Jeevis et Spiritus Feudum

A rather amusing translation attempt

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

by PG Wodehouse

As I sat in the bath-tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, if I remember correctly, Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar', it would be deceiving my public to say that I was feeling boomps-a-daisy The evening that lay before me promised to be one of those sticky evenings, no good to man or beast.

My Aunt Dahlia, writing from her country residence, Brinkley Court down in Worcestershire, had asked me as a personal favour to take some acquaintances of hers out to dinner, a couple of the name of Trotter. They were, she said, creeps of the first water and would bore the pants off me, but it was imperative that they be given the old oil, because she was in the middle of a very tricky business deal with the male half of the sketch and at such times every little helps.

'Don't fail me, my beautiful bountiful Bertie', her letter had concluded, on a note of poignant appeal. Well, this Dahlia is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young, so when she says Don't fail me, I don't fail her.

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Jeevis et Spiritus Feudum

Dum ego in balneum sedi, pedem contemplativum ungendo et cantando, si recte memoror, Manus Palidos apud Shalimar amavi, esset mihi decipere dicere ego sentiebam "Euge a Florae". Vesper, qui mihi appropinquebat, promisit esse unus e vesperis incommodis, inutilis ad virum aut bestiam. Amita mea Dahlia, ab sua villa rustica, Curiae Brincle apud Vertis, ut favorem personalem, aliquos amicos suos ad cenam cum coniugibus Trotter me rogavit.

Extraneos populi cum qualitatibus primi aquae esse dixerat, et sic taedio braccas defluerent; dulcedinem veterem deum blanditiae donare imperativum erat, quia in medio negotii complicati cum masculino dimidio coniugii erat, et in talibus temporibus omne minimum adiuvat. Epistula concluserat in tono tragico appellationis: "Noli me deficere, Berti pulcher et munifice meus."

Heu, haec Dahlia amita mea bona et digna est, non cum Amita Agatha confundenda, quae rattas dentibus occidit et duas proles devorat; ergo cum haec dicit "Noli me deficere", ego non deficio.