ONE of PG Wodehouse’s most likeable characters is the raffish Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham. He appears first in the short story Uncle Fred Flits By, included in the 1936 collection Young Men in Spats, and then in the novels Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), Uncle Dynamite (1948), Cocktail Time (1958) and Service with a Smile (1962).
He refers to himself as ‘one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet’.
As the scholarly Richard Usborne put it, Uncle Fred is ‘in his middle-sixties, with iron-grey hair, a slim, youthful figure, an American wife (always off-stage) who tries to keep him under control (“American girls try to boss you. It’s part of their charm”) and a stately home, with far too many nude statues in it, at Bishop’s Ickenham in Hampshire’.
In his masterly study Wodehouse at Work to the End, Usborne continues: ‘Lord Ickenham is a card, a joker, ready to stand in for anybody. He has claimed that the only people he wouldn’t be able to impersonate are a circus dwarf and Gina Lollobrigida. In Uncle Fred Flits By, he was driven to seek shelter from the rain in a suburban house and he pretended to be a) a vet come to clip the parrot’s claws (his nephew Pongo was to be his deaf-and-dumb assistant. “Tap your teeth with a pencil and try to smell of iodoform!”) b) a Mr Roddis [the actual resident of the address] and c) a Mr Bulstrode [a neighbour] in the space of about one hour.
‘In Uncle Dynamite he went down to the house of an old school acquaintance pretending, to one and all, to be Major Brabazon Plank, the famous explorer from Brazil. This worked easily and well until he met a) the policeman who had arrested him at the Dog Races and who knew him therefore to be George Robinson of East Dulwich, and b) the real Major Brabazon Plank.
‘In Uncle Fred in the Springtime Lord Ickenham is not only himself impersonating Sir Roderick Glossop, but he takes with him to Blandings Castle Polly Pott, a bookmaker’s daughter who has to pretend to be his (Lord Ickenham’s) daughter, and his nephew Pongo, who has to pretend to be his secretary.
‘In Cocktail Time Lord Ickenham becomes Inspector Jarvis of Scotland Yard. If impersonation fails temporarily, he has a smooth technique with knock-out drops. “It is madness to come to country houses without one’s bottle of Mickey Finns”, he says.’
Usborne observes that ‘Lord Ickenham provided the mature Wodehouse with some good new outlets. In his determination to whack amusement out of any situation that could be stood on its head and made to kick its heels in the air, he paralleled the unrepentant frivolity of his senescent author. A lifetime friend of Galahad Threepwood, Lord Ickenham is more of a practical joker than Gally, more of a licensed loony. He is the best buzzer in all Wodehouse. His joy in impersonation, lying and blackmail, his manic generation of muddle and mayhem as a challenge to his own powers of Houdini-like escape – these enabled Wodehouse to ravel his plots into webs apparently hopelessly tangled and then, in magical denouement, to shake them out into happy endings with all the right couples paired off. And, although one must at all times and at all costs avoid accusing Wodehouse of offering us messages, Lord Ickenham in his middle sixties is a high-stepping proof that, for the elderly as for the young, the brow should be worn low and unfurrowed, the hat should be perched on the side of the head and the shirt should not be stuffed.’
In Service with a Smile Uncle Fred meets Lord Emsworth (of Blandings Castle) in Moss Bros, where they are returning their outfits hired for attending the opening of Parliament.
‘Were you at that thing this morning?’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘I was indeed,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘and looking magnificent. I don’t suppose there is a peer in England who presents a posher appearance when wearing the reach-me-downs and comic hat than I do. Just before the procession got under way, I heard Rouge Croix whisper to Bluemantle, “Don’t look now, but who’s that chap over there?” and Bluemantle whispered back, “I haven’t the foggiest but evidently some terrific swell.’
Over the years Uncle Fred has been portrayed on screen by Arthur Treacher, David Niven, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Ballard Berkeley (the Major in Fawlty Towers).
Radio Four, back in 1994 before the BBC became a woke parody of itself, adapted Uncle Dynamite into a six-part serial with Richard Briers as Lord Ickenham and Hugh Grant as Pongo.
I’ve already used an extract from Uncle Fred in the Springtime as a PS from PG some time ago, but can’t resist repeating it.
‘Don’t blame me, Pongo,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can’t compare the lorgnettes of today with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.’
Old jokes’ home
My wife – it’s difficult to say what she does. She sells seashells on the seashore.
A PS from PG
For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking; most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.
PG Wodehouse: Pigs Have Wings