Education
Bertie's early education took place at the semi-fictional Malvern House Preparatory School. Wodehouse himself attended a school by that name, located in Kearsney, Kent; however, the Malvern House which appears in the stories is located in the fictional town of Bramley-on-Sea.
He was further educated at the non-fictional Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Most of Bertie's friends and fellow Drones Club members depicted in the stories attended one or more of these institutions with him. Also, Bertie's former schoolmaster at Malvern House, Aubrey Upjohn, appears or is mentioned several times.
One detail of Bertie's school life which comes into several stories is his winning of the prize for Scripture Knowledge while at Malvern House. Bertie speaks with pride of this achievement on several occasions; however, in Right Ho, Jeeves, the character of Gussie Fink-Nottle, while intoxicated, publicly accuses Bertie of having achieved the award through cheating. (Bertie stoutly denies this charge, however, and on the same occasion Gussie makes other completely groundless accusations against other characters.)
Bertie's scriptural knowledge (like most of his mental catalogue) often retains at least part of the literal quote, while completely losing the original meaning and context. In one story, Bertie complains about the lavish and constant attentions of a woman in whom he has no interest by referring to her as "old sticketh closer than a brother" in an annoyed fashion. The verse (Proverbs 18:24) that Bertie partially quotes actually is praising the value of close friendship when it refers to a "friend that sticketh closer than a brother".
Read more about this topic: Bertie Wooster
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)