The classic comic novel, “The Diary of a Nobody,” spawned a great many television series in Britain that looked satirically but lovingly at middle-class strivers like its protagonist, Mr. Pooter: hardworking underdogs trying to keep up with the bills, navigate complicated social codes in a time of cultural change, and deal with their young adults.
“We often forgive those who bore us,” wrote La Rochefoucauld, “but never those whom we bore.” Charles Pooter, the Nobody in question of George and Weedon Grossmith’s classic comic novel, Diary of a Nobody, shows all the hallmarks of a bore: often pompous, pedantic, and lacking in self-awareness. “I don’t often make jokes,” he repeats in his entries, usually in advance of the announcement of yet another Victorian Dad Joke he mistakes for the essence of hilarity. Yet, for over a century, readers have not only forgiven Mr. Pooter; they have loved him and his fourteen months of diary entries detailing lower-middle-class suburban London life. As an inveterate Dad Joker and father myself, I find him most sympathetic—none more so than when he is dealing with his rather outrageous young adult son, William, who has decided to rename himself Lupin.
The novel had its origins in the English humor magazine Punch, where it appeared in installments in 1888 and 1889. George Grossmith, the main author, was a celebrated comic entertainer. Weedon, an artist, contributed to it, especially the illustrations that appeared in the 1892 book version. He also provided, according to some scholars, the likely model for Lupin.
Early reviews of the newspaper feature and the book ranged from bemusement to hatred to mild positivity. Almost two decades later, however, the book’s reputation began to soar after several well-known authors praised it. Hilaire Belloc called it “one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time” and “a glory for us all.” His friend Gilbert Chesterton later spoke of countless men of letters of all types who cherished it on “the small and secret shelf of Best Books.” In his essay “One Way to Immortality,” Evelyn Waugh called it “the funniest book in the world.”
One might consider that the steep incline of its reputation had something to do with nostalgia. Belloc and Chesterton were teenagers when it appeared in Punch, while Waugh, born in 1903, had a father who loved the book and perhaps resembled Charles Pooter himself—as the young Waugh himself had resembled Lupin. Indeed, in Waugh’s essay, he observed that one chief joy of it is seeing the way things were: “Nobody wants to read other people’s reflections on life and religion and politics, but the routine of their day, properly recorded, is always interesting, and will become more so as conditions change with the years.”
Nostalgia is understandable. The 1880s, filled with new and incredible technological improvements to life, also saw a rising standard of living for middle-class clerks such as Charles Pooter, a man who wants to keep up with the Joneses. “You’ve always got some newfangled craze,” his wife, Carrie, tells him after he has been painting flowerpots with a new enamel paint his friend Brickwell tells him is “working wonders” for his wife. So, too, there are myriad new devices and bric-a-brac throughout their house. Rising living standards made for a new level of luxury and amusement.
Yet this new kind of life also made for a lot of work. The press of public social engagements, which do not always turn out so well for the Pooters, must be kept up. Mr. Pooter is often not able to manage either the practical or the social details of such a life. It is not surprising that he is often tempted to abandon the whole social scene as much too vexing. “I will never join in any more fireworks parties,” he says after Guy Fawkes Day. “It is a ridiculous waste of time and money.” The weekend after the Pooters’ first very important party in their house, Mr. Pooter writes that he is “quite satisfied a life of going-out and Society is not a life for me….”
The reader will find Mr. Pooter a bit much at times but also a lovable sort whose embarrassments are relatable. Though Carrie loves her husband dearly, even she cannot always take with equanimity her husband’s idiosyncrasies, such as recounting his dreams. “He tells me his stupid dreams every morning nearly,” she says very quietly, when he has inflicted some of them on a gathering who do not find them nearly as exciting as he does.
Nowhere is Mr. Pooter more relatable than in the second half of the diary, when young Willie returns to the house with his new moniker. A lupin, usually known as a lupine in American English, is a genus of garden plant, whose various species usually bear spiky, purple-blue flowers. It is the perfect name for a young man constantly drawing attention to himself by his youthful craziness—bizarre late-Victorian slang, involvement with theatre people, an engagement with a wholly unsuitable young woman named Daisy, losing a safe job and taking up one that involves selling speculative market shares. I think of La Rochefoucauld when I read Mr. Pooter’s alternatingly bewildered, frustrated, and hopeful entries about Lupin and his erratic behavior: “Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.”
Mr. Pooter is proud of his son’s ability to take risks, but he sees in him dangers. Charles and Carrie attend a dinner with a rich, mover-and-shaker named Hardfur Huttle, who reminds both of their sometimes outlandish son. “I feel proud to think Lupin does resemble Mr. Huttle in some ways,” Charles writes. “Lupin, like Mr. Huttle, has original and sometimes wonderful ideas; but it is those ideas that are so dangerous. They make men extremely rich or extremely poor. They make or break men.” Mr. Pooter sees his own happiness as connected to his lack of ambition and his attention to the ordinary things of life.
He hopes Lupin will himself settle down and make a name for himself that does not involve being broken or shamed. The end of the diary is hopeful. Though Lupin lost him money in the markets, Mr. Murray Posh has been quite good to Lupin. And the prospect of a more suitable marriage is on the horizon. Finally, Mr. Pooter himself, the striver who does not always feel up to the challenges, finds his rewards as well.
Many writers have observed that The Diary of a Nobody did not merely look back to the Victorian age long gone. It also spawned a great many future television series in Britain that looked satirically but lovingly at middle-class strivers like the Pooters. The writer E. J. Hutchinson has written that, “despite its form as a diary, The Diary of a Nobody often feels like a sitcom, in the best possible way.”
That’s no surprise. There is both something truly funny about and a universal sympathy for hardworking underdogs trying to keep up with the bills, navigate complicated social codes in a time of cultural change, and deal with their young adults whose originality and daring look as likely to produce disaster as success. In his elegiac poem “Middlesex,” John Betjeman observed the changes to a modern, urban England, and lamented the “Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters/Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.” For those of middle-age and middle-class status, we can look back not only at Lupin but Charles and Carrie as well, finding figures of sympathy and perhaps even resemblance to ourselves.
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The featured image is “The Englishman (William Tom Warrener, 1861–1934), by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge” (1892), by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
