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