P.G. Wodehouse was an English author who wrote comic novels from 1900 until his death in 1975. Several of his books are now in the public domain, and thus are available on Project Gutenberg for free.[1][2] His most lasting impact on popular culture is probably the character Jeeves, a butler able to think himself out of any hole; Jeeves has now been a search engine[3] and a word meaning a model helper.
I’m taking a closer look at several of his short stories featuring Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. A quick introduction before we begin: Bertie Wooster is a rich young-ish man who lives in London. He is stupid, and, along with his friends, is always getting into trouble. Jeeves is Bertie’s valet, a man of few words and intricate plots. Jeeves comes up with plans to help Bertie and his friends get out of trouble.
Wodehouse applies the “show, not tell” maxim in an unusual manner, and never describes what Bertie and Jeeves look like. For contrast, consider how other fiction authors introduce new characters. For example, here is J.K. Rowling introducing Dumbledore for the first time in Chapter 1 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Philosopher’s Stone:
He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man's name was Albus Dumbledore.
The writing paints a visual picture; the next time we read the name “Dumbledore,” we know what the character we imagine should look like. The physical attributes also imbue Dumbledore with certain personality traits: the long silver hair and beard suggest age, the robes and cloak suggest eccentricity, and the bright sparkling eyes suggest kindness.
Physical descriptions of characters also have problems. Namely:
Wodehouse does not bother with physical descriptions. Take a look at this introduction from Leave it to Jeeves:
Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.
This, for me, is the platonic ideal of how to introduce a character. Not only do we get an anecdote that perfectly illustrates the type of calm brainiac Jeeves is, we also learn about Bertie, our narrator who thinks going from Pennsylvania Station to Melonsquashville, TN (!) requires a track change in San Francisco. The introduction also provides a few visual details to create atmosphere (“peering sadly,” “marble battlements”), but not so many that I’m overwhelmed. Here is another introduction from The Aunt and the Sluggard:
Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages for pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he's more like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who was apt to rally round him in times of need—a guide, don't you know; philosopher, if I remember rightly, and—I rather fancy—friend. I rely on him at every turn.
This description does not talk about Jeeves’ eyes, hair color, clothes, voice, or smile. We learn he is Bertie’s “man,” and guide. At the same time, we learn that Bertie is the kind of person who tries, and fails, to quote Alexander Pope.[5] In three sentences, we know enough about both the main characters to enjoy the rest of the story.
Each chart below summarizes the plot of one short story. The colors show what types of holes (poor clothing choices, money troubles, love troubles, or family obligations) Bertie and his friends dig themselves into at various points in each story. The number to the right of each chart is the number of sentences in the story. (Spoilers ahead.)
Wodehouse often describes the same thing multiple times, each time heightening the humor of the description. Stand-up comedians do this too; for example, here is John Mulaney describing the passage of time in several hilarious ways.
Here is Bertie talking about the lackluster menu at a cafe that Bingo Little dragged him to. Bolded text added to highlight all the ways Bertie expresses his disgust.
“I’ll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?”
I gazed at the blighter, revolted. That he would have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick.
…
This chappie before me, who spoke in this absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head waiter at Claridge’s exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frit au gourmet aux champignons and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn’t just right. Ghastly! Ghastly!
…
A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn’t been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it.
Here is Bertie talking about a potential future father-in-law who is a nerve specialist.
Sir Roderick Glossop, Honoria’s father, is always called a nerve specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he’s really a sort of janitor to the looney-bin. I mean to say, when your uncle the Duke begins to feel the strain a bit and you find him in the blue drawing-room sticking straws in his hair, old Glossop is the first person you send for. He toddles round, gives the patient the once-over, talks about over-excited nervous systems, and recommends complete rest and seclusion and all that sort of thing. Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another, and I suppose that, being in that position—I mean constantly having to sit on people’s heads while their nearest and dearest ’phone to the asylum to send round the wagon—does tend to make a chappie take what you might call a warped view of humanity.
And here are Bertie and his Aunt Agatha talking about a relative who enjoys drinking a little too much.
“You are one of the family, Bertie, and I can speak freely to you. You know as well as I do that your poor Uncle George has for many years not been a . . . he has—er—developed a habit of … how shall I put it?”
“Shifting it a bit?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Mopping up the stuff to some extent?”
“I dislike your way of putting it exceedingly, but I must confess that he has not been perhaps as temperate as he should. He is highly strung and . . . well, the fact is that he has had a shock.”
The charts below show some of the top 100 words ranked by frequency, based on the words’ frequency in English in general on the left and in these short stories more specifically on the right.
Bertie often talks about himself in his narration. You can see that in the fact that “I” and “me” are more common in these short stories than in English generally. In fact, according to Zipf’s law,[8] the word “me” is about 2.5x more common in these short stories than English generally. Bertie uses third person pronouns less often than the average writer. To me, this indicates that Bertie’s narration is fairly self-absorbed, which fits with his personality of not being particularly concerned with the world at large.
The stories also use the above words much more than the average writer. This is probably due to several common Bertie exclamations, e.g., “Well, that was all to the good, what?” and “And all the time—well, I mean, dash it, you know.”
Wodehouse uses short sentences much more frequently than Dave Barry, another humor writer. Barry’s sentences are often between about 15 and 30 words long, which lets him write amusing paragraphs like this one (with sentences of length 17, 9, 25, and 20 words):
Miami also has a modern taxi fleet, which consists of four modern taxis, but they're pretty busy. So your best bet is to rent a car. Keep in mind that Miami has the same traffic laws as the rest of the United States; the difference is that nobody here obeys them. The main expressways are Interstate 95 and the Palmetto; do not use these unless you are an experienced fighter pilot.
Wodehouse’s narration features many shorter sentences (less than 15 words long), interspersed with few very long sentences (more than 30 words). The abundance of short sentences emphasizes Bertie’s character as a mostly superficial thinker and speaker, who has a few unintentional flashes of stylistic brilliance. For example, this paragraph describing Bingo Little getting married at last has sentences of length 4, 5, 3, 12, and 41 words:
I stared at him. That flower in his buttonhole. That dazed look. Yes, he had all the symptoms; and yet the thing seemed incredible. The fact is, I suppose, I’d seen so many of young Bingo’s love-affairs start off with a whoop and a rattle and poof themselves out half-way down the straight that I couldn’t believe he had actually brought it off at last.
The dialogue also features really short sentences. For example, take this conversation between Bertie and Bingo Little, with sentences of length 2, 3, 7, 4, 5, 2, 8, 2, 6, and 2 words:
“Hallo, Bertie!”
“Hallo, old turnip! Where have you been all this while?”
“Oh, here and there. Ripping weather we’re having, Bertie.”
“Not bad.”
“I see the Bank Rate is down again.”
“No, really?”
“Disturbing news from Lower Silesia, what?”
“Oh, dashed.”
▲ [1] Both as in beer and as in speech.
▲ [2] At time of writing, a free set of Wodehouse books is also available on the Amazon Kindle store. This set comes with DRM restrictions.
▲ [3] The search engine formerly known as Ask Jeeves, now renamed to Ask.com.
▲ [4] It’s always eyes for some reason.
▲ [5] “When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, / Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, / Shall then this verse to future age pretend / Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?” An Essay on Man. I don’t deserve the credit for finding this quote.
▲ [6] Aunt Agatha accuses Bertie of trying to use this plot again in the novel Right Ho, Jeeves.
▲ [7] Jeeves uses this plot again in the novel Right Ho, Jeeves.
▲ [8] How often words are used approximately follows Zipf’s law: the most frequent word occurs twice as often as the second most frequent word, three times as often as the third most frequent word, etc.
▲ [9] Wikipedia provides a fuller description of the process of books entering the public domain.
