Bertie Wooster On Suffering
05/07/2013
From "The Aunt and the Sluggard"; Bertie has had to lend both his apartment and Jeeves to a friend, and is living alone in a hotel:
You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering, you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself.
As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon, but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
This reminds me of Louise's thoughts on First World Problems.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 05/08/2013 at 06:42 AM
I read a really junky book the other day in which a duke. presiding at a charity bazaar, sees napkin rings for sale and inquires what they are. When it's explained to him that some people reuse their napkins, he is horrified that such poverty exists.
Posted by: Anne-Marie | 05/08/2013 at 07:18 PM
!!!
My job consists entirely of first-world problems.
Posted by: Mac | 05/08/2013 at 08:47 PM
very amusing :)
Posted by: Louise | 05/09/2013 at 10:44 AM