P G Wodehouse

Death at the Excelsior P G Wodehouse

Sir P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), English playwright and author created the fictional characters Bertie Wooster and Reginald Jeeves, starring in such works as The Inimitable Jeeves (1923), Carry On Jeeves (1925), Right Ho Jeeves (1934), Thank You, Jeeves (1934), Ring For Jeeves (1953), How Right You Are Jeeves (1960), and My Man Jeeves (1919); Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.--Ch. 1 Wooster is the amiable and naive man-of-leisure, while Jeeves as quintessential British gentleman, older and wiser, is friend and valet to him. Their tales usually involve Wooster getting into some sort of "scrape" with a woman, an Aunt, or the Law. Jeeves always comes to the rescue in his inimitably modest, no-nonsense style. "He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly fish." (Ch. 3, My Man Jeeves). The duo became popular literary icons, embodying the dry acerbic wit and humour of the English, "Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad." (The Inimitable Jeeves) and have gone on to inspire numerous adaptations for television, stage, and the screen. Their first appearance was in Wodehouse's short story "Extricating Young Gussie" printed in 1915 in The Saturday Evening Post. Many of Wodehouse's stories were first published in such magazines as Punch, Cosmopolitan, Collier's, The New Yorker, The Strand, and Vanity Fair before being published as collections. Other popular characters of Wodehouse's are Wooster's Aunt Dahlia "My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice... If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee". (Very Good, Jeeves (1930), his domineering Aunt Agatha "the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all." (Right Ho, Jeeves), dandy Rupert Psmith, and the absent-minded Lord Emsworth of Wodehouse's "Blandings Castle" series. While Wodehouse is a master of parody and prose, he also worked as theatre critic, and collaborated on a number of musical comedies and their lyrics including Cole Porter's Anything Goes (1934).