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About Plum

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to his friends as Plum and his family as Plummie.  And can you blame him?  After all, who wants to be called Pelham if he can possibly avoid it?  In fact, Wodehouse himself had nothing particularly good to say about his name.  To wit, an excerpt from a preface to Something Fresh: 'At the font I remember protesting vigorously when the clergyman uttered the names, but he stuck to his point. "Be that as it may," he said firmly, having waited for a lull, "I name thee Pelham Grenville."  Apparently I was called after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it except a small silver mug which I lost in 1897.'

Wodehouse claimed that "From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer.  I started turning out the stuff at the age of five. (What I was doing before that I don't remember.  Just loafing, I suppose)."   And turn out the stuff he did, with 92 books to his name, as well as a number of Broadway musicals (written with Guy Bolton and sometimes one Mr. Jerome Kern).  In fact, Bolton and Wodehouse wrote the original book for "Anything Goes."  The initial plotline was based on an ocean liner facing a possible shipwreck.  Unfortunately, just as rehearsals were set to start, more than 125 passengers lost their lives in the sinking of the S.S. Morro Castle off the coast of New Jersey.  The producer decided, wisely, that the show would have to be rewritten.  The rewrite was not done by Bolton and Wodehouse, but instead by the team usually associated with the musical -- Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.

But before he was able to make a living solely from writing, Wodehouse first graduated from Dulwich College and then went to work at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1900 - 1902).  During the evening, however, he indulged his passion for writing, submitting stories, poems, and short articles to some magazines and daily papers.  Eventually he was able to land a position as a diary writer for the Globe, and he never looked back.

During his early writing career, Wodehouse took two trips to New York (1904 and 1909).  On his second trip, he sold two stories for "untold wealth," and resigned his position at the Globe.  He wound up staying in New York for a few months.  Between this time and W.W. II, Wodehouse would spend time in both London and New York.  In 1914 he married Ethel Newton, whom he had met several weeks earlier in New York, and adopted her daughter, Leonora.  Wodehouse also wrote a large quantity of novels and short stories in this time period, including introducing both the Jeeves & Wooster and Blandings Castle series.

In 1940, the Wodehouses were living in Le Touquet, France.  They had not returned to the U.K. since this would have required quarantining their animals.  Unfortunately, Wodehouse was captured by the Nazis and "quarantined" himself for several months.  After his release, which the Germans affected a few weeks early to appease the Americans, the Germans suggested that Wodehouse make some broadcasts to America to assure people of his safety.  (The infamous "Berlin Broadcasts."  Read what George Orwell had to say about these broadcasts.)  It is important to note that although he had been released from internment, the Wodehouses were not free to leave Germany without the permission of the German government.  In 1943, they were given permission to live in occupied Paris.  In 1944, their beloved daughter Leonora died unexpectedly on an operating table in London.

The Wodehouses stayed in France until 1947.  After that, they settled in the United States, first in New York City, eventually settling permanently in Remsenburg, NY.  They were somewhat reluctant to return to the U.K. due to the undue furor raised by the "Berlin Broadcasts."  Wodehouse wrote many more novels and short stories and was working on another Blandings Castle novel at the time of his death on Valentine's Day, 1975.  It was not until very shortly before his death that Wodehouse was granted a knighthood (in fact, it was the New Year's Honours List for 1975).

If you want to learn more about Wodehouse and his work, I would suggest picking up a copy of The Penguin Wodehouse Companion, by Richard Usborne.

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