The
real-life Jeeves revealed: Inspiration behind P.G. Wodehouse's enduring
character was county cricketer who was killed fighting in the Somme
Percy Jeeves was a bowler for Warwickshire
at a match in 1913
One of the crowd was young humourist P.G.
Wodehouse
He took the cricketer's name for his most
famous creation
Jeeves died on the Somme
and never knew he inspired the writer
By SAM WEBB
PUBLISHED:16 July 2013 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2365175/The-real-life-Jeeves-revealed-Inspiration-P-G-Wodehouses-enduring-character-county-cricketer-killed-fighting-Somme.html
Inspiration: Percy Jeeves, whose name P.G.
Wodehouse used for his most famous comic creation Reginald Jeeves, the valet of
Bertie Wooster
He was the unflappable valet who artfully
rescued his well-meaning yet embarrassment-prone upper class twit of a master
from various sticky social situations.
Yet the story behind the naming of Jeeves,
who featured alongside Bertie Wooster in the beloved comedy books, has its
roots in the sporting world.
For it was a talented bowler who died
fighting for his country in the First World War that was the inspiration for
one of British humour's most enduring characters.
Tomorrow will be the 100th anniversary of a
cricket match between Gloucester and
Warwickshire at Cheltenham , where Percy Jeeves
was bowling for the visiting opposition.
One of the crowd on that summer day in 1913
was the young writer P.G. Wodehouse, who was already thinking of a series of
stories about the peerless valet and his hapless employer
Wodehouse was toying with the name Jevons
for the exceedingly competent manservant, but the bowler's name stuck in his
mind. So too did the much-loved sportsman's immaculate appearance and quiet
confidence.
And so Jeeves was born, going on to star in
35 short stories and 11 novels - alongside his foppish master Bertie Wooster -
that still capture the imagination of readers worldwide.
The stories recount the improbable and
unfortunate situations in which Bertie and his equally ridiculous friends find
themselves and the manner in which his ingenious valet Jeeves is always able to
quietly extricate them.
Sadly, Percy Jeeves, who had been tipped to
play for England before the
Great War, was killed fighting on the Somme just ten months after the first
Jeeves and Wooster
short story appeared in the Saturday Evening Post - never knowing that he was
the inspiration for such a famous literary icon.
Murray Hedgcock, a Wodehouse scholar, said:
'We was a very tidy, methodical, clean-cut chap and hugely popular.'
Writing team: The Authors XI featured P.G.
Wodehouse (back row, third from left) and Arthur Conan Doyle (sixth from left)
|
Comic genius: P.G. Wodehouse and his wife
Ethel Wayman in this picture from the 1940s
|
Norman Murphy, the author of A Wodehouse
Handbook, told The Times: 'Jeeves had much more of a ring about it. Wodehouse
was schooled in Greek and Latin and the feeling he learnt for what sounds good
when spoken never left him'.
A new book about the cricketer, The Real
Jeeves, has been written by Brian Halford, who will join 100 members of the
Wodehouse Society to celebrate the centenary of the landmark match tomorrow at Cheltenham .
Wodehouse, who died in 1975 aged 93, often
took real-life inspiration for his characters and stories from the world around
him.
A friend of Wodehouse once said that the
writer's servant Eugene Robinson possessed all Jeeves's attributes of quick
wits and intellect, and may have been the template for Jeeves.
He certainly wasn't alone in basing names
on cricketers. His friend Arthur Conan Doyle, who he also played cricket with,
named his famous detective Sherlock Holmes for two cricketers named Mordecai
Sherwin and Frank Shacklock.
The two writers played in the Edwardian
cricket team, the Authors. There were a number of literary cricket teams around
at the beginning of the twentieth century but the Authors was the only one made
up entirely of writers.
They would play at Lord’s each year,
against sides of Publishers and Actors, with Conan Doyle and Wodehouse
sometimes opening the batting together. A.A. Milne, best known for his books
about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, was reportedly the best fielder in the
side
In April 2012, the team was revived by a
new generation of writers. The ranks include Birdsong Author Sebastian Faulks,
history writer Tom Holland, author of Rubicon, and Downton Abbey star Dan
Stevens.
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