His elder son Galahad once caroused with members of the peerage in their younger, more frivolous days, and worse, remembers them when he threatens to write his memoirs.

Eve Halliday has no umbrella, nor has he, so he gets the best one he can find in the Drones Club cloakroom, and brings it to her.īlandings Castle is the seat of Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth, and home to various relatives, employees and invited guests. Standing in the window looking across the street, he spots a beautiful girl getting rained on. They are a frivolous group, given to games of chance, such as betting on sports like the Mother’s Sack Race or more esoteric things like who has the fattest uncle. The Drones Club is made up of younger men, most of whom live on allowances from their elderly relatives. He is a member of the Drones Club, another common Wodehouse element. His uncle the fish magnate thought he might train him as his heir to the business, starting from the bottom up, but he finds working with fish disgusting and is currently looking for employment. Psmith is another member of a recently impoverished family. In this book, we are introduced to Psmith (the p is silent, as in pshrimp), and I believe the second appearance of the denizens of Blandings Castle, who will appear in many more stories until Wodehouse’s last and sadly unfinished book, “Sunset at Blandings.” The mention of their names revives pleasant memories of when we last met, and tells you something of what to expect this time around. Recurring characters in Wodehouse’s stories are as comfortable as your favorite pair of socks. A frequent subject in his stories, Sir Roderick Glossop, who was himself a blister on the Hide of Humanity, has a daughter Honaria, whose laugh sounds like cavalry crossing a tin bridge. Bertie Wooster, one of his most famous creations, often ran afoul of his Aunt Agatha, observing that the sound of Aunt calling to Aunt was like mastodons bellowing over the primeval swamp. Master of metaphor, Sultan of simile, Wodehouse is recognized as one of the greatest writers of the English language.

Leave it to psmith