[lit-ideas] Re: Wodehouse on Spinoza
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:18:00 -0800
on 11/17/04 8:10 PM, Robert Paul at Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Kindly help me with my imperfect understanding.
> --------------------------------------
> Spinoza believed that the whole of nature (Nature) followed of necessity from
> God's essence.
>
> This is the shortest version I can come up with.
I find it quite extraordinary that if you pick up Geoffrey Jaggard,
"Wooster's World," (which is the encycl. B. of Jeeves and Wooster) the "S"
entries run "Spindrift" and then "Spode, Roderick." Where is Spinoza? Why
does Jeeves read him and not, say, Hume or Ewing? What is it about Spinoza
that makes him the perfect indicator of Jeeves the brainiac, and Jeeves the
eater of fish?
Part of the answer, of course, is that Wodehouse needed a philosopher whose
name "played" in the "Spindrift" bookshop scene in "Joy in the Morning."
You'll recall that Jeeves asks the master to pick him up the latest volume
of Spinoza and that, the bookstore owner--thinking it unlikely that such a
goof as Bertie really wanted Spinoza--recommends instead "Spindrift." Bertie
picks that book up just when Florence Cray, who turns out to be the novel's
awful author, walks into the shop. Florence, being the sort of woman who
thinks that Bertie needs molding (or moulding), immediately sees potential
in Bertie and when the bookstore owner returns with Spinoza (or possibly the
news that Spinoza is currently out of stock--I forget and haven't got a copy
of the novel to hand) Florence decides that Bertie's education must not be
postponed. When her fiancee breaks things off (or perhaps the other way
round, see above note about not having copy of novel) she proposes marriage
to Bertie, an offer that the code of the Woosters requires he accept.
But what, I wonder, was it about Spinoza's inter-war reputation that caused
Wodehouse to say, "That's the fellow for Jeeves to curl up in bed with"?
Was Spinoza more prominent in public debate than he is today? Was it just
that his name was funny? Was he considered quintessentially dusty?
Jaggard reminds us that "Joy in the Morning" was written during the German
occupation of Le Touquet. Wodehouse wrote that he labored, "with German
soldiers prowling about under my window, plus the necessity of having to
walk to Paris Plage every morning to report to the Kommandant." I can
imagine Wodehouse being amused by the notion, with Nazis under his window,
that the brainiest of British butlers was devoted to an (excommunicated)
Jewish philosopher, but perhaps this is stretching matters too far?
Possibly Wodehouse knew no more of Spinoza than he knew of Jeeves' other
passions: shrimping and consulting Marcus Aurelius?
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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