Line #117 Funny/JeevesAndWooster


1	[[foldercontrol]]
2
3	!! The Books
4
5	There is a certain something in P. G. Wodehouse's precise articulation of lunacy that brings the reader moments of great jollity. In other words, HilarityEnsues at least once on every page.
6
7	!! Works with their own pages:
8	[[index]]
9	* ''Funny/ThankYouJeeves''
10	* ''Funny/TheCodeOfTheWoosters''
11	* ''Funny/RightHoJeeves''
12	* ''Funny/JeevesAndTheFeudalSpirit''
13	* ''Funny/JoyInTheMorning''
14	* ''Funny/StiffUpperLipJeeves''
15	* ''Funny/MuchObligedJeeves''
16	* ''Funny/AuntsArentGentlemen''
17	[[/index]]
18
19	[[folder: My Man Jeeves]]
20	* One of the most hilarious early-morning conversations in fiction:
21	--> "[[CharacterCatchphrase What ho!]]" I said.
22	--> "What ho!" said Motty.
23	--> "What ho! What ho!"
24	--> "[[OverlyLongGag What ho! What ho! What ho!]]"
25	--> After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
26	* "I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare -- or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad -- who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping."
27	* Bertie meets the husband of one of his ex-girlfriends.
28	--> Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like." Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have preferred ''this'' to me!"
29	* Bertie reflecting on the refining effect of suffering in ''The Aunt and the Sluggard''.
30	--> As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
31	* "The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways. Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite."
32	[[/folder]]
33
34	[[folder: The Inimitable Jeeves]]
35	* Bingo falls for a young woman with poor taste in neckwear.
36	--> 'You see I'm wearing the tie,' said Bingo.\
37	'It suits you beautiful,' said the girl.\
38	Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner.
39
40	*
41	--> '''Bertie:''' What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?
42	--> '''Jeeves: '''Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake.
43	* "We Woosters do not lightly forget. [[ByNoIMeanYes At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that]] - but not an absolutely bally insult like the above."
44	* Bertie reflects on his place in the family.
45	--> As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.
46	* The [[TricksterTwins twins]] arrive.
47	--> '''Claude:''' Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time.
48	--> "[[LampshadeHanging I expect it will seem a good long time,]]" said Eustace, philosophically.
49	* Bertie displays his complete lack of tact yet again.
50	--> '''Jeeves:''' [Harold] is of an outspoken disposition, and had made an opprobrious remark respecting my personal appearance.
51	--> '''Bertie:''' What did he say about your appearance?
52	--> '''Jeeves''' ''(austerely):'' [[BlatantLies I have forgotten, sir]]. But it was opprobrious.
53	* Bingo falls in love (again) and spends the night outside what he thinks is the girl's window. [[EpicFail Turns out it's the butler's window.]]
54	* ''The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace''. All of it. Especially when the titular twins have just been expelled from Oxford and Bertie thinks they're on their way to South Africa... and then Claude walks into Bertie's room.
55	--> I'd been having so many distorted nightmares since I had dropped off to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of them, and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.
56	** Claude reveals that he's fallen in love with a girl called Marion Wardour, so he "gave Eustace the slip at Waterloo" to come back in hopes of seeing her again. Then he starts talking about Eustace, who he thinks is on a boat bound for South Africa.
57	--> '''Claude:''' Very sound fellow, Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can't explain, I've got a slight headache this morning.
58	--> '''Bertie:''' ''[narrating]'' And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill to look at.
59	** Eustace reveals that he's in love with Marion too, and he thinks Claude is en route to South Africa. [[HilarityEnsues Then Claude returns]].
60	--> ...[Claude] came in in person, looking like a giant refreshed. There's no doubt that Jeeves's pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. [...] Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.
61	** And then, while the twins are staying with Bertie and trying to see which one of them Marion will choose, [[OhCrap Aunt Agatha comes to visit]], and as far as she knows the two of them are in South Africa.
62	--> '''Aunt Agatha:''' ...What I was thinking was, are [Claude and Eustace] safe?
63	--> '''Bertie:''' Are they what?
64	--> It seemed such a rummy adjective to apply to the twins, they being about as innocuous as a couple of sprightly young tarantulas.
65	** Aunt Agatha then reveals that Uncle George saw what he thought was Eustace's ghost.
66	--> '''Aunt Agatha:''' You do think those poor, dear boys are safe, Bertie? They have not met with some horrible accident?
67	--> It made my mouth water to think of it, but I said no, I didn't think they had met with any horrible accident. I thought Eustace ''was'' a horrible accident, and Claude about the same, but I didn't say so.
68	** Then poor Marion, the object of the twins' affection, comes to call.
69	--> '''Marion:''' Your cousins not at home, Bertie?
70	--> '''Bertie:''' No, thank goodness!
71	--> '''Marion:''' Then I'll tell you where they are. They're in my sitting-room, glaring at each other from opposite corners, waiting for me to come in. Bertie, this has got to stop.
72	--> '''Bertie:''' You're seeing a good deal of them, are you?
73	--> '''Marion:''' I can't move a step without tripping over one or both of them. Generally both. They've taken to calling together, and they just settle down grimly and try to sit each other out. It's wearing me to a shadow.
74	** Claude gives Marion a cigarette case. Then Aunt Agatha visits again, and Bertie learns that it's Uncle George's cigarette case, and Claude stole it.
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder: Carry On, Jeeves]]
78	* "What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so bally discouraging for the great city."
79	* Bertie's descriptions of people or things are always good for a laugh.
80	--> He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner-gong due any moment.
81	* Bertie meets Sir Roderick.
82	--> If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.
83	--> "How are you, how are you, how are you?" I said, overcoming a slight desire to leap backwards out of the window.
84	[[/folder]]
85
86	[[folder: Very Good, Jeeves]]
87	* "The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number."
88	* "Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove."
89	* Bertie forgets his quotations again.
90	--> Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.
91	* In ''The Ordeal of Young Tuppy'' Jeeves demonstrates that when dealing with [[UpperClassTwit Bertie]], you have to be a CaptainObvious.
92	--> '''Bertie:''' I will read [Tuppy's telegram] to you. [...] ''When you come tomorrow, bring my football boots. Also, if humanly possible, Irish water-spaniel. Urgent. Regards. Tuppy''. What do you make of that, Jeeves?
93	--> '''Jeeves:''' As I interpret the document, sir, Mr. Glossop wishes you, when you come tomorrow, to bring his football boots. Also, if humanly possible, an Irish water-spaniel. He hints that the matter is urgent, and sends his regards.
94	--> '''Bertie:''' Yes, that is how I read it. But why football boots?
95	--> '''Jeeves:''' Perhaps Mr. Glossop wishes to play football, sir.
96	** And in the same story, Bertie's description of Tuppy during the climactic [[RugbyIsSlaughter rugby match]].
97	--->He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realized how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner's. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn't be simpler just to throw him away.
98	* In "Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit", Jeeves advises Bertie against pursuing Bobbie Wickham, calling her "volatile and frivolous." Later in the story Bertie tells Jeeves that he's about to eat his words: Bobbie just gave him an ''excellent'' plan to prank Tuppy Glossop by puncturing his hot water bottle, "[[ComicallyMissingThePoint and this is the girl you were calling volatile and frivolous.]]"
99	* In ''The Love That Purifies'', Bertie's cousins Thomas and Bonzo are the subject of a bet: whichever is the most well-behaved until Mr. Anstruther leaves gets five pounds. And then there's TheReveal of ''why'' they're both so well-behaved: Bonzo has fallen in love with Lillian Gish, and Thomas is in love with Greta Garbo. [[HilarityEnsues And then Sebastian Moon comes along with a crush on Clara Bow...]]
100	* Also in ''The Love That Purifies'', [[spoiler: Thomas finally snaps]] and tries to throw a bucket of water at Sebastian. Unfortunately, Sebastian dodges, and poor Mr. Anstruther gets it instead.
101	--> [Thomas], for some reason plainly stirred to the depths of his being, moved adroitly to one side and, poising the bucket for an instant, discharged its contents. And Mr Anstruther, who had just moved to the same side, received, as far as I could gather from a distance, the entire consignment. In one second, without any previous training or upbringing, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire.
102	[[/folder]]
103
104	[[folder: The Mating Season]]
105	* A memorable scene occurs when Police Constable Dobbs, in hot pursuit of Gussie Fink-Nottle, chases him up a tree.
106	--> And what [Gussie] expected to get out of this maneuver, only his diseased mind knew. Constable Dobbs may not have been one of Dorsetshire's finest thinkers, but he was smart enough to stand under a tree. And this he proceeded to do. Apparent in the lines of his broad back was the determination to fight it out on these lines if it took all summer [...] I closed my eyes to shut out the painful scene. When I re-opened them [...] I beheld the officer flat on his back in the middle of the road, while Jeeves was replacing something in his pocket which instinct told me was small, serviceable, and made of India-rubber.
107	--> "I coshed the officer, sir," said Jeeves respectfully. "It seemed to me the best course to pursue."
108	* "In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well."
109	* Bertie shows Gussie the script for the comic play he wants Gussie to act in. Gussie is not impressed.
110	--> '''Gussie:''' Well, let me put you quite straight, Wooster, as to what my stand is in this matter. I shall not say "Begorrah". I shall not say "Faith and begob". I shall not assault policemen with an umbrella. In short, I absolutely and positively refuse to have the slightest association with this degraded buffoonery.
111	* "[Dame Daphne] dismissed me with a gesture of loathing, as if I had been a green-fly that had fallen short of even the very moderate level of decency of the average run-of-the-mill green-fly."
112	* Bertie is appalled to hear Gussie hasn't written to Madeleine.
113	--> Only once in my career had I experienced an emotion equally intense, on the occasion when Freddie Widgeon at the Drones, having possessed himself of a motor horn, stole up behind me as I crossed Dover Street in what is known as a reverie and suddenly tooted the apparatus in my immediate ear.
114	* Gussie [[ItMakesSenseInContext puts frogs in Constable Dobbs' bedroom]].
115	--> Every mouse in my interior sprang into renewed life. With a strong effort I managed to refrain from howling like a lost soul. It seemed incredible to me that this super-goof should have gone through life all this while without fetching up in some loony bin. You would have thought that some such establishment as Colney Hatch, with its talent scouts out all over the place, would have snapped him up years ago.
116	[[/folder]]
117
118	[[folder: Ring for Jeeves]]
119	* "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."
120	[[/folder]]
121
122	[[folder: Jeeves in the Offing]]
123	* Bertie grumbling about how everyone makes him do the things they don't want to.
124	--> Whenever there is a job to be taken on of a kind calculated to make Humanity shudder, the cry goes up, "Let Wooster do it."
125	* Bertie saying that Aunt Dahlia could never [[ItMakesSenseInContext read in the paper that he'll be shot at sunrise]]... because [[ComicallyMissingThePoint he's never up that early]].
126	* Bobbie's mother calls Bertie and is very upset over something she read in The Times. Confused, Bertie looks at the paper to find out what it is, and discovers someone has sent in an announcement of his engagement to Bobbie, who he most definitely is ''not'' engaged to.
127	** Followed by TheReveal that Bobbie herself put the announcement in. Why? She's in love with Kipper, one of Bertie's friends, but [[DatingWhatDaddyHates her mother wouldn't approve of him, so she took advantage of the fact that her mother approves of Bertie even less]] to fake an engagement to him, then fake a break-up so she can get together with Kipper. Ridiculously overcomplicated? Yes. Inevitably going to go wrong? Yes. Hilarious? ''Yes''.
128	* Bertie is so startled at seeing Aunt Dahlia's new "butler" (otherwise known as Roderick Glossop) that he spills his tea... all over his former headmaster.
129	--> ...we all know what happens when you start violently while holding a full cup of tea. The contents of mine flew through the air and came to rest on the trousers of Aubrey Upjohn, MA, moistening them to no little extent. Indeed, it would scarcely be distorting the facts to say that he was now not so much wearing trousers as wearing tea.
130	* Aunt Dahlia discovers how difficult it is to talk to [[TheDitz Phyllis]].
131	--> '''Phyllis:''' ''[about her father taking libel action against a newspaper]'' It's this book Daddy wrote about preparatory schools. He wrote a book about preparatory schools. Did you know he had written a book about preparatory schools?
132	--> '''Aunt Dahlia:''' Hadn't an inkling. Nobody tells me anything.
133	--> '''Phyllis:''' Well, he wrote this book about preparatory schools. [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment It was about preparatory schools.]]
134	--> '''Aunt Dahlia:''' About preparatory schools, was it?
135	--> '''Phyllis:''' [[OverlyLongGag Yes, about preparatory schools.]]
136	--> '''Aunt Dahlia:''' [[DeadpanSnarker Thank God we've got that straightened out at last. I had a feeling we should get somewhere if we dug long enough.]]
137
138	* Bertie informs Jeeves that a dachshund is currently among the guests at his aunt's.
139	--> '''Bertie:''' Nice dog. Wears his ears inside out. Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out, Jeeves?\
140	'''Jeeves:''' I could not say, sir.
141	[[/folder]]
142
143	[[folder: Other stories]]
144	* Jeeves reads over Bertie's article on "What the Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing" for ''Milady's Boudoir'':
145	-->I watched him narrowly as he read on, and, as I was expecting, what you might call the love-light suddenly died out of his eyes. I braced myself for an unpleasant scene.\
146	"Come to the bit about soft silk shirts for evening wear?" I asked carelessly.\
147	"Yes, sir," said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he'd been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
148	* "If that doesn't leave me without a stain on my character, well, then I don't know what it does leave me without a stain on."
149	[[/folder]]
150
151	!!The TV series
152	* See [[Funny/JeevesAndWoosterSeries here]].

Context Funny / JeevesAndWooster