Before you float off to enjoy the story, please help Classics Read Aloud grow by “♡ Liking” this post and sending it to a friend—word of mouth is more powerful than any algorithm. Thank you!
“’Sir?’ said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them.”
If you have never experienced a Bertie & Jeeves story firsthand, you are in for a treat. This is comedy, pure and simple. Pelham Grenville (P. G.) Wodehouse did not set out to make satire or social commentary, nor was he concerned with wisdom or subversion. Wodehouse was an entertainer, and he conducted himself in the elevation of this artform with such finesse that we can hardly appreciate the difficulty as we consume it. As he humbly confessed in a 1961 interview, “I haven’t got any violent feelings about anything, I just love writing.”
And, oh, to be loved by Wodehouse, what decadence is bestowed. The author churned out stories of this yin-and-yang pair over nearly 60 years, bringing together the sensibilities of both his inherited English culture and his adopted American one. Bertie, the English gentleman through whose eyes we see the world, is a sort of vapid, bumbling man-about-town. His style of speech is “a blend of [English] clichés, public schoolboys’ tags, and upper-class slang, curiously enriched by a good deal of postwar American slang.” A swell chappie with a social life that is positively brimming and a Rolodex of calls that are always answered.
Meanwhile, Jeeves, Bertie’s butler, is the very picture of refined deportment; judicious in taste, behavior, and intellect. He is a reliable foil to poor Bertie, and the pair are simply topping. While Bertie’s idiocy gave necessary credence to the ridiculous situations introduced by the cast of characters parading in and out of each episode, it was Jeeves who eventually stole the show—Wodehouse called upon him for more and more stage time as the years progressed.
Today’s reading is of “Leave It to Jeeves,” the very first fully developed Bertie & Jeeves story published. Wodehouse hits right off the bat with Jeeves advising Bertie, in his own insistent way, against the error of donning a checkered suit in the modern style (“Injudicious, sir.”). With wardrobe decided, Bertie and Jeeves are thrown into helping Bertie’s pal Corky, a destitute would-be portrait painter, convince Corky’s uncle (and importantly, his only source of income) to accept his marriage to a chorus girl, the aptly named Miss Singer. (“Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it yet yourself…. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.”)
It’s jolly good fun.
Whether you’re having a bad day, are stuck in bed with the flu, or are in a literary rut, some time in Wodehouse’s world may be just the ticket. His characters are winningly simple, the stereotypes hysterically on-point, and the plotlines unapologetically frothy. It takes great talent to have created such an effect and maintained it over so many years; the result of true love, clearly.
If you have a favorite Jeeves story, share it in the comments; I would love to record a few more here over time.
Please enjoy…
Guffawing: A number of other British-born comedies fit the bill for equally charming entertainments by screen. Fawlty Towers gives us the brilliant John Cleese as the owner of a small, family-run hotel navigating the challenges of the day with incompetence and confusion; hilarity ensues. Yes, Minister pairs us with the Right Honorable James Hacker, Cabinet Minister to the Department of Administration, who, as you can imagine, leads a professional life mired in bureaucratic incompetence and mendacity; hilarity ensues. And, who could forget Absolutely Fabulous and the depraved fascinations of Edina “Eddy” Monsoon and Patsy Stone, two scions of incompetence, indulgence, and snobbery who traipse across London and the world, hungover all the way; hilarity ensues.
Spoiled for choice, really.
Listening: When I’m hankering for something fun and whimsical, I find my way to La Grande Fête by Belcirque. There a certain storytelling aspect to the collection, that, while coming across more Riviera than Thames, gives the same air of casually waltzing around the city, glass of bubbly in hand, that froths around the edges of Wodehouse’s pages. And honestly, in the middle of January, the Riviera is what we all need.
Peter Pan, an excerpt, by J. M. Barrie, 1911
“The Hounds of Fate” by Saki, 1911
“Paste” by Henry James, 1899
