Rating: 5/5
Wooster has got himself into scrapes again. Following a series of broken-off engagements, stolen cow-creamers, annoyed policemen and Gaelic Scottie dogs, Wooster relies on Jeeves’ priceless brain to get him out of some tricky predicaments.
I LOVED this book. Wodehouse is absolutely hilarious and his style of writing is interesting and clever. Here are (quite a few!) extracts that I were thought were particularly amusing:
“‘I say,’ I said, ‘could I send a telegram?’
‘You can telephone it from the library,’ said Madeline. ‘I’ll take you there.’
She conducted me to the instrument and left me, saying that she would be waiting in the hall when I had finished. I leaped at it, established connection with the post office, and after a brief conversation with what appeared to be the village idiot, telephoned as follows.”
This passage is said by Madeline, who incorrectly assumes that Wooster has come to see her because he is in love with her.
“Why did you come? [said Madeline] Oh, I know what you are going to say. You felt that, cost what it might, you had to see me again, just once. You could not resist the urge to take away with you one last memory, which you could cherish down the lonely years. Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel.’
The name was new to me. ‘Rudel?’
‘The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge.’
I shook my head. ‘Never met him, I’m afraid. Pal of yours?’
‘He lived in the Middle Ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli.’
I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean.
‘For years he loved her, and at last he could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore.’
‘Not feeling so good?’ I said, groping. ‘Rough crossing?’
‘He was dying. Of love.’
‘Oh, ah.’
‘They bore him into the Lady Melisande’s presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out and touch her hand. Then he died.’
She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued.
‘Terrific,’ I said, feeling I had to say something, though personally I didn’t think the story a patch on the one about the travelling salesman and the farmer’s daughter. Different, of course, if one had known the chap.”
This extract is written by Bertie Wooster when he sees Roderick Spode, a giant of a man, for the second time.
“I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself, ‘What ho! A Dictator!’ and a Dictator he had proved to be. I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.”
This passage is retold when Wooster is relieved to hear that a friend of his is in possession of a lost notebook which another friend of his, Gussie, wrote, containing a lot of rude remarks about people that Gussie didn’t like. The ‘dog Bartholomew’ is the unpleasant dog of the friend who has found the notebook:
‘Notebook?’
‘Small, brown, leather-covered one.’
‘Full of a lot of breezy personal remarks?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it.’
I flung the hands heavenwards and uttered a joyful yowl. The dog Bartholomew gave me an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic, but I ignored him. A kennel of Aberdeen terriers could have rolled their eyes and bared the wisdom tooth without impairing this ecstatic moment.”
Another (!):
“And I was just finishing tying the black tie, when Jeeves entered. ‘Mrs Travers,’ he announced formally.
An ‘Oh, golly!’ broke from my lips. I had known, of course, hearing that formal announcement, that she was coming, but so does the poor blighter taking a stroll and looking up and seeing a chap in an aeroplane dropping a bomb on his head know that that’s coming, but it doesn’t make it any better when it arrives.”
This final (!) passage is related when Wooster sees an old schoolfriend of his after having not seen him in a few years.
“I noticed that there was rather more of him than there had been when I had seen him last. Country butter and the easy life these curates lead had added a pound or two to an always impressive figure. To find the lean, finely trained Stinker of my nonage, I felt that one would have to catch him in Lent.
But the change in him, I soon perceived, was purely superficial. The manner in which he now tripped over a rug and cannoned into an occasional table, upsetting it with all the old thoroughness, showed me that at heart he still remained the same galumphing man with two left feet, who had always been constitutionally incapable of walking through the great Gobi desert without knocking something over.”