Leave It to Jeeves
Bertie Wooster pays for a fake bird book so his friend’s fiancée can charm a bird-mad uncle, the plan works far too well, and Jeeves has to rescue the artist with an ugly baby.
📖 Read the full storyThe complete text (public domain in the US), then come back to check what you caughtCorky Corcoran needs his uncle’s allowance and wants to marry a chorus girl, so Bertie rings for Jeeves and Jeeves invents a children’s book on birds to win the uncle over. The uncle is won over so completely that he marries the girl himself. Then he hires his ruined nephew to paint the baby who has just taken his inheritance, and the portrait comes out looking like a small drunk.
What happens in Leave It to Jeeves
Bertie Wooster, a wealthy young Englishman living in New York to avoid his Aunt Agatha, opens by explaining why he lets his valet, Jeeves, run his life: Jeeves was right about a loud check suit and right about a racehorse that was never meant to win. So when his friend Bruce “Corky” Corcoran, a portrait painter who has never been asked to paint a portrait, arrives with his fiancée, the chorus girl Muriel Singer, Bertie’s answer is to leave it to Jeeves. Corky lives on an allowance from his uncle, Alexander Worple, a bad-tempered jute millionaire who writes books about American birds and who will object to any step Corky takes on his own. Jeeves, who has overheard Corky through the thin apartment walls, proposes that Muriel “write” The Children’s Book of American Birds, full of praise for Worple’s own book, and send him a copy with a request to meet him. Bertie pays to publish it, and a hack writer named Sam Patterson writes it for a hundred dollars. Worple replies warmly. Bertie leaves town for some months and comes back to find Muriel married to the uncle. Jeeves calmly says he had seen this coming but did not like to take the liberty of saying so. Soon a son is born, Corky’s inheritance is gone, and Worple commissions Corky to paint the baby as a birthday surprise for Muriel. The portrait turns out hideous: the infant seems to leer and looks, in Jeeves’s words, decidedly inebriated. Worple calls it a joke from a comic supplement and orders Corky to give up art and report to the jute office on Monday. Jeeves takes the insult as a business idea. Corky’s gift has always been for comic drawing, so the baby could star in a newspaper comic series. Corky sells it to the Sunday Star as “The Adventures of Baby Blobbs,” a title Jeeves supplies, and it is a hit. In the last scene Corky has paid Jeeves generously, and Jeeves refuses to let Bertie wear his blue suit with the faint red stripe. Bertie gives in.
Where and when Leave It to Jeeves happens
Bertie’s New York apartment
The comfortable flat where Bertie rings for Jeeves, and where the thin walls let Jeeves overhear everything he needs.
Corky’s studio near Washington Square
The poor artists’ quarter of the city, where Corky paints the baby under the eye of a stern nurse.
A quiet New York restaurant
The place where Bertie greets Muriel as Corky’s girl and is introduced to her husband, Corky’s uncle.
The mid-1910s
Bertie is in exile in New York after a family scandal over his cousin Gussie, the world of chorus girls, Sunday comic sections and millionaire uncles.
Timeline the story arc, beat by beat
- Setup The brains of the establishment
After Jeeves proves right about a check suit and a racing tip, Bertie promises never to take another step without his advice.
- Rising Corky’s problem
Corky and his fiancée, a chorus girl, need a way to win over his bird-loving uncle, who controls his allowance.
- Rising The bird book
Jeeves plans a children’s book on birds in Muriel’s name that flatters the uncle, Bertie pays for it, and the uncle invites her to call.
- Turn She’s married the uncle
Back from months away, Bertie meets Muriel as Mrs. Worple, and Jeeves says he had always feared it.
- Complication The son and heir
A baby takes Corky’s inheritance, and Worple orders Corky to paint the child’s portrait as a surprise for Muriel.
- Climax The portrait
The finished picture shows a leering, dissipated baby, and Worple storms out, ordering Corky into the jute business.
- End Baby Blobbs
Jeeves turns the portrait into a newspaper comic series, Corky makes his fortune, and Bertie surrenders his striped suit.
Characters and how they connect
Bertie Wooster
Narrator, a wealthy idle Englishman
A cheerful young man who admits his brain is built for ornament, pays for every scheme, and tells the story without seeing how much of it is at his own expense.
Jeeves
Bertie’s valet
A quiet, all-knowing manservant who solves problems in the language of a lawyer, foresees disasters he politely keeps to himself, and is always paid in the end with Bertie’s obedience.
Bruce “Corky” Corcoran
Bertie’s friend, a would-be portrait painter
A struggling artist near Washington Square who lives on his uncle’s allowance and whose real talent, comic drawing, is the thing he has never taken seriously.
Muriel Singer
Corky’s fiancée, a chorus girl
A soft-voiced, big-eyed girl who makes every man feel like a knight, and who ends the story married to the uncle she was meant to charm on Corky’s behalf.
Alexander Worple
Corky’s uncle, a jute millionaire and bird lover
A red-faced, short-tempered businessman who wants Corky in the jute trade, can be soothed only by talk of birds, and gives Corky the insult that becomes his fortune.
Sam Patterson
A hack writer
A writer who turns out stories for the cheap fiction magazines under several names and writes the bird book for a hundred dollars.
Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them
Love / marriage
Family
Duty / service
Dependence
Connection
Themes in Leave It to Jeeves what the story is really about
Who really runs the house
Bertie is the master and Jeeves the servant, but every decision of weight is made by Jeeves, and the story ends with Bertie wearing the suit Jeeves chooses.
Money and dependence
Corky cannot marry, paint or refuse a job without his uncle’s allowance, so the whole plot is a series of attempts to keep the money flowing without giving in.
Schemes that work too well
The bird book succeeds exactly as planned and still ruins Corky, because a plan to make a man like a girl cannot control how much he likes her.
Art and honest talent
Corky wants to be a serious portrait painter, but his true gift is for comic drawing, and he succeeds only when he stops pretending otherwise.
Turning a loss into a gain
Jeeves’s maxim that there is always a way runs through the ending, where the uncle’s insult and the hated baby become Corky’s income for life.
Symbols & motifs
The check suit and the striped suit
The story opens and closes with clothes Jeeves forbids, so Bertie’s wardrobe becomes the scorecard of who holds power in the household.
The Children’s Book of American Birds
A book with a girl’s name on the cover, a hack’s words inside and Bertie’s money behind it, it stands for flattery as a manufactured product.
The baby’s portrait
Corky means to paint a cheerful child and paints a leering one, so the picture shows both his resentment and the talent he has been wasting.
Jute
Bertie is not sure what jute is, and the dull trade stands for the respectable, joyless work that Corky fears as a kind of prison.
Recurring motifs
Ringing for Jeeves. Every crisis ends with Bertie pressing the bell, and the phrase “Leave it to Jeeves” repeats like a spell.
Uncles and aunts. Worple, Aunt Agatha and the gimlet-eyed nurse who reminds Bertie of her form a chorus of disapproving elders whom young men must handle.
Bertie translating Jeeves. Jeeves speaks in formal, careful sentences and Bertie turns them into slang for his friends, a running joke about two kinds of English.
Conflicts
Person vs. person
Corky struggles against his uncle, who controls his money and wants him to give up art for the jute business.
Person vs. person
Bertie and Jeeves fight a small, polite war over clothes, which Jeeves always wins.
Person vs. self
Corky must give up the idea of himself as a serious portraitist before his real talent can make him independent.
Literary devices
- The obtuse first-person narrator
- Bertie tells the story in his own voice and often misses what it means. He admires Muriel as a helpless girl, calls the plan a cracker-jack after it has wrecked his friend, and calls Jeeves’s rule as bad as being henpecked while still obeying it. The reader sees more than the narrator, and that gap is where most of the comedy lives.
- Contrasting registers
- Bertie speaks club slang mixed with American phrases (“topping,” “the old bean,” “a cinch,” “raise Cain”), while Jeeves uses words like “injudicious,” “eulogistic” and “impecunious.” The servant speaks the higher English, which quietly reverses their social ranks.
- Comic simile and hyperbole
- Wodehouse builds jokes from exaggerated comparisons: Corky looks like a man who has done the murder but cannot think what to do with the body, Muriel works on a man like a strong drink, and Jeeves’s smile is a paternal muscular spasm about the mouth.
- Irony of reversal
- The book designed to bring the uncle and the girl together succeeds, which is exactly what goes wrong, and the uncle’s scornful insult turns out to be the best career advice Corky ever gets.
- The framing anecdote
- The opening stories of the suit and the racehorse are not part of Corky’s plot, but they establish the rule of the series: Jeeves is always right and Bertie always learns it too late.
Important quotes
“I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything.”
“Well, she’s slid. She’s married the uncle.”
“That was always a development to be feared, sir.”
“Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in and bounced me out of my inheritance.”
“Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to smiling.”
“Of course, I know it’s as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is always right.”
The ending of Leave It to Jeeves, explained
The ending works by turning every loss into a gain. Corky has lost his fiancée to his uncle and his inheritance to the uncle’s baby, and now he is ordered to give up art for jute. Jeeves notices that Worple’s angry phrase, “an extract from a comic coloured supplement,” is an accurate description of Corky’s real gift. Corky has always drawn funny pictures for the comic papers, and the ugly, dissipated baby is a ready-made comic character. As Jeeves tells it, a failed product under a new name made a fortune for his old employer, and the same trick saves Corky: the failed portrait becomes “The Adventures of Baby Blobbs,” a hit that makes Corky independent of his uncle. In the final scene Jeeves has been well paid by Corky, and he is back to business, refusing Bertie’s blue suit with the faint red stripe. Bertie gives way, calls it as bad as being henpecked, and adds that Jeeves is always right. The story has been about Corky, but its last word is about the household. Jeeves runs it, and Bertie has made his peace with that. One question the story leaves open is whether Jeeves let the marriage happen. He says he feared it and did not like to take the liberty of saying so. You can read this as the perfect servant’s discretion or as a sly sign that Jeeves always knows more than he chooses to share.
Common misreadings
MythJeeves’s bird-book plan failed.
ActuallyIt did exactly what it was meant to do: the uncle admired the book and welcomed Muriel. The trouble came afterward, when he married her himself.
MythJeeves is Bertie’s butler.
ActuallyHe is Bertie’s valet, the personal manservant who looks after his clothes and his rooms, which is why the quarrels between them are so often about suits and ties.
MythCorky ends up a successful portrait painter.
ActuallyHis portrait is a failure. He succeeds by turning it into a comic strip, the kind of drawing he had been good at all along.
Test yourself
1. What is Jeeves’s plan to introduce Muriel to Mr. Worple?
Jeeves knows Worple loves birds, so a flattering bird book in Muriel’s name, written by a hack and paid for by Bertie, wins his interest.
2. What does Bertie discover when he returns to New York after several months away?
He meets Muriel in a restaurant and is introduced to her husband, Alexander Worple.
3. Why does Corky hate painting the baby’s portrait?
The baby is Worple’s son and heir, so Corky has to spend his afternoons painting the child who has cost him his inheritance.
4. What gives Jeeves the idea that saves Corky?
Jeeves takes the uncle’s insult literally and suggests the baby become the hero of a comic series.
5. How does the story end for Bertie?
Jeeves refuses the blue suit with the faint red stripe, and Bertie gives in, admitting that Jeeves is always right.
Bertie is a wealthy young man who isn’t very clever, and Jeeves is his servant, who is very clever indeed. Bertie’s friend Corky wants to marry a girl, but his grumpy uncle, who pays his bills and loves birds, might say no. Jeeves suggests the girl put her name on a book about birds that praises the uncle, so he will like her. It works too well: the uncle marries her himself. Then they have a baby, and the uncle makes Corky paint its picture, which comes out looking funny and awful. The uncle is furious, but Jeeves says the picture would make a great comic strip in the newspaper. Corky sells it and makes a fortune, and Jeeves goes back to telling Bertie what to wear.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
Compare & connect the story universe
The Importance of Being Earnest
Another comedy of idle young men, money, marriages that need an elder’s approval, and a manservant who sees through his master.
The Ransom of Red Chief
A slangy comic narrator tells how a clever money-making plan goes wrong in a way nobody expected.
The Gift of the Magi
A New York story built on an ironic twist, where a plan succeeds in a way that undoes its purpose.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Both get their comedy from a narrator’s voice more than from events, and both turn on a wager where one side knows something the other does not.
Adaptation. Jeeves and Wooster (1992, Television episode).
Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper
💬 Discussion questions
- What happens in Leave It to Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
- Why does Muriel Singer marry Corky’s uncle
- What is the Baby Blobbs comic in Leave It to Jeeves
- How does Leave It to Jeeves explore the theme of who really runs the house?
- How does Leave It to Jeeves explore the theme of money and dependence?
- What is the central conflict in Leave It to Jeeves, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how P. G. Wodehouse develops the theme of who really runs the house in Leave It to Jeeves. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the check suit and the striped suit in Leave It to Jeeves. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does P. G. Wodehouse use the obtuse first-person narrator to shape the reader’s experience of Leave It to Jeeves?
- Some readers assume that jeeves’s bird-book plan failed. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What happens in Leave It to Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
- Why does Muriel Singer marry Corky’s uncle
- What is the Baby Blobbs comic in Leave It to Jeeves
- How does Jeeves control Bertie Wooster
- Is Leave It to Jeeves the same story as The Artistic Career of Corky
- What makes Bertie Wooster’s narration funny
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The story first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on February 5, 1916, and was revised as “The Artistic Career of Corky” for Carry On, Jeeves (1925). The text and the quotations are from P. G. Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves (London: George Newnes, 1919), from the Project Gutenberg transcription (eBook #8164). StoryBites prints the full text for readers in the United States, where it is in the public domain. It remains under copyright in countries that protect works for 70 years after the author’s death, so readers there get the analysis and short quotations only.