The Luck of the Bodkins


The Luck of the Bodkins is a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 11 October 1935 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 3 January 1936 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston. The two editions are significantly different, though the plot remains the same. The novel was serialised in The Passing Show magazine from 21 September to 23 November 1935, and this version was published as the UK edition. For its US magazine appearance, in the Red Book, between August 1935 and January 1936, Wodehouse re-wrote the story, reducing its length, and this became the US book edition.
The story concerns the complicated love life of amiable young Monty Bodkin, the nephew of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, who had previously appeared in Heavy Weather, when he was employed as the latest in the long line of Lord Emsworth's secretaries.
The plot of The Luck of the Bodkins continues into Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, in which Monty, the object of his affections, hockey-playing Gertrude Butterwick, and movie-mogul Ivor Llewellyn all return.

Plot

The story mostly takes place on an ocean liner, the RMS Atlantic, which picks up passengers at Southampton, England, and Cherbourg, France, then heads to New York in the United States. The journey takes a little over six days. Monty Bodkin is traveling to win back his fiancée Gertrude Butterwick, who ended their engagement without explanation. She is going to America to play hockey for England. Movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn is also on board. His wife Grayce, now in Paris but acting through her sister, osteopath Mabel Spence, wishes him to smuggle her new pearl necklace through Customs in the US to avoid paying duty. Gertrude's cousin Ambrose Tennyson has been hired to write for Ivor Llewellyn's film corporation, the Superba-Llewellyn, and his younger brother Reggie Tennyson is being sent by his family to Canada to work in an office there. Another passenger, Lottie Blossom, is a film actress for the Superba-Llewellyn and Ambrose's fiancée. Numerous comic misunderstandings occur throughout the novel, some inadvertently due to well-intentioned ship steward Albert Eustace Peasemarch.
Gertrude explains why she broke up with Monty. She had noticed a tattoo of the name "Sue" with a heart around it on his chest in a recent photograph of him in swimming costume, and thought the tattoo was new. After Monty explains that he unwisely got the tattoo more than three years ago, during his brief engagement to Sue Brown, Gertrude renews their engagement. Reggie and Mabel grow close after she uses osteopathy to treat his hangover. Llewellyn hears from Ambrose that Monty is a detective. Monty actually holds a nominal job with a detective agency solely because he needs to hold a job for a year to get Gertrude's father's consent to marry her, but Llewellyn does not know this and assumes Monty is a Customs spy. He tries to bribe Monty by offering him an acting job, but Monty hates acting and refuses, which concerns Llewellyn, who is nervous about being arrested for smuggling.
It is revealed that Llewellyn hired Ambrose Tennyson mistakenly thinking he was the more famous Tennyson. Mabel points out to Llewellyn that they are not the same person, though she later regrets telling him since this causes him to fire Ambrose. Ambrose does not want to rely on Lottie's money and will not marry her unless he has a job. Monty bought Gertrude a Mickey Mouse toy which opens to hold chocolates inside. Lottie takes the toy, and threatens Monty that she will tell Gertrude that Monty gave it to her if he does not accept Llewellyn's offer and insist that Ambrose be hired too. However, Gertrude ends her engagement to Monty again because Lottie appears to be close with Monty, and Gertrude does not believe Monty's explanations. Ambrose convinces Lottie to return the Mickey Mouse to Monty, though Monty believes that he has lost Gertrude for good anyway. This means he no longer needs a job, so he resigns from the detective agency. Reggie and Mabel are now engaged, and he wants to go with her to California. However, like his brother, he is unwilling to rely on his fiancée's money and needs a job. Llewellyn agrees with Mabel that he will hire Reggie to check the accuracy of his film sequences set in England, if Reggie smuggles the necklace for him.
In New York, everyone makes it past Customs. Reggie tells Llewellyn he hid the necklace in Monty's Mickey Mouse. Lottie explains to Gertrude that Monty's explanations were all true, and Gertrude reconciles with Monty. He needs a job again to marry her. With Mabel's help, Monty and Ambrose give Llewellyn the Mickey Mouse in exchange for jobs as a production expert and scenario writer, respectively. Llewellyn takes the toy and leaves. Peasemarch comes to see Monty and explains that he had found and confiscated the necklace, and the Mickey Mouse is actually empty. This worries Reggie. However, Peasemarch held onto the necklace because he did not want Monty to get in trouble, and he reveals that he has been carrying the necklace in his pocket. Wanting to celebrate with the others, Monty is delighted to learn from Lottie that prohibition was repealed and calls his hotel's room service to order champagne.

Characters

A comic effect is created by the incongruous combination of formal and informal language in Wodehouse's narrative passages, as in the beginning of the novel: "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." Before the first comma, the passage may be the beginning of a serious novel, but the sudden use of two colloquial words, "shifty" and "hangdog", prepares the reader for the semantic incongruity of the last part of the sentence.
The garrulous steward Albert Peasemarch combines a colloquial, informal manner of speaking with long, formal words, such as when he discovers highly "copperising" inscriptions on the wall written in "undeliable" pencil. Peasemarch uses malapropisms, such as when he says philosophically, "what helpless prawns we are in the clutches of a remorseless fate", and also mis-stresses words, as when he says "intricket". Similarly, Peasemarch makes several attempts to use French phrases. For example, he says "see jewness savvay" and "fam fatarl".

Publication history

The illustration on the first UK edition dust jacket was by "Abbey", and the illustration on the first US edition was by Alan Foster. The Luck of the Bodkins was published with illustrations by "Illingworth" in The Passing Show magazine. Alan Foster illustrated the story in Red Bfook.
Wodehouse's earlier 1922 novel The Girl on the Boat also involves a journey on the RMS Atlantic, going from New York to Southampton.

Adaptations

The story was adapted for radio in 2000 by Patricia Hooker, with Nicholas Boulton as Monty Bodkin, Jonathan Firth as Reggie, Eleanor Tremain as Gertrude, Lorelei King as Lottie, Peter Woodthorpe as Peasemarch, John Guerrasio as Ivor Llewellyn, Barbara Barnes as Mabel, and Ian Masters as Ambrose. It first aired on BBC Radio 4 on 17 June 2000 and was directed by Gordon House.