Dahlia Travers (née Wooster) is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves stories of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being best known as Bertie Wooster's bonhomous, red-faced Aunt Dahlia. She is much beloved by her nephew, in contrast with her sister, Bertie's Aunt Agatha.
Proprietor of the weekly newspaper for women Milady's Boudoir, she is married to Tom Travers, mother of Angela Travers and Bonzo Travers, and employs the supremely gifted French chef Anatole at her country house, Brinkley Court.
Aside from Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, Aunt Dahlia appears in more Jeeves novels, and more Jeeves stories overall, than any other character. She makes an appearance in fourteen Jeeves stories, including seven novels and seven short stories. Only Aunt Agatha and Bingo Little appear in more Jeeves short stories (eight and ten, respectively).
Contents
Inspiration
Wodehouse spent much of his youth with his many aunts and uncles, as his parents were generally away in Hong Kong. The character of Aunt Dahlia was inspired by one of Wodehouse's aunts, Louisa Deane. Louisa Deane was the sister of Wodehouse's mother, Eleanor Deane, and Mary Bathurst Deane, who inspired the character of Aunt Agatha.
Life and character
Dahlia Travers lives at Brinkley Court outside Market Snodsbury in Worcestershire. She is married to Tom Travers, and has two children, Angela Travers and Bonzo Travers. She appears to have been married sometime once before, since Bertie says that she "married old Tom Travers en secondes noces, as I believe the expression is, the year Bluebottle won the Cambridgeshire". Bertie enjoys her company, and says of her, "There are few males or females whose society I enjoy more than that of this genial sister of my late father". She is "a large, genial soul", and Bertie praises "her humanity, sporting qualities, and general good-eggishness". Though typically friendly, she is capable, with effort, of going into an authoritative "grande dame act" if the situation calls for it, assuming a serious expression and cold, aristocratic tone. While she generally has reasonable objectives, she has no objection to resorting to methods such as burglary or blackmail in order to achieve those goals.
Described as being built along the lines of Mae West, Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, with a reddish complexion. According to Bertie, her face takes on a purple tinge in moments of strong emotion. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading, and appears to style her hair carefully, as her hair is variously described as her "carefully fixed coiffure", "her Marcel-wave", and "her perm".
Her most notable personal characteristic is her loud, carrying voice. Riding in her youth for years with such fox-hunting packs as the Quorn and the Pytchley, she tends to address Bertie, over the phone or indoors, as if "shouting across ploughed fields in a high wind." She sometimes uses hunting cries in regular speech, including "Yoicks!", "Tally ho!", "Gone away!", and "Hark forrard!". She once put her carrying voice to use at a village concert, in which she sang "Every Nice Girl Loves A Sailor" while wearing a sailor suit. Her performance was well received. As she tells Bertie, "I had them rolling in the aisles. Three encores, and so many bows that I got a crick in my back."
Dahlia employs the French chef Anatole, whose cooking is revered by many characters, especially her husband Tom and her nephew Bertie Wooster. Bertie is quick to accept an invitation to Brinkley Court for the chance to enjoy Anatole's cooking, and she uses the promise of his cooking to get Bertie to do various tasks for her. Her butler is Seppings. Before Seppings, Aunt Dahlia employed a butler named Pomeroy, a noble fellow, and before him, Murgatroyd, who turned out to be a thief. Aunt Dahlia has a large, sleepy black cat called Augustus, or "Gus".
Relationship with Bertie Wooster
Bertie refers to Aunt Dahlia as his "good and deserving aunt", in contrast to his unfriendly Aunt Agatha. Unlike Aunt Agatha, she seems to enjoy Bertie's company. Dahlia dandled Bertie on her knee when he was very young, and once saved him from swallowing a rubber comforter. When Bertie had measles as a child, Aunt Dahlia played tiddlywinks with him for hours and let him win, though Bertie maintains that his victories were due to his own skill.
Bertie and Aunt Dahlia often call each other terms that others might find insulting in an endearing way, as when Bertie calls her "aged relative" and "old ancestor", and she calls him "young blot" and "abysmal chump". Dahlia's telegram conversations with Bertie can display some rough love; for instance, in Right Ho, Jeeves, after Bertie dumped his prize-giving duty on an unsuspecting Gussie Fink-Nottle and sent him to Brinkley Court, she sent:
« Am taking legal advice to ascertain whether strangling an idiot nephew counts as murder. If it doesn't look out for yourself. Consider your conduct frozen limit. What do you mean by planting your loathsome friends on me like this? Do you think Brinkley Court is a leper colony or what is it? Who is this Spink-Bottle? Love. Travers. »
And a few telegrams later, she sent:
« Well, all right. Something in what you say, I suppose. Consider you treacherous worm and contemptible, spineless cowardly custard, but have booked Spink-Bottle. Stay where you are, then, and I hope you get run over by an omnibus. Love. Travers. »
Nevertheless, she genuinely cares for Bertie. Bertie acknowledges that her love for him is deep-rooted, and at the end of The Code of the Woosters, she is willing to give up her valuable chef Anatole in order to help Bertie, which profoundly moves him.
Aunt Dahlia is also on good terms with Bertie's valet Jeeves. Though at first she doubts his abilities, she quickly learns to appreciate his skill for solving problems. She thinks that Jeeves has a great deal of influence over Bertie's life, as she is certain that Jeeves will decide Bertie's fate in a number of ways in "The Spot of Art". Notably, she wants Jeeves to vet an article about men's dress trousers for Milady's Boudoir in The Code of the Woosters, she and Jeeves plan together how to extricate Bertie from trouble without discussing it with Bertie in "Jeeves and the Greasy Bird", and Jeeves serves as substitute butler for her at Brinkley Court when Bertie is not there in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.
Appearances
Aunt Dahlia is featured in many Jeeves stories, across much of Wodehouse's writing career:
Carry on, Jeeves (1925)
"Clustering Round Young Bingo" (1925)
Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
"Jeeves and the Song of Songs" (1929)
"The Spot of Art" (1929)
"The Love That Purifies" (1929)
"The Ordeal of Young Tuppy" (1930)
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)
A Few Quick Ones (1959)
"Jeeves Makes an Omelette" (1958)
Jeeves in the Offing (1960)
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)
Plum Pie (1967)
"Jeeves and the Greasy Bird" (1965)
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974)
Aunt Dahlia or her Milady's Boudoir are mentioned in several stories, including:
Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)
Milady's Boudoir
Milady's Boudoir is a fictional weekly newspaper for women, of which Aunt Dahlia is the proprietor. According to Bertie, each issue costs sixpence. Milady's Boudoir is probably based on The Lady, Britain's oldest weekly women's magazine. In the story Clustering Round Young Bingo, the office of Milady's Boudoir is described as being located in "one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood", the same part of London as The Lady, which between 1885 and 2019 was headquartered in Bedford Street, Covent Garden.
Milady's Boudoir (and not "Madame's Nightshirt", as Dahlia's husband Tom Travers insists on calling it) never sold well and only stayed in business because Tom Travers reluctantly paid the bills.
Aunt Dahlia ran the paper for three (according to Bertie) or four (according to Dahlia and Bertie) years before selling the magazine to Mr Trotter of Liverpool in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. In the following novel Jeeves in the Offing, the magazine "had recently been sold to a mug up Liverpool way", and Dahlia mentions that there was a short story in each issue, adding that "in seventy per cent of those short stories the hero won the heroine's heart by saving her dog or her cat or whatever foul animal she happened to possess."
Contributors
Bertie Wooster contributed an article, titled "What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing", in "Clustering Round Young Bingo", and proudly mentions it in other stories.
Rosie M. Banks wrote an article, "How I Keep the Love of my Husband-Baby", though this article was not published, in "Clustering Round Young Bingo".
Lady Bablockhythe contributed her Frank Recollections of a Long Life as a serial in "Clustering Round Young Bingo".
Pomona Grindle was commissioned to contribute a serial in The Code of the Woosters.
Cornelia Fothergill contributed her latest romance novel as a serial in "Jeeves Makes an Omelette".
Adaptations
Television
Eleanor Summerfield portrayed Aunt Dahlia in BBC One's black-and-white The World of Wooster (1965–1967).
In the 1990-1993 television series Jeeves and Wooster, Aunt Dahlia was portrayed by a different actress in each series: Brenda Bruce in series 1, episodes 2, 4–5; by Vivian Pickles in series 2, episode 1; by Patricia Lawrence in series 3, episode 6; and by Jean Heywood in series 4, episode 4.
Radio
Aunt Dahlia was voiced by Jean Stanley in the 1956 BBC BBC Light Programme radio dramatisation of Right Ho, Jeeves.
In the 1973–1981 radio drama series What Ho! Jeeves, Aunt Dahlia was voiced by Vivian Pickles, who later portrayed her in an episode of the Jeeves and Wooster television series.
Aunt Dahlia was voiced by Anne Jameson in the 1988 BBC radio adaptation of Right Ho, Jeeves.
In the 1997 L.A. Theatre Works radio adaptation of The Code of the Woosters, Aunt Dahlia was voiced by Rosalind Ayres.
In BBC Radio 4's 2006 adaptation of The Code of the Woosters for its Classic Serial series, she was voiced by Carolyn Pickles.
Joanna Lumley voiced Aunt Dahlia in the 2018 BBC radio adaptation of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.
Stage
Aunt Dahlia was originally one of the characters in the 1975 musical Jeeves. She was portrayed in early performances by Betty Marsden. The character was cut from the musical before the show's London production.
She is portrayed by another character in the 2013 play Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense. In the play, her butler Seppings helps Bertie and Jeeves reenact the events of The Code of the Woosters. She is portrayed by Seppings.