A Review by
STEVEN STEINBOCK:


P. G. WODEHOUSE – The Code of the Woosters. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 7 October 1938. US First Edition: Doubleday Doran, hc, 1938. Reprinted many times.

P. G. WODEHOUSE Code of the Woosters

TV Adaptation: The book is the basis for the first two episodes of the second season of the ITV series Jeeves and Wooster. “The Silver Jug (or Jeeves Saves the Cow Creamer)” 14 April 1991, and “The Bassetts’ Fancy Dress Ball (or, A Plan for Gussie)” 21 April 1991.

    A rip-roaring novel length yarn in which Bertram Wooster and his faithful manservant end up at the stately Totleigh Towers, where Bertie finds himself deep in the soup trying to help friends and family, and it is up to Jeeves to pull him out.

    It all starts when Aunt Dahlia asks Bertie to procure a silver cow creamer from an antique dealer, and in the process of helping his “old flesh-and-blood,” he crosses paths with Sir Watkyn Bassett who suspects him of larceny. Bertie goes face to face with a hat-stealing curate, a fascist with a secret, and an Aberdeen Terrier with an attitude.

    The book has a few funny literary references. Bertie asks Jeeves about “the cat chap” (Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth’s comment: “Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ Like the poor cat i’ the adage.”)

    The novel ends with Bertie falling asleep as he tries to recall the words of Robert Browning, something with a snail and a wing and all being right with the world. When you finish reading a book like this, you know that the snail is on the wing, and the lark on the thorn, and God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world