P.G. Wodehouse: Five Complete Novels (Hardcover)

Imagine the surprise that many P.G. Wodehouse fans have when they open The Butler Did It and find that the butler in question is a Mr. Augustus Keggs, the English butler for one J.J. Bunyan, an American multimillionaire. But this Keggs is a worthy character who fans of Jeeves will find to be very rewarding.

The book has one of the most intriguing plots in all of the Wodehouse novels. As the story opens, it is the night of September tenth, 1929, just before the collapse of the American stock market. Bunyan is entertaining a group of bored millionaires who are having a hard time deciding how to spend the money they are raking in. Among his guests is Mortimer Bayliss, his art curator, who cannot help but want to stir up the philistines. Bayliss proposes that the men each put up $50,000 with the proceeds of the tontine to go to the last of their sons to marry. Naturally, they have to keep the whole matter a secret or deny themselves the possibility of ever having grandchildren.

The book then glides forward in time to the mid 1950s in England as the end game of the tontine arrives. Mr. Keggs is a fellow tenant with Lord Uffenham (who has fallen on hard times), whom he formerly served as a butler, and his niece, Jane Benedick. Mr. Kegg's own niece, Emma, is engaged to marry Roscoe Bunyan, son of the late J.J. Bunyan, of the tontine. Like the wise and omniscient butler he is, Mr. Keggs had recorded the conversation that night and knows all about the tontine. The tontine is down to Roscoe and one other. Mr. Keggs decides that the time has come to intercede.

Jane is engaged to one Stanhope Twine, a hopeless sculptor, but the two cannot marry because Twine hasn't the funds. Mr. Keggs suggests to Roscoe that Twine is the other member of the tontine, and that Twine will marry in a heartbeat if he can get hold of some money. Keggs suggests that Roscoe buy a percentage of Twine's future earnings in exchange for a payment now. Keggs naturally hopes to be well paid for his advice, and is thoroughly annoyed when Roscoe only gives him fifty pounds for information about a tontine payment of over a million dollars.

Here's where the plot begins to unravel. Twine takes the money and jilts Jane. Roscoe jilts Emma, and Cupid is not exactly being served.

But Keggs has been playing a game. Twine isn't really in on the tontine.

Next, Keggs sells the information to Roscoe for $100,000. Roscoe doesn't want to pay and hires a detective to get back the agreement as well as Roscoe's letters to Emma.

In the meantime, Bill Hollister falls head over heels for Jane and she for him . . . having known each other as children. Bill Hollister's name really is in the tontine, and Mr. Keggs has to try to sort out all of the romances and the money. Ultimately, he succeeds . . . but in a way that no reader could hope to anticipate. It's a marvelously funny story with great plot complications.

To my way of thinking, The Butler Did It is one of the five best P.G. Wodehouse books I have read.

Capital! Capital! Capital!

I divide people into those who love Wodehouse and those who just don't get it. Loving Wodehouse creates an indissoluble bond between friends. The only possible points of contention are which is the funniest book, which is the funniest incident and (difficult indeed) do you like the Bertie Wooster stories better or the Blandings Castle ones. (Psmith is lovely, but not a contender for best of the best.) At Sunday dinner my family could be reduced to helplessness by one of the six brothers and sisters or my mum or dad recounting a story from the latest book we'd read. Do you remember when Bertie looped back the last ring over the bathing pool causing Tuppy Glossop to drop into the water in full evening dress? Or when the ghastly Madeline Basset announced that the stars are God's daisy chain? I mean to say!

I'm not a slave to tradition but some traditions are worth honouring. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of giving my then 13 year old son his first Wodehouse novel. Like his mother and grandfather before him, he laughed until he cried and then asked for more. Thanks to Mr. Wodehouse's astonishing output, there are lots more. After 30 years, I still haven't read them all. But nothing can beat the pleasure of rereading (maybe for the 20th time) a tried and true favourite. Remember the time Gussie Fink-Nottle got pie-eyed before handing out the prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School? Remember when Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe tried to nobble the Empress of Blandings? Remember when Lord Emsworth's secretary got locked out and flung flowerpots at the window?

W! odehouse never claimed to write great literature, but he underestimated himself. What he wrote was absolutely perfect, the best of its kind. Escapism doesn't come any better than this. I will always be grateful to my dad for pointing me to the W's that day in the library.