My wife has been reading P.G. Wodehouse to our daughter (and watching the BBC series of Jeeves and Wooster) and I am currently reading The Lord of the Rings to her (my daughter, that is, not my wife). My wife imagined what might have happened if, instead of choosing Frodo to carry the ring, they had chosen Bertie Wooster!! She relayed this amusing thought to our friend, Rob Corzine, who works with Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Center in Steubenville, and he rose to the challenge of imagining the scene as Wodehouse might have written it:

“So, we just pop over to old Mount Doom and bung the bally thing into the fire, what? Dashed inconvenient what with all the orcs and such. But when a chap has faced as many lunches with his Aunt Agatha as I have, he is pretty hard to daunt. Lay out my grey elven-cloak, Jeeves.”

“I would not advise it, sir.”

“I know you’re usually right about this sort of thing, Jeeves. But I’m going to have to put my foot down on this one. I mean to say, when a fellow gets the old nod to be the Ringbearer (not A Ringbearer, mind you, but THE Ringbearer), he should jolly well have some say in the clothes department.”

“No, sir. You mistake my meaning. I was not speaking sartorially, sir, but rather suggesting that it might not be entirely prudent for a man of your particular gifts, sir, to undertake the commission at all.”