Today, most people think of Bertie Wooster as a denizen of the 1920s-1930s. That does seem to be the temporal setting in which the Jeeves stories finally crystallized – particularly after WWII, when P. G. Wodehouse became painfully aware of the fact that he was writing about a vanished world. The beloved ITV adaptation with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry subtly establishes the timeline in the early 1930s (sometime between the publication of Minnie the Moocher in 1930 and the repeal of Prohibition in late 1933).
However, Bertie Wooster’s roots are planted deeply in an earlier era. Wodehouse made no secret of the fact that Bertie was a creature of the Edwardian age, a particular species of idle, unambitious and wealthy young man whose heyday was somewhere between 1900 and 1914. As Wodehouse wrote in the preface to his 1946 novel, Joy in the Morning:
This is pointed out to me every time a new book of mine dealing with the Drones Club of Jeeves and Bertie is published in England. "Edwardian!" the critics hiss at me. (It is not easy to hiss the word Edwardian, containing as it does no sibilant, but they manage it.) And I shuffle my feet and blush a good deal and say, "Yes, I suppose you're right". After all, I tell myself, there has been no generic term for the type of young man who figures in my stories since he used to be called a knut in the pre-first-war days, which certainly seems to suggest that the species has died out like the macaronis of the Regency and the whiskered mashers of the Victorian age.
So what, exactly, is a knut (pronounced “nut,” but spelled with a k by those in the know)? This is a question that Wodehouse tackled in 1914, in an essay for Vanity Fair called “The Knuts o’London” (with illustrations by "Fish"). You can read the piece in its entirety and see all the illustrations here, but for our purposes, this is the most interesting part:
For listlessness and a certain air of world-weariness, combined with a colored collar, a small moustache, a drooping carriage, the minimum of frontal development, and a high-power racing-car, are the chief qualifications of the Nut. He is bored to death, but he does it simply because it’s done. [ . . . ] His chief forms of relaxation are dancing and bread-throwing. The only time a Nut really sits up and begins to display animation is when a hard roll, thrown by a friend across the table, takes him in the eye, and he reaches out for another to throw back.
The knut was a familiar type to those who lived in Edwardian London (in later interviews, Wodehouse claimed he knew them “by the score” in the prewar days), and one that was popularized more broadly on the stage by entertainers like George Grossmith Jr., G. P. Huntley, and Ralph Lynn.
One of the most famous knut characters of the Edwardian era was “Gilbert the Filbert,” the titular character of a song performed by the dashing Basil Hallam (image at left) for The Passing Show at London’s Palace Theatre in 1914. Listen to it here: Hallam died in action only two years later while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in WWI. His tragic passing serves as a poignant symbol for the extinction of the knut – an extinction that Wodehouse largely ascribed to a faltering economy forcing these wayward “second sons” to take up gainful employment (characteristically ignoring the massive rabid elephant in in the room that was the First World War).
Despite the brief floruit of the real-life knut, the caricature is still deeply entrenched in our collective cultural consciousness. Although the term has fallen into relative obscurity, the image of the knut is instantly recognizable: a lanky fellow in top hat, tails, monocle and spats (the latter being a crucial element of the knut’s attire, according to Wodehouse), possibly sporting a little curly mustache, amiably hoisting a glass of champagne and burbling out cheerful inanities (“Jolly good show, old chap!”). (Image of Mr. Peanut from www.planters.com. Yes, he is an actual nut. COINCIDENCE?! I don't know, actually, but I'm inclined to think not.)
While Bertie, as a character, eventually developed beyond this simplistic stereotype, that was his starting point. He was created as a type that would be familiar and amusing to both British and American audiences. In fact, his debut in America slightly preceded his first appearance in England. The first story featuring Bertie (to whom the surname Wooster had not yet been attached), “Extricating Young Gussie,” appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in September 1915, and in The Strand in January 1916. The story was also set largely in America, further solidifying Bertie’s trans-Atlantic appeal.
In this story, Bertie is the quintessential knut: a passive and listless young chap, more of an observer than a player in his own story, strangely adrift and helpless in the face of the events unfolding around him. Jeeves is present, but only as a walk-on. This proto-Bertie faces the world, and its aunts, alone. The story plunges right into the action without any preamble to speak of, and there’s not a single word about Bertie’s appearance.
Here are our first glimpses of Bertie, as depicted by Martin Justice in the Saturday Evening Post, and by Alfred Leete in The Strand (images from madameulalie.org):
Justice gives us a rather handsome Bertie, more along the lines of a Basil Hallam than a Ralph Lynn. He appears here at far left, helplessly observing the reunion of his Aunt Julia and her old theatrical compatriot, Joe Danby.
Leete’s Bertie is far more comical, buck-toothed and weak-chinned, with a look of perpetual, heavy-lidded ennui. One common feature of both is the monocle, an accessory that would remain doggedly attached to Bertie’s face in the work of numerous artists across many decades, despite its conspicuous absence from all but one of the many stories featuring Bertie (more on that later). One is reminded of the words of another famous Bertie, the music-hall character and underprivileged would-be knut, “Burlington Bertie from Bow”:
My pose, Tho' ironical Shows That my monocle Holds up my face, keeps it in place, Stops it from slipping away. The monocle, although not explicitly a part of Bertie Wooster’s standard uniform (as it was for his contemporary, Psmith) seems to have become a visual shorthand for characters of his general type. Like Burlington Bertie, Bertie Wooster (in the eyes of his illustrators, anyway) had to wear the monocle in order to maintain his essential identity. Even in later illustrations, where he has divested himself of most of the typical Edwardian attire, the monocle remains as a vestigial signal of his knutness. But wait! I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. Bertie didn’t just spring fully formed from Wodehouse’s brow. He had a predecessor, a sort of proto-Bertie, and Wodehouse made no secret of the fact that they were essentially the same character. Bertie was merely a rebranding of Wodehouse's earlier knut character, Reggie Pepper. Reggie first appeared in 1911, and his stories were illustrated, too. Like the early Bertie, Reggie’s appearance is left a mystery in the text of the stories. Let’s compare Reggie with our early Bertie:
There's Reggie at right, again by Alfred Leete in The Strand, from the 1915 story "Concealed Art."
And there's Leete's Bertie at far right, in another scene from "Extricating Young Gussie."
Lest you put that shocking similarity down to the fact that both examples are by the same artist, here's another take on Reggie from his very first appearance, in the 1911 story "Absent Treatment," by Joseph Simpson, R. B. A.:
Not a peep out of old Plum at this point about what either character was supposed to look like, but I suppose it didn't really matter. Reggie Pepper, and Bertie, in his earliest form, both served as a fun narrative voice and comedic foil for the main action of the story. They were both a recognizable "type" that seems to have called up a fairly specific sort of image, especially for British illustrators of the day.
But Bertie would not be a simple stock character for long. As Bertie's stories become more focused on Bertie himself, he begins to talk about himself more, and details of his appearance begin to emerge. Not that this stopped his illustrators from portraying him however they damn well pleased. Next time: The Many Faces of Bertie Wooster.
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AuthorI'm a Wodehouse fan who also loves vintage illustrations. ArchivesCategories
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