Blandings Castle

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Blandings Castle is a recurring fictional location in the stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being the seat of Lord Emsworth (Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth), home to many of his family and the setting for numerous tales and adventures. The stories were written between 1915 and 1975.

Contents

The series of stories taking place at the castle, in its environs and involving its denizens have come to be known as the "Blandings books", or, in a phrase used by Wodehouse in his preface to the 1969 reprint of the first book, "the Blandings Castle Saga". [1]

In a radio broadcast on 15 July 1961, Evelyn Waugh said: "The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled." [2]

The Castle

Blandings Castle, lying in the picturesque Vale of Blandings, Shropshire, England, is two miles (3.2 km) from the town of Market Blandings, home to at least nine pubs, most notably the Emsworth Arms.

The tiny hamlet of Blandings Parva lies directly outside the castle gates and the town of Much Matchingham, home to Matchingham Hall, the residence of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, is also nearby.

The castle is a noble pile, of Early Tudor building ("its history is recorded in England's history books and Viollet-le-Duc has written of its architecture", according to Something Fresh ). One of England's largest stately homes, it dominates the surrounding country, standing on a knoll of rising ground at the southern end of the celebrated Vale of Blandings; the Severn gleams in the distance. From its noble battlements, the Wrekin can be seen.

The famous moss-carpeted Yew Alley (subject to the devious gravelling schemes of Angus McAllister) leads to a small wood with a rough gamekeeper's cottage, which Psmith made use of, not to write poetry as he at first claimed, but to stash stolen jewellery. Another gamekeeper's cottage, in the West Wood, makes a pleasant home for the Empress of Blandings for a spell. The rose garden is another famous beauty spot, ideal for courting lovers. There is a lake, where Lord Emsworth often takes a brisk swim in the mornings.

The house has numerous guest rooms, many of which have not been used since Queen Elizabeth roamed the country. Of those still in use, the Garden Room is the finest, usually given to the most prestigious guest; it has a balcony outside its French windows, which can be easily accessed via a handy drainpipe.

The main library has a smaller library leading off it, and windows overlooking some flowerbeds; it is here that Lord Emsworth is often to be found on wet days, his nose deep in an improving tome of country lore, his favourite being Whiffle on The Care of the Pig.

Possible locations

There have been a number of attempts to identify a real building whose location Wodehouse might have used as the setting for the fictional Blandings Castle:

Residents and guests

The family

The master of Blandings is, nominally at least, Lord Emsworth. Clarence, the ninth Earl, is an amiably absent-minded old chap, who is charming because of his slow, relaxed lifestyle and the simple obsessions that make him oblivious to the absurd melodrama of his family, namely his home, gardens, pumpkins, and his champion pig, Empress of Blandings. He is never happier than when pottering about the grounds on a fine sunny day.

Lord Emsworth's ten sisters (all of whom look like the "daughter of a hundred earls", except for Hermione, who looks like a cook), his brother Galahad ("Gally"), his daughter Mildred, his sons Freddie and George, and his numerous nieces, nephews, and in-laws inhabit the castle from time to time. For the Threepwood family, and their friends, the castle is forever available for indefinite residence, and is occasionally used as a temporary prison—known as "Devil's Island" or "The Bastille"—for love-struck young men and ladies to calm down.

Emsworth's sister Ann plays the role of châtelaine when we first visit the Castle, in Something Fresh . Following her reign, Lady Constance Keeble usually acts as châtelaine until she marries American millionaire James Schoonmaker and spends most of her time in America. Another married sister, Hermione, takes over the duties when Constance is traveling, or otherwise unavailable. While all of Lord Emsworth's sisters are 'take-charge' types, Constance ("Connie") in particular has a very domineering and impatient temperament, as well as a cutting vocabulary; Clarence lives in dread of her occasional return visits to the Castle.

Lady Julia Fish (another sister) is "the iron hand beneath the leather glove", whose son Ronald Fish ("Ronnie") marries a chorus girl named Sue Brown, much to her displeasure. Sue is the daughter of the only woman whom Gally ever loved—Dolly Henderson—though Gally insists Sue is not Ronnie's cousin.

The other sisters (not all of whom are seen, as they are married and live elsewhere) are: Charlotte, Dora, Florence, Georgiana, Jane (deceased), and Diana, the only one that Gally likes ( Sunset at Blandings ). They have a third brother, who has died, called Lancelot.

The staff

Blandings's ever-present butler is Sebastian Beach, with eighteen years service at the castle under his ample belt, and its other domestic servants have at various times included Mrs Twemlow the housekeeper, an under-butler named Merridew, and a number of footmen, such as Charles, Thomas, Stokes, James and Alfred. The chauffeurs Slingsby and Alfred Voules drive the castle's stately Hispano-Suiza, or, in an emergency, the Albatross or the Antelope ( Summer Lightning ). Scottish head gardeners Thorne and Angus McAllister have tended the grounds, while George Cyril Wellbeloved, James Pirbright and the Amazonian Monica Simmons have each in turn taken care of Lord Emsworth's beloved prize pig, Empress of Blandings.

Emsworth has employed a series of secretaries, most notable among them Rupert Baxter, the highly efficient young man who never seems to be able to keep away from Blandings, despite Lord Emsworth's increasingly low opinion of his sanity. He was succeeded in the post by Ronald Psmith, and later by the likes of Hugo Carmody and Monty Bodkin. The castle's splendid library was catalogued, for the first time since 1885, by Eve Halliday.

Notable visitors

Many people pass through the doors of Blandings, including guests and friends of the family, prospective additions to the family, temporary staff, pig-lovers, day-trippers, detectives, crooks and of course impostors galore. Among the most distinguished are the grumpy Duke of Dunstable; leading brain-specialist Sir Roderick Glossop; publishing magnate Lord Tilbury; the fifth Earl of Ickenham, known to all as Uncle Fred; and Percy Pilbeam, head of the Argus Enquiry Agency employed to locate the lost pig and recover Gally's manuscript of his memoirs.

Books

Blandings Castle serves as the setting for eleven novels and nine short stories.

Wodehouse worked on Sunset at Blandings until his death, writing even in his hospital bed. It was unfinished and untitled when he died, and was subsequently edited (by Richard Usborne) and released in its incomplete form with extensive notes on the content.

All nine Blandings short stories were collected together in one volume entitled Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best in 1992.

The Folio Society published a six volume set The Best of Blandings consisting of Summer Lightning, Heavy Weather, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, Full Moon, Pigs Have Wings, and Service with a Smile .

Adaptations

Television

Film

Stage

Radio

Literature

See also

Related Research Articles

Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl Emsworth, commonly known as Lord Emsworth, is a recurring fictional character in the Blandings Castle series of stories by British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. He is the amiable and somewhat absent-minded head of the large Threepwood family. Longing for nothing more than to talk to his prize pig, Empress of Blandings, or potter peacefully in the idyllic gardens of Blandings Castle, he must frequently face the unpleasant reality of his domineering sisters and familial duties.

<i>Summer Lightning</i> 1929 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Summer Lightning is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 1 July 1929 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, under the title Fish Preferred, and in the United Kingdom on 19 July 1929 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It was serialised in The Pall Mall Magazine (UK) between March and August 1929 and in Collier's (US) from 6 April to 22 June 1929.

Sebastian Beach is a fictional character in the Blandings stories by P. G. Wodehouse. He is the butler at Blandings Castle, seat of Lord Emsworth and his family, where he serves for over eighteen years.

Rupert J. Baxter is a fictional character in the Blandings stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Often called the Efficient Baxter, he is Lord Emsworth's secretary, and an expert on many things, including Egyptian scarabs. He invariably wears his rimless spectacles, suspects many castle guests of being impostors, and is, as his epithet suggests, extremely efficient.

The Honourable Galahad "Gally" Threepwood is a fictional character in the Blandings Castle stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Lord Emsworth's younger brother, a lifelong bachelor, Gally was, according to Beach, the Blandings butler, "somewhat wild as a young man". When he appears in the Blandings books, he is in his fifties, has thick grey hair and wears a black-rimmed monocle on a black ribbon.

<i>Leave It to Psmith</i> 1923 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Leave It to Psmith is a comic novel by English author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 30 November 1923 by Herbert Jenkins, London, England, and in the United States on 14 March 1924 by George H. Doran, New York. It had previously been serialised, in the Saturday Evening Post in the US between 3 February and 24 March 1923, and in the Grand Magazine in the UK between April and December that year; the ending of this magazine version was rewritten for the book form.

Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, 7th Baronet is a fictional character from the Blandings Castle short stories and novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. In the stories, Parsloe resides at Matchingham Hall, near Blandings Castle, and is the rival and enemy of Lord Emsworth.

<i>Heavy Weather</i> (Wodehouse novel) 1933 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Heavy Weather is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 28 July 1933 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, and in the United Kingdom on 10 August 1933 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It had been serialised in The Saturday Evening Post from 27 May to 15 July 1933.

<i>Uncle Fred in the Springtime</i> 1939 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Uncle Fred in the Springtime is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 18 August 1939 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 25 August 1939 by Herbert Jenkins, London.

<i>Galahad at Blandings</i> 1964 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Galahad at Blandings is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 31 December 1964 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York under the title The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood, and in the United Kingdom on 26 August 1965 by Herbert Jenkins, London.

<i>Full Moon</i> (novel) 1947 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Full Moon is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States by Doubleday & Company on 22 May 1947, and in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins on 17 October 1947. It is the sixth full-length novel to be set at the beautiful but trouble-ridden Blandings Castle, home of Lord Emsworth.

<i>A Pelican at Blandings</i> 1969 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

A Pelican at Blandings is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 25 September 1969 by Barrie & Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 11 February 1970 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under the title No Nudes Is Good Nudes.

<i>Sunset at Blandings</i> Unfinished novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Sunset at Blandings is an unfinished novel by P. G. Wodehouse published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, London, on 17 November 1977 and in the United States by Simon & Schuster, New York, 19 September 1978. Wodehouse was working on the novel when he died in 1975. The book's first edition publisher, Chatto & Windus, gave the book its title.

"Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United States in the 9 July 1927 issue of Liberty, and in the United Kingdom in the August 1927 Strand. Part of the Blandings Castle canon, it features the absent-minded peer Lord Emsworth, and was included in the collection Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935), although the story takes place sometime between the events of Leave It to Psmith (1923) and Summer Lightning (1929).

"Company for Gertrude" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United Kingdom in September 1928 in Strand, and in the United States in October 1928 in Cosmopolitan. Part of the Blandings Castle canon, it features the absent-minded peer Lord Emsworth, and was included in the collection Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935), though the story takes place sometime between the events of Leave it to Psmith (1923) and Summer Lightning (1929).

"Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United States in the 6 October 1928 issue of Liberty and in the United Kingdom in the November 1928 The Strand. Part of the Blandings Castle canon, it features the absent-minded peer Lord Emsworth, and was included in the collection Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935), although the story takes place sometime between the events of Leave it to Psmith (1923) and Summer Lightning (1929). Wodehouse intended to write a sequel, set 8 years after the events of this story.

Lady Constance Keeble is a recurring fictional character in the Blandings Castle stories by British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being Lord Emsworth's most formidable sister, a strikingly handsome woman, with a fair, broad brow, and perfectly even white teeth. She has the carriage of an empress, and her large grey eyes are misleadingly genial.

<i>Heavy Weather</i> (film) 1995 TV series or program

Heavy Weather is a television film with a screenplay by Douglas Livingstone based on the 1933 novel Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse, set at Blandings Castle. It was made by the BBC and WGBH Boston, first screened by the BBC on Christmas Eve 1995 and shown in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre on 18 February 1996.

<i>Blandings</i> (radio series) Radio show

The Blandings radio series is a series of radio dramas based on the Blandings Castle stories by British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. The stories were dramatised by Wodehouse biographer Richard Usborne. The series ran between 1985 and 1992 on BBC Radio 4.

References

Sources consulted (main article)
Sources consulted (locations)
Endnotes
  1. ↑ Wodehouse, P. G. (1969). "Preface [new since the 1969 edition]". Something Fresh. Something Fresh was the first of what I might call – in fact, I will call – the Blandings Castle Saga.
  2. ↑ Waugh, Evelyn (16 July 1961). "Text of broadcast over Home Service of BBC". Sunday Times . [reprinted as: Waugh, Evelyn (1983). "An Act of Homage and Reparation". In Gallagher, Donat (ed.). The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh. Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company. p.  567. ISBN   9780316926430.]
  3. ↑ Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville; appendices by Richard Usborne; ill. by Ionicus (1977). Sunset at Blandings. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 195. ISBN   0701122374.
  4. ↑ Murphy, N. T. P. (1987) [1986]. In Search of Blandings . London: Penguin. ISBN   014010299X. OCLC   1330345553 – via Internet Archive. (Previously published privately by the author in 1981).
  5. ↑ Murphy 1999, op. cit.
  6. ↑ Lloyd, Daryl A.; Greatbatch, Ian D. (2009). "The Search for Blandings". Journal of Maps. 5 (1): 126–133. Bibcode:2009JMaps...5..126L. doi: 10.4113/jom.2009.4 . ISSN   1744-5647. S2CID   140649994.
  7. ↑ Kirby 2003, op. cit.
  8. ↑ Tibbetts 2003, op. cit.
  9. ↑ Brown, Paul (5 September 2003). "Sleuthing students solve Wodehouse castle mystery". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  10. ↑ The World of Wodehouse: Series 1: "Blandings Castle" lostshows.com
  11. ↑ Taves (2006), pp. 182, 187.
  12. ↑ "Thank You, P.G.Wodehouse (1981)". BFI. British Film Institute. 2019. Archived from the original on 20 March 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2019.
  13. ↑ Brown, Maggie (29 December 2012). "BBC looks to steal Downton ratings with two helpings of PG Wodehouse". The Observer . Retrieved 30 December 2012.
  14. ↑ Taves (2006), p. 168.
  15. ↑ McIlvaine (1990), p. 140, C12, and p. 306, J46.
  16. ↑ "London Lyric Theatre — Oh, Clarence! Programme". Theatre Memorabilia UK. 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  17. ↑ "Something Fresh: Episode 1". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  18. ↑ "Summer Lightning: Episode 1". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  19. ↑ "Uncle Fred in the Springtime: Episode 1". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  20. ↑ "Leave it to Psmith: 1. Poets at Blandings". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  21. ↑ Hogg, James (2020). Lord Emsworth's Annotated Whiffle: The Care of the Pig. Heineman. ISBN   978-0870081347.
  22. ↑ "Lord Emsworth's Annotated Whiffle: The Care of the Pig by Augustus Whiffle". Goodreads. 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  23. ↑ "The Reminiscences of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood by N.T.P. Murphy". Goodreads. 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  24. ↑ Puhl, Gayle Lange (2015). "The Case of the Starving Swine". Sherlock Holmes and the Folk Tale Mysteries - Volume 1. London: MX Publishing. ISBN   978-1780928036.
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