Apr 25, 2001 02:46 PM
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The frequency with which the term ‘Jeeves’ is used without further explanation in the media of today, and its inclusion as a generic term in the Oxford English Dictionary, suggests that P G Wodehouse’s Jeeves, together with his principal employer Bertie Wooster, remain the most popular of his many enduring characters.
The republication by Penguin recently of virtually all the Jeeves titles offers a fresh opportunity to make the acquaintance of these remarkable figments of the author’s imagination. He received the accolades not only of becoming part of the English language but also giving his name to a major Internet search engine (Ask Jeeves).
The plot in this novel revolves around Bertie ,an Englishman and his butler Jeeves.
Jeeves leaves Bertie ,as Bertie decides to move to a country cottage to learn Banjolele ,a musical instrument ,kind of a mix of a banjo and a ukelele; by sheer coincedence both meet at Chuffuell Regis…….
The beautiful daughter of a millionaire and fiancé of Chuffy goes to Bertie to be his wife …to see Bertie’s reaction and humor that follows ,just read the book.
Much has been written about Jeeves. His imperturabability, his omniscience, his unruffled insight, his orotund speech, his infallible way with a quotation… in short, his perfection. It would be a pity, however, to overlook the character of Bertie Wooster, who is himself a great deal more than the silly or chinless wonder that people often imagine. That he is loyal, kind chivalrous, resolute and magnificently sweet-natured is apparent.
The particular joy of this Jeeves story comes from the delicious feeling one derives from being completely in Bertie’s hands. His apparently confused way of expressing him-self both reveals character and manages, somehow, to develop narrative with extraordinary economy and life.
Wodehouse’s three great achievements in this novel are plot, character and language, and the greatest of these, by far, is language.
Bertie and Jeeves discussing a young man called Cyril Bassington-Bassington.
“I’ve never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?”
“I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassingon family – the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingotns, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons.”
“England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingons.”
“Tolerably so, sir.”
“No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?”
Well, such an exchange will always work best on the page of only P.G.Wodehouse
One of the gorgeous privileges of reading Wodehouse is that he makes us feel better about ourselves because we derive a sense of personal satisfaction from the laughter mutually created. Every comma, every “sir”, every “what?” is something we make work in the act of reading.
Example serves better than description. Let me throw up some more random nuggets. Particular to Wodehouse are the transferred epithets: “I lit a rather pleased cigarette”, or, “I pronged a moddy forkful of eggs and b”. Characteristic, too, are the sublimely hyperbolic similes: “Roderick Spode. Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces”, or, “The stationmaster’s whiskers are of a Vidtorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass.
It represents a golden age of comic writing, when a world could be created without giving undue offence to any group of individuals, when English in its purest modern form, still relatively untainted by the development of the American dialect, could be written, read and appreciated, when the virtuous (usually penniless and unemployed) triumphed, the dictatorial (usually authoritarian figures such as magistrates, businessmen, policemen, headmasters and aunts) suffered and the crookes were deprived of their spoils in the kindest way.
I would urge you, to head straight for a library or bookshop and get hold of this novel, where you will encounter it fully in context and find that it leaps even more magnificently to life.
