Carry On, Wodehouse!

by Shari Randall

My book club needed a literary pick me up after one too many dour Important Books, so a member suggested the short story collection Carry On, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse. The book includes ten stories set in the carefree world of upper class Edwardian Britain about hapless socialite Bertram Wooster getting into trouble and his imperturbable valet Jeeves getting him out of it, all told in Wodehouse’s glorious prose. The perfect choice.

 

Haven’t read Wodehouse? You’re in for a treat. I’ve read only some of the Jeeves stories, but as a writer, I reveled in the serpentine plotting and masterful use of language. With some writers, you read along trying to understand how they do it. With Wodehouse, whose talent is so one-of-a kind, you just relax and enjoy the ride.

 

And funny? You bet. Here’s a sampling:

 

Bertie: “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'”
Jeeves: “The mood will pass, sir.”

I started back to the house, and in the drive I met Jeeves. He was at the wheel of Stiffy’s car. Beside him, looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin, was the dog Bartholomew.

 

I hadn’t the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.

 

When I finished Carry On, Jeeves, I went down the Internet rabbit hole and found these intriguing facts about Wodehouse and his writing:

 

First things first. “Wodehouse” is pronounced Wood House. P. G. stands for Pelham Grenville, which was transformed (thank goodness!) into "Plum."

 

Wodehouse wrote 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories! He also somehow found time to write Broadway musical comedies, and screenwork for MGM in Hollywood. 

 

In 1906, Wodehouse lived in New York City and collaborated with Jerome Kern during his musical comedy days. One of their songs from the Broadway show The Beauty of Bath was the most popular song in London at the time. 

 

In September 1914, Wodehouse married English widow Ethel May Wayman. He adopted her daughter, Leonora, and their marriage was lifelong and happy.

 

Wodehouse had twenty aunts and fifteen uncles!

 

The man who created such beloved and utterly British characters was the object of scorn at home during WW II. While Wodehouse was living in France, he was arrested by the invading German army and interred in a concentration camp for more than a year. When released, he made several lighthearted and apolitical broadcasts for an American show that was broadcast over a German radio station, a move that soured public opinion back home. He and Ethel moved to the United States and never returned to England.

The video game World of Warcraft features Jeeves, a robot butler.

 

Wodehouse was lauded by some unexpected critics. Here’s Hilaire Belloc, who considered Wodehouse “the best writer of English now alive.” In 1939, Belloc wrote in the Introduction to Weekend Wodehouse, “Now the end of writing is the production in the reader's mind of a certain image and a certain emotion. And the means towards that end are the use of words in any particular language; and the complete use of that medium is the choosing of the right words and the putting of them into the right order. It is this which Mr. Wodehouse does better, in the English language, than anyone else alive; or at any rate than anyone else whom I have read for many years past.”

 

Is there a writer you turn to when you want to laugh?