Looking For Research Clues
Oct. 10th, 2007 03:42 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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What-ho, lovely people!
I'm been working on some things for my Sherlockian scion, with the hopes of producing something worthy to submit to the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, to try to gain admission to that august group. I've written a small piece for my scion on the interesting comparisons between Holmes and Jeeves, and I wondered if anyone has ever uncovered any literary suggestion (in stories, pastiches, scholarship, general ramblings, whatever!) that Holmes could have been Jeeves' father. What (if anything) do we know about Jeeves' parents---he seems to have uncles and aunts by the score, but I can't come up with anything off the top of my brain about his folks---except for the one line where he says his mother thought he was intelligent.
Anyway, I'm thinking about playing around with the idea, and was just curious if it had been done before, and if so, where.
Many many thanks ahead of time!
Woff
I'm been working on some things for my Sherlockian scion, with the hopes of producing something worthy to submit to the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, to try to gain admission to that august group. I've written a small piece for my scion on the interesting comparisons between Holmes and Jeeves, and I wondered if anyone has ever uncovered any literary suggestion (in stories, pastiches, scholarship, general ramblings, whatever!) that Holmes could have been Jeeves' father. What (if anything) do we know about Jeeves' parents---he seems to have uncles and aunts by the score, but I can't come up with anything off the top of my brain about his folks---except for the one line where he says his mother thought he was intelligent.
Anyway, I'm thinking about playing around with the idea, and was just curious if it had been done before, and if so, where.
Many many thanks ahead of time!
Woff
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Date: 2007-10-10 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 08:09 pm (UTC)Back when I was perusing the indeedsir archives, I came across a post in which someone mentioned a book that said Jeeves' father was a philologist, and his mother was a barmaid. Too bad I can't remember where that post is, or I'd link it. Anyway, it was something unofficial; as far as I know, Wodehouse never said anything specific about Jeeves' parents.
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Date: 2007-10-11 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 08:12 pm (UTC)Other than that I've really nothing else to add...aside from this side note, a speech giving by Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mystery, in which he insists that Watson was a Woman (http://www.hwslash.net/stout.html).
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Date: 2007-10-10 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 06:18 pm (UTC)*sigh* I have been sorely lacking in my Wodehouse know-how as of late. For SHAME.
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Date: 2007-10-11 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 05:35 pm (UTC)...perphaps we need to abbreviate the titles of the Jeeves stories in the way the Sherlockians did with the Holmes stories? (i.e. STUD, DYIN, HOUN, etc.)
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Date: 2007-10-10 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 09:36 pm (UTC)Incidentally, I've always felt fairly certain, given my experience (some might say run-ins) with the mainstream Holmes fandom, that I'd be blackballed from the BSI if I ever wrote a monograph outlining my scholarly opinions about Holmes's sexuality. Do you think ASH would be more welcoming?
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Date: 2007-10-11 02:39 am (UTC)Then again, I'm a slasher.
Still, I have written my own paper about Holmes (school project) about whether or not he actually gives justice. The paper I originally wanted to write argued that Sherlock Holmes was actually a superhero, but my teacher wouldn't let me do it. (I was disappointed, too. I still want to write that essay. The question is, would anyone read it?...) Anyway. -cough-
You would definitely be accepted by the slash community. Possibly even by some nonslashers, if it was presented purely academically.
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Date: 2007-10-11 06:32 am (UTC)And yeah, I suspect that some of the really scholarly Sherlockians, like Les Klinger, would be open to really listening the theory, simply because they want to know every possible interpretation out there. And I can be academic like nobody's business. (except when I need to be, like now. when I have a philosophy essay due in five hours that I haven't started yet.)
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Date: 2007-10-11 03:41 pm (UTC)Any teacher who wouldn't let you write that had no imagination! Sheez!!!!!
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Date: 2007-10-11 03:39 pm (UTC)My Jeeves references, let me show you them.
Date: 2007-10-10 11:13 pm (UTC)There's a little compare-contrast essay here (http://www.sherlockiana.net/ego/wodehouse/pgw%20artikler%20dk/pgw%20henry%20gb.htm). Though one of the quotes cited does having Jeeves referring to Holmes as ACD's "fictional detective" so you'd have to just sort of give that a pass.
It looks like Manly Wade Wellman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Wade_Wellman) was the first to come up with the idea that Jeeves might be Mrs. Hudson and Holmes's son, though casual googling doesn't seem to turn the essay or story up. There's a mention of the idea about a third from the end of this (http://members.tripod.com/~thethird/kents.htm) hilariously complicated article, which is mostly about tracing the lineage of Jonathan and Martha Kent, of Superman fame. (If you like this kind of insanity, check out the Wold Newton theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton_family).)
Semi-canonical
Wodehouse: a Literary Biography has a completely unattributed caption to one of the pictures of Jeeves in which it lists Jeeves's parents as "Basil Jeeves, philologist" and "Daisy Wiggins, barmaid." (Maybe related to the Irregulars' Wiggins? ^_^ ) It also lists his birthday as August...something (I haven't got my copy with me, but I remember it made him a Virgo), 1881. Like I said, I have no idea where this comes from; my best guess would be from C. Northcote Parkinson's mock-biography (http://www.amazon.com/Jeeves-Gentlemans-Gentleman-Northcote-Parkinson/dp/0312441444), which I confess I've never read.
In the never-completed musical with the plot eventually used for Ring for Jeeves aka The Return of Jeeves, Wodehouse gives Jeeves a song in which he talks about his fond memories of his childhood in Brixton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton). At least one of his aunts is from SE London, though, so that would fit.
Canonical:
The Jeeves article (http://webcitation.org/mainframe) at Blandings.org.uk is probably the first stop for any research, so I'll try not to just repeat all that. ^_^
Basically, we've got at least three aunts (and Bertie does at one point refer to "Jeeves's three aunts," wondering if they ever shut him up by pointing out that "at the age of six the child Jeeves didn't know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the ground." Aunts with names are Annie, Emily, and Mrs. Pigott (of whom Jeeves seems fond, as he goes to stay with her when he's sick). Uncles with names are Charlie Silversmith (a butler, appearing in The Mating Season, who "frequently" dandled the infant Jeeves upon his knee) and Cyril, who told mildly disturbing jokes about railway accidents.
There's one cousin, Egbert, who's a policeman; another cousin, Queenie Silversmith, who's a parlourmaid at Deverill Hall where her father is a butler, and is engaged to another policeman (though they nearly break up because of the policeman's atheistic tendencies, and also because Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright gives her a bit of a rush).
And Jeeves has at least one niece, Mabel, who gets engaged to Biffy Biffen, and who Jeeves seems to have a relatively close relationship with. This would indicate the existence of a sibling for Jeeves. I usually assume this must be a sister since clearly Mabel's last name can't be Jeeves (even Biffy wouldn't have forgotten that) but conceivably you could make the argument that Jeeves' mother had children from two marriages.
I think the only thing Jeeves ever says directly about his parents is that his mother thought him intelligent as a child. Overall, I'd say he's pretty solidly lower-middle class, with a fairly close-knit family who mostly live in the suburbs of London and the Home Counties.
Hope some of this helps! (And damn, I really need to get myself a tl;dr icon, don't I? I wonder where one finds pictures of teal deer...?)
Re: My Jeeves references, let me show you them.
Date: 2007-10-11 12:54 am (UTC)Do you know which story that's in? I don't remember ever seeeing that before.
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Date: 2007-10-11 01:00 am (UTC)Also, crap, I really fail at close-tags, don't I? >
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Date: 2007-10-11 06:24 am (UTC)Re: My Jeeves references, let me show you them.
Date: 2007-10-11 03:25 pm (UTC)Jeeves was amazingly blessed with kinfolk, wasn't he? :)
Re: My Jeeves references, let me show you them.
Date: 2007-10-11 05:35 pm (UTC)However, this part I can get behind:
The English Martha Clark grew up to marry a man named Hudson, a respectable tradesman in Peckham who died when she was 25 years old. She became a landlady, and her most famous renter was Sherlock Holmes. She was ten to fifteen years his senior, and there was never any romantic bond between them, despite Manly Wade Wellman's speculations. (Her husband was a cousin of the Hudson in the "Gloria Scott" adventure, however.) Nor was Reginald Jeeves, Holmes and Mrs. Hudson's son, although he did hear of a relationship between Jeeves and Mrs. Hudson which led to his speculation. Jeeves was the son of Mrs. Hudson's first cousin.
(Whether Jeeves had any Holmesian genes might be answered by whether the Squire Holmes' had any maids named Jeeves who worked for Dr. Siger Holmes or Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's grandfather...)
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Date: 2007-10-11 06:22 pm (UTC)I ALSO forgot to mention this! I have a short story of Wodehouse's werein a Mulliner explains why Sherlock Holmes was the fiend of Baker Street and was in fact Moriarty. It was called "From a Detective's Notebook". Brilliant stuff that, I'm going to hunt it down and scan it for you if you'd like!
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Date: 2007-10-11 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 02:12 am (UTC)Also, supposedly there's an old tradition in the north of England, and perhaps other places, of guys asking another guy who they admired to impregnate their wife so that they can have those admirable genes in their own family. (Of course the only place I can think of to offer as a reference for this is "The Flying Yorkshireman" by Eric Knight, but I do think I've heard mention of it elsewhere as well.)
The biggest stumbling block is that Jeeves is not of the upper classes. Jem's Bird came up with the excuse that he had to be hidden by giving him a false name and background, but, although I enjoyed her story, I really don't quite buy it, given that he has so many relatives who are all of the same class, and you don't pay off THAT many people to stick to a story.
So... yeah.
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Date: 2007-10-12 04:17 pm (UTC)