THANK YOU, JEEVES

The joy of Wodehouse novels is also the problem with Wodehouse novels: they are richly inventive, encompassing hundreds of eccentric characters who intertwine in intricate ways via wild coincidences and crazy hijinks; yet at the same time, they are repetitive and formulaic (basic plot structure: Bertie visits a country house and tries to help a friend or relative with some nutty scheme; there are romantic mix-ups and Bertie ends up involuntarily engaged; Bertie thinks he knows better than Jeeves and tries to fix the situation on his own; Jeeves swoops in to save the day at the last minute; meanwhile, Bertie and Jeeves disagree over some possession or habit of Bertie’s, such as an article of clothing, and Jeeves wins out in the end, ridding Bertie of the offending object).

This means the Jeeves and Bertie oeuvre can get confusing. Even the titles are easy to conflate: there's Thank You, Jeeves; Right Ho, Jeeves; Carry On, Jeeves; and Very Good, Jeeves for starters, plus the fact that some of the books have two titles—one for the British version, another for the American edition. I know I’ve read all the short stories, because I own the complete collection in an omnibus edition, but I’m less sure about the novels. Have I read most of them but just can’t recall the details or tell them apart? Or have I just read the same few over and over again?

That’s why I wanted to read them all in order. Wodehouse books are fun to reread, because they’re so complicated that even if you’ve read them already you probably don’t remember how everything gets resolved. Also, I am a completist. What if all these years I’ve been missing out on some Jeeves books and didn’t even know it? Sacrilege! To highlight the differences between the books and help myself keep them straight, I’ve developed the following handy template that distills the Jeeves-Wooster formula (as I remember it, anyway) into its essential elements. Unless Wodehouse got experimental in the later novels, I’m guessing it will prove applicable to all 10 books I’m planning to read. (There are actually 11 Jeeves novels, but I'm skipping The Return of Jeeves because (a) I read it last year and (b) Bertie isn't in it.)

Background: Published in 1934, Thank You, Jeeves was the first full-length Jeeves novel after numerous short stories dating back to 1917.

This is the one where: Jeeves quits Bertie’s employment; Bertie rents a cottage in the country

The action takes place at: Chuffnell Hall (the home of Bertie’s friend Chuffy, in Chuffnell Regis, Somersetshire)

Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Pauline Stoker, an American heiress (“Unquestionably an eyeful, Pauline Stoker had the grave defect of being one of those girls who want you to come and swim a mile before breakfast and rout you out when you are trying to catch a wink of sleep after lunch for a merry five sets of tennis.”)

But she’s really in love with: Bertie’s land-rich, cash-poor friend Chuffy (aka Marmaduke, the fifth baron Chuffnell)

The task at hand: Persuade J. Washburn Stoker to buy Chuffnell Hall and give it to Sir Roderick Glossop so he can open a mental institution, thus giving Chuffy enough money to marry Pauline

Bertie’s antagonists include:

• Pauline’s father, J. Washburn Stoker, “who bears a striking resemblance to something out of the book of Revelations”

• Sir Roderick Glossop, “A bald-domed, bushy-browed blighter, ostensibly a nerve specialist, but in reality, as everybody knows, nothing more nor less than a high-priced loony doctor, he has been cropping up in my path for years, always with the most momentous results.” Glossop thinks Bertie is insane and has convinced Stoker likewise, giving us this nice shout-out to the earlier Jeeves stories: “He would have touched, no doubt, on the incident of the cats and the fish in my bedroom; possibly, also, on the episode of the stolen hat and my habit of climbing down water-spouts: winding up, it may be, with a description of the unfortunate affair of the punctured water-bottle at Lady Wickham’s.”

• Sergeant Voules: “This Voules was a bird built rather on the lines of the Albert Hall, round in the middle and not much above. He always looked to me as if Nature had really intended to make two police sergeants and had forgotten to split them up.”

• Brinkley, Bertie’s new valet, an apparent Communist who gets drunk, chases Bertie with a knife, burns down Bertie’s cottage, and gives Glossop a black eye by throwing a potato at him

Bertie’s trials and tribulations include: Being repeatedly harassed by neighborhood policemen, being chased by his knife-wielding valet, being imprisoned on a yacht by J.W. Stoker, disguising himself in blackface and then being unable to remove it, trying to sleep in a variety of uncomfortable locations (a car, a potting shed, a summerhouse), and missing breakfast.

Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: banjolele (which meets its end in the fire that destroys Bertie’s cottage, paving the way for Jeeves to return to Bertie’s employment)

First paragraph: “I was a shade perturbed. Nothing to signify, really, but still just a spot concerned. As I sat in the old flat, idly touching the strings of my banjolele, an instrument to which I had become greatly addicted of late, you couldn’t have said that the brow was actually furrowed, and yet, on the other hand, you couldn’t have stated absolutely that it wasn’t. Perhaps the word ‘pensive’ about covers it. It seemed to me that a situation fraught with embarrassing potentialities had arisen.”

Bertie fashion moment: “I confess that it was in somber mood that I assembled the stick, the hat, and the lemon-colored gloves some half-hour later and strode out into the streets of London.” (Runner-up: “Reading from left to right, the contents of the bed consisted of Pauline Stoker in my heliotrope pajamas with the old gold stripe.”)

Slang I’d like to start using: [Of a positive event] “Well, this has certainly put the butter on the spinach.”

Bertie gets no respect:

• “There’s a sort of woolly-headed duckiness about you.”—Pauline Stoker

• “Mr. Wooster, miss, is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible, but he has a heart of gold.”—Jeeves

• “Anyway, you’re not the gibbering idiot I thought you at one time, I’m glad to say.”—J.W. Stoker

Best Jeeves moment: “I became aware of somebody coughing softly at my side like a respectful sheep trying to attract the attention of its shepherd, and how can I describe with what thankfulness and astonishment I perceived Jeeves.”

Best bit of description: “His voice died away with a sort of sound not unlike the last utterance of one of those toy ducks you inflate and then let the air out of. His jaw had dropped, and he was staring at the cable as if he had suddenly discovered he was fondling a tarantula. The next moment there proceeded from his lips an observation which even in these lax modern times I should certainly not have considered suitable for mixed company.”

Best bit of dialogue: Chuffy to Pauline: “I’m broke. You’re broke. Let’s rush off and get married.”

My review: The book was fairly enjoyable, but it suffered from a dated plot point involving blackface, which is difficult be amused by nowadays. It was even harder to overlook the frequent, though innocently intended, use of the n-word in reference to a group of minstrel-show performers (they never actually appear in the book, but are frequently mentioned as performing in the area—and rather cutely, Bertie hopes to consult their banjo player for pointers). Thus I've awarded the book just three stars. Still, there’s plenty to like here. The banjolele subplot and the subsequent rift between Jeeves and Bertie is hilarious, as is the scene where Pauline shows up unexpectedly in Bertie’s bed (Bertie was actually intentionally engaged to her in a past story, and I found her character much more sympathetic/appealing than most of the women Bertie gets entangled with).

Had I read it before? I think so, but not repeatedly. A lot of the plot details seemed familiar (Jeeves quitting, the cottage, the yacht, the minstrel show, the banjo), but it seems like I would have remembered the n-word stuff more vividly...unless somehow I read a censored/altered edition before? Or am I just remembering seeing this episode of the (brilliant, BRILLIANT) Stephen Fry/Hugh Laurie TV adaptation (where the banjo was changed to a trombone, as I recall)?

Next up: Right Ho, Jeeves