"My Man Jeeves" by P G Wodehouse

 

A collection of some of the first short stories in which Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves make their appearance. The collection also includes some stories featuring Reggie Prepper.

I would argue that Jeeves and Wooster represent the pinnacle of Wodehouse's oeuvre and it is interesting to trace the evolution of these characters. First there was Psmith, who first appeared in the novel Mike as schoolboy cricketer Mike's new friend. Psmith, like Wooster, has an air of indolence and a wonderful way with words but unlike Wooster he is really rather wise and it is he who enables the farcical plot to reach a successful conclusion. It is as if he is Wooster and Jeeves in a single person. Reggie Prepper is more like Wooster in that he is likely to get himself into scrapes and need rescuing; he is also the first person narrator of the stories. The transcendent moment came when Wodehouse took Psmith, removed his competence and placed them all in Jeeves, and, as with Prepper and also rather like Watson and Holmes, used Wooster as the foolish first person narrator.

The Wooster stories are set in America where Wodehouse lived during the First World War and where the third Psmith novel (Psmith, Journalist) is set. 

The joy is in the farcical situations in which the upper class twits are enmeshed and in the wonderful verbal dexterity with which the stories are told, as evidenced in some of the quotes below. His principal talent is for exaggerated similes and metaphors.

Selected quotes:

• "One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them." (Leave it to Jeeves)
• "I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself." (Leave it to Jeeves)
• "I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare - or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad - who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping." (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest)
• "What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so bally discouraging for a great city." (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest)
• "The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can't get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you have to walk two miles for a drink." (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest)
• "Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit, they aren't half-hearted about it." (Absent treatment)
• "'Women are frightfully rummy,' he said gloomily. 'You should of thought of that before you married one,' I said." (Absent treatment)
• "In his official capacity, Voules talks exactly like you'd expect a statue to talk." (Rallying Round Old George)
• "I did a murder last night ... It's the sort of thing that might happen to anyone." (Rallying Round Old George)
• "'How long were you engaged?' 'About two minutes.'" (Rallying Round Old George)
• "It's just on the cards that I may have drowned my sorrows a bit."  (Rallying Round Old George)

June 2024; 135 pages

Other Wodehouse works reviewed in this blog may be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God