[1] He is intensively protective of Sir Watkyn's daughter, Madeline Bassett, having loved her for many years without telling her. Such menacing is brought to an end thanks to a typically clever intervention from Jeeves and in one of the most satisfying speeches in the western canon, when Bertie declares: The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think youre someone. Wodehouse had to write. It is that All very genial that distinguishes Wodehouse from the irritable rest of us, while the observation of the fit from smoking tea shows that he isnt oblivious, or deranged. They are trolls. Second, Gussie has insulted Spode in a notebook, writing that Spode's mustache was "like the faint discoloured smear left by a squashed blackbeetle on the side of a kitchen sink", and that the way Spode eats asparagus "alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word. And the black-white-red of his banners seems also to imitate Hitler, not to mention the brown shirts. They comprise the small, but enthusiastic, audience to whom Spode makes loud, dramatic speeches in which he announces bizarre statements of policy, such as giving each citizen at birth a British-made bicycle and umbrella . There is a strong liberal spirit running through the whole series. [2] Bertie immediately thinks of Spode as "the Dictator" even before he learns of Spode's political ambitions. Spode, who does not want his followers to learn about his career as a designer of ladies' lingerie, is forced not to bother Bertie or Gussie. He leaves the group after he inherits his title. Welcome back. The United States was not yet in the war, and we now know that the German Foreign Office saw the release of Wodehouse, who was beloved in America, as propaganda designed to keep the U.S. out of the war. The two men feature in novels and stories that make up more than a dozen books. He was nearly sixty when he was released. A Dictator! and a Dictator he had proved to be. Jeeves gets Wooster out of tangles. In The Code of the Woosters, when Spode advances to attack Gussie, Gussie manages to hit him on the head with an oil painting. Gussie leaves Madeline for Emerald, and Spode proposes to Madeline. He should obviously have been bedded out in the stables., Dont you ever read the papers? P.G. Wodehouse Knew the Way: Fight Fascism with Humor - Article by [11], In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, which takes place at Aunt Dahlia's country house, Brinkley Court, Spode has recently become Lord Sidcup. After two years, he decided that he could make a living by his pen alone. All Quotes He sells the stuff to man for 83 pfennigs and man is very satisfied. Wodehouse, and hilariously portrayed in the 1990s TV adaptation starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. I suppose even Dictators have their chummy moments, when they put their feet up and relax with the boys, but it was plain from the outset that if Roderick Spode had a sunnier side, he had not come with any idea of exhibiting it now. Welcome back. The Oddest Terms Used for Antique Books, Explained. There are lots of political fools. Within days, he was asked by the German Foreign Office if he would record some radio broadcasts for American audiences. Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. This should also give a more consistent style and cover age (as copied from the small articles, you'll see quite a disparity between them) - Just zis Guy, you know? He frequently writes about difficulties in his camp notebook, just never at much length. [8] Despite Spode becoming Lord Sidcup, Bertie usually thinks of him as Spode, at one point addressing him as "Lord Spodecup". But the Code of the Woosters has a message for us here, too. What a dream! Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. That meanness and cruelty so often accompany an inability to understand comedy. One favorite plot hinges on a banjolele. One thinksif one has been reading a lot of Wodehouseof those ducks elegantly moving across the water, as their duck feet paddle furiously, unseen below the surface. How about when you are asleep?, But when I say 'cow', dont go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow., I dont mind people talking rot in my presence, but it must not be utter rot., She was standing by the barometer, which, if it had had an ounce of sense in its head, would have been pointing to 'Stormy' instead of 'Set Fair, a chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him., Scotties are smelly, even the best of them. But here in 2016, it seems more vital than ever. "[3] Bertie learns how accurate his initial impression of Spode was when Gussie tells him that Spode is the leader of a fascist group called the Saviours of Britain, also known as the Black Shorts. He quickly starts to think of Bertie as a thief, believing that Bertie was trying to steal Sir Watkyn's umbrella and also the silver cow-creamer from a shop. and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. Met cook and congratulated him on todays soup, he writes. Far from gruntled John Turner as Roderick Spode and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster in ITVs Jeeves and Wooster. Talk:Roderick Spode - Wikipedia The English reading public mostly defended Wodehouse: it wasnt fair to speculate. Under normal circumstances, people like the stately-home hopping Bertie Wooster may not be the most natural political allies for most Guardianistas. A large and intimidating figure, Spode is protective of Madeline Bassett to an extreme degree and is a threat to anyone who appears to have wronged her, particularly Gussie Fink-Nottle. And here he is proposing mandatory bicycles and umbrellas for all free-born Britons. Thats how Wodehouse presented his fascist just as a silly distraction whose only value is a good joke. It is hard to know where to begin to explain what a crass judgment that was. Later, Spode reappears at the country house to which Wooster has strategically been deployed by his aunt, who is trying to secure funds for Miladys Boudoir, the literary magazine she runs. Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character from the Jeeves novels of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a Nazi Sympathizer, an amateur dictator and the leader of a fictional fascist group in London called The Black Shorts. Or at least was in the room while they were on. Roderick Spode is a character who makes appearances at odd times, making speeches to his couple dozen followers, blabbing on in the park and bamboozling nave passersby, blowing up at people, practicing his demagogic delivery style. 129.241.62.157 (talk) 17:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]. : 21: The Plot Thickens", "Classic Serial: The Code of The Woosters", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roderick_Spode&oldid=1150150913, Fascist politician and designer of ladies' lingerie, later Earl of Sidcup, This page was last edited on 16 April 2023, at 16:01. I no longer think so. A week after Wodehouse was released, the journalist William Connor, writing under the pseudonym Cassandra, suggested in the Daily Mirror that Wodehouses early release had been part of an unsavory deal. At one point, Wooster tells Sir Roderick: "The trouble with you, Spode, is that because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of halfwits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. In his second broadcast, he writes of going to sleep on the floor of his cramped cell: My last waking thought, I remember, was that, while this was a hell of a thing to have happened to a respectable old gentleman in his declining years, it was all pretty darned interesting and that I could hardly wait to see what the morrow would bring forth., Wodehouses novels focus almost exclusively on the madcap troubles of the perilously leisured. He was separated from his wife. [3], In Bertie's eyes, Spode starts at seven feet tall, and seems to grow in height, eventually becoming nine feet seven. The scandal of the broadcasts didnt diminish. He perfectly captures the bluster, blather, and preposterous intellectual conceit of the interwar aspiring dictator. Madeline accepts Spode's proposal. Gussie says of Spode, "His general idea, if he doesn't get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator. Its a private notebook, after all. Sir Patrick was strongly against it, not only on the grounds that it would revive the controversy about Wodehouse's broadcasts during the war, but for this reason: "It would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate.". It was a reason so preposterous, so fantastically silly, that it would take the comic genius of the Master himself - the "head of our profession", as Hilaire Belloc called Wodehouse - to do full justice to its absurdity. He admitted as much himself, writing in May 1945: "I made an ass of myself and must pay the penalty." When Bertie Wooster rebukes Spode in The Code of the Woosters (1938), he mocks Spode's black shorts, calling them "footer bags" (football shorts): "It is about time", I proceeded, "that some public-spirited person came along and told you where you got off. (I think that image may even come from a Wodehouse novel, but which one?) He seemed to think that when they read Wodehouse's books, they would run away with the idea that life in Britain was as he described it: that this was a country full of half-witted toffs with brilliant manservants, their brains swollen by fish, a land of terrifying aunts and eccentric earls, gazing in rapt admiration at their prize pigs. Sergeant comes among us, patting our pockets to see we arent pinching any! Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Bertie does not learn the true meaning of "Eulalie" until the end of the story. by the popliteal unpleasantness. One of the squad has an apoplectic fit and keels over. The tangles are perennially gentle: Wooster gets engaged to a girl he doesnt want to marry, or is thought to have stolen a silver cow creamer that he has not stolen (though later will be pressured to steal).
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