Empress of Blandings

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A Berkshire sow similar to The Empress of Blandings (but much thinner) Berkshire Sow, Best of Breed.jpg
A Berkshire sow similar to The Empress of Blandings (but much thinner)
An 1870 drawing of a champion Berkshire sow similar to The Empress of Blandings Berkshire Sow 1870.png
An 1870 drawing of a champion Berkshire sow similar to The Empress of Blandings

Empress of Blandings is a fictional pig, featured in many of the Blandings Castle novels and stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Owned by the doting Lord Emsworth, the Empress is an enormous black Berkshire sow, who wins many prizes in the "Fat Pigs" class at the local Shropshire Agricultural Show, and is the subject of many plots and schemes, generally involving her kidnap for various purposes. [1] In 2005 Hall & Woodhouse, the Dorset-based Brewers of Badger beer, named a public house in Hampshire in honour of the Empress.

Contents

Appearances

Once the pig bug has taken hold of her master, the Empress becomes a regular feature in the Blandings books, playing some part in most of the subsequent stories:

Keepers

In the course of the Blandings saga, the Empress is tended to by a large and disparate bunch of pig-keepers, most of them rather unappealing types who, unsurprisingly, smell strongly of pig.

Adventures

"Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey", wherein we first meet the noble beast, tells of how she misses her first keeper, Wellbeloved, when he is sent to jail for a spell; her pining is worrisome to her master, with the big show approaching, until she is pepped up by James Belford's hog-calling techniques, returning to her trough with enough gusto to take her first Silver Medal.

Soon afterwards, to Emsworth's disgust, Wellbeloved defects to Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, whose own animal the Pride of Matchingham is the Empress' biggest rival. In the novels Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather , while she is under the care of Pirbright, she becomes the subject of various schemes: first stolen by Ronnie Fish (who has upset his uncle by bouncing a tennis ball on her back and hopes to get back into his good books by "finding" her again), she is stashed in a gamekeeper's cottage in the woods, and fed by the admirable Beach, but later moved by Hugo Carmody to a caravan owned by Rupert Baxter.

In Heavy Weather , she finds Galahad Threepwood's notorious memoirs, hidden in her custom-built new sty by Percy Pilbeam, and eats the whole book, and not long afterward finds herself in the dicky of Ronnie Fish's car, as he threatens to run off with her if her master refuses to fund Fish's elopement. Throughout this, both Emsworth and Gally suspect Parsloe-Parsloe of being behind all the foul play. The book opens with the Empress about to attempt her second silver medal and the book closes by implying that she won.

In Uncle Fred in the Springtime , she is once again taken captive, and hidden in a bathroom by the Duke of Dunstable, but flees when Lord Bosham lets off a shotgun in her vicinity.

In Full Moon , Bill Lister is twice hired to paint her portrait, and she is put in Veronica Wedge's bedroom for a time by Gally, while in Pigs Have Wings she spends some time at Matchingham Hall, home of Parsloe-Parsloe, having been stolen by the turncoat Wellbeloved in response to Gally's cunning theft of Parsloe's new pig, the Queen of Matchingham. Her subsequent rescue leaves her plenty of time to return to form, before her triumphant third Silver Medal.

In Service with a Smile , a Church Lad teases her with a potato on a piece of string, and Dunstable once again schemes to take her away from Lord Emsworth, planning to sell her to Lord Tilbury, but the plot (involving Lavender Briggs and Wellbeloved) is blocked by the dashing Uncle Fred.

In Galahad at Blandings , dastardly Huxley Winkworth, feeling she is overweight, plots to release her and give her some exercise. When he finally gets past Monica Simmons' able guard, he finds the Empress suffering from a hangover, Wilfred Allsop having dropped a flask of whisky into her trough the day before; she bites his finger, and Emsworth's fears that she may be in danger of infection prove priceless to his own happiness[ clarification needed ].

Related Research Articles

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

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.

Montague "Monty" Bodkin is a recurring fictional character in three novels of English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a wealthy young member of the Drones Club, well-dressed, well-spoken, impeccably polite, and generally in some kind of romantic trouble.

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 everyone of being an impostor, 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.

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>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>Pigs Have Wings</i> 1952 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Pigs Have Wings is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared as a serial in Collier's Weekly between 16 August and 20 September 1952. It was first published as a book in the United States on 16 October 1952 by Doubleday & Company, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 31 October 1952 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It is the seventh novel set at Blandings Castle.

<i>Service with a Smile</i> 1961 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Service with a Smile is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 15 October 1961 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on 17 August 1962 by Herbert Jenkins, London. A condensed version of the story had previously been published in two parts in the Toronto Star Weekly, on 26 August and 2 September 1961.

<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).

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 film

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)

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

  1. "Empress of Blandings". Encyclopædia Britannica . 7 April 2015. Retrieved 2 April 2023.