Heavy Weather: Summary & Reading Guide

Ten days later, the manuscript is still dangerous

Heavy Weather is the sequel I most want to place immediately behind Summer Lightning on a physical shelf. In story time, the second novel follows the first after a short interval; Gally’s memoirs and the tensions around Blandings remain live. A reader who remembers who fears those reminiscences gains instant pleasure from the return. At the same time, Wodehouse changes the mix by bringing Monty Bodkin into the castle’s orbit. Lord Emsworth remains devoted to the Empress, his relatives remain capable of treating the house as a strategic position, and a written record of youthful adventures remains potentially ruinous. The weather of the title suits a place in which everybody seems to be waiting for a different storm.

The memoir manuscript is a superb device because its threat does not depend on anybody reading it aloud. A rumour about what Gally might reveal is enough to make respectable people behave suspiciously. The object can be moved or hidden, but the memories behind it cannot be recalled. That difference keeps the chase comic rather than merely mechanical. Gally enjoys the authority of knowing his own past and other people’s. Those other people would prefer to edit the future before the past is printed. As in many of Wodehouse’s best plots, a proposed act of publication makes privacy into a contest. The castle has plenty of doors, but remarkably few places where an anxious motive can stay concealed.

Monty’s arrival gives the younger generation another angle. He is trying to make his way through a social world in which employment, romance and reputation are connected. A book that only described Emsworth, Gally and the Empress would miss the way Wodehouse keeps new people moving through familiar rooms. Ronnie Fish and Sue Brown retain the interest established in the previous novel. Their presence gives the sequel emotional continuity, while fresh complications prevent it from simply repeating the pig affair. I would read the pair in order if possible. Heavy Weather is intelligible alone, but Summer Lightning teaches the reader why certain names and documents can make a room suddenly tense.

Lord Emsworth’s peaceful ideal is once again at odds with the house in which he lives. He wants attention paid to the Empress and would rather avoid the negotiations occupying his relatives. The comedy of Blandings is not that he lacks a serious interest; it is that his serious interest is ranked differently by everyone else. The more urgently they treat a manuscript or a marriage, the more he may think about the pig. That contrast makes him a gently rebellious presence in his own home. It also makes the Empress a continuing figure rather than a single novel’s novelty. A fan may smile before she even enters a scene, knowing how quickly Emsworth’s attention can turn toward her.

Wodehouse is especially good at keeping a sequel mobile. A continuation can spend too long reminding readers of the previous instalment, or assume they recall every detail. Heavy Weather finds its own pace by making present decisions count. A visitor must act on what is known now. A relative must decide whether to trust Gally. An apparently safe arrangement may change when another person enters the grounds. The reader’s prior knowledge is a pleasure added to the action, not a prerequisite for decoding each page. On a rereading, I enjoy tracing how much of the pressure comes from something that happened in Summer Lightning and how much from a new person’s perfectly understandable misjudgment.

The book’s publication trail is simpler in title than its predecessor’s but not identical in format. Heavy Weather appeared in an American magazine serial before the first book editions. Little, Brown issued the American book on 28 July 1933; Herbert Jenkins issued the British book on 10 August. A serial instalment and a complete novel are different reading objects, and the annotated pagination helps anyone comparing passages. The earlier Summer Lightning had a different US book title, Fish Preferred; Heavy Weather itself retained its name in the first regional books. When two adjacent novels have distinct publishing histories, a combined modern volume or an adaptation can easily blur their boundaries. I keep the original titles and dates visible for that reason.

If you are choosing a first Blandings book, Something Fresh introduces the castle; Summer Lightning gives the pig and the crowded family machinery a central role. Heavy Weather is an excellent second Blandings novel for someone who has already enjoyed that summer. If you begin here, pay attention to Gally’s manuscript, the Empress and the younger people’s hopes. You will soon understand why a supposedly serene country house is full of purposeful movement. The novel is never only about recovering or suppressing a document. It is about the different lives that might be altered if the document is allowed to speak, and the different comic plans people invent to prevent that possibility.

I keep returning to the tone. The danger of Gally’s reminiscences is genuine to the characters, but the reader can trust Wodehouse to turn fear of exposure into an occasion for ingenuity. Emsworth’s absorption in the Empress is funny, yet the book lets him remain lovable. Monty and the returning young lovers give the story forward motion. Beach and the castle household provide the quiet practical background against which grand family schemes must unfold. The “heavy weather” is a series of social forecasts, revised whenever new information arrives. Reading the two novels together is like spending a longer season at Blandings, with just enough time between crises for everybody to believe that calm has returned.