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Most fellows, no doubt, are all for having their valets confine their activities to creasing trousers and what not without trying to run the home; but it's different with Jeeves. Right from the first day he came to me, I have looked on him as a sort of guide, philosopher, and friend.
- The Inimitable Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse
We have to admit it. Bertie Wooster as portrayed by Hugh Laurie1 on the BBC TV series, Jeeves and Wooster, is not a particularly sympathetic character. After all, we see a grown man who can't even make a cup of tea by himself, who indulges in puerile hooliganism like stealing hats, and in his personal interactions has the conversational ability of a spoiled five year old. If it wasn't for his valet, Jeeves, we doubt he could survive beyond his twenty-third birthday.
Footnote
Some American viewers were shocked! shocked! when after many years of watching the hit TV series, House, they learned the star of the show was actually an Englishman. These viewers were only slightly less shocked than those who found out the co-star of Jeeves and Wooster could assume such a convincing American accent that he was able to star in one of the most popular TV series in America.
Another actor who could do a great American accent was Bob Hoskins. Many of those who saw Who's Afraid of Roger Rabbit? were surprised to hear interviews where he sported an indisputable Albion twang.
As to who is the best English actor who nevertheless does a bad American accent, a number of critics have settled on Michael Caine. Certainly a quick review of his "American" roles does lend some justification to this opinion although his southern accent in Hurry Sundown was actually pretty good.
On the other hand, the Bertie Wooster in the books by P. G. Wodehouse is not quite the addle-headed nincompoop of the TV shows. Of course, the books are written in the first person with Bertie as the narrator. So we can't expect any admission to imbecility to appear in the telling. Nevertheless, Bertie still has to turn to "his man" Jeeves to get him out of any difficulty no matter how minor.
Jeeves, as many fans point out, is not a butler. He is a valet2 or as is sometimes genteely stated, a "gentleman's gentleman". A valet is a live-in personal attendant who takes care of the routine household duties for an individual. For a single man living alone, this would include the washing, ironing, cleaning, and cooking. A butler, on the other hand, has a supervisory position and is charged with the running of a household. Bertie made the distinction when he said, "Jeeves, of course, is a gentleman's gentleman, not a butler, but if the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them."
Footnote
Officially the word is pronounced "val-LAY" in the English speaking world after the French. However, in actual practice - and as heard in the Jeeves shows and by various native speaking Britons - the actual rendering seems to have shifted in dialect to "VAL-lit". In America you'll always hear "val-LAY" parking, never 'VAL-lit" parking.
Similarly the popular wine pronounced in America as "clair-RAY" seems to be rendered more often in England as "CLAIR-rit.
In the TV show - which aired in 23 episodes from 1990 to 1993 - Jeeves was played by Stephen Fry. In the books it can be deduced that Jeeves is not that much older than Bertie - a few years perhaps - so the TV representations agree with the books although the illustrations of the original articles usually depict Jeeves as looking middle aged.
After the show ended neither actor let grass grow under their feet. Both made movies and later moved into long run television shows. Hugh, as we said, went on to star in eight seasons of House on American television and Stephen hosted the celebrity panel show Qi (Quite Interesting) from 2003 to 2015 after which the helm was assumed by Sandi Toksvig.
Although Bertie's airheadedness is quite marked in the television shows, the TV scripts did follow the plots of the stories although they did mix and match episodes of one story with those of another. Like the books about Horatio Hornblower - excellent even today - some of the novels are compilations of short stories that were first published in popular magazines.
The basic premise of the stories - a savvy intelligent servant helping out an upper crust individual who seems incapable of pouring a fine vintage out of his black leather gaiters with the instructions engraved in copperplate on the heel - traces its origins back to Ancient Greece. Of course the "servant" in the Greek comedy was always a slave. The smart slave/dumb master was a basic plot point of what is now called Athenian New Comedy. The most famous of the New Comedy playwrights is Menander who lived from about 342 BC to around 292.3
Footnote
It's worth mentioning that Menander's plays are also the precursor of one of the more lamentable of modern entertainments - the sitcom. In addition to the clever slave who sets things aright, you had the love-sick male adolescent, the object of his affections in the form of a young and beautiful maiden, and the disapproving father who refuses to countenance even platonic congress betwixt his daughter and the protagonist. And as true for our own sitcoms, the humor was light on action but heavy on dialog with the actors coming on stage and swapping barbs before exiting.
One little known aspect of Greek theater is how rarely the plays were staged and how limited was the audience. Plays were only performed during religious festivals a couple of times a year with the rituals lasting only a few days. The plays were also rather arduous for the attendees. They sat outdoors in open theaters - and it can get hot in Greece - as they watched back-to-back performances all day long. Women were not allowed as actors and some historians think that even the audience was exclusively men. It wasn't until the rise of Rome that theater was staged for entertainment, available at all times of the year, and the audience open to everyone regardless of gender.
None of Menander's 100 plus comedies survive in their entirety. Only Dyskolos (Δύσκολος, "The Grump") comes down to us almost intact. However, as compensation Menander's legacy is long and a tally on a popular informational website lists the number of sitcoms produced at over 1500 and rising.
Jeeves and Wooster was not the first time the characters of P. G. Wodehouse were put to motionable media. On the BBC from 1965 to 1967, Ian Carmichael played the unflappable Jeeves and Dennis Price stood in as Wooster. The usual cast from the books also appeared.
As you might expect with the resurgence of the musical in the late 1960's, audiences have seen Jeeves and Wooster singing songs and capering about. By Jeeves! with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber premiered in 1975 starring David Hemmings as Wooster and Michael Aldrige as Jeeves. The original production was not a success and in fact a number of people who are fans of Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, and Evita have not even heard of the show. A later rewrite was more successful, and in 2001, it was made into a TV musical.
But even before the rise of the small screen, audiences could see the dynamic duo in action. The release of Thank You, Jeeves! in 1936 had Wooster played by David Niven and Jeeves personified by Arthur Treacher. The plot, though, contains little resemblance to any of the original stories. But probably the biggest departure from either the spirit or the letters of the books is Step Lively, Jeeves! in 1937, again starring Arthur Treacher as Jeeves. But Bertie Wooster doesn't even appear and the character of Jeeves is completely opposite from that of the literary creation.
P. G. Wodehouse ("Plum" to his friends) was far removed from the privileged lagabout that was his creation. Unable to afford a university education, P. G. clerked in a bank after he got out of school and as recreation from a job he hated began writing. His first story was published in 1900 and this was followed by a novel in 1902 with the characters being resident in an English public school4. With a writing career stretching to three quarters of a century, Plum's output was enormous but nothing was as popular as Jeeves and Wooster.
Footnote
"Public" schools in England are what Americans call private schools. That is they charge tuition. What Americans call public schools are dubbed "maintained schools" in England.
There really isn't a one-to-one correspondence of the educational levels in the US and the UK but you can get a rough correlation. The nearest equivalent to a "high school" in America is what the English call a "sixth form college". In days of yore you'd even have "colleges" that would sometimes have students in what are middle schools in America. The old "junior high schools" have 'prit near vanished.
For all their roots reaching back to antiquity, the Jeeves and Wooster stories are relatively recent. They first found print in 1915 and ended up in 1974. They sold millions of copies and made P. G. fabulously rich and famous.
One of George Orwell's most famous essays is "Good Bad Books". A good bad book is one that "has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished." Among the works cited are the Sherlock Holmes stories and that's probably the most enduring set of good bad books that George discusses.
Missing from George's essay, though, are the Jeeves and Wooster books. Why George left them out is a bit of a mystery. He certainly knew about them and he even wrote an essay "In Defense of P. G. Wodehouse". As for why P. G. - who later received a knighthood - needed defending, well, that's another story.
References and Further Reading
"Yours Ever, Plum: The Letters and Life of P.G. Wodehouse", Christopher Buckley, Newsweek, January 28, 2013.
Jeeves and Wooster, Hugh Laurie (actor), Stephen Fry (actor), BBC, Internet Movie Data Base.
The Inimitable Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse, Jenkins, 1923.
"Ring for Jeeves", P. G. Wodehouse, Jenkins, 1953.
Stiff Upper Lip Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse, Simon and Schuster, 1962.
The World of Wooster, Dennis Price (actor), Ian Carmichael (actor), BBC, Internet Movie Data Base.
Thank You, Jeeves, Arthur Treacher (actor), David Niven (actor), 20th Century Fox, 1936, Internet Movie Data Base.
Step Lively, Jeeves!, Arthur Treacher (actor), 20th Century Fox, 1937, Internet Movie Data Base.
By Jeeves, Andrew Lloyd Weber (composer), Martin Jarvis (actor), John Scherer (actor), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Really Useful Films, Tapestry Pictures, 2001, Internet Movie Data Base.
"Good Bad Books", In Front of Your Nose, George Orwell (author), Sonia Orwell (editor), Ian Angus (editor), The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, Harcourt, Brace, 1968.
Ancient Greek Civilization, Jeremy McInerney (lecturer), The Great Courses, The Teaching Company.