The World of Jeeves

1931, 1989 Harper & Row edition
P. G. Wodehouse
The World of Jeeves
Bought newish for $10.95
Worn paperback with cracking spine
B


If I could count all these short stories separately, Wodehouse would start out with a lot of posts but, while these were originally published from 1919 to 1930 (with two more added for the 1967 edition), these are not the original versions.  I learned this when I checked The Initimable Jeeves out from the library.  There were some of these stories, but one had a character described as "looking like Lillian Gish coming out of a swoon," while the version here has either Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo.  It seems that for the '31 edition, references to earlier actresses got changed to either Dietrich or Garbo.  In fact, in one story Lillian Gish is contrasted as a silent-film star to Dietrich and Garbo.  There's a mention or two of Clara Bow, which is more mid-'20s than early '30s but less dated than Gish.


While Wodehouse in his charming introduction recommends reading just three or four of these stories a day, I of course powered through the 600+ pages, and I do think of this collection as having one chronology, although admittedly muddled.  Based on textual clues, here's what I think:


Several of the early stories take place in the same year and even have references to the month, or at least season.  "The Great Sermon Handicap" happens on Sunday, 23 August, while "The Metropolitan Touch" has Bingo's play on Friday, 23 December.  Since it's impossible for one calendar to contain both dates, I'm weighing the latter as more because the twins might be confused about when Sunday is but Bingo has to put out publicity for his play.  23 December fell on a Friday twice in the 1920s-- 1921 and 1927.  Neither date is entirely satisfactory, but I'm going with the latter.


Summer 1926, "Jeeves Takes Charge"
Late April or early May of 1927, "Jeeves in the Springtime"
May or June, "Scoring off Jeeves"
Early summer, "Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch" and "Aunt Agatha Takes the Count"
July, "Comrade Bingo"
August, "The Great Sermon Handicap"
Early September, "The Purity of the Turf"
November and December, "The Metropolitan Touch"
Perhaps late October of 1928, since it's nearly 18 months since "Jeeves in the Springtime," we get the end of Bingo constantly falling in love, as he gets married in "Bingo and the Little Woman."


Not too long after that, we have "Clustering Round Young Bingo," and then "Jeeves and the Impending Doom" sometime after.  Let's say late '28, early '29 tentatively for at least the first of these.  "The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace" can't occur too much after "Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch," since Claude and Eustace are sent down from college, and they're about four years younger than Bertie.  Our hero by the way is 24 in "Jeeves Takes Charge," since it's nine years since he was 15.


The stories set in the U.S. have to be bunged in somewhere, so let's say 1929 and '30.  "The Artistic Career of Corky" covers at least a year, and some of the other American adventures could've happened then.


Let's say Bertie returns to England in 1930.  "Without the Option" is supposed to be one year before "The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy."  And then at the beginning of August, we get "The Love that Purifies" (with all the schoolboy crushes on actresses), this story being the summer after "Impending Doom."  So perhaps "Impending Doom" takes place a couple years after "Clustering Round."


1928 "Clustering Round"
1929 and 1930 American adventures (with a reference to Calvin Coolidge, so it can't be before '23)
1930 "Without the Option" and "Jeeves and the Impending Doom"
1931 "The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy" and "The Love That Purifies"

Meanwhile, we're introduced to Tuppy Glossop and Bobbie Wickham in "Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit."  Let's say Christmas of 1930.  Months later (1931), comes "Jeeves and the Song of Songs."  Another Yuletide tale is "The Ordeal of Young Tuppy," which refers to Tuesday the 17th, of either November or December.  There is a Tuesday, 17 November for 1931, so that works.

"The Episode of the Dog McIntosh" takes place not only after the American sequence but after "Yule-Tide Spirit," again possibly 1931.  "Jeeves and the Kid Clementina" also happens after "Yule-Tide Spirit," and after the Jeeves-narrated "Bertie Changes His Mind."  It can also be chucked into 1931.

Confusingly, "Jeeves and the Greasy Bird" is set at Christmas one year after the novel Thank You, Jeeves, which came out in 1934.  But this story was written in '66.  ("Jeeves Makes an Omelette" is from '59.)  For now, we'll tentatively say '35 for setting.

"Jeeves and the Old School Chum" takes place in the autumn, a few years after "Clustering Round Bingo," so it could be as early as '31.

There are a few stray stories that don't refer to season or year, but this covers most of the collection.  So, for the most part this book is set 1926 to '31.

Now that that's out of the way, yes, I've read this book a lot.  I discovered Wodehouse in my early 20s, and not long after that, I saw the delightful Fry & Laurie adaptations of Jeeves and Wooster.  (Not 100% faithful in regards to plotting or casting, but faithful to the spirit.)  Wodehouse tells of how reluctant he was to "sell his soul for gold," which made "a blush mantle his cheek" when he "took typewriter in hand" to update his introduction in 1967.  By then he had allowed film and television versions, and "today I should not object very strongly if somebody wanted to do Jeeves on Ice."


If I may state the obvious, Wodehouse is funny.  Born in 1881, he was a young man when Queen Victoria died and, in a different way than E. M. Forster, he gently mocks Victorianism.  In particular, he's got a gift for deflating literary cliches, including cross-pollinating them with then-modern slang.  He lived until 1975 but had long before become frozen in time.  (To get a sense of this span, think of how he ruined one of W.S. Gilbert's jokes at a dinner party, and a young Stephen Fry wrote him a fan letter.)  It's odd to think that this collection came out the year he turned 50, but for Jeeves, as Wodehouse observed in '67, "it would be difficult to think of an end that was less yetter."


It's difficult to see this book in isolation, and I want to give it a higher grade, but that's the problem with frequent readings.  I don't laugh out loud anymore.  I admire certain phrases but I'm long familiar with them.  I don't have any favorite stories, since they all seem about on a level.  I will note that, as with Austen, there are characters that would be annoying in real life but are amusing in print.  (Something Wodehouse didn't manage in If I Were You.)  Interestingly, it's the people that Bertie likes best, like his Aunt Dahlia and some of his friends, that cause him the most trouble.  He thinks Dahlia is much better than Agatha, but she's constantly insulting his intelligence and giving him difficult tasks.  And I don't know why he puts up with Bingo and Tuppy, although it is entertaining to the reader.

Back on the subject of chronology (sorry), it's unclear how long he's known either Bingo or Tuppy.  He claims that he and Bingo were born in the same village within a few days of each other and grew up together, and yet at one point he says they've been friends for 15 years.  Similarly, either he's befriended Tuppy Glossop recently, despite the latter being the nephew of the dreaded Sir Roderick Glossop, or he went to school with Tuppy.  The novels don't exactly clear this up.