I visit the original upper class twit

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves ***

by P.G. Wodehouse

My first reading of Wodehouse was just a little spoiled from having seen most of the funny bits from "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves" in the wonderful Hugh Laurie-Stephen Fry "Jeeves and Wooster" series on BBC TV (left). In fact, the two work so well as the idiot Bertie and his sanguine valet cum keeper, that it's hard not to hear their voices while reading.

In this installment, a relatively late one from 1963, Bertie purchases an Alpine hat with a pink feather of which Jeeves deeply disapproves. Needless to say, the hat will go. But exactly how and in the course of what near-miss matrimonial scrape Jeeves will coerce Bertie to be rid of said h., as Bertie might say, is Wodehouse's genius. Nothing is ever straightforward. Everything is trivial, which, of course, is why it's funny. Take, for instance, Bertie's "oiling out" of the dreaded Totleigh school treat (picnic):

Apart from anything else, I was remembering the story I had heard Pongo Twistleton tell one night at the Drones, illustrative of how unbridled passions are apt to become at these binges. Pongo got mixed up once in a school treat down in Somersetshire, and his description of how in order to promote a game called "Is Mr. Smith at Home?" he had to put his head in a sack and allow the younger generation to prod him with sticks had held the smoking room spellbound. At a place like Totleigh, where even on normal days human life was not safe, still worse excesses were to be expected. The glimpse or two I had had of the local Dead End kids had told me how tough a bunch they were and how sedulously they should be advoided by the man who knew what was good for him.

Much has been made of Wodehouse's pitch-perfect style in writing in Bertie's voice and about Britain in the years between the Wars. No one but Jane Austen did that kind of social satire quite as well.

I'm sure many tiresomely predictable diatribes have been written by critics about the subliminal homoeroticism in the Jeeves-Wooster relationship. I see nothing so innocent. In my estimation, Jeeves devotes most of his time to prevent Bertie's marrying anyone and thus inflicting more idiot upper class twits on the nation and weakening its gene pool. Jeeves does this so delicately, pampering Bertie's taste for liquor and comfort, that his victim never quite realizes he has become something of an overbred pet doted on by an owner that sees neutering as the only kind thing to do.

Here's Jeeves helping Bertie out singing "Minnie the Moocher" from the TV series. And, of course, if you're unfamiliar with the whole concept of the upper class twit, here's Monty Python to explain.