#self-archive

It’s a good performance, though the house is not as accessible as this afternoon’s. Suddenly, from a few rows back, a mobile phone rings. Quick as a flash John says, ‘Was that a cell phone ringing, Jeeves?’ This gets a round of applause.

I hear myself replying, ‘Can’t have been sir, they haven’t been invented yet.’ More applause.

The show goes wonderfully from that point on.

At a very early stage, perhaps back in 1973, Wodehouse felt he had two conflicting novels jostling towards Blandings to be born. In the next sequence of our transcription, which Wodehouse has headed “Novel A” we see the exciting possibility of Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and Stiffy Byng turning up to set the plots at the castle.

...

NOVEL A Try it as a Jeeves story. 1. Bertie is staying at Blandings. A niece of Lord Emsworth’s is there, and she and Bertie are great pals. Note: Bertie cd propose to her, using that idea of trying to persuade girl by saying she wd have a husband she cd tell stories about. And she tells him she is engaged to a man he knows who lives in the neighbourhood. 2. Girl comes to him in tears and says she has quarrelled with man and engt broken. 3. Man’s house has fire. The inhabitants are asked to stay at Blandings. Make this plausible. Ld E wd object strongly, so heroine’s mother ought to be his sister Dora from Pigs Have Wings, and she over-rules him. So hero comes to Blandings. 4. Hero has to leave. Then jewel is stolen. (Whose?)  5. Heroine comes to Bertie — says she stole jewel to keep hero from leaving house. Lands B with it.    Good so far but no part yet for Jeeves or Ld E and pig. I don’t believe it’s a Jeeves story. I think man heroine loves goes to London, as residents aren’t compelled to stay, and run of story is heroine falling for chap she gives jewel to: (This wd make the first man a rotter of some kind.

Work on this) Heroine steals her mother’s jewel. If caught she will get sent to her Grandmother in Bexhill. X)  Title: Lord Emsworth Entertains.

... If a Blandings story, Bertie goes out at night with Ld E to see pig, Φ who has not been well. Φ Ld E wants him to see pig by moonlight. They come back, Ld E in lead. He absent mindedly shuts front door, leaving B locked out. Good) B. climbs in through a window and is seen by detective and becomes a suspect (OR climbs in and meets heroine Φ and proposes. She says she is engaged to neighbour.  Φ ‘Will you marry me. Not immediately of course. When we have had time to assemble a clergyman or two.)  

Try this. Stiffy is at Blandings. Also heroine. Stiffy wants to steal pig it has become such an obsession with Ld E. (get some stronger motive). Heroine wants to get hero to stay on. I don’t know if the man afraid of being knighted wd come into Novel A, but a good solution wd be if some acquaintance of him and his wife’s got made a Lord, and she tells him on no account to accept a knighthood.  XX)   Sequence 1. Fire. Man comes to Blandings. 2. He & heroine have row. 3. Girl steals jewels, gives them to hero to keep. 4. Hero gives them to Ld E. 5. Man leaves. The company haven’t been told to stay. 6. Hero asks Ld E for the package he gave him. Ld E either has forgotten and denies having any package or has lost his memory.

“I have come to the conclusion that almost any attempt on my part to transfer Jeeves from book to song would do Jeeves and Bertie no good at all. Naturally they would survive (they are immortal) but I would hate any failure on my part to be responsible for linking your magnificent characters with adverse criticism.” I received a most gracious reply: “Dear Mr Rice:

I appreciated all the nice things you said about me in your letter, and I am of course sad at the thought that your Jeeves show has fallen through, but, as the fellow said, that’s show business, and you were certainly wise to issue a nolle prosequi, as Jeeves would say, if you didn’t feel comfortable about going on with a job which was certainly about as tough a one they come.

I had a feeling that it was a bit dangerous doing Jeeves after your stupendous success with JCS [Jesus Christ Superstar]. I don’t know how the critics would have reacted, but there is nothing they like better than to jump on somebody, especially if young, who has started off with a big winner. ‘We’ll show him’, they say to themselves.

Great pity of course, but I’m sure you have been wise. I am halfway through a new Jeeves novel. It looks pretty good to me, but there is a block comedy scene coming along, and if that doesn’t come out all right, I’m sunk. So I am not cheering just yet.

All the best Yours

P.G. Wodehouse”