#he's just the one that'll find a way to do it more discreetly efficiently and deadly uwu

[hel-phoenyx]

"No, Oli, Domi, we do not try to get out of gambling debt with beating up your creditors."

"D:"

*pulling out a card game from his pocket* We're gonna scam them out of their money. No one is going to suspect me of cheating :)"

":D"

[funnuraba]

Regarding some of the more troubling stuff from PG Wodehouse: A Life in Letters: I would say ableism is the most persistent bigotry on display in his writing itself, but there are a couple of homophobic letters, and some racism that's about the same level you get in his books, except infinitely worse because it's about real people.

Frances Donaldson's biography excerpts some of his letters from his internment by the Nazis that just made me think "Oh my god, shut up, white man." The usual white British condescension, things like calling a Malay inmate "like a little monkey", and Life in Letters has him writing to a friend that he hears British authorities are instituting forced labor in a certain African territory: "That'll give them something to do besides jump up and down." (Referencing a film he saw of a Maasai jumping dance.)

As for the homophobia, there's this, first of all:

(PG Wodehouse, In His Own Words, quotes a similar sentiment:

As with the first example, this isn't a genuine accusation, but a general insult and expression of irritation. He considers "fairies" shrill and frivolous.

Then this entire letter is nasty, nasty stuff from beginning to end:

Hugh Walpole was gay, and it's clear that Plum was aware, because it starts out mocking the affectionate way Walpole addressed other men in his letters, then moves on to "Can you imagine a man keeping that diary of his?" There are two swipes in the joke diary entries: according to Wikipedia, Walpole used the word "friend" to discreetly describe the long-term partner he was looking for. Again, Wodehouse must have been perfectly aware, because of the "gazing into his eyes" part. Then "slapping Henry James' hand", imputing a very effeminate gesture to Walpole. Then at the end, back to more of the same, with a joking description of Walpole with a pink mustache.

There's also a line about Cole Porter that two people, including editor Sophie Ratcliffe, consider a reference to him being gay.

Porter was partying a lot at the time, making work difficult for his collaborators, but this is a nasty, evil thing to say about any gay man, and in this case his only crime was being an annoying colleague. I don't see any other reason for Wodehouse to bring up the Night of the Long Knives except as reference to Porter's homosexuality. Very shocking and unpleasant to read.

So what do we have here? According to his biographers, Wodehouse often visited a distant relative of his, Charles Le Strange, who was as openly, flamboyantly gay as one could be in those days, and they were on perfectly friendly terms. In fact, Le Strange's estate, Hunstanton Hall, shows up over and over in Wodehouse's work as inspiration for names and for his big country houses, including parts of his beloved Blandings. It seems that it was the usual case where a trait may be fine in your personal friends, but as soon as it's someone you don't like, it becomes free fuel to mock them.

He does the same thing with Jewish people. He rightly points out that he had tons of Jewish friends in his Broadway days, and I consider his antisemitism pretty mild compared to many people in those days, particularly after WWII when he started eliminating stereotypes that had crept into his early work. But when he doesn't like someone, as with a Jewish man who was (allegedly) skiving in the internment camp to get better treatment from the Nazis, every reference to him is "the Jew, the Jew, the Jew". (Again, the charges of this man deliberately pulling stunts to get extra food, leaving others with fewer rations, was imputed to him by the other prisoners and I find them extremely dubious given the circumstances.)

Did he improve on his racism towards anyone with skin darker than, say, the Efficient Baxter, who, while white, appears to be about the limit of tolerable darkness judging from the constant reference to his "swarthy" skin? I can't tell. There's one letter from 1971 where someone working in a stage adaptation of his work has advised him, "You can't casually joke about whipping Ethiopian slaves anymore" and he says, "Okay, cut the line." And in another letter, he talks very casually about the minstrel blackface subplot, but has upgraded from describing it with a slur to using the term that was preferred for Black people at the time. One of his favorite lines for Lady Constance is describing her as Cleopatra dealing with Nubian or Ethiopian slaves; by the 1970s Blandings stories, I believe the latter half was no longer appearing, leaving her as just Cleopatra.

So, mild but minimal progress.