A Problem to Jeeves

Corky tiene una novia pero no sabe cómo presentársela a su tío, sin que éste se enoje. Piensan en Jeeves para que los ayude. Este es un cuento de P.G. Wodehouse, Leave it to Jeeves.

Ponemos unos párrafos en inglés y buscamos la palabra grudgingly. También investigamos sobre la teosofía.

Más abajo podés ver una foto de Blavatsky y Olcott en 1888.

 

All he would consider would be that I had gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and…

 

Paragraphs

… Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to give very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.

He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was what is known as an ornithologist…

Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.

To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was a poor fool and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.

So when Corky went into my apartment one afternoon, driving a girl in front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss Singer," the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke were, "Corky, how about your uncle?"

The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can't think what the deuce to do with the body.

"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you might suggest a way of breaking it to him."

Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me as if she were saying to herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man isn't going to hurt me." She gave a fellow a protective kind of feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, "There, there, little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was nothing I wouldn't do for her…

"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully moved," I said to Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."

Corky declined to cheer up.

"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it. That's the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it."

I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.

"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance without knowing that you know her. Then you come along——"

"But how can I work it that way?"

I saw his point. That was the catch.

"There's only one thing to do," I said.

"What's that?"

"Leave it to Jeeves."

And I rang the bell.

"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the strange things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and move through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his father at a distance. There was something about him that gave me confidence.

Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, smart faces. His eye gleams with the light of pure intelligence… (Paragraphs from Leave it to Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.)

Vocabulario

Grudgingly: unwillingly:

She grudgingly admitted that she had been wrong to criticize him.

Grudgingly: a regañadientes.

Blavatsky y Olcott

 

Para saber

La Teosofía enseña que el propósito de la vida humana es la emancipación espiritual y que el alma reencarna después de la muerte corporal de acuerdo con un proceso de karma. La Teosofía se estableció en la ciudad de Nueva York en 1875 con la fundación de la Sociedad Teosófica por Helena Blavatsky y los estadounidenses Henry Olcott y William Quan Judge.

El Catequismo Budista de Olcott, compuesto en 1.881, es una de las contribuciones más duraderas del resurgimiento del Budismo.

Se presentaba en el mismo formato de preguntas y respuestas usadas en los catequismos cristianos. A continuación algunos ejemplos:

— ¿Llamarías budista a aquel nacido de padres budistas?

—Ciertamente no. Un budista es alguien que no solo profesa la creencia en Buda como el más noble de los maestros sino que practica sus preceptos diariamente.

— ¿Qué es el Karma?

—Una causal operando en lo moral, físico y otros planos. Los budistas dicen que no hay milagros. Lo que el hombre siembra debe cosechar.

— ¿Por qué la ignorancia causa sufrimiento?

—Porque nos hace apreciar lo que no tiene valor, llorar por lo que no deberíamos, considerar real lo que no lo es sino ilusorio y pasar nuestras vidas en la persecución de objetos que no tienen valor.

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Fuentes

Theosophy, Wikipedia.

 

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