‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘No.’
‘Bertie.’
‘Hallo?’
‘Ever been hit over the head with a chair?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you soon may be.’
I began to see she was in difficult mood.
‘If cooks would stick to their roasts and hashes,’ I said rather severely, ‘and not waste their time in
psychical research, life would be a very different thing.’
‘Mr Wooster is an agreeable young gentleman, but I would describe him as essentially one of Nature’s bachelors.’
After writing 35 short stories about Jeeves and Wooster (1915 to 1930), ‘Thank You, Jeeves’ is the first of the 11 full-length Jeeves and Wooster novels Wodehouse wrote. All the mannerisms we saw in the short stories are here: farcical plots based on the complicated misunderstandings of posh young people falling in love and managing their eccentric parents, all refracted through the ludicrously upper class attitude of the wonderfully dim and self-deluding narrator, the upper-class idler Bertram ‘Bertie’ Wooster. And all the usual stylistic elements:
Comically dim references to classical literature
‘Well, let me tell you that the man that hath no music in himself…’ I stepped to the door. ‘Jeeves,’ I called down the passage, ‘what was it Shakespeare said the man who hadn’t music in himself was fit for?’
‘Treasons, stratagems, and spoils, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves. Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,’ I said, returning.
And:
‘Jeeves,’ I recollect saying, on returning to the apartment, ‘who was the fellow who on looking at
something felt like somebody looking at something? I learned the passage at school, but it has escaped me.’
‘I fancy the individual you have in mind, sir, is the poet Keats, who compared his emotions on first reading Chapman’s Homer to those of stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific’
So it’s a running gag that Bertie regularly wants to quote some gem of English literature but can never remember the actual details. And a variation on it is when characters (often but not always Bertie) offer to quote literary classics at inopportune moments and are told to shut up.
‘What you want on an occasion like this, Chuffy, old man,’ I said, ‘is simple faith. The poet Tennyson tells us…’
‘Shut up,’ said Chuffy. ‘
Or:
‘Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope …’
‘Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves.’
‘No, sir.’
‘There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn’t.’
‘Very true, sir.’
Climaxing with:
‘Reminds one of that thing about Lo somebody’s name led all the rest.’
Jeeves coughed. He had that informative gleam of his in his eyes.
‘Abou ben Adhem, sir.’
‘Have I what? said old Stoker, puzzled.
‘The poem to which you allude relates to a certain Abou ben Adhem, who, according to the story, awoke one night from a deep dream of peace to find an angel…’
‘Get out!’ said old Stoker, very quietly.
‘Sir?’
‘Get out of this room before I murder you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And take your angels with you.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Forgetting words
Forgetting famous quotations is one aspect of the broader comic topos of Bertie forgetting words and needing to be corrected.
I was impatient with this – what the dickens is the word I want?
Analysing this (if analysing is the word I want)…
What is Jeeves, after all? A valet. A salaried attendant. And a fellow simply can’t go on truckling – do I mean truckling? I know it begins with a ‘t’ – to his valet for ever.
I wished to disabuse him (if disabuse is what I’m driving at) of the idea that any such infatuation existed.
Most of the time he just sat and champed in a sort of dark silence, like a man with something on his mind. And when he did speak it was with a marked what-d’you-call-it.
What are those sore things people find themselves in?’
‘Straits, sir.’
‘I am in the sorest straits, Jeeves.
‘No imagination, that kid. No vision. I’ve often noticed it. His fancy is – what’s the word?’
‘Pedestrian, sir?’
‘Exactly.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we require your co-operation and advice.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘To begin with, let me give you a brief synopsis… do I mean synopsis?’
‘Yes, sir. Synopsis is perfectly correct.’
‘… a brief synopsis, then, of the position of affairs.’
‘You wanted to hit him over the head with a spade or something. All wrong. What is needed here is… what’s the word, Jeeves?’
‘Finesse, sir.’
‘Exactly. Carry on, Jeeves.’
The ‘the’
A really prominent part of Bertie’s diction (defined as: ‘the choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing’) is his insistent use of ‘the’ where a possessive pronoun such as ‘my’ or ‘his’ would be more conventional;
I shook the head.
I raised the eyebrows.
I confess that it was in sombre mood that I assembled the stick, the hat, and the lemon-coloured some half-hour later and strode out into the streets of London.
I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that a great peace enveloped the soul.
Where Bertram could find only a tentative ‘Pip-pip!’ she bounded forward, full of speech, and grabbed the old hand warmly.
I wiped the brow. ‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘this calls for careful thought.’
At seven on the dot, accordingly, I stepped aboard the yacht and handed the hat and light overcoat to a passing salt. It was with mixed feelings that I did so, for conflicting emotions were warring in the bosom.
It being reasonable to suppose by then that the coast was clear, I poked the head up over the desk.
The pride of the Woosters
Bertie’s comic exaggeration of his family’s, and his, abilities:
As I turned the corner into Piccadilly, I was a thing of fire and chilled steel; and I think in about another half-jiffy I should have been snorting, if not actually shouting the ancient battle cry of the Woosters, had I not observed on the skyline a familiar form.
This parting of the ways with Jeeves had made me feel a bit as if I had just stepped on a bomb and was trying to piece myself together again in a bleak world, but we Woosters can keep the stiff upper lip.
Half a dozen sentences start with the formula ‘we Woosters’ before going on to boast of their accomplishments. This exaggerated reverence of the Wooster lineage and qualities struck me as new-ish, or made more prominent for this book format.
Bertram
Then there are the many times he refers to himself in the third person, mockingly but also seriously, as ‘Bertram’.
Something was being kept from Bertram.
Nothing of the dog in the manger about Bertram.
There was something in his manner that gave me the idea that he considered Bertram eccentric.
Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is a man of sudden, strong enthusiasms and that, when in the grip of one of these, he becomes a remorseless machine – tense, absorbed, single-minded.
All this ‘pride of the Woosters’ and referring to himself in the third person like Julius Caesar is, of course, in stark contrast with the opinion of him held by all the other characters who, without exception, think him a fool and an idiot, ‘you poor goof’, ‘you poor ditherer’, ‘damned sooty-faced imbecile’ and many more. A typical opinion being:
‘Bertie!’ he [Chuffy] said, in a sort of moaning way. ‘My God! I might have guessed it would be you. You really are without exception the most completely drivelling lunatic that was ever at large.’
And:
Bertram Wooster is not accustomed to causing convulsions in the gentler sex. As a matter of fact, usually when girls see me, they incline rather to the amused smile, or, on occasion, to the weary sigh and the despairing ‘Oh, are you here again, Bertie?’
Registers
The book makes Bertie aware of the different registers or tones he uses i.e. characters notice and comment on it.
‘I always esteemed you most highly.’
‘You did what? Where do you pick up these expressions?’
‘Well, I suppose from Jeeves, mostly. My late man. He had a fine vocabulary.’
This influence Jeeves has on the speech patterns of those around him becomes a minor recurring theme. When Stoker talks to Bertie on his yacht, a few days after Jeeves has started working for him (Stoker), Bertie notices straightaway that his diction has improved, become more highfalutin’.
I mean to say, this man had had the advantage of Jeeves’s society for only about twenty-four hours, and here he was… talking just like him!
We see this in practice on the occasions when Jeeves explicitly corrects Bertie’s phraseology – or at least suggests alternative and better phrases. This becomes a running gag.
‘I admit that this change of heart is welcome. It has come at the right time. I shall accept his invitation. I regard it as…’
‘The amende honorable, sir?’
‘I was going to say olive branch.’
‘Or olive branch. The two terms are virtually synonymous. The French phrase I would be inclined to consider perhaps slightly the more exact in the circumstances – carrying with it, as it does, the implication of remorse, of the desire to make restitution. But if you prefer the expression “olive branch”, by all means employ it, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
Or:
‘Can’t you see? It’s all very well for old Stoker to talk – er—’
‘Glibly, sir?’
‘Airily.’
‘Airily or glibly, sir, whichever you prefer.’
‘It’s all very well for old Stoker to talk with airy glibness about marrying us off…’
Jeeves’s role as indicated by his language
Jeeves’s interventions to correct Bertie’s speech, to suggest the correct word or phrase, to supply the quotations Bertie has forgotten, all these are verbal indications or equivalents of his role in the stories.
To put it another way, all the characters have their own idiolects (‘the speech habits peculiar to a particular person’), from Bertie and Chuffy’s absurd poshness, through Sir Rodney Glossop’s outrage, the rough Cockney of the crook Brinkley, and the two examples of Americans – blustering millionaire J. Washburn Stoker and the affronted bright young woman tones of his American daughter, Pauline Stoker.
The point I’m trying to make is that Jeeves’s tone is always unshakeably factual, accurate and complete. Logical and clear and precise, with none of the slang all the other characters are liable to. So his speech is like a lighthouse on an island in a storm, battered by the raging idiolects of all around him, but shining a clear, logical light through every storm and fog. (‘I got the voices but I missed the play of expression. And I’d have given a lot to be able to see it. Not Jeeves’s, of course, because Jeeves never has any.’)
And this clarity of speech and thought is of course a verbal or tonal indicator of the structural role Jeeves plays in the stories, as the controlling mind who masters every situation and finds a solution to every problem.
Slang
Thus Jeeves stands completely aside from the bombardment of posh slang which characterises Bertie’s narrative (and often the dialogue of his posh friends).
As to slang, slang is (mostly) delightful because it is language cavorting and making free with itself. The best kind of slang is a sign of energy and life. And its domination of the text embodies the exuberance and delight of the stories. Whatever’s going on in the plot, we are always delighted with Bertie’s never-ending supply of inventive and entertaining phrases.
‘Jeeves has nothing to say on that or any other subject. We have parted brass-rags.’
‘He had the immortal rind to tell me that if I didn’t give up my banjolele he would resign.’
There never had been anyone like Jeeves, I felt, as I climbed sombrely into the soup and fish, and there never would be.
It was about as juicy a biff as I had had for years.
I removed the lid with as much courtly grace as I could muster up, but the face had coloured with embarrassment and I was more or less gasping for air.
I know that for years and years I have been trying to lend him of my plenty, but he has always steadfastly refused to put the bite on me.
‘Why all this fuss about money? After all, plenty of bust blokes have married oofy girls before now.’
I rose accordingly, and was just about to ankle upstairs…
It is plain to me that Miss Stoker is the one who will require the persuasive word, the nicely reasoned argument – in short, the old oil.
I mean to say, a fellow closely connected by ties of blood with a man who used to walk about on his hands is scarcely in a position, where the question of sanity is concerned, to put on dog and set himself up…
I emitted a hollow g.
I don’t know how long it was that I stood there, rooted to the s.
He stirred in the darkness. I fancy he was mopping the b.
The next moment I was feeling that nothing mattered in this world or the next except about a quart of coffee and all the eggs and b. you could cram onto a dish.
‘What I’m driving at is that you couldn’t by any stretch of the imag. call him slender and willowy.’
In my heart I was convinced that the fellow had gone off his onion.
He would have been on velvet.
I hitched myself into position forty-six in the hope that it would be easier on the f.p’s than the last forty-five, and had another shot at the dreamless.
Then the barrier of kipper gave way, and one of the most devastating yowls of terror I’ve ever heard in my puff ripped through the air.
These breathers with Brinkley take it out of a man.
When he spoke, there was something so subdued, so what you might call quavering, about his voice that I came within a toucher of placing a kindly arm round his shoulder and telling him to cheer up.
I could not only have scoured the face but could have hopped into the old two-seater, which was champing at its bit there, and tooled off to London by road…
Of all the unpleasant contingencies which could have arisen, this seemed to me about the scaliest.
She cheesed it in mid-sentence, deeply moved.
A little note on ‘binge’ which in Bertie’s hands seems to mean something very like that other ’20s and ’30s word, ‘stunt’.
‘What does she seem to feel about this buying the house binge?’
Words had passed. Relations had been severed. The whole binge was irrevocably off.
The plot
The plot is secondary to the manner, really. The point of the stories is Bertie’s ludicrous attitude and the tone of voice. But as to the plot, it is a preposterous farce of the silliest and most entertaining type.
Chuffy loves Pauline Like almost all the short stories (and most farces) it revolves around a frustrated love affair, between Bertie’s chum Marmaduke ‘Chuffy’ Chuffnell and an American heiress, Pauline Stoker, daughter of the calculating multimillionaire J. Washburn Stoker. The plot consists of a whole series of increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous obstacles placed in their way, along with various comic side-plots.
In terms of the core love story, the first obstacle is that Bertie himself was, a few months before the narrative commences, briefly engaged to this Pauline before her father called it off, under the influence of Bertie’s old nemesis, the nerve specialist (or ‘loony doctor’ as Bertie calls him) Sir Roderick Glossop who Bertie fell foul of in several of the short stories. At various points, the narrative makes it seem like Bertie and Pauline have fallen back in love, like the moment when Chuffy comes across them kissing in a garden, which makes Chuffy break off their engagement with all manner of ensuing complications.
In the end they young couple are, of course, happily reunited but not before loads of farcical incidents.
Jeeves leaves Bertie In rather the same way, early on in the narrative the far more important couple of Bertie and Jeeves are separated. As the pretext for this Wodehouse invents the notion that Bertie has become addicted to playing the banjolele, making a racket with his playing and the caterwauling he calls singing. This leads to protests from all his neighbours in the apartment block where he lives, Berkeley Mansions, West 1 (extremely posh Mayfair district of London). When the landlord gives him an ultimatum to either give up playing the banjolele or be evicted, Bertie very improbably says he’d rather move out than quit his artistic destiny.
Everyone goes to Somerset Two things result from this: 1) Bertie takes up an offer from his old pal, Chuffy, to move into one of the many cottages on the latter’s huge estate on the coast of Somerset, Chufnell Hall in the West of England. Almost the entire novel is set on this estate – at the big Hall, in Bertie’s cottage and various other buildings, and in the yacht moored in the harbour, the grand yacht belonging to J. Washburn Stoker who has sailed here to oversee the nuptials of his daughter and Lord Chuffnell (Chuffy). So much for the setting.
Jeeves quits 2) The second major consequence of Bertie’s decision is that Jeeves hands in his notice. In his muted logical way, he also cannot stand the racket of the banjolele and the thought of being locked up in a country cottage with Bertie playing it all day long is not bearable. So Jeeves announces to his shocked master that he is quitting and that he has already found a job working for Chuffy.
Thus all the ingredients are in place for farce. We are at a big country house. The young master is in love with a millionaire’s daughter. Her former fiancé (Bertie) is staying in a cottage in the grounds. And his former, valet, Jeeves, is now working at the house for the young master.
Incidentally, when I read that Jeeves quits and leaves I was sad because he is the anchor of the stories but need not have been because he, in fact, crops up in more or less every sticky situation and provides plans and solutions for everything. So he is pretty much as present in the narrative as in the short stories.
Complications
Now, not only is Chuffy in love with Pauline, but he is skint (broke, penniless). His estate is worth a fortune but he has no ready money. So he is negotiating a business deal whereby his fiancée’s father (J. Washburn) will buy the estate and lease it to Glossop to set up a sanatorium (that popular 1920s and ’30s’ institution) there. So it’s vital for Chuffy to keep both older men onside.
Also, Bertie discovers that although the young couple love each other, Chuffy hasn’t yet plucked up the nerve to propose to her because he is aware he is broke, so he wants to wait till the deal goes through. Typical of the farcical goings-on is that when Jeeves informs Bertie of this, Bertie conceives one of his cunning plans which is to arrange for Chuffy to see Bertie kissing Pauline in the garden which should trigger an outburst of passionate love and their engagement. Of course this goes wrong when the person who witnesses the kiss is none other than the girl’s father, J. Washburn Stoker, who is immediately convinced that Pauline is still in love with Bertie!
Meanwhile, both households have small boys of a similar age, for with Chuffy lives his Aunt Myrtle who has a young son, Seabury, while J. Washburn has brought over his young son, Dwight. Bertie hates children so he is delighted to hear from Jeeves that the boys started fighting and their fathers joined in, leading to Stoker being banned from Chufnell Hall, and retiring to his yacht anchored in the harbour.
This kicks off a major plot strand which is that Stoker decides to keep his daughter under a kind of house arrest, confining her to the yacht. But (as I write this I can see how improbable it is, but it works in the narrative) Jeeves swaps employment from Chuffy to Stoker, becoming his valet (!?) and in this capacity bears a love letter Chuffy has written to Pauline.
Touched by the letter, Pauline pops into a swimming costume, slips over the side of the yacht, swims to shore and the first thing we know about this is when Bertie arrives that evening at his cottage and finds her in his bed. At moments like this Wodehouse becomes bedroom farce and you can imagine the whole thing on the stage.
After he’s recovered from his initial surprise, Bertie does the honourable thing and says he’ll go and sleep in the car. But this triggers a comic sequence where he is plagued by the dim local police sergeant, Sergeant Voules, and his even dimmer constable (who happens to be his nephew) Constable Dobson. First of all they spot the broken window in Bertie’s cottage where Pauline broke in, and quiz him about that, Bertie assuring them there is no burglar within. Then, when Bertie goes to sleep in the car, he is woken by the flashlight of the sergeant who saw someone suspicious prowling around. And then when Bertie can’t sleep in the car and so removes to another outhouse, he is woken again by the sergeant and constable.
Full comic potential is milked from this situation because the cops tell Chuffy who arrives and declares Bertie must be drunk, and so the three of them pick him up, despite his protestations, and insist on carrying him back to the cottage and up to his bedroom. Of course the reader is anxiously expecting them to all discover Pauline in Bertie’s bed but, equally inevitably, she has made herself scarce and so all passes without mishap.
Except that Pauline had only been hiding and she emerges from her hiding place just as Chuffy returns and captures Bertie and Pauline apparently red-handed. Seeing Pauline wearing Bertie’s pyjamas, Chuffy draws the wrong conclusion (that they’ve been dallying) but when she realises this is what he’s thinking, Pauline is outraged with him for thinking so badly of her, the couple have a flaring standup row declaring the whole affair is off, Chuffy mistimes his steps and falls down the stairs and storms out into the night.
Ooops. Pauline decides the whole thing has been a mistake, slips back into her bathing costume and sets off to swim back out to the yacht. Meanwhile none other than the millionaire himself, Stoker, turns up at the cottage, having discovered that Pauline has absconded and – having witnessed them kissing in the garden – suspecting she’s made for Bertie’s cottage. Bertie is able to honestly say she isn’t there and show him round to prove it. Stoker grudgingly accepts this and he and Bertie are sort of friendly, shaking hands etc.
The next day Bertie is surprised to receive a gracious invitation from Stoker to have dinner on his yacht and prides himself on having befriended the rich man. In fact it’s to mark the birthday of little Dwight. Bertie assumes the man has realised what a good chap he is, dresses smartly and gets rowed out to the yacht. But he is surprised that nobody else has been invited and, when Stoker shows him round the yacht and shows off one of the grand bedrooms, Bertie is surprised to find himself locked in. He has been kidnapped!
This is because, after leaving Bertie’s cottage the night before, Stoker got back to his yacht and discovered Pauline had returned and learns all about her hiding out at Bertie’s cottage i.e. he lied to him, so he draws the conclusion that the pair must still be in love.
He has kidnapped Bertie in order to keep an eye on him until the wedding to Pauline can be arranged. Bertie is feeling very low about all this when who should unlock and enter his cabin but… Jeeves! So this explains why he had (improbably enough) to be made to enter Stoker’s employment – so he can act as the genie who releases Bertie.
He does this through a further elaborate plan which is to have farcical consequences. It turns out that there is an entertainment group of minstrels who ‘black up’ to look like African Americans, touring the West Country, and Stoker has invited them over to his yacht to perform songs and sketches for his son (it’s an indication of how big the yacht is that it can accommodate so many people and such a show).
Anyway, Jeeves suggests that Bertie ‘blacks up’, using black boot polish, to look like one of the minstrels and so get smuggled off the boat when they all leave. The narrative in fact quickly jumps through all the practicalities of this, just telling us that the plan worked and jumping to Bertie safe and sound and back at his cottage.
However, there is a further bout of mayhem, this time genuinely strange. Ever since Jeeves quit, Bertie has been employing a new valet named Brinkley who, as the weeks have passed, he realises he doesn’t like. In fact he’s come to realise the man is something of a left-winger, a revolutionary, a Bolshevik, who regards him as a member of the parasite idle rich class.
Still, it’s a bizarre and inexplicable part of the plot when Bertie is upstairs trying to wash the boot polish off his face when he hears a huge rumpus downstairs and discovers that Brinkley has come back from a night down the pub roaring drunk and is smashing up the cottage! What? Not only that but when Bertie appears to him, he is of course still in blackface and the drunk Brinkley decides he is a devil and chases him up the stairs brandishing a carving knife! What!?
Bertie barricades himself in his bedroom from this maniac who blunders back downstairs and then smashes a lantern in order to set the cottage on fire!! What!??
Bertie is forced to make an escape through the cottage window and away, escaping fire and maniac. Now what? He has only the clothes he’s wearing, no ready cash, and his face is still black. Now Bertie has realised (in fact Jeeves told him) that mere soap and water won’t get the boot polish off his face. What he needs to get it off is butter. So he sneaks up to the Hall and knocks at the back door hoping to get a servant to give him some butter, but when the scullery maid opens it and sees a Black man, she has hysterics and faints.
So Bertie goes round to the front of the Hall. His best hope is to beg Chuffy for butter but he hesitates to knock on the door and terrify another servant. So he awaits events. And something indeed happens for what happens next is the front door opens and Sir Roderick emerges, and angrily departs.
Bertie manages to see Jeeves who explains that the brat Seabury had kicked up a fuss when he wasn’t invited to Dwight’s party and so, in an effort to placate him (and suck up to his mother, Lady Chuffnell) Sir Roderick had black up as well and put on a show. But not only did Seabury not like it but he set a trap, he buttered part of the Hall outside his door so that when Sir Roderick departed, he slipped and landed on his bottom. This made him very angry, Lady Chuffnell defended her son, and the upshot is that Sir Roderick was kicked out of the Hall, late at night, with nowhere to stay.
So we now have two posh men wandering round the grounds with blacked-up faces. See what I mean by farce?
I forgot to mention that much earlier in the evening, Jeeves, having rescued Bertie, told him he could clean and his face and catch the next available train back to London, where he’ll be safe from Brinkley, Stoker and the lot of them. Obviously, by now, that option has disappeared.
Jeeves suggests that Bertie goes and sleeps in the Dower House where Jeeves will bring him butter in the morning. But when Bertie arrives there, he a) discovers that Brinkley has taken possession of it and b) while he’s wondering what to do next, watches as Sir Roderick – who had obviously sought refuge there too – is unceremoniously booted out by the drunk pyromaniac.
Bertie makes himself known and the two men commiserate their fate, with Sir Roderick for the first time softening his attitude to Bertie. (In a colourful digression, he tells Bertie the Dower House is overrun with animals, including a monkey and hordes of mice, to please young Seabury.)
Sir Roderick asks if he can go to Bertie’s cottage to wash the boot polish off until Bertie tells him it’s been burned to the ground. Bertie further informs him that soap and water won’t be enough. After pondering a while. Sir Roderick suggests that petrol may do the trick and asks if Bertie’s garage is still standing. When told yes, he says he’ll head there to get petrol and a wash. But Bertie superstitiously suspects that if he goes anywhere near the smouldering ruins, he’ll be accosted by the ever-vigilant Sergeant Voules and declines to join him, preferring to go try and get some sleep in the summer-house.
Quite a night!
After a bad night’s sleep, Bertie is starving and so carefully makes his way back to the Hall. Through the window he watches the maid bring a tray of delicious hot breakfast into Chuffy’s empty study ready for the master. Hunger has made him reckless so Bertie breaks into the study and is about to wolf down the breakfast when, inevitably, he hears footsteps, so he ducks down behind the large study table. In fact a whole succession of characters now enter this study, again making it feel very much like a stage farce.
First up is Jeeves. Hearing his voice, Bertie is hugely relieved and pops up. They swap news, Bertie telling him about bumping into Sir Rodney and him going off to Bertie’s garage to try the petrol binge. They’ve just got up to speed when there are more footsteps, Bertie ducks out of sight again, and Mr Stoker is shown in by a servant.
Stoker is very cross with Jeeves who, he’s realised, helped Bertie escape from the yacht. In fact he threatens to wring his neck. But Jeeves, with typical mastery, turns the tables by claiming he did it solely to protect Stoker’s interests, pointing out that what he did was in fact kidnapping, which is a criminal offence in England which made him liable to a fine and possibly imprisonment. Put that way, Stoker backs down and grudgingly thanks Jeeves. He says he’ll go and try to find Bertie at the Dower House (whereas we know he’s hiding under the study desk and overhearing all this).
Barely has Bertie resurfaced than there are more footsteps, he ducks back down, and this time is it Stoker’s daughter, young Pauline! She engages Jeeves in conversation in which we realise learn she has absolutely no interest in marrying Bertie, which is a relief to the hidden eavesdropper. Pauline encourages Jeeves to go about his duties i.e. to leave the room and, as soon as he’s done so, springs on the breakfast which had been brought for Chuffy.
At which point Bertie startles her by springing up from behind the desk. This has a mixed effect. On the downside, it prompts Pauline to let out a yowl of terror. On the plus side, Chuffy finally walks through the door at just this moment and is able to rush to Pauline’s rescue and comfort. In a phrase which strongly suggests the staginess of Wodehouse’s imagination:
It coincided with the opening of the door and the appearance on the threshold of the fifth Baron Chuffnell. And the next moment he had dashed at her and gathered her in his arms, and she had dashed at him and been gathered. They couldn’t have done it more neatly if they had been rehearsing for weeks.
Bertie listens to the pair being revoltingly lovey-dovey before he intervenes. Stripped of the banter the situation is simple: they really do love each other (i.e. are fully reconciled after their bust-up in Bertie’s cottage) but the big problem remains how to persuade her father to let her marry Chuffy. In other words, the plot of more or less every comedy since the ancient Greeks.
And just as they’ve defined the problem, in walks in the shape of Mr Stoker himself. There is lots of dialogue but the bottom line is both young people make it clear that they want to marry. However there are several obstacles: one is that Stoker has argued with Glossop. Bertie is able to intervene and tell Stoker that Glossop himself had a big falling out with Lady Chuffly as a result of being humiliated by Seabury. Because Stoker’s was in a fight with Seabury, this endears Glossop to the American.
The next obstacle is that Stoker recalls Chuffy insulting him to his face, calling him ‘a pop-eyed old swindler’. This is a little hard to wriggle out of, but he said it in the context of the deal falling through. But Stoker keeps up his opposition to Chuffy on the basis that he is a gold-digger only after Pauline’s fortune. Pauline counters this by saying Chuffy very nobly did not propose (because he was poor) until he thought the deal to sell the Hall was agreed, whereupon he would be rich, whereupon he instantly proposed.
Also, Jeeves reappears with a telegram. This has come all the way from American and announces that Stoker’s brother intends to contest the will under which he (Stoker) is set to become a multi-millionaire. Stoker is appalled but Chuffy is over the moon. Why? Because if Stoker doesn’t inherit, then Pauline will not become a millionaire’s daughter, will be much more modestly funded, and so the couple can marry!
‘I’m broke. You’re broke. Let’s rush off and get married.’
Obviously Stoker himself is not so happy. He needs to prove that the men who left him the money, ‘Old George’, was not insane, as the rival inheritors are claiming. To prove this he needs Sir Roderick Glossop to testify in court that George was sane. And yet he’s just had a massive falling-out with Glossop, based on the way their respective sons had a fight. So now he needs to find Sir Roderick and be reconciled to him.
There is then a long comic passage where Stoker asks everyone present if they know where Glossop is, and they all throw out wild speculations until Jeeves, once again, trickles into the room to announce that Sir Roderick Glossop is presently… under arrest! For breaking and entering into Bertie’s garage. And being held in the potting shed in the garden owing to the fact that Sergeant Voules’s house, which also the village police station, was also burned down in the blaze which demolished Bertie’s cottage, so it’s the best place he and Constable Dobson could think of!
This further crushes Stoker because he was planning to bring Glossop into court as a reputable psychiatrist to testify that Old George was sane, and yet here is his ‘expert’, arrested for burglary while all blacked up! He will be laughed out of court. Again there’s a hubbub of suggestions until Bertie rings for Jeeves who, of course, has a plan. He points out that the cops don’t actually know who Glossop is yet, they think he’s one of the minstrels. Although Chuffy is the local Justice of the Peace, Glossop hasn’t yet been brought before him. So if they can liberate Glossop from the potting shed, wash his face and despatch him to London all will be well.
Stoker is full of praise for the plan but Bertie sees that this is the moment to force him to make promises: Bertie extorts Stoker’s word that he will 1) buy Chuffley Hall and 2) give permission for Pauline to marry Chuffy. Once these are in the bag, the plan can proceed.
Jeeves’s plan is to extract Glossop from the potting shed by distracting Constable Dobson by telling him that his paramour, the Hall parlourmaid Mary, was waiting for him in the bushes, and make her even more appealing by announcing she has ham sandwiches and coffee for him. In his absence our team will release Glossop. However, there’s a snag: when the cops spot that Glossop is loose they’ll institute a manhunt. Therefore Jeeves takes everyone’s breath away when he suggests that they replace Glossop with… Bertie! Another posh man in blackface! Even though Dobson will realise he’s a different man he won’t be able to admit it to his boss because he’ll give away the fact that he abandoned his post. Although he’s prepared to make a little sacrifice for his friends, Bertie understandably objects to going to prison for them. But Jeeves logically points out that he cannot be charged for breaking into his own garage! Once the cops realise they’re charging the owner of the property they’ll have to abandon the prosecution.
Sudden conclusion
Then, suddenly and abruptly, the novel is over. Having devoted to pages describing the minutiae of various preceding incidents, the final chapter completely jumps over the enactment of this scheme, the deployment of the parlourmaid, the distracting of Constable Dobbs, the liberation of Sir Rodney, his replacement with Bertie… Instead we find ourselves transported to a few days later when Bertie has just demolished an enormous breakfast in Chuffnell Hall, chatting to Jeeves and it is revealed that everything went like clockwork, up to and including Bertie being brought before Chuffy, sitting on the bench wearing horn-rimmed spectacles in his capacity of Justice of the Peace, who made a stern speech and then let Bertie off without charge, fine or conviction.
As in the short stories, this brief coda also reveals that Jeeves played a larger role in orchestrating events than we realised. That cable from America which threatened to impoverish Stoker and forced him to seek out, liberate and reconcile with Glossop, not to mention promising to buy Chuffnell Hall and allow Chuffy and Pauline to marry – in solving all the problems at play in the story? Jeeves made it up, sent it to a pal in New York who sent it back so as to make it look authentic! As Bertie sums it up:
‘Once again you have shown that there is no crisis which you are unable to handle. A very smooth effort, Jeeves. Exceedingly smooth.’
‘I could have effected nothing without your co-operation, sir.’
‘Tush, Jeeves! I was a mere pawn in the game.’
Jeeves asks whether Bertie plans to stay in the country? No, he’ll return to ‘the metrop’. And will he resume playing the banjolele? No, his banjolele perished in the fire and one was enough. At which point Jeeves announces that he has quit Lord Chuffnell’s employment and could he come and work for Bertie again? Bertram’s joy is unbounded!
The cast
- Bertie Wooster – private school, Eton and Oxford
- Jeeves – his valet
- Sir Rodney Glossop – nerve specialist (i.e early form of psychiatrist) and Bertie’s nemesis, who he describes as that ‘old pot of poison’ and ‘that old crumb’
- Marmaduke Chuffnell aka ‘Chuffy’ – the fifth Baron Chuffnell – Bertie was at private school, Eton and Oxford with him
- Dowager Lady Chuffnell aka Chuffy’s Aunt Myrtle
- Seabury – Aunt Myrtle’s young son – ‘a smallish, freckled kid with aeroplane ears, and he had a way of looking at you as if you were something he had run into in the course of a slumming trip’
- J. Washburn Stoker – American millionaire, ‘a cove who always reminded me of a pirate of the Spanish Main – a massive blighter and piercing-eyed, to boot’
- Pauline Stoker – his daughter
- Dwight Stoker – his young son
- Brinkley – Jeeves’s replacement – ‘A melancholy blighter, with a long, thin, pimple-studded face and deep, brooding eyes, he had shown himself averse from the start to that agreeable chit-chat between employer and employed to which the society of Jeeves had accustomed me’ – turns out to be a left-wing, drunkard pyromaniac
- Sergeant Voules – ‘a bird built rather on the lines of the Albert Hall, round in the middle and not much above’ – Uncle Ted to..
- Constable Dobson – his nephew
Jeeves’s character
You can’t switch Jeeves off when he has something to say which he feels will be of interest. The only thing is to stand by and wait till he runs down.
Old Stoker breathed a bit tensely for a while, then he spoke in almost an awed voice. It’s often that way when you get up against Jeeves. He has a way of suggesting new viewpoints.
And mysterious qualities:
Said old Stoker severely. ‘Get out! We’re busy.’
The remark was addressed to Jeeves, who had come floating in again. It’s one of this man’s most
remarkable properties, that now you see him and now you don’t. Or, rather, now you don’t see him and now you do. You’re talking of this and that and you suddenly sense a presence, so to speak, and there he is.
Choice phrases
He made a noise like a pig swallowing half a cabbage, but refused to commit himself further.
The scullery-maid had set a mark at which others who met me suddenly might shoot in vain. But Pauline eclipsed her completely. She remained in Chuffy’s arms gurgling like a leaky radiator, and it was only quite some little time later that she began to regain anything of a grip on her faculties.
Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall. I couldn’t help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I’ve tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.
Credit
‘Thank You, Jeeves’ was published in 1934 by Herbert Jenkins.
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