Google has failed me… again. P’raps I just didn’t search long enough.
In one of the Jeeves stories (or novels), the plot hinges on a club for gentlemen’s gentlemen to which Jeeves belongs. They keep some sort of archive or record, each butler/valet writing about his master; the book is stolen, and the implications for blackmail are tremendous.
Anyone remember which story, and, more important, the NAME of the club for the gentlemen’s gentlemen?
Much appreciated.
Jeeves is a member of the Junior Ganymede, and the plot you describe sounds like Much Obliged, Jeeves.
This is correct. Something similar happened much earlier in Code Of The Woosters (Wodehouse notoriously, especially toward the end of his life, recycled plots and even verbatim bits of dialogue) – IIRC, Jeeves himself purloined information from the book to thwart the villainous Spode, who was running for office on a quasi-fascist platform, sabotaging his campaign by revealing to his thuggish right-wing tough guy supporters that the source of Spode’s vast fortune was the manufacture of . . . ladies’ undergarments? Something along those humiliating lines.
Eulalie!
“You can’t be a successful dictator and design women’s underclothes…one or the other, not both…”
Wasn’t this plot used in the Jeeves & Wooster TV series?
I’ve read all the Jeeves books AFAIK, but they do tend to run together–I have no idea which title corresponds to which story–or version of a story!
How right you are, Jeeves!
And few people look good in brown shorts.
A reference, for those who haven’t yet read it, to how Spode ridiculously had to outfit his acolytes in signature brown football pants “because all the good shirt colors were taken.” Not surprisingly I just confirmed that Code Of The Woosters was published in 1938 when Hitler and Mussolini and their various-colored-shirt-clad followers were easy pickings for satire.
And some meta-trivia, Ganymede was “cup-bearer to the gods” in Greek mythology, so an ideal namesake for a club for servants.
Also, Bertie’s club is popular among the idle rich, and is called “The Drones”.
It was. I saw that episode on the TV a couple of weeks ago.
I was just discussing the Junior Ganymede the other day, lamenting the fact that I have No Club. Clubless I stand before you, and, having no club, I am deprived of an overstuffed Club Chair, a spot of brandy, and a copy of the Times after an arduous day in the City…
Yes, it was. I kept thinking: “I’ve read that book, but I haven’t read Much obliged, Jeeves.” Of course I had seen the episode, and I was mixing things up.
Well I say, I mean, dash it. That all… something or other. How’s that saying go? “something, something and something.” ?
Well, sit down and have Jeeves serve you a plate of the old B and E, and it will come to you.
Thanks so much, Attack from the 3rd dimension, that’s it! Junior Ganymede was what I was searching for and couldn’t find in my befuddled brain. Much obliged!
There is a problem that all the stories seem to run together in so many ways, so I can never distinguish one from t’other.
Obviously one would need more fish in one’s diet.
What ho!
Always a pleasure to be of service, sir.
I thought Spode’s group wore black shorts, as a play on Mussolini’s black shirts, as well as Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, who also wore black shirts?
“Black footer bags, you mean? How foul.”
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Men’s suspenders, I thought?