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.)
This story contains one of Jeeves’ rare plans that backfires completely. Jeeves comes up with a plan that’s supposed to help Corky’s uncle accept Corky’s financée, but the plan works a little too well, and Corky’s uncle marries Corky’s financée.
The only story I read in which Jeeves stops Bertie from making two poor sartorial choices: a pink tie and a Country Gentleman hat.
Bertie’s poor clothing choices this time take the form of an ill-advised moustache. The story also features Bicky, Bertie’s friend, describing a chicken ponzi scheme:
Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's a fortune in it.
This is the longest story of the bunch. This is also one of the only stories in which Wodehouse discusses anything even slightly political.
As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
Bertie gets engaged to a woman Jeeves considers unsuitable, so Jeeves concocts a plan to break them up. This story has one of my favorite Bertie and Jeeves conversations.
"Oh, Jeeves," I said; "about that check suit."
"Yes, sir?"
"Is it really a frost?"
"A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion."
"But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is."
"Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir."
"He's supposed to be one of the best men in London."
"I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir."
Bingo Little asks Jeeves to help him secure an allowance from his uncle. However, this is one of the few problems that Jeeves does not solve, because he has his own entanglements to take care of.
This is a short but packed story, with Bertie managing to get in every possible type of trouble.
This is the first part of a two-part story. It features a classic Bertie plot: pushing a little kid into a body of water to impress a girl.[6]
This is the second part of the above two-part story. It features a classic Jeeves plot: playing up Bertie’s stupidity to get Bertie out of trouble.[7]
This story features one of the best Bertie and Jeeves conversations.
“The gentleman called to see you earlier in the day, sir.”
“Good Lord, Jeeves! You don’t mean to say the day starts earlier than this?”
“He desired me to say he would return later, sir.”
“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-Bassington family—the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons.”
“England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons.”
“Tolerably so, sir.”
“No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?”
“Presumably not, sir.”
“And what sort of a specimen is thus one?”
“I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance.”
“Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?”
“No, sir. I should not care to venture such odds.”
“I knew it. Well, the only thing that remains to be discovered is what kind of a blighter he is.”
“Time will tell, sir. The gentleman brought this letter for you, sir.”
Another story in which Bingo’s love life is beyond even Jeeves’ aid.
Bingo strikes out yet again. Bertie bets on the length of parsons’ sermons, and compares a parson he bet on to a horse.
The man was a trier. He was a tall, rangy-looking greybeard, and he went off from the start with a nice, easy action, pausing and clearing his throat at the end of each sentence, and it wasn’t five minutes before I realized that here was the winner. His habit of stopping dead and looking round the church at intervals was worth minutes to us, and in the home stretch we gained no little advantage owing to his dropping his pince-nez and having to grope for them. At the twenty-minute mark he had merely settled down. Twenty-five minutes saw him going strong. And when he finally finished with a good burst, the clock showed thirty-five minutes fourteen seconds. With the handicap which he had been given, this seemed to me to make the event easy for him, and it was with much bonhomie and goodwill to all men that I hopped on to the old bike and started back to the Hall for lunch.
Bertie gets involved with another rural betting ring, and this time compares children in an egg-and-spoon race to horses.
Class will tell. Thirty yards from the tape, the red-haired kid tripped over her feet and shot her egg on to the turf. The freckled blonde fought gamely, but she had run herself out half-way down the straight, and Sarah Mills came past and home on a tight rein by several lengths, a popular winner. The blonde was second. A sniffing female in blue gingham beat a pie-faced kid in pink for the place-money, and Prudence Baxter, Jeeves’s long shot, was either fifth or sixth, I couldn’t see which.
Poor Bingo strikes out yet again.
Bertie’s cousins stay with him, which results in twice the romantic and familial problems as usual.
Bingo finally gets married. Jeeves solves yet another problem by telling involved parties that Bertie is crazy, which leads Bertie trying to stick up for himself.
“I have just met Mr. Little, Jeeves,” I said.
“Indeed, sir?”
“He—er—he told me you had been helping him.”
“I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?”
“Thanks. Er—Jeeves.”
“Sir?”
“Another time——”
“Sir?”
“Oh, nothing—— Not all the soda, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.”
He started to drift out.
“Oh, Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“I wish—that is—I think—I mean — oh, nothing.”
“Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?”
“No. I’ll dine in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said.
“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
This story reverses the usual template: Jeeves is the narrator and Bertie’s name appears in the title. It felt strange, like reading a book from Holmes perspective, not Dr. Watson’s. The distance between the narrator and the genius, both in Bertie and Jeeves stories and in Sherlock Holmes stories, deepens the mystery around the genius, making him seem even more heroic. I missed Bertie’s rambling ditzy narration, which serves as a nice foil for Jeeves’ quiet intelligence.
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.
