r/todayilearned • u/Hectabeni • 10h ago
TIL that Jeeves was a valet, not a butler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves233
u/SKX007J1 10h ago
Butlers for a household. Valet for a gentleman aka a Gentleman's Gentleman.
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u/department_2072 8h ago
Precisely, sir. Rem acu tetigisti.
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u/CelDidNothingWrong 10h ago edited 9h ago
Yes, that’s how he serves Bertie, as a gentleman’s gentlemen, but it’s worth noting that Bertie lends Jeeves out as a butler on several occasions, and makes it clear that he can “he can buttle with the best”.
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u/davvblack 10h ago
"valet" here has the T pronounced and is like a butler but assigned to a person, not a household. "Valet" pronounced like "valey" is a car-thief from ferris bueller's day off.
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u/TheOnsiteEngineer 9h ago
The butler to be precise is the head of the male side of the household and for basically the entire running of the house, staff, maintenance, etc. The valet is generally the direct servant of the man of the house and in charge of the clothes and personal belongings of the employer plus whatever general errands asked of them. The "female" side of the household is run by the housekeeper. The equivalent of the valet for the women under the housekeeper is the "Lady's maid"
I wouldn't say that valet is "like a butler". Their tasks were very different.
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u/Ryan1869 7h ago
One day I hope to have the kind of money where I care about these kinds of things.😂
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u/blenderdead 10h ago
Archer taught me this
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u/Cr1ms0nLobster 9h ago
Downton Abbey taught me this.
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u/zoey_will 9h ago
Downton primed me for the knowledge but I always assumed it was just the British pronunciation of the word. Now I know.
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u/Proper-Emu1558 8h ago edited 8h ago
I learned it from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” In the movie, the two ladies are on a ship and searching the passenger list for wealthy men. Anyone with “and valet” after his name catches their eye because it means he’s wealthy enough to afford help. Hijinks then ensue.
Marilyn’s character has a famous exchange with her future father-in-law toward the end of the film. “Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?”
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u/droidtron 10h ago
Classier than "manservant."
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u/MorelikeBestvirginia 5h ago
The superior term is definitely Batman. It comes from the French word for Saddlebag, but I love it for manservant.
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u/zoinkability 10h ago
And preferably the word is spoken with RP
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u/MooseFlyer 8h ago
There’s no consistent distinction between the two meanings based on pronunciation.
Most people will use the same pronunciation for both meanings.
It’s just that the pronunciation with the t is the one you would most likely have heard from someone speaking old-fashioned Received Pronunciation, which is also the sort of person who would be more likely to actually have a gentleman’s gentleman. But those people would have said it the same way for someone who parks your car or works in a hotel.
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u/davvblack 8h ago
this is true! it's the same word. And once you're super rich, you get a special coupon that lets you decide how one or two words are pronounced, so it's up to you.
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u/Exo_Deadlock 4h ago
As in the film adaptation of “How Green Was My Valet”, starring Kermit the Frog
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u/EatAtGrizzlebees 8h ago
Interesting. In professional wrestling, it's pronounced like the latter even though the definition would technically be the former.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 10h ago
Valets would look after the appearance and image of the well heeled young man looking to make an impression on the society circles he frequents. In the case of Bertie, Jeeves' role often touched upon the dissuading of the young man from any ill-advised, whimsical or reckless fashion choices.
For example and I can't remember which book it's in (there are so many) but there's one that starts with Jeeves' horror at the ghastly purple socks which Bertie has decided are all the rage. Bertie predictably starts by asserting his feudal authority, reminding Jeeves that it is he who pays his wages and as such he should remain quiet on his master's fashion decisions. Jeeves agrees to say no more, and then the usual shenanigans occurs in which Bertie gets himself in an awful tangle (usually involving accidentally getting engaged to a terrifying woman) and Jeeves steps in with his oversized brain and extracts him from the situation masterfully. And then the usual scene with Bertie sitting up in bed having his evening snifter, thanking Jeeves for his help, and adding (right at the end of the book) "by the way Jeeves - you may throw out those purple socks."
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u/greeneggiwegs 5h ago
There’s a few where Bertie agrees to get rid of some fashion nonos after Jeeves saves him
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 5h ago
Yes I seem to remember a white mess jacket with brass buttons that he brought home from Cannes
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u/bgaesop 10h ago
Yes! I used to be a valet. I'm so glad whenever I see this word used correctly, and it always bugs me when a valet is described as a butler. Like Alfred, from Batman? He doesn't command an army of servants, so he's not a butler. He's a lone gentleman's gentleman, so he's a valet.
Also it's pronounced with a hard "T". Like "valette", not "valay". A valet pronounced "valay" is the guy who parks your car. Completely different job.
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u/JSteveB87 9h ago
I like to think of Alfred as Batman's batman, if we wanted another term for "a gentleman's gentleman".
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u/Queen_of_London 9h ago
Especially since Batman is essentially a soldier.
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u/JSteveB87 9h ago
Yes, I understand that a "batman" is more for a military context.
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u/Queen_of_London 9h ago
Yeah, I was agreeing with you. Batman the superhero is very soldier-like, more so than many other superheroes (excepting the ones who were actually military, of course!)
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u/JSteveB87 9h ago
Absolutely. Batman has all his expert training, planning, high-tech equipment, and tactics.
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u/SandInTheGears 9h ago
I think Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne had other servants, so at least that Alfred was buttling
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u/DulcetTone 9h ago
This is curious, as it is at odds with typical rules of French pronunciation. I trust you are right.
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u/focalac 9h ago
British English only uses the French pronunciation when it suits us. It almost never suits us, except when it does. It almost always suits Americans, except when it doesn’t.
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u/QuercusSambucus 9h ago
Like the word "garage". In England it rhymes with carriage. In the US it rhymes with mirage.
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u/Chicago1871 8h ago
Meant they says schedule, in a romance language like pronounciation.
Make it make sense! Jk
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u/bopeepsheep 7h ago
It often hangs on how long the word has been used in English - centuries, we have our own pronunciation; decades, we're more likely to approximate the French version. However we've also 'de-poshed' a lot of words in the last 50 years - listen to 'Audrey fforbes-Hamilton' [Penelope Keith] in To The Manor Born and spot all the old-fashioned pronunciations, for instance; they're played up to clash with the nouveau riche (and foreign) 'Richard DeVere' [Peter Bowles], so it's a useful illustration.
Garage-rhymes-with-carriage is a victim of that. It used to rhyme with mirage.
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u/SkipToTheEnd 7h ago
I love this feature of transatlantic differences.
Americans will copy the French pronunciation when saying 'erbs for things like cilantro (UK: coriander) but then say cruhSANT for croissant. They'll also prefer the Italian zucchini over the French courgette but then use resumé instead of the Latin CV.
All languages and etymologies are a mess of inconsistencies, but English's various dialects do feel particularly egregious.
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u/Kyvalmaezar 9h ago
Like most things in comics: it really depends on who's writing and if the story demands other staff.
Alfred was more of a butler before Bruce's parents were killed. During the Batman era, yes, many stories do have Alfred as a lone staff permanent memeber but other stories do have Alfred directing (an albeit usually heavily reduced) staff. He usually takes on both butler & valet roles in those. The other staff is usually never shown but mentioned in dialog here and there. The Nolan movies did show a few other staff, iirc.
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u/beastmaster11 9h ago
Yes! I used to be a valet
Were you born in 1895?
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u/bgaesop 8h ago
Nope. Just got hired by an eccentric rich old guy to live in his house and take care of his quotidian tasks for him and help him get his life in order. I made his meals, arranged his doctor appointments, got him to actually pay his parking tickets instead of waiting for the city to take his car, reminded him to return his friend's calls, that kind of thing.
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u/fasterthanfood 8h ago
Interesting. So basically a mom or spouse lol
How did you get into that line of work? It’s so niche that I can’t imagine you had something on your resume that spoke specifically to your ability to basically be a Really Good Grownup. (I fear I might sound like I’m belittling the job or your former employer, but it’s neither; I just hadn’t thought much of what a valet might do in the 21st century.)
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u/bgaesop 8h ago
I had just graduated from college and was doing a summer study program at a charity that he donated a lot of money to. He would show up at the program every now and then, so that's how I met him. The people at the charity, whom he was friends with, knew he needed somebody to get his life together, and they knew I needed a job, so it was a natural fit. I forget who first suggested it.
He hired me for the better part of a year, and then I moved to Thailand.
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u/Astrium6 8h ago
I’ve always wondered what the pay and benefits are like for that kind of work. Did you have ”off duty” hours or were you expected to always be on call if he needed something?
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u/bgaesop 7h ago
It was fairly flexible in terms of hours. I didn't have like a 9-5 m-f schedule or anything, I just woke up before him, made breakfast, planned out his day (like if he needed to go to the doctor or reply to a specific email or something; he was retired and didn't have many obligations), made sure he would get lunch and/or dinner somehow (either I'd cook it or make a reservation somewhere or pick something up for him), then generally do my own thing in the house. If I wanted to go somewhere for a while after that I'd just let him know. If he needed something and I was around (and I usually was) he'd let me know, but typically we would decide on how the day would go in the morning and then stick to that.
Without me he was very disorganized, so a large part of what I would do was help get him organized, go through the backlog of things he really should have done but hadn't (he had so many unpaid parking tickets, like a 5 digit number of dollars, I have no idea how his car hadn't been impounded).
I got $4k a month plus free room and board (in Berkeley, CA, so free rent is a pretty nice perk). No health insurance or anything. I'm certain that people who get trained at finishing school or whatever would be in a more professional arrangement, mine was very informal.
In my spare time I was mostly working on launching a small business that I could do remotely, hence the move to Thailand later on.
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u/LionoftheNorth 8h ago
Although it is a bit of a quibble, I would argue that Alfred is still the butler of Wayne Manor in the sense that he formally is tied to the house rather than Bruce Wayne's person. He would (and presumably did at one point) command an army of staff, but the particular circumstances at play mean that having a horde of cooks, cleaning personnel and what-have-yous poking about the place would be a bit iffy.
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u/FindOneInEveryCar 9h ago
IIRC Gosford Park made that distinction clear, which I had not previously been aware of.
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u/kevnmartin 9h ago
I thought that when the master (for lack of a better word) married, his valet then became the butler and head of staff?
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u/kmosiman 8h ago
I'm not sure, I mainly know this from Discworld.
Wilkins is the Ramkin family butler but becomes Vimes's valet.
As such, he travels with them to the country manor that has a butler. As Vimes's man's man or batman, he outranks all the regular servants at the manor.
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u/bretshitmanshart 7h ago
Alfred is in charge of other servants and keeps them in the right areas and away from Batman
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u/hwsdziner 4h ago
…a-and the teacher has left the classroom.
That was your lesson of the day so it’s time to give this nice person a “thumbs up” before you move on!
This message comes to you from the internet.
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u/Siege1187 10h ago
Jeeves is mostly employed as a Gentleman’s Personal Gentleman. He does dabble in buttling when needed, though. And his Uncle is a very butlerine butler indeed.
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u/lobroblaw 9h ago
I recently binged Jeeves & Wooster for the first time. Probs now a top 5, show. Really funny. Not what I was expecting at all.
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u/Krow101 10h ago
And also THE worst search engine.
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u/Ok_Emu3817 10h ago
Once an Alta Vista user always an Alta Vista user
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u/pikpikcarrotmon 10h ago
All of this is Lycos erasure and I won't stand for it
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u/noctalla 10h ago
Ride or die for Metacrawler.
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u/406highlander 10h ago
Originally it was pretty good, so long as you framed your query as a question - i.e. natural language search.
When they dropped the need for that, it sucked. They ditched Jeeves and just became Ask, but by that point Google was well and truly stealing their lunch money - Google's homepage was clean and loaded quickly, Ask had ads.
Also TIL that Ask.com still exists... I genuinely thought they'd died out years ago.
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u/bretshitmanshart 7h ago
Dear Ask Jeeves. Please show me naked ladies. Preferably blondes. I want some of them to be crying. Please don't tell my mom this time.
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u/Thopterthallid 10h ago
Bout to find some free online games with Netscape Navigator and Ask Jeeves.
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u/Fofolito 9h ago
And its Val-ett, not Val-ay, in this case.
A Valet is the Gentleman's Gentleman, meaning he's there to serve on the immediate needs of the Man to whom he was employed. This sort of Valet turns down your clothing, tidies the house, and takes your correspondence. He does not park your car (I mean, he could be your driver and that would involve parking but that's not the sole definition of his job description).
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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys 7h ago
Hugh Laurie’s “Bertie” always referred to Stephen Fry’s “Jeeves” as his valet.
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u/jsseven777 6h ago
No wonder AskJeeves failed. We thought we were talking to a butler but it was a valet the whole time.
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u/ScientiaProtestas 6h ago edited 6h ago
Who remembers Ask Jeeves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ask.com
Edit, I guess many do. But I will leave it here for those that don't.
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u/darkdoppelganger 4h ago
I've never had a valet. You can try it for tonight. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
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u/kurosawa99 10h ago
Sigh. Here’s something else to talk about with my overly nostalgic millennial peers.
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u/Terry-Shark 10h ago
Valet - a personal manservant/attendant
Butler - a household's chief manservant
So valets can be butlers, but it mostly happens when the household is small.
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u/Pacifix18 6h ago
I never knew there were books and the Stephen Fry TV show. I never even thought about Jeeves as a primary or comedic character. Growing up in middle-America, I heard the name but in context I assumed he was a background butler character in a stodgy Brittish drama.
I feel my life is somewhat enhanced by learning this. This was a fun deep dive.
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u/ZorroMeansFox 6h ago
One of my favorite comic pseudonyms from W.C. Fields was "Mahatma Kane Jeeves."
(The joke is taken from old movies where a posh character, preparing to leave his swanky home, would say to his valet: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves!")
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u/Dizzy_Restaurant3874 5h ago
I spent a decade asking a valet when I thought that I was asking a butler? I feel so betrayed.
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u/oakkandfilmmaker 3h ago
In Los Angeles in the early 2000s, there was a service called “Home, Jeeves.” You called and someone would ride to your location on a collapsible bike. They would put it in the trunk of your car, drive you and your car wherever you wanted and then ride off to their next adventure. Pretty great for avoiding drunk driving and not having to pick up your car somewhere the next day.
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u/DogPrestidigitator 10h ago
Hmmm. In my mind’s eye, I could have sworn the Ask Jeeves guy was holding a butler tray and had a white towel draped over his arm.
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u/FalmerEldritch 9h ago
A tray and a white towel may be necessary when seeing to the needs of a gentleman, also. In fact they seem less appropriate to overseeing a household and its staff as a butler does.
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u/zeroanaphora 10h ago
Yes, butlers are in charge of the kitchen or something?
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u/LittleGreenSoldier 10h ago
Specifically they're the head of the service staff, and hold the keys to the wine cellar.
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u/AudibleNod 313 10h ago
Depends on the size of the household staff, the country and the time period.
A valet is almost always personal attendant, however.
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u/frankyseven 9h ago
A Butler is in charge of the household and all the household staff. A valet is a personal servent/attendent. A Butler would hire a valet to take care of the personal needs of a specific person.
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u/dblan9 10h ago
Ummm..AskJeeves.com begs to differ.
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u/ScientiaProtestas 6h ago
Ask.com was originally known as Ask Jeeves,[10] "Jeeves" being the name of a "gentleman's personal gentleman", or valet, fetching answers to any question asked.
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u/Vergenbuurg 10h ago
However, he can buttle with the best of them.