A couple of years ago, at Powell’s, I found a copy of P. G. Wodehouse’s Carry On, Jeeves that I needed to own, even though it was dinged up and a little delicate-looking. I decided I needed it for two reasons: it only cost $4.50, and it looked very much like this:
It’s about as old as it looks (printed in January 1948), with vividly red inner covers, some adorably ancient fonts, and a slightly truncated size. It was released by Pocket Books back in the day when that publisher was interested in designing books that were actually meant to fit in a person’s pocket. Thus, it’s the same width as modern-day mass-market paperback, but maybe as much an inch shorter in length. And it looks like such a comforting book, doesn’t it? There’s Jeeves in the foreground with his serene near-smile and his famous hangover cure at the ready; Bertie Wooster, over on the left, suffers beneath a large hot-water bottle, his personal effects strewn around the bed after a hard night of living the good life. The foundation of their relationship is right there, plain to see.
So I bought it that day, May before last, envisioning myself cozying up in the middle of winter with a cup of tea and some classic Wodehouse hijinks. And that is, for the last several nights, exactly what I’ve been doing. Carry On contains some early stories—they’re not the very first ones to feature Jeeves and Wooster, but Wodehouse probably wrote them shortly after he had worked out his major formula (Wooster or some pal of his does something foolhardy and gets into a trivially bad spot, only to be rescued at the very last by some effortlessly quick thinking by Jeeves). In any case, the first story in the collection is an origin story of sorts, in which the reader finds out how Jeeves first arrived on Bertie’s doorstep to become his valet. No, sorry, “arrived” isn’t the right word—too simple; Jeeves hardly ever just “arrives” or “walks” anywhere: as Wooster would have it, he just “shimmers in” or something when his presence is required. The happier Wooster is to see him, the more Jeeves’s sudden appearances are divorced from any particular relationship with gravity. There’s this, for example, from the climax of “Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest”: “Jeeves had projected himself from the dining-room and materialised on the rug.”
I’m also finding some new favorite Wodehouse one-liners in this book. I’ve previously mentioned the line “I could bite a tiger,” which gave a name to this blog; in “The Artistic Career of Corky,” Wooster says something in the same vein regarding the idea that he would walk into a delicate situation without bringing Jeeves along: “I’d sooner go into a den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.” And, speaking of wild beasts, in “Unbidden Guest,” he has this to say after being ambushed in his darkened sitting room: “Jeeves! There’s something in there that grabs you by the leg!” (A bull terrier, as it turns out.) Nothing in Wodehouse is quite as unmistakably brilliant as Bertie’s elocution in a crisis.
So, having read only the first three stories in this collection (and there are seven more awaiting my approval), I’m satisfied that I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth. I’m especially looking forward to the last one, “Bertie Changes His Mind,” the only story in which Wodehouse changed the point of view and made Jeeves the narrator.
