SOURCE: “The Very Irreverent P. G. Wodehouse: A Study of Thank You, Jeeves,” in The Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters, Vol. IV, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 203-22.

[In the following essay, Smith offers a thematic analysis of Thank You, Jeeves, maintaining that Wodehouse's irreverent approach to plot and characters is his defining characteristic.]

What characterises Wodehouse's fiction and provides the key to understanding his comic genius is the irreverence that pervades every aspect of his work, the characters, the plots and above all the use of language. Anything that represents authority becomes the victim of his humour. Thank You, Jeeves is no exception to this. In it, Bertie Wooster relates how, banished to the country because not even his own valet, Jeeves, can stand his banjolele playing, he becomes involved in his friend Chuffy's courtship of Pauline Stoker, the daughter of a rich American. Chuffy, the impoverished owner of Chuffnell Hall, hopes to sell his house to Pauline's father so that the millionaire's nerve specialist, Sir Roderick Glossop, can use it for his patients. But many obstacles lie in his path to wealth and wedded bliss.

I

Thank You, Jeeves¹ is Wodehouse's first Bertie Wooster novel. But he had already written a number of short stories about Wooster and Jeeves. The first one had been in 1917, that is seventeen years earlier. He was to go on writing about Wooster and Jeeves for another forty years—the last novel, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen came out in 1974. Richard Usborne in his classic work, Wodehouse at Work to the End (1961, revised 1976), points out that Wodehouse wrote in his Bertie Wooster voice more than in any other (op. cit. p. 183/4) and suggests that it is in Bertie that we find more of the Wodehouse personal identity than in any other of his recurrent characters. Usborne gives a revealing account of these characters, including Wooster and Jeeves. Here, I would like to concentrate on the central Wodehousian theme of irreverence as it is worked out in one particular novel. Thank You, Jeeves is certainly as good as any other for this purpose. Moreover, I want to pay special attention to what comes closest to my personal interests and what is surely of particular interest to non-native English readers, namely the language of Wodehouse. I hope to show why it is that Wodehouse seems so often to be consigned, however reluctantly, to a third rank of novelists, i.e., widely appreciated but seldom appearing in serious reading lists in schools and at universities. Wodehouse, typically, might have had no objection to this state of affairs (he spent his whole life undermining the serious) but there is no need for us to share his sentiments. Taking him seriously does not mean having to stop laughing.

In the preface to Thank You, Jeeves, Wodehouse gives us an insight into his personal tastes and his motivation for writing. In an amusing account of why he gave up the idea of using a tape-recorder for planning the book, he relates how he was shocked at hearing his own voice, which sounded, as he puts it, “like that of a very pompous schoolmaster addressing the young scholars in his charge from the pulpit in the school chapel.” His aim was, he says, to make the book “rollicking”, “amusing” and “gay” and he feared, or pretended to fear, that it would turn out to be like “one of those dim tragedies of peasant life which we return to the library after a quick glance at Page One”. Wodehouse's fiction seems to have sprung from a reaction that must have begun in his early teens, perhaps as he was sitting listening to a “very pompous schoolmaster” in his school chapel at Dulwich, a reaction to the feudal, authoritarian world of the English public school in which everything and everyone had its place and the prevailing atmosphere was a rather moralistic one. This reaction was not only towards people but also to what people had written as presented to him by his teachers; not only to the pompous schoolmasters but also to the Popes, the Shakespeares and the Chaucers and indeed to the innumerable passages from the King James' bible that every public schoolboy is required to listen to or read. In a sense, Wodehouse is an anarchist but the anarchy he aims at is determined by a pleasure principle. Authority usually represents an obstacle to happiness, and as such has to be undermined.

It is convenient for present purposes to draw a two-way distinction between different types of character, situation and language use. I shall use the terms “high” and “low”. These two terms involve a very broad distinction in which “low” means “unserious”, and “high” means “serious”. In other words, we need not take low characters, low situations or low language very seriously. On the other hand a high character or a high situation or high language should not be treated too frivolously; they at least demand a serious frame of mind, if not always one of reverence and awe. Wodehouse's work mainly consists in a campaign, on all fronts, by which the high is continually being knocked off its pedestal and reduced to the low. This is effected in both simple and complex ways. The result is a kind of utopian anarchy where all law and order has been completely devalued, if not removed.

If we take Wodehouse's characters, aunts obviously rate as high and Aunt Myrtle, Chuffy's aunt, is no exception. Aunts are supposed to inspire respect. We must treat them seriously. And we should also respect eminent doctors, like Sir Roderick Glossop, and American magnates like J. Washburn Stoker. These are people who, in varying ways, have power over others. They reflect the all-pervading power that a schoolmaster at a boarding school has over his charges, a man who stands like Wodehouse's aunts, in loco parentis and who is there to examine and make impressive judgements like doctors and who seems, to the young boy at least, to have as much power to influence everyday life as any millionaire. Again, on the social level, we can talk of a high and a low world. The upper classes populate the higher level and the others, people who rarely used to send their sons to public school, occupy the lower level. But still, within these two separate worlds there is an internal hierarchy: there are upper and lower people, controllers and controlled. Bertie Wooster is definitely not a controller even though he comes from the higher level of society, and Sergeant Voules and Constable Dobson most certainly represent authority in the lower level even though in the execution of their duties, as well as in the rather exaggerated formal language they use, they depend upon the “higher” authorities. Two characters do not quite fit into this scheme of things: Chuffy, who alternates between being an underdog and being Lord Chuffnell, owner of landed property and local Justice of the Peace, and Jeeves, who controls events discreetly backstage. It is interesting nevertheless to note that the real power behind the scenes comes from the lower level of society. Wooster, and Wodehouse behind him, come from the higher world and consequently the continual slide of the high towards the low may easily be interpreted as self-parody. The preface to the book gives a foretaste of this. Wodehouse chooses Jeeves, the valet, and thus aligns himself with the more classical tradition of cunning servants (however with the buffoonery handed over to his master) rather than to the contemporary popular tradition of adventure stories and detective thrillers. Jeeves has been aptly compared to Sherlock Holmes, but significantly Holmes does his controlling from the higher world whereas Jeeves controls, just as dexterously, from below.

If we want to consider the types of situation that make up the typical Wodehouse novel, we need first to consider what is normal before going on to see how a normal state of affairs is upset. What constitutes “normal” for Wodehouse is, I think, best reflected in the standard adventure story or detective novel that Wodehouse is parodying. The parody is evident indirectly through frequent use of the language that characterises these types of fiction: phrases like “the man of chilled steel” (p. 170) and “a soft smile playing over the finely chiselled face” (p. 108), and, directly, by means of explicit reference as when Bertie says to Chuffy: “This, if I mistake not, Watson,” (…) “is our client now” (p. 166). In such novels, the police or private sleuths, or whoever the heroes are, pursue the villains with a reasonable amount of dignity. The millionaires, doctors, vicars and ladies-in-distress come to the gentleman detective for help, which they duly get. The villains, rough lower class characters or, more embarrassingly, renegade members of a higher social order are brought to justice and appropriately removed from the scene and the status quo is reestablished. In Wodehouse, however, even if the status quo is restored to some extent it is at great cost not only to the villains (if there are any) but also to the millionaires and the doctors, and one feels that they never quite recover from the various experiences that Wodehouse makes them undergo. What is certain is that they have been stripped of all respect due to them by virtue of their position. Love, which in Wodehouse renders the lover ridiculous rather than ennobles him (or her), creates a situation where Sir Roderick Glossop is forced to race through the undergrowth with his face covered with boot polish and no means of cleaning it to hand. A high character is brought low. It is funny when the same thing happens to Bertie, but because Sir Roderick's fall is from a higher position, the doctor's predicament is the more comic one. Bertie Wooster is indeed placed in a number of similar situations as well: his various confrontations with the local constabulary, his terrorising by the drunken Brinkley and, of course, his total dependence on his other manservant, Jeeves. All these situations are comic for the same reason, but it is interesting to note that the higher you are, the harder you fall. Brinkley chooses a knife for Bertie but he takes a chopper to Sir Roderick. Moreover, Sir Roderick gets much more in the way of unpleasantness from young Seabury, plunging through rooms full of mice, parrots and monkeys as a kind of warm-up for the Brinkley treatment. It is only because we know that the knives and choppers will never find their mark, that the situations, based as they are on the fall of a character, are comic rather than tragic.

The characters in Thank you, Jeeves are easily identifiable as high or low since we know exactly what their situation is in society and are constantly aware of the accepted hierarchy through the language they use. Glossop's language is extremely formal and Bertie's is formal on occasions but generally full of public school colloquialisms. The policemen also adopt a formal manner of speaking—“I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir” (p. 69) which is an attempt to come close to the Glossop style of speech (“I owe you an apology, Wooster” (p. 87)) but which is mixed up with what Glossop would regard as offences against English grammar as in, “I thought you was a marauder” (also p. 87, same speech). If the language they use helps to establish their supposed positions on the social scale, Wodehouse's or rather Wooster's descriptions of them are designed to unsettle them from these positions by leading the reader to see them in an uncomplimentary light, thus forcing a distinction between social position and the kind of respect we actually feel for them. Sir Roderick Glossop comes in for the most spirited linguistic assault. He is described in various places as:

“That old crumb”

(p. 8)

“this old pot of poison”

(p. 8)

“a bald-domed, bushy browed blighter”

(p. 9)

“a foul strait-waistcoat specialist”

(p. 11)

Similarly, Lady Chuffnell and her son, Seabury (aunts and children are favourite Wodehouse targets) are described unflatteringly as “a pair of pustules” (p. 19).

There is one particular linguistic technique which I would like to draw attention to, whose function it is to “devalue” characters. Informally we might describe this technique as “talking of characters as though they were things”. One might use the term “reification”. One of the descriptions of Pop Stoker gives us a clear illustration of this. In it Bertie claims that there are two types of elderly American. The first type is friendliness itself but the second type:

“runs a good deal to the cold, grey stare and the square jaw (…) It broods. It says little. It sucks in its breath in a pained way. And every now and then you catch its eye, and it is like colliding with a raw oyster”

(p. 69, see also p. 167, the beginning of Chapter 20).

A nice mixture of the sinister and the ludicrous. Notice not only how the man is reduced to a thing by referring to him as “it” but also, parts of the body are similarly handled. Here we only have one example of this—“the square jaw”—but the following are further illustrations of this:

“Wouldn't that make him (…) charge in, breathing fire through the nostrils?”

(p. 41)²

“the first thing the eye fell on was the kitchen door …”

(p. 139)

“… the brain seems to flicker and I rather missed the gist”

(p. 7)

The last two examples refer to Bertie and demonstrate that the narrator himself is not excluded from being a victim of this process. It is typical of Wodehouse that not only high characters are treated in this way, but also any temporary state of mind that might, under normal circumstances be said to be impressive if not ennobling and thus raise a lower character for a while to a higher level. Feelings of love, fear or amazement are good examples of such states of mind that need to be kept firmly in Wodehousian proportion. When Bertie sees what he suspects are symptoms of love in Pauline he relates how, “the face had coloured with embarrassment” (p. 28) and how “the tip of the nose had wiggled and there had been embarrassment in the manner” (p. 30). And when Chuffy was tortured by fear that Bertie's confident manner is not going to work with Stoker he “hitched up a lower jaw which had jogged a bit”. Apart from the fact that one has only one lower jaw to raise, one normally “hitches up” things, like trousers, not parts of one's own body. Again, the scullery maid at Chuffnell Hall, when confronted by Bertie's blackened face, “keels over” (p. 118), in other words overturns like a boat. Sir Roderick Glossop in the same situation merely quivers “like something in aspic when joggled on a dish” (p. 142) and Pauline, though managing to remain in her lover's arms, expresses her shock by gurgling “like a leaky radiator” (p. 163). Thus either by direct reification or indirectly by means of an image, the characters are deprived of any dramatic halo that might otherwise have surrounded them and impressed the reader.

There is another way in which Wodehouse reduces his characters which is perhaps more colourful. Instead of treating them as things, he simply takes them down a peg or two in the evolutionary scale and compares them to animals. The use of animal imagery is very marked in Wodehouse: the narrative is full of it. Stoker, for example, when asked to comment on Bertie's appearance can only “make a noise like a pig swallowing a cabbage” (p. 28). Later, Bertie recounts how he felt that J. Washburn Stoker might be “baying on the trail” (p. 111), i.e., like a bloodhound, and Stoker is elsewhere described as “gruffling to himself like a not too sunny bulldog” (p. 171). Again, Bertie tells Sir Roderick Glossop that he, that is, Glossop, seemed to be “leaping from crag to crag”, thus conjuring up the picture of a mountain goat. Very often the imagery is used precisely to describe movement. Glossop's appearance, says Bertie, used to send him “bolting for cover like a rabbit” (p. 12). Elsewhere, he “hares round” to the front of the cottage (p. 119) and Glossop is described as “padding away into the darkness”, in other words, moving like a large cat stealing silently away, a particularly ludicrous image in view of Sir Roderick's presumably rather slow and portly manner. Chuffy “bounds” (p. 45) into Bertie's “sylvan glade”, presumably like a happy fawn and Pauline (elsewhere) “shies like a frightened horse” (p. 163). As a further example, one might take Chuffy's reaction to Bertie's boot-polished face (Wodehouse gets a lot of mileage out of this situation):

“The cigarette flew out of his hand, his teeth came together with a snap and he shook visibly. The whole effect being much as if I had spiked him in the trousering with a gimlet or bodkin. I have seen salmon behave in rather a similar way during the spawning season”

(p. 122)

Note how there was an opportunity to use the reification technique but this is ignored, perhaps because Chuffy is viewed sympathetically by the narrator (“this poor old lad”). A double downgrading would not have been in order. Finally, even Jeeves is submitted to comic dehumanisation:

(Bertie) “I became aware of somebody coughing softly at my side like a respectful sheep trying to attract the attention of its shepherd”.

(p. 127)

Interestingly here, we have a more subtle image whereby a human being is compared to an animal behaving like a human being: Jeeves coughs like a sheep and the sheep coughs like a person wanting to make his presence known. Perhaps this is a special concession to Jeeves.

II

The language in Wodehouse is used not only to reinforce the theme of irreverence by painting the characters in incongruous colours. It also involves a strictly internal conflict in which the high and the low are comically placed together. Firstly one might mention the clash of styles and secondly the irreverent use of the great classics of English literature.

One of the most salient characteristics of Wodehouse's language is precisely the incongruous juxtaposition of styles and perhaps the most typical is the high-low clash. Just as low language is used in high situations it is also used together with high language resulting in unexpected combinations. The English language is very well suited to this technique with its “alternative” vocabularies, the one containing words of Anglo-Saxon origin, the other derived from Latin or more often indirectly via French, a Latin-based language. Bertie says to Jeeves, of Glossop:

“If there is one man in the world I hope never to exchange words with again, it is that old crumb.”

(p. 8)

The formalistic “exchange words with” with its Latinate term (“exchange”) is used together with the colloquial, Anglo-Saxon term “crumb”. The frequent Wooster-Jeeves exchanges often produce further examples of this as, for instance, when Bertie refers to Pop Stoker's mad cousin George:

“He was potty, wasn't he?”

“Certainly extremely eccentric, sir”.

(p. 38)

Here, “potty” is juxtaposed with the Latinate “eccentric”, the former being the low form and the latter being the high one. The use of two speakers, the second providing the synonym, highlights the stylistic juxtaposition. Many of the low forms used in Wodehouse are colloquial terms that are now outdated, but it is not difficult to appreciate their flavour. People are often not “men” or “women” but “blighters”, “coves” and “birds” (bird is usually a male in Wodehouse, by the way). And if they are judged to be unbalanced because of their strange behaviour (arising from insanity, or related states like love) they are “potty”, “squiffy”, “goofy”, “dippy” or “barmy to the core”. Articles of clothing and parts of the body get the same kind of treatment: heads that are nodded or shaken are “beans”, “onions”, “nappers” or “knockers” that are “inclined” or “oscillated” (note the Latinate terms). When Bertie is confronted with Glossop and the Stokers, he does not “take off his hat as politely as he could”. Rather, he removes “the lid” and he does this “with as much courtly grace as he could muster” (p. 27). Wodehouse uses a lot of slang but he uses it creatively.

This high-low combination is the most noticeable type of stylistic clash, but just as there are internal distinctions within the high and low levels of society, there are also internal clashes within the same language level, particularly within the high one. The last example (above) also provided an illustration of this. In “with as much courtly grace as he could muster”, we have “courtly grace”, a high term with a literary and perhaps historical or archaic flavour together with “muster”, a military term meaning “to summon”. It is, I think, interesting and revealing to reconstruct hypothetical original versions from some Wodehouse passages where we get stylistic clashes. The following example is actually taken from The Code of the Woosters. The hypothetical “unadapted” source might have run something like this:

“She turned her head away no doubt to hide a silent tear and there ensued a brief interval during which she dabbed her eyes with a pocket handkerchief and I, averting my gaze, smelled (or more delicately: “pretended to smell”?) a jar of pot-pourri, which stood on the piano”

The Wodehouse “version” runs like this:

She turned the bean away, no doubt to hide a silent tear, and there ensued a brief interval during which she swabbed the eyes with a pocket handkerchief and I, averting my gaze, dipped the beak into a jar of pot-pourri, which stood on the piano”.

Enough of our original is preserved to retain the flavour of the high style but, apart from the low terms like “bean” for “head” and “beak” for “nose”, we have an incongruous mixture of high terms with “dabbed” being replaced by the medical “swabbed”. A surgeon swabs a wound or incision with cotton wool, hardly appropriate in this supposedly romantic context (a sailor also swabs a deck, admittedly, but the medical connection is more obvious because a part of the body is being treated here). Later Bertie “dips” his nose into the pot-pourri. With the medical reference in the preceding clause, “dipping” takes on a rather technical connotation. One is perhaps reminded more of a thermometer being dipped into antiseptic fluid.

One might apply a similar treatment to a passage out of Thank You, Jeeves. For example there is a passage where Bertie reads out an invitation from Pop Stoker. He is talking to Jeeves. The passage might have run like this before Bertie starts playing around with the high style of the invitation:

“This is a letter of invitation.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Absolutely. Inviting me to a meal. ‘Dear Mr Wooster’ writes Pop Stoker. ‘I shall be most grateful if you would come and dine with me on the boat tonight’.”

In place of this, Bertie gives, as he says, “the gist of the thing”. The real passage runs as follows:

“This is a letter of invitation.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Absolutely, Bidding me to a feast. ‘Dear Mr Wooster” writes Pop Stoker, ‘I shall be frightfully bucked if you will come and mangle a spot of garbage tonight’”.

(p. 92)

Mixed with the standard formal language of invitations is not only the low form “frightfully bucked” and the baroque expression, “mangle a spot of garbage” (a Wodehouse creation or standard slang?) but also other high forms “bidding” and “feast”, which add a quaint historical flavour.

This constant stylistic conflict that goes on throughout the Wodehouse narrative may also be much more conscious as was illustrated earlier by the potty/eccentric exchange. The interaction between Wooster and Jeeves is specially geared to this because Wodehouse makes both of them very conscious users of language. We either get the technique (not only used by Wodehouse, although he uses it particularly well) whereby the second speaker repeats roughly what the first speaker says or expands it but in other style, or we get both characters explicitly talking about the terms used. Here are some examples of this:

(Jeeves:) “Mr Stoker has expressed a wish that I should enter his employment. He approached me in the matter. I informed his lordship. His lordship instructed me to hold out hopes.”

(Bertie:) “You can't mean that he wants you to leave him and go to old Stoker?”

“No, sir. He specifically stated the reverse, with a good deal of vehemence. But he was anxious that I should not break off the negotiations with a definite refusal until the sale of Chuffnell Hall had gone through.”

“I see. I follow his strategy. He wanted you to jolly old Stoker along and keep him sweetened till he signed the fatal papers”.

(p. 39)

Here Bertie both rephrases and interprets Jeeves. In the second, short example, Jeeves simply rephrases Bertie:

“Silly ass.” [says Bertie]

“I would not have ventured to employ precisely that term myself, sir, but I confess that I regard his lordship's attitude as somewhat hyperquixotic”.

(p. 40)

It is of course ironic that instead of the usual situation where a higher character's speech has to be “translated” into the vernacular for the benefit of a lower character (the higher style is often officialese, the language of bureaucracy), here the translation is for the benefit of the higher character, Bertie, whose own speech is often lower. Bertie generally attempts a free rephrasing of Jeeves' verbose statements for his own better understanding. He is happier with his own lower colloquial style. This was also clear from his spontaneous rephrasing of the Stoker invitation. Of course, one can also see in Bertie's rephrasing an attempt to expose the pomposity of highly formal speech, even that of Jeeves and by implication Holmes and Watson. This would be entirely in keeping with the underlying theme of irreverence. Although Jeeves is master of events, he is not invulnerable. Wodehouse himself would never be caught dead speaking that way. Jeeves for all his erudition and ingenuity cannot escape from sounding like a pompous schoolmaster. So even when Jeeves rephrases Bertie, it can, as the (above) example shows, change the colloquial into something quite ludicrous. Who would ever say “hyperquixotic”?

The technique of making the main characters, Jeeves and Bertie, conscious users of language also allows Wodehouse to work in a great deal of comic reference to linguistic and literary authority. This provides the second type of internal linguistic conflict I was referring to. It is not just normal everyday high style that is mixed in with lower language, but specific references to famous writers, quotations, in other words, literary high language. This is accomplished as Basil Boothroyd remarks in an essay on Wodehouse (“The Laughs” in Homage to P.G. Wodehouse [1973]) “by some sort of elusive doublethink” without completely losing a sense of respect for the original. This is humour not satire. Wodehouse would not have read his complete works of Shakespeare every two years (see Usborne, op. cit. p. 27) if he had not respected him. However, Shakespeare, Keat, Fitzgerald and all the others are not spared comic maltreatment. The answer to Boothroyd's “doublethink” is simply that Wodehouse is not so much laughing at the writers themselves but at the stained-glass attitudes adopted towards them. Wodehouse's mockery takes the form of a variation on the more general stylistic clash between the high and the low. Thank You, Jeeves is full of it. Bertie is very fond of making literary allusions since he fancies himself as a writer. He makes these allusions both in the narration of the story and, as Bertie the character, in the narrative itself. In an exchange with Chuffy, he proves to be irrepressible:

“What you want on an occasion like this, Chuffy, old man,” I said, “is simple faith. The poet Tennyson tells us …”

“Shut up,” said Chuffy, “I don't want to hear anything from you.”

“Right ho,” I said. “But, all the same, simple faith is better than Norman blood, and you can't get away from it”.

(p. 79) (Author's italics.)

Elsewhere, without opposition this time, he uses Matthew Arnold's commentary on Shakespeare to praise Jeeves. Where, except in Wodehouse, would a master praise his servant in the following grand manner:

“Jeeves,” I said, “as I have often had occasion to say before, you stand alone.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Others abide our question, thou art free.”

“I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir.”

And when speaking of Sir Roderick Glossop's passion for Aunt Myrtle, Bertie borrows from Chaucer's Prologue (and presumably ultimately from Ovid's amor vincit omnia):

“You mean he's in love?”

“Yes, sir.” [says Jeeves]

“And love conquers all?”

Again, Bertie's unceremonious departure from the burning cottage is described, this time by Bertie the narrator, with a borrowing from Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice. As so often, Bertie is not completely sure of the quotation:

With a regretful sigh, I hopped hurriedly to the window, and the next moment I was dropping like the gentle dew upon the place beneath, or is it rain? I always forget. Jeeves would know.

(p. 116)

When Jeeves is around, Bertie turns to him for help. Jeeves is a walking reference book. Sometimes we are able to see Bertie in the process of learning something from Jeeves, as for example with the reference to Viola's speech in Twelfth Night:

“… She is all for it. And what is worrying her is that he does not tell his love, but let's concealment like …, like what Jeeves?”

“A worm i' the bud, sir.”

“Feed on the something …”

“Damask cheek, sir.”

“Damask? You're sure?”

“Quite sure, sir”.

(p. 37)

A few pages later, Bertie is using the reference confidently. However, he is not above mildly questioning Jeeve's memory but this is only because he doesn't understand “damask”. This gives Jeeves the opportunity of demonstrating his linguistic expertise:

“But suppose the sale of the house will not go through?”

“In that case, I fear, sir …”

“The damask cheek will continue to do business at the old stand?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“You really are sure it's ‘damask’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But it doesn't seem to mean anything.”

“An archaic adjective, sir. I fancy it is intended to signify a healthy complexion”.

(p. 40)

A little later, Bertie is using the reference even more confidently this time to Chuffy:

“Well, if old Stoker is not going to buy the Hall, aren't you rather by way of being back in the position you were in before, when you would not tell your love, but let the thought of Wotwotleigh like a worm i' the bud, feed on your damask cheek?”

(p. 54)

That it is not so much the great writers that bear the brunt of Wodehouse's mockery but the attitudes that some people take towards linguistic correctness and elegance is demonstrated by the fact that very often Bertie and Jeeves, in their exchanges, are simply looking for the mot juste. Bertie is comic in his exaggerated struggle to find the right word since the situation is a low one, not requiring high language, and Jeeves is comic because of his willingness to participate, though more successfully, in this pedantry. A good example is the “amende honorable” case. Bertie is talking about Pop Stoker:

“I shall accept his invitation, I regard it as …”

“The amende honorable, sir? [author's italics]

“I was going to say olive branch.”

“Or olive branch. The two terms are virtually synonymous. The French phrase I would be inclined to consider perhaps slightly more exact in the circumstances—carrying with it, as it does, the implication of remorse, of the desire to make restitution. But if you prefer the expression ‘olive branch’, by all means employ it sir.”

“Thank you, Jeeves”.

(p. 152)

If Jeeves's language is pompous, he is not. In contrast to his way of speaking, he is always modest and accommodating. In this way he scores over the Sir Roderick Glossops of the world who are consistently pompous in both senses. Much later, Bertie confidently trots out the French expression himself:

“You really think she loves him and wishes to extend the amende honorable?” [author's italics]

Or olive branch? Yes sir”.

(p. 152)

Bertie himself is not above playing the expert himself with Jeeves, adding a further dimension to the humour. When Jeeves points out that the presence of Constable Dobson in front of the potting shed represents a considerable obstacle to getting Sir Roderick out of it, Bertie reacts in the following way:

“Very true, Jeeves.”

“He represents the crux, if I may say so” [author's italics].

“Certainly you may say so, Jeeves. Another way of putting it would be the snag.”

“Precisely, sir …”

An additional humorous note based on the language is Bertie's literal interpretation of Jeeves' “If I may say so”, which is of course not normally to be understood as a request for permission to speak. And Bertie is not above supplying a right word or right form to people other than Jeeves as in the passage where Chuffy says:

“You have a perfect right to love who you like …”

and Bertie corrects him:

“Whom, old man”

adding that he couldn't help saying this:

“Jeeves has made me rather a purist in these matters”.

(pp. 80-81)

III

The conscious use of language in Thank You, Jeeves manifests itself in Bertie's obsession for synonyms. Very often one is reminded of dictionary style, especially when we get just a couple of words. Here are some examples of this:

“Something of defiance or bravado came into his manner”

(p. 164)

“A species of shed or outhouse”

(p. 71)

“This demesne or seat of Chuffy's”

(p. 48)

“Old Stoker sizzled a bit. Or fumed …”

(p. 48)

“I was feeling a good deal worked up. Taut, if you know what I mean. On edge. Tense”.

(p. 44)

Excellent material even for the foreign learner, one might think. There are certainly passages where one seems to recognise the English literature teacher at work, talking about such poetic techniques as alliteration and assonance. In fact it is difficult to draw the borderline between what is literary in its own right, in other words a skilful and colourful use of the English language which one can appreciate for itself, and what is simply playing with the technique for a consciously comic effect, in other words comic because it is overdone and out of place. The decision as to which is which has to be a subjective one but I think it is fair to say that the difference exists. In other words, passages like:

“a bald-domed bushy browed blighter”

(p. 8)

and

“pekinese, parlourmaids, and policeman,”

(p. 139)

and

“down in the depths like a diving duck”

(p. 153)

are overdone in terms of the alliteration used even though in other respects they are very effective. The following passage is arguably effective from any point of view (the reader, as always, is free to make up his own mind). Listen to the interaction of fricatives and stops, “f” and “t”, as well as the succession of “p” sounds (with the variation in the following vowels) and the succession of the “u” vowel ([c] as in “tough”):

I had often felt how tough it must be for poor old Chuffy, having this pair of pustules popping in and out all the time.

(p. 19)

The following are further, shorter examples of typical Wodehouse sound play:

this old pot of poison

(p. 8)

so dashed dynamic

(p. 31)

plenty of bust blokes

(p. 5)

pristine purity

(p. 62)

seething and brooding and sizzling

(p. 121)

posses of policemen

(p. 141)

decencies of debate

(p. 169)

a bilious bird

(p. 131)

and what about:

… it so happened that one morning a sharp shower had driven me to the shelter of a species of shed or outhouse down in the south-west corner of the estate”

(p. 71)?

By drawing attention to the language itself rather than simply what the language expresses, Wodehouse achieves interesting poetic effects while still providing a great deal of action in the plot to keep his prose from becoming poetry pure and simple. Nevertheless, one of the important reasons for highlighting the language is still to make fun of attitudes towards language and this is just one manifestation of the underlying theme of irreverence. By creating a very specific and intense kind of atmosphere he makes sure that any mechanical reaction of respect is immediately felt to be suspect. We can literally take nothing seriously. For some people this may be quite impossible. Their temperaments and learned attitudes will not allow it. Others may manage if only for the duration of the novel, to accept this golden rule of Wodehouse's. And if comedy is cathartic, if it brings release from the stresses and strains of normal life, it is a good rule. And if, in the process of administering this therapeutic treatment, the author provides the reader with genuine aesthetic pleasure, enjoyment not only of the plot, but also of the complex effects created by his use of language, then I think we can claim that we are dealing with good literature. The only trouble is, if we enter too fully into the Wodehouse spirit of things we will probably, without deliberately wanting to, “devalue” his work along with all the other things that he is trying to make us devalue.

Turning now away from language to the implications of Wodehouse's irreverence, it is interesting to ask the question: does Wodehouse express something that is essentially English? One important thing to get straight, in this respect, is the extent to which Wodehouse may be thought of as old-fashioned. It is very easy to point out that the world which he creates no longer exists. People usually think in terms of the twenties when they think of Wodehouse. Much of his work was written in America and it is just possible that Wodehouse was not really aware of the changes that have been taking place on this side of the Atlantic. Moreover he had a vast American public to please and he might have been motivated to give the Americans the foreigner's view of the English, butlers, castles and all. I think it is fairly naive to imagine that Wodehouse thought life stopped in 1930 in Britain but proceeded to go on in the United States, and it is fairly safe to suppose, with Richard Usborne, that Wodehouse simply found the perfect vehicle for his humour and saw no reason to change it. There is no evidence that his books stopped being sold in Europe because they were outdated. Consciously or unconsciously, many people are acknowledging, by buying his books now, that he has something to give them even in the nineteen seventies.

If one looks at other popular English humourists, both those that Wodehouse knew and may well have been influenced by, and those that have appeared in the last ten years or so either as novelists or as television script-writers, one can certainly detect a quite recognisable tradition. Gilbert, a great influence on Wodehouse (see Usborn, op. cit. pp. 19-20) was certainly someone who depended very much on irreverence for his comedy. It is a good thing, for anyone who has stereotyped views about nineteenth century imperial Britain, to consider how popular the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were that mocked the monarchy, the Church and all the pillars of the establishment. But the last few decades have produced quite a number of authors, who, if not as good in their use of language, have definitely carried on the tradition of poking fun at pompous policemen, Harley Street doctors and the like: Richard Gordon, James Herriot and the creators of television series like Dad's Army, It Ain't Arf 'Ot Mum and Are You Being Served (and even in part Monty Python). The butts of the humour have become more exclusively middle-class (but so have the dukes and earls) and yet the main features of this brand of humour are still there, stripping the high of all their dignity and yet allowing them to live on to be just as pompous and just as ridiculous in the next book or the next episode. It is a conservative humour, perhaps typically English, which says, basically, that one should always laugh at the high-up, but that if one removed them, there would be nothing more to laugh at. Call it pessimistic or call it realistic, it is an attitude that should, however, be removed from all class connotations to be understood. Whatever the status quo, there are always high people and low people, controllers and controlled. Humour, especially the English kind, is designed to deflate the controllers and implicit in it, is that any more drastic action would only result in new controllers, perhaps with different names and different ideals, springing up in their stead. This is why the Brinkley's will always end up in the police cell. Wodehouse, in his American home, was perhaps freed from some of the stresses that have produced more satirical strains in English humour since the beginning of the sixties. Claud Cockburn (in “Wodehouse All the Way”, also in Homage to Wodehouse), talking of Wodehouse's language, says that being abroad boosted his awareness of his own language and gave him the heightened sensitivity to English that is more often found in writers whose native tongue was some other language, like Conrad. I think this may well be true also for his grasp of the essence of English humour. He is a better interpreter of Englishness for having spent most of his adult life outside England. We need not bother looking for a contemporary social comment. It is therefore important for readers of Wodehouse who are interested in going beyond the hilarious situations that his plots produce, to understand that the world of earls, Harley Street doctors, butlers and scullery maids is just there to provide him with handy tools for his humour. A socially stratified world offers rich possibilities for making points, in the sense that his humour does have some point—points that are valid for any kind of human situation. And what is even more important, it offers countless possibilities in the area where Wodehouse has most claim to fame, language. A culture that is complex in its social structure usually possesses a linguistic means of expressing this complexity and Wodehouse's comic genius really consists in extending the kind of irreverence we see in his (and other humourists') plots into the realm of the English tongue. The world of Wodehouse should be as remote from contemporary social reality as the world of King Arthur. Blandings Castle should be as unreal to us as Camelot. The trouble is that we are still too close to the real-life source of Wodehouse's world. We need another generation to get the right perspective. Wodehouse himself has already created his own distance even in geographical terms since he spent so much of his life abroad. In another twenty years or so Wodehouse will have many more readers who can avoid the trap of reading him too literally and looking for the presence or lack of social comment. They will have learned to appreciate him as a master of the English language.

Notes

1. All pages references refer to the Hodder and Stoughton Coronet edition (1977).

2. The italics in the quotations are mine.

Works Cited

Boothroyd, B. “The Laughs”. In Cazalet-Keir, (ed.), Homage to P.G. Wodehouse. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1973.

Cockburn, C., “Wodehouse all the Way”. Also in Cazalet-Keir, (ed.), Homage to P.G. Wodehouse.

Usborne, R., Wodehouse at Work to the End. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1961, rev. 1976.

Wodehouse, P.G., “Extricating young Gussie.” In Wodehouse, The Man with Two Left Feet. London: Methuen, 1917.

———. The Code of the Woosters. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1938.

———. Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1974.

———. Thank You, Jeeves. London: Hodder and Stoughton Coronet, 1977 (first published 1934 by Herbert Jenkins).