Inklings // March 2026 (Jeeves & The Impending Doom)

The prompt for March’s Inklings link-up (check out Heidi’s post here for the rules to link up!) is a scene in a heavy rainstorm in book or film. As I was mulling over what I could do for this prompt, the shocking fact came to my attention that, although I once highlighted a scene from the show, I’ve never done a scene from the Jeeves and Wooster books for Inklings. To remedy that, I will share with you a bit from one of my favorite J&W short stories, “Jeeves and the Impending Doom” (found in the book Very Good, Jeeves). The scene is a bit on the long side, but I’ve cut it down considerably.

In this scene, Bertie is a guest of his Aunt Agatha, and the Right Honorable A.B. Filmer, another house guest, has mysteriously disappeared during a rainstorm. Aunt Agatha sends Bertie to search the grounds for him. Jeeves has certain knowledge that he is marooned on the island which stands in the middle of the lake, so the two row out to the island to fetch him. Jeeves stays in the boat, and Bertie trudges out to the little building in the middle of the island, where the Right Honorable Filmer, for some mysterious reason, is sitting on the roof in the pouring rain as he shouts for help.

… I thought it about time to slip him the glad news that assistance had arrived, before he strained a vocal chord.
“Hi!” I shouted, waiting for a lull.
He poked his head over the edge.
“Hi!” he bellowed, looking in every direction but the right one, of course.
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Oh!” he said, spotting me at last.
“What-ho!” I replied, sort of clinching the thing.
I suppose the conversation can’t be said to have touched a frightfully high level up to this moment; but probably we should have got a good deal brainier very shortly – only just then, at the very instant when I was getting ready to say something good, there was a hissing noise like a tyre bursting in a nest of cobras, and out of the bushes to my left there popped something so large and white and active that, thinking quicker than I have ever done in my puff, I rose like a rocketing pheasant, and, before I knew what I was doing, had begun to climb for my life.

… it wasn’t very long before I was parked up on the roof beside the Right Hon., gazing down at one of the largest and shortest-tempered swans I had ever seen.

…

“Wet, isn’t it, what?” I said.
“I had already observed it,” said the Right Hon. in one of those nasty, bitter voices. “I thank you, however, for drawing the matter to my attention.”
Chit-chat about the weather hadn’t gone with much of a bang, I perceived. I had a shot at Bird Life in the Home Counties.
“Have you ever noticed,” I said, “how a swan’s eyebrows sort of meet in the middle?”
“I have had every opportunity of observing all that there is to observe about swans.”
“Gives them a sort of peevish look, what?”
“The look to which you allude has not escaped me.”
“Rummy,” I said, rather warming to my subject, “how bad an effect family life has on a swan’s disposition.”
“I wish you would select some other topic of conversation than swans.”
“No, but really, it’s rather interesting. I mean to say, our old pal down there is probably a perfect ray of sunshine in normal circumstances. Quite the domestic pet, don’t you know. But purely and simply because the little woman happens to be nesting -“
I paused. You will scarcely believe me, but until this moment, what with all the recent bustle and activities, I had clean forgotten that, while we were treed up on a roof like this, there lurked all the time in the background one whose giant brain, if notified of the emergency and requested to flock round, would probably be able to think up half a dozen schemes for solving our little difficulties in a couple of minutes.
“Jeeves!” I shouted.
“Sir?” came a faint respectful voice from the great open spaces.
“My man,” I explained to the Right Hon. “A fellow of infinite resource and sagacity. He’ll have us out of this in a minute. Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“I’m sitting on the roof.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Don’t say ‘Very good’. It’s nothing of the kind. The place is alive with swans.”
“I will attend to the matter immediately, sir.”
I turned to the Right Hon. I even went so far as to pat him on the back. It was like slapping a wet sponge.
“All is well,” I said. “Jeeves is coming.”
“What can he do?”
I frowned a trifle. The man’s tone had been peevish, and I didn’t like it.
“That,” I replied with a touch of stiffness, “we cannot say until we see him in action. He may pursue one course, or he may pursue another. But on one thing you can rely with the utmost confidence – Jeeves will find a way. See, here he comes stealing through the undergrowth, his face shining with the light of pure intelligence. There are no limits to Jeeves’s brain-power. He virtually lives on fish.”

And how Jeeves will rescue them from this predicament (not to mention how Bingo Little’s financial difficulties will be solved, or what mysterious and surely ghastly reason Aunt Agatha has for wanting Bertie to make a good impression on the Right Hon.) I will leave you to find out.

Have you read any Jeeves and Wooster stories? What’s your favorite P.G. Wodehouse book? Do you like rainstorms?