What ho Author!

In honour of PGW’s 130^th birth anniversary (which I remembered reading this post), I crafted the following letter. If Bertie Wooster launched a literary agency with Jeeves as his trusty assistant, what kind of rejection letter would good ol’ Bertie send to the hand-wringing writers? Fret not, friends! The answer lies below: 

What ho Author! 

Jolly good of you to send along your manuscript thingie, what?  

Of course I couldn’t read it without downing one of Jeeves’ life-saving bracers, but even that didn’t do the trick. The old lemon remained clouded several hours after turning the last of your pages. So I handed over the bally thing to Jeeves, who has a head the size of a melon. His brow flickered upon reading the opening paragraph, which, I hesitate to say, boded ill for the rest of the work. 

My judgment proved correct. After a detailed inspection of your material, Jeeves addressed me thus: ‘I fear, sir, that it would be injudicious on my part to advise you to undertake the championing of this manuscript. The prose does not merit praise, and the treatment of the subject matter has clearly not taken into account the psychology of the individual.’ 

I offered it to Aunt Dahlia, but she had occupied herself with writing an editorial for her magazine Milady’s Boudoir, to which I once contributed an article on ‘What the Well-dressed Man is Wearing’. You see, author old chap, I’ve written some tosh too, just like you brainy coves! 

Aunt Agatha refused to answer my call for help. I believe she was chewing on a broken bottle at the time of receiving my telegram. 

Fear not, author old boy, for this too shall pass, as Jeeves says. A stiff b and s is all you’ll need to recover. 

Toodle-oo,

Bertram Wilberforce Wooster