Summer Lightning / Heavy Weather

Summer Lightning (1929) is undoubtedly one of Wodehouse's very best works. It's the third in the Blandings sequence, but is the first to feature Lord Emsworth's prize pig, Empress of Blandings (described as a black Berkshire sow, but usually depicted, as here, pink). Beach the butler (left) finds his role deepening, now not just a trusted servant but also a reluctant conspirator in the dirty deeds inseparable from a Wodehouse plot (in this case, pignapping). The Gamekeeper's Cottage in the West Wood, a key location in Leave It to Psmith (1923) reappears, and is the setting for the cover.

The novel was first published by Penguin in 1954, and the Ionicus cover dates from 1971. The font is Monotype Garamond, with the chapter titles in attractive italic:

Wodehouse went out of his way to be lyrical about Blandings in this novel. His descriptions of physical settings are usually brief and functional; but in Summer Lightning there are numerous pauses in the narrative to revel in the beauties of the setting, and without any obvious punch line. Take, for instance, the opening paragraph of Chapter 13: "Blandings Castle basked in the afterglow of a golden summer evening. Only a memory now was the storm which, two hours since, had raged with such violence through the parks, pleasure grounds and messuages. It had passed, leaving behind it peace and bird-song and a sunset of pink and green and orange and opal and amethyst. The air was cool and sweet, and the earth sent up a healing fragrance. Little stars were peeping down from a rain-washed sky." Wodehouse was making a special point, and the point was: don't you wish you were here?

I have a theory about this novel and its sequel, Heavy Weather (1933). The theory is this. PGW is associated with the era of the Twenties and Thirties, the era of jazz and flappers, Oxford Bags and Brideshead. The young generation was renowned to be fun-loving and outrageous. Wodehouse, who was in his forties and fifties during this time, seems to have responded by wishing to remind a few people that earlier times had also featured outrageous revels; and so he invented the Hon Galahad Threepwood, reprobate younger brother to Lord Emsworth, who, now in his fifties, is busy writing scandalous Reminiscences of his life when he was young and riotous in the 1890s - and of the lives of his contemporaries, now old and respectable, who will do almost anything to suppress anecdotes of a phase in their lives that they thought was dead and buried. Wodehouse plots all tend to the same pattern, but here he found something like a new pattern, a brilliant pattern with deeper implications than we usually expect in his work. Landowners, noblemen, prospective Conservative politicians, all are in terror of the facts that may be laid bare in the Reminiscences. The sight of respectability in a panic is always funny and strangely satisfying. The fact that the instigator of all this is a dapper little man in his fifties with and eyeglass and absolutely no respect for anyone makes it all the funnier.

Here is the Ionicus cover for Heavy Weather:

Not quite as stylish as the Summer Lightning cover, but it has its points. We are in the small library of Blanding Castle, with photos of the Empress on the bookcase. It's a working study for Galahad (seated), who is about to put his manuscript of the Reminiscences into the top right hand drawer of the desk (the scene is on page 97 of this edition) while his erstwhile publisher, the mogul Stinker Pyke (I beg your pardon, Lord Tilbury) looks on. We look on from a rather Hitchcockian aerial view, appropriate to the intrigue of the plot, centring on stealing the manuscript from that very same desk drawer. Ionicus has decided not to draw the floor or walls, which gives the scene a strange, floaty feel which is presumably not intended. (I have just noticed the Hon Galahad's bright yellow socks, which match is waistcoat: perfect!)

The font here is Monotype Times: more sober than its predecessor's Monotype Garamond:

I don't know if Wodehouse always had it in his mind to write a sequel to Summer Lightning, but that is what Heavy Weather is: a direct continuation of the plot of the previous offering. At the end of Summer Lightning (spoiler alert), a deal had been arranged in the Threepwood family to allow young Ronnie Fish to marry chorus girl Sue Brown, on the understanding that in return Galahad would not publish his book. Wodehouse must have started wondering at some point about some of the loose ends, specifically: 1. what happens when his publisher finds out that he's backing out?; and 2. what happens when Ronnie Fish's mother learns of the deal that has been struck? Cue renewed machinations, with Respectability in full attack mode against love and wit.

There are some surprisingly forthright lines in both books in criticism of the Downton Abbey milieu which we are supposed to take so reverently in these days; as when Ronnie Fish valiantly suggests earning his living (at the end of Summer Lightning):

" 'The market value of any member of this family,' said the Hon. Galahad, who harboured no illusions about his nearest and dearest, 'is about threepence-ha'penny per annum.' "

Oh, and before I finish.... I have an omnibus volume of Something Fresh, Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather, confusingly called Life at Blandings, like the box set I have featured previously. It uses the Ionicus illustration for Summer Lightning:

It was while perusing this volume that I noticed an odd thing about the opening sentence of each of its constituent novels. Thus:

"The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously upon London town." (Something Fresh)

"Blandings Castle slept in the sunshine." (Summer Lightning)

"Sunshine pierced the haze that enveloped London." (Heavy Weather)

Of course, it doesn't work for all the novels. But it must be admitted that having sunshine right at the start of a Wodehouse novel is somehow exactly right.