Evelyn Waugh by Frances Donaldson

Author:Frances Donaldson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1967-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Income Tax

Evelyn was a great devotee of P.G. Wodehouse. Jack and I had both for many years known the Master - I since I was a child and Jack since a young man, and it was in the house of his step-daughter we first met. We proudly claimed this friendship and educated Evelyn to the fact that to his friends Wodehouse is known as Plummy. Evelyn had a nearly complete edition of his works which was specially bound in leather. The books published up to the time of his marriage had been given to him and he had later bound many - I think not all - of the books which subsequently appeared to match the others. However, Jack owned a rarity, an early book named Swoop of which Evelyn had not heard, and which had been given him by Wodehouse himself. This book was in a paperback edition and becoming slightly spoilt. Jack was glad both to be able to give Evelyn an unusual present and to find a leather binding which would preserve the Master’s present to him. He gave it to Evelyn in 1948, the first Christmas after we met him.

Later he gave him two books he had picked up on a bookstall as a young man and which were by this time rarities. This present elicited the following letter.

My dear Jack,

What a delicious Christmas present. The William Tell told Again is a bibliographical gem of purest quality. I have never seen a copy before or heard of it except from you. It is the rarest thing to find a children’s book in library condition.

And the Master as critic in a Century of Humour is most interesting and a necessary part of a Wodehouse collection which I lacked.

Thank you so much for giving it to me. I do hope that Thomas will not later reproach you with the dispersal of heirlooms.

I hope your Christmas was cloudless. Ours was ghastly but it is over. I would prefer a week of Ash Wednesdays, but I discovered a senile taste for mince pies.

I hope we see you both again soon.

Yours ever

Evelyn

Although I had known Plummy Wodehouse most of my life and his daughter - who died before this time - had been one of my greatest friends, I had never been able to read his books. I cannot see the point of them. For years I allowed myself to believe that he is a man’s writer, that it is normal as a woman not to enjoy him. But as my own children grew up, two of them daughters, I found that they and most of their friends read all the old volumes of Wodehouse and bought, either for themselves or as presents for their father, the new books as they came out. He is, it seems, one of the very few writers who is never out of date, a joy to each succeeding generation. But even acknowledging this I still, like Wodehouse himself I believe, have never been able to understand the ‘Master’ stuff.

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