Jeeves Takes Charge

by P.G. Wodehouse

The rare pleasure of a long laugh with an old friend is commonplace in the company of P.G. Wodehouse. Edward Duke brilliantly performs an entire cast of characters in these delightful stories. Adapted from Duke's stage show. Unabridged

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Classics, Short Stories, Comedy, British Literature, Adult Fiction

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[W · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read about Wodehouse's other characters,I don't get the same level of enjoyment as I get from Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.They reign supreme in the Wodehouse universe.

This short story collection includes a story about the very beginning when Jeeves first arrives to work with Bertie,and dazzles him with his intelligence straightaway.

He even saves Bertie from getting married to Florence Craye.Later,Wooster finds himself in a similar predicament with Honoria Glossop as Aunt Agatha pushes for the union.Bertie is saved again,though it takes some doing.

His prospective mates and the evil Aunt Agatha would even want him to do the unthinkable and to get rid of Jeeves !

But Jeeves would always be there to put the finishing touches to the schemes that test the Wooster soul !

Top-notch entertainment.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bertie meets Jeeves

In this story, Jeeves becomes Bertie's man. Actually Jeeves, in the guise of valet, takes charge and manages Bertie Wooster and his affairs.. The result leads to years of hilarity. An excellent place to begin reading the saga.

[Diamond Cowboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story very much. It tells of Jeeves first experience with his Master Berty. He handles things beautifully.

[wasteland baby · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This was getting perfectly rotten. I didn't want to murder the kid, and yet there didn't seem any other way of shifting him. I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea."
THE OLD LEMON THROBBED FIERCELY
oh mr wodehouse we are going to get on famously

[Vaishali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic ! My first Wodehouse book, and I am hooked. Sarcastic, snappy... I could hang out with Jeeves all day... especially given Nick Martin’s excellent narration : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76sAH...

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."

Firstly I should point out that Bertie Wooster & Jeeves are two of the greatest literary characters ever drawn IMHO. Their stories have a comfortable familiarity that I love to turn to periodically. In Jeeves takes Charge we are given a series of inter-linked short stories that follows the usual formula where dim-witted but likeable Bertie gets involved when one of idle rich friends gets involved with an unsuitable girl (unsuitable in the eyes of their families who disapprove of the union) and the ever resourceful Jeeves must come up with a plan to save the day.

Some readers may see these stories as flimsy and superficial but they will still finish with a smile on their faces. Now, as I said previously, I usually love these books but this one didn't quite hit the mark for me. There is still the usual wonderfully witty and tight prose, not a word is wasted, but as these are short stories rather than one full-length one I felt that it was missing some of it's customary humour, it was a series of chortles than that full blown guffaws.

[Alexey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is one of the best diversions, imho.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read by Jonathan Cecil

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Bertie Wooster & Jeeves stories have a comfortable predictability and familiarity. In fact even more than any other series that I can think of, these stories follow a formula. Dim-witted but likeable Bertie, a young, rich, and thoroughly idle fellow, gets involved with a friend (or a girl) in some questionable business. Very often the visit of, or travel to the home of, a difficult older relative is involved. This relative’s approval is necessary for Bertie’s friend to continue receiving his inheritance, or some other type of complication, and something has to be hidden from the relative. This is where the resourceful and shrewd Jeeves intervenes and comes up with a plan. But the relative figures things out, and all is about to be lost when Jeeves spontaneously saves the day with some clever maneuver.

This type of story telling has clearly been usurped by television these days, and I found the repetitiveness a little grating. Call it superficial, or even trite. No matter, it is impossible to dislike these genial and charming little fictions which bring us back to uncomplicated characters and a pleasant world which never was. This is not great art, but it is good entertainment, and I smiled too, just as so many others have.

This was superbly read by Edward Duke, and it contains several stories from the collection titled "Carry on, Jeeves."

[Bogdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading this as a part of the omnibus collection "The world of Jeeves". It is, nevertheless, the only way to get properly introduced to the "gentlemen" in Wodehouse's fiction. To those who aren't acquainted to the Jeeves-related stirring and unpredictable scenarios, the substance in the humor, along with Bertie and his moralistic buffoonery, although it is a recommendation that moves counter to my beliefs, I strongly advise to watch the series directed by Clive Exton, in which the two are portrayed by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Especially if you aren't English, you will find this as the perfect boost in lecturing Wodehouse, afterwards, having their constant image and role play in every phrase you read; you might even hear them at night when trying your best to do something else. Ha!

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight out funny, hilarious, and it mirrors life.

Made into television episodes with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.

💥 Recommended.
📺

[Sandeep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeeves takes charge - PG Wodehouse
Rating 4.25/5

Very recently this year, I was very critically vocal about PG Wodehouse books/works especially Bertie and Jeeves one's. I felt myself compelled to read about books which included social issues - which I felt completely lacking in PGWodehouse books, though it was written at the time of World War or early part of 20th century. I felt discouraged by the stereotypical plots of Bertie and Jeeves - falling in love, falling out of love, confusions, these over simplified plots I felt outdated. But I suppose time has come to eat my own words!

After having busy workdays for quite a long stretch, having faced a reading slump - owing to some serious books (which can rather be categorized as text books in-fact), I really wanted to escape the madness of the society and its social obligations and complications at-least while I read a book and rather dash of somewhere to a place more simpler.

And the very retreat I found first, coming to my mind was the very same book/author which I was critical about not reading. Yes - it did not disappoint. This book was such a pleasant read, not only it put me in a different zone, era, it brought back my much needed reading rims.

Jeeves takes charge happens to be a collection of funny short stories' or episodes borrowed from different books (1-14). What is more interesting is - it captures multitude of such incidents which have been the highlight of other Jeeves books. For example Sir Fredrick Glossop and his hat snatching incident by the twins, hiding the cat incident. Bingo Richard Little's attempts at falling in love and Bertie's attempts at betting at sermon's, horses and village races, all these ring in much needed laughter.

As usual the winner in all these episodes is none other than Jeeves- who with his impeccable observations, connections yield the much desired outcome - not to forget the mannerisms.

What I really gain from PGWodehouse books apart from a good amount of laughter - is the mannerisms, the words, the language which I dream to employ in my own conversations, the metaphors, the simile's - the description of man and animal to innate things which they likely resemble, they are just priceless. The complete sentences are a dream to read about, the mannerisms are very much waiting to be practiced, but all in all - a worthwhile read!

I only have to say - it feels good to regurgitate the incorrectly swallowed judgmental pill about PGWodehouse and chuck in to much more of such books when in time of dire need.

Cheers,

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first time reading the story in print, although I've heard it several times through an Audible collection. While this story is not the first to be published, it is narratively the first story, as Bertie recollects six years earlier when Jeeves became his valet.
The story is well-written and intriguing. Whether you read, listen, or both, it flows well and keeps you riveted. Although it is not the first published story, I (like several others I've read in blogs and social media) think that this story should be read first as it is chronologically first in the storyline.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

British humor. Jeeves may be one of the best characters I've met in literature. I'm reminded of Sam in Pickwick Papers by Dickens.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeeves’ famous “morning head” restorative: Worcestershire sauce, raw egg, red pepper.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.” “Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.”

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m binge reviewing my best-read short stories of all time.

There’s a kind of divine absurdity to “Jeeves Takes ”Charge”—the first chronicle of that most symmetrical of comic pairings: Bertie Wooster, the well-meaning imbecile, and Jeeves, the valet who might as well be God if God preferred spats and understatement.

Wodehouse doesn’t merely write humour; he designs a metaphysical ecosystem of control and chaos where intellect wears gloves and foolishness wears a monocle. “Jeeves Takes Charge” isn’t just a debut; it’s an origin myth disguised as farce — the Genesis of a comic cosmos where reason and idiocy waltz through Edwardian England in immaculate rhythm.

Bertie’s narration is a marvel of deliberate ignorance. He tells us the story of how Jeeves enters his life — how the man materialises like a butler-shaped solution to the problem of Bertie’s existence. From the first moment, there’s a sense of ritual: the hangover, the miraculous pick-me-up, and the awe. “Gentleman’s personal gentleman” — that’s how Bertie defines him, but the phrase barely captures it. Jeeves is not merely a servant; he’s a principle, an aesthetic, an epistemology. He embodies control, balance, and discretion in a world perpetually tumbling into scandal and nonsense.

The story’s surface plot — involving Bertie’s fiancée, an ill-advised letter, and Jeeves’s first act of elegant intervention — feels light, but it hides the architecture of something profound. Wodehouse, like Maugham, writes comedy with the precision of tragedy. Everything turns on tone, on rhythm, on the slow, musical unveiling of disaster. Bertie’s blunders have the inevitability of Greek fate, and Jeeves, with his perfect calm, functions as both chorus and deus ex machina. He rescues, restores, and reasserts the hierarchy of intelligence — a hierarchy that England, in its heart, always wished were true.

Postmodern readers might see in this relationship a subtle critique of class performance — the way intelligence and labour disguise themselves as servitude to maintain the illusion of aristocratic competence. Jeeves, the servant, is the one who 'knows'; Bertie, the master, is merely a puppet of birthright and confusion. However, Wodehouse, ever allergic to politics, sidesteps any direct commentary. Instead, he alchemises class tension into musical irony. Every act of Jeeves’s mastery confirms the myth of his superiority, and every act of Bertie’s idiocy confirms our affection for him. We laugh not at him, but with the universe that made him possible.

The genius of Wodehouse lies in his ability to turn linguistic rhythm into moral order. The story moves like jazz before jazz — syncopated, circular, and full of verbal improvisation and surprise. Each line feels rehearsed by a metronome set to wit. Bertie’s slangy voice — “what ho,” “by Jove,” “rummy business” — isn’t just funny; it’s an entire worldview rendered in sound. It tells us that language, in Wodehouse’s world, is both a weapon and a pillow: it can soften disaster even as it ridicules it.

The introduction of Jeeves is almost spiritual. He arrives, notes the chaos, and corrects it — quietly, decisively, with the unflappable precision of a cosmic janitor. There is a faint echo of the divine servant archetype here: the figure who rescues without claiming ownership, who restores balance and withdraws. Nevertheless, Wodehouse’s version is gleefully secular. Jeeves’s miracles are made of logic, timing, and black coffee.

What’s remarkable is how emotionally intimate the story feels beneath the comedy. “Jeeves Takes Charge” isn’t just about clever solutions; it’s about dependence and the odd love story between competence and confusion. Bertie’s surrender to Jeeves — his willing abdication of authority — reads almost like a romance. “I’ll never desert you, Jeeves,” he says later in the series, but here, the sentiment is embryonic. The moment he recognises Jeeves’s superiority, something irreversible happens. He gives up control — gladly, even lovingly. It’s the kind of submission only privilege allows: he can afford to be helpless because Jeeves will always save him.

There’s something deeply English, almost colonial, about that dynamic. The empire was already cracking when Wodehouse was writing, and yet his world remains one of polished certainties. The humour, though, is self-aware enough to shimmer with irony. Bertie’s world of idle gentlemen and well-buttered toast is already an anachronism, a fragile snow globe preserved in prose. Wodehouse knew it — and by exaggerating its absurdity, he made it timeless.

What makes “Jeeves Takes Charge” so enduring is its refusal to grow up. The story understands that adulthood — with its consequences, its gravitas, its sense of “real life” — is the death of comedy. In Wodehouse’s universe, the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment; the greatest catastrophe is social awkwardness. Within those parameters, he creates infinite variation. The world outside might be falling into war or depression, but inside Bertie’s Mayfair apartment, everything is reparable with the right plan and a change of tie.

Seen through a postmodern lens, the story reads like a parody of narrative authority itself. Bertie is the unreliable narrator par excellence — he speaks, but Jeeves controls the plot. The one who tells the story doesn’t understand it; the one who understands it doesn’t tell it. It’s a structural joke on epistemology, the comedy of knowing and not knowing. Bertie’s narrative voice becomes the mask through which Wodehouse hides his precision — a double irony that makes the story shimmer with modernist intelligence beneath its Edwardian manners.

Jeeves, meanwhile, is a kind of proto-AI before there was such a thing — perfectly efficient, emotionless, unfailingly correct. His intelligence doesn’t need context; it operates by deduction and discretion. In an age obsessed with algorithmic perfection, Jeeves feels oddly prophetic. He is what every machine-learning system wishes to be: unflappable, self-erasing, and always right. But Wodehouse keeps him human by giving him taste — his disapproval of Bertie’s purple socks and his subtle manipulations of fashion and mood. Intelligence, here, is aesthetic as much as logical.

What’s striking, reading it now, is how self-contained the comedy feels — as if the story exists in a loop, immune to consequence. There’s no “before” or “after” in Wodehouse; every story resets to equilibrium. Jeeves will fix it, Bertie will thank him, and the sun will shine again over an England that never quite existed. It’s escapism, yes, but of a kind so perfectly constructed it becomes art. The perfection lies not in the plot, but in the pattern — the way each failure reaffirms the cosmic order of laughter.

Wodehouse once said he wanted to create “a sort of musical comedy without music.” “Jeeves Takes Charge” is exactly that: a verbal operetta where tone replaces melody and rhythm replaces moral. It’s the literature of pure pleasure, free from bitterness or ideology. But that doesn’t make it shallow. Beneath the laughter lies an understanding of human frailty so affectionate it becomes almost moral in itself. The story insists that folly is forgivable, that elegance is salvation, and that life, no matter how absurd, is best faced with good tailoring and good grammar.

By the time the story ends — with Jeeves firmly installed as the quiet ruler of Bertie’s life — we realise that we’ve witnessed not a joke but a coronation. The servant has taken charge, the fool has found his saviour, and English literature has acquired one of its most perfect symmetries. The laughter isn’t merely at Bertie’s expense; it’s an act of celebration, a small victory of grace over bluster.

In a postmodern sense, “Jeeves Takes Charge” is about the collapse of authority — social, narrative, epistemic—and the survival of charm. It understands that intelligence does not need power to rule; it needs timing. Jeeves wins not by commanding, but by arranging — a kind of aesthetic governance that feels, even now, like the purest fantasy.

And maybe that’s why, more than a century later, it still feels fresh. In an age of loud certainty and moral panic, Wodehouse’s world whispers a quiet gospel: that the only wisdom worth having is the kind that fixes your mistakes, refills your glass, and pretends nothing ever happened.

Give it a go. One of the greatest short stories of all time!!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the Jeeves books on tape at my library in 2005 when I was sorely in need of a laugh. The 2004 presidential election had worn me out and I was getting tired of listening to the news and getting angry all the time. So I decided to try out this tape to see if they were funny.
Being a bit of an anglophile, I had heard of P.G. Wodehouse and Stephen Fry recommended them, so I figured why not?

It was a hilarious story with the bumbling Bertie Wooster getting in predicaments and the ever reliable Jeeves coming to his rescue. It was a fun flash back in time when the star of the day was Tallulah Bankhead. The funny slang of the day was puzzling at times but what ho Jeeves, I did enjoy it.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book on tape. I checked it out of the library with some trepidation - would a 54-year-old 2009 American female find it as entertaining as the jacket claimed? Emphatically, yes! Jeeves is a marvel, of course, but the dim-witted indolent Bertie is one of British literature's most amusing narrators.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 5 out of 5]

P.G.Wodehouse's books are available in so many versions and his stories in so many editions that I had run on these before, but that was okay. Wodehouse is an original...and I can't read him or listen to a (good) recording of him without ending up in tears. Here as always when Bertie or his "friends" are in trouble or in need, Jeeves saves the day.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm subscribed to the Jeeves and Wooster substack and I'm finally getting around to reading them, ha. So here's some of my favorite quotes from this story! [My notes are in brackets]

"My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone."
[<3 I love our introduction to Jeeves gives us Bertie's undying loyalty to the man]

"The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly coextensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve."
[I swear, I read a book exactly like this for a philosophy class a couple years ago... I failed the class.]

"I was sent by the agency, sir,” he said. “I was given to understand that you required a valet.”
[Imagine a soulmate au fic where this is tattooed on Bertie and so he keeps hiring valets out of curiosity and he finally finds Jeeves- rather good words, but imagine Jeeves's tattoo, the poor guy.]

"I've often wondered since then how these murderer fellows manage to keep in shape while they’re contemplating their next effort."
[Bertie would so be one of those true crime girlies who listens to podcasts. His choice of leisure books are all murder mysteries, much like mine.]

"It seemed to me that if he wanted to do a real act of kindness he would commit suicide."
[I mean! Bertie! This is about a 14 year old boy lol. Bertie's indignant aggression is so funny though.]

"Well⁠—I mean to say⁠—what?"
[I genuinely want a tattoo of this]

"But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.”
“Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.”
[I love Jeeves with all my heart]

Anywhoo, I love these characters so much! They're so silly.

[So Lae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je découvre enfin Jeeves et je suis conquise !
Il faut dire que l'humour et le comique "so bristish" est des plus délectable et il n'y a que les anglais pour être capable de mêler absurdité, quiproquos et situations rocambolesque avec autant de brios !
J'ai beaucoup souri en découvrant ce valet hors norme et son "maître" et j'ai vraiment hâte de découvrir leurs aventures qui semblent hautes en couleur verbale !

La deuxième nouvelle avec l'oncle Fred n'intègre pas Jeeves mais j'ai adoré l'histoire totalement ubuesque de cet oncle qui une fois par an débarque de sa campagne pour semer la zizanie à Londres et ses environs histoire de mettre un peu de sel et dans sa vie et dans celle de son neveu toujours affligé des situations qu'il lui fait vivre.
C'est jubilatoire, on se prend au jeu autant que les personnages et pour peu on pourrait imaginer les Monthy Python débarquer dans la plus normale des attitudes.
Un joli cru !

[Taja Ofthemarigold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Довольно смешанные чувства по отношению к Дживсу. Иногда смертельно раздражает то, что он лезет не в свое дело и крутит Вустером, как ему заблагорассудится. К Вустеру существует некая жалость, как к человеку, совершенно бесхребетному и позволяющему другим себя поносить. И если от других Дживсу удается его "спасти", то негодование к камердинеру на время даже сменяется ликованием. Возможно, автор задумал Вустера именно как человека созависимого и инфантильного, а именно потому ему без Дживса не обойтись

[Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And I have it from her ladyship's own maid, who happened to overhear a conversation between her ladyship and one of the gentlemen staying here--Mr. Maxwell, who is employed in an editorial capacity by one of the reviews--that it was her intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”

Wherein we are first introduced to Jeeves. Bertie and Jeeves are always pleasant company for one’s day.

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet, a great introduction to Jeeves and Bertie!

Read as part of the Letters Regarding Jeeves series on Substack, which includes all of the Jeeves literature by P. G. Wodehouse that is currently in public domain — the first 25 short stories, as well as the entirety of the novel ‘Right Ho, Jeeves’ — over the course of one year.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of P G Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster short stories. This is where Jeeves comes into Bertie’s service. It was short concise and too the point. For this reason I gave it four stars. Too many of Wodehouses’ books have too much waffle in it.

Although, the negative side is, Bertie gets into trouble, Jeeves saves the day and there is YET SNOTHER marriage on the cards.

[Krayfish1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't get into these books when I was younger, but coming back to them after watching some of the tv show (and reading a lot of Heyer), I enjoyed this a lot. It's a good place to start for the series.

[Akhil Jain · Rating 4 out of 5]

My fav quote:

He looked down at me like a father gazing tenderly at the wayward child. "Thank you Sir, I gave it to the under-gardener last night. A little more tea, Sir?"

[Liselle Ecarlate · Rating 4 out of 5]

დიდი სიამოვნება მივიღე♥️

[Chris Bull · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of the Jeeve’s stories. Here, Bertie ‘s remittance is in danger and at the same time, he must escape a fiancée. Botched plans go astray.