The Inimitable Jeeves

"It’s about a young man called Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. This is kind of a novel, but it was originally written as separate short stories which were published in magazines in the early 1920s. I chose it not only because it is the first Wodehouse book I read, but also because it is wonderful. I was particularly thinking of the hilarious first short story, about Bertie’s friend Bingo who falls desperately in love with a waitress called Mabel. The story centres on how Bingo is going to get his uncle’s permission to marry Mabel, and Jeeves devises a cunning scheme to make this possible. There’s a marvellous scene where Bertie and the lovesick Bingo end up in Mabel’s teashop. We get Bingo studying the menu “devoutly”, as if it’s a sacred text. That “devoutly” tells us a lot about Bingo’s feelings. Wodehouse has such a gift with language. The placement of the word “macaroon” in this story is magnificent. Jeeves always gets things absolutely right. He’s in charge of everything from Bertie’s choice of socks to his love-life. As Bertie puts it, he’s “so dashed competent in every respect”. And there’s a great deal of fondness between the pair, much of which goes completely unsaid. Yes – though Bertie would love to be thought of as intelligent. He often tries to capture things through quotations, which he gets wrong and is gently corrected by Jeeves. In fact Jeeves once refers to Bertie as “mentally negligible”, which causes a bit of friction. But Jeeves isn’t all brain. There is a moment at the end of the second story where we find out that Jeeves has a love life, that he’s courting someone. That is what made me smile the most. When a novel is so much about surface, and then you find this moment of inwardness, it’s extraordinary. Dickens does the same thing with Mr Pickwick. I’ve also always wondered – if Jeeves is so perfect, what would he be like on a date?"