Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves
© 1930 P.G. Wodehouse
304 pages

This past Saturday I had a very happy surprise. Taking a break from a day of  sacking my closet, wardrobe, and bookcases to donate to charity and get me closer to my simple-living ideal,  I grabbed a tale of Wodehouse stories to re-read during lunch. Imagine my delight to realize...this was a collection I'd purchased to read one April, then forgotten that I hadn't already read it.  (I have quite a bit of Wodehouse, and they all blur together in the imagination.)

Now, I've reviewed other Wodehouse story collection before, and he like Bernard Cornwell is so consistent that my comments, both descriptive and appraising, would only copy past reviews.   With a few adjustments, I could literally paste-in my review for Right Ho Jeeves, as the difference lies in one being a novel and the other (this) a collection of stories.   In short, Wodehouse has a brilliant way with the English language, which is never funnier than in his hands,  and he tells amusing stories about a society wastrel and his Machiavellian butler, who works endlessly to keep his young master out of trouble,  i.e. marriage and useful employment. Jeeves' solutions also have a way of destroying tacky articles of clothing and art that Bertie insists on dragging home. In a full-length novel there are multiple schemes from different people afoot, sometimes conflicting with one another and sometimes complementing one another.    What one values most (language aside) from a Wodehouse novel is how innocent they are, providing  mirth and drama without a hint of malice.  (A few months ago, an article called "P.G. Wodehouse: Balm for the Modern Soul"  made me especially appreciative of this.)


There's a full run-down of the stories on Wikipedia if you're curious. 

Love Among the Chickens

Love Among the Chickens
© 1906 P.G. Wodehouse
150 pages

"He's a very young gentlemen, sir," said Mrs. Medley, in vague defense of her top room.
"And it's highly improbable," said Garnet, "that he will ever grow old, if he repeats his last night's performance. I have no wish to shed blood wantonly, but there are moments when one must lay aside one's personal prejudices and act for the good of the race. "

Meet Jerry Garnet,  a mildly successful but currently stricken-for-ideas author whose creativity is plagued by the constant distractions of his apartment, chiefly from the musically inclined but ungifted chap upstairs.  Garnet wants to get away, and at just the right time comes his old friend Ukridge, who has just conceived a marvelous idea for getting rich quick: move to the country and keep chickens!  Ignoring a letter from another friend that says, in effect, "Ukridge will be coming to touch you for money, so clear out",   Garnet affably joins his old companion in what quickly becomes a debacle, but one Garnet doesn't see coming because he only has eyes for the neighbor's daughter. P.G. Wodehouse's first novel, Love Among the Chickens is short and amusing, though not nearly as riotous as his later works. Those familiar with the Wooster stories will recognize the germ of many a Wooster plot here, in schemes that go awry. The biggest, of course, is the notion of keeping chickens: Ukridge is so careless  about what kinds of chickens he gets that he ends up with mostly roosters. Roosters are notoriously poor at laying eggs.

Right Ho, Jeeves!

Right Ho, Jeeves
© 1934 P.G. Wodehouse
284 pages

What ho, readers all!  What better way to start off a new month than a Wodehouse story, featuring our favorite lovable idiot Bertie Wooster and his impeccable valet, Jeeves?   Unlike previous laughs with Wodehouse, this is a full novel and not just a collection of short stories. The premise is ever familiar:  Bertie would like nothing more than to drink and cavort, but he has pals in the soup and an aunt sending increasingly threatening telegrams. There’s nothing to do but be a sport and leg it down to Brinkley House, there to fix the woes of the world -- and by “fix”, I mean “make them worse until Jeeves arrives to put things in order again".  After studiously ignoring the attempts of his hand to get him to travel into the country and lend at a hand at an awards dinner, Bertie is forced to do so anyway to lend relationship advice to a few friends (who will wind up engaged to the wrong people), and after some spirits are added, general merriment follows.

The chief appeal of a Wodehouse/Wooster novel is not the familiar plots or even the comedy that ensues when Bertie tries to finesse social situations and make matters worse for the wear of his subtle touches,  but Wodehouse’s use of language.  I would venture to say that a reader can’t appreciate how funny English can be until they’ve read Wodehouse.  All of the Wooster stories are rendered in the first person, through a narrator who is a ball to listen to. He’s brimming with opinions, so full of them that he has to abbreviate things at random., trusting that you know perfectly well what he meant. Mix this in with physical comedy, like drunken speeches and  frequent chases through the halls and grounds of places like Highclere Castle (used for Totleigh Towers in the television series), and it’s a hoot all around.   This one features a bit of comeuppance against Bertie; ever resentful of people preferring Jeeves’ schemes to his, Bertie spends most of the novel  trying to take over. Jeeves has his revenge when he uses Bertie in the grand plan at the end to resolve everything at a stroke.

Ultimately, however, Wodehouse’s language has to speak for itself:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And yet, if he wants this female to be his wife, he's got to say so, what? I mean, only civil to mention it."
"Precisely, sir."

"In this  life, you can choose between two courses. You can either shut yourself up in a country house and stare into tanks, or you can be a dasher with the sex. You can't do both."

"Well, Gussie."
"Hullo, Bertie."
"What ho."
"What ho."
These civilities included, I felt the moment had come to touch delicately on the past.

"I'm not saying I don't love the little blighter," he said, obviously moved. "I love her passionately. But that doesn't alter the fact that I consider that what she needs most in this world is a swift kick in the pants."
A Wooster could scarcely pass this. "Tuppy, old man!"
"It's no good saying 'Tuppy, old man!'"
"Well, I do say 'Tuppy, old man!'. Your tone shocks me. One raises the eyebrows.

"I can never forget Augustus, but my love for him is dead. I will be your wife."
Well, one has to be civil.
"Right ho," I said. "Thanks awfully."

"You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz."

"It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest."
"Yes, sir."
"What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?"
"One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir."
"You mean imagination boggles?"
"Yes, sir."
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
© 1963 P.G. Wodehouse
227 pages

As had so often happened before, I felt that my only course was to place myself in the hands of a higher power.

"Sir?" [Jeeves] said, manifesting himself.

Bertie Wooster has two great weaknesses: needy friends and forceful females.  Now, alas, they're conspiring to take him to a  house whose master is quite certain Wooster is a kleptomanic loony who ought to be put away. Still, for the sake of two friends whose engagement is endangered  by something mysterious, Bertie must journey and face great personal peril, from village constables to Scottish terriers, to play the part of peacemaker. Naturally, he ends up in jail.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves is a short novel in PG Wodehouse's hysterical Wooster & Jeeves tales. They've come up before, but in summary: the main character, Bertie Wooster, is a society wastrel who lives on a family allowance and spends most of his time chumming in gentlemen's clubs and avoiding the schemes of his family to get him either gainfully employed or married   He does attempt to make himself useful in getting his friends out of scrapes, usually by attempting to manipulate events. In this he typically ,makes things worse, but fortunately he has his brilliant valet, Jeeves.   There is no social predicament too complicated for Jeeves to finesse, though sometimes at Bertie's personal expense.

In Stiff Upper Lip, Bertie labors to save his friends' engagement primarily so that the newly-freed bride to be won't renew her interest in him, but when he arrives at Totleigh Towers one problem quickly multiplies into a blizzard of shenanigans that blinds even Jeeves for a bit.  As always,  Bertie-Jeeves books are a brilliant joy  to read just for the language.   I wonder if these books weren't written under the influence of ardent spirits, because they're too giddy to be the work of  a sober mind. Bertie can't tell a story without inventing a noun ("Aunt Agatha called up with a what-the-hell"),  a gerund ("I what-ho'd her"),  or verbs ("legged it over to the Drones').      

Wodehouse is positively mirthful, a welcome start to the year -- but interested parties should start with something like Carry on, Jeeves, instead. This is a sequel to another story and I would have been lost utterly had I not read Wodehouse previously and watched the DVD specials with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry repeatedly.

My Man Jeeves

My Man Jeeves
© 1919 P.G. Wodehouse
132 pages

"There's only one thing to do," I said.

"What's that?"

"Leave it to Jeeves."

What ho, readers all!   My Man Jeeves renews my acquaintance with young Bertie Wooster, exemplar of the aristocracy in decline.  Bertie has loads of money and no sense in the least, but is saved from the worst of his foibles by the ever-present Jeeves, he of the unrivaled brilliance.  The work gathers a handful of Bertie-and-Jeeves stories,  ranging from the whimsical to the inane.  There are also a couple of stories about Reggie Pepper, a  character who was a prototype for Bertie, and is just about as thick but lacks a Jeeves to see him through.   If he survives, let alone triumphs, it is only through that bit of wisdom that God preserves fools.  The premise is the same in this as in other collections; either Bertie himself, his aunts, or his friends have gotten him into a fix, and Jeeves must contrive to find a way out of it.  Plots thicken, Jeeves stirs, Bertie's out of the soup and into his recliner to enjoy a whiskey and soda and contemplate the wonder that is his man Jeeves.

In this collection, his friends are typically the culprits.  One notable exception is the arrival at his American apartment of one of his dreaded Aunt Agatha’s friends. She is on a tour of American prisons and wants Bertie to take care of her intensely repressed son, Wilmot. No sooner has mummy dearest run off on business than has Wilmost escaped the apartment to engage as much sordid revelry as he can. This is his one chance to accumulate a storied and sinful past, and he’s intent on making the most of it. It’s up to Bertie to keep him from ruining his health with all-night binge drinking and partying, so naturally the ward winds up in prison. There’s often an element of backfire here;  Jeeves suggests, for instance, that if friend Corky wants his uncle to approve of his girlfriend, that they arrange to impress said uncle with the young lady’s authorship of a book on said uncle’s favorite subject – not expecting the uncle to be so taken with her that he  marries her.  The Reggie stories are all backfire  While Bertie’s scrapes and Jeeves’ ingenuity are fun reading in themselves, as I’ve noted in prior volumes, part of the fun of reading Wodehouse is the writing.  Bertie is an eccentric character and an enthusiastic narrator,  the sort who manages to make sitting in a  chair fun to read about. He’s like laughing gas, nonsensical and with a contagious effect.

"Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season."

Here, in a sentence, is part of what makes Bertie a ball to read. There's such energy to his narrative, the way he slings out descriptive fun with a healthy sampling of odd slang, some of it assuredly made up on the spot.  There is no one funnier to read out loud than P.G. Wodehouse, especially if you do it in a Hugh-Laurie-as-Wooster voice.  Even more giggles are to be had from Bertie's interactions with Jeeves, who reins in his employer's questionable fashion choices and is often allowed to destroy an offensive article as a reward. While Bertie professes to resent being dominated sartorially by his valet,  Jeeves is such a master at getting Bertie and company out of trouble, getting rid of pink ties and colorful sports jackets are a small price to pay.  If your interest is piqued, My Man Jeeves is available online for free via Gutenberg,  or through Amazon. 

Bachelors Anonymous

Bachelors Anonymous
© 1973 P.G. Wodehouse
191 pages

"It is never agreeable for a man who is engaged to one girl and has just proposed to another to find himself in the company of both of them."

Ivor Llewellyn and his lawyer Mr. Trout have been through five divorces together, but it's time to say goodbye. Llewellyn is headed for England, but he leaves with parting advice from his good friend Trout:  for heaven's sake, man, steer clear of marriage!  Trout's own secret at avoiding matrimony is simple: he belongs to a discrete club of gentlemen who, when one of their members is headed down the slippery slope of copulation, rescues him.  At the first batted eyelash, the first romantic date, the members of Bachelors Anonymous step in fight off the lady-types and redeem their pal.  While there is no such club in England, Trout suggests that his friend look into employing some reasonably level-headed fellow in London who can help safeguard him from unwanted female affection.  They find such a man in young Joe Pickering, whose heartfelt first play has just been ruined by a diva stealing all of the lines.  In the comedy of errors that follows, however, and a string of coincidences so preposterous that even the characters are boggled at them,   the book ends with at least two marriages.  Wodehouse is a delightful absurdist; there is some pleasure just in the silly situations he comes up with, but the style of the story works to great effective. The characters are often pompous, and Wodehouse sneaks in little barbs that are completely nonsensical, but in a novel of this sort not altogether rout of place. He informs the reader, for instance, that one particular character’s  flight to England arrived on time, thanks to the complete lack of a hijacking.  It’s so apropos of nothing, and yet if the flight was hjacked, it’s the sort of  random happenstances that would fit into a crazy, silly story like this. This is nothing but entertainment, of course, but it’s lively and stylish.

The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves
© 1923 P.G. Wodehouse
225 pages

Bertie Wooster is something of an imbecile, but his preference for the quiet life would keep him out of trouble were it not for the fact that his relations and idiot friends are constantly getting him into scraps. If his domineering Aunt Agatha isn’t constantly trying to get him married, or worse, employed, his friend Bingo Little is plotting some elaborate scheme to win the heart of the girl-of-the-week. (Even if she is a socialist revolutionary, and Bingo a contented member of the Idle Rich.) Fortunately for Bertie, he has Jeeves, the epitome of an efficient and clever valet. Jeeves hasn’t yet encountered a predicament too difficult, no Gordian knot too tangled, to  finesse.  The Inimitable Jeeves  collects a series of escapades, colorfully and hilarious rendered, in which Jeeves pulls Bertie’s chestnuts out of the fire. This particular set of stories is more or less pulled together by the many love affairs of Bingo, who doesn’t think twice about introducing  Bertie to his uncle as an acclaimed author, so that Bertie might better influence the uncle into giving Bingo more of an allowance. The scenarios are  absurd in themselves, but what truly sells  Wodehouse’s storytelling is the narrative voice.  Bertie tells these stories personally, and his delivery is a riot -- so earnest, so energetic, so full of quaintly charming slang. Bertie never walks anywhere, no, -- he legs it.  And while Bertie is catastrophically throwing himself into whatever obstacles come his away, Jeeves is hovering in the background and working his magic. He is unflappable, and I have rarely been so delighted by any set of stories.

At any rate, now I know why Isaac Asimov constantly referred to Wodehouse writing his Black Widower series!