When two people meet and magic happens, when the world will never be the same because two souls have come into contact with one another, when you see two people together and just know that they will be forever entwined in life, that is a Great Romance.
And sometimes it’s a Great Bromance.
Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves are such a Bromance. You can’t imagine one without the other. Actually, I’m not sure that Bertie would survive without Jeeves. Jeeves keeps him out of trouble. … Okay, well, Jeeves doesn’t exactly keep Bertie entirely out of trouble, but he sure does know how to limit the damage. And Bertie … well, Bertie gives Jeeves something to keep busy with.
For those of you who have no idea who I’m talking about, you’re missing out! Bertie Wooster and his indomitable manservant Jeeves are the creation of 20th century writer P.G. Wodehouse. If you’ve never read any Wodehouse, stop what you’re doing and fix that problem! Wodehouse is one of the most talented humor writers ever. He creates ridiculous worlds of British refinement and fills them with a variety of hilarious characters, high and low. His prose is so light and easy to digest that you might forget you’re reading a master at his finest.
And boy is he funny!
Bertie Wooster is a harebrained, clueless aristocrat who spends the majority of his time coming up with ideas that land him in all sorts of outlandish scrapes. He doesn’t have much of a profession besides dodging in and out of the whims of his aunts and either trying to win or escape from a variety of young women. He’s more or less everything the British aristocracy of the early 20th century didn’t want to admit that they were. Think Downton Abbey on laughing gas.
Jeeves is Bertie’s much cleverer valet. Along with having the most magnificent cure for a hangover known to man, he is handy with a good idea and rescues Bertie just about every time he turns around. And yet he does it in such a delightfully long-suffering way.
I don’t even want to think about what Bertie’s life would be like without Jeeves. He’d probably end up getting his head stuck up a chimney somewhere while trying to hide a family heirloom or something like that. That much is obvious.
But I personally think that Jeeves wouldn’t know what to do with himself if not for Bertie’s antics. In spite of his stoic demeanor, I’m pretty sure that Jeeves needs a lot more adventure in his life than your average stuffy aristocrat could provide. He’s got to be amused by Bertie on some level. And in spite of an occasional threat to leave Bertie’s service in the numerous books and short stories written about the pair, he never does.
And that’s what makes the perfect couple. The symbiosis between these two is the stuff of legend. You just can’t imagine one without the other.
For those who are fans of the TV show House, you’ve got to go out and watch some of the episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, the serialized TV version of some of Wodehouse’s stories that was produced in the 1990s. The series stars none other than Hugh Laurie in a superbly comic turn, and another favorite actor of mine, Stephen Fry. Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry have been friends since King Kong was a monkey and that chemistry definitely translates to the small screen. The characters as Wodehouse wrote them are hysterical. The performances of Laurie and Fry absolutely do those characters justice.
