The Luck of the Bodkins: Summary & Reading Guide

Monty Bodkin boards a liner with a very crowded itinerary

Monty Bodkin’s feelings for Gertrude Butterwick are strong enough to send him aboard the S.S. Atlantic, but the crossing introduces all the difficulties a Wodehouse reader might hope for. Film star Lotus Blossom, a movie mogul, novelist Ambrose Tennyson and his brother Reggie are among the travellers. Gertrude’s sporting resolve adds a different kind of determination. Even a mouse doll becomes a possible hiding place. The confined ship turns separate ambitions into a shared problem, and Monty must keep track of what others believe about him while trying to make his own romance advance.

The voyage is a satisfying continuation for readers who met Monty in Heavy Weather, where he first appeared amid the Blandings company. His connection to that book should not misfile this novel as a Blandings episode. The Atlantic is its own social stage, and Monty’s pursuit of Gertrude is its romantic centre. Later, Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin will return to this thread after a long interval in Wodehouse’s career. The three books form a character route, but each has a distinct setting and publication history. I like the chance to follow Monty without insisting that every appearance belong to a numbered series.

Lotus Blossom’s Hollywood interests pull the shipboard comedy towards another industry. She sees Monty as a possible way to repair a relationship with Ambrose Tennyson, while a confusion involving Tennyson’s name creates opportunities of its own. The film world offers contracts, celebrity and exaggerated impressions of literary prestige. Reggie’s money troubles and Ikey Llewellyn’s difficulties give still more reasons for passengers to seek advantage. A cruise permits them to retreat to a cabin for a plan and return to a deck where the very person they hoped to avoid is taking the air.

Gertrude is more than a fixed point in Monty’s pursuit. She has her own expectations, and the novel’s fun depends on Monty’s efforts to satisfy them amid circumstances that continually produce bad appearances. Wodehouse can make a man’s innocent movement across a liner seem incriminating when it is witnessed by the wrong passenger. Monty’s problems are not solved by protesting sincerity loudly enough. He has to navigate an entire network of other people’s purposes, from Hollywood business to romantic jealousy. The reader knows that his affection is substantial, which makes each fresh misunderstanding a pleasure rather than a reason to abandon him.

The British first book was issued by Herbert Jenkins on 11 October 1935. Little, Brown published the American edition on 3 January 1936. The difference is more than dates and publisher names. After a planned American magazine sale failed, Wodehouse shortened and rewrote the story for Red Book; that shorter version became the US book. The UK and US texts differ significantly, although they tell essentially the same story. An unqualified claim that one is simply the other with American spelling would obscure a real choice for readers and collectors.

The serial history adds another layer. The Passing Show ran the British version in 1935, while Red Book published the revised shorter American text across 1935 and 1936. A reader comparing passages should therefore identify both medium and region. Even if you have no intention of collating editions, it is useful to know why an encounter recalled from one copy may not have exactly the same length or shape in another. This is one of those Wodehouse books where the edition label belongs in the conversation, not merely in a small-print bibliography at the bottom.

The props and trades aboard the liner are delightfully various. A hidden item in a doll suggests a miniature mystery; a film contract suggests the vast machinery of Hollywood; a romantic explanation suggests the old difficulty of finding a private moment on a public deck. Wodehouse brings these scales together without requiring the reader to solve a formal detective puzzle. I return for the way an apparently harmless object can acquire several meanings as it passes among people who have different information. The ship cannot make its passengers honest, but it makes the consequences of their manoeuvres harder to escape.

This is a good choice for someone wanting a full-length Wodehouse farce with motion, music-hall bustle and a romantic hero under continuous observation. Read Heavy Weather first if you want Monty’s introduction, or begin here for the shipboard adventure. Make a note of whether your copy follows the longer British or shorter American book text, then enjoy the voyage on its own terms. Lotus, Gertrude and the Tennysons give Monty more than enough to handle before the later sequel arrives, and the S.S. Atlantic is an excellent vessel for carrying everybody’s plans towards collision.

A cruise gives the reader a clock as well as a stage. The crossing will end, so Monty’s explanations cannot be postponed for ever. Other passengers may make plans for a life after arrival, but they have to survive shared meals and public passages first. The pressure of that temporary community gives the novel its buoyant pace and makes every interruption of a private romantic conversation more exasperating for Monty and more delightful for us.