Armistice Day

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

An excellent site about The Great War, with battle accounts, photos, and poetry:

http://www.greatwar.nl/

If you need me, I'll just be sobbing in this corner over here.

Comments

[cross-stitchery.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link :) i've got a long neglected post WWW1 original story in the works which might some day benefit from this information.

it also raises the question for me, would Bertie have been involved in the war (and if so, *how* did he - or the British army - survive it? :P). i can readily see Jeeves being involved as a batman or spy or just a very good NCO, but Bertie... that's a scary thought.

i'm not sure of ages or even the time frame in which the stories take place. can anyone enlighten me?

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

The very first Wodehouse fanfic I read was an amazing story by Adina called "Green Ice" (top of the page here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/indeedsir_posts/789.html#cutid1 )

which addresses that very issue. For the most part I tend think of most of Wodehouse as a sort of Arcadian 1920s-30s AU where most of the horrible events of the 20th c. didn't happen. Or if they did, they weren't as bad. There's a novel called "The Indiscretions of Archie" where the Bertie-like eponymous hero has fairly recently returned from the War, and is quite bubbly about bombs and starvation in the trenches. (Okay, then...) Spode, the amateur dictator, is hilarious, and I don't want to ruin that by putting him in the same world with Hitler. Bertie and his friends ever appear to get any older, and the structure of their society remains determinedly Edwardian, but Bertie's pop culture references tend to march with the times (sometimes); in the last novel, "Aunts Aren't Gentlemen," I seem to remember him mentioning hippies, and my brain going, "Does Not Compute." The Granada series very wisely (IMHO) kept everything in an idealized between-the-wars Neverland, which is the feeling one normally gets reading the stories.

George Orwell pointed out in some essay or other that, in real life, Bertie Wooster would probably have died on the Western Front before any of the stories took place. Like, thanks for that thought, George. ("Orrie Orwell"? "Wellie"? "Snorie"?)

[cross-stitchery.livejournal.com]

The very first Wodehouse fanfic I read was an amazing story by Adina called "Green Ice"

thanks. i'll read that in a minute.

For the most part I tend think of most of Wodehouse as a sort of Arcadian 1920s-30s AU where most of the horrible events of the 20th c. didn't happen. Or if they did, they weren't as bad.

considering Spode - he's obviously modelled on Hitler, tho as you say, far from being in the same league. however, i believe in the 30's people *did* think of Hitler as a joke. the early 30's at least. which probably gives us the closest thing to a time frame.

i was thinking of the aunties' outfits and tending to put the stories in an earlier period, but thinking again, the young women were dressed more in thirties style than twenties (on the DVDs, that is), so the 30's fit best there too.


There's a novel called "The Indiscretions of Archie" where the Bertie-like eponymous hero has fairly recently returned from the War, and is quite bubbly about bombs and starvation in the trenches. (Okay, then...)

ah, but that's because he's hiding his damaged psyche behind an air of apparent carefreeness, a la Peter Wimsey... <g>

George Orwell pointed out in some essay or other that, in real life, Bertie Wooster would probably have died on the Western Front before any of the stories took place.

he's probably right, but what a killjoy <g> or maybe Bertie sustained a head injury and that's why he's the way he is in the stories :P

still, if the stories are set in the 30's he would have been too young, maybe, to serve in the war? he might have joined up just as the war was ending.

[one-bumblefish.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to speculate on this with any real precision - mostly because it reduces me to a blithering puddle of goo, to be frank - but also because the characters are seemingly ageless, and because (if my memory serves me) even though Wodehouse was writing Jeeves stories over the significant time-span of around 1917 to 1974, he doesn't tend to mention either the first or second World War until WWII is safely over and done with, and then only in passing. To reiterate what others have already stated more eloquently, it does seem to be permanently set in an idyllic version of the between-the-wars 20s and 30s, albeit with a certain amount of jarring references to more modern times!

However, I think Jeeves does state definitively that he served in the First World War in that strange solitary novel in which Bertie for once doesn’t appear, Ring For Jeeves (that is, if you call “I dabbled in it to a certain extent, m’lord” definitive), while I imagine Bertie himself would have been far too young to have done so at that time. As to WWII, it’s more open to speculation and entirely possible that both participated, as Bertie at least would have been of age (although perhaps by the 1940s Jeeves would have been too old?).

Thankyou for posting this link! I’m afraid thinking about it too much befuddles my brain, so I hope what I’ve said has made sense - I can’t bear to think about it too hard, or I’ll be joining you in that corner before long!

Toodle-pip!