Something New

I just finished Something New, a short, early novel (1915) by P. G. Wodehouse. It is the first in the Blandings Castle saga, and introduces Lord Emsworth, the fuddy squire of Blandings who just wants to putter in his garden. (No pigs in this story).

It is interesting to see the early Wodehouse work a silly story set on a country estate. Many of the same features that are used in later stories (I know only the Bertie and Jeeves stories), are here in early manifestations. The old aristocrat has a collection with a recently acquired object (this time an Egyptian scarab, not a cow creamer) which must be stolen; an visiting dyspeptic American millionaire's beautiful daughter is in a hopeless engagement; and various author characters are producing silly works of popular fiction. Freddy Threepwood, son of Lord Emsworth, is a member of the Drones, and will be mentioned by Bertie in The Code of the Woosters.

Fun stuff, but Wodehouse was a only developing talent in 1915. Nothing like the precise and extremely well-tuned stories he did later.

This was a free epub that I got for my ereader. Now it's back to Dickens.