After hearing the name “Wodehouse” for long enough, a chappie starts to feel like he ought to read something of his, and the first of The Inimitable Jeeves is the first in the long series. Narrated by Bertie Wooster, Jeeve himself appears somewhat rarely, although rather decisively. Bertie was a member of the liesured class, living in London, who mostly just wanted a comfortable life, but his domineering aunt, his gambling, serial-lover, and school-friend Bingo Little, and his troublesome young cousins landed him in the soup more times than is comfortable.

Bingo was always in love with some woman, often beneath his station. The first time this happened, Bingo prevailed on Bertie to pretend to be Rosie M. Banks, author of romance novels where the heroine is a commoner, to persuade his father that marrying a waitress is acceptable, to forestall his father geting angry and cutting off his allowance. This does succeed, as Mr. Little is completely won over by Bank’s shallow appeals to the romantic love being the primary determining factor. However, Bingo does not succeed in keeping the girl, and in the end it is the old cove himself, the elder Little, who marries beneath his station, namely his cook in order to prevent someone else from takening her out of his employ.

In addition to courtships where Bingo pawned off all the hard work onto Bertie, Bingo was also a serial gambler, and not a succesful one, which frequently forced him to become a live-in tutor at someone’s estate. Inevitably he found a wager that could be made to restore his fortunes, which only needed to be bankrolled by Bertie. Bertie had learned to defer to Jeeves’ judgement, and Jeeves only bet if he could find an edge. On the occasion of some local holiday contests he believes they had such an edge in dark-horse candidates who had skills not widely known. However, the bookie figured out something was up and managed to get a chaotic schoolboy thrown out of the choir (a requirement for his particpation in the race), get a woman drunk on punch, and similar, although Jeeves salvaged the situation by getting the top girls in the egg-teaspoon race disqualified by offering them money if they win the race, resulting in their choice winning.

Berties aunt had forceful schemes to get him married to people who would build his character. Bertie’s inability to say no to people close to him ended up with him affianced to one lady, who turned out to be a thief using the relationship as an opportunity to borrow money from the aunt with a pledge of a pearl necklace, which she then stole, so that the aunt would not able to deliver it up on repayment. Jeeves figures out what is going on an recovered the necklace, saving both the aunt and extricating Bertie from the situation.

At other times his aunt required him to take responsibility for keeping people out of trouble that they were intent on causing, frequently his twin cousins studying at Oxford, who have a penchant for practical jokes. (If these cousins are not the inspiration for Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter books, I shall be very much mistaken.) Naturally they got into exactly the sort of soup that his aunt wants Bertie to prevent. Jeeves rescued Bertie through discreet choices. One time Jeeves shows the twins into incorrect rooms, and then a troublesoome guest into those same rooms, which provoked him to leave in a huff. Another time the twins had been expelled from Oxford and were to take a boat to South Africa, but the night before, they went on the town and fell in love with a popular musician and gave each other the slip to come back to London to court her. The lady was not enamored of their affections. Jeeves suggested that she tell them that she was going on a tour to South Africa, and the twins separately, one to Jeeves and one to Bertie, said that they had developed a sudden desire to go to South Africa and asked if he could finance them a ticket on the liner to South Africa. Jeeves obliged and provided each (separately) with a ticket, which he arranged to be in a two room berth, so that the jealous lovers would have to endure each other all the way to South Africa, in payment for the havoc they caused Bertie.

Jeeves was the consumate valet, in the way the Sherlock Holmes is the consummate detective and the Mandalorian the consummate fighter. Somehow he always knew when Bertie had woken up, delivering the morning tea about five minutes afterwards. He cultivates connections with other servants, so he knews what was going on in the households relevant to Bertie, and thus was always ready with advice when such was needed. All Bertie’s wants have been anticipated and provided for, without even asking. (The only exception is when Jeeves was frosty because Bertie had been insisting on wearing some loud-colored piece of attire, and even then, was limited to not providing soup-extraction advice until asked.) In that manner, then, Jeeves solutions also were subtle, behind the scenes, and frequently done before being asked, which set into motion events which solved Bertie’s problem. One such case happened when Bingo had fallen madly in love with the daughter of a Communist activist. Their activism took the form of public harangues in an area of a London park designated for that. Communists sported long, unkempt beards, so Bingo got himself a fake beard, and was so successful at delivering eloquent harangues against the idle rich that the girl was favoring him over the other Communist who was competing for her hand. Jeeves resolved the situation by causually remarking to the jealous suitor that it was a shame that the eloquent member of their party was not able to receive proper recognition for his element; the Communist was then aware that his competitor was in disguise, and when an opportunity for public confrontation came, the jealous Communist said that they one one of the idle-rich in their midst and ripped off Bingo’s beard.

After this, Bingo was lunching at a different club, as his club was renovating and so their club was attending a different club. He was attracted to one of the waitresses, and proposed to her after two weeks. Well, it turned out that she was none other than Rosie M. Banks, who was working as a waitress in order to research her next book, and she was so taken that Bingo loved her for who she was, that she accepted his offer. This landed Bertie into hot soup with the elder Little, who would not believe that this woman was the real Rosie M. Banks until she provided proof of her identity via her publisher, and afterwards he would not speak to Bertie. Jeeves fixed the situation by telling him that Bertie was simply a little mad—he sometimes insisted he was Rosie M. Banks and would not be dissuaded otherwise, but was a harmless and likable chap. Bertie was finally so frosty with Jeeves that he wanted to throw him out, but Jeeves brought his whiskey at exactly the right time, and had already placed his cigarettes next to the chair, and everything was so properly comfortable that he just could not do it.

Wodehouse created the literary version of the sitcom in this book. The writing is quite funny, presumably even more so if one is familiar with 1920s London culture, as there are clearly a lot of allusions to expectations about places, or what a certain style of names of books and films would imply about the quality of their context. However, the situations arise due to the persistent poor character of the people involved, and the social need to maintain appearances within the aristocracy. Bertie has no boundaries and is a pushover, while his aunt is overbearing and unilaterial puts responsibility on him for the behavior of others, while Bingo has a gambling addiction and poor choice in the quality of woman (which also being an awful choice for a husband) and is incapable of handling his own problems, and manipulates Bertie into doing it for him. Furthermore, there are a very limited number of plots: Bingo has courting a girl for whom he is unfit, gambling that turns out badly, undesired women pushed on Bertie by his aunt, and being held responsible for unresponsible people by his aunt. None of the characters, except for Jeeves, are worthy people. So the humor gets old after a while. However, one can hope that subsequent books have richer situations and some character growth, since Wodehose is well-regarded.