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First published as a serial in the satirical magazine 'Punch' and then turned into a short novel, this Victorian classic pokes gentle fun at Mr Pooter, a middle clerk Victorian working as a clerk in a London office. It records the trials of working with unreliable tradespeople - the laundress loses socks and bleaches coloured handkerchiefs, the eggs from the grocer aren't fresh etc - and the antics of a wayward son who loses his job almost as often as he falls in love. Despite what Michael Irwin says (in the Introduction to my edition, a Wordsworth Classics paperback) the humour is essentially fuelled by snobbery: we are invited to laugh at Mr Pooter's pretensions and pomposity as he is regularly brought down to earth ("I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat."; Ch 12) or discovering a tradesman at the Lord Mayor's Ball or being snubbed at a dinner party. He is fundamentally a social climber and we are invited to mock him. He is like a diluted version of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) in the BBC TB sitcom 'Keeping Up Appearances'. Perhaps it was funnier back in the days but I have laughed far more at The Diary of Adrian Mole or Nobody's more or less exact contemporary Three Men in a Boat.
The funniest things are the dreadful jokes, mostly based on word-play, such as: "I hoped it would not be long before I knew Mr Short. He evidently did not see my little joke, although I repeated it twice with a little laugh." (Ch 19)
I was disappointed at the ending which seemed to arrive like a bolt out of the blue brought about by a deus ex machina.
George Grossmith was the leading man in the first productions of many of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas playing, among other roles, The First Lord of the Admiralty in HMS Pinafore, the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance, and the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado.
May 2024; 169 pages
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