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Bertie Wooster

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Bertie Wooster

Bertram Wilberforce Wooster is a fictional character in the comedic Jeeves stories created by British author P. G. Wodehouse. An amiable English gentleman and one of the "idle rich", Bertie appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligence manages to save Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward situations. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves have been described as "one of the great comic double-acts of all time".

Bertie is the narrator and central figure of most of the Jeeves short stories and novels. The two exceptions are the short story "Bertie Changes His Mind" (1922), which is narrated by Jeeves, and the novel Ring for Jeeves (1953), a third-person narration in which Bertie is mentioned but does not appear. First appearing in "Extricating Young Gussie" in 1915, Bertie is the narrator of ten novels and over 30 short stories, his last appearance being in the novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, published in 1974.

The Wodehouse scholar Norman Murphy believes George Grossmith Jr. to have been the inspiration for the character of Bertie Wooster. Others have asserted John Wodehouse, 3rd Earl of Kimberley, was the inspiration. P. G. Wodehouse was a distant cousin of John Wodehouse. He was also the godfather to the 3rd Earl's son, John Wodehouse, 4th Earl of Kimberley.

The Wodehouse character Reggie Pepper was an early prototype of Bertie Wooster.

Bertie Wooster and his friend Bingo Little were born in the same village only a few days apart. Bertie's middle name, "Wilberforce", is the doing of his father, who won money on a horse named Wilberforce in the Grand National the day before Bertie's christening and insisted on his son carrying that name. The only other piece of information given about Bertie's father, aside from the fact that he had numerous relatives, is that he was a great friend of Lord Wickhammersley of Twing Hall. Bertie refers to his father as the "guv'nor", and seems to have had a friendly relationship with him.

When he was around seven years of age, Bertie was sometimes compelled to recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade" for guests by his mother; she proclaimed that he recited nicely, but Bertie disagrees, and says that he and others found the experience unpleasant. Bertie also mentions reciting other poems as a child, including "Ben Battle" and works by Walter Scott. Like Jeeves, Bertie says that his mother thought him intelligent. Bertie makes no other mention of his mother, though he makes a remark about motherhood after being astounded by a friend telling a blatant lie: "And this, mark you, a man who had had a good upbringing and had, no doubt, spent years at his mother's knee being taught to tell the truth."

When Bertie was eight years old, he took dancing lessons (alongside Corky Potter-Pirbright, sister of Bertie's friend Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright). Bertie later becomes very good at dancing, being the favourite to win the Drones Club Dancing Competition in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. It is established throughout the series that Bertie is an orphan who inherited a large fortune at some point, although the exact details and timing of his parents' deaths are never made clear.

Bertie Wooster's early education took place at the semi-fictional Malvern House Preparatory School, headed by Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, whom he meets again in Jeeves in the Offing. (Wodehouse himself attended a school by that name, in Kearsney, Kent, but the Malvern House that appears in the stories is in the fictional town of Bramley-on-Sea.) At Malvern House, Bertie's friends called him "Daredevil Bertie", though Upjohn and others called him "Bungling Wooster".

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