Bertie Wooster's age

[Neil Midkiff midkiff@public.btr.com]

I remarked in my reply to "Gussie" about Aunt Dahlia's appearance and
Jeeves' age that Bertie Wooster's age would be the subject of another post.
I did so because I couldn't then put my finger on the defining moment.
Having just found it, here it is.

When Jeeves first enters Bertie's employment, Bertie is twenty-four.

The clues are in what is not the first story to be published, but the
one that describes the earliest events in the Jeeves-Wooster relationship.
This is "Jeeves Takes Charge," which begins _Carry On, Jeeves_ (1925)
but was originally published in a magazine in 1916. [These dates have
no relevance to any argument; as I mentioned in my previous post,
Wodehouse's world evolves at a different rate than the one we live in.]

Bertie relates how Florence Craye's father, Lord Worplesdon, had "found
me -- then a stripling of fifteen -- smoking one of his special cigars
in the stables." (Bertie's account in Chapter 1 of _Joy in the Morning_
confirms this as at the age of fifteen.) A few pages later, Bertie
blames Florence's younger brother Edwin as the one "who, nine years
before, had led his father to where I was smoking...." The context makes
it clear that he means nine years before the events that make up the story
of "Jeeves Takes Charge," when Jeeves first arrives on the scene.

In the first paragraph of _Carry On, Jeeves_, Bertie mentions that all
this was about half a dozen years ago, so he's narrating this at the
age of thirty.

Interestingly, this must be taking place *after* the events of _Joy in
the Morning_ (1946). We can date this by Edwin's age. During the action
of "Jeeves Takes Charge" Edwin "was fourteen now and had just joined
the Boy Scouts." (So he is ten years younger than Bertie, and was five
when he led Lord Worplesdon to the fifteen-year-old Bertie smoking the
cigar.) When, in Chapter 9 of _Joy in the Morning_, Bertie first enters
the cottage 'Wee Nooke,' "the door opened and there entered a small boy
with a face like a ferret. He was wearing the uniform of a Boy Scout,
and I had no difficulty...in identifying him as Florence's little brother
Edwin...." Edwin can't be much older than fourteen to be a small Boy
Scout, so _Joy in the Morning_ must be during Bertie's mid-twenties.

And (as described in my previous article) from _Right Ho, Jeeves_ (1934)
to _How Right You Are, Jeeves_/_Jeeves in the Offing_ (1960) is but a
single year in Wodehouse-time. So I must conclude that through the whole
canon Bertie must be in his mid-twenties through about thirty or so.

I'd be grateful to hear from anyone with confirming (or conflicting)
evidence.

-Neil