Titles by P. G. Wodehouse
Jeeves and Wooster
The Inimitable Jeeves
Carry On, Jeeves
Very Good, Jeeves
Thank You, Jeeves
Right Ho, Jeeves
The Code of the Woosters
Joy in the Morning
The Mating Season
Ring for Jeeves
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Jeeves in the Offing
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Much Obliged, Jeeves
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen
Blandings Castle
Something Fresh
Leave it to Psmith
Summer Lightning
Full Moon
Pigs Have Wings
A Pelican at Blandings
Sunset at Blandings
Uncle Fred
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Cocktail Time
Service with a Smile
Monty Bodkin
The Luck of the Bodkins
Standalone novels
The Pothunters
Piccadilly Jim
A Damsel in Distress
The Adventures of Sally
The Small Bachelor
Money for Nothing
Big Money
Hot Water
Laughing Gas
Summer Moonshine
The Girl in Blue
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This collection © The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate, 2024 All quoted material copyright © P. G. Wodehouse with the exception of the quotation from Lady Ethel Wodehouse on p. xii, taken from The World of P. G. Wodehouse by Herbert Warren Wind, published by Hutchinson in 1981. Introduction © Alan Titchmarsh, 2024
The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate have asserted P. G. Wodehouse’s right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work
Please be aware that the material included in this book was originally published between the 1910s and 1970s and contains language, themes or characterisations which you may find outdated.
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Jeeves
Jeeves
Introduction
Reginald Jeeves is the one exception to the rule that ‘nobody loves a smart-arse’, even though he himself, when commenting on such a situation to his ‘gentleman’ Bertram Wooster, would couch his opinion more felicitously:
‘Might I venture to suggest, sir, that a person who gives the impression of omniscience is most likely to be treated by society with some degree of opprobrium.’
I forgive Jeeves his air of superiority because of his finely crafted phraseology and the fact that his endeavours are almost always directed at salvaging the disastrous situations unwittingly wrought by his hapless employer.
This paragon of valeting virtue sprang from the pen of the man who I, and many others, consider to be the finest comic writer this country has ever produced. Granted, ‘comic’ might seem to suggest a thinness of style, but the style of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (known as ‘Plum’ since his childhood) is anything but thin. There are many, myself included, who simply cannot get enough of him and his various characterful creations, be they billeted at Blandings Castle in
Shropshire, or Berkeley Mansions in Mayfair. Aside from the Wodehouse style and the literary craftsmanship, the very nature of the books – their Edwardian otherworldliness – makes them volumes into which one can dive when the tawdriness of dystopian drama and the darkness of Scandi-noir begin to pall. That literary titan Evelyn Waugh opined that ‘Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale . . . He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.’ In the words of Bertie Wooster, I consider that ‘E.W. has hit the n on the h.’
I confess to aspiring to become Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, in my dotage – not for the elegance of the title, but for the ability to live contentedly, deep in the British countryside, under a clear blue sky, scratching the back of my prize-winning pig while birds sing and bees buzz in the flowerbeds of my Arcadian demesne. While not wishing to confine my reading matter to that of Augustus Whiffle, whose porcine knowledge is clearly of unimpeachable repute, I do concur with Cicero that ‘If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.’ It is a sentiment that I hope might receive an approving nod from Jeeves, though we are not apprised of any horticultural acuity on his behalf. His pronouncements on nature tend to be of a poetic turn of phrase: ‘There is a fog, sir. If you will recollect, we are now in autumn – a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ However, he was clearly well acquainted with certain aspects of natural history, for when Bertie suggests that ‘You must have heard of newts. Those little sort of lizard things
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that charge about in ponds,’ Jeeves replies: ‘Oh, yes, sir. The aquatic members of the family Salamandridae which constitute the genus molge.’ (It would be idle to deny that there are times when Jeeves does not shy away from showing off.)
Bertie, while not unaffected by the caprices of the weather or the beauty of the countryside, is undoubtedly happiest at his club – the Drones – in the company of such characters as Bingo Little, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Pongo Twistleton, whose predilection for hurling bread rolls would, had their membership been that of the Athenaeum, have been greeted by the Edwardian clergy of that establishment with a disdainful snort and hasty expulsion.
Among all these personages, whose names are like those of old friends to me and countless other Wodehouse addicts, Reginald Jeeves is, perhaps, the most resonant. His Christian name is never used by his employer. His surname – which universally has come to represent that of the archetypal gentleman’s gentleman – has a touching history. It was first used by Wodehouse in a short story published in 1916: ‘Extricating Young Gussie’. The already established writer (his first book, The Pothunters, had been published in 1902) saw the first-class cricketer Percy Jeeves play for Warwickshire against Gloucestershire in 1913. That Percy died in the Battle of the Somme three years later, at the age of just twenty-eight – the year in which that short story was published – gives the choice of name a certain poignancy.
From the authentic tone of his books, one might assume that Wodehouse was accustomed to being surrounded by a host of domestic staff, and for one short period in his life, that much was true. In 1928, in his late forties, he and his wife Ethel owned two houses: one in Le Touquet, France, and the other in Norfolk Street, London. The English home possessed ‘a butler, a footman, a cook, a scullery maid, two housemaids, a parlour maid and a chauffeur who drove the RollsRoyce’. For most of their married life, in Remsenburg, Long Island, they employed a couple who looked after the household, but Mrs Wodehouse did admit that prior to this ‘we had only one really exceptional servant. He was a butler named Kreutz – an Austrian – who was with us the year we lived in southern France. He had worked in embassies most of his life, because he had a naturally dignified manner and spoke half a dozen languages. Kreutz was a very, very nice man – nothing at all like those pompous butlers in my husband’s books.’
But then, Jeeves was not a butler. He was a valet –even though, when push came to shove, he could, according to Bertie, ‘buttle with the best of them’. But for most of the time he was a general factotum, a companion, a facilitator and an all-round good egg. He and Bertram Wilberforce Wooster appeared in thirty-five short stories and eleven full-length novels, the first of these being Thank You, Jeeves in 1934 and the last Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen in 1974.
Throughout these books, we come to know a widely read, self-reliant individual whose knowledge
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of literature is clearly a reflection of the man from whose pen he sprang. Whereas Bertie frequents the Drones, Jeeves joins his fellow valets and butlers at the Junior Ganymede Club, whose club book (now running to twelve volumes) contains information about the employers of the members and, as such, is a record of considerable sensitivity. The members play bridge and, clearly in the case of Jeeves, spend much time reading. While Bertie relies heavily upon his childhood familiarity with the Old Testament, which resulted in his winning the scripture prize at school – hence his tendency to repeatedly compare his ordeals at the hands of such tyrants as Roderick Spode with those of Daniel in the lion’s den – Jeeves evinces a wider understanding of world literature: the classics, Latin aphorisms, Greek myths and the works of Shakespeare. But his real forte is poetry, and he will, at the drop of Bertie’s reviled Tyrolean hat, quote Keats, Shelley, Longfellow, Burns, Rossetti, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Pope. He is fond of referring to the philosophers Schopenhauer and Spinoza but finds Nietzsche ‘fundamentally unsound’.
Aside from his literary knowledge – and worldly wisdom – the one thing that makes Jeeves’s discourse so enjoyable is his syntax. He is not so much verbose as apposite and elegant in his mode of expression. One has the feeling that his conversation is crafted to amuse himself as much as to impress Bertie, over whose head it regularly takes flight. It is a way of channelling his exasperation, which might otherwise result in a degree
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of inadvisable candour. Not that he always seeks to disguise his prejudices when offering advice: ‘I would hesitate to recommend as a life’s companion a young lady with quite such a vivid shade of red hair. Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.’
Of one thing the reader can be certain: when Jeeves puts his foot down, it stays down. He is a man of unwavering opinion – in lesser mortals it might be described as a ‘stubborn streak’ – but whether it is a lack of appreciation for his master’s modest accomplishments on the banjolele, or for a particular item of clothing to which Bertie seems especially attached and which is abhorrent to his valet, we know that in the end Jeeves will triumph and that any self-congratulation on his part will be undertaken silently, with perhaps the merest hint of a smile.
It is highly likely that few of us could, in reality, live with Jeeves and his arch omnipresence, but it is absolutely certain that without him Bertie Wooster would be lost – and our bookshelves would be all the poorer.
Alan Titchmarsh, 2024
