 70 books or so: something needs to be stolen (whether scarab, silver cow creamer, painting, manuscript, or necklace) and returned to its true owner, true love will out, and the Hon. Freddie and his chinless comrades will never get married.  Although Wodehouse admitted to writing the same story over and over, it's the details of characters, the lovely language, and the absurd slow-motion description of slapstick that make each successive novel something fresh.



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