Book review of Joy in the Morning
Bound to your bookseller, leap to your library
Deluge your dealer with bakshish and bribery,
Lean on the counter and never say when,
Wodehouse and Wooster are with us again.
Flourish the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing,
Prepare for the fabulous browsing and sluicing,
And quote, till you're known as the neighbourhood nuisance,
The gems that illuminate the browsance and sluisance.
Oh, fondle each gem, and after you quote it,
Kindly inform me just who wrote it.
Which came first, the egg or the rooster,
P.G.Wodehouse or Bertram Wooster?
I know hawk from handsaw, and Finn from Fiji,
But I can't disentangle Bertram from P.G.
I inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house,
Did Wodehouse write Wooster, or Wooster write Wodehouse?
Bertram Wodehouse and P.G.Wooster.
They are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster.
No matter which fumbled in '41,
Or which the woebegone figure of fun.
I deduce how the faux pas came about;
It was clearly Jeeves's afternoon out.
Now Jeeves is back, and my cheeks are crumply
From watching him glide through Steeple Bumpleigh.
-Ogden Nash
The address of the Public Orator, Oxford University, June 1939
Ecce auctor magicus, quo non expertior alter
delectae animos hominum risusque movere.
Namque novas scaenae personas intulit et res
Ridiculas cuique adiunxit. Cui non bene notus
dives opum iuvenis, comisque animique benigni,
nec quod vult fecisse capax, nisi fidus Achates
ipse doli fabricator adest vestisque decentis
arbiter? Aut comes ille loquax et ventre rotundo
cui patruusque neposque agnatorum et domus omnis
miranda in vita-sic narrat- fata obierunt?
Nobilis est etiam Clarens, fundique paterni
et suis eximiae dominues, Psimtheusque "relicta
cui fac cuncta," Augustus item qui novit amores
ranicularum, aliusque alio sub sidere natus.
Non vitia autem hominum naso suspendit adunco
sed tenera pietate notat, peccataque ridet.
Hoc quoque, lingua etsi repleat plebeia chartas,
non incomposito patitur pede currere verba,
concinnus, lepidus, puri sermonis amator.
Quid multa? Quem novere omnes, testimonio non eget. Praesento vobis festi-
vun caput-Petroniumne dicam an Terentium nostrum?-Pelham Grenville
Wodehouse, Societatis Litterarum sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa
ad gradum Doctoris in litteris.
Source: P.G. Wodehouse - A Biography by Frances Donaldson