Bertie Wooster
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Image:Wooster.jpg Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is the foppish, dim-witted, and very wealthy co-protagonist and narrator of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. A minor British aristocrat and member of the "idle rich", he always appears alongside his highly intelligent "gentleman's personal gentleman" Jeeves, whose genius manages to extract Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward or difficult situations.
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Family
Bertie, an Old Etonian, who is apparently an orphan, has at least two aunts and three uncles from the Wooster family, though Wodehouse alludes to his father's having had many siblings. Only his aunts—Aunt Dahlia and Aunt Agatha, sisters of his late father—play major roles in the stories; his uncles, while mentioned in passing, are not recurring characters.
Bertie has at least six uncles, three of which he has acquired by marriage: Tom Travers, Aunt Dahlia's husband; Spenser Gregson, Aunt Agatha's first husband; Percy Craye, Earl of Worplesdon, her second; Henry Wooster, a "looney" of whom the family is deeply embarrassed; George, Lord Yaxley, who has a fondness for waitresses; and Willoughby Wooster. Henry's twin sons Claude and Eustace—Bertie's cousins—play significant roles in several stories, as do Aunt Dahlia's children Angela and Bonzo Travers and Aunt Agatha's young son Thomas Gregson.
At first, Bertie depends on his Uncle Willoughby for financial support, but upon his uncle's death, Bertie apparently inherits a vast fortune. Nevertheless, he is perpetually afraid of his Aunt Agatha, who considers him a spineless invertebrate and a burden on society; his Aunt Dahlia, on the contrary, likes him very much, often inviting him to stay at her country estate, Brinkley Court. Bertie's Aunt Dahlia often uses the threat of banning Bertie from Brinkley Court and the produce of her peerless chef Anatole, to make him bend to her will. For instance, in the novel The Code of the Woosters, Bertie is obliged to steal a cow creamer for his Aunt Dahlia, who wants it for her husband (Uncle Tom), who wants it for his collection. The cow creamer rightfully belongs to Uncle Tom, but with the use of trickery, was purchased by Sir Watkyn Bassett (a rival collector and the magistrate who fined Bertie five pounds one Boat Race Night). Bertie asks Madeline Bassett for an invitation and goes through a harrowing experience at Totleigh Towers, but is ultimately crowned with success.
Bertie also has a cousin named Gussie, mentioned in the first Jeeves story, Extricating Young Gussie, in which his and his cousin's last name is Mannering-Phipps. Wodehouse apparently changed his mind afterward, and renamed the family, though Bertie does make occasional mention of his Aunt Julia, the antagonist of that first story. The "Young Gussie" of the title, who becomes entangled with a chorus girl and goes on stage, is not to be confused with the much more prominent character of Augustus "Gussie" Fink-Nottle, the eminent newt-fancier and former schoolmate of Bertie's who falls in love with first Madeline Bassett and, late in the Saga, Pauline Stoker's younger sister Emerald.
Education
Bertie has been given a first-rate British establishment education, having been schooled at Eton and Oxford University. However, the little he may have learned has mostly escaped him by the time he narrates the Jeeves tales. Standard characters and passages of English literature are typically recalled with scant more detail than "Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tumty-tum, I slew him, tum-tum tum!". Bertie typically fails to recognize Shakespeare when it is quoted to him by Jeeves. The most that he seems to have retained from his Oxford days is a skill in pinching policeman's helmets.
His earlier school days serve him no better. About all that has stuck with him are attachments to former classmates such as Bingo Little and Tuppy Glossop, who cause Bertie more trouble than comfort. Although Bertie claims to have memorized a list of the Kings of Judah in order to win a Scripture prize as a youngster, Gussie Fink-Nottle insists that Bertie cheated.
Romance
Bertie never marries, but does become engaged in nearly every story and novel. In the early years he is rather given to sudden and short-lived infatuations, under the influence of which he proposes to Florence Craye (in Jeeves Takes Charge, the second story in terms of publication and the first in the internal timeline of the books), Pauline Stoker, and Bobbie Wickham. In all of these cases, he rethinks the charms of the holy state and a "lovely profile" upon a closer understanding of the personalities of the girls in question. Having already received a proposal from him, however, each assumes in her own way that she has an open invitation to marry Bertie whenever she has a spat with her current fiancé. Madeline Bassett and Honoria Glossop are similarly deluded, though in their cases Bertie was attempting to plead the case of a friend (Gussie Fink-Nottle and Bingo Little respectively) but was misinterpreted as confessing his own love. In all of these cases, Bertie feels himself honour-bound to agree to the marriage out of fear of being ungallant and hurting the girl's feelings. He often cites his determination to act as a preux chevalier, and observes that "one is either preux or one isn't." In the later stories and novels, Bertie regards engagement solely as a dire situation from which Jeeves must extricate him.
Aunt Agatha is of the opinion that Bertie, a burden to society in his present state, must marry and carry on the Wooster name; furthermore, he must marry a girl capable of moulding his personality and compensating for his many defects. (Interestingly, though, in the short story Jeeves Takes Charge, Lady Florence Craye tells Bertie that his Aunt Agatha "called you a spineless invertebrate and advised me strongly not to marry you." Aunt Agatha later marries Florence's father Lord Worplesdon, and Florence begins to call Agatha "mother," to Bertie's bemusement, so evidently the two terrifyingly imperious females feel some sort of spiritual kinship.) This prospect mortifies Bertie, not least because it would mean he and Jeeves would part ways.
Jeeves
When Bertie caught his valet Meadowes stealing his silk socks, he sacked him and sent for another from the agency. Jeeves, arriving in Jeeves Takes Charge, mixes Bertie a hangover cure of his own invention and is hired almost immediately. According to Jeeves Takes Charge, Bertie is 24 when he hires Jeeves. Thereafter, Bertie cedes much of the control of his life to Jeeves, clashing occasionally on matters of dress. When Jeeves expresses disapproval of a particular article of Bertie's clothing, be it a brightly-colored cummerbund, a check suit, purple socks, various hats or even a moustache, it is certain that it will be disposed of by the end of the story, sometimes after a period of coolness between him and Jeeves.
Among Bertie's many reasons for not wanting to marry are his dislike of children and that all of his fiancées seem to dislike Jeeves, insisting that Bertie sack him after their wedding. Aunt Agatha also disapproves strongly of Jeeves's influence on Bertie, seeing his position as Bertie's "keeper" as further proof of self-insufficiency and unwillingness to take responsibility. Bertie's Aunt Dahlia, on the other hand, is extremely impressed by Jeeves's intelligence and is often party to Jeeves's clever schemes.
Language
With a single exception, all the Bertie Wooster stories are told in the first person by Bertie himself. This allows Wodehouse a comedic paradox: although Bertie himself is, as Jeeves puts it, "mentally negligible", his descriptive style employs a considerable facility with English. The charm of Bertie's narrative descriptions makes the tales nearly impossible to adequately translate to a visual medium such as film.
Bertie displays a fondness for pre-war slang, peppering his speech with words and phrases such as "What ho!", "pipped," "bally," and so on. He also commonly abbreviates words and phrases, such as "eggs and b."
Miscellaneous
Bertie belongs to the Drones Club, where many of his adventures begin. He is also acquainted with Lord Emsworth, another of Wodehouse's best-known characters, and mentions having visited Blandings Castle.
Controversy
Bertie's foppish foolishness was not popular with everyone. Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when Wodehouse was recommended for a Companion of Honour in 1967, Sir Patrick Dean, British ambassador in Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate."
TV actors
Image:Jeeves-n-wooster.jpg Hugh Laurie portrayed Bertie in the early-1990s ITV series Jeeves and Wooster opposite his longtime comedy partner Stephen Fry as Jeeves.
In the earlier BBC World of Wooster (1965-7), Ian Carmichael played the part of Bertie opposite Dennis Price as Jeeves.
See also
External links
- BBC's World of Wooster (BBC comedy guide)
- ITV's Jeeves and Wooster (BBC comedy guide)nl:Bertie Wooster