However, I did want to show this Ionicus cover in any case, as it is one of the best:
It's a very striking image, full of excitement and promise.... to be truthful, much more so than the book Jeeves in the Offing (1960) itself. Bertie has been without his Jeeves for much of the novel, while the omniscient valet goes on holiday to Herne Bay for the shrimping; but, the imbroglio having got too hot for comfort by page 96, Bertie fetches him back in his sports model in order to fix everything good. It will be noted that the sports model is very post-war; in fact, about 1960, like the novel. Bertie and Jeeves, invented in 1915, have aged about five or six years in the intervening decades, but that's fine; Wodehouse did tend to include in his books the occasional nod to the passing years in terms of cultural references, without making any awkward calculations about the age of the cast. Bertie is very much at home behind the wheel, and the personalised number plate looks about right. Jeeves, of course, is as imperturbable as ever, though looking after his hat with calm care. This detail, and Bertie's flapping tie, add to the sense of movement and action which (to be truthful) is not always apparent in Ionicus. The yellow of the car is nicely reflected in the yellow of the Wodehouse logo.
I've been rereading some of these late Wodehouses recently, and I was very pleasantly surprised by them. When I went through my first Wodehouse phase in my teens and twenties, I came to the conclusion that the man went off very badly, stylistically speaking, in his last years, from about 1950 to the 1970s... though I always made an exception for that late return to form, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974), his last completed novel. He started to repeat himself too much - I don't mean just plots, though I do mean that partly, but also jokes and turns of phrase. I always set down Jeeves in the Offing and Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971) as two of the worst offenders. Jeeves in the Offing had the additional major fault of being completely inconsistent with previous episodes. As far back as Thank You, Jeeves in 1934 Bertie had told the affecting tale of his reconciliation with the prominent nerve specialist Sir Roderick Glossop; but here, in 1960, it is as if that reconciliation had never occurred, and events have to be manufactured to make it happen all over again. Most irritating.
But on rereading today, I find there is much, after all, to admire in these autumnal works - most of all, the sheer balance of the prose. So much that is written is badly written. It clunks; it is badly paced, telling too much that is irrelevant and boring where it should excite. A Wodehouse sentence always has a certain heft about it. What do I mean? Here is a random example, taken literally from the first page I opened (page 98):
"It was with... well, not quite an uplifted heart... call it a heart lifted about half-way... that I started out for Brinkley the following afternoon."
Nothing special, you might say; and certainly it's not one for the anthologies exactly. But at the same time, thought has gone into that sentence, so that, while it uses a little cliché, care has been taken to examine it and dismantle it in part, and to write in this partial dismantlement in such a way as to make it sound natural, almost spoken, and with a cadence, a rise and a fall.
I could give you a dozen counter-examples from a flabby, lazy thriller written by a very big name and published only last year; but the problem about lazy writing is that it doesn't look so bad in isolated sentences. A little flat, maybe, but not actively bad. It's only in aggregate that the dead prose, the unexamined clichés, and so on and so forth, start to irritate....
"Paula grinned like a birthday child."
"Paula gave him a sideways look."
"He liked that people still had the power to surprise him in a good way."
"Paula rolled her eyes."
"Abruptly, Tony slapped his forehead."
(All taken from a single dialogue scene over the space of three pages. That "Tony slapped his forehead" is especially awful: does anyone, ever, actually do that, outside a bad TV drama?)
But behold, the matter is too painful. I will simply say that to read Wodehouse after a few swathes of that sort of thing is like swimming through from a muddy current into a clear and crystalline stream.
The Penguin edition of Jeeves in the Offing was first published in 1963, and it's set in Intertype Garamond, a clear and simple type:
You can see, even from that little snippet, that Wodehouse is back using some of his old jokes (eggs and b.) and familiar rhythms. Maybe the nostalgia factor does enter into the equation here: in times of uncertainty, what can be nicer than to hear once again the reassuring rise and fall of a loved narrative voice?
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971) is of similar calibre, though the prose is a little more discursive. The Ionicus cover, I confess, is one of his worst:
It's an imperfect copy, unfortunately, with some damage to Jeeves's jacket caused by an over-adhesive label, but the essence is there. The foreground table, I like. Aunt Dahlia, seated, is good. Bertie, standing and adjusting his tie, not too dusty. But Jeeves on the right and L.P. Runkle (especially) in the middle: awful. L.P.R. is out of proportion and apparently a cardboard cutout. Jeeves is making a startling revelation (this is the key scene at the end of the book) but he might as well be announcing dinner. Where is the drama? It could almost be a different illustrator to the Ionicus who drew the best examples in the series. Ah, well; such is life.
Here are the first few lines - and it will be noted that the mise-en-scene is remarkably similar to that at the start of Jeeves in the Offing:
First published by Penguin in 1981, and the font is Linotype Baskerville. I'm not keen on the left-justified chapter heading; it's just a bit too matter-of-fact. Still, it's all perfectly serviceable.
It's possible that one of the reasons I had a prejudice against Much Obliged, Jeeves was the cover. Reading it again, I was surprised to see haw much I enjoyed it. Set during a tightly-fought by-election at Market Snodsbury (the same one that Aubrey Upjohn had been trying to be selected for in Jeeves in the Offing?), it has some nice gags about politicians and even a gag about world over-population:
"If steps aren't taken through the proper channels, half the world will soon be standing on the other half's shoulders."
"All right if you're one of the top layer."
"Yes, there's that, of course." (page 49)
There aren't any rip-roaring set pieces, but there's much to enjoy, and it's worth pointing out (if the reader did not know) that Wodehouse was 90 years old when this was published, and even then was writing much better than I ever will.
