In my recent article on the renowned English language humourist and writer Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (better known as P. G. Wodehouse) (1) I pointed out that Wodehouse's huge literary output (he wrote just shy of a hundred novels in his lifetime) (2) contained no positive descriptions of jews that I could find.
I argued in fact that Wodehouse's novels could be considered anti-jewish for the simple reason that Wodehouse always described (and wrote about) his jewish characters as dominating the theatres, movies, art world, the music industry and also banking (in the City of London at least) of his day.
He also produced no account as far as I can see of positivity in regards to this control since in Wodehouse's work: this is either stated as a neutral fact or it is a negative never a positive. As such judged by the modern colloquial definition of anti-Semitism, which is effectively that any criticism of jews as a group or Judaism as a religion from a non-jewish individual. Wodehouse would then almost certainly be classed as anti-Semitic in the context of today's socio-cultural norms and forms.
Using a more technical definition of anti-Semitism, which is the opposition to and/or criticism of jews based on the ideological position that they are definite national group or race (as opposed to anti-Judaism or anti-Zionism, which are very different things): then the case is more oblique.
To be sure the statement that the shady Mr. Montagu in 'A Man of Means' (who as I argued in my previous article was clearly meant to be jewish) was the pride of his race and the reference in 'The Swoop' to generally undesirable Solly Quain's distinctly jewishly-named father Abraham Cohen and Solly's brothers (who are financiers in the City of London) would be anti-Semitic by this standard: as both Mr. Montagu and Solly are hardly positive characters and their jewishness is defined as an inherited and quasi-national trait by Wodehouse.
However at the same time most of Wodehouse's jewish characters do not include such a description and their jewishness, while central to the character themselves, is more incidental to the plot line.
This suggests that Wodehouse did hold some kind of anti-jewish sentiment, which would now be considered as being anti-Semitic. At the same time however a lot of what Wodehouse wrote is not literary invention, but rather are his observations as to the domination of the pre and inter-war European and American artistic world by jews that he noticed during in his social and business interactions. (3)
What this suggests, and is I think the case, is that what we might see in Wodehouse's work as anti-Semitic in modern colloquial and technical definitions of such sentiments is in fact the product of simple observation on Wodehouse's part.
As Wodehouse himself wrote to a friend in 1947:
'Aren't the Jews an extraordinary people. They seem to infuriate all nations as nations, and yet almost every individual has a number of Jewish friends... apart from my real inner circle of friends (numbering about three) most of the men I like best are Jews e.g. Scott Meredith, Ira Gershwin, Molnar, Oscar Hammerstein, Irving Berlin... and a lot more.' (4)
These men, with the partial exception of Scott Meredith (who was Wodehouse's literary agent in the United States from 1946), (5) were artistic and literary types.
When you add to this McCrum's observation that Wodehouse spent a lot of time working closely with jewish producers and musicians (such as Jerome Kern and the Gershwin brothers) on Broadway, but he only did so because it suited him to do so. (6)
Then it makes sense of Wodehouse's attitude towards jews in that he well knew that nations as a group objected to jews as a group and moreover because of his extensive experience of the significant jewish over-representation (or domination if you like) of the pre and inter-war literary and artistic world then it made sense of these so-called 'prejudices'.
Wodehouse knew (unlike many of those of the current epoch who love to opine on this general subject without having conducted even the most basic research) that there was a solid evidential basis to the anti-jewish (or anti-Semitic if you like) viewpoint and as such understood to a degree why people held such views.
It is perhaps because of this that Wodehouse was able to live as free as paying guest in various hotels and houses in the Third Reich (7) between when he was released from Tost civilian internment camp on the 21st June 1941 to the liberation of Paris on 25th August 1944. (8)
Despite the fact that Wodehouse was subsequently cleared of the legally dubious charge of 'collaboration' with the Third Reich by both the French and the British: (9) it is reasonable to assert that had Wodehouse been in massive disagreement with the Third Reich (relative to the pro-USSR artistic and literary circles he tended to inhabit) then he would never have been able to roam about with his wife Ethel in largely unfettered fashion in wartime as he did.
The other alternative is simple naivete and I don't really think it is particularly reasonable to assert Wodehouse was in way naïve: he had an idealized notion of life and humanity in general, but naïve he in my opinion was not.
Wodehouse's biographers tend to make a mountain of a mole hill on this issue by asserting (as Jasen did) that the Nazis didn't understand Wodehouse's humour (rather unlikely given their Anglophile academics and English supporters) (10) or that Wodehouse was 'strikingly free from racist or anti-Semitic prejudice' (which as we have seen isn't very truthful in a modern context). (11)
The simple fact is that Wodehouse did exhibit what modernity would consider anti-jewish stereotypes (as well as 'racist' ones [in his early work in particular]) on a frequent basis, but that these would not have been such to Wodehouse who was simply reporting reality, which just happened to broadly conform to some of the substance of anti-jewish arguments made then and now.
This is the origin of Wodehouse's quip that I quoted above in so far as Wodehouse recognized the reality and broad reasonableness of anti-jewish critique, but at the same time tended to associate with jews himself (where he also mistakes his own proclivities with those of society [as there aren't enough jews in any one place for everyone to have a couple of jewish friends]) because jews dominated the social world that he immersed himself in.
Thus by modorn colloquial and technical definition Wodehouse was anti-Semitic, but in as much as this is true: he was anti-Semitic because the facts he was alluded to would be considered such now not because he had a great animus against the jews personally.
References
(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/p-g-wodehouse-on-the-jews
(2) Richard Usbourne, 1981, 'A Wodehouse Companion', 1st Edition, Hamish Hamilton: London, p. 2
(3) A fact confirmed by recent historical studies of this period such as Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, 'On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War', 1st Edition, Profile: London and Howard Sachar, 2003, 'Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War', 1st Edition, Vintage: New York
(4) Quoted in Robert McCrum, 2004, 'Wodehouse: A Life', 1st Edition, Viking: London, p. 354
(5) David Jasen, 1975, 'P. G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master', 1st Edition, Garnstone: London, p. 207
(6) McCrum, Op. Cit., p. 354
(7) Jasen, Op. Cit., pp. 182-183
(8) Ibid., pp. 179; 183
(9) Ibid., pp. 184-199
(10) Ibid., p. 181
(11) McCrum, Op. Cit, p. 354