Mulliner Nights: Summary & Reading Guide

The family grows stranger after dark

Mulliner Nights is the third principal collection of Mr Mulliner’s tales and another nine-story invitation to the Anglers’ Rest. The narrator’s family appears inexhaustible, and his belief that every topic has a relevant relation remains wholly intact. The book ranges across troublesome pets, literary ambition, old voices, open houses and the apparently small social tests that can become enormous in a Wodehouse story. A returning reader already knows the pleasure of a conversational opening turning into a full comic account. A newcomer can begin here too, though Meet Mr Mulliner gives a clearer introduction to the habitual host and his audience.

“The Smile That Wins” starts the sequence; “The Story of Webster” and “Cats Will Be Cats” make room for animals and their effects on human behaviour. “The Knightly Quest of Mervyn” has a particular history beyond its title. “The Voice from the Past,” “Open House,” “Best Seller,” “Strychnine in the Soup” and “Gala Night” complete the collection. Each title leads to an independent tale. The family theme is not a demand to track a single domestic saga from one chapter to the next. It is Mr Mulliner’s wonderfully flexible way of assuring the listener that he has known a person who encountered just such a difficulty.

“The Knightly Quest of Mervyn” is a good example of that flexibility at the level of text. Its earlier magazine version, titled “Quest,” centred on Freddie Widgeon; Wodehouse rewrote it as a Mulliner story for the book. The specialist bibliography says the original differs materially in its beginning and conclusion, and notes that it later appeared in book form in 1975. That original is not simply a spare chapter from this 1933 collection. A reader comparing them will encounter a work reshaped for a different character and narrative family. A responsible collection record should name the connection and keep the versions distinct.

“Best Seller” has another long trail: the book story revisits Wodehouse’s earlier “Parted Ways,” with the Mulliner frame added for the volume. This gives an extra gleam to a tale about the fortunes of writing. The storyteller’s family claims can accommodate material conceived years before the collection’s publication. I find this reuse interesting because it shows revision as a creative act, not merely a publisher’s tidying of a manuscript. The change of frame affects how an audience hears a tale. What might have been an independent comic episode becomes an instance in Mr Mulliner’s accumulated knowledge of relations and their predicaments.

The first UK book came from Herbert Jenkins on 17 January 1933; Doubleday, Doran published the US book on 15 February. All nine stories had previously appeared in the Strand and in either American Magazine or Cosmopolitan. Several magazine titles differ from the collected ones. “The Story of Webster,” for example, had been “The Bishop’s Cat,” while “Cats Will Be Cats” had appeared as “The Bishop’s Folly.” “Strychnine in the Soup” had a different magazine title too. It is useful to record such variants without implying that nine new books hide behind the story titles. The original volume is one collection containing nine pieces with separate histories.

What makes the set enjoyable as a third visit is the ease of the voice. Mr Mulliner can treat a relative’s most implausible adventure as if it naturally follows from a fellow drinker’s brief remark. Wodehouse gives the bar-parlour the ritual familiarity of a stage: a speaker, an audience and a cue. The story then travels far beyond the room. When it returns, the narrator’s confidence is undisturbed. The listeners have heard a startling account and perhaps learned something, though not necessarily the lesson they expected. I enjoy the social comedy of the frame as much as the central tales. An interruption at the pub can become an entire evening’s entertainment.

This volume completes a useful introductory trio, but Mr Mulliner’s voice and family do not end here. Other collections contain his narratives, including stories in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere with a Hollywood setting. That later crossing is a reminder that a series shelf is an aid, not a prison. Wodehouse’s recurring storytellers move across publishing categories, and a fan site should let links reflect the actual book a story inhabits. The initial three volumes can be read in publication order; individual episodes can still stand alone. The combination makes them ideal books to return to between long novels.

If you have enjoyed the earlier collections, listen here for the way a familiar telling device makes room for stories with quite different origins. If this is your first, begin with any title whose predicament appeals, then visit Meet Mr Mulliner for the opening of the Anglers’ Rest tradition. I particularly like the sense that the family’s range has become a comic fact nobody in the room can reasonably challenge. The more unexpected the subject, the more likely Mr Mulliner is to know somebody who once found himself in exactly that position. The book’s title promises an evening of tales, and the nine distinct stories make it one that can be prolonged over several sittings.