喬治·奧威爾
In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse
1940 年初夏，德軍迅速攻下比利時，並俘虜了包括 P.G. 伍德豪斯先生在內的多名囚犯。戰爭初期，伍德豪斯一直住在勒圖凱的別墅裡，似乎直到最後一刻才意識到自己身處險境。據說，當他被俘虜時，他曾說過：「也許此後我會寫一本嚴肅的書。」他暫時被軟禁，從他隨後的陳述來看，他受到了相當友好的對待，附近的德國軍官經常「來洗澡或參加聚會」。
一年多後，1941 年 6 月 25 日，傳來伍德豪斯獲釋並住在柏林阿德隆飯店的消息。第二天，公眾驚訝地得知他同意在德國電台進行一些「非政治」性質的廣播。目前這些廣播的全文已不易獲得，但伍德豪斯似乎在 6 月 26 日至 7 月 2 日期間進行了五次廣播，之後德國人再次叫停了他的廣播。 6 月 26 日的第一次廣播不是在納粹電台播出的，而是以採訪哥倫比亞廣播公司代表哈里·弗蘭納裡 (Harry Flannery) 的形式播出的，當時哥倫比亞廣播公司在柏林仍有記者。伍德豪斯還在《星期六晚郵報》上發表了一篇他在拘留營中寫的一篇文章。
文章和廣播主要講述了伍德豪斯在拘留所的經歷，但也包含了一些對戰爭的評論。以下是公平的樣本：
我從來對政治不感興趣。我根本無法激起任何好戰情緒。就在我快要對某個國家產生好戰情緒的時候，我遇到了一個還不錯的傢伙。我們一起出去，所有好戰的想法和情緒都消失了。
「不久前，他們在閱兵式上看了我一眼，然後就下定了決心；至少他們把我們送進了當地的瘋人院。我已經在那裡待了四十二週了。拘留有很多好處。它能讓你遠離酒吧，還能幫助你堅持讀書。最大的問題是，這意味著你要長時間離家。我和妻子團聚的時候，最好帶上一封介紹，以防萬一。」
戰前的日子裡，我一直為自己是英國人而感到謙卑和自豪，但現在我已經在這個英國人的箱子或倉庫裡住了幾個月，我不再那麼自信了。 ……我唯一想從德國得到的讓步是，給我一條麵包，讓大門邊上那些帶火槍的先生們別往那邊看了，剩下的就交給我了。作為回報，我準備把《印度》、一套我的親筆簽名的書交給我，並透露用暖氣片烤馬鈴薯的秘訣。這個提議有效期限到下週三。
上面引用的第一段摘錄引起了極大的冒犯。伍德豪斯也因（在接受弗蘭納裡的採訪時）使用“英國是否贏得戰爭”這一短語而受到譴責，而他在另一次廣播中描述了與他一起被關押的一些比利時囚犯的骯髒習慣，這也沒有使事情變得更好。德國人錄下了這次廣播並重複播放了多次。他們似乎對他的講話監督很寬鬆，不僅允許他拿拘留的不適開玩笑，還允許他說「特羅斯特集中營的被拘留者都堅信英國最終會獲勝」。然而，談判的整體結果是，他沒有受到虐待，也沒有懷有惡意。
這些廣播立即在英國引起了軒然大波。議會對此提出了質疑，媒體發表了憤怒的評論，同行作家也紛紛致信，幾乎所有的來信都表示反對，但有一兩個人建議最好不要下結論，還有幾個人辯稱伍德豪斯可能沒有意識到自己在做什麼。 7月15日，英國廣播公司國內頻道刊登了《每日鏡報》「卡桑德拉」的一篇極其激烈的後記，指責伍德豪斯「出賣自己的國家」。這篇後記隨意使用了「吉斯林」和「崇拜元首」等表述。主要指控是伍德豪斯同意為德國宣傳，以此讓自己擺脫拘留營的牢獄之災。
《卡桑德拉的後記》引起了一定程度的抗議，但總體而言，它似乎加劇了民眾對伍德豪斯的情緒。結果之一是，許多藉閱圖書館撤下了伍德豪斯的書。以下是一則典型的新聞：
在收聽《每日鏡報》專欄作家卡桑德拉的廣播後不到24小時，北愛爾蘭波塔當區議會就禁止P.G.伍德豪斯的書籍進入其公共圖書館。愛德華·麥卡恩先生說，卡桑德拉的廣播徹底解決了這個問題。伍德豪斯不再有趣了。 （《每日鏡報》）
此外，英國廣播公司還禁止播放伍德豪斯的歌詞，幾年後仍然如此。直到 1944 年 12 月，議會仍有人要求將伍德豪斯作為叛徒進行審判。
有句老話說，如果你扔出足夠多的泥巴，有些泥巴就會粘住，而泥巴卻以一種相當奇特的方式粘在了伍德豪斯身上。人們留下的印像是，伍德豪斯的談話（並不是有人記得他在談話中說了什麼）不僅表明他是一個叛徒，而且還表明他是一個法西斯主義的意識形態同情者。甚至當時就有幾封致新聞界的信聲稱，他的書中存在“法西斯傾向”，此後這一指控不斷出現。我稍後將嘗試分析這些書的精神氛圍，但重要的是要認識到，1941 年的事件並沒有證明伍德豪斯有任何比愚蠢更糟糕的行為。真正有趣的問題是他怎麼會如此愚蠢以及為什麼如此愚蠢。 1941 年 6 月，當弗蘭納裡在阿德隆酒店遇見伍德豪斯（當時伍德豪斯已獲釋，但仍在看守之下）時，他立刻意識到自己面對的是一個政治上無辜的人，在為廣播採訪做準備時，他不得不警告伍德豪斯不要發表一些極其不當的言論，其中一條言論就帶有輕微的反俄色彩。事實上，「英格蘭是否獲勝」這句話確實傳達了出來。採訪結束後不久，伍德豪斯告訴他，他也將在納粹電台進行廣播，顯然沒有意識到這項行動有什麼特殊意義。弗蘭納裡評論道：
此時，伍德豪斯的陰謀已然顯露。這是納粹在二戰期間最精彩的宣傳噱頭之一，也是首次以人性為視角。 ……普拉克（戈培爾的助手）前往格萊維茨附近的集中營拜訪伍德豪斯，發現這位作者完全沒有政治頭腦，於是便有了個主意。他向伍德豪斯建議，作為獲釋的回報，他可以撰寫一系列關於自己經歷的廣播劇；廣播劇不會受到審查，由他親自播出。普拉克提出這個建議，表明他了解伍德豪斯。他知道伍德豪斯在所有故事中都嘲笑英國人，而伍德豪斯很少以其他方式寫作，他仍然生活在自己所描述的時代，對納粹主義及其含義毫無概念。伍德豪斯就是他自己的伯蒂·伍斯特。
伍德豪斯和普拉克之間達成的實際交易似乎只是弗蘭納裡自己的解釋。這種安排可能不太明確，從廣播本身來判斷，伍德豪斯製作這些節目的主要想法是為了與觀眾保持聯繫，以及——這位喜劇演員的主要熱情——博得觀眾歡笑。顯然，這些言論不是埃茲拉·龐德或約翰·埃默里那種吉斯林的言論，也可能不是一個能夠理解吉斯林主義本質的人的言論。弗蘭納裡似乎已經警告過伍德豪斯，廣播是不明智的，但警告的力度並不大。他補充說，伍德豪斯（儘管他在一次廣播中稱自己是英國人）似乎認為自己是美國公民。他曾考慮入籍，但從未填寫必要的文件。他甚至對弗蘭納裡說：“我們並沒有與德國交戰。”
我面前有一份 P.G. 伍德豪斯 (P.G. Wodehouse) 作品的書目。它列舉了大約五十本書，但肯定是不完整的。說實話，我首先應該承認伍德豪斯的許多書——大概是總數的四分之一或三分之一——我都沒有讀過。確實，要讀完一位通常以廉價版本出版的暢銷作家的全部作品並不容易。但自從 1911 年我八歲起，我就一直密切關注著他的作品，並且非常熟悉其獨特的精神氛圍——當然，這種氛圍並沒有完全改變，但自 1925 年左右以來幾乎沒有什麼變化。在我上面引用的弗蘭納裡書中的段落中，有兩句話會立即引起伍德豪斯任何細心讀者的注意。一派認為伍德豪斯“仍然生活在他所寫的時代”，另一派則認為納粹宣傳部利用他是因為他“嘲笑英國人”。第二種說法是基於一種誤解，我稍後會回到這個問題。但弗蘭納裡的另一條評論卻非常正確，其中包含了伍德豪斯行為的部分線索。
人們常常忘記 P.G. 伍德豪斯的小說中那些較為著名的作品是多久以前創作的。我們認為他在某種意義上代表了二十世紀二十年代和三十年代的愚蠢，但事實上，他最為人記住的場景和人物都是在 1925 年之前出現的。 ……當人們瀏覽伍德豪斯從 1902 年起的書單時，人們可以觀察到三個相當明顯的時期。第一節是學校故事課。 ……接下來是美國時期。伍德豪斯似乎在 1913 年至 1920 年期間居住在美國，有一段時間他的習慣用語和觀點顯露出美國化的跡象。 ……第三個時期或許可以恰當地稱為鄉村別墅時期。到二十世紀二十年代初，伍德豪斯的收入一定非常高，他筆下人物的社會地位也相應提高……現在典型的場景是鄉村豪宅、豪華的單身公寓或昂貴的高爾夫俱樂部。早期書籍中學生的運動精神逐漸消失，板球和足球讓位給高爾夫，鬧劇和滑稽表演的元素變得更加明顯。 ……麥克傑克森變成了伯蒂伍斯特。然而，這並不是什麼令人吃驚的轉變，伍德豪斯最引人注目的特點之一就是他缺乏發展。 ……儘管在被拘留前的十六年裡他一直住在好萊塢和勒圖凱，但他仍在繼續寫英國生活的故事，從這一事實可以看出，他後期作品的寫作方式已經變得多麼程式化。
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在《新鮮事》中，伍德豪斯發現了英國貴族的喜劇潛力，並因此而誕生了一系列荒謬但實際上並不可鄙的男爵、伯爵等等。這產生了一種相當奇怪的效果，使得伍德豪斯在英國以外被視為一位敏銳的英國社會諷刺作家。因此，弗蘭納裡說伍德豪斯“嘲笑英國人”，這可能是他給德國甚至美國讀者的印象。在柏林廣播結束後不久，我與一位熱情捍衛伍德豪斯的年輕印度民族主義者討論了這件事。他理所當然地認為伍德豪斯已經投奔敵人了，從他自己的角度來看，這是正確的做法。但令我感興趣的是，他認為伍德豪斯是一位反英作家，揭露了英國貴族的真面目，並做出了有益的貢獻。這是一個英國人很難犯的錯誤，也是書籍，特別是幽默書籍，在到達外國讀者手中時失去其細微差別的一個很好的例子。因為很明顯伍德豪斯不是反英國，但也不反上層階級。相反，在他的作品中隨處可見一種無害的老式勢利。正如一個聰明的天主教徒能夠看出，波特萊爾或詹姆斯·喬伊斯的褻瀆行為並沒有嚴重損害天主教信仰一樣，英國讀者也可以看出，在塑造希爾德布蘭德·斯賓塞·波因斯·德·伯格、約翰·漢尼賽德·庫姆-克倫比（第十二任德里弗伯爵）等人物時，伍德豪斯並沒有真正攻擊社會等級制度。事實上，真正鄙視頭銜的人不會對頭銜寫這麼多。伍德豪斯對英國社會制度的態度與他對公立學校道德準則的態度是一樣的——溫和的玩笑掩蓋著不加思索的接受。艾姆斯沃斯伯爵之所以有趣，是因為伯爵應該享有更多的尊嚴，而伯蒂·伍斯特對吉夫斯的無助依賴之所以有趣，部分原因在於僕人不應該高於主人。美國讀者可能會誤以為這兩個人以及其他類似的人是充滿敵意的漫畫人物，因為他已經傾向於仇視英國，而他們符合他對頹廢貴族的先入為主的觀念。穿著綁腿、手持拐杖的伯蒂·伍斯特是典型的英國舞台演員。但是，正如任何英國讀者都會看到的，伍德豪斯試圖將他塑造成一個富有同情心的人物，而伍德豪斯真正的罪過是將英國上流社會描繪得比實際情況要好得多。在他的所有書中，他不斷迴避某些問題。他筆下的有錢年輕人幾乎無一例外都是謙遜的、善於交際的、不貪婪的：他們的基調是由史密斯定下的，史密斯保留了他自己上流社會的外表，但通過稱呼每個人為“同志”來彌合社會差距。
但伯蒂·伍斯特還有另一個重要特點：他的過時性。伯蒂大約誕生於 1917 年，但實際上她的誕生時代更早。 ……幽默作家沒有義務與時俱進，伍德豪斯在找到一兩條好線索後，便繼續有規律地利用它們，這無疑更容易，因為在他被拘留前的十六年裡，他沒有踏足英國。他對英國社會的描繪是在 1914 年之前形成的，是一幅天真的、傳統的、本質上充滿讚美的畫面。 ……顯然，他的書不是針對高雅讀者，而是針對受過傳統教育的讀者。 ……在接受弗蘭納裡的電台採訪時，伍德豪斯想知道“我所寫的那種人和那種英格蘭是否還會在戰後存在”，卻沒有意識到他們已經成了幽靈。 「他仍然生活在他所寫的時代，」弗蘭納裡說，他可能指的是 20 世紀 20 年代。但那個時期實際上是愛德華時代，而伯蒂·伍斯特（如果真的存在的話）大約在 1915 年被殺。
如果我對伍德豪斯心態的分析被接受，那麼認為他在 1941 年有意識地幫助納粹宣傳機器的想法就變得站不住腳，甚至是荒謬的。他可能因為提前獲釋的承諾而被迫廣播（幾個月後他就將在六十歲生日時獲釋），但他不可能意識到他的所作所為會損害英國的利益。正如我試圖表明的那樣，他的道德觀仍然和公立學校的學生一樣，根據公立學校的規定，戰爭時期的叛國行為是所有罪行中最不可原諒的。但他怎麼會不明白，他的所作所為將會成為德國人的一大宣傳亮點，並會給自己招來強烈的不滿呢？要回答這個問題，必須考慮兩件事。首先，從伍德豪斯的印刷作品來看，他完全缺乏政治意識。在他的書中談論「法西斯傾向」是無稽之談。根本沒有 1918 年以後的趨勢。在他的整個作品中，都存在著對階級差別問題的某種不安的認識，並且在不同時期散佈著對社會主義的無知但並非不友好的提及。《傻瓜之心》（1926 年） 講述了一個關於俄羅斯小說家的相當愚蠢的故事，這個故事似乎受到了當時蘇聯派系鬥爭的啟發，但其中對蘇聯體制的提及完全是輕浮的，而且考慮到日期，並沒有明顯的敵意。這就是伍德豪斯的政治意識的程度，就我們從他的著作中可以看出這一點。據我所知，他從未在任何地方使用過“法西斯主義”或“納粹主義”這個詞。在左翼圈子裡，實際上在任何類型的「開明」圈子裡，在納粹電台上廣播、與納粹有任何來往，在戰前都會被視為與戰時同樣令人震驚的行為。但這是近十年反法西斯意識形態鬥爭中養成的思考習慣。我們應該記住，直到 1940 年末，大多數英國人對那場鬥爭仍然麻木不仁。阿比西尼亞、西班牙、中國、奧地利、捷克斯洛伐克——一系列的罪行和侵略行為只是從他們的意識中溜走了，或者被模糊地認為是外國人之間發生的爭吵，「與我們無關」。從以下事實可以看出人們普遍的無知：普通英國人認為「法西斯主義」是義大利獨有的東西，而當這個詞用在德國身上時，他們就感到困惑。伍德豪斯的作品中沒有任何內容表明他比大多數讀者更了解政治，或對政治更感興趣。
另一件必須記住的事情是，伍德豪斯恰好在戰爭進入絕望階段時被俘虜。我們現在已經忘記了這些事情，但直到那時，人們對戰爭的感受才明顯變得冷淡。幾乎沒有發生任何戰鬥，張伯倫政府不受歡迎，著名的政治家暗示我們應該盡快達成妥協和平，全國各地的工會和工黨分支機構都在通過反戰決議。當然，後來情況發生了變化。軍隊艱難地從敦克爾克撤出，法國崩潰，英國孤立無援，炸彈如雨般落在倫敦，戈培爾宣布英國將「陷入墮落和貧困」。到 1941 年中期，英國人民知道了他們所面對的是什麼，對敵人的情緒比以前更加強烈。但伍德豪斯在那一年被拘留，而他的俘虜似乎對他還不錯。他錯過了戰爭的轉捩點，1941年他還在以1939年為背景做出反應。他並不是唯一一個有這種想法的人。大約在這個時候，德國人曾多次把被俘虜的英國士兵帶到麥克風前，其中一些人的言論至少和伍德豪斯一樣不得體。然而，它們並未引起人們的注意。甚至像約翰·埃默里 (John Amery) 這樣徹頭徹尾的吉斯林，後來所引起的憤慨也比伍德豪斯要少得多。
但為什麼？為什麼一位老小說家的幾句相當愚蠢但無害的言論會引起如此強烈的抗議？人們必須在宣傳戰的骯髒要求中尋找可能的答案。
伍德豪斯的廣播中有一個點幾乎肯定是重要的——日期。伍德豪斯是在蘇聯入侵前兩三天獲釋的，當時納粹黨高層一定知道入侵迫在眉睫。讓美國盡可能長時間地遠離戰爭是至關重要的，事實上，大約在這個時候，德國對美國的態度確實比以前更和解。德國人幾乎不可能指望打敗俄羅斯、英國和美國的聯軍，但如果他們能夠迅速消滅俄羅斯——想必他們也希望這樣做——那麼美國可能永遠不會幹預。釋放伍德豪斯只是一個小舉動，但對美國孤立主義者來說卻不失為一個好辦法。他在美國很有名，而且——至少德國人是這麼認為的——他是一位深受反英民眾歡迎的漫畫家，他經常用漫畫來諷刺那些穿著緊身鞋、戴著單片眼鏡的愚蠢的英國人。人們相信，在麥克風前，他會以某種方式損害英國的威望，而他的獲釋將證明德國人是好人，知道如何勇敢地對待他們的敵人。大概就是這樣的計算，但伍德豪斯只播音了大約一周，這表明他沒有達到預期。
但英國方面卻有著類似但相反的盤算。在敦克爾克大撤退後的兩年裡，英國人的士氣很大程度上取決於這樣一種感覺：這不僅是一場爭取民主的戰爭，而且是一場普通民眾必須憑藉自己的努力贏得的戰爭。綏靖政策和 1940 年的災難使上層階級名譽掃地，社會平等進程似乎正在發生。愛國主義和左翼情緒在民眾心中緊密相連，而眾多能幹的記者則致力於將這種聯繫更加緊密。普里斯特利 1940 年的廣播和「卡桑德拉」在《每日鏡報》上發表的文章是當時煽動性宣傳盛行的典型例子。在這種氛圍下，伍德豪斯成了一個理想的替罪羔羊。因為人們普遍認為富人是奸詐的，而伍德豪斯——正如“卡桑德拉”在他的廣播中極力指出的那樣——是一個富人。但他是那種可以不受懲罰地攻擊並且不會對社會結構造成任何破壞的富人。譴責伍德豪斯不同於譴責比佛布魯克。一個普通的小說家，無論他的收入有多少，都不屬於有產階級。即使他的年收入達到 35 萬英鎊，他也只是外表看起來像個百萬富翁。他是一個幸運的局外人，偶然獲得了一筆財富——通常是非常短暫的財富——就像加爾各答德比大滿貫的獲勝者一樣。因此，伍德豪斯的輕率行為為宣傳提供了一個良好的開端。這是一個「揭露」富有的寄生蟲的機會，但不會引起任何真正重要的寄生蟲的注意。
在當時的絕望環境下，對伍德豪斯的所作所為感到憤怒尚可情有可原，但三四年後還繼續譴責他——甚至給人留下他蓄意背叛的印象——就不可原諒了。在這場戰爭中，很少有事情比目前對叛徒和吉斯林的追捕更令人厭惡。充其量，這基本上是以有罪者對有罪者的懲罰。在法國，各種各樣的小偷——警察官員、小記者、與德國士兵睡過的女人——都會被追捕，而大偷幾乎無一例外都會逃脫。在英國，對吉斯林最猛烈的抨擊來自 1938 年實行綏靖政策的保守黨人和 1940 年提倡綏靖政策的共產黨人。我努力表明可憐的伍德豪斯——僅僅因為成功和流亡使他的精神狀態停留在愛德華時代——是如何成為宣傳實驗中的受害者的，我認為現在是時候將此事視為結束了。如果埃茲拉·龐德被美國當局抓獲並槍斃，那麼他的詩人聲譽將在未來幾百年內得到確立；甚至就伍德豪斯而言，如果我們迫使他退休到美國並放棄英國國籍，我們最終也會感到非常羞愧。同時，如果我們真的要懲罰那些在關鍵時刻削弱民族士氣的人，還有其他更近的罪魁禍首更值得追究。
1946
結束
____BD____
喬治‧歐威爾：《為 P.G. 伍德豪斯辯護》
首次出版：《風車》。 — GB，倫敦。 1946年7月
轉載：
—《評論文章》。 — 1946年。
— 《奧威爾讀者、小說、散文與報導文學》— 1956 年。
—《散文集》。 — 1961年。
—《喬治‧歐威爾散文、新聞與書信集》。 — 1968年。
____
機讀版本：O. Dag
最後修改時間：2019-12-29
[書的封面]
喬治·奧威爾
《評論文章》
© 1946 Secker 和 Warburg。倫敦。
George Orwell
In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse
When the Germans made their rapid advance through Belgium in the early summer of 1940, they captured, among other things, Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, who had been living throughout the early part of the war in his villa at Le Touquet, and seems not to have realised until the last moment that he was in any danger. As he was led away into captivity, he is said to have remarked, “Perhaps after this I shall write a serious book.” He was placed for the time being under house arrest, and from his subsequent statements it appears that he was treated in a fairly friendly way, German officers in the neighbourhood frequently “dropping in for a bath or a party”.
Over a year later, on 25th June 1941, the news came that Wodehouse had been released from internment and was living at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. On the following day the public was astonished to learn that he had agreed to do some broadcasts of a “non-political” nature over the German radio. The full texts of these broadcasts are not easy to obtain at this date, but Wodehouse seems to have done five of them between 26th June and 2nd July, when the Germans took him off the air again. The first broadcast, on 26th June, was not made on the Nazi radio but took the form of an interview with Harry Flannery, the representative of the Columbia Broadcasting System, which still had its correspondents in Berlin. Wodehouse also published in the Saturday Evening Post an article which he had written while still in the internment camp.
The article and the broadcasts dealt mainly with Wodehouse's experiences in internment, but they did include a very few comments on the war. The following are fair samples:
“I never was interested in politics. I'm quite unable to work up any kind of belligerent feeling. Just as I'm about to feel belligerent about some country I meet a decent sort of chap. We go out together and lose any fighting thoughts or feelings.”
“A short time ago they had a look at me on parade and got the right idea; at least they sent us to the local lunatic asylum. And I have been there forty-two weeks. There is a good deal to be said for internment. It keeps you out of the saloon and helps you to keep up with your reading. The chief trouble is that it means you are away from home for a long time. When I join my wife I had better take along a letter of introduction to be on the safe side.”
“In the days before the war I had always been modestly proud of being an Englishman, but now that I have been some months resident in this bin or repository of Englishmen I am not so sure. ...The only concession I want from Germany is that she gives me a loaf of bread, tells the gentlemen with muskets at the main gate to look the other way, and leaves the rest to me. In return I am prepared to hand over India, an autographed set of my books, and to reveal the secret process of cooking sliced potatoes on a radiator. This offer holds good till Wednesday week.”
The first extract quoted above caused great offence. Wodehouse was also censured for using (in the interview with Flannery) the phrase “whether Britain wins the war or not,” and he did not make things better by describing in another broadcast the filthy habits of some Belgian prisoners among whom he was interned. The Germans recorded this broadcast and repeated it a number of times. They seem to have supervised his talks very lightly, and they allowed him not only to be funny about the discomforts of internment but to remark that “the internees at Trost camp all fervently believe that Britain will eventually win.” The general upshot of the talks, however, was that he had not been ill treated and bore no malice.
These broadcasts caused an immediate uproar in England. There were questions in Parliament, angry editorial comments in the press, and a stream of letters from fellow-authors, nearly all of them disapproving, though one or two suggested that it would be better to suspend judgment, and several pleaded that Wodehouse probably did not realise what he was doing. On 15th July, the Home Service of the B.B.C. carried an extremely violent Postscript by “Cassandra” of the Daily Mirror, accusing Wodehouse of “selling his country.” This postscript made free use of such expressions as “Quisling” and “worshipping the Fìhrer”. The main charge was that Wodehouse had agreed to do German propaganda as a way of buying himself out of the internment camp.
“Cassandra's” Postscript caused a certain amount of protest, but on the whole it seems to have intensified popular feeling against Wodehouse. One result of it was that numerous lending libraries withdrew Wodehouse's books from circulation. Here is a typical news item:
“Within twenty-four hours of listening to the broadcast of Cassandra, the Daily Mirror columnist, Portadown (North Ireland) Urban District Council banned P. G. Wodehouse's books from their public library. Mr. Edward McCann said that Cassandra's broadcast had clinched the matter. Wodehouse was funny no longer.” (Daily Mirror.)
In addition the B.B.C. banned Wodehouse's lyrics from the air and was still doing so a couple of years later. As late as December 1944 there were demands in Parliament that Wodehouse should be put on trial as a traitor.
There is an old saying that if you throw enough mud some of it will stick, and the mud has stuck to Wodehouse in a rather peculiar way. An impression has been left behind that Wodehouse's talks (not that anyone remembers what he said in them) showed him up not merely as a traitor but as an ideological sympathiser with Fascism. Even at the time several letters to the press claimed that “Fascist tendencies” could be detected in his books, and the charge has been repeated since. I shall try to analyse the mental atmosphere of those books in a moment, but it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity. The really interesting question is how and why he could be so stupid. When Flannery met Wodehouse (released, but still under guard) at the Adlon Hotel in June 1941, he saw at once that he was dealing with a political innocent, and when preparing him for their broadcast interview he had to warn him against making some exceedingly unfortunate remarks, one of which was by implication slightly anti-Russian. As it was, the phrase “whether England wins or not” did get through. Soon after the interview Wodehouse told him that he was also going to broadcast on the Nazi radio, apparently not realising that this action had any special significance. Flannery comments:
“By this time the Wodehouse plot was evident. It was one of the best Nazi publicity stunts of the war, the first with a human angle. ...Plack (Goebbels's assistant) had gone to the camp near Gleiwitz to see Wodehouse, found that the author was completely without political sense, and had an idea. He suggested to Wodehouse that in return for being released from the prison camp he write a series of broadcasts about his experiences; there would be no censorship and he would put them on the air himself. In making that proposal Plack showed that he knew his man. He knew that Wodehouse made fun of the English in all his stories and that he seldom wrote in any other way, that he was still living in the period about which he wrote and had no conception of Nazism and all it meant. Wodehouse was his own Bertie Wooster.”
The striking of an actual bargain between Wodehouse and Plack seems to be merely Flannery's own interpretation. The arrangement may have been of a much less definite kind, and to judge from the broadcasts themselves, Wodehouse's main idea in making them was to keep in touch with his public and — the comedian's ruling passion — to get a laugh. Obviously they are not the utterances of a Quisling of the type of Ezra Pound or John Amery, nor, probably, of a person capable of understanding the nature of Quislingism. Flannery seems to have warned Wodehouse that it would be unwise to broadcast, but not very forcibly. He adds that Wodehouse (though in one broadcast he refers to himself as an Englishman) seemed to regard himself as an American citizen. He had contemplated naturalisation, but had never filled in the necessary papers. He even used, to Flannery, the phrase, “We're not at war with Germany.”
I have before me a bibliography of P. G. Wodehouse's works. It names round about fifty books, but is certainly incomplete. It is as well to be honest, and I ought to start by admitting that there are many books by Wodehouse perhaps a quarter or a third of the total — which I have not read. It is not, indeed, easy to read the whole output of a popular writer who is normally published in cheap editions. But I have followed his work fairly closely since 1911, when I was eight years old, and am well acquainted with its peculiar mental atmosphere — an atmosphere which has not, of course, remained completely unchanged, but shows little alteration since about 1925. In the passage from Flannery's book which I quoted above there are two remarks which would immediately strike any attentive reader of Wodehouse. One is to the effect that Wodehouse “was still living in the period about which he wrote,” and the other that the Nazi Propaganda Ministry made use of him because he “made fun of the English.” The second statement is based on a misconception to which I will return presently. But Flannery's other comment is quite true and contains in it part of the clue to Wodehouse's behaviour.
A thing that people often forget about P. G. Wodehouse's novels is how long ago the better-known of them were written. We think of him as in some sense typifying the silliness of the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties, but in fact the scenes and characters by which he is best remembered had all made their appearance before 1925. ...When one looks through the list of Wodehouse's books from 1902 onwards, one can observe three fairly well-marked periods. The first is the school-story period. ...The next is the American period. Wodehouse seems to have lived in the United States from about 1913 to 1920, and for a while showed signs of becoming Americanised in idiom and outlook. ...The third period might fitly be called the country-house period. By the early nineteen-twenties Wodehouse must have been making a very large income, and the social status of his characters moved upwards accordingly ...The typical setting is now a country mansion, a luxurious bachelor flat or an expensive golf club. The schoolboy athleticism of the earlier books fades out, cricket and football giving way to golf, and the element of farce and burlesque becomes more marked. ...Mike Jackson has turned into Bertie Wooster. That, however, is not a very startling metamorphosis, and one of the most noticeable things about Wodehouse is his lack of development. ...How much of a formula the writing of his later books had become one can see from the fact that he continued to write stories of English life although throughout the sixteen years before his internment he was living at Hollywood and Le Touquet.
* * *
In Something Fresh Wodehouse had discovered the comic possibilities of the English aristocracy, and a succession of ridiculous but, save in a very few instances, not actually contemptible barons, earls and what-not followed accordingly. This had the rather curious effect of causing Wodehouse to be regarded, outside England, as a penetrating satirist of English society. Hence Flannery's statement that Wodehouse “made fun of the English,” which is the impression he would probably make on a German or even an American reader. Some time after the broadcasts from Berlin I was discussing them with a young Indian Nationalist who defended Wodehouse warmly. He took it for granted that Wodehouse had gone over to the enemy, which from his own point of view was the right thing to do. But what interested me was to find that he regarded Wodehouse as an anti-British writer who had done useful work by showing up the British aristocracy in their true colours. This is a mistake that it would be very difficult for an English person to make, and is a good instance of the way in which books, especially humorous books, lose their finer nuances when they reach a foreign audience. For it is clear enough that Wodehouse is not anti-British, and not anti-upper class either. On the contrary, a harmless old-fashioned snobbishness is perceptible all through his work. Just as an intelligent Catholic is able to see that the blasphemies of Baudelaire or James Joyce are not seriously damaging to the Catholic faith, so an English reader can see that in creating such characters as Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh John Hanneyside Coombe-Crombie, 12th Earl of Dreever, Wodehouse is not really attacking the social hierarchy. Indeed, no one who genuinely despised titles would write of them so much. Wodehouse's attitude towards the English social system is the same as his attitude towards the public-school moral code — a mild facetiousness covering an unthinking acceptance. The Earl of Emsworth is funny because an earl ought to have more dignity, and Bertie Wooster's helpless dependence on Jeeves is funny partly because the servant ought not to be superior to the master. An American reader can mistake these two, and others like them, for hostile caricatures, because he is inclined to be Anglophobe already and they correspond to his preconceived ideas about a decadent aristocracy. Bertie Wooster, with his spats and his cane, is the traditional stage Englishman. But, as any English reader would see, Wodehouse intends him as a sympathetic figure, and Wodehouse's real sin has been to present the English upper classes as much nicer people than they are. All through his books certain problems are constantly avoided. Almost without exception his moneyed young men are unassuming, good mixers, not avaricious: their tone is set for them by Psmith, who retains his own upper-class exterior but bridges the social gap by addressing everyone as “Comrade”.
But there is another important point about Bertie Wooster: his out-of-dateness. Conceived in 1917 or thereabouts, Bertie really belongs to an epoch earlier than that. ...A humorous writer is not obliged to keep up to date, and having struck one or two good veins, Wodehouse continued to exploit them with a regularity that was no doubt all the easier because he did not set foot in England during the sixteen years that preceded his internment. His picture of English society had been formed before 1914, and it was a naЇve, traditional and, at bottom, admiring picture. ...His books are aimed, not, obviously, at a highbrow audience, but at an audience educated along traditional lines. ...In his radio interview with Flannery, Wodehouse wondered whether “the kind of people and the kind of England I write about will live after the war,” not realising that they were ghosts already. “He was still living in the period about which he wrote,” says Flannery, meaning, probably, the nineteen-twenties. But the period was really the Edwardian age, and Bertie Wooster, if he ever existed, was killed round about 1915.
If my analysis of Wodehouse's mentality is accepted, the idea that in 1941 he consciously aided the Nazi propaganda machine becomes untenable and even ridiculous. He may have been induced to broadcast by the promise of an earlier release (he was due for release a few months later, on reaching his sixtieth birthday), but he cannot have realised that what he did would be damaging to British interests. As I have tried to show, his moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins. But how could he fail to grasp that what he did would be a big propaganda score for the Germans and would bring down a torrent of disapproval on his own head? To answer this one must take two things into consideration. First, Wodehouse's complete lack — so far as one can judge from his printed works — of political awareness. It is nonsense to talk of “Fascist tendencies” in his books. There are no post-1918 tendencies at all. Throughout his work there is a certain uneasy awareness of the problem of class distinctions, and scattered through it at various dates there are ignorant though not unfriendly references to Socialism. In The Heart of a Goof (1926) there is a rather silly story about a Russian novelist, which seems to have been inspired by the factional struggle then raging in the U.S.S.R. But the references in it to the Soviet system are entirely frivolous and, considering the date, not markedly hostile. That is about the extent of Wodehouse's political consciousness, so far as it is discoverable from his writings. Nowhere, so far as I know, does he so much as use the word “Fascism” or “Nazism.” In left-wing circles, indeed in “enlightened” circles of any kind, to broadcast on the Nazi radio, to have any truck with the Nazis whatever, would have seemed just as shocking an action before the war as during it. But that is a habit of mind that had been developed during nearly a decade of ideological struggle against Fascism. The bulk of the British people, one ought to remember, remained an¦sthetic to that struggle until late into 1940. Abyssinia, Spain, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia — the long series of crimes and aggressions had simply slid past their consciousness or were dimly noted as quarrels occurring among foreigners and “not our business.” One can gauge the general ignorance from the fact that the ordinary Englishman thought of “Fascism” as an exclusively Italian thing and was bewildered when the same word was applied to Germany. And there is nothing in Wodehouse's writings to suggest that he was better informed, or more interested in politics, than the general run of his readers.
The other thing one must remember is that Wodehouse happened to be taken prisoner at just the moment when the war reached its desperate phase. We forget these things now, but until that time feelings about the war had been noticeably tepid. There was hardly any fighting, the Chamberlain Government was unpopular, eminent publicists were hinting that we should make a compromise peace as quickly as possible, trade union and Labour Party branches all over the country were passing anti-war resolutions. Afterwards, of course, things changed. The Army was with difficulty extricated from Dunkirk, France collapsed, Britain was alone, the bombs rained on London, Goebbels announced that Britain was to be “reduced to degradation and poverty”. By the middle of 1941 the British people knew what they were up against and feelings against the enemy were far fiercer than before. But Wodehouse had spent the intervening year in internment, and his captors seem to have treated him reasonably well. He had missed the turning-point of the war, and in 1941 he was still reacting in terms of 1939. He was not alone in this. On several occasions about this time the Germans brought captured British soldiers to the microphone, and some of them made remarks at least as tactless as Wodehouse's. They attracted no attention, however. And even an outright Quisling like John Amery was afterwards to arouse much less indignation than Wodehouse had done.
But why? Why should a few rather silly but harmless remarks by an elderly novelist have provoked such an outcry? One has to look for the probable answer amid the dirty requirements of propaganda warfare.
There is one point about the Wodehouse broadcasts that is almost certainly significant — the date. Wodehouse was released two or three days before the invasion of the U.S.S.R., and at a time when the higher ranks of the Nazi party must have known that the invasion was imminent. It was vitally necessary to keep America out of the war as long as possible, and in fact, about this time, the German attitude towards the U.S.A. did become more conciliatory than it had been before. The Germans could hardly hope to defeat Russia, Britain and the U.S.A. in combination, but if they could polish off Russia quickly — and presumably they expected to do so — the Americans might never intervene. The release of Wodehouse was only a minor move, but it was not a bad sop to throw to the American isolationists. He was well known in the United States, and he was — or so the Germans calculated — popular with the Anglophobe public as a caricaturist who made fun of the silly-ass Englishman with his spats and his monocle. At the microphone he could be trusted to damage British prestige in one way or another, while his release would demonstrate that the Germans were good fellows and knew how to treat their enemies chivalrously. That presumably was the calculation, though the fact that Wodehouse was only broadcasting for about a week suggests that he did not come up to expectations.
But on the British side similar though opposite calculations were at work. For the two years following Dunkirk, British morale depended largely upon the feeling that this was not only a war for democracy but a war which the common people had to win by their own efforts. The upper classes were discredited by their appeasement policy and by the disasters of 1940, and a social levelling process appeared to be taking place. Patriotism and left-wing sentiments were associated in the popular mind, and numerous able journalists were at work to tie the association tighter. Priestley's 1940 broadcasts, and “Cassandra's” articles in the Daily Mirror, were good examples of the demagogic propaganda flourishing at that time. In this atmosphere, Wodehouse made an ideal whipping-boy. For it was generally felt that the rich were treacherous, and Wodehouse — as “Cassandra” vigorously pointed out in his broadcast — was a rich man. But he was the kind of rich man who could be attacked with impunity and without risking any damage to the structure of society. To denounce Wodehouse was not like denouncing, say, Beaverbrook. A mere novelist, however large his earnings may happen to be, is not of the possessing class. Even if his income touches £350,000 a year he has only the outward semblance of a millionaire. He is a lucky outsider who has fluked into a fortune — usually a very temporary fortune — like the winner of the Calcutta Derby Sweep. Consequently, Wodehouse's indiscretion gave a good propaganda opening. It was a chance to “expose” a wealthy parasite without drawing attention to any of the parasites who really mattered.
In the desperate circumstances of the time, it was excusable to be angry at what Wodehouse did, but to go on denouncing him three or four years later — and more, to let an impression remain that he acted with conscious treachery — is not excusable. Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In France, all kinds of petty rats — police officials, penny-a-lining journalists, women who have slept with German soldiers — are hunted down while almost without exception the big rats escape. In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in 1940. I have striven to show how the wretched Wodehouse — just because success and expatriation had allowed him to remain mentally in the Edwardian age — became the corpus vile in a propaganda experiment, and I suggest that it is now time to regard the incident as closed. If Ezra Pound is caught and shot by the American authorities, it will have the effect of establishing his reputation as a poet for hundreds of years; and even in the case of Wodehouse, if we drive him to retire to the United States and renounce his British citizenship, we shall end by being horribly ashamed of ourselves. Meanwhile, if we really want to punish the people who weakened national morale at critical moments, there are other culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing.
1946
THE END
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George Orwell: ‘In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse’
First published: Windmill. — GB, London. — July 1946.
Reprinted:
— ‘Critical Essays’. — 1946.
— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.
— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
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Machine-readable version: O. Dag
Last modified on: 2019-12-29
