IMMORTAL JEEVES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21959, 10 May 1941, Page 4

IMMORTAL JEEVES

His Life Revealed Wodehouse Hero Studied IV HEN Mi- P. G. Wodehouse ’ introduced Jeeves to the public he added to the immortals. They are an eclectic assemblage, these immortals of Action; most of them are the creatures of authors who are themselves immortal, but a few transpend their creators. They include persons so various as Mr Pickwick, Falstaff, and Madame Bovary, Sherlock Holmes and Jeeves, writes Denys Holland in John o’ London’s Weekly. About the characters of Shakespeare and Flaubert we know all that we need to know; they are drawn in the round and illuminated by the light of genius. Dickens has created his own world, as real as our own, yet happily different. But behind the chronicled words and deeds of some of the creations of lesser men lies the fascinating hinterland of private life, where the character, we may imagine, pan aet as he wishes and is not forced to go through the performance which his author has set for him. Falstaff and Madame Bovary behave: Jeeves performs. Yet, In the course of his Infinitely entertaining performance, Jeeves is allowed by Mr Wodehouse to give us an occasional glimpse of the purely personal relationships and affairs which must often have exercised his giant brain. Mr Wodehouse knows more about Jeeves than we ever shall, but we may surmise, from hints here and there, something of the private life of that incomparable performer, whose eyes “beamed with the light of pure intelligence.” Not a F>sh-Eater And what intelligence! Bertie, put it down to eating fish, but we have Jeeves’s own word for it that he was not fond of fish; indeed, he is known to have “shuddered" at the mention of sardines. There must have been some eccentric strain in his heredity to account for the blossoming of the master-mind in one of such humble origin. For humble it undoubtedly was. Jeeves’s early life appears to have been overshadowed by aunts. Except for once remarking, “My mother thought me intelligent, sir,” he is silent about his parents, but where aunts are concerned he is at times loquacious. All these ladies seem to have been of that "sturdy lower middle-class stock” which provided so suitable a mate for Bertie’s self-indulgent uncle, Lord Yaxley. Chief, in interest among them to all students of Jeevesiana must be she whose passion it was to ride in cabs. That Jeeves refers first to hansom cabs and later to taxi-cabs seems to show that this not unamiable mama recurred over a considerable period. "She resided,” said Jeeves, “in the south-east portion of London.” To gratify her passion she would break open the children's money boxes, but when her attacks were observed to be imminent, a visit from the clergyman of the parish was often efficacious. “We,” says Jeeves, “used to send for him,” and talk of higher things would divert the afflicted lady’s mind from cabs. That "we” seems to make Jeeves a member of this household, evidently respectable, and able to rely on the good offices of the vicar in its hour of

need, Coupled with our knowledge that Jeeves attended a subscription dance in Camberwell, the passage gives grounds for the assumption that, for some part of his youth at least, he was entrusted to the care of this aunt and her family. In fact, he was probably left an orphan at an early age. Another aunt, “a martyr to swollen limbs,” allowed her photograph to appear in a press advertisement of Walkinsaw’S Supreme Ointment, a photograph which Jeeves austerely stigmatised as revolting. Yet another owned a complete set of the works of Rosie M. Banks and obligingly lent Jeeves several volumes. There was a fourth aunt, evidently a social climber of the worst type, who paid “a young fellow” five shillings to bring a motionpicture actor to tea one Sunday. “It gave her” (says Jeeves) “social standing among her neighbours.” We know, moreover, that Jeeves’s cousin Egbert was a police-constable at Beckley-on-the-Moor, Yorkshire, whicn hints at further provincial aunts. Jeeves’s niece, Mabel, who married Mr Blffen, came from Crloklewood, where her father kept some kind of retail establishment. She must have been the daughter of Jeeves’s sister, for had her surname been Jeeves it could hardly have been forgotten, even by Mr Biffen. “compared with whom,” said Bertram Wooster, “I’m one of the great thinkers of all time.” His Former Employers So much for Jeeves’s relations. Of his former employees we also know something. One, Lord Frederick Ranelagh. was swindled at Monte Carlo by a criminal known as Soapy Sid. Jeeves cannot have been present when the trick was worked, or its author would never have returned to practise it on Bertie Wooster. “I am sorry for the shrimp that tries to pit its feeble cunning against you, Jeeves,” said Bertie, and the sentiment holds good for criminals. The veil is also lifted slightly from two other employers, Lord Worplesdon, whose sartorical eccentricities ended in Jeeves giving notice, and Mr Digby Thistleton. This latter gentleman acquired a fortune and the title of Lord Bridgnorth (for services to his party) by marketing as a hair restorer a patent preparation which had proved wholly unsuccessful as a depilatory. And who dare say that it was not in Jeeves’s giant brain that this simple but successful coup originated? There are many more passages and incidents which, for a moment, light up unexpected facets of that enigmatic character. His knowledge of all forms of gambling must have been wide, for he was able to add appreciably to his savings by combining- with the Vicar of Irving’s butler to buy the book on the great Sermon Handicap at exactly the right moment. Many a man would be richer to-day had he had Jeeves to murmur to him: “The stable is not sanguine, sir.” We do not know that Jeeves played games. Though he was able, deeming the course advisable, to stun Mr Slipperley with a golf club, he was uncertain as to whether or not it

was a putter he had used. Where did Jeeves learn to handle savage dogs and infuriated swans’ Why did he think Nietzsche unsound? Skilled in quotation, reader of improving books, he could yet wager Lord Pershore 50 dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the eyo. When told by Comrade Rowbotham that he was “an obsolete relic of an exploded feudal system,” Jeeves's polite, “Very good, sir,” concealed a deep sense of shock. Yet with all his respect for the upper classes, Jeeves, as we know, thought poorly of the intelligence of Mr Wooster and his fellow members of the Drones Club. These are deep waters. There are many more discoveries to be made, and the persevering student may well find that Jeeves’s lightest words merit a more than passing attention. There is the fascinating subject of his “misunderstandings” with various ladies, Lord Bittiesham’s cook included, and the vaster problems of the “psychology of the individual.” What depths of thought may not have been concealed by his remark to Bertie: “Life is like that, sir.” Like what? Jeeves only knew.