PG Wodehouse in Hong Kong
Posted: September 30th, 2010 | 2 Comments »OK – this is one of those posts where you all go, ‘what? you didn’t know that!’
Stuck in Hong Kong airport courtesy of Typhoon Fanapi trying to get back to Shanghai last week. Faced with a long delay I walk into the bookshop and buy Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles figuring he’s entertaining enough to make a delay a pleasure (and it worked too!). Enjoyed it so much that got home and looked up Fry’s old Jeeves and Wooster show on Tudou, source of all illegal TV for me – they’ve got it (here). While watching laugh to myself that the day before, wasting time in Hong Kong University Library, I had been reading reports of cases of pirates in Hong Kong coming up before the stern British judge called Wodehouse.
A Hong Kong typhoon – Stephen Fry – Jeeves and Wooster – PG Wodehouse – a judge called Wodehouse in 19th century Hong Kong – a lovely bit of coincidence
Except of course that Henry Ernest Wodehouse(1845–1929), who received the CMG, was indeed a British judge in Hong Kong. His, and wife Eleanor’s, third son was christened Pelham Grenville. Though born in the rather boring surroundings of Guilford, young Pelham Grenville did go to Hong Kong and lived there until he was four, not really enough time to get to know the Colony or for it to leave any particular mark on the young PG the way it did with other British writers who spent part of their youth in China such as JG Ballard and his Shanghai years feeding his modernism or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast (spookily the 2000 TV adaptation of which featured Stephen Fry I believe) clearly revealing his early years in the British Concession of Tientsin and visitng the Forbidden City in Peking.
No – sadly Jeeves and Bertie Wooster owe nothing to Hong Kong but Pelham Grenville’s old man laid down the law on the barren rock between 1869 and 1895.
Actually, there is no evidence at all for Peake ever having visited the Forbidden City; his father did though, once, and he took some photographs. On the other hand, Peake’s parents married in Hong Kong (31 Dec 1903).
Peter, thanks for that. I am in no way a Peake aficionado and actually not a great fan of fantasy stuff like Gormenghast – all I know is he spent some time at Tientsin Grammar in what is now Tianjin, which was of course, a tight knit concession. I have simply read elsewhere suggestions that the Forbidden City inspired his work later.