Bertie and his parents

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

A really interesting discussion has been going on in the comments on my fic A Butler's Advice regarding Bertie and his sometimes-antagonistic relationship with his family, but also some speculation about Bertie's parents and his relationship (or lack thereof) with them.

Bertie rarely says anything about his parents and never talks about their deaths, as I recall. There has been some speculation that he was probably closer to the servants who raised him than to either his parents or his aunts. What would have been "normal" for someone of Bertie's social class at the time? We know he spent a lot of time away at school. When, how and why would Bertie's parents have died? How do you think he reacted?

What does everyone here think? What's fanon opinion and what, if anything, have people written about it in their stories?

If this results in any fics (perhaps you could consider this a story prompt as well as a discussion prompt), I think that would be fantastic!

Comments

[sailthouforth.livejournal.com]

I've always imagined Bertie's parents to have died when he was very young (not older than four or five) and for them to have died together, at the same time. Automobile accident is generally what springs to mind, but given the imprecise setting of Bertie's world I'm not sure if that's practical. I've also thought his sister to be 8-10 years older than him, and that she stuck to him like glue when it happened to make sure they didn't get separated and sent to live with different relatives, that sort of thing.

Someone as open and affectionate as Bertie probably would have reminisced about specific servants in his stories if they'd done the majority of his upbringing; on the other hand, he seems to blur the line between servant and friend with Jeeves and perhaps that's due to being on more intimate terms with servants during his childhood. I can't decide!

I do think, however, that his schoolmasters and peers had a lot more to do with his upbringing than we give them credit for -- consider how much time he spent away at school with how much time he spent with his relatives (who, I hate to say it, probably passed Bertie and his sister around during the holidays; summers at Woollam Chersey and Christmases at Brinkley Court, that sort of thing). So he probably never spent more than a month or two a year in any given household, but about eight months a year away at school. This is how I account for Bertie's weakness for the "but we were at school together!" line that his friends so often employ: wouldn't you find yourself susceptible to pleas from old school friends if you used to see them more than you saw your own family?

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

Someone as open and affectionate as Bertie probably would have reminisced about specific servants in his stories if they'd done the majority of his upbringing; on the other hand, he seems to blur the line between servant and friend with Jeeves and perhaps that's due to being on more intimate terms with servants during his childhood. I can't decide!

He does mention having a nurse who had hiccups, but that's the only remotely specific one I can recall off the top of my head.

But he also does frequently mention how he's on good terms with various servants, like how he and Seppings have been buddies since his boyhood and they'd often discuss Seppings' lumbago; he says good morning to housemaids (or was it parlormaids?) and claims few men are more ready to sympathize with their distress; etc.

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

I think even in the 1910s it would be possible for an auto accident to be the cause, particularly given that Bertie's family is very wealthy. The wikipedia article on the history of autos says that 30,204 cars were produced in France in 1903, which was 43% of the world's motorcars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile), so a rich English family even then might well have had one. Given that cars in that time weren't closed, an accident would be pretty much guaranteed to throw people out of the vehicle. Apparently, from about 1905, the price came down to where a middle-class family could afford one, largely due to mass production. The Edwardian stuff (up to about 1914) is specifically covered here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Era_car).

That's probably more than you wanted to know but, yes, Bertie's parents could easily have died in a car crash before 1910.

And also, your reasoning for the "but we were at school together" stuff hitting Bertie so hard really makes sense.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I've always got the impression that Bertie would have had to be a little older than that when they died - his mother used to have him recite for guests, which would have been pretty trying if he was only four or five, I'd think (note, I have no actual knowledge of how children work).

I don't see Bertie being close with more than a couple servants, like Seppings, but I do see the servants feeling sorry for him and maybe looking out for him even if he wasn't aware of it.

You raise an interesting point with the school thing. I'm not entirely sure how schooling worked in the period, but at what age would he have first gone away to school? As far as I can recall, he went to a "kid's school" (the one with Aubrey Upjohn), then to Eton, then to Oxford, but I'm not sure what ages those would span.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Auto accident seems to be a common cause of death for Bertie's parents, but I agree with others that it was a little early for that. However an overturned carriage was as common a cause of death then as auto accidents are now. One of my great-uncles was killed in a run-away carriage accident in the early 1900s.

I can easily imagine the young Mr. and Mrs. Wooster returning from a county ball late at night along a country road, no lane markers or cat's-eye reflectors along the edge of the road, only a dim oil-lamp for light. The coachman's maybe a little tipsy from the gathering in the housekeeper's room, plus it's 3AM and he's been awake since early that morning. The night's cloudy, hiding the full moon (balls were often scheduled for full moons to make driving home safer). The left wheel of the carriage goes off the edge of the road and the carriage overturns, tumbling down an small embankment. The coachman is thrown clear, bruised and bloody but still able to stand. With the help of the footman he cuts the traces, freeing the horses from the ruined carriage. There is no sound from inside.

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

What a coincidence, I was just about to post a discussion topic myself (different subject)! I'll put it off for a bit so people don't miss this one. :D

I think when Bertie was a boy they were still in the period when children were supposed to be seen and not heard, although it was probably not as strict by his time. Seconding everything thesyntaxdr said about his upbringing being influenced more by schoolmasters & peers than his parents. Nurses/governesses as well, before he went off to school. Perhaps he viewed his parents as fond but somewhat distant figures.

I get the impression that Bertie's parents died within a very short time of each other, if not at the same time. I tend to lean toward car accident as the cause, and that it happened when Bertie was no more than 9 or so.

Bertie's an affectionate person and there's some reason to think he was fond of his mother at least. So I'm sure he was upset by their deaths. But I have no idea how quickly he'd have recovered. Aunt Agatha likely expected him to keep a stiff upper lip about the whole thing.

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

I think it would depend on the family as to how strict that was. I still got the "children are to be seen and not heard" from my dad's mother until I was at least ten. It wasn't strictly enforced, but it was held up as an ideal and brought out with a vengeance if we were annoying at all.

Schoolmasters probably had a lot of influence on him, though he hasn't much good to say about them any more than he does about aunts. We know that he got chased by Percy before he married Agatha, back when Bertie was just a boy and stealing his cigars, so he probably was visiting other estates where his relatives had friends or where his friends lived.

Given what we know, I'm not sure there would have been any particular adult (beyond maybe Seppings) that he associated with a lot and talked with on a familiar basis. I'd love to see a collection of quotes where Bertie's talking about servants and his interactions with them beyond his relationship with Jeeves so that we have some idea what the background is.

Also? I'd love to see your conversation topic! This is always such a cool community. For such a small fandom in terms of numbers of people actively writing fic (compared to, say, the Stargate franchise or Harry Potter or Star Trek, for example), we have so much awesome stuff going on, and there's almost always a fic in progress with somebody, or a new one being posted every week or two. So sweet. *happy sigh*

[saylee.livejournal.com]

Please don't hold off too long on your discussion topic. I love the conversations we have in this fandom.

I think the "seen and not heard" thing would depend on the parents. Different context, what with class and country, but the children of Anne of Green Gables would have been growing up at about the same time, and those kids certainly weren't seen and not heard (possibly not relevant, but I was thinking of it). Aunt Agatha would certainly be that kind of parent, but I'm not so sure about Bertie's parents. I would imagine if his mother thought him intelligent, she must have listened to him talking at least sometimes. And somebody must have encouraged his imagination.

[hazeltea.livejournal.com]

Stories from the time period gloss over illness as well, as it was far more common, like in Cold Comfort Farm,Flora's parents die within months of each other due to "The annual Spanish Plague, or influenza", and she doesn't miss them or mourn because she only saw them a few times a year and barely know them- they traveled, and she was at boarding school. It's dismissed as being quite an ordinary situation. On holidays, she stayed with a friend. I think Bertie's situation was similar to this, except that he stayed with aunts and uncles during holidays.

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

Of pretty much everything I've seen postulated, flu or something similar is quite possibly the most likely, honestly. I think that we forget how awful things could be without modern medicine sometimes, even just a hundred years ago. Hell, in a lot of parts of the world right now, death by disease in the prime of adulthood is not that uncommon. We know that Bertie knew his mother, or it might well have been death in childbirth. That's still horrifyingly common.

[imshi.livejournal.com]

Given how common it was for parents to barely see their children I don't think it's that unlikely that he barely knew them... Just two examples off the top of my head are the kids in Mary Poppins who barely ever see their father or mother (though obviously that was written later) and in A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh their son spends most of his time with his nanny except at certain times of day when he does something with his father and/or mother... So yeah, he probably barely knew them, and I always assumed they died when he was quite young (between 5 and 10). It's funny though because I always assumed that they died together in a car crash or something... I wonder why that's come up so often.

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

I suspect it comes up often because it's quick and convenient, and it's one of the few ways most of us can think of that they'd both go together, to be honest.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I do think he must have known them more than "barely", though it's quite possible that most or all of his actual care came from a nanny or other servants, because the mentions of his mother in canon do portray her as doting.

[namasteyoga.livejournal.com]

If you have the time, you can peruse the PBS (probably BBC as well, since it was a British program) reality series "Manor House," in which contemporary volunteers were placed as staff and family in an early 1900s manor house, similar to the type of place Bertie would have known.

One of the family is a young boy, and it's noted often there that children were the only members of the family to have full access to the entire house. It was typical for them to freely mingle with the servants (though they were servants) and visit the servants areas including the kitchen. (Picture young Bertie watching Anatole cook in the kitchen, for instance, and getting samples of food.)

Might be a good source.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

If you have the time, you can peruse the PBS (probably BBC as well, since it was a British program) reality series "Manor House,"

That sounded familiar but under a different name, so I googled; it was called "The Edwardian Country House" in the UK, and Channel 4 made it (in case anyone's looking for it online - it might be on 4 On Demand)

[backfrommars.livejournal.com]

I can see Bertie watching the cook, but it wouldn't have been Anatole. Wasn't he originally Rosie Little's chef? That would mean Bertie wouldn't meet him till after Bingo was married.

As for killing Bertie's parents, I've always thought a train accident would be a good way to have them both go at the same time.

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

Well, Anatole was only hired after Aunt Dahlia "stole" him from Rosie and Bingo, so he couldn't have watched him cooking as a kid. But other cooks, sure.

[bullet2.livejournal.com]

I always thought Bertie was born around 1895-1900. I also think his parents died when he was very young.
'The kids should be seen, not heard'-thing is very true I think. The son of Oscar Wilde wrote a book about his father where he said that kids then were kept apart and given their own rooms so as not to bother their parents. He said that Oscar was one of the few parents who really played with his kids and didn't consider it beneath him. And even then the amount of time he spent with his kids seems laughable compared to the present. That son was born around 1885.
So, I follow everyone else: most formed by schoolmasters and peers but in the holidays shopped around by his aunts where he spent most of his time with the staff.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed Bertie's parents died when he was about nine or so, and usually close together, though I've never had a concrete idea of how they died. I have toyed with the idea of them dying on the Titanic, but it's not a serious notion and it makes Bertie's birth date later than I usually place it.

I do think Bertie loved his parents, even if the bulk of his care would have been handled by a nanny when he was small, and he would have been at school after that. As we noted on the other thread, his mentions of his mother all sound as if she was doting and proud of him. We know less about his father, except that Bertie's middle name comes from a horse he won a great deal of money on. I always picture Bertie's parents as young and a bit flighty or silly, but very sweet and loving (Bertie had to get his sweet side somewhere, and it certainly didn't come from the rest of his family).

I do imagine their death affected him, and he probably does miss them at times, though he has had years to get used to their absence. I think part of the reason they don't get mentioned much is the stiff upper lip thing and part is the fact that Bertie does seem to mostly talk about people as they become relevant to his stories. I'm pretty sure we don't hear about Kipper Herring or Ginger Winship, two of his closest (and most decent) friends, until the books in which they appear, either, and they're alive and walking around, and presumably interacting with Bertie behind the scenes.

I do wish we knew more about his sister.

[dragonsquill.livejournal.com]

Titanic or not, the chances of a maritime disaster for a wealthy couple is more doable than an auto accident, though it could still be disease, as people said. :)

A Small List of Pandemics For Your Perusal.

[gallents.livejournal.com]

As the Woosters are wealthy, I assumed they wanted to visit around the world, especially what is now The Commonwealth. In other words, lots of disease choices. This is no way a complete list.

1855-1950: Third Pandemic (Bubonic Plague - Especially likely if they visited India or Hong Kong)
1889-1890: Russian or Asiatic Flu
1892: Hamburg water supply contaminated with cholera
1896–1906: Congo Basin outbreak of trypanosomiasis
1899-1923: Sixth Cholera Pandemic (low deaths in Europe, but Russia & Middle East/North Africa & Asia hit hard)
1900: West Africa outbreak of Yellow Fever
1900-1920: Uganda outbreak of trypanosomiasis
1902: Egypt outbreak of cholera
1903: India outbreak of Plague (possibly Bubonic)
1910-1912: Manchuria outbreak of Bubonic Plague

Re: A Small List of Pandemics For Your Perusal.

[gallents.livejournal.com]

Also, don't forget Smallpox, TB, and Malaria (Once upon a time, it was not necessarily a "tropical" disease, mind).

[margi-lynn.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to get the feeling that my belief they died in a boating accident isn't canon, but just something I read in fic so long ago I felt like it was canon.

*facepalm*

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I can recall at least one fic where that was the case - I think it's called something along the lines of "A Decent Proposal".

[smiley-cow.livejournal.com]

Do we know exactly how old Bertie is? I used to always assume that his father had died fighting in WWI and his mother had been killed by the Spanish influenza shortly there after, but if he was born around 1900 that makes him already a teenager when they died. Which is still possible, but I think really only plausible if Bertie wasn't very close to them.

I do remember in one of the stories Aunt Dahlia suddenly starts reminiscing about Bertie's father (her brother) and something to do with betting on horses and names (I wish I could remember which book, sorry!) and Bertie seems completely uninterested and keeps trying to get his aunt to focus on the task at hand. At least that's how I'm remembering it, it's been a while since I've read it.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

We know Bertie is 24 at the start of the stories, but we don't have any concrete dates. The chronology ironicbees posted awhile ago has some clues, but on the whole the stories seem to exist in a world where it's always simultaneously the Edwardian age and the 1920s.

My impression has always been that Bertie's parents died when he was a kid rather than a teen.

[dogwoodblossom.livejournal.com]

So, this "children would have been seen and not heard when Bertie was a child" theory is sound, except look at the canon. The novels and TV show are full of young boys in particular who are very outspoken and rude pretty much all the time. Edwin (?), Seabury, that American producer's son who is straight up allowed to steal MacIntosh. In the 'real world' I expect better behavior would have been expected of children (heck, it should be today even) but all the parents in the Wodehouse universe seem to be quite indulgent of their own children, letting them talk back to adults and immediately giving them anything it should pop into their heads to ask for up to and including being upset when strangers don't give their children money on demand.

Aunt Agatha certainly does it with young Thomas (Thomas? there are so many of these kids I get them confused), although it's a safe bet that she was much stricter with Bertie. Even with Cousin Angela, Aunt Dahlia is always quick to drag she and Tuppy back together even though she doesn't seem particularly fond of him. She just doesn't want Angela to be unhappy.

Occasionally Bertie and/or Jeeves will bond with another character over a shared desire to deliver a sharp clip on the ear or a swift kick to some wretched child who always has it coming, but their parents seem to be universally overindulgent.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I think Uncle Percy is less lenient with Edwin - doesn't he decide that Bertie's alright after all when Bertie kicks Edwin? But on the whole the parents in the series are ridiculously overindulgent.

And yes, Thomas or Thos is Agatha's son.

[managerie.livejournal.com]

In my head I picture Bertie’s father (Wooster Senior) being the only son of Grandpa Wooster. Possibly the youngest. So... Baby Brother to all those strong willed sisters. As favored child he would have been indulged. He marries at an extremely early age to his childhood sweetheart. Family not too happy but the young Mrs. Wooster is so helpful, sweet natured and adored by Baby Brother that the sisters leave it alone. Bertie's sister is born suspiciously soon after marriage. Say 9 months to the very day of the rather impromptu wedding. So, the young couple makes their home in the city. Mr. Wooster actually works. Mrs. Wooster is big on the society pages. Bertie's sister is tutored by her nanny. On their 10th anniversary at the turn of the century they decide to retire to the peaceful country life at a big estate in the middle of nowhere. The parents are more involved then most but still nowhere near the constant play dates modern parents run through. Mrs. Wooster finds herself in the family way. To everyone’s delight it’s a boy. The whole family has great expectation of the last male Wooster. Mr. & Mrs. Wooster along with the new Big Sister adore Bertram. Feeling the same thrill and happiness of winning that horse race… Mr. Wooster gives Baby Bertie an unusual middle name. At 9 Bertie’s Sister would have considered Bertie a live Baby Doll. She would have been very involved in Bertie’s care by the nanny. Mrs. Wooster would have developed a close relationship with her daughter and would try to share in her excitement about the new baby.
I see Bertie as around 7 when they die and having been tutored at home along side sister. They die either together in a train/carriage accident or the Mrs. dies suddenly and Dad wastes away (possible suicide if we are bringing the angst and explains why the Aunts keeps such a close eye on Bertie) Bertie’s Sister wants to stay with brother but the Aunts can’t keep them both. So for the first time Bertie is sent away to school. He loses most of his family and his world is turned upside down. Those chums he meets that first year would have been like a life line to Bertie. Explaining why he lets them treat him like manure.
Bertie doesn’t talk about his parents because it’s too painful. Also he would have learned that no one wants to be around the sad sack. When he, at 7 cried for his parents or was melancholy, no Aunt would coddle him and his new school mates wouldn’t hang around. Thus the always-look-on-the-the-bright-side-Bertie is born. He would have learned early that deep thoughts and simmering emotions garner no friends. Another reason for the dim seeming Bertie. Playing dumb works better than seeing the true selfish natures of one’s friends and family.
I see Bertie visiting Aunts and spending most of the time with the servants. Bertie doesn’t mention these parent substitutes because it’s depressing and not relevant to the story. But Bertie’s rather casual behavior with servants indicates to me that he sees them as equals. This is something he would have learned from example or necessity.
Wow… I sure have opinions on Fanon.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of food for thought in this. I like your reasons for Bertie not talking about his parents, and for his ease with servants.

Bertie's father couldn't have been the only boy though - there's George Wooster (Lord Yaxley) and Henry Wooster, and if you count "Extricating Young Gussie" as canon and can come up with an explanation for the last names, there's also Cuthbert Mannering-Phipps. Bertie's also got an Uncle Willoughby, though he could be from either side of the family. Dahlia and Agatha are the only ones who are definitely sisters of Bertie's father, though there may be more who aren't named, since Bertie alludes to having many aunts. Julia and Emily are aunts-by-marriage.