Have you ever read any P.G. Wodehouse? If you have not, you are missing out.

These books are hilarious. Narrated by Bertie Wooster, an upper-class British person (I believe the technical name is “twit”) living in London in the 1920s-1930s, they follow his adventures with a host of his crazy friends, and his valet (and savior), Jeeves.

Bertie grew up on estates of his aristocratic relatives and friends, went to a prep school where he rubbed elbows with others of his type and, upon graduation, Bertie joined the Drones Club, a private club for the idle rich of which he is one. His head is filled with specialized knowledge, such as the lineage of his friends and peers, how to how to mix the perfect martini, and how to play Minnie the Moocher on the piano. He is a sportsman, playing golf, tennis, swimming, rowing, squash, darts, and other sports, such as spoon races.

Bertie brags of other skills: winning over wealthy aunts who are threatening to cut one off without cent, getting close friends out of narrow scrapes, and escaping the snares of upper-class young ladies “steeped to the gills in serious purpose”, and with a marrying gleam in their eyes, determined to make Bertie over, raise his intellect or force him to (gasp) get a job or “make something of himself.” Often these young ladies are accompanied by suspicious aunts and mothers, machinating younger brothers who are willing to look the other way for a price, and narrow-eyed fathers who make their livings as nerve specialists (“loony doctors”), ex-magistrates, or exploring the Amazon. However, like many young men even today, Bertie’s estimation of his own skills far outstrip his actual experience and abilities.

Luckily he encounters Jeeves who, heaven-sent by the registry service in response to Bertie’s cri de coeur, floats “noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr” one morning when Bertie is a little under the weather, and earns the job by mixing the perfect hangover tonic. Jeeves turns out to be the perfect valet, always perfectly correct in dress and manner – and yet, somehow the tone of his “Indeed, Sir” or “Very Good, Sir” manages to convey (accurately) to Bertie his reticence toward Bertie’s fiancée or intention to wear a suit in a “sprightly young check” on the train down to his fiancée’s home.

Bertie, however, holds strong to his principles. Jeeves, after all, is a servant and it is not his place to criticize his employer’s taste in ladies or haberdashery. Somehow however, in each story¹ Bertie gets into some kind of trouble – often through trying to use his brain strategically, something that taxes that poor organ beyond its capacity – and Jeeves has to rescue Bertie from his best intentions. Often this comes at a price to Bertie – the sacrifice of a particularly heinous tie or socks. Then Jeeves reveals how he knew all and came up with the perfect way to solve Bertie’s problem.

Bertie is a loyal friend to his compadres from the Drones club and from school, and believes in standing up for friends, often playing the foil to make his friends look better. Bertie’s friends all have ridiculous nicknames, fall in love with earnest young women² whose standards they don’t meet, and share Bertie’s lack of intellect. Be that as it may, Bertie does his best to care for them. In this selection that I chose randomly from this book, Bertie commits his intellect to cheering a friend who has fallen into an awful depression as a result of having been sent (by an inflexible aunt, of course) to stay with the most boring people possible:

It was then that I got one of those bright ideas that one does get round about 11.30³ on Boat-Race Night.

‘What you want, old man,’ I said ‘is a policeman’s helmet.‘

‘Do I, Bertie?’

‘If I were you, I’d just step straight across the street and get that one over there.’

‘But there’s a policeman inside it. You can see him distinctly.’

‘What does that matter?’ I said. I simply couldn’t follow his reasoning.

Sippy stood for a moment in thought.

‘I believe you’re absolutely right,’ he said at last. ‘Funny I never thought of it before. You really recommend me to get that helmet?’

‘I do, indeed.’

‘Then I will,’ said Sippy, brightening up in the most remarkable manner.

And then Sippy, of course, gets arrested and sent to jail for 30 days, resolving his problem of having to go on a boring visit – and causing a problem with a young woman of serious disposition that he has been pursuing.

A few years ago, the BBC produced Jeeves and Wooster with Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster. While Fry and Laurie could make anything funny⁴, this is a wonderful adaptation, true to the books and yet it stands on its own. If you can get ahold of it, it will be totally worth your while.

These books are so funny that I can’t read them without laughing aloud and, I am pleased to say, have absolutely nothing else redeeming about them.

But isn’t the ability to generate laughter enough?

1. The earlier Jeeves books are collections of short stories, often with some kind of theme or arc to them, and later books are novels. ↩︎
2. With the exception of one older gentleman who falls in love with a barmaid whom he had known in his wild youth. ↩︎
3. 11:30 for those of us on this side of the pond and this generation. ↩︎
4. You do know they were both in Blackadder, right? ↩︎