Edwin the Boy Scout

Who they are

Edwin is the fourteen-year-old Boy Scout whose determination to do good complicates the early Jeeves story “Jeeves Takes Charge,” published in 1916 and collected in Carry On, Jeeves. Within the fiction the tale tells how Jeeves entered Bertie’s service. The combination of a helpful boy, a country-house visit and a manuscript creates a compact example of Wodehouse’s talent for turning the right intention into the wrong practical result. Edwin’s part is small compared with Bertie’s or Jeeves’s, but the mechanism of the story would be poorer without him.

It is tempting to treat a Boy Scout as simply an emblem of innocent virtue. Wodehouse’s joke is more precise: a code of doing a good turn can be applied with enthusiasm to a situation that asks for tact and full information. The child is not malicious, and Bertie is not well equipped to foresee every consequence. Jeeves has just arrived and must read the household’s motives. The story’s retrospective form means the reader knows a lasting partnership is beginning even while a particular object becomes a problem for everyone concerned.

Personality and relationships

Florence Craye is Edwin’s older sister, and her view of what Bertie ought to do is a pressure of its own. Bertie’s uncle Willoughby is another figure in the original household situation. Edwin’s desire to be useful crosses their interests in an inconvenient way. Jeeves’s composure allows the case to become a demonstration of why Bertie will need his new valet. The boy does not become a recurring sidekick; his usefulness to the narrative comes from one sharply timed intervention.

A mention of Edwin in another Jeeves story may refer back to this first meeting, but that is not a new scene featuring the Scout. The direct book route below therefore points to Carry On, Jeeves. My Man Jeeves contains some early Bertie and Jeeves stories but not “Jeeves Takes Charge” in its original 1919 contents. Later omnibuses may assemble the tale under another arrangement. A collector should check the exact story list rather than rely on the presence of two famous names on the cover.

Best books and memorable moments

Read “Jeeves Takes Charge” in Carry On, Jeeves. It is a particularly helpful entrance to the partnership inside the fiction, though it was published after Jeeves’s first print appearance in “Extricating Young Gussie.” That difference between story chronology and publication chronology is worth keeping visible. The volume contains further early cases, so the purchase serves more than one route. I enjoy Edwin’s place in a plot where almost everyone thinks they are doing something sensible and Jeeves alone has a complete view of the likely result.

Kristopher Milnes is credited as Edwin in an ITV Jeeves and Wooster episode. The adaptation may reshape incidents from the tale. The 1916 magazine text and specialist story bibliography support the first-appearance claim; a screen credit supports only the performer in that production.

On screen

Kristopher Milnes played Edwin in one episode of ITV’s Jeeves and Wooster. Cast and production record. Compare Wodehouse screen, stage and radio versions.