For years and years now, P. G. Wodehouse has remained one of my favourite authors of all time, and each time I revisit one of his works, I am astounded by his wit and brilliance all over again! Part of the “School” series, Tales of St. Austin’s is a collection of short stories and essays set in the fictional public school of St. Austin’s. It deals with life in an all-boys’ school, which includes cricket, rugby, small favours and of course the ever-popular theme of successful ways to skip classes or score one over the teacher!
I really cannot pick one or even a few favourites from the 12 short stories. There were memorable moments in all of them. When Mr. Mellish announces an examination in Livy with less than a week’s notice, it makes Pillingshot “annoyed… disgusted, mortified… He would have liked to have stalked up to Mr. Mellish’s desk, fixed him with a blazing eye, and remarked, ‘Sir, withdraw that remark. Cancel that statement instantly, or--!’ or words to that effect. What he did say was: ‘Oo, si-i-r!!’” And that’s the start of this series, which goes to depict the trials and tribulations of the St. Austin’s student. We see Pillingshot manoeuvre events to legitimately miss a test; we see Philip St H. Harrison always find subtle yet effective means of avenging himself of ‘unfair’ treatment (read, punishment for flouncing rules); we see Uncle John’s entire character described, raised and debunked just through letters exchanged between Richard Venables, his brother Archibald Venables, their father Major-General Sir Everard Venables, and his sister Mrs. James Anthony (nee Miss Dorothy Venables); we see Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw (got to love the fantastic names!) almost get away from an Euripides exam and actually get away from a Thucydides paper; we see J. S. M. Babington and Mr. Seymour’s cat and mouse game in a story about “wholly undeserved good luck”; and we see an annual poetry prize reveal a dark and sordid tale of sickness, bribery and deception.
Of the four Essays, “Notes” was my favourite. Starting with criticism of “the master who forces the human boy to take down notes from dictation”, the essay goes on to describe different types of notes, from the useful to the convoluted to those that are written purely with a view to air one’s vanity, the following example being the very simplest of this kind: “‘See line 80.’ You look up line 80, hoping to see a translation, and there you are told that a rather similar construction occurs in Xenophades’ Lyrics from a Padded Cell.”
This was one of Wodehouse’s first series (appearing in 1903 in a compiled form) and - having read a large majority of his life’s work - I can see the seeds of brilliance that would flower in the years and decades to come! While not quite uniformly ‘laugh out loud’ funny like some of his later works, there was a soft but persistent hint of gentle comedy right through, with bursts of guffaws every now and then!
As far as I can recollect, Tales of St. Austin’s was one of the first Wodehouse books I read, and while I consider the ‘Jeeves’ series the best, I will always revisit these tales for nostalgic comfort as much as comic relief. It reminds me of my early childhood, when I harboured a deep-seated desire to be a boarding house student, as opposed to the day scholar that I was, based on amazing stories like this and - prior to this - Enid Blyton’s school stories such as The Malory Towers series and The St. Clare’s series!
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