Very Good, Jeeves: Summary & Reading Guide

Eleven variations on an excellent rescue

Very Good, Jeeves is the moment I reach for when somebody has tried one early Bertie story and asks whether the joke will keep working. Yes, and this 1930 collection is a fine demonstration of how much Wodehouse can change the circumstances while preserving the pleasure of the partnership. Its eleven stories had appeared in magazines between 1926 and 1930. The American book preceded the British book by a few weeks in that year; the British volume included a preface. The pieces are separate cases, so I would open almost anywhere, but reading the entire collection reveals a remarkably assured rhythm. Bertie describes a predicament with mounting alarm, Jeeves appears to have heard more than he says, and the resolution has the lightness of a trick performed without showing the apparatus.

The cast has become more crowded and more useful. Bingo Little and Tuppy Glossop can each turn a romantic or social worry into a demand on Bertie’s friendship. Aunt Dahlia belongs to the world in which a family request may be more difficult to refuse than a threat. In “Jeeves and the Impending Doom,” an important guest and a swan help turn an apparently manageable visit into a comic hazard; the Estate’s description singles out the marooned cabinet minister. Elsewhere, a song played or sung too often can become an instrument of the plot. These details are delicious because they seem small until the story assigns them the power to upset an entire evening. I prefer to leave the exact rescue unexplained for a first reader.

The title is a promise of renewed confidence in Jeeves, but it should not make us overlook Bertie. He can be vain about clothes, stubborn about an idea and immediately vulnerable to a friend’s appeal. He also tells his own failures with such energy that the reader is welcomed into the room rather than asked to stand above him. This is not a collection in which a faultless expert repeatedly lectures an idiot. Bertie’s generosity creates problems that are worth solving, and Jeeves’s judgment sometimes has to make room for the very human wishes of the people he is helping. The affection between the two gives a light social farce its durable centre.

A fan can follow the collection through recurrent devices without pretending the stories are one continuous novel. An unwanted engagement or a threat to domestic peace will sound familiar, but the balance of knowledge changes from case to case. Sometimes a friend has withheld a crucial fact. Sometimes Bertie has interpreted a gesture in the most hopeful possible way. Sometimes Jeeves has a practical reason to wait before explaining his design. The closing click depends on the arrangement of those particular facts, not on a rubber stamp marked “Jeeves solves it.” Reading several in a row makes the variation clearer. It also gives a reader a reason to revisit a favourite later and notice a quiet preparation that was invisible on the first pass.

The book is a useful bridge between early stories and the great full-length novels. The Inimitable Jeeves shapes eleven earlier stories into an eighteen-chapter sequence. Carry On, Jeeves gathers cases with the pair’s first meeting. Very Good, Jeeves offers another eleven-story collection, but the social world feels firmly established and the storytelling less like a set of experiments. If you eventually move to Right Ho, Jeeves, you will recognise the confident voice and the dangerous combination of Bertie’s loyalty with Bertie’s theories. A novel gives the complications longer to interlock. The collection lets you see how precisely Wodehouse can build a comparable effect within a much smaller space.

For collectors, the most interesting caution concerns the text rather than the date. Neil Midkiff’s detailed annotations distinguish the American and British book versions and their magazine predecessors. The US volume often follows American magazine versions; the UK book tends toward the Strand texts. Editorial intervention can involve punctuation and spelling but sometimes cuts or changes in wording, and the British book has a preface the American edition lacks. A casual reader need not compare columns before laughing. A reader who wants a specific passage, a cited line or the first book arrangement should record the edition used. A quotation copied from one text may not match another letter for letter, even though both belong to Very Good, Jeeves.

I particularly like the story list as an invitation to browse rather than as a promise of a single plot. “Jeeves and the Kid Clementina,” “Jeeves and the Old School Chum,” “Indian Summer of an Uncle,” and “Tuppy Changes His Mind” announce different kinds of difficulty before one has read a word. Titles such as “Jeeves and the Song of Songs” or “Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit” signal how a performance or seasonal gathering can be made to misbehave. The old magazine titles sometimes differ from the names on a modern contents page. This is why the story index and the book record should be read together: one tracks the underlying pieces, the other the shape of the volume in your hands.

As a first purchase, this would suit someone who already knows they enjoy short stories and wants a generous stretch of Bertie’s company. For the absolute beginner I might hand over Carry On, Jeeves because “Jeeves Takes Charge” starts at the partnership’s fictional beginning, or Right Ho, Jeeves if a novel is more inviting. For the returning reader, Very Good, Jeeves is a delightfully reliable place to spend an evening. There is no requirement to finish the whole shelf before reaching it. Give a story its own space, admire the precise moment at which Bertie discovers the problem has changed, and remember that an apparently effortless rescue is the result of Wodehouse’s very hard work on the page.