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Title: My Man Jeeves

 

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

 

Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8164]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on June 24, 2003]

 

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***

 

Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

MY MAN JEEVES

BY P. G. WODEHOUSE

 

1919

CONTENTS LEAVE IT TO JEEVES JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST

JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG

ABSENT TREATMENT HELPING FREDDIE RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE

DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD

THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD LEAVE IT TO JEEVES

Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable.

Honestly, I shouldn’t know what to do without him. On broader lines he’s

like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements

at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked “Inquiries.” You know

the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: “When’s the next train

for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?” and they reply, without stopping to

think, “Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco.” And they’re

right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of

omniscience.

 

As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond

Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I

felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address

of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the

hour.

 

“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one

of Mr. Byng’s.”

 

“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”

 

“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”

 

“Unsuitable for you, sir.”

 

Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came

home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I

nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a

music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in

absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and

that’s all there is to it.

 

But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible,

though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows

everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.”

I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,

red-hot tabasco.

 

“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good

turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on

Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.’”

 

He shook his head.

 

“I’d rather not, sir.”

 

“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to put my shirt on him.”

 

“I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second

place is what the stable is after.”

 

Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know

anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till

he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and

nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.

 

“After this,” I said, “not another step for me without your advice.

From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.”

 

“Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.”

 

And he has, by Jove! I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean

would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,

don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with

Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything. And that’s why,

when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to

ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.

 

“Leave it to Jeeves,” I said.

 

I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my

cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square

way. I don’t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I

left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to

stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got

the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound

scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and

having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out

to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I’m

bound to say that New York’s a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody

was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going

on, and I’m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced

me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t long before

I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses

up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly

around Washington Square—artists and writers and so forth. Brainy

coves.

 

Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,

but he hadn’t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines

with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the

game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting—I’ve looked into the

thing a bit—is that you can’t start painting portraits till people

come along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until

you’ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a

chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture

for the comic papers—he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got

a good idea—and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the

advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived

from biting the ear of a rich uncle—one Alexander Worple, who was in

the jute business. I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s

apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had

made quite an indecently large stack out of it.

 

Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty

soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky’s uncle

was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was

fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,

however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had

no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the

way the above Worple used to harry him.

 

Corky’s uncle, you see, didn’t want him to be an artist. He didn’t

think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to

chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and

work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with

him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what

Corky said was that, while he didn’t know what they did at the bottom

of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too

beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an

artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by

using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to

cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.

 

He wouldn’t have got this if his uncle hadn’t had a hobby. Mr. Worple

was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I’ve observed, the

American captain of industry doesn’t do anything out of business hours.

When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he

just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start

being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was

what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called

American Birds, and was writing another, to be called _More

American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that

he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds

gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let

him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked

with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so

these little chats used to make Corky’s allowance all right for the

time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the

frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when

broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.

 

To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of

extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that

Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction

on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I

should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.

 

So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl

in front of him, and said, “Bertie, I want you to meet my fianc�e, Miss

Singer,” the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the

one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke

were, “Corky, how about your uncle?”

 

The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking

anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but

can’t think what the deuce to do with the body.

 

“We’re so scared, Mr. Wooster,” said the girl. “We were hoping that you

might suggest a way of breaking it to him.”

 

Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing