The last of Bertie

Bertie Wooster's life is beset with the usual challenges in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974): an aunt, of course; young lovers with obstacles on their path to matrimony, and gruff older men, who usually provide those obstacles. But this time there's a newcomer to the plot, a cat.

Published when P.G. Wodehouse was in his 90s, just a year or so before his death, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen is more reflective of the time in which it was written than most Jeeves and Wooster novels. There's a reference to Billy Graham, for example, even if the Billy Graham of the novel is a poacher, and there's a passage about leftists throwing bottles at police officers that reads like it could have been written yesterday. But demonstrations, sometimes turning violent, were also commonplace in the early 1970s.

When Bertie finds his body covered with spots, his doctor suggests rest in the country, and his Aunt Dahlia offers him a village cottage that seems ideal, especially because Jeeves happens to have an aunt living in the same village. This aunt takes Jeeves away for most of the story, leaving Bertie on his own, which always means trouble.

Bertie's aunt has a ulterior motive for her invitation to her nephew. She wants him to hide a stolen cat.   The cat pacifies a certain horse about to race against another horse on which Aunt Dahlia has placed a great deal of money. Bertie, showing a stronger sense of ethics than usual in these tales, objects and hires Billy Graham to stealthily return the cat. The cat, however, likes Bertie and keeps coming back.

Meanwhile Vanessa, the daughter of the man with the horse and the cat, happens to be the bottle thrower. She is also a young beauty who once rejected Bertie's marriage proposal, to his great relief after he came to his senses. Now, after a fight with her boyfriend, she tells Bertie she will marry him after all, and she begins immediately to start reforming him, reminding him of why it was such a great relief when she previously turned him down. So Bertie is stuck with both a cat and a fiancee he doesn't want. Where is Jeeves when he needs him?

Wodehouse may have been a very old man when he wrote this novel, but it shows no sign of a decline in his ability. In fact, this is better than the earliest Jeeves and Wooster stories. It's pure delight from beginning to end.