‘This looks like being another of your successes. I’ve always said, and I always shall say, that for sheer brain, Jeeves, you stand alone. All the other great thinkers of the age are simply in the crowd, watching you go by.’
‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’
‘Bertie,’ said Bingo reproachfully, ‘I saved your life once.’
‘When?’
‘Didn’t I? It must have been some other fellow, then.’
I bit the bullet and had a dash at being airy.
‘Oh, well, tra-la-la!’ I said.
‘Precisely, sir,’ said Jeeves.
‘This is a rotten country,’ said Cyril.
‘Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!’ I said.
‘Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!’ I said. ‘What?’ There didn’t seem much else to say.
‘The Inimitable Jeeves’ by P.G. Wodehouse, published in 1923, was the first of the Jeeves novels. It wasn’t originally conceived as a single narrative and was cobbled together from 11 previously published short stories featuring the same characters.
All the stories had previously appeared in The Strand magazine in the UK, between December 1921 and November 1922, except for one, ‘Jeeves and the Chump Cyril’, which had appeared in the Strand in August 1918.
This was the second collection of Jeeves stories, after ‘My Man Jeeves’ (1919) although the four Jeeves stories in that collection would be reprinted in the next one, ‘Carry On, Jeeves’, in 1925.
Bingo’s infatuations
The stories are connected and feature either Bertie Wooster’s friend Richard ‘Bingo’ Little, who is always falling in love (with no fewer than seven young ladies in this volume):
- Bingo Little is a chap I was at school with, and we see a lot of each other still. He’s the nephew of old Mortimer Little, who retired from business recently with a goodish pile. (You’ve probably heard of Little’s Liniment—It Limbers Up the Legs.)
- I don’t know why, ever since I first knew him at school, I should have felt a rummy feeling of responsibility for young Bingo. I mean to say, he’s not my son (thank goodness) or my brother or anything like that. He’s got absolutely no claim on me at all, and yet a large-sized chunk of my existence seems to be spent in fussing over him like a bally old hen and hauling him out of the soup.
- ‘I suppose what it amounts to, Jeeves, is that, when young Bingo really takes his coat off and starts in, there is no power of God or man that can prevent him making a chump of himself.’
Bertie dodges matrimony
Or Bertie himself as he tries to dodge romantic liaisons organised by his fearful Aunt Agatha.
Jeeves
In most of the stories Jeeves smoothly saves both Bertie and Bingo, proving himself an invaluable and almost supernaturally clever valet.
Arguments over clothes
Bertie is a fussy dresser, almost a dandy:
As a rule, I’m what you might call a slow and careful dresser: I like to linger over the tie and see that the trousers are just so;
Jeeves lays out his outfit for him every morning. But another thread running through the stories is that Bertie and Jeeves have disagreements, almost like lovers’ tiffs, caused when Jeeves disapproves of one of Bertie’s clothing choices, such as a bright red cummerbund or a pair of mauve socks or coloured spats, and a coldness affects their relationship.
I went straight back to my room, dug out the cummerbund, and draped it round the old tum. I turned round and Jeeves shied like a startled mustang.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said in a sort of hushed voice. ‘You are surely not proposing to appear in public in that thing?’
‘The cummerbund?’ I said in a careless, debonair way, passing it off. ‘Oh, rather!’
‘I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘The effect, sir, is loud in the extreme.’
Hence the three or four periods of froideur in the relationship. But not for long.
Bertie is loaded
Another theme is that, despite his modesty, Bertie is the only one with any money. All the other posh young men he knows – Bingo, Eustace and Claude – are constantly touching him for small loans. Bertie himself admits he enjoys ‘a sizable private income and a topping digestion’.
Gambling
Cliché for centuries that posh young aristocrats had nothing to do except gamble. Same here, in a comic mode. Bertie and pals are shown routinely betting on horse races. hence the chapter set at the Goodwood races, and its sequel, the comic chapter when the young chaps bet on how long local vicars’ sermons will be.
If there is one thing we Woosters are simply dripping with, it is sporting blood.
New York
I’m always surprised by the number of stories in which Bertie jaunts off to New York. He goes there to escape Aunt Agatha’s wrath after he had a disastrously bad lunch with Sir Roderick Glossop, father of Honoria Glossop who Agatha wanted Bertie to marry. The story in question (A Letter of Introduction) features a priceless exchange between another Brit newly arrived in the city, Cyril Bassington-Bassington and Bertie’s long-time pal George Caffyn:
‘This is a rotten country,’ said Cyril.
‘Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!’ I said.
‘We do our best,’ said George.
‘Old George is an American,’ I explained. ‘Writes plays, don’t you know, and what not.’
‘Of course, I didn’t invent the country,’ said George. ‘That was Columbus. But I shall be delighted to consider any improvements you may suggest and lay them before the proper authorities.’
Cast
- Bertie Wooster – idle, upper-class loafer
- Jeeves – his faithful valet
- Bingo Little – his idiot friend, always falling in love with inappropriate types, ‘perpetually hard-up’
- Mortimer Little – Bingo’s uncle, who becomes Lord Bittlesham
- Miss Watson, Uncle Mortimer’s cook – with whom Jeeves, for a while, has ‘an understanding’
- Aunt Agatha aka Mrs Gregson – Bertie’s arch enemy, ‘a sort of human vampire-bat’
- Spenser – her butler
- Mabel – the tearoom waitress Bingo thinks he’s in love with
- Aline Hemmingway – confidence trickster
- Soapy Sid – her accomplice posing as her brother
- McGarry – barman
- Honoria Glossop – young woman Aunt Agatha tries to fix Bertie up with – ‘To me the girl was simply nothing more nor less than a pot of poison. One of those dashed large, brainy, strenuous, dynamic girls you see so many of these days. She had been at Girton [College, Cambridge] where, in addition to enlarging her brain to the most frightful extent, she had gone in for every kind of sport and developed the physique of a middle-weight catch-as-catch-can wrestler’
- Oswald Glossop – Honoria’s kid brother
- Sir Roderick Glossop – Honoria’s father, nerve specialist, owner of Ditteredge Hall – ‘an extraordinarily formidable old bird he was. He had a pair of shaggy eyebrows which gave his eyes a piercing look which was not at all the sort of thing a fellow wanted to encounter on an empty stomach. He was fairly tall and fairly broad, and he had the most enormous head, with practically no hair on it, which made it seem bigger and much more like the dome of St. Paul’s’
- Claude and Eustace – twins, kids at school with Bertie in his last summer term
- Cyril Bassington-Bassington – ‘a thin, tall chappie with a lot of light hair and pale-blue goggly eyes which made him look like one of the rarer kinds of fish’
- George Caffyn – acquaintance in New York – ‘a fellow who wrote plays and what not’, author of new musical comedy, ‘Ask Dad’
- Blumenfield – manager of the theatre where ‘Ask Dad’ is being staged – ‘an absolutely round chappie with big spectacles and a practically hairless dome’
- Charlotte Corday Rowbotham – Bingo falls for
- Cynthia Wickhammersley – pal of Bertie’s – ‘I think she’s a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything’s nice and matey’
- Lord Wickhammersley
- Lady Wickhammersley
- Brookfield, their butler
- Rupert Steggles – chief opponent in the gambling chapters – ‘a little, rat-faced fellow, with shifty eyes and a suspicious nature’
- Rev. Francis Heppenstall – author of the famously long sermon on brotherly love who, at the last minute, hands it to his nephew to deliver, thus ruining the great sermon handicap
- the Reverend Mr Wingham – Mr Heppenstall’s new curate and Bingo’s rival for the love of Miss Mary Burgess
- Miss Mary Burgess
- Wilfred Burgess – her kid brother
- Marion Wardour – friend of Bertie’s who both Eustace and Claude claim to have fallen in love with
Aspects of Wodehouse’s style
1. First-person narrative by Bertie, which consists of:
2. Direct address – treating the reader as a confidential chum:
The audience was settling down into the sort of torpor usual on these occasions, when the first of Bingo’s interpolated bits occurred. It was that number which What’s-her-name sings in that revue at the Palace—you would recognise the tune if I hummed it, but I can never get hold of the dashed thing.
A small boy with a face like a turbot edged out in front of the curtain, which had been lowered after a pretty painful scene about a wishing-ring or a fairy’s curse or something of that sort, and started to sing that song of George Thingummy’s out of ‘Cuddle Up’. You know the one I mean. ‘Always Listen to Mother, Girls!’ it’s called, and he gets the audience to join in and sing the refrain.
3. This artless candour is related to disarming honesty about his charming brainlessness.
4. It’s easy to overlook that the entire thing is a satire on the kind of posh dimwits epitomised by Bertie and his friends.
5. Much of this is embodied in the prose style of the text and, in particular, in the relentless use of upper-class slang.
An endless fount of posh slang
Two things. 1) the text is so solidly stuffed with upper-class slang, in both dialogue and the first-person narrative, that it creates its own world. 2) It is so exuberant and creative and original that the endless slang is a major contributor to the light, bubbly comic vibe. Thus:
Bingo biffs about London on a pretty comfortable allowance given him by his uncle…
He had been clearing away the breakfast things, but at the sound of the young master’s voice cheesed it courteously.
Bingo, while not absolutely rolling in the stuff, has always had a fair amount of the ready. [money]
The man was goggling. His entire map was suffused with a rich blush. [face]
If anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard…
Anyway, he was there, swinging a dashed efficient shoe. [dancing well]
‘What might you have missed?’ I asked, the old lemon being slightly clouded.
If he cut off my allowance, I should be very much in the soup. So you put the whole binge to Jeeves and see if he can’t scare up a happy ending somehow.
To round it all off, my Aunt Agatha had gone to France and wouldn’t be on hand to snooter me for at least another six weeks.
Never before had I encountered a curate so genuinely all to the mustard.
Little as he might look like one of the lads of the village, he certainly appeared to be the real tabasco.
I mean, even a chappie endowed with the immortal rind of dear old Sid is hardly likely to have the nerve to come back and retrieve these little chaps.’
‘Well, then, dash it, I’m on velvet. Absolutely reclining on the good old plush!’
I knocked but no one took any notice, so I trickled in.
Once a year Jeeves takes a couple of weeks’ vacation and biffs off to the sea or somewhere to restore his tissues.
‘Worships the ground you tread on, but can’t whack up the ginger to tell you so.’
‘And what might all this be, Jeeves?’ I said, giving the thing the glassy gaze.
‘I’m feeling frightfully braced, don’t you know!’
‘My jolly old guv’nor wouldn’t stick it at any price. Put the old Waukeesi down with a bang.’
‘Toodle-oo!’ I said sadly, and the blighter scudded off.
What with trying to imagine how Aunt Agatha was going to take this thing, and being woken up out of the dreamless in the small hours every other night to give my opinion of some new bit of business which Cyril had invented, I became more or less the good old shadow.
‘Well, never mind about him, Jeeves. Read this letter.’ He gave it the up-and-down.
I gave the couple the wary up-and-down…
‘Of course,’ I said, after I had given it the east-to-west, ‘I expected this, Jeeves.’
I mean to say, he sent me over here to broaden my jolly old mind and words to that effect, don’t you know, and I can’t help thinking it would be a bit of a jar for the old boy if I gave him the bird and went on the stage instead.
‘Isn’t she the most wonderful girl you ever saw in your puff?’ [in your life]
Few people have ever looked fouler than young Bingo in the fungus. [with a beard]
‘Well, when I tell you he got me through Smalls, you’ll gather that he’s a bit of a hummer.’
I found him eventually in his room, lying on the bed with his feet on the rail, smoking a toofah.
‘Bertie,’ said Claude, deeply agitated, ‘unless we take immediate action and do a bit of quick thinking, we’re in the cart.’
He started in about the female the moment we had begun to hoof it. [walk]
I can’t go chucking all my engagements every second week in order to biff down to Twing.
He gave one frosty look at the spats and biffed off.
The blighter had appeared from nowhere and was in my bed, sleeping like an infant with a sort of happy, dreamy smile on his map.
Anything merrier and brighter than the Twins, when they curveted into the old flat while I was dressing for dinner the next night, I have never struck in my whole puff. [life]
‘You heard about the binge, Bertie?’ [spot of bother]
‘He could use a bit of the right stuff paid every quarter, if you felt like unbelting.’ [money]
‘Something tells me that this show of his is going to be a frost.’ [failure, disaster]
‘This morning young Bingo went and jumped off the dock.’ [got married]
Posh abbreviations
The good old persp. was bedewing my forehead by this time in a pretty lavish manner. [perspiration]
I had just had one quick and another rather slower, and was feeling about as cheerio as was possible under the circs. [circumstances]
‘I think we’ve had about enough of the metrop. for the time being, and require a change.’ [metropolis i.e. London]
‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ said Eustace gloomily, ‘if there’s such a thing as a cert. in this world.’ [certainty – racing term]
We Woosters are all for the good old mediæval hosp. and all that… [hospitality]
I sent Jeeves a telegram saying I was coming, and drove straight to Bingo’s place when I reached town. I wanted to find out the general posish of affairs.
Verbs for entering or leaving a room
Jeeves poured silently in.
I then perceived that the stout stripling had trickled into the room.
About half-past ten next morning, just after I had finished lubricating the good old interior with a soothing cup of Oolong, Jeeves filtered into my bedroom…
He sallied forth,
Old Rowbotham took three and dropped the subject, and Jeeves drifted away.
‘Sir?’ said Jeeves, who had just meandered in with my breakfast.
And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients…
Jeeves had materialised from nowhere, and was standing at my elbow.
The idle rich
The text has moments of self criticism or self awareness, albeit themselves played for laughs, one useless upper class layabout berating his pals for being useless upper class layabouts – the entire ‘serious’ world of politics, socialism and so on co-opted, emptied and turned into yet another trope for gags.
‘Good night!’
‘But, I say, George, old man!’
You didn’t get my last remark. It was ‘Good night!’ You Idle Rich may not need any sleep, but I’ve got to be bright and fresh in the morning.’
And:
I saw that the bearded chappie was pointing at us. ‘Yes, look at them! Drink them in!’ he was yelling, his voice rising above the perpetual-motion fellow’s and beating the missionary service all to nothing. ‘There you see two typical members of the class which has down-trodden the poor for centuries. Idlers! Non-producers! Look at the tall thin one with the face like a motor-mascot. Has he ever done an honest day’s work in his life? No! A prowler, a trifler, and a blood-sucker! And I bet he still owes his tailor for those trousers!’
Comic similes
Young Bingo is long and thin and hasn’t had a superfluous ounce on him since we first met; but the uncle restored the average and a bit over. The hand which grasped mine wrapped it round and enfolded it till I began to wonder if I’d ever get it out without excavating machinery.
I tottered back to my room to dress for dinner, feeling like a toad under the harrow.
At this point the brother, who after shedding a floppy overcoat and parking his hat on a chair had been standing by wrapped in the silence, gave a little cough, like a sheep caught in the mist on a mountain top.
She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.
The stage seemed to stretch out in front of me like a trackless desert, and there was a kind of breathless hush as if all Nature had paused to concentrate its attention on me personally.
I could see that these harsh words had hit the old Bassington-Bassington family pride a frightful wallop. He started to get pink in the ears, and then in the nose, and then in the cheeks, till in about a quarter of a minute he looked pretty much like an explosion in a tomato cannery on a sunset evening.
On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James’s letter about Cousin Mabel’s peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle (‘Please read this carefully and send it on to Jane’), the clan has a tendency to ignore me.
Books & Boots 