There are so many P.G. Wodehouse books in the world, and so many of them are sitting unread on my bookshelves, that I try not to buy more. But I think I must have been tempted by the intriguing title of Wodehouse’s Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, and I’m glad I did because it meant I could add it to the 1940 Club. It’s also one of his books that I’ve never seen anyone else mention, and that’s enough to make me wonder if I’ve stumbled across an overlooked gem among his vast canon.
Well, the title is fun, but completely irrelevant – it’s a collection of stories from a few different gentleman’s clubs, and Wodehouse has decided to delineate different anonymous members of the clubs by types of breakfast food. Is this a joke he did elsewhere? It’s never explained, and the different foods don’t seem to have any associated traits. Here, for instance, is the opening paragraph of the first story:
A Bean and a Crumpet were in the smoking-room of the Drones Club having a quick one before lunch, when an Egg who had been seated at the writing-table in the corner rose and approached them.
Perhaps he thought of the title first? Anyway, while these various figures are unnamed, most of the stories feature names that P.G. Wodehouse fans will recognise. The Drones Club, of course, appears in many collections of Wodehouse stories – and the first few stories in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets star one of their most prominent members, Bingo Little.
Bingo Little will also be familiar to readers of the Jeeves books. In those, he is perpetually falling in love with different women. By the time of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets he is happily married to a rich novelist. There is something sweet and unusual in Wodehouse about their genuinely affectionate love for one another – but the difficulty that inspires each of his stories is Rosie M. Banks’ (his wife) reluctance to give him any money. Bingo Little also needs money to pay debts, and his sure-fire way to earn it is to gamble on a horse so certain to win that it’s basically just collecting money. Except, of course, the horse always loses and Bingo Little gets himself into increasing difficulties – without, in these stories, Jeeves to save him.
Apparently other stories in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets will differ depending on whether you have the US or UK editions. In my UK edition, other familiar characters who appear in later stories are Ukridge and Mr Mulliner, and quite a few minor characters who recur in Ukridge stories. In some ways it doesn’t particularly matter who the story is about. These gentlemen do have different personalities, but the structure of each story is the same: they get themselves into some sort of fix, and then surprising coincidences help extricate them from it.
While I really enjoyed reading this for the 1940 Club, I think that is the reason I prefer Wodehouse at novel-length. Because there will only be one big denouement where all the pieces brilliantly fit into place, and the hero gets away with whatever risks and blunders they have found themselves in. In Eggs, Beans and Crumpets it was all very fun, but rather repetitive. The same patterns took place in every chapter, without long enough space for the plot to have got as brilliantly convoluted as Wodehouse does at his best.
But, while the plots felt hurried, the writing was as deliciously Wodehousian as ever. There is no equal for his mix of understatement, overstatement, and comic twists and turns of sentences. Even something like this is deliciously funny to me:
The Bean asked what the Bella Mae Jobson affair was, and the Crumpet, expressing surprise that he had not heard of it, said that it was the affair of Bella Mae Jobson.
I could type out the whole book, but here is just one more example – on the snobbery of ailments at a health spa:
The ancient Spartans, one gathers, were far from cordial towards their Helots, and the French aristocrat of pre-Revolution days tended to be a little stand-offish with his tenantry, but their attitude was almost back-slapping compared with that of – let us say – the man who has been out in Switzerland taking insulin for his diabetes towards one who is simply undergoing treatment from the village doc負or for an ingrowing toe-nail. And this was particularly so, of course, in those places where invalids collect in gangs – Baden-Baden, for example, or Hot Springs, Virginia, or, as in Sir Aylmer’s case, Droitgate Spa.
Wodehouse has never been equalled – he hasn’t even been imitated as much as you’d expect – and any time spent with him is reliably delightful. I doubt I’ll remember the details of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets and it isn’t a standout from his library of work – it certainly wouldn’t be one of the ones I’d recommend to a newcomer. But a mid-ranking Wodehouse is still a more entertaining experience than almost any other writer, and I enjoyed every moment.
