I stared at the young pill, appalled at her moral code, if you could call it that. You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of Society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.
The first Jeeves and Wooster book I ever bought was The Code of the Woosters. That was about 50 years ago. I recall pausing a moment, in the B. Dalton’s aisle, to wonder whether I’d like the book. I was young then, I need hardly say, and knew nothing.
The Code of the Woosters is Wodehouse (as he himself might have put it) at his fruitiest. It’s such a tightly plotted farce that I, for one, was forced to pause my reading every few pages, just to get my breath back.
The plot, even in a broad sketch, requires some setting up. So curl up on the nearest chesterfield and pour yourself a restorative libation.
The tale begins with Bertie Wooster getting a call from his Aunt Dahlia, asking him (for once) to do what seems to be a fairly simple task. He is to go to a particular antique shop and sneer at a silver cow-creamer. Her husband, Tom Travers, a silver collector. yearns to buy that creamer. Aunt Dahlia hopes Bertie’s scorn will demoralize the shopkeeper, who will then knock down the price for Uncle Tom. Then she can touch him for a loan for the insolvent magazine she publishes.
The upshot is, of course, disastrous. On arriving, Bertie finds Sir Watkyn Basset, a retired judge, already at the shop. Sir Watkyn is Uncle Tom’s rival, also coveting the cow-creamer. He and Bertie are acquainted, as Sir Watkyn once fined him for stealing a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race Night. Accompanying Sir Watkyn is the gorilla-like Roderick Spode, leader of an English Fascist party. Caught unprepared, Bertie ends up stumbling over a cat in a manner that convinces Sir Watkyn that he’s attempting to steal the creamer.
Back in his flat, Bertie gets a telegram from his fatuous friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, who wants him to come to the country estate where he’s staying. The estate just happens to belong to Sir Watkyn, as Gussie is engaged to Sir Watkyn’s daughter Madeline. Except that Madeline, Gussie reports, has broken the engagement off, This horrifies Bertie, since Madeline has conceived the erroneous idea that Bertie is in love with her, and threatens to marry him if it doesn’t work out with Gussie.
Then there’s a visit from Aunt Dahlia, who reports that Sir Watkyn has now acquired the cow-creamer. So she needs Bertie to go to the same estate and steal the thing. If he refuses, she’ll bar his access to the cooking of Anatole, her incomparable French chef.
Clear so far?
After that it gets complicated.
Oh yes, I need to remember Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, Sir Watkyn’s niece, who is also on site. She is engaged to an old friend of Bertie’s, whom she is pressuring to steal (recurring theme here) the local constable’s police helmet.
It’s all hilarious. Brilliant. Incomparable.
Most highly recommended.
Lovely – thanks!
It sounds familiar – but, then again – was he ever prolific! And I suppose just about everything is enjoyable in rereading.
Thanks to LibriVox we ran into all sorts of early, out-of-copyright stuff.
One wild delight is in a genre I like (but have not pursued relentlessly) – the clashing Great Powers/coming war novels of the late 19th- and early 20th c.: The Swoop!, or How Clarence Saved England – A Tale of the Great Invasion (1909), where the Boy Scout, Clarence, is decisive in fending off the enemies when “England was not merely beneath the heel of the invader. It was beneath the heels of nine invaders. There was barely standing-room.”
A more serious entry in the genre – about a more successful invasion – which I also enjoy is by another great writer about aunts, Saki: When William Came (1913).
I’ve never read The Swoop; his early work does not please me. I don’t even like Psmith; anything post-Smith I’ll devour like chocolate.
I have no memory of When William Came. I’ve read most of Saki’s short stories, I think, but it’s been a while. My personal favorite is “The Unrest-Cure,” a masterpiece of over-the-top black humor (or humour), which still works as a joke, but is also too offensive for company.
I’ve recently enjoyed a couple of his non-Jeeves novels from librivox. A Gentleman of Means, and The Little Nugget. Both are mystery detective novels, but not as hard boiled as Lars prefers.
I listened to one of Wodehouse’s mysteries. I forget the title. It has to do with a boarding house and a man dying in a locked room. The constable in charge is a young snot who thinks too much of himself and the woman who manages the house is a frank woman who explains everything after the police bungle it.
Karl Anderson,
Many thanks for these recommendations – both of which I’ve now enjoyed! Fascinating how they have lots of aspects of the Jeeves-and-Wooster and other later Wodehouse and yet are differently enjoyable in their interests in the psychology of the characters and the working out of their crime plots.
While anything but hard-boiled the 1910 Gentleman astonished me by its satire on crooked cops and politicians.
philwade,
I wonder how I’ll find that one – and how many more romantic crime comedies he may have written?
We found it in an audiobook library. It’s a short story collection with the mystery at the beginning and assorted stories we were already familiar with afterward. The title is “Death at the Excelsior and Other Stories.”
Thank you! We’ve now enjoyed it! The Wikipedia Wodehouse short-story bibliography says it was first published in Pearson’s Magazine in England in December 1914 and then in the US in All-Story Cavalier Weekly in March 1915 – so, 111 years ago!
It dawned on me perhaps surprisingly slowly how full of assorted crimes the ‘classic’ Wodehouse stories are – such as attempts to steal The Empress of Blandings in Summer Lightning (1929)!
Pigs and cow creamers take the prize, I think, but I recall manuscripts too. And no doubt there are more.
I don’t suppose I’ve really reflected about periods and sorts of stories by Wodehouse, though surprised by early varieties, but have enjoyed everything so far (though I guess in different ways or to different degrees).
Thanks for the Saki title and the Wodehouse detective mysteries – I’ll have to try them!
Tangentially, I enjoyed the late Tim Pigott-Smith in the 2013 dramatization, Wodehouse in Exile, about his time in a civilian internment camp (but don’t know how one might get to see it).