Tag Archives: Carry On Jeeves

Fiction, Reviews

‘Very Good, Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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He was fat then, and day by day in every way has been getting fatter ever since, till now tailors measure him just for the sake of the exercise.

It’s kind of a waste of time to review a P. G. Wodehouse book. The intelligent consumer knows the quality of the product. But it’s possible some reader (for some incomprehensible reason) has resisted the delights of “Plum’s” work to date, so here goes.

Very Good, Jeeves!, a story collection, is obviously a Jeeves and Wooster book, so there’s no mystery about what we’re getting. Idle London clubman Bertie Wooster – or one of his equally dimwitted friends – gets into some kind of ridiculous trouble. In the end, they turn to Bertie’s valet (not butler), Jeeves, of whom Bertie testifies: “There are no limits to Jeeves’s brain-power. He virtually lives on fish.”

The basic scenario is consistent (we’d be disappointed if it weren’t) but there are minor variations from story to story – sometimes Bertie turns to Jeeves at the very beginning, but unforeseen complications stretch the problem out. Sometimes Bertie delays resorting to Jeeves because some coldness has arisen between the two of them, over a disagreement about socks or golf attire or something. Once Jeeves is absent on holiday, and on another occasion Bertie’s imperious Aunt Agatha refuses to ask help from a mere servant.

But in the end Jeeves comes through, and the sun shines once again on the Edenic world of Wodehouse.

There are plenty of familiar characters in this collection – Bingo Little, Tuppy Glossop, and – most dramatically – Bobbie Wickham, the beautiful, red-haired, walking attractive nuisance.

Also, I noted, with interest, that at one point Bertie describes a portrait of himself as featuring a monocle. Bertie used to be portrayed with monocles in illustrations all the time, but I don’t recall actually finding one in a story before (there are probably others I’ve overlooked, though).

I think several of the stories in Very Good, Jeeves were actually new to me, which was delightful. The ones I’d read before were also delightful, though, so I had a thoroughly good time.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Carry On, Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I’ve got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the light of love in her eyes. I don’t know how to account for it, but it is so.’

I am at one of those points in life where I find it prudent to re-read beloved books from my past, rather than spend money on new ones. Having made that determination, it was but the work of a moment for me to ankle off to the bookshelf and pull a book out of my P. G. Wodehouse shelf. And so I offer my review of Carry On, Jeeves.

The characters of Bertie and Jeeves first appear in a story called “Extricating Young Gussie”, (not in this collection) which was published in 1915. In it, Bertie is dispatched to New York by his formidable Aunt Agatha, because his cousin Gussie has formed an ill-advised attachment to a vaudeville performer. Bertie crosses the Atlantic on this mission, but in the end the whole thing is resolved through a farcical coincidence.

What’s rummy about this story (as Wodehouse himself would have put it) is that, first of all, we’re never told Bertie’s last name (it appears, in fact, to be Mannering-Phipps). Also, Jeeves does nothing brainy at all. He answers doors and takes people’s hats. That’s it. This is a nascent Jeeves and Wooster story. The concept remains in embryo.

It wasn’t until the next story, “The Artistic Career of Corky” (1916), that Wodehouse faced the challenge of solving a plot problem without letting Bertie do anything smart, which would violate his character. It was then that he hit on the idea of making Jeeves a super-intellect. And a wonderful phenomenon came into being.

“The Artistic Career of Corky” is included in the collection, Carry On, Jeeves. But its first story is “Jeeves Takes Charge” (also published in 1916). Here we get the origin story, as “rebooted” (as they say of movie franchises) by Wodehouse himself. The story opens with a wonderful scene in which Bertie, hung-over and temporarily valet-less, opens his door to “a kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnny” who immediately diagnoses his complaint and mixes up his proprietary anti-hangover concoction. Bertie engages him on the spot, and as the story continues, Jeeves contrives to disentangle him from an ill-advised engagement to Florence Cray (“seen sideways, most awfully good-looking”), who had a plan for “making something of him.”

And so it goes on through ten wonderful stories. Sometimes Bertie helps a friend out with a spot of matrimonial trouble. Sometimes Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia enlists him in an insane quest to steal some ridiculous object. It’s all light, implausible, and hilarious.

As I read, I couldn’t help thinking about Heaven (see my review on the book about Near Death Experiences, a few inches below). I think Heaven may turn out to be a lot like a Wodehouse story. We never grow old, and the world never changes (Wodehouse attempts to keep up with the times in a couple stories, but they jar). And above all stands the great God of whom Jeeves is a symbol, who (in this life, anyway) allows us to go our wayward ways, knowing that in the end we have no resource but Him, and no one who cares more for our welfare.

Anyway, highly recommended.