The Inimitable Jeeves

by P.G. Wodehouse

On three separate occasions horses on which I’d invested a sizeable amount won by lengths instead of sitting down to rest in the middle of the race, as horses usually do when I’ve got money on them.

The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I hadn’t gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum. “You will find Mr. Wooster,” he was saying to the substitute chappie, “an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible—quite negligible.”

YOU know, the longer I live, the more clearly I see that half the trouble in this bally world is caused by the light-hearted and thoughtless way in which chappies dash off letters of introduction and hand them to other chappies to deliver to chappies of the third part. It’s one of those things that make you wish you were living in the Stone Age. What I mean to say is, if a fellow in those days wanted to give anyone a letter of introduction, he had to spend a month or so carving it on a large-sized boulder, and the chances were that the other chappie got so sick of lugging the thing round in the hot sun that he dropped it after the first mile.

I never know, when I’m telling a story, whether to cut the thing down to plain facts or whether to drool on and shove in a lot of atmosphere, and all that.

“Good gracious! Is he a friend of yours?” “Rather! Known him all my life.” “Then tell me, Bertie, is he at all weak in the head?” “Weak in the head?” “I don’t mean simply because he’s a friend of yours. But he’s so strange in his manner.” “How do you mean?” “Well, he keeps looking at me so oddly.” “Oddly? How? Give an imitation.” “I can’t in front of all these people.” “Yes, you can. I’ll hold my napkin up.” “All right, then. Quick. There!” Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognised the symptoms immediately. “Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “No need to be alarmed. He’s simply in love with you.”

It was like that song of Harry Lauder’s where he’s waiting for the girl and says “This is her-r-r. No, it’s a rabbut.” Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor’east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else.

THE feeling I had when Aunt Agatha trapped me in my lair that morning and spilled the bad news was that my luck had broken at last. As a rule, you see, I’m not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James’s letter about Cousin Mabel’s peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle (“Please read this carefully and send it on to Jane”), the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It’s one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor—and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that. ‘It’s no good trying to get Bertie to take the slightest interest’ is more or less the slogan, and I’m bound to say I’m all for it. A quiet life is what I like.

I ran into young Bingo Little in the smoking-room of the Senior Liberal Club. He was lying back in an arm-chair with his mouth open and a sort of goofy expression in his eyes, while a grey-bearded cove in the middle distance watched him with so much dislike that I concluded that Bingo had pinched his favourite seat. That’s the worst of being in a strange club—absolutely without intending it, you find yourself constantly trampling upon the vested interests of the Oldest Inhabitants. “Hallo, face,” I said. “Cheerio, ugly,” said young Bingo, and we settled down to have a small one before lunch. Once a year the committee of the Drones decides that the old club could do with a wash and brush-up, so they shoo us out and dump us down for a few weeks at some other institution. This time we were roosting at the Senior Liberal, and personally I had found the strain pretty fearful. I mean, when you’ve got used to a club where everything’s nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie’s attention, you heave a bit of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven and it isn’t considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he were through the Peninsular War together.

“This club,” I said, “is the limit.” “It is the eel’s eyebrows,” agreed young Bingo. “I believe that old boy over by the window has been dead three days, but I don’t like to mention it to anyone.” “Have you lunched here yet?” “No. Why?” “They have waitresses instead of waiters.” “Good Lord! I thought that went out with the armistice.” Bingo mused a moment, straightening his tie absently. “Er—pretty girls?” he said. “No.” He seemed disappointed, but pulled round. “Well, I’ve heard that the cooking’s the best in London.” “So they say. Shall we be going in?” “All right. I expect,” said young Bingo, “that at the end of the meal—or possibly at the beginning —the waitress will say, ‘Both together, sir? ‘Reply in the affirmative. I haven’t a bean.”

“It can’t be done, old thing. Sorry, but it’s out of the question. I couldn’t go through all that again.” “Not for me?” “Not for a dozen more like you.” “I never thought,” said Bingo sorrowfully, “to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!” “Well, you’ve heard them now,” I said. “Paste them in your hat.” “Bertie, we were at school together.” “It wasn’t my fault.” “We’ve been pals for fifteen years.” “I know. It’s going to take me the rest of my life to live it down.”