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[tootsiemuppet.livejournal.com]

All right, now I'm definitely hogging and I fully expect shoes and rotten vegetables to be thrown at my head.

Still...


Jeeves on Bertie
I had heard gentleman in whose employment I have been speak in very much the same way before, and it had almost invariably meant that they were contemplating marriage. It disturbed me therefore, I am free to admit, when Mr Wooster addressed me in this fashion. I had no desire to sever a connexion so pleasant in every aspect as his and mine had been, and my experience is that when the wife comes in at the front door the valet of the bachelor days goes out at the back.

[Upon Bertie saying he wanted to invite his sister and nieces to live with them -- thereby indirectly putting an end to his and Jeeves' cosy two-person household.]
I concealed my perturbation, but the efforts to preserve my sang-froid tested my powers to the utmost.

I am fond of Mr Wooster and I came very near to melting as I looked at his face.

Mr Wooster is a young gentleman with practically every desirable quality except one [...] the gift of dealing with the Unusual Situation.

"You will find Mr Wooster," he was saying to the substitute chappie, "and exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman."

Jeeves smiled gently.
(I had to add the one time he actually smiled. ^.^)

Bertie on Jeeves

Now, touching this business of Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is why not? The man’s a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone, I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me.

"You know, Jeeves, you're by way of being rather a topper."

"One in a million, by Jove!"

[After giving up the pink tie:]
I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.

"Do you know, Jeeves, you're -- well, you absolutely stand alone."

"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."

"And shave off my moustache."
There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice.

[Leaving for an hotel to allow Jeeves to pretend to be Rocky's valet for a short while.]
I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive chappies out of the old homestead in the snow.
‘Good-bye, Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Good-bye, sir.’

[Alone and Jeeves-less in the hotel]
I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn't forgotten a thing in his packing. Everything was there, down to the final stud. I'm not sure this didn't make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn't the heart to go out to supper anywhere. I just went straight up to bed. I don't know when I've felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end of the wire said 'Hallo!' five times, thinking he hadn't got me.

"But Rocky, old top, it's too bally awful! You've no idea what I'm going through in this beastly hotel without Jeeves!"

Next morning Jeeves came round; It was all so home-like when he floated noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.

The frightful loss of Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery.

"You're always smoking," she said, a little too much like a lovingly chiding young bride for my comfort. "I wish you wouldn't. It's so bad for you. And you ought not to be sitting out here without your light overcoat. You want someone to look after you."
"I've got Jeeves."

He bowed in a gratified manner. I beamed. And while we didn’t actually fall on each other’s necks, we gave each other to understand that all was well once more.

Jeeves starts his holiday this morning. He’s off to Herne Bay for the shrimping, and I’m feeling like that bird in the poem who lost his pet gazelle.

… but it’s different with Jeeves. Right from the first day he came to me, I have looked on him as a sort of guide, philosopher and friend.

If it hadn't been for the cummerbund business earlier in the day I could have sobbed on Jeeves's neck and poured out all my troubles to him.

"Bertie," she said, as if she had just remembered it, "what is the name of that man of yours -- your valet?"
"Eh? Oh, Jeeves."
"I think he's a bad influence for you," said Honoria. "When we are married, you must get rid of Jeeves."
It was at this point that I jerked the spoon and sent six of the best and crispiest sailing on to the sideboard, with Spencer gambolling after them like a dignified old retriever.
"Get rid of Jeeves!" I gasped.
"Yes, I don't like him."
"I don't like him," said Aunt Agatha.
"But I can't. I mean -- why, I couldn't carry on a day without Jeeves."
"You will have to," said Honoria. "I don't like him at all."
"I don't like him at all," said Aunt Agatha. "I never did."
Ghastly, what? I'd always had an idea that marriage was a bit of a wash-out, but I'd never dreamed that it demanded such frightful sacrifices from a fellow.

I pushed on to the old flat, seething like the dickens. One thing I was jolly certain of, and that was that this was where Jeeves and I parted company. A topping valet, of course, none better in London, but I wasn’t going to allow that to weaken me. I buzzed into the flat like an east wind … and there was the box of cigarettes on the small table and the illustrated weekly papers on the big table and my slippers on the floor, and every dashed thing so bally right, if you know what I mean, that I started to calm down in the first two seconds. It was like one of those moments in a play where the chappie about to steep himself in crime, suddenly hears the soft, appealing strains of the old melody he learned at his mother’s knee. Softened, I mean to say. That’s the word I want. I was softened.
And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients, and there was something about the mere look of the man.
However, I steeled the old heart and had a stab at it.
‘I have just met Mr Little, Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘He – er – he told me you had been helping him.’
‘I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?’
‘Thanks. Er – Jeeves.’
‘Sir?’
‘Another time…’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, nothing… Not all the soda, Jeeves.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He started to drift out.
‘Oh, Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘I wish… that is… I think… I mean… Oh, nothing!’
‘Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?’
‘No. I’ll dine in.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, nothing!’ I said.
‘Very good, sir,’ said Jeeves.

I checked him sharply. There are limits, and we Woosters recognise them.
“Gussie, are you suggesting that I prod Stiffy’s legs?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not going to.”
“Why not?”
“We need not delve into my reasons,” I said, stiffly.

“Bertie, could one kiss Jeeves?”
“Certainly not.”
“Shall I kiss you?”
“No, thank you.”

“And who may you be, my man?”
“That’s exactly what he is – my man. May I say my right-hand man?”
“Thank you, sir.”

He opened the door. “Here, you!”
It was a most improper way of addressing, Jeeves.
[Love when Bertie gets all huffy and protective over Jeeves.]

‘Girls will be girls.’
‘Yes, but I wish they wouldn’t.'

‘You wished to see me, sir?’ he said.
‘You can put it even stronger, Jeeves. I yearned to see you.’


Anything Out Of Context.. hehe
‘Jeeves!’ I ejaculated.

‘Don’t,’ said Mr Wooster wistfully. ‘You make my mouth water!’

"Surely he plays with other boys?"

"There is no doubt that Jeeves's pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. It's something he puts in them -- the Worcester sauce or something."
(Simply put here because the first time I read this, I read 'The Wooster sauce' and that just brought forth all kinds of entertaining pictures... I'll never look at Worcester sauce the same way now.)

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?’”

‘You know what they say in books.’
‘Who say what in books?’
‘Detectives and people like that. Bertie, are you going straight now?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You know what I mean. Have you given up stealing things?’
I laughed one of those gay debonair ones.
(Just me being amused that to the question of whether he’s going straight, Bertie answers with a gay laugh. Sue me.)



Hee, that was fun.

There's a goodish bit at the end of 'Jeeves and The Tie That Binds' as well, I know, but I'd only borrowed that one from the library and didn't write any quotes down. :-/