As America remained neutral until 8 December 1941, Wodehouse was able to send brief communications to his family through his agent, Reynolds.
TO PAUL REYNOLDS
Berlin
RCA Radiogram Telegram
Nov 18. 1941
TELL LEONORA ETHEL WELL GIVE HER OUR LOVE
PLEASE CABLE AMERICAN REACTION TO MY SERIAL1
HOPE WELL RECEIVED REGARDS
WODEHOUSE
1 Money in the Bank had just been serialised in the Saturday Evening Post.
TO PAUL R. REYNOLDS
Adlon Hotel
Berlin
Nov 27. 1941
Dear Reynolds.
Thanks so much for your cable, telling me that the reaction to the serial had been favourable. I had visions of people writing to Stout asking him how he dared print a story by the outcast Wodehouse.1 It really looks as if all that fuss that happened in the summer has subsided. You know, I still cannot fathom the mystery of that article of mine in the S.E.P. You said in your letter of June 17, 1941 ‘The Post was very pleased with your article’, and I got a cable from Stout not more than a month later, which ended ‘Your article strongly resented by many’. Why anyone should resent a harmless humorous article about men in camp growing beards and servers at meals hitting the bowl with the fish stew four times out of five, it is beyond me to imagine. Evidently the Post people didn’t on June 17. Amazing that an article which pleased them at the end of June should have roused indignation at the end of July. It seemed to me, when I wrote it, that I was doing something mildly courageous and praiseworthy in showing that it was possible, even though in a prison camp, to keep one’s end up and not bellyache.
It is a great relief to learn that Money in the Bank has gone well. Things are looking very bright as regards my Art. My wife, when she joined me in July, brought along the Jeeves novel which I was working on when I was interned, and I have now finished it and, if I can manage it, will ship it over to you […]. I have also written half of a new novel about Lord Emsworth and his pig, called Full Moon. This I have shelved for the time being in order to work on a book of Camp reminiscences. This will be good, but shortish. Could you let me know the minimum length for a book of this type.
[…]
Also, do you think it ought to be published while the war is still on? If people in America resented that article in the S.E. Post, they would presumably resent a book of the same tone. It is very funny, a little vulgar in spots, and contains a chapter where I state my case to my English critics and – I hope – make them feel pretty foolish. […]
(A man from Tauchnitz has just phoned up from the lobby and wants to see me, so must stop for the moment.)
The man from Tauchnitz turned out to be a charming girl.2
Do you know Berlin at all? It is a very attractive city and just suits me because I am fond of walking and the sidewalks are very wide and not too many cross-streets. We have the Tiergarten, a park rather like the Bois du Boulogne, just outside the hotel, – invaluable for exercising the Peke.
Best wishes to you all
Yours ever
P. G. Wodehouse
P.S. Will you please on receipt of this send to the Reilly and Lee Co, 325 West Huron Street, Chicago, the sum of One Thousand dollars and chalk it up to me on the slate. Tell them to hold it for Edward Delaney. Important.3
P.P.S. The chocolates and tobacco arrived very intermittently, presumably owing to difficulties of transport. I received two pounds of tobacco at intervals and, I think, four lots of chocolate. By the way, don’t slacken off on these parcels because I am now out of camp. I need them just as much as ever.
[…]
1 Wesley Stout, editor of the Saturday Evening Post.
2 Tauchnitz was a publishing firm based in Leipzig, producing English-language versions of books for the Continental market. Wodehouse had been working with them since 1924.
3 Edward Delaney, also staying in the Adlon at this time, was an American who was employed by the Germans to broadcast Nazi propaganda to the US, under the pseudonym ‘E. D. Ward’. He was indicted for treason in 1943, but released due to a lack of evidence. Reynolds, in fact, did not transfer PGW’s funds, noting that Delaney was a ‘prisoner of the enemy’, and was subsequently informed by the FBI that Delaney was a Nazi representative. Reynolds’ son later noted that ‘presumably the Nazis gave Wodehouse $1000 in German marks and asked him to have us send $1000 to Delaney in Chicago. Wodehouse had no reason to believe that he was asking us to do something that might be harmful to the United States or to England’ (Reynolds Jr, Diary of a Middle Man (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1972), p. 112).
By July 1, Wodehouse’s broadcasts were under discussion in the House of Commons, and the question was aired as to whether he could be subject to prosecution under the Treachery Act. Wesley Stout, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, had sent an appalled telegram to Wodehouse: ‘MONEY IN BANK GOOD. EAGER TO BUY BUT CAN ONLY ON YOUR EXPLICIT ASSURANCE THAT YOU WILL NOT BROADCAST FROM GERMANY EUROPE OR OTHERWISE ACT PUBLICLY IN MANNER WHICH CAN BE CONSTRUED AS SERVING NAZI ENDS […]’. Stout had also written to Paul Reynolds noting that Wodehouse had ‘alienated’ his readers and that he felt he would be ‘a liability to The Post’, adding in a later letter: ‘Our own belief is that he traded himself out of prison camp with his eyes open.’
TO WESLEY STOUT
Adlon Hotel
Berlin
Nov 29. 1941
My Dear Stout.
I have just had a cable from Reynolds, saying that the reaction in America to Money in the Bank has been ‘extremely favorable’, which is a great weight off my mind, as I have naturally been worrying since your cables of July.
I am still bewildered about that article of mine in the Post. You cabled me that it had been ‘strongly resented by many’, and I can’t understand what there was in it that could have offended people. I read it as a paper in the camp to an audience of several hundred, all rabid patriots, and had them rolling in the aisles. And they not only laughed, but applauded and cheered. So what can have been wrong with it? I must say that when I wrote it I felt a little complacently that I was keeping my end up by being humorous about camp life and not beefing, but from what you say people in America must have resented this tone. But surely all that stuff about growing beards and the servers dishing out the fish stew was harmless. I wish you would write and tell me exactly why it was resented.
The great joy of being out of the camp is that I am now able to see an occasional Post. I get them only in driblets, when somebody happens to have one, and I have to make what I can of the serials by reading installments two, six and seven – the last I saw of Budington Kelland’s Silver Spoon hero was him facing a peeved gangster (to be concluded), and I suppose I never shall get around to knowing how it all came out. Still, even an occasional Post is a godsend after an abstinence of nearly two years.
My Art is flourishing like the family of an Australian rabbit. I have in my desk, complete to the last comma, a Jeeves novel called Joy in the Morning, – and when I say a Jeeves novel, I mean the supreme Jeeves novel of all time. This is the one I was writing when I was interned, and I have now been able to finish it. In addition to this, I have written half of a Blandings Castle novel called Full Moon, so funny that it will be almost dangerous to publish it. The rest is all scenarioed out, and I can finish it in a month or so. I don’t know why it was, but having to write in pencil in camp seemed to inspire me.
Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
P. G. Wodehouse
The Baroness von Bodenhausen was engaged to her cousin, Raven von Barnikow, whom Wodehouse had known in Hollywood and met in Berlin. Although he served in the Luftwaffe, Barnikow was fervently anti-Nazi. As he became aware of the German treatment of the Jews, Barnikow became deeply depressed. He had refused to fight on the Western Front, had taken to drinking heavily, and was briefly sent for rehabilitation in various hospitals in Berlin.
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Adlon Hotel
Berlin
Dec 24. 1941
Dearest Anga.
Just a line to let you know we are thinking of you all and hoping you will have a happy Christmas. I don’t suppose the children have learned enough English to read enclosed, so will you read them and give them our love and a lot of kisses.
It must be heavenly on Rügen Island.1 Everything is very quiet at the Adlon now, which I enjoy. Ethel went to see Raven yesterday, and thinks he seems ever so much better. He is very quiet, of course, and not in his usual spirits, but that is only to be expected. The great thing is that his health seems good again and I feel sure he has got over his bad time. We were going to see him the day before, but he was off to the pictures, which seems a good sign that he is better and taking an interest in things. When you consider the terrible shock he has had, I think he has made splendid progress.
[…]
Werner has at last got us a radio, but we can only get Breslau on it! Still, that is better than nothing.
Ethel is busy dressing for our luncheon party, and has just shouted through the door to give you her love. So here it is, with lots of love from me and Wonder, and a hope that 1942 may see us all happy and you back on Holland Estates shooting rhinoceroses!2
Yours ever
Plummie
1 The Baroness’s father had a castle on Rügen Island in the Baltic.
2 ‘Holland Estates’ – the Baroness’s two farms in Tanganyika, Africa, which she and her late husband had bought in 1932.
By March 1942, Wodehouse was longing to return to the peace of Degeners-hausen. The following letter gives the first mention of Wodehouse’s work for the Berliner Film Company, in which he speaks of a year’s tie-in contract. Later, writing about this decision to Major Cussen, Wodehouse notes that the company decided to develop his novel Heavy Weather. Wodehouse ‘insisted on the insertion in the contract of a clause’ which gave assurance that his work would ‘not be twisted for propaganda purposes’, and he was ‘given to understand that the picture would not be released until after the war. […] The scene of the story would be changed from Shropshire to Pomerania and […] all the characters would be German’. He received 40,000 marks as an advance.
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Hotel Adlon
Berlin
March 30. 1942
My dearest Anga.
What a lovely fat letter from you! It was wonderful to get it and to know that you are preparing the old home for my arrival. I can hardly wait to get to dear Degenershausen. I feel that when I am there I can just settle down and forget what horrible times we are living in. It is a little haven of peace in this awful world. I shall stroll in the park and think out wonderful stories.
[…]
I think the best plan will be for me to stay on here till something definite is settled about the picture I am going to do, and then I shall not have to break my stay at Degenershausen by coming up to Berlin. What has happened so far is that they have paid me a sum of money which binds me to sell my novels for pictures to them alone for a year. The next step is for them to decide which of my books they want made into a picture. When this is done, they pay me some more money and then I retire into the country and write the picture. Werner says that Theo Lingen, who will probably star in whatever picture I do, arrives here tomorrow, when I suppose there will be a meeting and I shall know how I stand.1 But I feel sure I shall be able to go with you when you go back to Degenershausen.
How wonderful the place must be looking now, and how angelic it is of you to say we can come to you for the whole summer. Are you really sure you can stand us for so long? We talk of you and your sweetness all the time. Words can’t express our gratitude for all you have done.
[…]
I must stop now, as I have to go down to dinner and the slightest delay means that one does not get a table! Oceans of love, dearest Anga, and bless you for all your sweetness.
Yours
Plummie
1 Theo Lingen (1903–78) was a successful German film actor. Lingen’s wife, Marianne Zoff, was of Jewish descent, but due to Lingen’s popularity, Goebbels granted him a special permit enabling him to keep performing and protecting his wife.
TO WILLIAM TOWNEND
Berlin
May 11. 1942
Dear Bill.
At last I am able to write to you!! This is being taken to Lisbon by my Hollywood friend, Werner Plack, who is escorting the U.S. Embassy boys to freedom tomorrow. He will mail it there, and I hope it will eventually arrive.
You really have been wonderful, Bill, writing to me so regularly. I got all your letters and loved them.
[…]
I’m so glad you liked Money in the Bank. It was written at the rate of about a page a day in a room with fifty other men playing darts and ping-pong and talking and singing. It just shows how one can concentrate when one has to. After I had finished it, I started a Blandings Castle novel called Full Moon and had done about a third of it when I was released. Ethel then joined me in the country, bringing with her about two thirds of a Jeeves novel called Joy in the Morning, which I had been writing at Le Touquet during the occupation. I finished this, and then I tackled Full Moon again and finished that. I have also written a book about life in camp – very funny, but a bit on the short side. I shall not publish that till after the war.
Camp was really great fun. Those letters in the Daily Telegraph about my having found internment so awful that I bought my release by making a bargain with the German Government made me laugh. I was released because I was on the verge of sixty. The Germans don’t intern people after sixty. When I was in Loos Prison the first week, a dozen of us were released because they were sixty, including my cellmate William Cartmell, the Etaples piano tuner.1 Of course, he may have made a bargain with the German Government by offering, if set free, to tune its piano half price, but I don’t think so. And even if he did, what about the other eleven? One of them was a man who eked out a livelihood by standing on Boulogne pier and spitting into the water. You can’t bribe a Government just by promising that if set at liberty you will stand on piers and spit. No, I think that all these men were released for the reason stated, because they were sixty, and so was I. Though I admit that it doesn’t make nearly such a good story.
Camp was fine. The first few weeks, at Loos Prison, Liege Barracks and the Citadel of Huy, were on the tough side, but once we got to Tost everything was great. I played cricket again after twenty-seven years, and played havoc with the opposition with slow leg-breaks. I was in the middle of an over when they came and told me to pack. (What happens in a cricket match when the bowler is suddenly snatched away in the middle of an over? Can you play a sub? And, if so, is he allowed to bowl?) We used to play with a string ball (string wound round a nut) which our sailors manufactured.
I remember you saying to me once how much you liked the men in the last war. It was the same with me. I really do think that there is nothing on earth to compare with the Englishman in the cloth cap and muffler. I had friends at Tost in every imaginable walk of life, from Calais dock touts upwards, and there wasn’t one I didn’t like.
[…]
I got very religious in camp. There was a Salvation Army colonel there who held services every Sunday. There is something about the atmosphere of a camp which does something to you in that way.
I shall have to stop now, as the deadline for writing is approaching. Werner is due here to pick up our letters in about five minutes.
Love to Rene
Yours ever
Plum
1 Described in his broadcasts as ‘courteous and popular’, William Cartmell shared a cell with PGW and ‘Algy’, the resident clown from a local bar in Le Touquet. Cartmell was the ‘senior member’ of the cell. ‘He used to talk to us of pianos he had tuned in the past, and sometimes he would speak easily and well of pianos he hoped to tune in the future, but it was not the same. You could see that what the man wanted was a piano now. Either that, or something to take his mind off the thing’ (‘Second Berlin Broadcast’, repr. in Donaldson, P. G. Wodehouse, p. 333).
In the summer of 1942, Wodehouse gladly made his way back to Degeners-hausen. Ethel, who enjoyed the quiet of the countryside less, needed dental treatment, and remained at the Adlon.
TO RAVEN VON BARNIKOW
Degenershausen
July 26. 1942
Dear Raven.
The sweater arrived yesterday. Thanks most awfully for taking all that trouble to get it for me. It is a magnificent sweater, very thick with a collar and is just what I want.
[…]
We think and talk of you all the time here, and it was a terrible disappointment when we heard that you were not able to come to Degenershausen after all. I do hope you will be able to get leave in August. I suppose with all this talk of a second front leave is out of the question for a bit. What a shame. I was looking forward so much to seeing you again.
Anga will have told you that at the moment we are in a state of siege owing to a Bolshie prisoner having escaped from Ermsleben. He is supposed to be hiding in the cherry orchard, and this afternoon, Anga, Count Rantzow, Bwana and the children are going there heavily armed, to have a look around. I may go, but am feeling very lazy these days and prefer just strolling in the park.
Degenershausen is looking lovely now, and it only needs you here, to make it perfect. We lead a quiet life. Anga and the children milk the cows and the goat and I sweep out the stable.
[…]
Ethel as you probably know stayed on in Berlin and seems to be having quite a good time. She is very fond of the Tiergarten and she has Wonder the peke to keep her company. […] Ethel says Werner is back again from Africa and got a big laugh from everyone at a party by putting on his African kit. How that man does get about. It seems only yesterday that he was in Greece.
[…]
I’m afraid life must be pretty awful for you just now. That telephone work you have to do must be very wearing. Let’s hope it won’t last much longer.
Sometimes I feel very optimistic and at other times I wonder if the thing will ever end.
[…] It’s curious that you too should be quartered in a lunatic asylum. I wonder if it is anything like Tost.
[…]
Well all our best Raven, old man and I’m hoping to see you here in August.
Yours ever
Plummie
TO THE FOREIGN OFFICE
Via the Swiss Representatives in Berlin
November 21. 1942
Sir,
In the hope that by doing so I shall be able to re-establish myself in the eyes of the British Government and people and to remove the bad impression created by my unfortunate broadcasts over the German short wave system in July 1941, may I be allowed to put before you the circumstances connected with those? I am not attempting to minimise the blunder, which I realise was inexcusable, but I feel that I can place certain facts before His Majesty’s Government which will show that I am guilty of nothing more than a blunder.
In the press and on the radio of Great Britain it has been stated that I bought my release from internment by making a bargain with the German Government, whereby they on their side were to set me free and I on mine undertook to broadcast German propaganda to the United States.
This I can emphatically deny. I was released, as were all the internees who had reached that age, because I was sixty years old. In the first week of my internment, at Loos Prison, a dozen men were sent home because they were sixty or over. I left the camp a year later in company with another internee of that age, who was released at the same time and for the same reason. I mention this to show that no special consideration was extended to me, and that there was never any suggestion at any time that the German Government were expecting a quid pro quo.
Nor did the suggestion that I should broadcast come from the German Government. It happened that the first man I met on arriving in Berlin was an old Hollywood friend of mine, who had returned to Germany at the beginning of the war to work in the Foreign Office. And after we had talked for a while and the conversation had turned to my plans for the future, I said that the thing I was anxious to do as soon as possible was to make a few broadcasts to the United States, to let my correspondents there know how I had been getting along.
In the last thirty weeks of my captivity, I should mention, I had received a great number of letters from American readers of my books, full of sympathy and kindness and all very curious for details of the life I was living, and none of these had I been able to answer. For in camp internees are allowed to write only to near relatives.
Those letters had been preying on my mind. I felt that their writers, having no means of knowing the circumstances, must be thinking me ungrateful and ungracious in ignoring them. I still could not reply to them individually, but I thought that if I were to speak on the radio, describing my adventures, it would at least be an interim acknowledgement. Next day I arranged to do five talks, covering the five phases of my imprisonment – the start at Le Touquet; the first week in Loos Prison; the second week in Liege Barracks; the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh weeks at the Citadel of Huy; and the last forty-two weeks in Tost Lunatic Asylum.
I can now, of course, see that this was an insane thing to do, and I regret it sincerely. My only excuse is that I was in an emotional frame of mind, and the desire to make some return for all those letters had become an obsession, causing me to overlook the enormity of my action.
It seemed to me at the time that there would be no harm in reading over the radio a short series of purely humorous and frivolous reminiscences which, if I had been in England, would have appeared in Punch. I had written those talks while in camp and had read them to an audience of fellow-internees, who were amused by them, which would not have been the case had they contained the slightest suggestion of German propaganda.
All this, I realise, does not condone the fact that I used the German short wave system as a means of communication with my American public, but I hope it puts my conduct in a better light.
With regard to my life since I left camp, I have been living during the spring, summer and autumn at the house of the family of another Hollywood friend. In the winter, when the house is closed, I have been obliged to stay at the Adlon Hotel, as I do not speak German and the difficulties in the way of living anywhere else would have been insuperable. All my expenses are paid by myself, partly with borrowed money and partly from the proceeds of the sale of my wife’s jewellery. If the impression in England is that I am being maintained by the German Government, I should like to deny it totally.
I should like to conclude by expressing my sincere regret that a well-meant but ill-considered action on my part should have given the impression that I am anything but a loyal subject of His Majesty.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
P. G. Wodehouse
By December 1942, in the face of another bitterly cold German winter, the Wodehouses began ‘working on getting out of Germany’. Conditions worsened in the new year. By early February, Field Marshal Paulus and the German troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender to the Russians. Almost no German family was untouched by the massive loss of life. A radio announcement on 3 February informed the German people that the struggle for Stalingrad had ended in defeat. Three days of national mourning followed, and theatres, cinemas, vaudeville halls and cafés were shut to mark the sombre occasion. By March, Berlin was sustaining heavy damage from Allied bombing. Ethel and Wodehouse moved from the Adlon to the Bristol, another hotel on Unter den Linden, probably in the hope of escaping some of the worst of the air raids.
On the night of 1 March, there was a particularly heavy raid on Berlin, when nearly 300 aircraft bombed the city, causing more damage than on any previous raid. 191 people were killed, and much damage occurred on Unter den Linden, near to the Wodehouses. Anga von Bodenhausen had her own anxieties. She had broken off her engagement to Raven von Barnikow but remained close to him. In late 1942, he committed suicide. His despair had been prompted by the suicide of a friend who had been helping German Jews escape the Nazis, by the death of his father – and by the thought of ‘the frightful future ahead’.
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Bristol Hotel
Berlin
March 5. 1943
Dearest Anga.
Ethel and I were so excited by your news yesterday. I couldn’t hear very well, as I was speaking from the telephone room on the fourth floor with all sorts of noises going on, but I gathered enough to understand that you think the prospects of our going to Sweden are good. It’s wonderful of you taking all this trouble.
The raid was pretty bad. The only good thing was that this time we had had dinner, so the waiting was not so tiring. After the All Clear had been blown, we went out into the Unter den Linden, and it was an extraordinary sight. Large fires seemed to be blazing everywhere. At first I thought that one of them was some little distance beyond the Bristol, and then I discovered that the Bristol was on fire. So I rushed up to my room and threw half my things into a suitcase and took them over to the Adlon, then came back and fetched the rest. I managed to get a room at the Adlon for the night, and came back here the next night, as the fire was only on the top storey of a part quite a distance from my room.
A great deal of damage seems to have been done, though you can’t notice anything hardly as you walk about the town. We have met so many people who have been burned out. The big Roman Catholic church has been destroyed. But really it does seem silly making these raids, as you can’t possibly do any real harm to a city the size of Berlin.
[…]
Ethel took the raid splendidly, and did not seem a bit nervous at the time and has had no bad after effects. Wonder remained perfectly calm throughout. We had put her in her little bag, so that she should not be seen, and she stayed there quite happily all the time. But she must have been disturbed, as quite early next morning she clamoured to go out, and I took her into the Tiergarten and she put up a performance which even Bwana has never equalled in the middle of the path!
[…]
One good result of the raid is that two dinner engagements which we had have been cancelled! I do hate going out at night in times like this. I like to be within reach of the Adlon cellar. And it is so difficult getting about at night. Lunch and tea are the only possible meals in war time.
We were so delighted to get the photographs of our dear Raven. They are so exactly like him. But how sad his face looks, doesn’t it. It’s terrible to think of how he must have been suffering all that time when he was on the coast. I look at the photograph and think how different he was at Hollywood, where he was always happy. It’s one of the ghastly tragedies of the war that a man like him should have been sacrificed. It does seem such a pity that he felt it his duty to join up again, because at his age he could so easily have stayed in America.
Lots of love from us both. We are so looking forward to seeing you again.
Yours ever
Plummie
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Hotel Bristol
Berlin
April 15. 1943
Dearest Anga.
I have been trying to write to you for days, but what with being kennel maid to Wonder I never seem to have a moment. Ethel has now moved back to the Adlon, so that she can get on with her packing, and I am here with Wonder, and whenever I want to sit down at my desk she has to be taken for a walk. I’ve just got back from an hour’s stroll in the Tiergarten, and it was so warm I could scarcely drag myself along. How wonderful it must be at Degenershausen now. It makes me so sad to think of my pine wood and to feel that wounded officers will be walking there instead of me this summer. It would be splendid if I could come down for a week or two when I get back from Schlesien in September.
Yesterday I had a telephone call from the Ministry of Propaganda, asking me if I would join a party of writers who were being taken down to Smolensk to look at the corpses of those unfortunate Polish soldiers who were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1940.1 I had to refuse, because of what would have been said in England, but I was very regretful that I couldn’t go, as it would have been a great experience. When I heard the offer, I said to myself ‘Ah, they’re starting to ask me to do things’, but I believe it was just a detached thing and does not mean anything. The man who rang me up came to see me later in the day and we had a chat, and he turned out to be the son of Baroness von Hutten, the novelist, and he had lived a great deal of his life in England and was very charming.
[…] We are all on edge these days. […] What with these air raids and everything else, nobody is quite normal. Thank goodness they have kept away since March the 29th, but one expects them all the time, and the worst of it is that the last raid started at a quarter past one in the morning, so one never knows when one is safe for the night. I find that one develops a sort of philosophy and becomes a fatalist.
We had a guest to lunch at the Adlon yesterday, and the food was simply garbage. I can’t think why they can’t take more trouble. Here at the Bristol the food is wonderful, but the nuisance is that you can only occasionally get wine, whereas at the Adlon, whatever its other defects, there is always plenty.
[…]
I have been thinking so much lately of our dear Raven. How sad life has become since that day I met him in the Adlon and thought how marvellous he looked. But one has moods in which one rather envies him for being out of it all. Isn’t it extraordinary, when every nation must be feeling the strain almost intolerable, that they can’t get together and make peace.
Will you tell Reinhild how much I loved the photographs of my precious Bwana. I will write to her very soon. I suppose Ortrud will be with you in a day or two. How she will enjoy it after Berlin. I suppose you are feeling a bit apprehensive about the wounded officers. I hope they will send you some nice ones.
All our love
Yours ever
Plummie
1 In 1940, the Soviet secret police had massacred approximately 22,000 Poles. The victims included officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners-of-war. Many of the victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia. By 1941, Nazi Germany was at war with Russia, and the discovery of the mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943 was a useful tool for the anti-Russian arm of Goebbels’ propaganda machine.
To escape the bombing, Wodehouse and Ethel travelled to Lobris, in Lower Silesia, and were taken in as paying guests by some Anglophile acquaintances, the Count and Countess von Wolkenstein. Wodehouse recalls that ‘my upper [sic] Silesian host was a man who had lived a great part of his life in England, and you can imagine my joy when I found in his library five years of Punch and the Saturday Review and also great masses of the Cornhill’.
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Lobris
Kr Jauer
Schlesien
June 11. 1943
Dearest Anga.
I suppose you will get this at lunch time when you are out on the verandah looking at my lime tree! And Mister Bwana will be there wondering where I am. Do the parachutists have lunch with you, or have you given them a mess room downstairs?
Ethel turned up here two weeks ago, giving me a big thrill, as I had not expected her till two days later. She made the journey all by herself! I came with Frau von Wulfing a month earlier, bringing Wonder with me. I was expecting that objections would be made to her travelling in the compartment, but nobody said anything and she was as good as gold.
This is a very big place with enormous rooms. It is built round an inner courtyard and the rooms on the other side of the courtyard are not used. The country round is very different from Degenershausen. Practically no woods, just corn fields and beet fields. Everything is farming here. Ethel and I go for walks and read a lot, and I have started a new novel and am getting on very well with it. The time goes by quite quickly.
[…]
Ethel found her last week in Berlin very trying, as there was an alerte [sic] every night, generally at about one in the morning, and she had to get up and dress and go to the cellar, and then nothing happened! It is a great comfort to feel that one can go to bed for the rest of the summer knowing that one won’t be routed out.
I saw in a paper the other day that the English in East Africa have started forced labour for the natives, so I suppose all your friends are hard at it. I wonder if this includes the Masai. It will do them good to do a bit of honest work instead of wasting their time jumping up and down.1
[…]
Yours ever
Plummie
1 While at Degenershausen, Wodehouse had enjoyed watching a film of Anga’s former life in Africa, ‘A day on my farm in Holland Estate in Tanganyika’. He was particularly delighted by the ‘scene of the Masai jumping up and down during their welcome dance’ when the Baroness returned from Germany (The Unknown Years, p. 95).
TO ANGA VON BODENHAUSEN
Lobris,
Schlesien
Sept 1. 1943
Dearest Anga.
We were so delighted to get your letter yesterday, but so sad to hear of the upheavals which have been taking place at the old home. At first we got the impression that about twenty officials had come to stay with you, but then we read the letter again and realized that it was only their baggage. Still, it must be bad enough having to give up the whole lower floor. I simply can’t imagine where you are putting everybody on the first floor. I suppose you must be using the room at the end, but even so what a squash! Poor Anga, we are so sorry! I expect you to dig yourself in in your room and never come out.
Unless plans are altered at the last moment, we leave for Paris on Tuesday, Sept —th. We shall have to stay one night in Berlin, as we have to get our English passports renewed, so we leave here on Monday the —th,1 arriving in Berlin about six-thirty in the evening and go to the Bristol. We are praying that there won’t be a raid that night. In Paris we stay at the Bristol, but I am hoping that we shall be allowed to go to Hesdin, where Ethel lived before she came to Germany.
[…]
I feel terribly sad about leaving Germany and all our friends. We shall never forget how wonderful you were to us. It is very melancholy to feel that we may not see Degenershausen for years. […] I wonder if you are right in being so optimistic about peace coming soon. How marvellous it would be if it did. I remember all your prophecies!
[…]
Ethel is very well, but gets rather frequent touches of toothache. I am hoping that we shall find a good dentist in Paris who will put her right. Wonder is in tremendous form, and has never been happier. I am very well, but I find the war beginning to weigh upon me more than it used to. The horrible senselessness of it all oppresses me. I can’t see how any sort of a world can be left after it is over. How is England to pay the bill? Already, as far as I can work it out, they have a National Debt on which they will have to pay about seven hundred million pounds a year, and where is the money coming from?
Goodbye, Anga dear. You will know that we are thinking of you all the time, even though we are in France. Ethel sends loads of love.
Yours ever
Plummie
1 The dates on this letter appear to have been censored.