Carry On, Jeeves: (Jeeves & Wooster)

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This collection of humorous stories, published in 1925, is very similar to My Man Jeeves (1919)—so similar, in fact, that several stories from that earlier book appear, in a somewhat revised form, in this later one. In this case, all ten of the stories feature English playboy Bertie Wooster and his resourceful manservant Jeeves. (You may recall that half of My Man Jeeves was devoted to a different series of stories.) One of them, “Jeeves Takes Charge,” tells the tale of how Jeeves and Wooster got together. Another installment is told from Jeeves’s point of view, a striking departure from Bertie’s usual narrative, revealing even more clearly which of the two is really in control of the relationship. Together they get mixed up in a series of comical capers of the kind that only over-educated, idle-rich chumps could get into during the early decades of the last century. In billiards, it is not permitted to hit a ball in the baulk area of the table in certain circumstances. Extensive additional annotations to this story appear as end notes to the Saturday Evening Post transcription, here on Madame Eulalie. Jeeves continues to help Bertie's friends with all their problems from financial and romantic to needing a good cook. Regardless of the situation, Jeeves almost always seems to have a plan. On occasion the plan doesn't go quit right, but Jeeves is able to fix the situation with ease. Jeeves is the envy of all that know Bertram, but despite their best efforts, Jeeves is loyal to Bertram and can't be stolen away no matter how much money is offered. Jeeves never tells Bertram much about himself, friends, family, or the money he acquires throughout the story, but is as loyal as a friend can be.

Damocles. In classical mythology he was a courtier of Dionysius the first. At a dinner, Dionysius had a sword suspended over Damocles’s head by a single hair to show him the precarious nature of rank and power.much as I admire P G. Wodehouse, I know he recycles characters and plots frequently, his charm relying more on style than originality. The catch about portrait-painting is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won’t come to ask you to until you’ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult, not to say tough, for the ambitious youngster. I believe all the stories included in Carry on, Jeeves! have been filmed by the B.B.C. for their excellent T.V. show ‘Jeeves and Wooster’, a series that is also responsible for fixing in my imagination the faces of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as the title characters. I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead of our European civilisation. The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.”

What did it matter that Jeeves was somewhat of a tyrant, and that without his approval Bertie could not grow so much as a moustache? Was he not always there to lean on in moments of stress? And moments such as these were frequent in the life of Bertie and his friends. Jeeves service was extended to them all.Wolseley cars were made in Birmingham from 1895 to 1975, although the company was taken over by Morris (Lord Nuffield’s group, later to be British Leyland) in 1927. The famous illuminated radiator badge only appeared in the 1930s. Music halls or Vaudevilles were theatres specialising in variety entertainment, and usually also serving food and drink to a mainly lower-class public. They were thus a considerable step down in respectability even from the “legitimate theatre,” and Aunt Agatha would not have been at all pleased.

Wodehouse, P. G. (2008) [1925]. Carry On, Jeeves (Reprinteded.). London: Arrow Books. ISBN 978-0099513698. In the story’s initial appearance Jeeves recommends “the Longacre—as worn by John Drew” while Bertie buys the Country Gentleman, as worn by Jerome D. Kern (Wodehouse’s friend and theatrical collaborator). Slang expressions for English pounds sterling. “Quid” is still current, and its origins are obscure; the obsolete “o’goblin” is a short variant of “Jimmy O’Goblin,” rhyming slang for “sovereign” (also obsolete). Rather an unusual way of describing the situation. As detailed in the opening paragraphs of chapter 2 of this book, “The Artistic Career of Corky”, it was Aunt Agatha who sent him over in the first place; the same explanation is in the nineteenth paragraph of the original appearance of that story as “Leave It to Jeeves” (1916). A proprietary hot sauce made with chili peppers. Tabasco ® brand products are produced by McIlhenny Company, founded in 1868 at Avery Island, Louisiana. Bertie is implying that Uncle Willoughby was hot stuff in his younger days.Le Touquet-Paris Plage is a seaside resort in northern France, about 15km south of Boulogne. Still very fashionable in the twenties, although it declined in popularity with the upper classes when they started going to the Riviera in summer as well as winter. The rummy business Betie needs rescue from involves his fiancee Florence Craye, ‘a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose’ , her uncle Willoughby who has just finished writing down the scandalous account of his youth as a rake and the inquisitive Edwin the Boyscout whose good deeds are the bane of Bertie’s existence. The setting is the usual posh country manor in Shropshire. George M. Cohan (1878–1942), American actor, singer, songwriter, playwright and producer. His most famous composition was the song “Over There” (1919). There is an anecdote about him in Bring On the Girls. I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. ... Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was notorious for participation in her family’s aristocratic intrigues, including a number of poison plots. Nothing has ever been proved against her, apparently, but it makes for great stories, as Victor Hugo and Donizetti found.

Adrian”/David is of course right about point 1, that Dahlia is Bertie’s father’s sister. [This is confirmed in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 12, “Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” (1965/66), and Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974).] Point 2 is not conclusive, as admitted, especially if Bertie never knew his own grandfather, and Adrian’s later “Regarding source 2” paragraph seems reasonable. Point 3 is consistent with Tom being an uncle by marriage, his brother George being a courtesy uncle, and his sister Katherine’s husband Witherspoon a sort of uncle. The quotation in point 4 is about Uncle Tom, and settles the point that Bertie was young when Tom married Dahlia. A frequent idea in poetry, so Bertie may not have a specific quotation in mind (among other places, the phrase also occurs in Wilde’s Endymion and at least two poems by “A.E.”): This reference is so vague it’s probably impossible to pin down an exact source. Bertie seems to be talking about the concept of Nemesis, which is one of the leading elements of Greek tragedy. The original SEP appearance of the story used the spelling “Shakspere.” A hilarious collection about the antics of Bertie Wooster, who is saved by the clever manipulations of Jeeves, his man-servant.

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This story appeared two years after the end of the“Spanish influenza” pandemic of 1918–1920, which is believed to have killed between twenty andfifty million people around the world.(By comparison, World War I claimed nine million lives.) Before I start on the next story, I believe this is a good place to remark on the two favorite running gags Wodehouse deploys in most of his Jeeves yarns: Late Victorian British slang for the head, especially in the phrase off one’s onion for “mad, crazy,” which is the most frequent usage of the term by Wodehouse. Thisstory seems to beBertie’s only reference to his sister, who is named on p 245 as Mrs Scholfield.Wodehousehimself acquired a ready-made (step-)daughter, Leonora,on his marriage in 1914.