This is the one where: Bertie and Sir Roderick Glossop become pals!
The action takes place at: Brinkley Court
Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Roberta “Bobbie” Wickham (“Aunt Dahlia, describing this young blister as a one-girl beauty chorus, had called her shots perfectly. Her outer crust was indeed of a nature to cause those beholding it to rock back on their heels with a startled whistle. But while equipped with eyes like twin stars, hair ruddier than the cherry, oomph, espièglerie and all the fixings, B. Wickham had also the disposition and general outlook on life of a ticking bomb. In her society you always had the uneasy feeling that something was likely to go off at any moment with a pop. You never knew what she was going to do next or into what murky depths of soup she would carelessly plunge you.”)
But she’s really in love with: Reginald “Kipper” Herring (“The salt of the earth. But nobody could have called him a knock-out in the way of looks. Having gone in for a lot of boxing from his earliest years, he had [a] cauliflower ear … and in addition to this a nose which some hidden hand had knocked slightly out of the straight. He would, in short, have been an unsafe entrant to have backed in a beauty contest, even if the only other competitors had been Boris Karloff, King King and Oofy Prosser of the Drones.”)
The task at hand: Keep Aubrey Upjohn from suing for libel over Kipper’s negative review of Upjohn’s memoir, keep Wilbert Cream from proposing to Phyllis Mills, keep Glossop’s identity secret while he’s undercover as a butler to observe Wilbert Cream for signs of insanity, and find Uncle Tom’s missing silver cow creamer—which Bertie and Glossop assume Wilbert Cream hse stolen—without arousing the suspicions of Mrs. Cream
Other characters include:
- Aunt Dahlia Travers (“She greeted me with one of those piercing view-halloos which she had picked up on the hunting field in the days when she had been an energetic chivvier of the British fox. It sounded like a gas explosion and went through me from stem to stern. I’ve never hunted myself, but I understand that half the battle is being able to make noises like some jungle animal with dyspepsia, and I believe that Aunt Dahlia in her prime could lift fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated from them by two ploughed fields and a spinney.”)
- Sir Roderick Glossop (“The eminent brain specialist…was a man I would have not cared to lunch with myself, our relations having been on the stiff side since the night at Lady Wickham’s place in Herfordshire when, acting on the advice of my hostess’s daughter Roberta, I had punctured his hot-water bottle with a darning needle in the small hours of the morning. Quite unintentional, of course. I had planned to puncture the h-w-b of his nephew Tuppy Glossop, with whom I had a feud on, and unknown to me they had changed rooms. Just one of those unfortunate misunderstandings.”)
- Aubrey Upjohn, Bertie and Kipper’s former headmaster (“I was immediately struck by the change that had taken place in his appearance since those get-togethers at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, when with a sinking heart I had watched him reach for the whangee and start limbering up the shoulder muscles with a few trial swings. At that period of our acquaintance he had been an upstanding old gentlemen about eight feet six in height with burning eyes, foam-flecked lips and flame coming out of both nostrils. He had now shrunk to a modest five foot seven or thereabouts, and I could have felled him with a single blow.”)
- Phyllis Mills, Upjohn’s stepdaughter (“Nice but goofy, Kipper had said, and a glance told me that he was right. One learns, as one goes through life, to spot goofiness in the other sex with an unerring eye, and this exhibit had a sort of mild, Soul’s Awakening kind of expression which made it abundantly clear that, while not a super-goof like some of the female goofs I’d met, she was quite goofy enough to be going on with. Her whole aspect was that of a girl who at the drop of a hat would start talking baby talk.”)
- Mrs. Adela Cream, writer of mystery stories (“tall and thin with a hawk-like face that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. She had an ink spot on her nose, the result of working on her novel of suspense. It is virtually impossible to write a novel of suspense without getting a certain amount of ink of the beezer. Ask Agatha Christie or anyone.”)
- Wilbert Cream, Adela’s son, “a willowy bird about the tonnage and general aspect of David Niven with ginger hair and a small moustache,” who Bertie and Dahlia mistake for his brother Wilfred, a notorious playboy and kleptomaniac
Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: Nothing, except maybe his short-lived plan to knock Upjohn into the lake and have Kipper save him from drowning (seriously, how many books does Wodehouse use this plot in?), thus earning his gratitude and ending the libel lawsuit, which of course goes awry
First paragraph: “Jeeves placed the sizzling eggs and b. on the breakfast table, and Reginald (‘Kipper’) Herring and I, licking the lips, squared our elbows and got down to it. A lifelong buddy of mine, this Herring, linked to me by what are called imperishable memories. Years ago, when striplings, he and I had done a stretch together at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, the preparatory school conducted by that prince of stinkers, Aubrey Upjohn M.A., and had frequently stood side by side in the Upjohn study awaiting the receipt of six of the juiciest from a cane of the type that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as the fellow said. So we were, you might say, rather like a couple of old sweats who had fought shoulder to shoulder on Crispin’s day, if I’ve got the name right.”
Bertie fashion moment: None, again. Maybe I need to get rid of this category?
Slang I’d like to start using: “Beasel,” Bertie’s preferred term for Bobbie Wickham: “I could make nothing of this. It seemed to me that the beasel spoke in riddles.” Internet results suggest “beasel” either means “flapper,” “fiend,” or just “girl,” but the way Bertie uses it seems like a slightly nicer way of saying “bitch.”
Bertie gets no respect: “‘I see you have not changed since you were with me at Malvern House,’ [Upjohn] said in an extremely nasty voice… ‘Bungling Wooster we used to call him…He could not perform the simplest action such as holding a cup without spreading ruin and disaster on all sides. It was an axiom at Malvern House that if there was a chair in any room in which he happened to be, Wooster would trip over it. The child…is the father of the man.’”
Best Jeeves moment:
Jeeves: “I mistrust these elaborate schemes. One cannot depend on them. As the poet Burns says, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.”
Bertie: “Scotch, isn’t it, that word?”
Jeeves: “Yes, sir.”
Bertie: “I thought as much. The ‘gang’ told the story. Why do Scotsmen say gang?”
Jeeves: “I have no information, sir. They have not confided in me.”
Best bit of description: “The effect the apparition had on me was to make me start violently, and we all know what happens when you start violently while holding a full cup of tea. The contents of mine flew through the air and came to rest on the trousers of Aubrey Upjohn, M.A., moistening them to no little extent. Indeed, it would scarcely be distorting the facts to say that he was now not so much wearing trousers as wearing tea.”
Best bit of dialogue: Bertie’s explanation to Aunt Dahlia of why he doesn’t want to marry Bobbie Wickham, despite having proposed to her and been rejected in the past: “The male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine for the male non-rabbit) and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce…I’m one of the rabbits and always have been while she is about as pronounced a dasher as ever dashed. What I like is the quiet life, and Roberta Wickham wouldn’t recognize the quiet life if you brought it to her on a plate with watercress round it.”
My review: Four stars. Bobbie Wickham is delightfully madcap, plus we have Aunt Dahlia, the return of the cow creamer, Glossop bonding with Bertie (and revealing himself to have been at least slightly Bertie-like in his youth), and finally meeting Aubrey Upjohn, a nemesis Bertie has mentioned in many previous stories. About the only downside is that the book could have used a bit more Jeeves (he’s once again on vacation, “off to Herne Bay for the shrimping,” in the first half). Also, I do have to note that despite throwing tea and cucumber sandwiches at people when startled, overall Bertie seems to have become a lot smarter than in the early books—he still gets into scrapes, but his role is more the jaded, sarcastic onlooker and less the bumbling, blithering idiot. I’m not sure whether I approve of this or not.
Had I read it before? No! I would definitely remember Bertie getting buddy-buddy with Glossop.
Next up: Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
