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News from the upper classes

THE justly famous obituaries published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph—of which there are several anthologies, including volumes devoted to “Rogues”, “Eccentric Lives” and “Heroes and Adventurers”—regularly celebrate the lives of those who seem to have inhabited a vanished world long before they themselves vanished. Last week’s tribute (if that is the word) to Lord Michael Pratt describes him as “one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London's clubland”, and noted that “he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale.”

Yet the epithet “Wodehousian” is raising eyebrows, in this online newsgroup and perhaps in the more literary corners of clubland itself. The Telegraph reports that the late Lord Michael was ejected from a London club (ironically, it is called “Pratt’s”) following “a spectacular altercation with a waitress.” Do the sunny novels of P.G. Wodehouse—home to Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, the gentle Lord Emsworth and his prize pig—really have room for such an unpleasant character?

Actually, yes. Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Oofy Prosser and Gussie Fink-Nottle may have been largely harmless. But the voluminous works of Wodehouse are home to all manner of villains and reprobates. The spineless Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie springs immediately to mind. Stanley Featherstonehaugh (pronounced “Fanshawe”) Ukridge was a famously scheming wastrel. Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe was mischevious and mad. Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, was a frightful guest. Sir James Willoughby Pitt turned to crime after he was thrown out of Eton. Every imperfection detailed in the Telegraph’s obituary is represented somewhere in Wodehouse’s pages. Even Wodehouse, though, might have balked at introducing a character with a name like Pratt.