Jeeves and the feudal spirit Book

Bertie, you worm, your early presence desired. Drop everything and come down here pronto, prepared for lengthy visit. Urgently need you to buck up a blighter with whiskers. Love. Travers.

A summon from Mrs. Travers at Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Worcestershire is not something Bertram Wooster is likely to ignore, although he might play dumb for our entertainment with a hilariously escalating war of words by way of telegrams. The reader familiar with the happy-go-lucky character knows that he will eventually cave in, even if his trip to the manor would lead to probably the ghastliest imbroglio that had ever broken loose in the history of the human race.

We've been there before, both to Brinkley Court, and to the imbroglios Bertie is always finding himself until his trusted butler Jeeves can swoop in to save his master in true feudal spirit of devotion. But it's so good to be back in this rosy Wodehouse universe, especially after reading a couple of heavy-hitting, harsh modern novels. It's a known side-effect of reading a Jeeves novel that the world seems a better place to live in during and after the lecture:

The days that followed saw me at the peak of my form, fizzy to an almost unbelievable extent and enchanting one and all with my bright smile and merry sallies. During this halcyon period, if halcyon is the word I want, it would not be too much to say that I revived like a watered flower.

But to get back to our current adventure, Aunt Dahlia is in need of moral and material support from Bertie as she tries to sell her weekly paper, 'Milady's Boudoir', to a Liverpoodlian publishing magnate and to his socially ambitious wife, L.G. and Ma Trotter.

Well, this Aunt Dahlia is my good and deserving aunt, not to b confused with Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young, so when she says 'Don't fail me', I don't fail her.

Also at Brinkley Court will be found the young lovers G. D'Arcy ('Stilton') Cheesewright and Florence Craye, both familiar from previous episodes in the series and both needing a little help now from Bertrand Wooster: Stilton to win a bet at the Drones Club on the next darts tournament ( 'Wooster', the word flew to and fro, 'is the deadest of snips. He throws a beautiful dart.' ) and Florence to get some research done in London for her next novel. To complicate matters even further, another young man with aspirations to the hand of the beautiful Florence is roaming the grounds in Worcestershire. Percy Gorrringe may make a poor first impression ( He may have just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wants to eat, but no more. He's a half-witted gargoyle. exclaims the jealous Stilton while Aunt Dahlia calls him a ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from hell ), but he is entitled just as anybody else for a place in the sun, especially if he can save Bertie from another unwanted marriage proposal. Without further ado, let Bertie jump into his sporty two-seater and head for the countryside:

Get going, laddie. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead. Yoicks! Tally-ho! Hark for'ard!

It is almost impossible to write a synopsis for one of Wodehouse's long form novels, despite the fact that most of the elements are recycled from short stories or from previous novels, but he always finds new ways to trip Bertie into the 'bouillon' and to tangle the rest of the characters into a Gordian knot of mishaps that only the mighty brain of Jeeves can untangle. This time, besides the darts tournament and the 'Milady's Boudoir' woes, there will be of course the misunderstandings between young people in love, police chases from 'garrish' night clubs named either "The Startled Shrimp" or "The Mottled Oyster" followed by an appearance before a severe judge, a detective novel called "The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish", a spine broken in five places (the threat of), a cosh, a valuable pearl necklace, the cuisine of Anatole the volatile French chef, a visit from Bertie's old Nemesis, Roderick Spode and the by-now-expected-conflict between master and servant on the subject of fashion.

You know how it is when two strong men live in close juxtaposition, if juxtaposition is the word I want. Differences arise. Wills clash. Bones of contention pop up and start turning handsprings. No one was more keenly alive than I to the fact that one such bone was scheduled to make its debut the instant I swam into his ken, and mere martinis, I felt, despite their numerous merits, would not be enough to see me through the ordeal that confronted me.

The ordeal in the present novel takes the form of a ridiculous risque moustache that Bertie is growing and that Jeeves strongly disagrees with. Aunt Dahlia is of a similar choleric disposition:

As I presented myself, she gave the moustache a swift glance, but apart from starting like a nymph surprised while bathing and muttering something about 'Was this the face that stopped a thousand clocks?' made no comment. One received the impression that she was saving it up.

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Well now, knowing that the 'stache is probably doomed by the end of the novel and that the plot is complicated what else is there to discuss about the novel? The celebration of the language or the inventive insults? I've already mentioned those in previous reviews. Better go with the romance angle, which is on the menu every time Wodehouse puts pen to paper. The engine that drives the story is usually Bertie Wooster's caddishness, his unwillingness to give up his sweet bachelor lifestyle for the dubious benefits of marriage, even with the lovely but brainy Florence ( She is tall and willowy and handsome, with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blond hair, and might, so far as looks are concerned, be the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans. I have known strong men to be bowled over by her at first sight, and it is seldom that she takes her walks abroad without being whistled at by visiting Americans.) or with the sparkly new heartthrob Daphne Dolores Morehead ( there was a flash of blonde hair and a whiff of Chanel Number Five and a girl came sailing in, a girl whom I was able to classify at a single glance as a pipterino of the first water.)

Which of them will finally manage to get Bertie to the altar and to start 'moulding' his mind into a more responsible character? Can jilted former fiancees or new prospective lovers be induced to step back into the fray and relieve our reluctant knight from half-assed proposals?

All you do is riot and revel and carouse. I am told that you were at that party of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright's last night. You probably reeled home at three in the morning, rousing the neighbourhood with drunken shouts. complains Stilton Cheesewright as he comes to check on his darts tournament investment. Florence Cray has even more ambitious plans for the sweet wastrel:

'It would be a fascinating task, I told myself, fostering the latent potentialities of your budding mind. Like watching over some timid, backward flower.'
I bridled pretty considerably. Timid, backward flower, my left eyeball, I was thinking. I was on the point of saying something stinging like 'Oh, yes?' when she proceeded.
'I know I can mould you, Bertie. You want to improve yourself, and that is half the battle. What have you been reading lately?'

We already know that Bertie is fond of cheap detective novels about crayfish instead of the recommended Tolstoy or T. S. Elliott and that Florence has her work sabotaged from the start ( 'Oh, dear,' she said, 'I'm afraid it's going to be uphill work fostering the latent potentialities of you budding mind.' ) but there is an undeniable charm in the rogue and frankly dimwit Wooster that seems to wake up the marriage impulse in these lovely girls.

All this nonsense you have been talking, trying to reconcile me and D'Arcy. Not that I don't admire you for it. I think it's rather wonderful of you. But then everybody says that, though you have the brain like a peahen, you're the soul of kindness and generosity.

... and here it is in a nutshell the secret ingredient of all these lovely comedies penned by Wodehouse - 'kindness and generosity' - an appeal to our better nature and a message of hope in times of anguish. For me, the message will never go out of fashion.

Didn't I tell you I had faith in my star? The moral of the whole thing, as I see it, is that you can't keep a good man down, or - I bowed slightly in her direction - 'a good woman. What the lesson this should be to us, old flesh and blood, never to give up, never to despair. However dark the outlook.'

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This review has been almost as much fun to write as reading the novel and I wish I could have included another couple of pages of notes and bookmarks that I eventually left out (like the drunken test so typical of the English language: say this phrase as fast as you can "Theodore Oswaldtwistle, the thistle sifter, sifting a sack of thistles thrust three thorns through the thick of his thumb." )

I may be biased by the longish interval (about a year) I went without reading one of the Wodehouse farces, but 'Feudal Spirit' is for now my favorite of the whole bunch. It has tough competition, and it will probably require re-reads and further study of the ones still left unread, but it's position near the top is unlikely to be challenged. Until then, I am closing the last page of the book with a big smile on my face, putting down one last fitting quote:

And I came away, walking, as you may well imagine, on air. I deprecate the modern tendency to use slang, but I am not ashamed to confess that what I was saying to myself was the word "Whoopee!"