Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best

by P.G. Wodehouse

Blandings Castle is the home of Lord Emsworth, who likes nothing better than to potter at home in his enormous castle garden. But his rural idyll is once again set to be disturbed. No peace is possible when his sister Constance is let loose, and she is constantly trying to reorganise the household! Without great success . . . The nieces are unhappy, McAllister leaves at a difficult time, and then The Empress of Blandings - Emsworth's prize pig - goes off her pig-food! Set this against the continuing tangled love affairs of Freddie Threepwood, and the stage is once more set for classic Wodehouse hilarity!

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Short Stories, Audiobook, Comedy, Classics, British Literature

182 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1926

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[Justin Lonas · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the great temptations of life is to take oneself too seriously. Spicing your reading list with some of Wodehouse’s works will do wonders for your inflated ego.

Often unfairly accused of being too frivolous, Wodehouse is quite a serious writer. By cutting the legs out from under the pretension and self-aggrandizement of his curious characters, he allows us to laugh at ourselves through their larger-than-life foibles.

As a writer, I can’t help but to revel in his masterful use of the English language; very few others have attained the level of precision in description that his works overflow with.

[Ian Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wodehouse described his Blandings short stories as ‘short snorts between the solid orgies’ and they do rather wet the appetite rather than satisfy it.

The Blandings short stories allow the Threepwoods and particularly Lord Emsworth to come out of the shadow of being in the supporting cast of Wodehouse’s novels to take centre stage. These stories highlight whilst a character actor can make a story in support he cannot necessarily carry it alone. The stories which feature Lord Emsworth in the lead are the poorer stories whilst the ones which follow the novel template of boy meets girl, Aunt Constance refuses match, Lord Emsworth brings things to a satisfactory conclusion for the sake of an quiet life, are where these characters really shine.

‘The Crime Wave at Blandings’ is the best story collected here it is nearly three times this length of the others and the story benefits from it by allowing the plot to twist not unlike a corkscrew and allow a romance to be supported by the cast of Blandings rather than make a feature certain individuals as some of the other stories do. This brings out the best in the Blandings repertory company and is worth the cover charge of the book alone.

Although the majority of these stories are not to the calibre Wodehouse brought to the Blandings novels they are indispensable as stories such as ‘The Custody of the Pumpkin’, ‘Pig-hoo-o-o-oey!’ and especially ‘Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best’, in which Freddie Threepwood is married, contain the facts that are referred to in some of the greater orgies. It’s a shame the Freddie Threepwood novella from ‘Plum Pie’ in which he travels on the Atlantic liner called, somewhat predictably, the Atlantic, spreading good news of love and Donaldson’s Dog Biscuits is not included but, well er ‘Tinkery Tonk’.

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would give ten stars for sheer enjoyment. So delightful. Laughed LOUDLY out loud several times, something I rarely do. Just such beautiful beautiful words in such delightful stories.

"Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend" and "Crime Wave at Blandings" some of the finest Wodehouse (or any).
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"Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster; but he refrained from damping the other's enthusiasm by saying so." (The Custody of the Pumpkin)

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"He bent to where the animal lay on the hearth-rug, and prodded it civilly in the lower ribs. Bottles waved a long tail in brief acknowledgement. He was a fine dog, though of uncertain breed. His mother had been a popular local belle with a good deal of sex-appeal, and the question of his paternity was one that would have set a Genealogical College pursing its lips perplexedly. (The Go-Getter)

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[Watermarked Pages · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love dear, absent-minded, pottering Lord Emsworth so much, so this collection of short stories featuring him was delightful. He just wants to be left alone to wander in his rose garden and admire his giant pig, Empress of Blandings (so relatable!) but life, overbearing sisters, stiff-collars, traitorous pig-men, formidable head gardeners, and judgmental younger sons won’t let him do it.

My favorite stories are probably “Crime Wave at Blandings” and “Lord Emsworth and the Girlfriend.”

This audiobook had me silently shaking with laughter with a big grin on my face during a plane trip full of delays, turbulence, and missed connections, and if that isn’t the litmus test of a wonderful book, I don’t know what is. While Jonathan Cecil is incomparable as a Wodehouse narrator, Martin Jarvis was also very enjoyable.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

hilarious

[Kim Symes · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're familiar with Wodehouse, then all you need to know is that this collection of short stories is top notch.

If you haven't read any Wodehouse yet, then this is as good a place to start as any, though I started with the Jeeves and Wooster series. Wodehouse transports you to a time of large country houses, butlers, lazy younger sons and imperious aunts. Though the Feudal spirit is in full force, and Wodehouse was no socialist, he makes much of the absurdity of social status. Indeed much of the humour comes from the mismatch between a person's ability and their position in life. The thing that makes Wodehouse so special though, is the language. The apparently effortless, absurdly appropriate similes that scatter every page and make you laugh out loud.
Any Wodehouse is an easy read, and even his full length novels are quite short, so perfect for bedtime or holiday reading, where you want to be put into a good mood.
I listened to an audio version of this book in the car, but I think reading Wodehouse is better because there are times when you want to pause, sit back and absorb the genius of what you've just read.

[Gemma Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Wodehouse, always a pleasure. I especially love the story in which everybody, including Lady Constance, takes a pop at everybody else with an airgun. A comfort read to make the world seem brighter and more friendly.

[Bill Peschel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's P.G. Wodehouse, what do you think I'm going to say? I picked this up at a library sale and it's exposing me to some of his work I hadn't read before.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

"For years Angus McAllister had set before himself as his earthly goal the construction of a gravel path through the Castle’s famous yew alley. For years he had been bringing the project to the notice of his employer, though in anyone less whiskered the latter’s unconcealed loathing would have caused embarrassment. And now, it seemed, he was at it again.

'Gravel path!' Lord Emsworth stiffened through the whole length of his stringy body. Nature, he had always maintained, intended a yew alley to be carpeted with a mossy growth. And, whatever Nature felt about it, he personally was dashed if he was going to have men with Clydeside accents and faces like dissipated potatoes coming along and mutilating that lovely expanse of green velvet. 'Gravel path, indeed! Why not asphalt? Why not a few hoardings with advertisements of liver pills and a filling station? That’s what the man would really like.'

Lord Emsworth felt bitter, and when he felt bitter he could be terribly sarcastic.

'Well, I think it is a very good idea,' said his sister. 'One could walk there in wet weather then. Damp moss is ruinous to shoes.'

Lord Emsworth rose. He could bear no more of this. He left the table, the room, and the house, and, reaching the yew alley some minutes later, was revolted to find it infested by Angus McAllister in person. The head-gardener was standing gazing at the moss like a high priest of some ancient religion about to stick the gaff into the human sacrifice.

'Morning, McAllister,' said Lord Emsworth, coldly.

'Good morrrrning, your lorrudsheep.'

There was a pause. Angus McAllister, extending a foot that looked like a violin-case, pressed it on the moss. The meaning of the gesture was plain. It expressed contempt, dislike, a generally anti-moss spirit; and Lord Emsworth, wincing, surveyed the man unpleasantly through his pince-nez. Though not often given to theological speculation, he was wondering why Providence, if obliged to make head-gardeners, had found it necessary to make them so Scotch. In the case of Angus McAllister, why, going a step farther, have made him a human being at all? All the ingredients of a first-class mule simply thrown away. He felt that he might have liked Angus McAllister if he had been a mule.

'I was speaking to her leddyship yesterday.'

'Oh?'

'About the gravel path I was speaking to her leddyship.'

'Oh?'

'Her leddyship likes the notion fine.'

'Indeed! Well——'

Lord Emsworth’s face had turned a lively pink, and he was about to release the blistering words which were forming themselves in his mind when suddenly he caught the head-gardener’s eye and paused. Angus McAllister was looking at him in a peculiar manner, and he knew what that look meant. Just one crack, his eye was saying—in Scotch, of course—just one crack out of you and I tender my resignation. And with a sickening shock it came home to Lord Emsworth how completely he was in this man’s clutches.

He shuffled miserably. Yes, he was helpless. Except for that kink about gravel paths, Angus McAllister was a head-gardener in a thousand, and he needed him. He could not do without him. Filled with the coward rage that dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, Lord Emsworth coughed a cough that was undisguisedly a bronchial white flag.

'I’ll—er—I’ll think it over, McAllister.'

'Mphm.'

'I have to go to the village now. I will see you later.'

'Mphm.'

'Meanwhile, I will—er—think it over.'

'Mphm.'"

[William Bibliomane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps too much Wodehouse is not a good thing? As opposed to dipping into a collection of tales from time to time, Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best is my second collection of stories by The Master in as many months, and although I could scarcely have believed it, that may have been too much. Which is a pity, as I've so many of his books still to get through. This volume collects the disparate tales of the pig-loving denizen of Blandings Castle, which stretch over about thirty years, and this too could be the problem. "The Crime Wave at Blandings," perhaps the best-known tale included, is of course a corker, but I'd already read it in my previous outing (Wodehouse on Crime, q.v.), so it was, in a sense, too soon. But that familiarity wasn't, I regret to report, the only problem.

My feeling of overload has the unpleasant effect of rendering a couple of the stories to chime somewhat hollowly on the old shell-like. The three earliest stories, "The Custody of the Pumpkin," "Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best," and "Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey," are unquestionable classics, three of the finest. But after this point, the quality wavers. Thus, "Lord Emsworth and the Girl-Friend" seems overlong, although Clarence does finally put his foot down with Connie, which is sterling stuff. And most awkward is "Birth of a Salesman," a tale which first saw print in book form in 1950, which puts the 9th Earl so far out of his element (specifically on Wodehouse's later-in-life home turf of Long Island, NY) as to render him almost completely unrecognisable. "Sticky Wicket at Blandings," the final story of the collection, sees the characters again ageing and changing, although it does contain the welcome appearance of Clarence's scandalous brother, Galahad.

Maybe it is simply that by forcing the characters to progress in time, even if only by a decade or so, they are removed from that safe bubble of time, that pocket universe which is forever faintly Edwardian, and lose some of their charm. Although New York and Long Island are of course fictional locations, the fact that they masquerade as somewhere real and that Wodehouse actually puts Emsworth on the spot is a jar. An enormous jar, full of pickled whatsits, in fact. Or perhaps the problem with the volume is simply that Wodehouse anthologies can be too much of a good thing. Whatever it is, there are some excellent stories in this volume. Read it for those, and judge for yourself.

In the meantime, I'm off to potter around my roses, under a sky which is always blue, to the sound of a nearby tennis match, the buzz of summer insects, and the hint of mischief in the air.

[Erick Njenga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many stories cramped into this short book. Felt rushed with incomplete story lines. Meh.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short story from the Blandings Castle Series.

[Natasha Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another super funny Wodehouse.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funniest book I've read in years. I laughed so hard!

[Mh Weyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harder to feel invested in wodehouses short stories, but still some comical predicaments. Many so overly familiar to me, I didn’t enjoy this book as much. But lovely writing and quirky humor.

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic as always, with a particularly good introduction - more of a tribute to Wodehouse's entire literary career.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got this book at the Minnehaha Free Space library. By far the least revolutionary book on their shelves, but what I had the mental space for at the time.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterly..

[Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

If it were possible, Wodehouse's Blandings tales are even funnier than the Jeeves stories. Could it be?

Side-splitting.

[Michele]

Right ho! A jolly good read.

[Clémence d'Harville · Rating 5 out of 5]

Délicieux ! Le paradis se trouve à Blandings Castle.