THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS

Background: Published in 1938.

This is the one where: Bertie deals with “the sinister affair of Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, old Pop Bassett, Stiffy Byng, the Rev. H. P. (‘Stinker’) Pinker, the eighteenth-century cow-creamer and the small, brown, leather-covered notebook.” Of course, if you’re a big Jeeves & Wooster fan, “cow-creamer” is probably all you needed to hear.

The action takes place at: Totleigh Towers, Totleigh-in-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, the home of Sir Watkyn Bassett

Bertie accidentally nearly gets engaged to:

• Madeline Bassett, AGAIN (“A droopy, soupy, sentimental exhibit, with melting eyes and a cooing voice and most extraordinary views on such things as stars and rabbits.…That squashy soupiness of hers, that subtle air she had of being on the point of talking baby-talk. It was that that froze the blood. She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says: ‘Guess who!’”)

• Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, Madeline’s cousin (“Stiffy’s map, as a rule, tends to be rather grave and dreamy, giving the impression that she is thinking deep, beautiful thoughts. Quite misleading, of course. I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.”)

But she’s really in love with:

• In Madeline’s case, Gussie Fink-Nottle (“a fish-faced pal of mine who, on reaching man’s estate, had buried himself in the country and devoted himself entirely to the study of newts…A confirmed recluse you would have called him, if you had happened to know the word, and you would have been right. By all the rulings of the form book, a less promising prospect for the whispering of tender words into shell-like ears and the subsequent purchase of platinum ring and license for wedding it would have seemed impossible to discover in a month of Sundays.”)

• In Stiffy’s case: The Reverend Harold “Stinker” Pinker (“a large, lumbering, Newfoundland puppy of a chap—full of zeal, yes: always doing his best, true; but never quite able to make the grade; a man, in short, who if there was a chance of bungling an enterprise and landing himself in the soup, would snatch at it.”)
  

The task at hand: Steal the cow-creamer for Bertie’s Uncle Tom, recover the notebook in which Gussie has written insults about Sir Watkyn Bassett and Roderick Spode, reunite Gussie and Madeline, and get Sir Watkyn’s permission for Stiffy to marry Stinker

Other characters include:

• Aunt Dahlia (Bertie first describes her as “my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, who eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to the skin.” After she pressures him to steal the cow-creamer, however, he changes his tune: “It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”)

• Sir Watkyn Bassett, a retired magistrate who once fined Bertie for stealing a policeman’s helmet; also Madeline’s father (“Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.”)

• Roderick Spode, Bassett’s friend and the leader of a quasi-fascist group called the Black Shorts (“About seven feet in height, and swathed in a plaid ulster which made him look about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment.”)

• The dog Bartholomew, Stiffy’s Aberdeen terrier (“Reluctant as one always is to criticize the acts of an all-wise Providence, I was dashed if I could see why a dog of his size should have been fitted out with the jaws and teeth of a crocodile.”)

• Constable Eustace Oates (“In describing this public servant as ugly, she was undoubtedly technically correct. Only if the competition had consisted of Sir Watkyn Bassett, Oofy Prosser of the Drones, and a few more fellows like that, could he have hoped to win success in a beauty contest.”)
  

Bertie’s trials and tribulations include: Being constantly suspected of theft (of, variously, an umbrella, the cow creamer, and yet another policeman’s helmet) by Sir Watkyn (which culminates in Bertie being locked in his room and nearly hauled off to jail), being treed atop a chest of drawers by Bartholomew

Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: Unwillingness to go on a round-the-world cruise

First paragraph: “I reached out a hand from under the blankets, and rang the bell for Jeeves.
‘Good evening, Jeeves.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
This surprised me.”

Bertie fashion moment: “I slid into the shirt, and donned the knee-length under-wear…I groaned a hollow one, and shoved on the trousers…The blow was a severe one, and it was with a quivering hand that I now socked the feet.”

Slang I’d like to start using: “Rannygazoo,” which I can only assume means something similar to “hullaballoo” (“I lit a cigarette and proceeded to stress the moral lesson to be learned from all this rannygazoo.”)

Bertie gets no respect:

• “Hello, ugly.”—Aunt Dahlia

• “It’s an extraordinary thing—every time I see you, you appear to be recovering from some debauch. Don’t you ever stop drinking? How about when you are asleep?”—Aunt Dahlia

Best Jeeves moment: “Presently I was aware that Jeeves was with me. I hadn’t heard him come in, but you often don’t with Jeeves. He just streams silently from spot A to spot B, like some gas.”

Best bit of description: The silver cow-creamer: “It was a silver cow. But when I say ‘cow,’ don’t go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence…The sight of it seemed to take me into a different and dreadful world.”

Best bit of dialogue:
Madeline: “You know your Shelley, Bertie.”
Bertie: “Oh, am I?”

My review: Five stars! This is perhaps the classic Jeeves novel, containing many of the series’ most memorable characters (Gussie, Madeline, Spode with his “Eulalie” secret), details (the cow-creamer, the menacing Bartholomew, the policeman’s helmet), and lines (“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled”). Practically perfect in every way.

Had I read it before? Yes, many times. My parents own it, and I vividly remember my father reading it aloud to me when I was a kid. I was not exactly sure what a cow-creamer was, and yet I still thought it was hilarious.

Next up: Joy in the Morning