On most days, he would get up at half past seven, go out onto the porch at the back door, and do the "daily dozen" sequence of calisthenic exercises he had performed every day since 1920. While Ethel, always a late riser, was still upstairs in bed, Wodehouse would prepare his regular breakfast -- toast and honey or marmalade, a slice of coffee cake and a mug of tea -- and, as part of the early morning routine, he would read a "breakfast book," for example a Rex Stout or Ngaio Marsh mystery. Then he would light the first pipe of the day, crumbling the cigars Peter Schwed sent him into the bowl in preference to pipe tobacco. At nine o'clock, after a short walk with some of the dogs, he would retire to his study, a spacious, pine-clad room overlooking the garden, for the morning's work. His writing methods had not changed in years. He would sit and brood in a favourite armchair, draft a paragraph or two in pencil, then move to the typewriter, sitting under a Victorian oil painting of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank's Lombard Street offices. Even in old age, he was still translating the chaos of reality into the farcical stability of Blandings Castle. There is something both heroic and poignant about the octogenarian Wodehouse, in exile, pecking away at his typewriter.
In his last decade, Wodehouse could still average 1,000 words a day where, as a younger man, he had often written 2,500 words and more. The morning's work would be followed by lunch -- usually meat and two veg, followed by an English pudding like apple crumble -- at about one o'clock. If he was visiting Remsenburg, Bolton, now also in his eighties, would arrive at two for their daily walk, an hour-long circuit, a regular outing which would unfailingly bring Wodehouse back home in time for the all-important rendezvous with his favourite soap opera, The Edge of the Night. At about four, he and Ethel would have tea, which was served, English style, on good china with cucumber sandwiches. After this, he might snooze a bit in his armchair, have a bath, and do some more work, before the evening cocktail (sherry for her, a lethal martini for him) at six, which they took in the sun parlour, overlooking the garden. This was followed by dinner, alone with Ethel, and eaten early to allow the cook to get home to her family. After dinner, Wodehouse would usually read, but occasionally he would play two-handed bridge with Ethel, a habit, he joked, that doubtless suggested he was senile.
Robert McCrum, Wodehouse: A Life
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