Wodehouse Aeternus

JEEVES AND THE TIE THAT BINDS by P.G. Wodehouse. 189 pages. Simon & Schuster. $5.95.

As usual, the plot begins to thicken no later than the top of page 2. Bertie Wooster has just escaped from the clutching hands of Madeline Bassett, Sir Watkyn's daughter, and is reflecting on the joys of freedom. "I've seldom had a sharper attack of euphoria," he tells Jeeves over the eggs and bacon. "I feel full to the brim of Vitamin B. Mind you, I don't know how long it will last. Too often it is when one feels fizziest that the storm clouds begin doing their stuff."

The inevitable thunderclap comes in the form of a telephone call from his Aunt Dahlia, who invites him down to her estate near Market Snodsbury. Who should be there but Madeline Bassett and her new fiance, the seventh Earl of Sidcup, not to mention the beautiful but bossy Florence Craye, a millionaire businessman called L.P. Runkle, and a bounder by the name of Bingley. Add to that Bertie, a mobile magnet for disaster, and you have literary lunacy of a high order--P.G. Wodehouse in near-perfect form. In no time at all, the Earl of Sidcup has caught Bertie in an innocent but compromising position with his fiancee, Florence has threatened to marry him, and Runkle has promised to jail him for the theft of his 17th century silver porringer.

The Perfect Martini. Experienced Wodehouse readers will remain cheerfully secure in the knowledge that Jeeves will cleverly spring Bertie from these cataclysms. So unique is the Wodehouse brand of humor, however, that to describe it is as thankless and bootless as describing the taste of the perfect martini. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse) can be compared to no other novelist, living or dead. His literary ancestor, instead, is the Roman dramatist Plautus, and, like Plautus, he is the manufacturer of a thousand comically crossed connections.

And what characters to cross them! Bertie and Jeeves; bumbling Lord Emsworth and the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig; the elegant sybarite Psmith, who believes that early rising leads to insanity; and that boozy American Biffen, who inspired one of the master's famous similes: "He quivered like a suet pudding in a high wind." Whatever it is, the Wodehouse formula is clearly simple--so simple that the secret will probably die with its creator.

That event, however, seems a remote calamity. As he celebrated his 90th birthday and the publication of his 90th-odd book last week, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse--known as "Plum" to his friends and "Plummie" to Ethel, his wife of 57 years--was still in good form, working on a new novel and surrounded by the inevitable dogs and cats in his house at Remsenburg, a serene little town on Long Island's south shore.

Unlike most writers, Wodehouse relaxes first and works later. After a lazy morning, he has lunch--"I don't feel bright until after lunch"--and then, a few minutes before 3:30, drops everything to sit before the TV set and wait for The Edge of Night, a soap opera that, for some inexplicable reason, never fails to enthrall him. At four, Wodehouse begins to write. If he is into a novel, he sits down at his desk with a legal pad and a Royal electric. "I used to be able to get down 2,000 words a day," he laments. "Now I'm happy if I can do 1,000." If he is still in the thinking stage, however, he sits in an armchair, his pipe rack beside him, and a dog or cat on his lap. Before arriving at his usual labyrinthine mystery-style plot--he is "awfully keen" on Agatha Christie and Rex Stout--he jots down something like 400 pages of notes. "I do like a book with an elaborate plot," he says. Old age? Piffle! "As long as I'm in a chair thinking, I seem to be as young as ever. It's only when I do a three-or four-mile walk that I find the difficulty."

Did the world Wodehouse writes about ever exist? "Oh. I think so," he says. "Before the first World War, you know, practically everyone had money. The Bertie Wooster type was a very familiar character in those days, and there were dozens of Jeeveses." Surely, though, no one wore the-spats he describes. "Oh, rather," he says--"Oh, rather" being an all-purpose phrase that can express either agreement or disagreement. "I used to go about in spats. They were wonderful things. They kept your ankles warm and your socks clean. The real name was spatterdashers, you know. They were rather a dressy thing, and you looked quite nice in them." He continues in a more somber voice: "It's very curious being out-of-date. I'm rather stuck with a world that doesn't exist anymore. I shouldn't think there's a Jeeves in England today."

Though Wodehouse is currently considering a trip back to England, his first since 1939, he seems a bit afraid of destroying fine memories, perhaps of ringing the doorbell of a stately home and being greeted by the mistress in curlers and the master in his undershirt. "Has it changed much?" he asks in a worried voice. He looks both pleased and relieved when the answer is no, not all that much.

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