It was another lifetime – when my father introduced me to P.G.Wodehouse. I would read and enjoy these silly, bubbly frothy books (more than bordering on farcical), with as much relish as an Enid Blyton adventure or a Billy Bunter caper. Wodehouse called his books “a musical comedy without the music and ignoring real life altogether.”
This whole month of September has gone by in the blink of an eye. Work has been so very hectic that every day, every week has passed by in a blur of work, work and then some more work. Each night that I dropped exhausted into bed, Bertie and Jeeves kept me company – made me smile, chuckle and oftentimes laugh out loud.
I had forgotten the so very Brit upper-class layabouts that Wodehouse parodied with such sparkling brilliance. He made everyone yearn for a Jeeves of their very own. (In fact, coincidentally, the contractor coming to our home tomorrow is called “Jeeves Handyman Service”)
Yet – my perspective has shifted considerably from when I was young and practically a layabout myself. With the wisdom of age and the experience of raising children, I shudder to think of having kids like Bertie or Bingo – or Claude or Eustace for that matter. They all are wastrels – Bertie being the most well-heeled one, able to afford and sustain his clubbing, jaunts to the countryside, betting on horses, trips to Paris, loaning (loosely used term meaning giving-away) money to Bingo & others – for him, money is certainly no object. But it is the sheer idleness and sluggish indolence of these men that started annoying me – maybe because I myself have been worked to the bone and it just doesn’t seem right or fair – even if nestled in a work of fiction by a beloved author.
But my most startling perspective-shift has been in how I now view Jeeves. Like a child who (while growing up) becomes more and more aware that her parents are but human themselves and may have feet of clay – I see the curtain rise and reveal a Jeeves who is – why – not very perfect at all!
I have always remembered him as inscrutable – someone who wouldn’t turn a hair no matter how startling the situation. Instead, he is actually more like a wife – who when she doesn’t get her way – gets all pouty & sulky. When Bertie wears a “fruity cummerbund” – “Jeeves shied like a startled mustang”. His purple socks makes Jeeves look like a “vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of a salad”. At one point early on in the book, Jeeves is instructing his replacement (for a few days) on the do’s and don’ts of the house and Bertie overhears Jeeves telling him that Bertie is very amiable etc. but NOT the most intelligent of men. That is just plain wrong on so many levels and so not the done thing – really Jeeves – “HOW COULD YOU?!” – I think – even as my heart goes out to Bertie and his (inevitably) hurt feelings. Then there is the Jeeves who seems to have his own dalliances on the side, is quite the gossip and appears to have the inside scoop on every village and its internal dramas, is not above betting and gambling himself to make some extra income. I find it quite disturbing that he knows down to the last penny, how much money Bertie leaves lying around casually. Oh – not because I suspect his integrity, but just because…
Every time Jeeves is not cold-shouldering Bertie because of some clothing-attire that offends J’s fastidious eye, he extends his help – but the expected reward is always that Bertie get rid of the offending piece of clothing. So firmly entrenched are these expectations, that at the end, when Bertie reluctantly gives Jeeves permission to burn the spats which hours earlier had earned him a “frosty look” (there’s that petulant wife again), Jeeves tells him – “I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning.” “*Well really now Jeeves*”, I bristle – as I want to take Bertie by his shoulders and shake him until he gets some spine and learns to stand up for himself. As it happens, Jeeves does go too far in the end (labeling Bertie not quite right in the head) and Bertie does want to tell him off – but once again the pouty wife – fully aware of her wrongdoings – has been replaced with the charming one who anticipates every comfort every need of her spouse – and with the right touches – newspaper on the table, slippers on the floor, cigarettes & whisky, dinner at quarter to eight – “softens” him & quells his complaints so they are forever left unvoiced.
Jeeves – not quite “inimitable”. I myself have used several of J’s tactics on my spouse – indeed I believe most women are born with these skills (there are days even now when my husband may feel “a certain coldness in the home”). However, still a great Man Friday to have at your beck and call – one who “shimmies respectfully on the carpet”, like a conjured-up genie – even before you have beckoned or called.
Footnote: I wonder how many readers now (as in the generation/s that did not grow up reading him as we did), appreciate Wodehouse’s inimitable style of writing or even understand it. “Lubricating the interior with a good old cup of oolong”; “draped it around the old tum”; “Enough of the metrop. Shift-ho I think”; Examples abound.
As for “cummerbund” – it immediately made me recall all the times my dad would tell me about words in the English language that have been incorporated thanks to the colonization and “all that sort of rot” – cummerbund, verandah, bungalow, jungle, pundit, guru…..But that’s neither here nor there – until next time, “toodle-oo and pip-pip” everyone!