Something is missing....

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

I was poking around the interwebs, and read up on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagging

A VERY common practice in schools of Bertie's time period. The article even mentions Eton specifically.

Now, Bertie already has ferocious aunts giving him a submissive personality, but, somehow, I don't think that accounts for all of it. I think he also may have served as someone's fag.

And I would like to think this someone was Bingo 'We-were-at-school-together' Little. Bingo, while not as abusive as Bertie's other 'friends', seems to think he is entitled to ask every favor of Bertie. It's a possible explanation. Unless it states in canon that they are the same age?

In any case, I am sure he was someone's fag, simply given the school environment and his personality.

Discuss/ giggle over terminology.

Edit:
B: You know, Jeeves, I was a valet, once.

J: Really, sir?

B: Absolutely! Well, sort of. I was a fag, you see.

J:........Indeed, sir.

Edit Also: For some reason, I picture him always burning the toast, but being rather good at shining shoes.

Comments

[queen-fiend.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. I read Tom Brown's Schooldays last year for a children's lit class, and there was a lot of fagging. I was quite confused when I first read it, because I had never heard of fagging before. :P

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

It is one of those later-this-will-be-unintentionally-funny things, isn't it?
The conversation the first time one hears of it always seems to go like this:
1: Fagging? ....is this a gay thing?
2: No. Well...kind of.

[queen-fiend.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much the conversation I had with myself. :P Actually, I wrote my final essay for that course on possible homosexual relationships at public schools, after reading some articles on the same topic.

[b-c-draygon.livejournal.com]

It's funny you should mention this - I was considering writing a fic (my first in this fandom; yes, I am very daunted!) based around this very concept!

Also, the edit is making me giggle like a crazy person. :P

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

Ha! Fantastic! I posted hoping it would inspire more Eton fiction. ^_^;;

When it popped into my head, it made me giggle. I figured I had to share that bit of dialogue.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

I would be surprised if he didn't have to fag for an older boy at least in his first year - it was my impression that it was just sort of the normal thing as a first year, at least?

I don't think it would've been for Bingo, though - aren't they meant to be almost exactly the same age? With Bingo being a little bit younger? I think Bertie says in the first Bingo-story that he's always felt he ought to look after Bingo and keep him from getting into too much trouble.

Funny as the terminology is, I have to confess I'm not all that gung-ho about the idea of little!Bertie being subjected to the harsher sort of, um, lessons about service as a first year at Eton. However possible such a thing might have been, I mean. YMMV, and throwing no stones and all, but a thirteen year old boy having to accept whatever from a seventeen year old hits my dubcon/noncon and child abuse squick buttons pretty damn hard, and to be honest doesn't really seem in line with Bertie's personality or the overall tone of canon.

...Behold me: innocentsmith, Destroyer of Squee. :P Sorry about that.

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

But this is in Wodehouse-land, where nothing really bad ever happens.
He would just have to make some fellows toast until said fellow got tired of his room filling with smoke all the time.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

this is in Wodehouse-land, where nothing really bad ever happens

Well, yeah, exactly. I have no objection to fic about young!Bertie running around having to black someone's boots or make them toast, and/or getting into wacky mishaps around school. That would be totally adorable, and I'd really love to read it. And young!Bertie/young!Bingo could be cute, too.

But - maybe I misunderstood, but you were talking about Bertie having been given a submissive personality as a result of fagging, and I just. Really, really don't want to think about underage!dubcon fic involving Bertie. Sorry. And I recognize that this is clearly a "don't like, don't read" kind of thing, and other people's tastes may vary, but...still. Drawing on actual, historical instances of boys getting abused in aid of chan sexy fun times fic kind of doesn't strike me as being in the best taste. And, applied to the Wodehouseverse, would kind of send me screaming into the night.

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

I was not thinking in those terms. Bertie should never be hurt. His friends and relations do enough damage. -_-;; Seriously, someone give the man a hug.

[luna-argentea.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, Roald Dahl wrote about fagging in Boy (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141322764/ref=sib_rdr_dp).

[seularen.livejournal.com]

really? i remember reading that book as a kid but for some reason do not remember this. *gives memory an unhappy look*

[luna-argentea.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember it being in the book because it stuck in my mind as I hadn't heard of it before.

[kill-claudio.livejournal.com]

Hee, I was going to point that out, but you beat me to it. :-) I always thought Dahl made fagging sound not too bad, what with his camel-hair dressing gown(?) and the funny stories about his teachers. Then again, Roald Dahl makes being shot down by enemy aircraft during WW2 sound like a Boy's Own adventure, so it probably wasn't that great.

Stephen Fry mentions this in his autobiography too, I think, although fags had to do communal duties like collect the mail, etc, rather than being one boy's personal servant. Fry's job was to wake the older boys in the morning, and he relates that this led to a few early-morning fumbles with some of the older boys. Good to know homosocialism is still going strong in the upper classes, isn't it?

[seularen.livejournal.com]

Good to know homosocialism is still going strong in the upper classes, isn't it?

Warms the cockles of the heart. (Also makes the rainbow-tinted glasses all the more historically accurate.)

[purplefluffycat.livejournal.com]

I do indeed think it was highly likely that Bertie was a fag while at school - I believe most boys were at some point or another. However, it is also likely that Bertie would have had a fag of his own when he reached the last year of school - again, I think that was common.

I quite agree that this would be a very rich vein for a fic-author to mine - Bertie's relationship with his fag-master, or even his own fag, could well have shaped his adult personality.

I can't quite see him fagging for Bingo, however, because Bertie doesn't seem quite respectful enough to/about Bingo to suggest that he previously acted as, effectively, his servant. Also, Bingo always strikes me as especially young, given his tendency to puppy-love!

Bertie/Bingo experimental tumbles in the dorm, though, are an entirely different matter... ;-)

Great topic :-)

PurpleFluffyCat x

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

Yes, quite true. Bingo probably is a year younger, or something. I still like playing with the idea of Bingo being his senior, as my Eton Conversation shows.

But he is very likely to have been or to have had a fag. And it's an interesting picture.

I just hope I stimulate some creativity! I very selfishly just wanted some more Eton/Oxford stories. ^_^;;

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

I don't think that has much to do with his tractability, since everyone did fagging duty at some point, and it's only Bertie who ended up a yes-man preux. Besides, surely Bertie's not more compliant around Bingo (who I don't imagine being older, by the way) than all the others.
What precisely did fagging at Eton entail in those times, though, I wonder. What if Jeeves was upper-class, in a senior year there?..

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

Jeeves as....oh, Jesus.....

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Are we talking high school Eton AU, here? Why/how would Jeeves have gone to Eton?

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the ticket, an AU.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

ink_n_imp did a little art+fic thing along those lines, a while back.

This (http://community.livejournal.com/indeedsir/209957.html) was the first post on it, I think, and then there was this picture (http://ink-n-imp.deviantart.com/art/Prompt-37-Thief-39999129), which led to this ficlet (http://membranelabs.livejournal.com/2562.html). They're all pretty adorable.

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I haven't seen some of those lovely pictures!
I remember that short story with a bit of a sequel (http://membranelabs.livejournal.com/3081.html), they are quite sweet, true. Though I'd rather Jeeves weren't so nasty to Bertie.

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds like an AU. They would have to be closer in age, for starters.

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

In my personal canon they're no more than six years apart in age, anyway.

[seularen.livejournal.com]

What if Jeeves was upper-class, in a senior year there?..

Dude. Dude. YES.

icon also relevant.

[zekkass.livejournal.com]

Thirded!

Now, what do we have to do to make this happen?

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

He would definitely have been somebody's fag - one of the original intentions of fagging was as 'a great leveller', i.e., to prevent the sons of lords getting too up themselves, they would have to clean an older boy's shoes exactly like a merchant's son would, and so forth. I am absolutely in favour of fics about this, for the record!

I actually didn't know 'fag' meant 'queer' in the US until I discovered fandom. Here, it has two meanings: the one discussed in this post, and 'cigarette'.

[seularen.livejournal.com]

I actually didn't know 'fag' meant 'queer' in the US until I discovered fandom

Imagine my shock the first time I read a brit!fic and someone asked for a fag! I thought the author had gone barmy. (This was back before I became the dedicated Anglophile I am today.)

[kakareen.livejournal.com]

To an American, this is a very funny sentence:

"Oi, mate, can I bum a fag?"

[seularen.livejournal.com]

How many awkward situations has that word created for American and English tourists alike? *grin* I can only imagine Bertie approaching some gentlemen in Chicago and subsequently being clapped in irons.

[feanix.livejournal.com]

Only if you ask nicely.

[seularen.livejournal.com]

Such a great conversation. I can only imagine Jeeves' face during it. Hee!

[emeraldreeve.livejournal.com]

I think that Bertie was a fag at school. And that probably means he could do a few simple tasks-despite how the TV show shows him. I also feel, having read the Wikipedia entry, that he would have a fag of his own during that last year of school.

Here's Bertie's words on Bingo's age:"Bingo Little and I have been pals practically from birth. Born in the same village within a couple of days of one another, we went through kindergarten, Eton, and Oxford together..."

That's in Jeeves and The Impending Doom.

[feanix.livejournal.com]

Bertie would have been useless as a fag in some ways, lol, but good in others. And cute and endearing.

Reminds me of Stephen's accounts of fagging in Moab.

[disassembly_rsn]

C.S. Lewis in his autobiography Surprised by Joy described a similar system that was in effect at Malvern College (called Wyvern in the text), one of the boarding schools he attended as a child. He hated it - he was exhausted all the time from the chores being piled onto his schoolwork.

Caveat: his older brother, who went to the same school, liked the place as much as Jack hated it (their previous school had been a nightmare and Warren would have seen any place as a vast improvement, according to Jack), and later took him to task for distorting the facts (e.g. stressing the sexual relationships out of proportion).