Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen
1st edition
Author(s)	P. G. Wodehouse
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Barrie & Jenkins
Publication date	October 1974
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	176 pp
ISBN	0214200477
OCLC Number	1167497
Dewey Decimal	823/.9/12
LC Classification	PZ3.W817 Au PR6045.O53

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in Britain on October 17, 1974 by Barrie & Jenkins, London, and in the U.S. under the title The Cat-nappers on April 14, 1975 by Simon & Schuster, New York. It was the last novel to feature some of Wodehouse's best known characters, Bertie Wooster and his resourceful valet Jeeves, and the last novel fully completed by Wodehouse before his death.

Overview

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen is another of the Bertie-Jeeves exploits in which Aunt Dahlia starts horsing around and enmeshes, amongst others, Bertie, Vanessa Cook, Orlo Porter, Major Brabazon-Plank (now Major Plank), Potato Chip the horse, and The Cat That Kept Popping Up.

Plot summary

The story begins with Bertie finding himself with pink spots about the thorax, so he flies off to E. Jimpson Murgatroyd (the sombre bird of Harley Street who despotted Tipton Plimsoll in Full Moon). After getting mixed with Orlo Porter fleeing from a policeman and a crowd, Bertie is sentenced by the doc to a quiet life in the country.

Thus Bertie goes to Maiden Eggesford in Somerset, with its two leading men, Jimmy Briscoe and Pop Cook, their respective horses, Simla and Potato Chip, and their dark rivalry. Aunt Dahlia, a friend of Jimmy Briscoe, has bet on Simla only to find that it isn't a snitch. Bertie is annoyed to see old enemy Major Plank in residence with Vanessa Cook and her Pop Cook, who takes an instant dislike to Bertie when he is found tickling a passing cat which is a favorite of his horse Potato Chip.

Things get hot when Aunt Dahlia gets a neighbourhood poacher to steal the cat in the hope to impede his horse friend, embroiling Bertie in the to-do. Meanwhile, after a rift between Vanessa and Orlo Porter, the girl decides to plight her troth to the blighted Bertie, whose Code is to never refuse a girl asking for marriage.

How Bertie is saved from the Charybdis of marrying Vanessa and being torn with bare hands by Orlo and the Scylla of being whipped by Pop Cook, without compromising his position with Aunt Dahlia, is solely due to the quick thinking of Jeeves.

External links

• The Russian Wodehouse Society's page, with a list of characters