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P.G. WODEHOUSE 

A STUDY IN

SHERLOCK AND JEEVES

Many will have noticed the several similarities between Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson and Jeeves/Bertie Wooster, and it has been written about in Richard Usborne's Wodehouse at Work (1961), R.D.B. French's P.G. Wodehouse (1966) and in J. Ranolph Cox's Elementary, My Dear Wooster (The Baker Street Journal, June 1967).

The authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse were good friends and usually their stories were first printed in The Strand Magazine. Both series of stories are based on a narrator, a not too clever person (Wooster and Watson) who is contrasted against a brilliant mind able to solve any problem (Jeeves and Holmes). Exceptionally Jeeves and Homes were themselves the narrator, Jeeves in Bertie Changes His Mind and Holmes in The Blanched Soldier and The Lion's Mane.

There are also similarities between the charming bachelor apartments in Berkeley Mansions and in Baker Street, and often the characters in all haste, two by two, have to set off for places like Totleigh Towers, Steeple Bumpley, Pondicherry Lodge and Birlstone Manor - Jeeves and Wooster by two-seater, Holmes and Watson by train and hansom cab. As J. Randolph Cox wrote: "Holmes is the world's first consulting detective, Jeeves is the world's first consulting gentleman's gentleman."

There are many parallels in both style and plots. Holmes as well as Jeeves seems only once to have been engaged to be married.; Holmes to Cahrles Augustus Milverton's maid Agatha, and Jeeves to the older Bingo Little's cook in The Inimitable Jeeves. The latter was said to be a remarkable cook.

In Bring on the Girls Wodehouse tells that he had trouble finding a name for Jeeves and that he took the name 'jeeves' from a cricketeer. "It brings luck to name a person after a cricketeer. Sherlock and Holmes were both county cricketeers," Wodehouse wrote.

There can be little doubt that Doyle had a great influence on Wodehouse's style and in the latter's books there are allusions to Holmes again and again. On the other hand, Jeeves is never mentioned in the Canon.

In Over Seventy Wodehouse writes that he is a great reader of mystery stories but that "the insertion into them of a love interest is a serrious mistake" "Nobody appreciates more than myself the presence of girls in their proper place." "Indeed, it would scarcely be overstating it to say that her (the heroine's) mentality is that of a retarded chilkd of six.""What we all liked so much about Sherlock Holmes was his correct atrtitude in this matter of girls. True, he would sometimes permit them to call at Baker Street and tell him about the odd behaviour of their uncles or stepfathers … in a pich he might even allow them to marry Watson … but once the story was under way they had to retire to the background and stay there. That was the spirit."

In Right Ho, Jeeves Bertie Wooster tries himself to act as a detective and save his friend Gussie Fink-Nottles and though bertie suffers a bad case og hangovers he pulls himself together and says:

"One can't give the rasberry to a client. I mean, you didn't find Sherlock Holmes refusing to see clients just because he had been out late the night before atg Doctor Watsons birthday party."

In the same book Wooster says both "Elementary!" and "You know my methods, Jeeves. Apply them," and he remarks to his friend Tuppy: "Tell em the whole story in your own words, omtting no detail, however apparently slight, for one never knows how mimportant the most trivial detail may be." And in the same book when Jeeves presents a complicated plan:

"Is that based on psychology?"

"Yes, sir. Possibly you may recollect that it was an axiom of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective¹, Sherlock Holmes, that the instinct of everyone, upon an alarm of fire, is to save the object dearest to the."

To which Bertie remarks that there is hgrave danger of seeing Tuppy come out carrying a steak-and-kidney pie.

In The Inimitable Jeeves Bertie says:

A last example of Conanical influence is from a Blandings Castle story in which Lord Emsworth says to his brother Galahad:

"Miss Callendar has just found a letter from him."

"In the wastepaper basket?"

"No, actually in the library coal scuttle, oddly enough. I cannot imagine how it got there.!

"Sherlock Holmes used to keep his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper."

"I don't think I have ever seen a Persian slipper."

"Nor have I. It is my secret sorrow…"

A comparison between Holmes and Jeeves must end in the conclusion that neither Jeeves nor Holmes knew everything - but they always knew all that was necessary for them to know. They were almost infallible and they were in control of every situation. Both were British through and through - representatives for the England we like to remember.

A formidable team!