Find How Right You Are, Jeeves (Jeeves, #12) Formulated By P.G. Wodehouse Textbook

There are a few things I find more agreeable than a sojourn at Aunt Dahlias rural lair.


Twelve books into the Jeeves and Wooster series, and I still have no quarrel with the statement above, even as I admit that P G Wodehouse is strolling here down some wellworn paths at Brinkley Manor, reusing past plot plots and past characters and even some jokes and speech mannerisms.
Yet every time I come back, the wide smile is back on my face, the sun is shining without my thoughts turning towards global warming and a high sense of anticipation enfolds me as I wait to read about the new adventures of the clueless fop Bertrand Wooster and about the phlegmatic replies of his stalwart gentlemans gentleman Jeeves.
I look forward to the return of those familiar faces, summoned down to the manor by the bellowing voice of Aunt Dahlia or to an evening tasting .
. . the superb cheffing of her French chef Anatole, Gods gift to the gastric juices,

The alternative new title of the novel already points out to the fact that Jeeves is absent for most of the proceedings, being away on his yearly holiday, an event that all but ensures that his charge, left to his own devices, will land

directly in the soup, with some help from old friends like Bobbie Wickham, Sir Roderick Glossop and from a few fresh faces:
Kipper Herring is an old school mate and partner in mischief of Bertie.
He is currently writing book reviews for a London newspaper and wooing the redheaded menace named Roberta Wickham.
Aubrey Upjohn is the former school master of Bertie and Kipper, currently visiting Brinkley Court at the invitation of Aunt Dahlia, accompanied by his pretty stepdaughter Phyllis Mills.
An American family named Crane is also visiting, Aunt Dahlia hoping to help her husband land a contract with the rich investor from across the pond.


“I shall be delighted to run an eye over her material,” I said, for I am what they call an asomething of novels of suspense.
Aficionado, would that be it I can always do with another corpse or two,

Adela Cream, the wife, is an author, while her son Willie Cream is allegedly a New York wastrel and cabaret pillar.
Bertie is summoned to keep an eye on Willie and prevent the scoundrel from laying his paws on the innocent airhead that is Phyllis Mills.
Bobbie Wickham is there to throw a spanner in the works,
Hijinks ensue!

I have every right to goggle like a dead halibut,

I dont know why it is, but whenever theres dirty work to be undertaken at the crossroads, the cry that goes round my little circle is always Let Wooster do it.
It never fails. But though I hadnt much hope that any word of mine would accomplish anything in the way of averting the doom, I put in a rebuttal.

Why me

Without the steadying hand of Jeeves, Mr, Wooster comes up with one crazy scheme after another, usually with a handy push in the wrong direction from the beautiful and spirited Bobby.
The infamous cow creamer from previous episodes is making a comeback, as does the habit of people and dogs of plunging fully dressed in the estate lake.
Raids on the pantry in the middle of the night and illegal visits to various chambers at Brinkley Court also feature high in the economy of the novel, all of it of course revolving around the question of who is engaged to whom and how often their fortunes in love are reversed.


Really, one sometimes despairs of the modern girl, Youd have thought that this Wickham would have learned at her mothers knee that the last thing a fellow in a highly nervous condition wants, when hes searching someones room, is a disembodied voice in his immediate ear asking him how hes getting on.


Roberta Wickham is by far my favorite female character in a Wodehouse novel, her fiery temperament and wicked sense of humour well suited to the kind of physical comedy and witty repartee that the novelist excels at.
Unfortunately for Bertie, Kipper and other males attracted by her redcoloured tresses like moths to a flame, she is proving to be a hard egg to crack.


Ought you to call her a piefaced little hornswoggler
Why, can you think of something worse

Bertie and Kipper, the old school friends, commiserate over their unlucky fate to be contemporaries with the little tornado, giving the author a chance to express his hard acquired wisdom about youth and relationships:

Put it like this.
The male sex is divided into rabbits and nonrabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher who would be fine for the male nonrabbit and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce.


The blonde Phyllis is a fine example of what Wodehouse refers so inelegantly as a dormouse: good intentioned, but so boring and so easily led astray.
Even the amiable Aunt Dahlia is forced to declare in an exasperated voice: The silly young geezer.
I nearly conked her one with my trowel, Id always thought her halfbaked, but now I think they didnt even put her in the oven.


My own vote, as it had gone in the past, is awarded of course to the unpredictable and dangerous dasher that makes life interesting and these books such a delight, for all their frivolity:

Roberta Wickham wouldnt recognize the quiet life if you brought it to her on a plate with watercress round it.
Shes all for not letting the sun go down without having started something calculated to stagger humanity.


gtgtgtltltltgtgtgtltltlt

Some rare moments of a more introspective nature and of social commentary are present along the pranks and misunderstandings.
A slightly bitter commentary on the condition of the freelance writer in the publishing world and of blackballing authors who made wrong steps Wodehouse himself was on trial in the public eye for his years living in France under German occupation is occasioned by an enraged author who resents a negative review and threats the newspaper witch a costly law action.


Chuck the blighter out the window and we want to see him bounce,

A more careful look at a negative character from previous episodes will remind us not to be too hasty in judging other people and to always be open to give them a second chance.


What a lesson, I felt, this should teach all of us that a man may have a bald head and bushy eyebrows and still remain at heart a jovial sportsman and one of the boys.


Finally, many find it easy to dismiss Wodehouse as a peddler of cheap, unrealistic dreams of an impossible rosy life that exists only in fiction, but he manages to surprise me every time with some offhand remark that I almost gloss over and later is revealed to be some underhand literary gem:

I dont know if you know the meaning of the word agley, Kipper, but that, to put it in a nutshell, is the way things have ganged.


Not being a Native English speaker, and being even less familiar with the Scottish dialect, I chalked this down as club banter between two old chaps, but looking up the word agley online I found out it is a sort of national treasure and this is actually a reference to a famous poem:

The bestlaid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Luckily for Bertie and friends, there is always the option of ringing for Jeeves in this fictional universe and kindly ask him to unagley the proceedings.
And in the end, we can exclaim with a sigh of relief :

How right you are, Jeeves!
.