Happy 130th Birthday! Toast PG Wodehouse’s hilariously dumb Bertie Wooster with a tour of his London pubs

The worst young git in literary history – employer of the brilliant servant (never butler) Jeeves – was born in 1892.

Its creator, PG Wodehouse, never discloses his birthday. But he is 24 in Jeeves Takes Charge, published in November 1916. So Bertie was born 130 years ago.

To celebrate this milestone, I took a walking tour of Bertie Wooster’s Mayfair – the chicest part of London as it was in Wodehouse’s day. The Georgian and Victorian houses and shops are very similar today.

And Jeeves and Wooster’s pubs are still open.

I started in front of Bertie’s flat on the third floor of 15 Berkeley Street. This is the immortal spot of Bertie and Jeeves’ first meeting. Jeeves turns him into a hangover kiss and Bertie realizes he has a genius on his hands.

Wodehouse lived in the same flat. He based Bertie’s whereabouts on his favorite places in London, where he lived from 1919 to 1939.

There were some dark clouds in Bertie’s carefree, jobless life. His neighbor at 47 Charles Street was Aunt Dahlia. Bertie said, “It is not often that Aunt Dahlia lets her raging passions flare, but when she does, strong men climb trees and drag them along.”

I stopped at Heywood Hill, the Mayfair bookshop that Bertie would have known even if he didn’t read much.

I was up for a drink, like Bertie, any time of the day. Opposite Aunt Dahlia is The Footman pub, the original location of Junior Ganymede’s club, Jeeves. I had a Scotch haggis egg (8lb) – the kind of Edwardian food that Bertie liked to stuff in his nose pocket at lunchtime.

Harry digs into Heywood Hill, “the Mayfair bookshop that Bertie would have known well, even if he didn’t like to read”. Image courtesy of Creative Commons

Harry went to the flat at 15 Berkeley Street where Wodehouse lived, on the left of the picture. It also served as Wooster’s apartment. Pictured right are Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in the 1990s TV adaptation Jeeves and Wooster

I toasted Bertie with a drink of his choice, a £7.25 cognac and soft drink, and it’s a short hurdle to Bertie Wooster’s Club Drones, home to the kingdom’s drunkest young men, including GD’ Arcy ‘Stilton’ Cheesewright. Drones was based at Buck’s Club – a lovely terraced house still in good use at 18 Clifford Street, close to the shops of Bond Street.

The club was founded by blues officer Captain Herbert Buckmaster – Buck’s.

Buckmaster installed an American cocktail bar and Buck’s Fizz was invented here by bartender Mr. McGarry – also the name of the Drones bartender.

So makes a Buck’s Fizz on Bertie’s 130th birthday and his words, “It was my uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food way ahead of modern medical thinking.”