Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

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Author: PG Wodehouse
Acquired in: May 2020 


During these times where the state of mind alternates between horrified to bottomless boredom, the wise words of Mary Poppins come to mind- A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine (a.k.a. isolation) go down. If you are scouting for books to read during this far-from-relaxing holiday, Wodehouse is the ultimate pick-me-up (other than ice cream of course). 

Wodehouse wrote many stories, broadly divided into the Jeeves series, Blandings Castle series and quite a few short stories. The book Aunts' Aren't Gentlemen comes under the weighty clan of Wooster and Jeeves. 

Bertram or Bertie Wooster is an affluent and rather feather-headed young man making most of the sunny days of youth in London. Whenever ominous clouds loom on the horizon, his trusty right-hand man, Jeeves, comes to his aid, accompanied by an appropriate quotation by some great dramatist, often Shakespeare or Keats. On such a fine day, he discovers pink spots on his chest, and much perturbed, he seeks the counsel of a doctor, who promptly prescribes a vacation in the countryside, away from the unhealthy city. And so Bertie and Jeeves head to Maiden Eggesford in the seaside town of Somerset, expecting an idyllic holiday. Alas, the unfortunate Bertie is a lodestone for calamity. Soon, the tranquil town is in an uproar with burglaries and sabotage and rivalry, all because of Bertie's cheeky but unscrupulous Aunt Dahlia. The inference derived from the hullabaloo? Aunts aren't gentlemen.

Anybody reading Wodehouse for the first time would probably be like one of those who 

'Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

    Silent, upon a peak in Darien'.

-Chapman's Homer by John Keats


Yes, I was one of those saucer-eyed chaps last year.


Most of Wodehouse's books are usually of the same vein, but I can't help disbelieving a bit at how much I enjoy them. Maybe it's Jeeves' unbelievable sagacity or the droll way Bertie seems to fall foul of most of London (quite a lot of people would heartily like to scoop his insides out), I just can't put my finger on why I love reading Wodehouse. Why don't you give it a try?


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