STIFF UPPER LIP, JEEVES

Background: Published in 1963

This is the one where: Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett break up, for reals!

The action takes place at: Totleigh Towers

Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Madeline Bassett yet again, “one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God’s daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case”

But she’s really in love with:

1. Originally, newt-lover Gussie Fink-Nottle (“he was looking so like a halibut that if he hadn’t been wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, a thing halibuts seldom do, I might have supposed myself to be gazing at something AWOL from a fishmonger’s slab”)
2. But ultimately, Roderick Spode, Lord Sidcup, former leader of the Black Shorts and sometime seller of women’s undergarments (“He’s about eight feet high and has the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces”)

The task at hand: Keep Gussie and Madeline from breaking up over her insistence that Gussie become a vegetarian (and his subsequent cheating with a steak and kidney pie); persuade Sir Watkyn Bassett to appoint Stinker Pinker as vicar so that he can marry Stiffy Byng; escape the murderous rage of Spode (who jealously threatens both Gussie and Bertie); avoid the suspicions of both Spode and Bassett (who generally think Bertie is up to no good and assume he’s going to steal Bassett’s prized black amber statuette)

Other characters include:

• Sir Watkyn “Pop” Bassett, Madeline’s father (“He was a small man…you got the impression, seeing him, that when they were making magistrates there wasn’t enough material left over when they came to him”)

• Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, Madeline’s cousin, “a cross between a ticking bomb and a poltergeist…in short, about as loony a young shrimp as ever wore a windswept hairdo”

• The Rev. H.P. “Stinker” Pinker, Stiffy’s fiancé, the rugby-playing curate (“Even as a boy, I imagine, he must have burst seams and broken try-your-weight machines”)

• The dog Bartholomew, Stiffy’s pet (“Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls”)

• Emerald Stoker (younger sister of Pauline Stoker from Thank You, Jeeves), an art student who loses her allowance gambling, works as the cook at Totleigh Towers, and ultimately elopes with Gussie, “just ordinary, no different from a million other girls, except perhaps for a touch of the Pekingese about the nose and eyes and more freckles than you usually see”

• Major Plank, an explorer who sold Bassett the amber statuette and ends up giving Pinker the vicarage of Hockley-cum-Meston because the village rugby team needs a new prop forward (“an elderly gentleman with a square face, much tanned, as if he had been sitting in the sun quite a lot without his parasol…He was looking at me with a cold, glassy stare, as no doubt he had looked at the late lions, leopards, and gnus whose remains were to be viewed on the walls of the outer hall”)

• Aunt Dahlia, who sadly appears in the story only by telephone (“The aged relative has a strong personality and finds no difficulty, when displeased, in reducing the object of her displeasure to a spot of grease in a matter of minutes. I am told that sportsmen whom in her hunting days she had occasion to rebuke for riding over hounds were never the same again and for months would go about in a sort of stupor, starting at sudden noises”)

Bertie’s trials and tribulations include: Getting caught breaking Bassett’s grandfather clock; being trapped with Bassett atop a wardrobe by the dog Bartholomew; being blackmailed by Stiffy into stealing Bassett’s black amber statuette; hiding behind a sofa (twice); spending a night in jail; and having Plank, Bassett, Spode, and Madeline believe he is a kleptomaniac who leads a life of crime under the alias “Alpine Joe”

Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: “blue alpine hat with the pink feather in it…tilted just that merest shade over the left eyebrow which makes all the difference”

First paragraph: “I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don’t suppose I have ever come much closer to saying ‘Tra-la-la’ as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning. God, as I once heard Jeeves put it, was in His heaven and all right with the world. (He added, I remember, some guff about larks and snails, but that is a side issue and need not detain us.)”

Bertie fashion moment: “One was either soaring like an eagle on to the tops of chests or whizzing down behind sofas like a diving duck, and apart from the hustle and bustle of it all that sort of thing wounds the spirit and does no good to the trouser crease.”

Slang I’d like to start using: “I had become as hungry as dammit.”

Bertie gets no respect:

• “My aunt Agatha, the one who eats broken bottles and turns into a werewolf at the time of the full moon, generally refers to Jeeves as my keeper.”

• “Myself, I’ve never found a host and hostess who could stick my presence for more than about a week. Indeed, long before that as a general rule the conversation at the dinner table is apt to turn on the subject of how good the train service to London is, those present obviously hoping wistfully that Bertram will avail himself of it. Not to mention the timetable left in your room with a large cross against the two thirty-five and the legend, ‘Excellent train. Highly recommended.’”

• “I don’t suppose he has ever loved anything in his life except a dry martini.”—Spode

Best Jeeves moment:
Bertie: “You remember that day I lunched at the Ritz?”
Jeeves: “Yes, sir. You were wearing an Alpine hat.”
Bertie: “There is no need to dwell on the Alpine hat, Jeeves.”
Jeeves: “No, sir.”
Bertie: “If you really want to know, several fellows at the Drones asked me where I had got it.”
Jeeves: “No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.”

Best bit of description: “My eyebrows rose till they nearly disarranged my front hair.”

Best bit of dialogue: “‘I hate you, I hate you!’ cried Madeline, a thing I didn’t know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.”

My review: Five stars. It’s a straight-up sequel to my very favorite book in the series, The Code of the Woosters, featuring the same location and most of the same characters (some of the best in the Bertieverse). This allows Wodehouse to build the humor on already-established concepts (Bertie’s aversion to Madeline, Bassett and Spode’s aversion to Bertie, Stiffy’s troublemaking, the dog Bartholomew’s viciousness), but the story doesn’t feel like a retread, maybe because the characters actually do change in the end (Gussie finally gets a backbone and dumps Madeline, Spode declares his longtime love for Madeline).

Had I read it before? Yes; my parents own it, and my father read it aloud to me when I was a kid. I haven’t read it as many times as The Code of the Woosters, but I remembered the alpine hat and the black amber statuette. I think I appreciate the story more now that I’ve read the series in order; after following Gussie and Madeline’s on-again, off-again relationship through three previous books, it’s a genuine surprise when they actually do end it for good.

Next up: Jeeves and the Tie That Binds

THE WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH AND OTHER STORIES

Dear god, I adore Connie Willis, who writes brilliant sci-fi, alternately charming and chilling, full of literary and historical references. Just the introduction to this huge compilation, in which she discusses some of her influences, was full of things I love (P.G. Wodehouse! Three Men in a Boat!) and gave me a whole slew of additions to my reading list (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the Mapp and Lucia series). As for the stories themselves, I had read some of them before, including “Fire Watch” (set in the same awesome time-travel world as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, and to which it appears her new book will return[!!]), the screwball comedy “Blued Moon,” the poignant “Samaritan” (if you want to get me crying, just kill a fictional animal), and the eminently creepy “All My Darling Daughters” (which I flat-out refused to reread and actually paper-clipped the pages together so that I wouldn’t accidentally glance at any of the pages, it’s really that terrifying). But the majority were new to me, my favorites of which included the title story and “Jack,” both of which continue Willis’s obvious obsession with the London Blitz (also seen in “Fire Watch” and her new book, apparently).

Sadly, the book was so poorly copyedited it was rife with typos, and it now appears to be out of print, now only available used for exorbitant prices—two strikes against its publisher, Subterranean Press—so I guess I’ll have to hunt down the stories in other volumes if I want to own them. Anyway, reading these just made me want to sit down and reread Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Passage straight through. If you haven’t read any Connie Willis, I can’t recommend her highly enough. I’ll be eagerly awaiting her next novel, Blackout, due out in February, and will pass the meantime trying to hunt down all the older novels and novellas (Remake, All Seated on the Ground, Uncharted Territory) I may have missed.

BETSY WAS A JUNIOR

Maud Hart Lovelace’s sequel to Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself. Childhood pal Tib moves back from Milwaukee and joins the Crowd, Betsy sets her sights on Joe Willard but he goes steady with Phyllis Brandish instead (twin sister of Betsy’s ex-beau Phil, of the red automobile), Betsy dates “strong silent type” Dave Hunt, and Betsy’s older sister, Julia, starts college at the U of M and brings home exciting tales of sorority rushes, prompting Betsy and seven of her girlfriends to form their own Greek-letter club, the Okto Deltas (the boys then form a matching fraternity, the Omega Deltas). As usual, plenty of madcap fun ensues, but also as usual, Betsy doesn’t accomplish many of the goals she sets for the school year. She neglects her lonely younger sister, Margaret, as well as her studies (there’s a great chapter where Betsy, Tacy, and Tib pull a frantic all-nighter collecting flowers for their Biology herbariums), and the rest of the school is alienated by the cliquey Okto Deltas. Tony nobly refuses to join the Omega Deltas (“They leave too many people out”) and drifts away from the Crowd toward a “fast clique of older boys,” skipping classes, hanging around “a pool hall which had a bad reputation,” and getting suspended for coming to school drunk(!). None of the Okto Deltas are given leadership of the committees organizing the Junior-Senior Banquet, and worst of all, Betsy isn’t chosen to compete against Joe in the Essay Contest, even though the topic, “The History of the Deep Valley Region,” is right up her alley. As in the other books, when Betsy realizes the error of her ways and how far she’s strayed from her ideals, it’s handled realistically, without the smack of “Very Special Episode”:

She wondered whether life consisted of making resolutions and breaking them, of climbing up and slipping down. “I believe that’s it,” she thought. “And the bright side of it is that you never slip down quite to the point you started climbing from. You always gain a little… Gosh!” she thought. “I must be growing up.”

Again, Joe remains in the background of this book, but the glimmers of him that appear are tantalizingly Mr. Darcyish. What bookish girl wouldn’t sigh over this passage?

She always looked forward to English class, both because she liked the subject and because she enjoyed the competition of Joe Willard. They never saw each other outside of school but in English class there was a bond between them. They talked for each other’s benefit sometimes; they sought each other’s eyes when a good point was made; they smiled across the room when something funny happened.

When Joe finds out Betsy hasn’t been picked for the Essay Contest, he lobbies in vain on her behalf. He now works for the town paper as a part-time reporter. And although he’s dating the snobbish Phyllis when he obviously belongs with (and is attracted to) Betsy, Phyllis is never portrayed as an enemy, and Joe’s interest in her isn’t shown to be a character flaw on his part, but an understandable match:

In a curious way Joe and Phyllis were alike. Neither one “belonged.” They were different, Phyllis because rich and Joe because circumstances had always set him apart. He was accustomed to being different and had come to like it…Joe had not been influenced in his choice by the Brandish money or prestige. The fact that Phyllis was so cosmopolitan, that she had traveled abroad and had lived in New York—those things would fascinate him. But most of all, Betsy felt, their “differentness” drew them together.

This doesn’t make it any less satisfying when Joe finally chooses Betsy over Phyllis; in fact, for the first time I wished for a film adaptation of these books just so I could enjoy seeing the climactic, Austen-like scene at the Junior-Senior Banquet played out: Joe asks Betsy to dance—but he’s too late and her dance card is full! She gives him a dance anyway (booting Lloyd, who “only took two because Tib was mad at him”), the next-to-last dance of the evening—but then Phyllis wants to leave early! Betsy watches from across the room as Phyllis and Joe argue and then leave together—but then, just as the music starts for the second-to-last dance, Joe comes running back! And they dance! But wisely, Betsy knows it’s not that simple:

Joe would not, she felt sure, desert Phyllis now, even though they had had a disagreement. He was a fundamentally loyal person. He had been unwilling to humiliate Betsy by leaving her without a partner, and he would certainly not humiliate Phyllis, with whom he had had such a good time all year, by deserting her at the beginning of a gay Commencement week—when she was a senior, too. He would see her through. But maybe, just the same, he didn’t care about her any more. Maybe he never had.

After winning the Essay Cup yet again and participating in a daring school prank, Joe romantically whisks himself off to work in the threshing fields again for the summer, sending Betsy a coy postcard from Texas: “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a good dancer?” And since the next book is called Betsy and Joe, you can probably guess where this is headed.

READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi: This was a follow-up to my reading Lolita for the first time last summer, and I wish I’d checked it out immediately instead of a year later, because Nafisi’s take on Nabokov was my favorite part of the book. Overall, this was a moving, powerful, and revelatory memoir, but I’ll cop to feeling that it was also slightly scattered and draggy in spots. I won’t be rereading it, but I’m glad I read it once.