#wodehouse could have retroactively made vanessa cook one of the brinkley engagements but he didn’t

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

So I had Right Ho, Jeeves playing in the background just now and I noticed something I’d missed before:

“Of course, I’m right. I’ve got engaged three times at Brinkley. No business resulted, but the fact remains. And I went there without the foggiest idea of indulging in the tender pash. I hadn’t the slightest intention of proposing to anybody. Yet no sooner had I entered those romantic grounds than I found myself reaching out for the nearest girl in sight and slapping my soul down in front of her. It’s something in the air.”

What are these three engagements? To the best of my memory, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the only women Bertie has actually been engaged to that we know of at this point are Florence, Honoria, and Pauline. His first engagement to Madeline doesn’t happen until later in this book. He got engaged to Florence at a house party in Easeby, Honoria at her house, and Pauline in New York. Plus Honoria couldn’t have been one of them anyway because these sound like they were willing (if unplanned) engagements.

Doylist explanation is probably that Wodehouse bunged the line in because he needed Bertie to say something convincing at that moment and just didn’t give it much thought. What do we think the Watsonian explanation is? Is Bertie lying to Gussie to give him confidence? Is he, as I’ve recently decided to headcanon, presenting himself as unluckier in love than he really is to avoid raising suspicion about his refusal to marry? If he really got engaged three times at Brinkley, was this pre-Jeeves (in which case I assume the girls themselves broke the engagements without much fanfare)? Are those three ex-fiancées still, in that case, lurking menaces who remain unaccounted for to this day? If they were Jeeves-era engagements, you’d think we’d have heard about them, because Jeeves obviously isn’t going to take that sitting down. Are there lost in-universe Jeeves manuscripts floating around somewhere? Why didn’t Bertie publish them?

Dozens of exciting possibilities