Sunset at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

Author:P.G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-07T18:04:06+00:00

Much too tall for his width.

Claude accosts Gaily because he feels he must cure himself of shyness.

Why is Jeff Claude’s hero? At school together. Jeff athlete, always treated him as equal. At Cambridge, Rugger blue.

In the typescript first draft Claude is minor, and he suffers, in terms of Wodehouse characterization, from good looks. He is rich, well dressed, a pianist, a bachelor and a great success with the girls. And — and this has always, in Wodehouse’s books, spelt r-o-t-t-e-r — he is very handsome. And now he has fallen in love with Vicky, not knowing of her love for his old friend, and hero, Jeff, or of Jeff’s for Vicky.

Wodehouse would have developed Claude and found a much fuller purpose for him than has so far been revealed. My own bet is that Claude would have lost his good looks, either by their being simply omitted from the preliminary sketch or, the hard way, as Hollywood’s Mike Cardinal did in Spring Fever, by getting his face re-arranged in some honourable fight or scuffle. Claude would then have been built up in two or three good scenes, at least one of them retroactively to the first half of the book.

My guess is, then, that in an early chapter Vicky had begged to be allowed to ask a school friend to come and stay with her in her captivity. And this her step-mother was only too glad to grant. Now, though everybody had forgotten about her, this girl arrives. She is welcomed by all as providing a modicum of chaperonage for Vicky when Diana goes back with Sir James, taking Murchison, Marilyn and Claude Duff with them. But there is just time, before they go, for Claude to lose his heart as suddenly to Vicky’s friend as he did to Vicky. So he doesn’t go back with his boss. Sir James, in a yeastly benevolence as a result of his own approaching nuptials, gives Claude indefinite leave.

So Jeff stays on and finishes the Empress’s portrait, with Vicky in the background during working hours. Claude and Vicky’s friend stay on the premises too. And then, in addition to the portraits that Jeff is asked to paint, of Sir James Piper for a start and then, Gaily hopes, of all the other members of the Cabinet, Claude gets Jeff the job of Advertising Manager of Duff & Trotter, where the money is good and steady and he can pay his whack with Vicky as man and wife.

The Empress’s portrait, we all wish to think, will now hang in the family portrait gallery. Lord Emsworth can enjoy looking at it whenever he is not out at the sty looking at its sitter. Gaily and Beach ring down the curtain over a glass or two of port in the pantry. Beach is now distantly step-related to Gaily (and Lord Emsworth, Florence, Connie and all the other eight sisters), but he will continue to be the supreme butler. McAllister is still head gardener, though his cousin married Freddie Threepwood.

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