Jeeves And The Serious Novelist

So, I'm minding my own business reading Trollope's The Small House at Allington when I start to be bothered by a niggling thought. Lord De Guest reminds me of someone. Lord De Guest would be great friends with Lord Emsworth, so long as they could reach armistice on the great pig/bull debate. Not only that, but the plot starts to seem somewhat familiar. There is this chap, you see. Not the most intelligent chap, of course, but well-turned out. Well, this chap goes to visit a friend from his club at his uncle's home (the chap's friend's uncle, that is) in the country and meets this girl, something in the cousin line. It being the country and all, there are fields and streams and this bridge, you see, and stars, at night I mean, and of course the chap walks out with the girl and before you can say "b's and bees" the chap's engaged. So far, so good, you say, and yet there are some flies in the, in the ..., in whatever it is that flies get into. Nothing good, I'm sure.

You see, there's this other girl and she and the chap have seen something of each other in London and you might even think -- or she might think, which is more to the point -- that there are certain expectations. What's worse, the chap is about to be torn from the b. of his new f. and dragged off to visit this other girl at her country home (more of a castle, actually), where there are lots of Earls and younger sons and other people a chap would just as soon avoid, so he'll be spending lots of time with that other girl. Worst of all, there's a sort of aunt to the first girl who's also going to be at the castle and knows all about the engagement, so if that chap were somehow to get engaged to another girl, well the first girl would find out all about it directly. Come to think of it, there is this other chap, forget the name, Eaves, Eakes, wait, wait, Eames, that's it, Eames, who does something in an office in London, bit of a stick in the mud. Well this J. Eames knew that first girl from childhood and loves her like a chap loves a girl, but he's poor but proud and won't make an offer. Maybe if I lend him a fiver... oh well, nothing to do but put it all in the hands of Jeeves.

Oh, wait, there is no Jeeves in Trollope. In fact, that seems to be the only difference between Trollope and Wodehouse: Wodehouse takes Trollope's plot and adds Jeeves. The first time is tragedy, the second is farce.

That's not to say that Trollope is not funny. He can be laugh out loud funny. I particularly like this passage, from our introduction to Dr. Crofts (who is not the chap, or the other chap, or even the third chap alluded to above):

It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs Dale. She had then been ill for a long period--some two or three months, and Dr Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with Mrs Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from homes in which there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living. Mrs Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs Dale's eldest daughter. At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do?

Nor are the characters much different. Trollope has as many drones about the place as Wodehouse. He treats his politicians with more respect, but as barely more human than Wodehouse's magistrates. Trollope's aristocrats are, on the whole, probably a little worse behaved than Wodehouses and are no more intelligent or inherently noble; though they are treated as such by Trollope's fawners every bit as much as by Wodehouse's. Their women are just about exactly the same. Lady Alexandrina could walk unchanged into Bertie's flat and turn his b.'s to i. Lily Dale, though she would pass Bertie's test perhaps, would certainly fail Jeeves' exam.

The difference seems to be this: Trollope's characters are earnest where Wodehouse's characters are fatuous.