Quentin Durward Book

Who needs expensive Freudian psychiatrists when you can have this:



The discovery of some toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the merry old Bertram.

Old Bertram is in dire need of moral bracing, since one of his recurring spats over wardrobe with his trusted man Jeeves has left him without valuable advice just when he needed it most. Valiant efforts to solve the problems of his friends and family gathered at Brinkley Court on his own are only serving to further push him deeper into the soup. Bertie blames it on bad luck and on the French:

If I hadn't gone to Cannes, I shouldn't have met the Bassett or bought that white mess jacket, and Angela wouldn't have met her shark, and Aunt Dahlia wouldn't have played baccarat.

If you want to find the connection between sharks, white mess jackets, baccarat, devil's costumes, newts and French cooking you have come to the right place at Brinkley Court. Be careful though of Bertie's 'clever' plans, and keep Gussie Fink-Nottle away from the strong spirits. As his Aunt Dahlia rather cruelly but truthfully puts it:

You may well say 'Golly!'. Anatole, God's gift to the gastric juices, gone like the dew off the petal of a rose, all through your idiocy.

After reading four or five Jeeves short stories collections in a row I was just in the right disposition for a more substantial fare, and the master didn't disappoint. Right Ho, Jeeves is one of Wodehouse's best novels, showcasing his talent to weave together several storylines and to ramp up the mischief and hijinks to stratospheric levels, where even the imperturbable gentleman's gentleman Jeeves would be hard put to come up with a solution. Some of the faces are familiar, as are some of the romantic missteps that crop up in almost every Wodehouse story, but there is something about how the different characters come together and interact that make me appreciate the long form better than the above mentioned short stories. This splittig of the troubles into four or five separate incidents makes it a little harder to pick a main plot line in the novel, but, judging by screen time and by the laughter-meter, I would pick August Fink-Nottle as the leader of the pack. This old school friend of Bertie, this 'newt-nuzzling blister' as he is more or less affectionately referred to, has fallen in love. And because he is pathologically shy and accident prone, he appeals to Jeeves as a go-between. As you might remember, Jeeves and Bertie had a tiff over a dinner jacket, so Bertie takes, reluctantly, the role of Cupid:

A splendid chap, of course, in many ways - courteous, amiable, and just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands - but quite obviously not of Mendelssohn's March timber. I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England's most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic.

Yet such a girl resides presently at Brinkley Court: Madeline Bassett, another gold-plated comedy arrow in the author's quiver. A sensitive, poetic soul, whose exclamations about daisy chains and fluffy rabbits in the meadows are apt to give even the strongest man the shivers:

... the thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was, frankly appalled me. confesses Bertie, yet that's exactly where his efforts on behalf of Gussie lands him. It's enough to turn our bachelor friend to despair:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - girls are rummy. Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.

Gussie and the Bassett are not the only couple trying to mend up the ties of love. Bertie's cousin Angela is on the warpath with her fiancee, another Wodehouse recurring character and frenemy of Bertie, Tuppy Glossop. Add to the double dose of romance the volatile temper of the Brinkley Court's celebrated cook Anatole and the sour disposition of the lord of the manor, and you have the main ingredients of the soup Bertie is currently wallowing in.

Well, I'm dashed. I'm really dashed. I positively am dashed, Jeeves. finally confesses the master after all his best efforts misfire, and he goes back, as the reader already knew he would, to his trusted servant for rescue. But can even Jeeves transform a newt like Gussie into a dragon?

Only active measures, promptly applied, can provide this poor, pusillanimous poop with the proper pep.

Don't you just love this alliterative game? But what can he be talking about? I am still cracking with laughter as I remember the effect of alcohol on the timid man's disposition:

It just shows, what any member of Parliament will tell you, that if you want real oratory, the preliminary noggin is essential. Unless pie-eyed, you cannot hope to grip.

(I should try the recipe when writing my reviews. Maybe they will be as popular as Gussie's speechmaking under the influence)

On a personal level, I am most grateful to P G Wodehouse for making me fall in love with the English language all over again. I feel so lucky to be able to enjoy his prose in the original club vernacular, even as I dive to the dictionary for "sedulously" (diligent in application or attention; persevering; assiduous.) or "hornswoggle"(to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.). Even his insults have style, inventivity, and his short portraits are unrivaled in the field of comedy:

- Uncle Tom who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow.

- Tuppy : If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

- Aunt Dahlia: She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression. also: ... the nearest thing to a charging rhinoceros.

Recurrent jokes that are continued from one story to another are another secret ingredient mixed by Wodehouse into his recipe for success. I have already mentioned the wardrobe malfunctions. Another example is the reference to the habit of Jeeves to move about silently:

My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about - the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.

or,
I dismissed Jeeves with a nod, and he flickered for a moment and was gone. Many a spectre would have been less slippy.

I am sure the author will come with a fresh twist on the old jokes for his next novel, and this is one of the reasons I am glad that he was so productive and that I have so many more of his novels to enjoy in the future.

Recommended as the best remedy for a sour disposition. If you haven't yet read one of Wodehouse farces, this is a good introduction to his style.