Speccie Second Thoughts
 

He'll need one, That's all I can say The word 'Doomed!' hovers in the air like a Wodehousian simile

No. 2794: on second thoughts

You are invited to give a helping hand to Sebastian Faulks, who will write the first-ever authorised Wodehouse sequel, and submit a scene from an imaginary sequel in which Wodeshousian characters of your choice debate the wisdom of such an enterprise (150 words max.). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 17 April.

They play into your hands, John, don't they? Just play into your hands.

“Some writer chappie called Faulks wants to call round, Jeeves. Says he’s gathering material for a book, just like the last one - what was the fellow’s name? Treehome, or something of the kind.”

“That would be the late Mr Wodehouse, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, Jeeves. Seemed a decent sort, apart from that pestilential pipe of his. Anyway, I’m relying on you to give this new fellow the lowdown on aunts, cow-creamers, and suchlike.”

Jeeves coughed discreetly, and said: “ I fear, sir, that it would not be my place to indulge in the kind of gossip that Mr Faulks will undoubtedly be seeking.”

I sighed. I knew all too well what was causing Jeeves’s frostiness. “About those mauve shirts, Jeeves ... Oh, dash it, you may give them to the poor.”

“Thank you, sir. I have already done so. I shall prepare afternoon tea for Mr Faulks in the kitchen.”

'I don't know what's come over me. I keep saying thingsI would never say and doing things I would never do. Has that happened to you, Jeeves?'
'Never, sir.'
'Yesterday I called Aunt Agatha an Old Trout. To her face, Jeeves.'
'She is an Old Trout, sir.'
'Great Heavens, Jeeves, you've caught it too. Did you hear yourself.
Horror spread over Jeeves's finely chiselled features like the yolk of a boiled egg when you put too much devil into your spoonwork. 'I fear, sir, we are in the grip on an unseen power.'
'You talk in riddles, Jeeves.'
'There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will.'
'That's well put, Jeeves. Your own?'
'The Swan of Avon, sir. There's a Mr Faulks to see you with a project he says may surprise us. He awaits without?'
'Without what, Jeeves?'
'Shall I throw the bastard out, sir?'

We Woosters are a placable tribe, but can be forthright when rudely awakened.
'What's that bally racket, Jeeves?'
'The noise sir? Birdsong.'
'Not that noise. I mean the one that sounded like a nine-inch shell exploding at close range.'
'A perceptive simile, sir. It was indeed such a shell, and uncomfortably near. Our new proprietor has placed us on the Western Front.'
'Why on earth should he do that?'
'He likes to inform his readers that war is both unpleasant and futile.'
'Don't they know that already?'
'He is not, sir, a man who fears stating the obvious.'
'Grim news, Jeeves. We'll come through, won't we?'
Jeeves's brow took on a furrowed look: 'He is, I fear, considerably fonder of pathos than the previous incumbent.'
At which point Lieutenant Owen entered, looking poetical: 'I say, Bertie, has it ever occurred to you that the stars are God's Very lights?'

Good 'uns, John and George.

George, I love the idea of their new proprietor relocating them on the Western Front.

(But I'm not sure that Jeeves was capable of anything as revealing as "a furrowed look", let alone "horror" ...)

Ah, that's the effect of the new writing, you see.

Ah, that's the effect of the new writing, you see.

“Your Aunt Charlotte has called to see you, sir. I have shown her into the library.”

I groaned. “Righty-ho, Jeeves, though I must say it’s confoundedly early ... But hang on a minute - I haven’t got an Aunt Charlotte!”

“That was Mr Faulks’s doing, sir. He felt that a new Aunt would rejuvenate the saga.”

“Good Lord! Bit of a bally nerve, what? I mean, inflicting supernumerary Aunts on chaps who are already infested with the blighters.”

“Authors can be somewhat dictatorial in these matters, sir.”

“And where’s old Bingo Little? Haven’t seen him for ages.”

“I regret to inform you, sir, that Mr Little is no more.”

“What! You don’t mean -?"

”Yes, sir. Mr Faulks has written him out of the story.”

“Well, that’s a bit stiff! Give these writer johnnies an inch, and they’ll take a what’s-its-name.”

“ ‘Ell’, sir.”

I was startled. I had never heard Jeeves swear before.

You're right, Brian. I shall start unfurrowing.

I say, Jeeves, have I been talking a lot of bally rot, recently?

I had not noticed any perceptible difference in your quotidian discourse, sir.

But, really, you know, I sense a strangeness in the old ambience.

Ah, in that case, sir, we may perhaps blame the readers of a leading weekly.

I say, dash it, why?

They have been set the task of anticipating Mr Faulks in his editing of your memoirs, sir.

What a fearful cheek! So the air is abuzz with blighters sticking their oars in, eh?

I think I perceive your meaning, sir,

Any idea who these scribbling merchants might be, Jeeves?

I believe the chief source of your discomfort, sir, is the notorious Whitworth-Allgar-Simmers syndicate.

Good Lord, Jeeves! Anything we can do?

Well, sir, as it is my afternoon off, I will go round and have a word with my Aunt Lucy . . .

Noted. Expect a visit from Lord Sidcup in attack mode.

Frankly, I would have said that the man Betts sounds more like a case for Sir Roderick Glossop, the well-known loony doctor. But Jeeves assures me that Mr Betts is as sane as the next man, although he did add a phrase that rather went over my head: "Mutatis mutandis". Perhaps I ought to follow Jeeves's example and eat more fish.

'Do you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?'

'No, sir.'

'Oh, well, then it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born that way there's no use worrying.'

'Precisely, sir.'

Aha, we've caught PGW out in one of his famous slips, writing prolifically over many decades & not always matching up his fictional data (not that it matters for comp purposes). I seem to recall that Conan Doyle, comparable in some respects, didn't consistently remember Watson's first name or where his wound was.

“Yo, Jeeves. You an’ me, we always bin tight, right?”
“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”
“Hey man, you my homie but you gotta wise up. Dis new dude, Faulks? He gonna update us, you dig?”
“I am a gentleman’s gentleman, sir. I am neither a gardener nor a highway engineer.”
“Man, you sure can be one helluva boregasm. You gotta see what dis guy is cookin’.”
“Is it fish,sir?”
“Jeeves, ma maaan. You gotta get wid it or dis guy’s gonna have yo ass.”
“I shall of course check my room but I can assure you donkeys will be remarkable by their absence.”
“Yo not gittin’ ma drift, Jeeves. Dis is no Y2K. Yo gotta learn to talk chimp else you gonna go from butler to butt-pirate.”
“Oh I see. Very well, sir, I shall try. By the way, your Aunt Dahlia is expecting you for lunch, erm, innit.”

Come, Jeeves, let’s have no more of this wailing and gnashing of teeth over our forthcoming sequel. Such displays are, and I speak frankly, quite unbecoming of you. "As you say, sir. Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that none of the present auguries appear to be particularly propitious. Oh, yes. Doom attends us 'like a Wodehouse simile’, and all that tosh - but that’s simply one old cove in Kent who’s been posting crank comments. “Perhaps, sir, but Fleet Street is hardly more encouraging. I believe the mildest sentiments I’ve read are: ‘lamentable folly’; ‘absurd anachronism’; and ‘relics best forgotten’. Great heavens, Jeeves, I'd no inkling our collective stock had plummeted so precipitously. “Oh,not us, sir. Though Mr. Faulks’s enterprise is the subject of some concern, we remain at the zenith of popularity. No, each of the passages I quoted was a commentary on the prospects of book publishing in general.”