The Trials Of A Poet

When we were last with Mr. Mulliner, he had been recounting the story of a synonymizing nephew. <1>  But George was not the only Mulliner to have had a keen interest in words.  In "Came The Dawn", Mr. Mulliner tells us of Lancelot, his versifying nephew.

II.

Jeremiah Briggs, Lancelot's uncle on his mother's side, and the owner of a successful pickle business, had sent young Lance to university, in the hopes that he would join the business once his studies were completed at Oxford.

Lancelot developed other vocational plans, however.  "'The fact is, uncle,' he said, 'I have mapped out a career for myself on far different lines. I am a poet.'  'A poet? When did you feel this coming on?'" <2>  Still, Briggs perseveres.  He reads aloud a commercial piece as example.  

Soon, soon all human joys must end:
Grim Death approaches with his sickle:
Courage! There is still time, my friend
To eat a Briggs's Breakfast Pickle.

With his poet's sensibility, perhaps Lancelot could compose something similar for Briggs's?

As it happens, Lance has come prepared.  "He began to read in a low, musical voice. 'Darkling (A Threnody). By L. Bassington Mulliner.'"  The threnody then commences,

[with]

Black branches
Like a corpse's withered hands

[to]

Doom
Dyspepsia
And Despair

[concluding with]

I am a despairing toad
I have got dyspepsia.

III.

Lancelot is unprepared for Mr. Briggs's reaction to the threnody. His uncle has the butler immediately throw Lance's person from his house.  In the course of "Came The Dawn", Lancelot will again have occasion to experience physical eviction from homes. The discomfort and indignation occasioned will be his. The experience of sweet hilarity, as often in Wodehouse, is ours.
__________
<1>"Wodehouse the Shorter, the Compact, the Concise". BMT, February 2014.
<2>Wodehouse, P.G. "Came The Dawn". Meet Mr. Mulliner. 2008 Edition: Arrow Books, London.