On Valentine’s Day, 1975 at the age of 93, PG Wodehouse had the best of all possible ends.
He passed away surrounded by the notes for what would be the last but was at the time his next Blandings novel. It was never completed, at least not in the traditional sense.
I cherish this book, though. Not because it’s the best Wodehouse nor even the best Blandings (that would be Leave it to Psmith, 1923) but because it’s not — it’s something more and it’s something else, because it’s a snapshot of the master at work and because of the affectionate form in which it was eventually published.
The story is a warmly familiar reunion of the Blandings ensemble and devices, slightly rearranged for a new narrative toot. Lord Emsworth is immediately on hand to be oppressed by a sister (Florence, in this case) with particular respect to the Empress of Blandings whose portrait His Lordship is still trying to have painted. A niece has been confined to Blandings to keep her from the penniless artist she loves who is, obviously, introduced into the castle by Galahad in the guise of a gifted and passionate painter of pigs.
Then, just as the machinations are assembled and cranked up to speed, they hit the wall. Very suddenly and very poignantly the story stops and so does PG Wodehouse.
Taking the wise and obvious and only course, the publishers elected not to engage another writer to try to finish the book. Instead, Wodehouse biographer and scholar Richard Usborne collated the considerable notes, transcriptions, and annotations, and employed them to edit that which Wodehouse had completed into what he estimates to be the first sixteen of an eventual twenty-two chapters, and essay a very informed and informal guess at how the story might have played out.
This is borne out in the next section, composed of selected notes, transcribed, and marking the point at which Sunset at Blandings becomes more of an artefact for the enthusiast.
This is followed, in descending order of interest to even the enthusiast, with speculative floor and grounds plans of Blandings Castle, predicated on rather a lot of pedantic study and preceded by the observation that Wodehouse himself would have found the exercise a bewildering use of time.
True to the spotting swotting in which Usborne clearly delights, next stop is the trains. Every express, omnibus, and milk train that Wodehouse ever sent between London and Blandings is painstakingly inspected in an effort to isolate a clue to the location of the real Blandings. It doesn’t, for the same reason that a careful analysis of the work of J. M. Barrie wouldn’t render up directions to the real Neverland, but these fanciful memories and minutiae, along with the extensive footnotes, serve as happy vignettes of Blandings on rotation — a way to revisit the old place without wearing out our welcome.
Throughout, Usborne takes sharp pains to demonstrate that and how Sunset at Blandings would have been a better book had Wodehouse only been allowed to complete it. This is self-evident, but I was surprised at the degree of detail that remained undecided, and the amount of writing Wodehouse had done that he was going to have to change. I was much more surprised, though, by the near total absence of prose notes. Very clearly, Wodehouse was going to polish the text on the second pass, but there’s no denying that what we have so far is composed mainly of recycled material and flat drafting.
In fact the best line not written is given to, of all characters, Bertie Wooster, in a tantalising alternate plot in which, finally, he and Jeeves would have visited Blandings,
“Will you marry me? Not immediately of course. When we have had time to assemble a clergyman or two.”
So it’s no great stretch to imagine that Plumb’s final act in this world was to form one last, laughing, lyrical line, and then pass along with a smile on his face. We don’t get to read it, though, and that’s only right — the absence of an ending to Sunset at Blandings is the perfect poetic ending for its architect — of course Blandings doesn’t end. Blandings can’t end.
Sunset at Blandings isn’t a great book but it’s a memorable, important, linchpin — it’s where the circle joins.
It’s tempting to wonder if Wodehouse suspected this might be the ultimate role of this book, in light of the most meaningful line that did make it into the draft, spoken by Galahad,
“The great thing about Blandings is that it never changes.”
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