‘The tie, if I might suggest it, sir, a shade more tightly knotted. One aims at the perfect butterfly effect. If you will permit me⁠—’
‘What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this? Do you realize that Mr Little’s domestic happiness is hanging in the scale?’
‘There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.’

‘Great Scott, Jeeves, you seem to know everything.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’

‘What earthly use do you suppose you are without Jeeves, you poor ditherer?’ (Aunt Dahlia)

This is the third collection of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves short stories, bringing together 11 which had been published in the later 1920s.

1. Jeeves and the Impending Doom (December 1926)
2. The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy (April 1926)
3. Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit (December 1927)
4. Jeeves and the Song of Songs (September 1929)
5. Episode of the Dog McIntosh (October 1929)
6. The Spot of Art (December 1929)
7. Jeeves and the Kid Clementina (January 1930)
8. The Love That Purifies (November 1929)
9. Jeeves and the Old School Chum (February 1930)
10. Indian Summer of an Uncle (March 1930)
11. The Ordeal of Young Tuppy (April 1930)

They feature empty-headed posh boy Bertram ‘Bertie’ Wooster and revolve around the supernatural ability of his impeccably dressed, supremely clever and always-in-command valet, Jeeves, to solve the problems faced by Bertie and his posh boy pals. The stories are almost all narrated by Bertie in his upbeat, slang-rich, posh boy tones which are quite candid about his own shortcomings.

If you ask my Aunt Agatha, she will tell you⁠—in fact, she is quite likely to tell you even if you don’t ask her⁠—that I am a vapid and irreflective chump. Barely sentient, was the way she once described me: and I’m not saying that in a broad, general sense she isn’t right.

The formula

Early on in each story Bertie or a posh young pal of his is faced with a tricky social problem, mostly revolving around entanglements with unsuitable young ladies, or social commitments foisted on them by their aunts which they are trying to wriggle out of. In every instance Bertie calls in Jeeves who comes up with a cunning plan to solve the situation. But there is always a kind of second climax or double take, whereby the initial plan often goes awry but Jeeves is revealed as having anticipated this and put in place an even better, more all-encompassing plan B, so that every story invariably ends with ‘Well done, Jeeves’.

Jeeves and Bertie’s eternal battle over clothes

When I read the earliest stories I thought Jeeves’s insistence on telling Bertie what to wear was one among many foibles, but I came to realise it plays a central role, for at least two reasons. The obvious one is to demonstrate the comic principle that Jeeves is always right and Bertie is always wrong. About everything.

But the deeper reason is that the argument about a piece of clothing which Bertie is frightfully proud of buying but which Jeeves thinks is beyond the pale, these arguments often top and tail the stories, providing a structure and an added layer of comic plot. So that:

1. The story opens with the pair behaving frostily towards each other over such a squabble with Bertie insisting on his independence and how he is the master and how he will never cave in to Jeeves’s taste; then…
2. We have the entire central plot of saving Bertie or a buddy from a fate worse than death, and after that’s all sorted out…
3. The narrative returns to the silly squabble about a tie or a shirt or a pair of spats and Bertie, awed by Jeeves’s triumph at solving the central problem, caves in.

1. It’s part of the comic formula that Bertie starts every story insisting he’s going to show the true Wooster mettle:

• ‘I mean to say, where does a valet get off, censoring vases…’
• ‘I mean to say, one has got to take a firm stand from time to time. The trouble with Jeeves is that he tends occasionally to get above himself…’

Bertie’s tone, the comic over-assertion of the man who knows he’s going to lose, is typified by the spat over his moustache in the Hard-Boiled Egg:

I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on anything to talk about that wasn’t apt to take a personal turn. You see, I had decided—rightly or wrongly—to grow a moustache, and this had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn’t stick the thing at any price, and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while there’s no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves’s judgement is absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many’s the time I’ve given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet’s staking out a claim on your upper lip you’ve simply got to have a bit of the good old bulldog pluck and defy the blighter…

2. Then there’s the main story in all its complexity, and complete with the double ending I’ve pointed out.

3. And then the comic punchline as Bertie, yet again, gives in to Jeeves’s silent disapproval. At the end of the Hard Boiled Egg adventure, Bertie considers that Jeeves himself didn’t make enough out of the adventure and then… proceeds to give in on the moustache issue.

‘I fancy Mr Bickersteth intends—I judge from his remarks—to signify his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position to do so.’
‘It isn’t enough, Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
‘Bring my shaving things.’
A gleam of hope shone in the man’s eye, mixed with doubt.
‘You mean, sir?’
‘And shave off my moustache.’
There was a moment’s silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
‘Thank you very much indeed, sir,’ he said, in a low voice.

In previous collections Jeeves has interfered to stop Bertie wearing:

• a rather sprightly young check suit – ‘Jeeves Takes Charge’ (1916)
• a blue suit with the faint red stripe – ‘The Artistic Career of Corky’ (1916)
• a moustache – ‘Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg’ (1917)
• purple socks – ‘Bertie Changes His Mind’ (1922)
• a cummerbund – ‘Aunt Agatha Takes the Count’ (1922)
• soft-fronted shirts with dress-clothes – in their very first story, ‘Jeeves Takes Charge’ (1916)
• coloured spats – ‘Without the Option’ (1925)

In this volume Jeeves triumphs in the matter of:

• the new vase – ‘The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy’
• Bertie’s bright new plus-fours – ‘Jeeves and the Kid Clementina’

Holiday battles

Also worth mentioning that this battle of wills also extends to holiday destinations, as when Jeeves is disappointed when Bertie cancels their plan to spend Christmas in Monte Carlo and go, instead, to his Aunt Dahlia’s but how, by orchestrating a sequence of unfortunate events, Jeeves manages to get his way in the end.

Or in ‘Jeeves and the Spot of Art’, Jeeves is disappointed when Bertie turns down the offer of a yacht cruise with Aunt Agatha but engineers everything so that they do, as a result of the story’s main adventure, end up going on it.

Psychology

I noted in the novels of Agatha Christie the slow spread through the 1920s of ideas and terms from Freud and his followers. So it’s striking that there’s an entire story here, from 1926, entirely based on the concept of the ‘inferiority complex’, the depth psychology term which is also most used in Christie’s novels. Maybe, for some reason, it struck a chord in popular psychology and culture although, like a lot of the Freudian ideas, it is used in a crude, inaccurate, popularised kind of way.

1. Jeeves and the Impending Doom (1926)

Bertie rescues a politician from a swan.

Bertie is invited by his dreaded Aunt Agatha to go and stay at her place, Woollam Chersey, in Hertfordshire. Here he finds his old school chum Bingo Little has been hired to tutor Aunt A’s difficult son, Thomas. Bingo anxiously tells Bertie to pretend not to know him because Agatha has such a low opinion of Bertie that if she learns Bingo is his friend, she’ll sack him.

But the centre of the story is that Aunt Agatha is also entertaining a very important guest, a Cabinet Minister named A.B. Filmer.

The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “When!”

Aunt A has tasked Bingo with making sure her difficult son, Thomas, doesn’t cause trouble.

As a result Bingo is super-stressed. Both Bertie and Jeeves tell him he simply mustn’t let the little rascal out of his sight, which is perfectly sensible, until it comes to the afternoon of the tennis tournament. Bingo is nuts about tennis and becomes so immersed in the games he loses all track of Thomas. When rain stops play and everyone troops inside, they realise the VIP Filmer is missing.

Jeeves informs Bertie that Filmer took a rowing boat across the large lake to the island in the middle to explore, but the dastardly Thomas rowed after him and untied his boat, which drifted off, leaving the politician marooned.

Rather heroically, Bertie and Jeeves rush down to the lake, take another boat and row out to the island. Here Bertie discovers the hapless politician is being terrorised by a wild swan and so has taken refuge on the roof of the mock Greek temple. Bertie is just sizing up the situation when the swan goes for him, too, so he also scrambles up onto the temple roof.

They call to Jeeves who saves the day, throwing Bertie’s raincoat over the swan and using a boathook to hoist him into the undergrowth, at which point Bertie and Filmer scramble down and everyone legs it back to the boats.

Later on, as Bertie is having a bath and recovering, Jeeves surprises him by telling him that he (Jeeves) has just told Aunt Agatha that it was Bertie who unmoored the minister’s boat. At first sight Jeeves seems to have dropped Bertie in the soup. But Jeeves goes on to explain that he overheard Aunt Agatha planning to get Bertie a job as Filmer’s secretary, something he would have hated. Therefore, what at first sight appears a floater by Jeeves turns out to be a stroke of genius.

This is what I meant when I referred, above, to the way the stories so often have a second comic climax, or Plan B, a kind of encore to the main action.

Anyway, Jeeves suggests Bertie avoids recriminations from his aunt by getting dressed, shimmying down the drainpipe and Jeeves will be waiting in the car to spirit him away.

2. The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy (1926)

Bertie helps his old chum overcome his shyness about proposing to his girlfriend and standing up to his old headmaster.

The story opens with one of those arguments over taste which I mentioned above. usually Bertie and Jeeves fall out over clothes, but this is over a vase which Bertie loves and Jeeves hates.

Having established the bookend theme, Bertie goes to visit his old friend Sippy, who we first met as a freelance writer but who is now the editor of a journal, which he is finding dashed hard work. Bertie arrives for a visit and observes him being bullied by a horrible older man, who forces an unsuitable article on him and, when he’s left, turns out to be his old headmaster, Mr Waterbury. In the same visit Sippy explains that he is in love with the poet Gwendolen Moon.

Back home Bertie runs all this past Jeeves and expounds his theory that Sippy is suffering from an inferiority complex. Bertie comes up with a wizard wheeze which is to place a bag of flour over the entrance to Sippy’s offices so that next time the bullying headmaster visits, he will be doused in flour and Sippy, upon seeing him so humiliated, will lose his fear of him – and this will give him the confidence he needs to finally propose to his lady love, Miss Moon.

At present this head master bloke, this Waterbury, is trampling all over Mr Sipperley because he is hedged about with dignity, if you understand what I mean. Years have passed; Mr Sipperley now shaves daily and is in an important editorial position; but he can never forget that this bird once gave him six of the juiciest. Result: an inferiority complex. The only way to remove that complex, Jeeves, is to arrange that Mr Sipperley shall see this Waterbury in a thoroughly undignified position.

Jeeves doesn’t like the plan. He thinks they should do things in the opposite order – help Sippy pluck up the courage to propose to Gwendolen so that her acceptance gives him the boost and confidence to outface horrible old Waterbury.

But Bertie pushes on with his flour plan, popping round to the offices and perching the flour bomb on a partly ajar door when no-one is around. Then he goes for a walk round the block to let Waterbury get caught in the trap. But when he returns an hour or so later, there is no sign of a floured Waterbury but there is a Sippy wreathed in smiles because Jeeves has arranged everything.

Jeeves explains that he invited Sippy round to Bertie’s flat and, when his back was turned, whacked him with a golf club, then phoned Miss Moon and told her Sippy had had a bad accident. She immediately came rushing round and swooned at the sight of her beloved injured, tended him and he finally proposed and she joyfully said yes. Success!

How did he explain away the whacking? Well, he gave the excuse that Bertie’s vase fell on is head. This had the added virtue, for Jeeves, of smashing said vase.

All is well but Bertie realises he’s forgotten his hat so nips back into the offices, goes through the wrong door and triggers the pound-and-a-half of flour falling on his head.

So Jeeves fixes everything, gets rid of the detested vase, and Bertie gets roundly humiliated into the bargain.

Inferiority complex

‘The whole trouble being, Jeeves, that he has got one of those things that fellows do get⁠—it’s on the tip of my tongue.’
‘An inferiority complex, sir?’
‘Exactly. An inferiority complex. I have one myself with regard to my Aunt Agatha. You know me, Jeeves. You know that if it were a question of volunteers to man the lifeboat, I would spring to the task. If anyone said, ‘Don’t go down the coal-mine, daddy,’ it would have not the slightest effect on my resolution⁠—’
‘Undoubtedly, sir.’
‘And yet⁠—and this is where I want you to follow me very closely, Jeeves⁠—when I hear that my Aunt Agatha is out with her hatchet and moving in my direction, I run like a rabbit. Why? Because she gives me an inferiority complex.’

3. Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit (December 1927)

The hot water bottle fiasco.

Christmas is approaching and Lady Wickham invites Berties to her place, Skeldings, for the festive season. This disappoints Jeeves who thought they were going to Monte Carlo.

Aunt Agatha phones to warn him that his nemesis, the loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop, will be there too. Bertie confides in Jeeves that the reason he’s come is to get revenge on one Tuppy Glossop, the chap who humiliated him at the club by making him swing from hoops above the swimming pool for a bet, but tied the last one to the wall so Bertie was obliged to drop into the pool and swim back to the side.

Now Bobbie suggests a scheme for revenge involving a long stick, a darning needle, and a hot water bottle. Bertie tells Jeeves to get a long stick and tie a darning needle to the end of it. Then, as per Bobbie’s plan, he sneaks into Tuppy’s room in the dead of night, infiltrates the stick under the covers of the sleeping figure, locates the hot water bottle, and gently punctures it.

However, it’s at that moment that the bedroom door, which Bertie had carefully left ajar, is caught by a gust of wind and slams shut, waking the inhabitant of the bed like a shot. Bertie turns and runs but his dressing gown gets caught in the door and he is apprehended by the room’s inhabitant who… turns out to be Sir Roderick!! He and Tuppy have swapped rooms because Roderick doesn’t like sleeping on upper floors.

Sir Roderick drags Bertie back into the room where they both observe his hot water bottle leaking all over the bed, at which point Sir Roderick says he will sleep in Bertie’s bed and leaves our hero to decide not to try the now soaking wet bed, but instead fall asleep in the armchair… where, come the morning, he is awoken by Jeeves with a reviving cup of tea.

There then follows one of those comic double takes or double endings which I’ve mentioned, the kind where Jeeves first appals Bertie, before going on to give the deeper, reassuring, explanation.

In this case, Bertie is astounded to learn that it was Jeeves who betrayed him: Sir Roderick told Jeeves he was changing rooms but Jeeves didn’t pass on the message thus guaranteeing Bertie’s humiliation. BUT next second, Jeeves goes on to clarify that he did it to avoid Bertie falling into the clutches of Roderick’s daughter, Honoria Glossop. He had overheard Sir Roderick musing that Bertie might still make her a good wife.

Bertie makes the objection that Sir Roderick might, over time, come to realise the hot water bottle thing was just youthful hi-jinks, when Jeeves points out there was a second incident in the night, namely that someone crept into Bertie’s old bedroom, where Sir Roderick was sleeping, and punctured his hot water bottle using the stick and needle technique.

Dim Bertie thinks this is an extraordinary coincidence, two chaps having the same bright idea on the same night. Not really, Jeeves explains. For he overheard Bobbie Wickham giving Tuppy the idea, same as she gave Bertie the idea. In other words, she arranged for them both to sneak into each others’ rooms and puncture each others’ hot water bottles!

Bertie had been showing signs of softening to Bobbie. Now Jeeves’s revelation of her treachery makes him see her in a whole new light. Meanwhile Jeeves has seen Sir Roderick this morning who is gunning for Bertie. Jeeves thinks the best course of action would be to shin down the drainpipe and do a runner from the house to the nearest village where he can hire a car to take him back to London. Jeeves will pack up his stuff and bring it back in their motor car.

And, in order to escape Aunt Agatha’s wrath maybe get out of England altogether. Probably to Monte Carlo which is where Jeeves wanted to head all along.

‘I would not take the liberty of dictating your movements, sir, but as you already have accommodation engaged on the Blue Train for Monte Carlo for the day after to-morrow ‘
‘But you cancelled the booking?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I thought you had.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I told you to.’
‘Yes, sir. It was remiss of me, but the matter slipped my mind.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right, Jeeves. Monte Carlo ho, then.’
‘Very good, sir.’

A textbook example of how Jeeves always gets his way in the end.

4. Jeeves and the Song of Songs (September 1929)

Jeeves ends Tuppy Glossop’s inappropriate engagement to opera singer Cora Bellinger.

Bertie is in the bath when Tuppy Glossop calls round to announce he’s madly in love with an opera singer named Cora Bellinger. Tuppy’s called round for two reasons. 1) To invite Bertie to have lunch with him and Cora; 2) to ask him not to mention the practical joke where he bet Bertie he couldn’t swing from bars above a swimming pool which resulted in Bertie falling into said pool.

Bertie is reluctant as he is still mulling over some fierce revenge he can take for the swimming pool incident but instead finds himself hosting lunch for his enemy. When Cora arrives, Bertie is winningly rude about her:

I can’t say I exactly saw eye to eye with young Tuppy in his admiration for the Bellinger female. Delivered on the mat at one-twenty-five, she proved to be an upstanding light-heavyweight of some thirty summers, with a commanding eye and a square chin which I, personally, would have steered clear of. She seemed to me a good deal like what Cleopatra would have been after going in too freely for the starches and cereals.

Cora performs a few songs.

The Bellinger, at Tuppy’s request, had sung us a few songs before digging in at the trough, and nobody could have denied that her pipes were in great shape. Plaster was still falling from the ceiling.

After lunch Cora has to leave. Only then can Tuppy relax, have a drink and explain that, in her presence, he’s having to put on a serious and earnest facade. For example he’s given up drinking booze (in her presence).

He also explains what turns out to be the comic core of the story: that he’s planning to demonstrate what a serious type of chap he is by inviting her along to an East End Boys club run by a mutual pal of his and Bertie’s (‘Beefy Bingham who was at Oxford with us’) to show off his social conscience. More, Tuppy will impress her with his musical talent by singing ‘Sonny Boy’. (This is the 1928 song which had been a massive hit for Al Jolson the year before the story was published.)

Jeeves announces that Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia is on her way round and Tuppy disappears. She is a large impressive lady.

 Aunt Dahlia is one of those big, hearty women. She used to go in a lot for hunting, and she generally speaks as if she had just sighted a fox on a hillside half a mile away. ‘Bertie,’ she cried, in the manner of one encouraging a platoon of hounds to renewed efforts,

Everything is always very tightly plotted in a Wodehouse story, and Tuppy’s disappearance is directly linked to Aunt Dahlia. Turns out she has a daughter, Angela, who Tuppy left for Cora, which explains why he is in her bad books and why he ran off so quickly. Aunt Dahlia wants Tuppy to get back together with Angela and orders Bertie to get his man Jeeves on the case. She’ll call back tomorrow to find out their plan.

So Jeeves comes up with a cunning plan. He proposes that Bertie does a turn at this East End boys club and sings ‘Sonny Boy’ before Tuppy goes on, so that by the time Tuppy sings it, the audience will have heard it and it will make no impression. And then, if Tuppy goes down badly with the audience, Jeeves argues, Cora will cease to like him:

‘I think, therefore, that, should Miss Bellinger be a witness of Mr Glossop appearing to disadvantage in public, she would cease to entertain affection for him. In the event, for instance, of his failing to please the audience on Tuesday with his singing.’

Bertie is none too pleased at having to sing ‘Sonny Boy’ in public but he reluctantly agrees to go ahead if it means saving his old mucker Tuppy from an inappropriate liaison.

At the club Bertie points out that if Tuppy hears him sing ‘Sonny Boy’, he obviously won’t sing it himself. Jeeves reassures Bertie that Tuppy, on Jeeves’ advice, has gone for a drink to settle his nerves and won’t be back until it’s time to perform. He then suggests a similar stiffener for Bertie, who accordingly nips round to the local pub and has a couple of whisky and sodas, becoming a little inebriated.

Back at the venue, Bertie manages to get through the song, giving what he thinks is a good performance though puzzled at the audience’s lack of appreciation, at which Jeeves drops the bombshell that the previous two turns before Bertie had also sung ‘Sonny Boy’! No wonder the audience was restive.

Which explains why, when Tuppy takes the stage, ignorant of all his predecessors, he is only half way through the song when the audience revolts, first making boos and catcalls, and then starting to throw things, starting with a squishy banana, so Tuppy eventually gives up and beats a retreat.

It is now that the story follows the general shape of having the First Setback followed by the Ultimate Triumph. The setback is that it’s only after Tuppy runs offstage that we learn that Cora is running late and didn’t hear Tuppy sing – the whole ordeal has been for nothing. Disheartened, Bertie says he’s off to the club for a drink, while Jeeves says he’ll stay and watch the rest.

But then comes the Ultimate Triumph: later that night, back at his flat, Bertie is visited by Tuppy who is sporting an impressive black eye and announcing that he doesn’t think Cora is the girl for him, and perhaps someone with a sweeter temperament would be more suitable such as Bertie’s cousin Angela. He leaves and Jeeves arrives, to explain all.

It was Cora who gave Tuppy his black eye. This is because, when she arrived late and finally went on and performed, Jeeves asked her to sing ‘Sonny Boy’ as a favour to Tuppy. She was upset to be received with boos and raspberries, but furious to learn that several performers before her had sung the same song and drew the conclusion that she was the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Which is when she punched Tuppy in the eye. Which is why he’s rather gone off her.

As usual, complete triumph for Jeeves.

5. Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh (October 1929)

Bobbie Wickham gives Aunt Agatha’s dog to the American impresario Blumenfeld and Bertie has to get him back.

Bertie is looking after his Aunt Agatha’s West Highland terrier, McIntosh for five weeks. Aunt A returns and expects her dog back. In the meantime Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Wickham asks Bertie to give her lunch and specifically requests pudding, ice cream and chocolates. When she turns up she explains this is because a boy, a child, is coming to lunch. She goes on to explain that 1) her mother has dramatised one of her own novels 2) she (Bobbie) is in bad odour with her mother because she smashed up the car and a few other things and so 3) when she met an American theatrical impresario she thought she’d effect a reconciliation with her mother by 4) promoting the play to him; specifically, she has asked the impresario along to Bertie’s flat for a reading of the play. So she’s invited him along, and his son.

As she tells all this Bertie realises he knows the man: it’s Blumenfeld who he and we encountered in an earlier story, set in New York, ‘Jeeves and the Chump Cyril’ (1918). Bertie violently objected to Blumenfeld’s horrible son and now vows to avoid the lunch altogether. He bounds for his coat and legs it to the stairs. Unfortunately the taxi the Blumenfeld father and so is just pulling up and they spot him but he waves a cheery hello and legs it to his club.

Many hours later he returns to his flat, having phoned ahead to check the Americans have left. Jeeves reports that Miss Wickham was well pleased with the reading and, when he phones her, she confirms this, confirms that the boy was well stuffed with ice cream, his Dad liked the play, they’ve gone off to catch a movie and she’s to report to their suite at the Savoy at 5.30 to sign the contract.

Just one catch. During the lunch the little boy took a fancy to Aunt Agatha’s dog and so, er, she gave him (the dog) to him (the boy). Bertie reels at his end of the phone. He’s had a message that Aunt Agatha is arriving home from her trip abroad today. She’ll eviscerate him when she discovers her precious dog has been given away to an American brat.

Jeeves suggests a plan: if Miss Wickham has been invited to the Americans’ suite, if she arrives early and is let in, then she can open the door moments later to Bertie who can swipe the dog, and all before the Yanks get there from their movie. A quick call to Bobbie confirms this is the arrangement. Jeeves has one more suggestion: it is that Bertie douses his trouser bottoms in aniseed on the principle that dogs go mad for it. Slightly disbelieving, Bertie legs it to a chemist’s shop, buys and bottle, and whistles back, douses his trouser bottoms as instructed, then catches a cab to the Savoy.

Everything works like a dream: Bobbie opens the Americans’ room door to Bertie, the dog smells the aniseed and comes bounding out, snuffling his trousers, following him as he legs it downstairs, out into the street and into a cab home.

Barely is he home before Jeeves announces that Blumenfeld has rung up in a rage about Bertie kidnapping his goddam’ dog. There’s no time to leg it so Bertie hides behind the sofa as Blumenfeld storms in and rants and rages at an impassive Jeeves. Jeeves plays a blinder by persuading Blumenfeld that Bertie is eccentric, even dangerous – he is particularly triggered by fat men, such as Blumenfeld. That’s why he excused himself from the lunch and they saw him running off; he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to control himself.

Bertie hears all the vigour going out of Blumenfeld’s voice as he becomes hesitant and then scared. When Jeeves offers to wake Bertie who, he says, is taking his usual nap behind the sofa, Blumenfeld blinks and then says, No, just get him out of this madhouse alive! and Jeeves sees him off the premises.

But this isn’t all. There’s always the second comic climax. For Jeeves tells a startled Bertie that, before he left, Jeeves gave Blumenfeld the dog! But wasn’t that the whole point of the whole beastly exercise, to keep the wretched dog?!

Oh no, not that dog Jeeves explains. The one he bought in Bond Street earlier that afternoon and looks exactly like McIntosh. This way Blumenfeld’s boy gets a dog, Bobbie Wickham gets her mother’s play performed, and Aunt Agatha can be reunited with her precious mutt in just a few hours’ time.

Jeeves is a genius! Everyone is, as Bertie puts it, ‘on velvet’.

6. Jeeves and the Spot of Art (December 1929)

Over dinner, Bertie tells Aunt Dahlia that he will not, now, be able to take up her kind offer of accompanying her on a yachting cruise of the Mediterranean because he has fallen in love with Gwladys Pendlebury. She is an artist and has painted his portrait which he just this morning hung in his flat. Jeeves (of course) doesn’t like it. Anyway, Bertie daren’t leave her alone in London because he has a love rival, one Lucius Pim.

But Bertie gets home from this lunch to discover that Gwladys called round but left rather distressed because she had a car accident outside the apartment block, specifically she hit a pedestrian and fractured his tibia; more specifically still, it was none other than the dreaded rival, Lucius Pim.

And to his horror, Bertie discovers that the doctor they called advised that Pim be accommodated in Bertie’s flat, in his spare room, and be accorded full rest and recovery. Also: his sister (Mrs Slingsby) is arriving in London and she must on no account discover that it was Gwladys who ran him over. Bertie must agree with the cover story that he was hit by an unknown driver who drove on.

Knowing that the sister is going to pay a visit the following day, Bertie decides to make himself scarce and motors down to Brighton for the day. However, on his return he is horrified to learn that not only did Gwladys visit for four hours – suggesting she is doing that womanly thing of caring for a poor invalid – but Mrs Slingsby was made furious with Bertie when Lucius told her that it was Bertie who ran him over – and that he was a bit drunk at the time!!

Pim is offensively calm about it, agrees it is a cheek, admits his sister is furious with him (Bertie). Not only this, her husband is an American businessman who might be so angry about it, there’s a risk he might take Bertie to court. So Pim suggests Bertie sends her a nice big bouquet of roses and a card with apologies.

Bertie does this but next thing is that the husband appears, demands his way into the flat, and starts accusing Bertie – not of running over his wife’s brother, but of having an affair with his wife! He thinks the swags of roses Bertie sent her indicated romantic tendencies. At that moment Mrs Slingsby arrives at the flat and her appearance triggers Slingsby to charge out of his chair as if to assault Bertie except that…. he slips on the golf ball Bertie had been toying with before he arrived, flies in the air and lands painfully on his back.

This gives Bertie the opportunity of legging it out the room, grabbing his coat and hat, just time to tell Jeeves to meet him at Victoria with some packed bags because he’s going to nip over to Paris till the coast clear, leaving last instructions to Jeeves to do whatever it takes to calm Slingsby down.

Weeks later Bertie ventures to return and, arriving in London, discovers that it is plastered with his image on enormous posters for Slingsby’s Super Soups. Slingsby has only gone and done a commercial deal with Gwladys to use Bertie’s image from the portrait of him she did.

Jeeves explains that he did as instructed and set about mollifying Slingsby by suggesting he use the image from the portrait. Gwladys secured a good deal, brokered by Pim acting not only as her agent but in his new-found role as her fiancé.

Well 1) that puts Bertie right off Gwladys and 2) right off the portrait (which Jeeves always disliked) and 3) in order to escape London and the ridicule the use of his image exposes him to, Jeeves suggests no better resort than to accept Aunt Dahlia’s kind invitation to the yacht cruise. As he, Jeeves, had wanted all along. Game, set and match to Jeeves.

7. Jeeves and the Kid Clementina (January 1930)

Bertie tries a cunning way of returning an AWOL schoolgirl to her school.

Bertie travels to Bingley-on-Sea to take part in the annual golf tournament. One day he confesses he’s nervous because Bingley is where a friend of his dreaded Aunt Agatha – Miss Mapleton – runs a school for girls, St Monica’s.

The clothes complication: Jeeves doesn’t like the vivid plus-fours Bertie has chosen to play golf in. What are plus-fours?

• Plus-fours on Google Images

One day Bertie’s knocked out of the competition early and has met Jeeves on the promenade when they both spot his ex-girlfriend Bobbie Wickham approaching. At the start of the story, Bertie had horrified Jeeves by announcing Bobbie had invited him to go and stay with a party of Bobbie’s in Antibes in the south of France.

Now she bounces up and announces that she’s down from London to visit her friend Clementina who’s at school nearby and to take her for dinner on her birthday. More precisely, to ask Bertie to take them both out for dinner. Bobbie will then jump into her own motor and tootle back to London, leaving Bertie to deliver Clem back to her school…

When they pitch up for dinner, Clementina turns out to be a well-behaved 13-year-old. All goes well till Bobbie jumps into her car and is about to shoot off when she casually reveals that Clementina didn’t have permission to leave school. She had been sent to her room early for putting sherbet in the inkwells.

Obviously Bertie can’t just roll up and hand her in at the front door as she will get into trouble and he will be the subject of a vitriolic letter to Aunt Agatha. So Bobbie outlines a cunning plan: get some string, break into the grounds, go to the greenhouse, gather some pots, attach string to pots, climb the nearby tree; when coast is clear pull string pulling pots down onto greenhouse with great shattering. Door opens as teachers sally out to discover what’s going on. Insert Clementina through open door, she makes her way to her room, Bertie legs it.

When he explains all this to Jeeves the latter is appalled but Bertie insists they proceed. In the event he’s only just climbed up the tree when he’s startled by the flashlamp of a policeman who tells him to climb down and explain himself. Oops.

Things are getting dicey when Jeeves magically appears and intervenes. He says he and Bertie were on a visit when they saw suspicious figures in the grounds. He, Jeeves, has knocked at the servants door and asked to see the headmistress, Miss Mapleton. (Later, he explains to Bertie that while the servant was getting her, Jeeves quietly let Clementina run in through the open back door and make her own way to her bedroom.) Then told the headmistress the fake story about alleged intruders, made Bertie out to be a hero who had gone looking for them.

Jeeves takes Bertie and the copper to meet Miss Mapleton who confirms all this is true, so the policeman is obliged, reluctantly, to acquiesce and let Bertie off. There is then the comic second climax, when they all hear the flower pot Bertie had precariously balanced, crash down into the glasshouse, as originally planned. But Miss Mapleton says this only confirms Jeeves’s story that there are intruders loose in the grounds and tells the policeman to go and do his job.

The clothes conclusion: having started the story insisting on keeping the plus-fours, Bertie ends it giving in to Jeeves. As always.

8. Jeeves and the Love That Purifies (November 1929)

Bertie gets involved in a competition between two boys as to which can be the best behaved.

It is August, the month when Jeeves gets a summer holiday and decamps off to Bognor ‘for the shrimping’.

Bertie is invited to go and stay at his Aunt Dahlia’s at Brinkley Court in Worcestershire. Here he discovers that the little terror Thomas Gregson, the son of Bertie’s Aunt Agatha, has been dumped on poor Dahlia while Agatha goes abroad. Now Dahlia has a son of her own about the same age as Thomas, Bonzo, and Bertie further discovers that another guest of his aunt’s is an old boy named Mr Anstruther, who is notoriously sensitive and given to nervous collapses. So when Anstruther realised the house contained two boisterous young boys he did a clever thing and invited them to take part in a competition as to who could be the best-behaved boy, winner getting £5! Not only this but, as Anstruther explains to Bertie, he has instituted a points system and assigns the boys points on a daily basis based on their behaviour.

But Aunt Dahlia quickly informs Bertie that this is just the start: for also staying at the house are Lord and Lady Jane Snettisham and they are gamblers and they have bet on which of the two boys will break first and behave badly. And Aunt Dahlia has joined the betting, betting her legendary cook, Anatole, against Jane Snettisham’s kitchen-maid!

Now, she tells Bertie, she suspects the Snettishams (‘the opposition’) will play dirty and place unwonted temptations in Bonzo’s way, so Bertie has to help her do the same to young Thomas. After a few failed attempts, Thomas is pulling ahead in the stakes. On one notable occasion Thomas walks 3 miles to the nearest station and 3 miles back again to fetch Bertie a copy of the Sporting Times. When he hears about this Anstruther gives Thomas bonus points.

So Aunt Dahlia insists Bertie contacts Jeeves and asks him to cut short his holiday in order to come and help. Jeeves suggests they invite young Sebastian Moon, young brother of Gwendolen Moon, to stay. He has such lovely blonde curls that any self-respecting thug like Thomas will find it impossible not to beat him up. But at first all goes badly; Thomas goes out of his way to be friendly to Sebastian and very conspicuously gives him a piggy-back when Sebastian has a painful nail in his shoe.

Then Jeeves makes the crucial breakthrough: he engages Thomas in casual conversation and discovers that the boy is besotted with the movie star Greta Garbo and, like many an idealistic adolescent, he wants to make himself worthy for her by doing good deeds. Leading Bertie to make the age-old lament:

‘The motion-pictures, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘are the curse of the age.’

This is the key which brings the story to a sudden climax because all Jeeves now has to do is tell irritating young Sebastian to insult Greta Garbo to Thomas’s face. A few hours later the boys are playing down in the stables when Jeeves and Bertie both hear a piercing scream. Round the corner comes Sebastian running, pursued by Thomas carrying a big stables bucket of water. The ‘insult Greta Garbo’ strategy has obviously worked a treat.

Anstruther had been dozing in a deckchair till the scream woke him up. He leaped to his feet just as Sebastian drew near him so that the boy dodged behind him and Thomas, egged on by the momentum of his run, let loose his big bucket of water which, of course, completely misses Sebastian but drenches old Anstruther.

Anstruther seizes a nearby stick and lashes out at Thomas who turns and flees, pursued by angry old man – Victory!

Greta Garbo in her last silent movie, The Kiss (1929)

9. Jeeves and the Old School Chum (February 1930)

Bingo Little’s marriage is imperilled when a friend of his wife’s, Laura Pyke, visits and enforces a health and vegetarian regime.

Bertie’s friend Bingo Little inherits a nice country house in Norfolk, about 30 miles from Norwich. Here Bertie has a jolly stay before being dragged off to Harrogate to accompany his Uncle George on one of his many rest cures.

After a week or so he manages to slip away but discovers the atmosphere at the Littles’ place much changed. Because Bertie’s old school friend, Laura Pyke, has come to stay and she is a health food fanatic. She immediately starts criticising everything Bingo eats, insisting they switch to pretty much vegetarian meals, and strongly disapproves of lunch.

Bertie goes so far as to imagine that it’s affecting the Little marriage, as the wife, Rosie, sees her husband being mocked on a daily basis. Bingo begs him to get Jeeves to help somehow. In the end the solution is this: they all go to the nearby Lakenham races in two cars – Bingo and Rosie in one, Bertie, Jeeves and Laura in the other. Beforehand Bingo had stood over the cook to make sure he packs a small feast of tasty sandwiches in the hamper.

However when they arrive at the races, disaster has struck: someone forgot to pack the bally hamper! Laura is jubilant, saying that no-one needs a big lunch anyway and Rosie, as she has taken to doing, agrees with everything Laura says.

Luckily Bertie had instructed Jeeves to pack a few more sandwiches for himself and the three men make excuses about seeing bookies in order to sneak off behind a hedge and share out Jeeves’s sandwiches. It is here that Jeeves drops the bombshell that it was he who omitted packing the hamper. So many of the stories follow this shape – Jeeves does something which appears inexplicably awful to Bertie, until he explains its deeper significance. Now Jeeves explains that his aim was to force the ladies to go hungry and put their money where their mouth is. Bertie is sceptical because, as he explain to Jeeves, the modern woman is happy enough to skip lunch but adamant about having tea and buttered toast.

The races end and, as Bingo wants to stay on a little, Rosie asks Bertie to drive her and Laura home. Just as they’ve got to the complete back of beyond the car stutters and rolls to a halt. There’s some comic business as the two women (Rosie and Laura) send Bertie to an isolated house they see half a mile away to get some petrol but when he bangs on the door it is opened by an infuriated man who has only just managed to get his baby off to sleep, and who refuses to give petrol.

After some more business they see a light approaching along the now dark road and Bertie runs toward it to flag it down and discovers it is Bingo and Jeeves. Bingo jumps out, tells Jeeves to wait five minutes, and walks up the road with Bertie. This is so they can secretly listen to Rosie and Pyke who, lacking their afternoon tea, have begun to bicker and argue. Their argument grows in intensity till Laura insults Rosie’s latest book!

After five minutes Jeeves drives up and Laura, furious with Rosie, demands that Jeeves drives her home.

Rosie is thrilled that Bingo has arrived to rescue her but a little cross with him for not filling the car up. Bingo insists he did and says the real fault is some car mechanic stuff (which he’s clearly made up on the spot in order to blind her with manly car know-how:

‘What’s wrong is probably that the sprockets aren’t running true with the differential gear. It happens that way sometimes. I’ll fix it in a second.’

Meanwhile he also assuages her longing for ‘tea’ by taking Rosie to the nearby house – despite Bertie’s warnings that the inhabitant is a beast – and intimidating the man into giving Rosie tea, impressing Rosie, restoring her faith in her husband which is the point of the entire exercise.

She turned for an instant to Bingo, and there was a look in her eyes that one of those damsels in distress might have given the knight as he shot his cuffs and turned away from the dead dragon. It was a look of adoration, of almost reverent respect. Just the sort of look, in fact, that a husband likes to see.

While she is inside, Bertie and Bingo refuel the car with the petrol tin they brought with them so they can retrieve Rosie after she’s refreshed by tea and all toddle home. It had been Jeeves’s idea to almost empty the tank, ensuring the ladies broke down in the middle of nowhere confident that, having had no lunch and now being deprived of tea, they would have a big fight. And then arranged for Bingo to turn up like a knight in shining armour and play the hero to his wife. Well done, Jeeves!

‘He’s a marvel.’
‘A wonder.’
‘A wizard.’
‘A stout fellow,’

10. Indian Summer of an Uncle (March 1930)

Aunt Agatha tasks Bertie with breaking up the relationship between his Uncle George and a young waitress.

Fat Uncle George, whose full title is Lord Yaxley, falls in love with a waitress named Miss Rhoda Platt and is threatening to marry her. Jeeves knows all about it, of course, and that the girl is a waitress who lives in East Dulwich. Aunt Agatha storms in and orders Bertie to go to East Dulwich straightaway and offer the girl £100 to cancel the engagement. Bertie drives down to the girl’s place, Wistaria Lodge, and encounters her stout, imposing aunt, who tells him Rhoda is in bed with the flu. There’s some comic business when she at first takes Bertie to be a doctor and asks him to examine his knee. Once that’s sorted out, Bertie loses his nerve and can’t bring himself to raise the subject with the aunt or offer her the money.

He returns to his flat where Aunt Agatha is waiting and she is furious at his failure. At this point he calls in Jeeves who, of course, fixes things. Jeeves suggests they invite Uncle George for lunch to meet the girl’s stout aunt: once he sees her and learns that she will move in if he marries the girl, it will put him off the match. Aunt Agatha ridicules this suggestion and insists that Bertie continues with the money option but, once she’s left, Bertie tells Jeeves to arrange the lunch.

When Bertie asks how Jeeves knows about Rhoda, Jeeves replies that a friend of his, another valet, named Smethurst (valet to a Colonel Mainwaring-Smith), wants to marry this Rhoda and had an ‘understanding’ with her, until she met Uncle George. Now she is torn between love for Smethurst, a man of her own station in life, and the opportunity of marrying a man with a title.

Next morning Bertie awakes with a sense of impending doom. At lunchtime Rhoda’s aunt, Mrs Wilberforce, arrives. In casual chat she stuns Bertie by telling him how she used to work as a barmaid at the Criterion. Now the thing is, as backstory earlier on, Bertie had told Jeeves (and the reader) that Uncle George had done this kind of thing – falling for a member of the lower classes – once before, years ago – with a barmaid at the Criterion, and had only just been talked out of it by the family. Could this be the self-same barmaid? Well, this is a comic story so the answer is, of course, Yes!

Panic-stricken, Bertie tells Jeeves to call Uncle George and cancel lunch but it’s too late because he arrives at just that moment, enters the drawing room and is astonished and delighted to encounter his beloved of all those years ago, immediately using their old pet names:

‘Piggy?’
‘Maudie!’

Bertie doesn’t hang around to see any more but legs it off to his club, the Drones Club. Here he gets a call from Aunt Agatha who, to his surprise, sounds happy. She explains this is because Uncle George has told her he’s called off the plan to marry Miss Rhoda and instead is going to marry a Mrs Wilberforce, a woman closer to his own age. The comic point is that Aunt Agatha mistakenly believes Mrs Wilberforce belongs to an aristocratic family.

‘I wonder which Wilberforces that would be. There are two main branches of the family — the
Essex Wilberforces and the Cumberland Wilberforces. I believe there is also a cadet branch somewhere in Shropshire.’

Bertie dare not point out her mistake, returns to his flat and confronts Jeeves. Surely this is a disaster! But Jeeves smoothly puts him right. He explains that 1) Smethurst asked him to break up Rhoda and Uncle George and that 2) Mrs Wilberforce might actually be a good match for Uncle George: he keeps going off the rails because he is an unsupervised bachelor. Even during lunch she was commenting on his overweight and recommending a healthier regime. She might be a blessing in disguise.

As to Aunt Agatha who will, no doubt, be furious, maybe a little trip abroad?

11. The Ordeal of Young Tuppy (April 1930)

Every year aristocratic households live in fear of who Bertie will go and stay with for Christmas. This year it’s Sir Reginald Witherspoon, Bart, of Bleaching Court, Upper Bleaching, Hampshire. A consideration is that Tuppy Glossop will be there and Bertie is still brooding his revenge after the swimming pool humiliation.

But plans are interrupted by the arrival of Aunt Agatha with news that Tuppy appears to be reneging on his engagement to Angela, Aunt Dahlia’s daughter, in favour of some ‘dog girl’ he’s met at this place Bleaching Court. Dahlia tells Bertie to tell Jeeves to sort it out.

So Bertie and Wooster motor down there, coming across Tuppy mooning over the girl en route. Once arrived and unpacking, Tuppy bounces in to explain the meaning of the telegram he sent Bertie. In it he asks him to bring 1) his football boots and 2) an Irish water-spaniel spaniel. The dog was designed to impress the girl and her parents (Bertie didn’t bring one). The football boots (which Bertie did bring) are to enable Tuppy to take part in the annual village football match between Upper Bleaching and Hockley-cum-Meston.

Jeeves tells Bertie that this football match is no mere sporting event but a primitive affair of great violence between two villages who hate each other. Bertie visits both villages and is horrified at the bloodthirsty language being bandied about. But when he warns Tuppy, the latter rejects it all, saying this is his big opportunity to impress the lovely Miss Dalgleish.

Wodehouse describes the match, which is in fact a form of barbarian rugby, with brilliant comic verve. Before the match Bertie had concocted a scheme whereby Jeeves would send a telegram purporting to come from Aunt Dahlia and telling Tuppy to return to London because Angela is ill and calling for him – but when he goes to deliver it to Tuppy, he realises he’s left it in the pocket of his other coat!00 It doesn’t matter, though, because, with a kind of comic inevitability, once his blood is up, Tuppy turns out to be a ferocious player, takes revenge on a red-haired player who’s been persecuting him and even scores a try!

Bertie gets back to his room at Bleaching Court and confides to Jeeves that he thinks the case is lost: he failed to deliver the telegram and Tuppy was the star of the game. However, at that moment Tuppy enters, still covered in mud, but a broken man. He explains that the lovely Miss Dalgleish wasn’t there and so didn’t see his heroic play! Apparently someone rang her from London claiming to have an Irish water-spaniel they wanted to sell her so she scorned the chance of seeing Tuppy risk his life for her and motored off to the capital, only to discover it was the wrong kind of spaniel after all.

He is gutted – disappointed in Miss Dalgliesh, what kind of life partner would she make! – and disillusioned with women as a sex.

Bertie mentions Angela but Tuppy crossly remembers the argument about her hat they had which led to them breaking up. it is now, at the perfect psychological moment, that Bertie retrieves the telegram he and Jeeves faked and hands it to Tuppy. When he reads that Angela in her delirium is calling his name, Tuppy melts, tells Bertie what a wonderful woman she is, asks to borrow his car so he can motor off to her bedside hot foot. And so he exits.

Just as Jeeves re-enters with the drink he ordered. By this stage even dim Bertie realises that it must have been Jeeves who made the mystery phone call to Miss Dalgliesh inviting her to London to see the phantom Irish water-spaniel, and Jeeves admits as much. But what will happen when Tuppy arrives in London and finds Angela very much not ill in bed and feverishly calling Tuppy’s name? Jeeves has phoned Aunt Dahlia and told her to manage the situation.

And thus concludes the eleventh and final short story in the collection.

Cast

• Bertie Wooster
• Jeeves
• Aunt Agatha aka Mrs Gregson – ‘on the occasions when my Aunt Agatha is perturbed strong men dive down drain-pipes to get out of her way’ – rudely referred to as ‘the Family Curse’
• Spenser Gregson – Aunt Agatha’s (first) husband, big on the Stock Exchange, ‘recently cleaned up to an amazing extent in Sumatra Rubber’
• Cousin Thomas – Agatha’s mischievous son
  • Purvis – their butler
• Mr A.B. Filmer – cabinet minister, president of the Anti-Tobacco League, in Bertie’s view a ‘superfatted bore’, character in ‘Jeeves and the Impending Doom’
• Bingo Little – old pal of Bertie’s from school, always getting into trouble
• Rosie M. Banks – married to Bingo, celebrated authoress of romantic tripe
• Oliver ‘Sippy’ Sipperly – old pal of Bertie’s, currently ‘editor of a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the lighter Society’
• Waterbury – Sippy’s old headmaster – ‘a large, important-looking bird with penetrating eyes, a Roman nose, and high cheekbones. Authoritative’
• Miss Gwendolen Moon – authoress of ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘ ’Twas on an English June,’ and other works, beloved of Sippy
• Sir Roderick Glossop – nerve specialist aka the ‘loony doctor’
• Tuppy Glossop – nephew of Sr Roderick, who played the wicked trick on Bertie at a swimming pool, who he conspired to humiliate by bursting his hot water bottle in ‘Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit’ but who he helps dump an unsuitable opera singer girlfriend, Cora Bellingham, in ‘Jeeves and the Song of Songs’
• Cora Bellingham – large opera singer who dumps Tuppy
• Miss Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Wickham – red-haired girl who Bertie fancies until she is revealed as a prankster in ‘Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit’
• Blumenfeld – the American theatrical impresario in ‘Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh’ – ‘A large, round, fat, overflowing bird, who might quite easily, if stirred, fall on a fellow and flatten him to the carpet’
• Blumenfeld fils – brattish son
• Gwladys Pendlebury – artist who Bertie thinks he’s in love with in ‘Jeeves and the Spot of Art’
• Lucius Pim – artist and rival for the affections of Gwladys Pendlebury
• Mrs Slingsby – Pim’s sister, who blames Bertie for running Lucius over
• Mr Slingsby – her husband, a pushy American who threatens to assault Bertie
• Miss Mapleton – Aunt Agatha’s friend who runs a girls’ school in Bingley
• Clementina – Bobbie’s 13-year-old cousin who attends St. Monica’s school for girls
• Lady Wickham
• Anstruther – an old friend of Aunt Dahlia’s late father, prone to nervous collapses
• Lord ‘Jack’ Snettisham
• Lady Jane Snettisham
• Bonzo Travers – son of Aunt Dahlia
• Mrs Wilberforce – the waitress Rhoda’s aunt, who turns out to be the waitress Uncle George fell in love with a generation earlier, in ‘Indian Summer of an Uncle’

Bertie’s character

As Aunt Agatha puts it, addressing Bertie:

‘Mr Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type of vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.’

And again:

‘I have always known that you were an imbecile, Bertie,’ said the flesh-and-blood, now down at about three degrees Fahrenheit, ‘but I did suppose that you had some proper feeling, some pride, some respect for your position.’

And:

‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia, with a sort of frozen calm, ‘You are the Abysmal Chump… It’s simply because I am fond of you and have influence with the Lunacy Commissioners that you weren’t put in a padded cell years ago…’

As Bertie himself puts it.

Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey through life he is impeded and generally snootered by about as scaly a collection of aunts as was ever assembled.

I explained as much to the fair cargo and received in return a ‘Tchah!’ from the Pyke that nearly lifted the top of my head off. What with having a covey of female relations who have regarded me from childhood as about ten degrees short of a half-wit, I have become rather a connoisseur of ‘Tchahs,’ and the Pyke’s seemed to me well up in Class A, possessing much of the timbre and brio of my Aunt Agatha’s.

And:

Every year, starting about the middle of November, there is a good deal of anxiety and apprehension among owners of the better-class of country-house throughout England as to who will get Bertram Wooster’s patronage for the Christmas holidays. It may be one or it may be another. As my Aunt Dahlia says, you never know where the blow will fall.

All compared with Jeeves’s omniscience:

‘There are very few things in this world, Aunt Agatha,’ I said gravely, ‘that Jeeves doesn’t know all about.’

Slang

The last time I had seen old Sippy, you must remember, he had had all the appearance of a man who didn’t know it was loaded.

He looked as if he had been taking as much as will cover a sixpence every morning before breakfast for years.

The fixture was scratched owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my napper.

It seemed to me that things were beginning to look pretty scaly.

He [Jeeves] has a nasty way of conveying the impression that he looks on Bertram Wooster as a sort of idiot child who, but for him, would conk in the first chukka.

How any doom or disaster could lurk behind the simple pronging of a spot of dinner together, I failed to see.

‘Take it from me, Aunt Agatha, I’ve studied human nature and I don’t believe there’s a female in the world who could sec Uncle George fairly often in those waistcoats he wears without feeling that it was due to her better self to give him the gate.’

An unseen hand without tootled on the bell, and I braced myself to play the host. The binge was on.

I slid away. The last I saw of them, Uncle George was down beside her on the Chesterfield, buzzing hard.

It was — what’s the word I want? — it was plausible, of course, but still I shook the onion.

‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia — and I could see her generous nature was stirred to its depths — ‘one more crack like that out of you, and I shall forget that I am an aunt and hand you one.’
I became soothing. I gave her the old oil.

‘We must put a bit of a jerk in it and save young Tuppy in spite of himself.’

I thought ‘tuning out’ was a modern idiom, maybe dating from the 1960s. Apparently not. In ‘Indian Summer of an Uncle’, Jeeves embarks on a long explanation and Bertie comments:

I saw that this was going to take some time. I tuned out.

Bertie’s cheerful philistinism

As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over.

‘You want time to think, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take it, Jeeves, take it. You may feel brainier after a night’s sleep. What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?’
‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, sir.’
‘Exactly. Well, there you are, then.’

‘Remember what the poet Shakespeare said, Jeeves.’
‘What was that, sir?’
‘”Exit hurriedly, pursued by a bear.” You’ll find it in one of his plays. I remember drawing a picture of it on the side of the page, when I was at school.’

‘Yes, sir. Smethurst — his name is Smethurst — would consider it a consummation devoutly to be
wished.’
‘Rather well put, that, Jeeves. Your own?’
‘No, sir. The Swan of Avon, sir.’

Actually, reading them in chronological order, it feels like there are more and more literary references in the stories, played for laughs of course, but increasingly evident. For example ‘Indian Summer of an Uncle’ contains several references to Shakespeare, and to Robert Burns and Tennyson, and others are liberally scattered about:

JEEVES: ‘An invalid undoubtedly exercises a powerful appeal to the motherliness which exists in every woman’s heart, sir. Invalids seem to stir their deepest feelings. The poet Scott has put the matter neatly in the lines — ‘Oh, Woman in our hours of case uncertain, coy, and hard to please… When pain and anguish rack the brow.’
I held up a hand.
‘At some other time, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I shall be delighted to hear you your piece, but just now I am
not in the mood.’

Memorable moments

‘Are wives often like that? Welcoming criticism of the lord and master, I mean?’
‘They are generally open to suggestions from the outside public with regard to the improvement of their husbands, sir.’
‘That is why married men are wan, what?’
‘Yes, sir.’

I heard Aunt Agatha rumble like a volcano just before it starts to set about the neighbours, but I did not wilt.

The stupid narrator

Literary critics and writers themselves have long known about the so-called ‘unreliable narrator’, who tells the story but you slowly realise is giving you a biased account. There’s a moment in ‘Indian Summer of an Uncle’ when Bertie is being more than usually obtuse, when the reader has realised the family he’s visiting has mistaken him for a doctor but it takes Bertie five minutes longer than the reader to realise this, while all the time he describes himself as being sharp and alert and quick to spot things.. A bit belatedly (like Bertie himself) I realised that, in Bertie Wooster, we are dealing with the stupid narrator, a narrator whose dimness has been laid on for our comic amusement.

And at the same moment I realised there’s a family resemblance with Captain Hastings whose obtuseness is exaggerated in order to promote the suave cleverness of Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s detective novels.

(There’s actually a real world connection here, because the lovely character actor, Jonathan Cecil, played Captain Hastings to Peter Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot in three Agatha Christie TV adaptations in the 1980s, and he also recorded audiobooks of a number of the Jeeves books. According to Wikipedia ‘He might have been more strongly identified with narration of the series than any other actor.’ He was eminently qualified to do so, having himself attended Eton and New College Oxford.)

P.G. Wodehouse and Sherlock Holmes

It’s amazing how large the shadow of Sherlock Holmes loomed, for generations after his invention. I’ve pointed out in my Agatha Christie reviews that almost every single one of her detective novels features at least one reference to the master detective; and that the relationship between dim Captain Hastings and super-smart Hercule Poirot echoes or is built on the template of slow Dr Watson and the omniscient Holmes. Well, same here. I’m hardly the first to point out that the relationship between incredibly dim Bertie Wooster and super-smart Jeeves is based on the same basic structure.

Wodehouse nowhere mentions Holmes by name but this thought was triggered by the way each of these stories is actually very like one of Holmes’s cases, with a knotty problem set out at the beginning, Bertie following a number of false leads, only for Jeeves to dazzlingly solve it in the end.

And this notion of ‘cases’ is made explicit in ‘The Ordeal of Young Tuppy’:

‘You remember the trouble we had when he ran after that singing-woman.’
I recollected the case. You will find it elsewhere in the archives.

This use of ‘case’, and also the reference to ‘the archives’, are very reminiscent of the way Dr Watson refers to his files of Holmes cases.

Alas, the times

BERTIE: ‘Twice during dinner tonight the Pyke said things about young Bingo’s intestinal canal which I shouldn’t have thought would have been possible in mixed company even in this lax post-War era.’

BERTIE: ‘You tell me that Sebastian Moon, a stripling of such tender years that he can go about the place with long curls without causing mob violence, is in love with Clara Bow?”
JEEVES: ‘And has been for some little time, he gave me to understand, sir.’
BERTIE: ‘Jeeves, this Younger Generation is hot stuff.’
JEEVES: ‘Yes, sir.’

BERTIE: ‘What do you think about it yourself?’
RHODA’S AUNT: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter what I think. There’s no doing anything with girls these days, is there?’
BERTIE: ‘Not much.’
RHODA’S AUNT: ‘What I often say is, I wonder what girls are coming to. Still, there it is.’
BERTIE: ‘Absolutely.’

And mocking contemporary fiction. There are a surprising number of writers in the Jeeves stories, although somehow disguised by the poshboy banter. Bingo Little has married an author of ladies romances such as Mervyn Keene, Clubman, and Only A Factory Girl, leading Bertie to ponder:

I shouldn’t wonder if right from the start Mrs. Bingo hasn’t had a sort of sneaking regret that Bingo isn’t one of those strong, curt, Empire-building kind of Englishmen she puts into her books, with sad, unfathomable eyes, lean, sensitive hands, and riding-boots. You see what I mean?’
‘Precisely, sir.’

Freud

If you’ve read my Agatha Christie reviews, you’ll know I’m interested in the spread of references to Freud or Freudian ideas in popular fiction of the 1920s. There are several references scattered among the Jeeves short stories, not least because one of the recurring characters, Sir Roderick Glossop, is a nerve specialist or psychiatrist. Here’s another one, from ‘Jeeves and the Old School Chum’ published in 1930, made humorous by the stock contrast between Jeeves’s intellectual fluency and Bertie’s dimness.

‘Precisely, sir. You imply that Miss Pyke’s criticisms will have been instrumental in moving the
hitherto unformulated dissatisfaction from the subconscious to the conscious mind.’
‘Once again, Jeeves?’ I said, trying to grab it as it came off the bat, but missing it by several yards.
He repeated the dose.
‘Well, I daresay you’re right,’ I said.

Related links

• Very Good, Jeeves online
• P.G. Wodehouse website
• P.G. Wodehouse society
• List of Jeeves characters

Related reviews

• P.G. Wodehouse reviews

P.S. Plans

I won’t draw a plan, because my experience is that, when you’re reading one of those detective stories and come to the bit where the author draws a plan of the Manor, showing room where body was found, stairs leading to passageway, and all the rest of it, one just skips. I’ll simply explain in a few brief words.