Iacobus will be relieved to know that I finally tracked down the Latin hexameters with which P. G. Wodehouse was made a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Oxford in June 1939. (If you’ve never read Wodehouse before, I’d encourage you to do so. I’d also recommend, if you’re so inclined, to begin by listening to one of his novels, rather than encountering him through the written word. Jonathan Cecil has recorded quite a few of the Jeeves novels; his interpretation of the characters and the voices he supplies them have often had me crying laughing.)

Anyway – the verses! I had been trying to get them the hard way, through inter-library loan. Surprisingly, my library did not have Frances Donaldson’s P. G. Wodehouse: A Biography. So I inter-library loaned that as well. When Donaldson’s book came, I was perusing it and found that she had included in an appendix the Latin address to Wodehouse on the occasion of his honorary doctorate. This led me to the further discovery that the verses were already available online: someone had copied them from Donaldson’s book. That this person had copied them from her book (and not from the Oxford Gazette) was clear because they had preserved a typo in lines 2 and 12. I guess that means that this person had done better than Donaldson! I’ve marked my corrections with a bold font.

So, in some sense, I’m making the correct verses available here for the first time. I know, I know, a great service to mankind and all that.

Ecce auctor magicus, quo non expertior alter
delectare animos hominum risusque movere.
Namque novas scaenae personas intulit et res
Ridiculas cuique adiunxit. Cui non bene notus
dives opum iuvenis, comisque animique benigni,
nec quod vult fecisse capax, nisi fidus Achates
ipse doli fabricator adest vestisque decentis
arbiter? Aut comes ille loquax et ventre rotundo
cui patruusque neposque agnatorum et domus omnis
miranda in vita – sic narrat – fata obierunt?
Nobilis est etiam Clarens, fundique paterni
et suis eximiae dominus, Psimtheusque “relicta
cui fac cuncta,” Augustus item qui novit amores
ranicularum, aliusque alio sub sidere natus.
Non vitia autem hominum naso suspendit adunco
sed tenera pietate notat, peccataque ridet.
Hoc quoque, lingua etsi repleat plebeia chartas,
non incomposito patitur pede currere verba,
concinnus, lepidus, puri sermonis amator.

These hexameters were written by Dr. Cyril Bailey, the Public Oratory of the University. He says some very nice things in capturing the essence of Wodehouse’s literary output; in particular, the lines “Non vitia autem hominum naso suspendit adunco / sed tenera pietate notat, peccataque ridet.” “He marks the vices of men not with an upturned nose, but with a tender affection, and he smiles at their faults.” Since Bertram Wooster is a great mock hero, in Bailey’s poem Jeeves becomes, in mock heroic style, Aeneas’ faithful companion, Achates. The whole thing is good fun, and it was no surprise that the undergraduates shared in the enthusiasm of their professors:

That night at the Gaudy dinner at Christ Church [Wodehouse] sat at the high table and listened to the speeches customary on this occasion. After these were over, those seated at the lower tables began to bang on them and chant, “We want Wodehouse! We want Wodehouse!” Alas for the glitter of our story (as Winston Churchill once wrote): our hero disgraced himself. Rising to his feet, he barely mumbled the words “Thank you” and ungracefully and ungraciously sat down. Several stories have since been put about as to why he behaved so badly, but none are needed. Asked what he might do when unexpectedly faced with so massive a request for communication with the human race, anyone who knew him would accurately have predicated his behaviour (Donaldson 148).

It would be bad of me if I didn’t also include Donaldson’s translation of Bailey’s verses. I’ve modified it in a few places:

Behold this magical author than whom none is more expert at delighting men’s minds and arousing laughter. He has introduced a new cast of stage characters and endowed each with a unique comicality. Who does not know the rich young man, good-natured and kindhearted, incapable of doing what he wants without faithful Achates, his deviser of stratagems and arbiter of dress? Or who does not know the voluble and tubby companion whose uncle and nephew and all this relations have had, by his account, extraordinary experiences in life? Then there is the noble Clarence, master of his father’s ancestral estates and of a distinguished sow; and Psmith (“leave it to him”); Augustus the expert on the love life of newts; and other people born under various stars. Our author does not turn up his nose at men’s vices, but marks these with gentle affection, and laughs at their misdeeds. In addition, although his pages are full of vulgar vocabulary, he does not let his words run on in unrhythmical disorder, but is neat and witty and “a lover of elegant speech”.

The last words are a quotation from an epigram attributed to Caesar about Terence, the great Roman playwright. Edward St. John Parry writes: “It was the peculiar feature of the New Comedy that it represented on the stage the characters and language of everyday life; and this feature seems to have been preserved more scrupulously by Terence than by Plautus” (402). So Bailey concluded his address to Wodehouse with these lines (prose):

Quid multa? Quem novere omnes, testimonio non eget. Praesento vobis festivum caput – Petroniumne dicam an Terentium nostrum? – Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Societatis Litterarum sodalem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in litteris.

“Need I say more? The man known to all doesn’t need testimony. I present to you ‘the soul of wit’ – shall I call him our Petronius or our Terence? – P. G. Wodehouse, etc.” That expression, “festivum caput”, is a quotation from Terence (look at II.B.2 here) – see, you had to have read a few things before you were promoted to Public Orator in the University of Oxford! Here’s a little snippet from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography about Bailey:

In the fashion of the time, much of his teaching took the form of ‘composition’, stylish translation from English into Greek and Latin prose and verse. Bailey was an elegant composer, and he had a fine presence and delivery; he was a natural choice as the university’s public orator (1932–9). But he was not, like some Oxford and Cambridge dons of the time, content with this sort of scholarly activity. He had a lifelong interest, which issued in a number of substantial books, in the philosopher–poet Lucretius, one of the greatest of Latin poets, and in the Greek philosopher Epicurus, whose system Lucretius versified in his extraordinary poem De rerum natura (‘On the nature of the world’).