Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, resident at 3A Berkeley Mansions,
London W.I, narrator of 10 novels and 34 stories:
Artistic Career of Corky,
Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest (1),
The Aunt and the Sluggard (1),
Jeeves Takes Charge,
Jeeves and the Hard Boiled Egg (1),
Jeeves and the Chump Cyril (A Letter of Introduction/Startling Dressiness of a Lift Attendant),
Jeeves in the Springtime (Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum/No Wedding Bells for Bingo),
Aunt Agatha Takes the Count (Aunt Agatha Speaks Her Mind/Pearls Mean Tears),
Scoring Off Jeeves (Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum/No Wedding Bells for Bingo),
Sir Roderick Comes To Lunch (Introducing Claude and Eustace/Sir Roderick Comes To Lunch),
Comrade Bingo (Comrade Bingo/Bingo Has a Bad Goodwood),
The Great Sermon Handicap,
The Purity of the Turf,
The Metropolitan Touch,
The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace,
Bingo and the Little Woman (Bingo and the Little Woman/All's Well),
Bertie Changes His Mind,
The Inimitable Jeeves,
The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy,
Clustering Round Young Bingo,
Without the Option,
Fixing It for Freddie,
The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy,
Jeeves and the Impending Doom,
Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit,
Jeeves and the Song of Songs,
Episode of the Dog McIntosh,
The Spot of Art,
The Love That Purifies,
Jeeves and the Kid Clementina,
Jeeves and the Old School Chum,
Indian Summer of an Uncle,
The Ordeal of Young Tuppy,
Right Ho, Jeeves,
Thank You, Jeeves,
Right Ho, Jeeves,
The Code of the Woosters,
Joy in the Morning,
The Mating Season,
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit,
Jeeves Makes an Omelet,
Jeeves in the Offing,
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves,
Jeeves and the Greasy Bird,
Much Obliged, Jeeves,
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen.
A graduate of Rev. Aubrey Upjohn's private school
at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, Eton, and Oxford, where
he was in Magdalen and won his Rackets Blue in
partnership with Beefy Anstruther during his last year. A Drone,
his proper attire and escape from personal difficulties are
attended to by his man Jeeves. His appearance is rarely
hinted; in Comrade Bingo (Comrade Bingo/Bingo Has a Bad Goodwood)
a Hyde Park agitator (Bingo Little in
disguise) describes him as "the tall thin one with the face
like a motor-mascot." Boko Fittleworth describes him as tall
and slim in Joy in the Morning. Normally clean-shaven, he has grown a
moustache in Jeeves and the Hard Boiled Egg (1),
and another of the David Niven type in
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, each time provoking a rift with Jeeves. His most public
discomfiture was being fined £5 by magistrate Watkyn Basset
for pinching a policeman's helmet on Boat Race Night. His
proudest achievements include winning a prize at his first
school for the best collection of wild flowers made during the
summer holidays, winning a Scripture Knowledge contest at
Malvern House, and writing an article for Milady's Boudoir
entitled "What the Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing" for the
"Husbands and Brothers" page (this happens in Clustering Round Young Bingo - "I
don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald
heads and faces like birds who have suffered") for which his
Aunt Dahlia paid him a packet of cigarettes. He also
mentions having won a Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap in his
younger days at a clergyman uncle's place in Kent. His
middle name, as we learn in Much Obliged, Jeeves, is derived from the
horse who won the Grand National immediately prior to his
baptism, earning Wooster Sr. a packet (presumably of
something more valuable than cigarettes). His ranking aunts are
Dahlia and Agatha (his late father's sisters, who regard him
with a mixture of affection and contempt), but among his
many kin are George Wooster (Lord Yaxley, brother of
Dahlia and Agatha), an Uncle Willoughby (Jeeves Takes Charge), an
eccentric Uncle Henry who kept eleven pet rabbits in his
bedroom and wound up his career in some sort of a home
(Sir Roderick Comes To Lunch (Introducing Claude and Eustace/Sir Roderick Comes To Lunch)
mentioned in Thank You, Jeeves as three years dead), an
Aunt Emily (mother of Claude & Eustace in The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace, an
Uncle Clive in Worcestershire (The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace, an Uncle James
(The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy),
an Uncle Percy (Without the Option,
Fixing It for Freddie), and an Uncle
Thomas (The Love That Purifies). A sister, Mrs. Scholfield, is mentioned in
Bertie Changes His Mind. The Code of the Woosters includes the commandment
"never let a pal down" and numerous other prohibitions.
Aims always to be the preux chevalier, which requires that he
never demur when a girl in a passing fit of despair declares
that she will marry him, e.g. Florence Craye in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit,
Madeline Bassett and Florence Craye (again) in Much Obliged, Jeeves,
Vanessa Cook in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. Normally regarded with contempt by
women ("Show me a woman, and I will show you someone
who is going to ignore my observations"), but often seized by
vain impulses to propose marriage ("It would be pretty
difficult for me to go anywhere in England where there
wasn't somebody who has turned me down at some time or
another.") Plays the banjolele (for which Jeeves briefly leaves
his service) in Thank You, Jeeves, where Jeeves describes him to Pauline
Stoker as "mentally somewhat negligible," Pauline as "one of
Nature's bachelors." Aunt Agatha, his severest critic,
describes him as "barely sentient" (The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy). His prototypes
include Reggie Pepper and Bertie Mannering-Phipps.
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