No man can serve two masters

But it can be illuminating for two of us to compare masters.  

The other day I got talking to Jeeves. Jeeves is unquestionably a man of intelligence, though perhaps not quite as incandescently brilliant as his gentleman Bertram Wooster makes him out to be. No reflection on Jeeves; with that great a contrast, exaggeration is inevitable. More on that in a moment.

Getting back to Jeeves. A man of unquestioned intelligence, as I said, and with a considerable store of knowledge to draw upon. A very capable man. So the natural question is why he is Wooster‘s man. In the case of His Majesty, it’s easy to give the reasons why I serve him: He is powerful enough in the Force to defeat even Yoda. He rules an entire friggin’ Galaxy. His trenchant sense of humor sometimes goes unappreciated by those who don’t know him well. He has become something of a father figure to me (though I try to stay away from Greek mythology in my readings nowadays.) Ultimately, though, I must obey my master. It’s a Sith thing.

So I asked Jeeves why he serves a piece of work like Wooster. His response was to read me a passage out of John Lukacs’ The Duel: 10 May – 31 July 1940: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler:

That was on the very day, perhaps the same hour, when Hitler signed Directive No. 16 for the invasion of England. Here is another of those “spiritual puns,” a telling coincidence that is perhaps the peak of the Duel: Hitler readying to set out from Europe to invade England; Churchill making his first plans to liberate Europe from England.

For London was more than the capital city of Britain and the British Empire by then. It was, as Churchill said on the fourteenth, a City of Refuge; a Bastion City of a free Europe, Its streets were enlivened by the various unaccustomed uniforms of Polish officers and soldiers; Norwegian and Belgian military; Free French sailors with their red pompoms. On 10 July the queen told Harold Nicolson that she received instruction every morning in the garden of Buckingham Palace on how to fire a revolver. “I expressed surprise. ‘Yes,” she said, ‘I shall not go down like the others.’”

It took me a moment to see Jeeves’ point.

The British ruling class has never been expected to be particularly clever. The necessary wisdom is provided by advisors, traditionally often drawn from the upper clergy. What is expected of the ruling class is to be steadfast, even stupidly steadfast, in times of peril. They are rather like Tolkien’s hobbits, and I think it is no coincidence that Bilbo lived like a gentleman, with no visible means of support, even before bringing home dragon treasure. Mr. Wooster may seem frightfully thick, but Jeeves seems to think he would surprise us in a pinch.

I wonder if Jeeves is pulling my leg. I suspect the real reason he serves Wooster is for the latter’s entertainment value.

The ruling class in Britain no longer seems to listen much to the clergy, nor does the Anglican clergy seem particularly wise any more. And it’s difficult to imagine the Prince of Wales choosing to go out in a blaze of gunfire rather than submit to jihadists. I suppose that there is some hope to be gleaned from seeing the younger princes tootling about in Iraq. Though not much.