Jeeves’s Schemes: A Wodehouse Tale of Wit and Misadventures
Jeeves Takes Charge
The story takes place in England sometime between 1910 and 1920. Narrator Bertie Wooster, a young, idle rich, opens “Jeeves Takes Charge” admitting that he is too dependent on his butler, Jeeves. However, he is ashamed; after all, according to Bertie, Jeeves is a genius. “From the neck up is just,” Bertie says, and proceeds to detail how he came to trust the butler with all his affairs.
Easeby
During a visit to the farm of his uncle Willoughby, Bertie catches his original butler, Meadowes, stealing silk socks. He is forced to return to London to hire a new valet. Bertie is trying to read a boring book to his fiancée, Florence Craye, when Jeeves arrives. Bertie, who is nursing a hangover, is immediately impressed when Jeeves invents a remedy for it. During their conversation, Bertie learns that Jeeves had been employed by Florence’s father, Lord Worplesdon. Jeeves resigned because he disapproved of Lord Worplesdon’s fashion sense. Bertie detects that Jeeves does not approve of his commitment to Florence. Bertie receives a telegram from Florence asking him to return urgently to Easeby, where she is now living as a guest. Jeeves orders him to pack and discovers that Jeeves does not like the dress she’s wearing. Bertie ignores the butler’s disapproval.
Reaching Easeby, Bertie determines the nature of the emergency. His uncle Willoughby has been writing his memoirs, “Memories of a Long Life.” It seems that the old man has read some of the manuscripts to Florence, and she is horrified. The book details the wild adventures of Sir Willoughby with his friends during his youth. Her father is one of the many respectable gentlemen who, she feels, will be shocked when the book is published. She proposes that Bertie pilfer the manuscript before publication. Bertie, who is financially dependent on his Uncle Willoughby, is extremely reluctant. He suggests that perhaps Florence’s younger brother, Edwin, who is also a guest at Easeby, might be more suitable for the task. After all, Edwin is a boy scout who is always looking for “acts of kindness” to perform. Florence threatens to break off her engagement if Bertie does not steal the book. Bertie, nervous, agrees to the crazy scheme. Leaving the room, he finds Jeeves, who informs him that someone has used black enamel on his brown shoes.
Bertie is hiding nearby, waiting in his uncle’s library for a chance to steal the book. Sir Willoughby left the manuscript on a table in the room of his house, Oakshott, to take to the office the next morning. Bertie snatches the book and returns to his room. He arrives to find Edwin spying on his things under the guise of “tidying up.” Bertie tries to hide the book behind his back. Edwin tells him that one of his recent “acts of kindness” was polishing Bertie’s shoes. Bertie sends the boy to get some water and immediately locks the manuscript in a drawer.
Bertie is afraid of trying to destroy the manuscript while still in Easeby. Determined to leave the drawer for the moment, he thinks it is the best solution. Sir Willoughby is concerned that publishers have not yet received his book. Bertie tries to blame his former butler, but his uncle said that he was not present when Meadowes finished the manuscript. Bertie gets nervous and walks around the grounds of the hotel. Just past the library window, he overhears a conversation between Edwin and his uncle. Edwin knows that Bertie has the book and convinces Sir Willoughby to search Bertie’s room. Bertie is released back to the room only to find his uncle Willoughby and Edwin. Sir Willoughby uses the story Edwin devised as an excuse to search Bertie’s room. The drawer where the hidden book remains locked, and Bertie, to his relief, cannot find the key. Suddenly, Jeeves, to Bertie’s horror, appears with the key. The drawer opens, but Bertie is surprised to see that the manuscript is not there.
After Sir Willoughby and Edwin leave the room, Bertie questions Jeeves and learns that the butler had overheard his conversation with Florence in relation to the book. Jeeves determined that it would be wiser if he took possession of the plot. Bertie is happy with the performance of his butler and is satisfied that he has complied with his duty to Florence.
Florence returns from a dance, and Bertie tells her that, even though he has not exactly destroyed the manuscript, he has fulfilled his obligation. At that time, his uncle appears, happy to say that the manuscript has gone to the publisher. Florence, enraged, breaks their engagement. Angrily, she confronts Bertie about Jeeves. Jeeves tells Bertie that he thinks he overestimated the effect that the book would have on the people in it. Bertie fires Jeeves, and Jeeves takes the opportunity to say that he believes Bertie and Florence are a mismatch. Bertie tells him to leave the room. After a night’s sleep, Bertie begins to think about what Jeeves said. He tries reading the book Florence gave him and realizes that Jeeves was right. He rehires the butler, and in an effort to win approval, he tells him to get rid of Jeeves’s checkered suit. Jeeves informs Bertie that he has already taken the suit to the gardener.
Corky of the Artistic Career
This short story is told while Jeeves and Wooster stay in New York, and it details his efforts to help struggling artist Bruce Corcoran escape his uncle Alejandro’s clutches. Nothing goes according to plan: Corcoran loves Muriel, a chorus-girl, but she ends up marrying Alexander. Alexander commissioned a painting of his new baby son from Corcoran, but over time it seems a caricature. As a result, Corcoran seems doomed to a life of servitude in the family’s jute business, but Jeeves intervenes at the last moment to ensure the artist a full-time position as a cartoonist in the New York Sunday Star.
Performed as a solo exhibition at the stage of Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, Martin Jarvis read the story in a number of different voices—the silly-ass Bertie, the emotionless Jeeves, the crazy chorus-girl Muriel, the disillusioned youth Corcoran, and the fast-talking mobster Alexander. The reading became a tour de force speech, but Jarvis understood the value of a pause in the text of Wodehouse to guarantee a laugh. He also knew how to control the laugh—repeatedly, a short laugh was the prelude to a great belly laugh as Jarvis finished a sentence. The actor may not have been a comedian by profession, but he certainly understood the importance of the art of comics.