There are times when only a PG Wodehouse will do. I’ve featured two of his books before on this blog, Summer Lightning back at the end of November 2019 and The Clicking of Cuthbert in September 2021, Summer Lightning is one of the Blandings Castle novels set in a stately home in Shropshire, whilst The Clicking of Cuthbert is a collection of short stories featuring golf. You can see from this description that there is a noticeable gap in my descriptions of the works of Wodehouse and that is the thirty five short stories and eleven novels that make up the Jeeves and Wooster canon. I do have all of these in three boxed sets from The Folio Society beautifully illustrated by Paul Cox, and I have chosen this book comprising of ten stories because it includes the appearance of the indomitable gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves into the life of wealthy dilettante Bertie Wooster. This story ‘Jeeves Takes Charge’, originally published in 1915, begins with Bertie very badly hungover when his new valet arrives from the agency:
I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.
‘I was sent by the agency, sir,’ he said. ‘I was given to understand that you required a valet.’
I’d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn’t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said gently.
Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn’t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.
‘If you would drink this, sir,’ he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. ‘It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’
I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.
‘You’re engaged!’ I said, as soon as I could say anything.
The hiring of Jeeves would prove to be the best thing Bertram Wooster would ever do and many a time Jeeves would get him out of terrible problems, often caused by Bertie’s friends although sometimes by Bertie himself. This book comprises of ten of the short stories an was first published in 1925 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd and as well as introducing us to Jeeves the stories are set around the first few novels. It isn’t necessary to have read the other stories before this collection although there are some spoilers regarding plots, most noticeably around Bertie’s interaction with the Glossop family which assumes that the reader is familiar with them. The odd thing is that although this collection includes the hiring of Jeeves, the collection of eighteen short stories (some of which were originally published in combination) in The Inimitable Jeeves was first published in 1923 and includes much of the appearances of Sir Roderick Glossop and his daughter Honoria whom Bertie gets engaged to twice only for Jeeves to successfully extricate him both times.
The other thing to bear in mind is that Wodehouse started writing about Jeeves and Wooster in 1915 and wrote his final novel about them, ‘Aunt’s Aren’t Gentlemen’, in 1974 so a spread of almost six decades but none of the characters age more than about five years over this period and the lifestyle of Bertie is firmly rooted in the 1910’s and 20’s. It also needs to be understood that the First World War doesn’t impinge on the books at all and it is easier to assume whilst reading them that almost the whole story line is set in the early 1920’s. The one obvious exception to this is the novel ‘Ring For Jeeves’ which is clearly set later and is the only Jeeves book which doesn’t feature Bertie Wooster.
Of the ten stories in ‘Carry On Jeeves’ four are set in New York where Bertie had taken refuge to avoid the wrath of his aunt Agatha and one in Paris where he is simply on holiday for a couple of weeks whilst the rest are in his native England. Wooster is sufficiently wealthy that he doesn’t have to work for a living so Wodehouse is free to place him wherever he fancies which includes hiring a house for an extended holiday by the coast. It is also clear that Bertie is not the brightest of chaps but then again neither are most of his friends, with the intellectual status being almost entirely given to Jeeves. Almost all the stories and novels are written from the perspective of Bertie but this collection includes the only one seen from Jeeves’s viewpoint ‘Bertie Changes His Mind’, where Jeeves is worried that he might be about to be let go by Bertie and is determined to make sure that this doesn’t happen. For Jeeves, despite his occasional disagreements with Bertie, largely over his sartorial choices, knows that his employer is one that is worth retaining especially compared to some of the others he has worked for.
I love the works of PG Wodehouse as his gentle comedies are invariably just the thing to brighten the day and they are beautifully written. You can read one of the various series such as Jeeves and Wooster, Blandings Castle or the Psmith stories or pick one of the numerous stand alone works that together comprise the around a hundred novels and collections of short stories along with over fifty plays and scripts that he wrote over more than seventy years, Indeed he was working on another Blandings novel when he died aged ninety three.