P. G. Wodehouse - Tumblr Posts

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Behold, the thing I said I was going to do! (x) Nobody asked me to, but I did it anyway. Huzzah

If you don't want to share your actual first initial, you can use a nickname or fictional character instead.

I really tried hard to make these sound as plausible as possible per the way Wodehouse usually names things, so I put an explanation of all my thought processes under the cut.

Also, many of the color category placements are based on speculation and best guesses. If you think you could make a case for the color you're wearing being in another category, you can go ahead and put it there. Category justifications and list of canon references also under the cut.

First names: This is pretty simple, there aren't that many posh British first names. They mostly reuse the same 15 or so over and over. I used this list (x) of canon Drones as my reference to work off of for all names.

Surnames: All of these are either real British surnames (found mostly here) or real British town names (found mostly here). From Googling, this appears to be how Wodehouse created most of his characters' surnames. I generally tried to avoid names that have already been used, with the exception of Phipps, because Plum really seemed to like that one.

When it comes to place names, he tends to be more liberal about making up generically British-sounding shit or swapping out the suffixes of real places. For example, there's a real town called Steeple Bumpstead, but Steeple Bumpleigh is completely fictional. So I believe my instruction above to mash two names together still squares with the Wodehouse school of naming things, Your Honor.

Nicknames: Did you know that it's REALLY hard to come up with random combinations of sounds that a) are funny, b) sound like plausible nicknames, and c) aren't too similar to funny sound combinations that Wodehouse has already used? Because I do now

Most of the Drones just have regular nicknames based on a syllable of their first or last name (Corky, Freddie, Algy, etc.). Rules of hockey nicknames seem to apply. This left me with a fairly small pool of non-name-based nicknames to use as examples. Other categories of nickname include "personal characteristics" (Barmy, Ginger), "random syllable followed by y" (Tuppy, Biffy, Oofy), "random syllables shoved together" (Boko), "food joke or pun" (Stilton, Biscuit), and "random thing" (Bingo). I tried to include nicknames from all of these.

I first assumed "Catsmeat" was just a random compound word, which is where Fishbowl and Mousetrap came from. On further searching I found out that his middle name is Cattermole, putting him more between the "based on real name" and "smushing random syllables" schools of thought. I kept them in partly because I thought they were funny and also because I can easily hear Bertie in my head telling Jeeves all about his old pal Mousetrap's romantic troubles. I imagine there are good stories behind them.

Colors: As stated above, placements are based on memory, conjecture, and cursory searches of the text. Some are pretty easy; Jeeves likes neutral tones. Some seem more context-based or depend on the specific shade. Pajamas seem to follow looser rules for acceptable colors, so I didn't count them.

Clothing items Jeeves has approved: shirts in light blue, mauve, and "dove colored"; brown or blue suit; tie with blue and red domino pattern; brown lounge with faint green twill (The Aunt and the Sluggard); blue suit with thin red stripe (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril)

Clothing items Jeeves has NOT approved: Blue suit with thin red stripe, confusingly; green tie that gives Bertie a bilious air (The Aunt and the Sluggard); "cheerful" pink tie (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest); purple socks (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril); scarlet cummerbund that Bertie tries to justify by telling Jeeves he saw someone wearing a yellow velvet suit downstairs (Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer (Jeeves wasn't swayed)); white mess jacket (Right Ho, Jeeves, but I don't think it was on the basis of color)

Jeeves seems to endorse blue and red on some occasions but not others, according to mysterious Jeeves rules. Conspicuous bright red clothing is obviously verboten (see: cummerbund).

There's little data available on green. He approved it once in the form of an accent color, but vetoed a green tie on another occasion. Might be shade-dependent or only acceptable in small amounts.

Lavender gloves and spats tend to show up when a character is dressed in formal wear. I take this to mean that it's a normal color for such, but possibly not for casual wear.

I couldn't find anything on orange, so I made a guess. I think it's a good guess.

I could only find one instance of Bertie wearing yellow: in "Jeeves in the Springtime" he tells Jeeves to bring his "yellowest shoes" and "the old green Homburg." Jeeves doesn't voice any objection in the text, but there's no way in hell Bertie got away with this.

The only thing I can find on pink (excluding pajamas) is the "cheerful" pink tie mentioned above. I decided to err on the side of conservatism and assume that all pink is a no-go, but it's possible Jeeves would be less hostile toward a lighter shade.

For expediency (ha) and because the clothing power struggles become less frequent as the series progresses, I mostly limited my color search to the short stories.

I cannot just casually make a fun little meme. It has to consume my life and turn into an entire research project.

And there you have it! Like share and subscribe, ring that bell (ha) etc. etc.

The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was the wrong number.

P. G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, "Do trousers matter?"' 'The mood will pass, sir.'

P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.

P. G. Wodehouse

The Wit of PG Wodehouse

“Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.”

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

“She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.”

“Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.”

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”

“Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.”

“As for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.”

“This is a bit steep, Jeeves!” “Approaching the perpendicular, sir.”

“Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city’s reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.”

“I’m not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

“There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottke going about in sea boots.”

“A slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion had reached saturation point.”

“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”

“This was not Aunt Dahlia, my good and kindly aunt, but my Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.”

“Like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest.”

“It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can’t help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.”

“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”

“Out on the course each morning you could see the representatives of every nightmare style that was ever invented. There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball and lull it into a false security by looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its guard. There was the man who wielded his mid-iron like one killing snakes. There was the man who addressed his ball as if he were stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were cracking a whip, the man who brooded over each shot like one whose heart is bowed down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with his mashie as if he were ladling soup.”

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”

“What ho!” I said. “What ho!” said Motty. “What ho! What ho!” “What ho! What ho! What ho!” After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when’.”

“I always advise people never to give advice.”

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

“It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.”

“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”

“If he had a mind, there was something on it.”

“The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.”

“Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.”

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

“He resembled a minor prophet who had been hit behind the ear with a stuffed eel-skin.”

“I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.”

“Before my eyes he wilted like a wet sock.”

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself ‘Do trousers matter?’ ” “The mood will pass, sir.”

“I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic.”

“It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t.”

Ah, Wodehouse. Truly, he is beyond compare. In all sorts of ways.

The Bystander, England, July 20, 1921

Things I watched in 2023 [6/12]: Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993)

"Jeeves, I'm sure that nothing is further from your mind, but you know, you have a way of saying, 'Indeed, sir' which gives the impression it is only a feudal sense of what is fitting which prevents you from substituting the words 'Says you!'"