Uncle Fred in the Springtime

A troupe of upper class twits engage in an entirely avoidable scheme of imposture and misidentification in order to allow a pig to continue to be fattened up, to ingratiate a girl with a reluctant in-law by securing funding for an onion-soup bar on Piccadilly Circus, and to allow a gambling youngling to pay off his debts. A chaotic host of side characters serve to comically complicate matters.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime is very much a book of its time (1930s) and its subgenre: a pythonesque poking of fun at British upper class twits. Stereotypes and catch-phrases abound, with silliness, irresponsibility, witticisms and verbal humour aplenty. If that’s not your cup of tea, you probably won’t like this book. If it is, you’ll be show more delighted. At least, I was, for the prose positively hops and sparkles from joke to joke. I very much giggled my way through this book: it was fast-paced, read splendidly, and was regularly hilarious.

(As an aside, I was pleased to find out that the tag upper class twits existed on LT, and that it had been applied to a bunch of Wodehouse’s works. Bottom-up, people-powered tagging for the win!) show less

Wodehouse remains my #1 choice for vacation reading! The books are light but engrossing, silly but clever – just perfect when you’re having a lovely time and in need of a book that’s going to amplify those feelings of cheerful content.

This outing is mostly dedicated to the antics of Uncle Fred, Earl of Ickenham, whose fearless, feckless plots sow mayhem yet somehow always seem to end up achieving their ends. In this case those ends are extracting his nephew Pongo from a formidable gambling debt and facilitating the marriage of Polly Potts (charming daughter of Fred’s shady bookie/con man/detective acquaintance Claude “Mustard” Potts) and to her jealous but devoted beau Ricky Gilpin (a poet aspiring to make his fortune in show more onion soup stands, if only he can find an investor). Interwoven in the spaces between these two storylines: a plot by Alaric, the Duke of Dunstable, to kidnap the beloved pig of Clarence, Earl of Emsworth (so it can be trained to race); the on-again/off-again engagement of Alaric’s nephew Horace and Fred’s niece Valerie (complicated by Valerie’s outrage over the discovery that Horace set a private investigator on her during a club outing to watch for any signs of flirtation); and the machinations of Clarence’s wife Lady Constance, in cahoots with Rupert Baxter (her husband’s former private secretary) to lure a highly regarded London neurosurgeon to Blandings Castle in declare their uninvited guest Alaric insane – all because Alaric beat up some furniture with a poker and *will* insist on throwing eggs at the gardener who keeps humming Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond underneath his window. (Which, to be fair, is a genuinely annoying song).

In traditional Wodehouse fashion, these events intersect in ways that become increasingly preposterous and hilarious. Fred ends up impersonating the neurosurgeon, Horace ends up trapped in a callbox while dressed as a Zulu warrior, Pongo ends up prancing through a woods warbling Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond at the top of his lungs, con man Potts ends up hoisted on his own petard (a questionably legitimate card game called Persian Monarchs), and eventually almost everyone finds themselves trapped in a bathroom with Alaric’s pig.

One wonders how Wodehouse manages to keep recycling the same tropes – shady bookies, preposterous bets, gambling debts, potty aristocrats, unflappable butlers, terrifying aunts, romantic dalliances between members of the aristocracy and showgirls with hearts of gold, pratfalls and pigs – to generate such a sustained series of witty masterpieces. My only concern: what if I run out of Wodehouse novels before I run out of vacations? show less

This was Wodehouse's last full-scale novel of the thirties (Quick Service is only a novelette, really) and the book that many Wodehouse enthusiasts list as their absolute favourite. It's a sort of pendant to Leave it to Psmith with a buzzer character introduced into Blandings Castle as an impostor to steal pigs, spread sweetness and light, and generally cause chaos. The buzzer in this case is of course the inimitable and irrepressible peer, Lord Ickenham (Uncle Fred), whom we met for the first time in "Uncle Fred flits by" (1935). Wodehouse rather cleverly realised that irresponsible behaviour is funnier in the elderly than in the young, and that it is even funnier if the person concerned is an embarrassing uncle. Poor old Pongo, the show more nephew, has a rather dull but essential role as straight-man.

But it doesn't stop there: we actually get three comic peers this time, with the welcome return of the absent-minded Lord Emsworth and the introduction of the supremely irascible Duke of Dunstable. There's a Drones Club prologue featuring an untoward incident at a fancy-dress ball and a ludicrous betting tragedy; Emsworth's heir, Lord Bosham, emerges from his previous obscurity to display supreme quantities of upper-class twittishness; the Efficient Baxter is back with his death-ray spectacles; nerve-specialist Sir Roderick Glossop has a walk-on part, and we meet Claude "Mustard" Pott, private detective and former bookie with a talent for the game of Persian Monarchs. What more could you want?

Well, perhaps it is all a little bit too hectic. Certainly, the girls Valerie and Polly don't get much to do - just two scenes each where they actually speak, the rest of the time they are off-stage. Beach and the Empress are rather marginalised as well. But those are tiny quibbles. All in all, it is a magnificent tour-de-force, with quite a few of Wodehouse's best throwaway lines. I always love the Tennysonian detail of Uncle Fred heading for the bathroom "armed with his great sponge Joyeuse", for instance. And Burns being (most unfairly) ticked off for rhyming "Loch Lomond" with "afore ye". And it's great to watch Lady Constance Keeble being manoeuvred into a position where she can accuse someone else of being a snob.

Greatest Wodehouse novel? - possibly, but there are several other serious contenders.
A book every Wodehouse-lover should read? - definitely. show less

Polly frowned. In a world scented with flowers and full of soft music, these sentiments jarred upon her.
'I don't see why it's got to be a sort of fight.'
'Well, it has. Marriage is a battlefield, not a bed of roses. Who said that? It sounds too good to be my own. Not that I don't think of some extraordinarily good things, generally in my bath.'

When his sister Lady Constance agrees to give his beloved Empress to the visiting Duke of Dunstable, for fear that he will trash the castle if he doesn't get his own way, the Earl of Emsworth turns to his brother's Gally's friend Fred, the Earl of Ickenham for help. Fred arrives at Blandings Castle disguised as distinguished psychiatrist Sir Roderick Glossop (who has been summoned by Lady show more Constance to examine the Duke), along with his nephew and a girl who is engaged to one of the Duke's nephews.

As usual the story includes impostors infiltrating the castle, pignapping, a broken engagement, a jealous boyfriend getting the wrong end of the stick, and impoverished young men trying to get money from their richer friends and relatives. Uncle Fred is an alarming character who thinks it fun to try his hand at a confidence trick just to see if can do it, and is prepared to steal, cheat at cards and slip people Micky Finns, so for once I felt that Wodehouse's disapproving females could be right to keep their husbands and male relatives on a tight leash. show less

Classic Wodehouse. While most Wodehouse characters bumble about, a few are the exact opposite -- rarely if ever at a loss for what to do. Jeeves is the best known of these, but Uncle Fred is right up there. A congenial uncle, up for adventure to the dismay of his nephew Pongo, with a con man's heart, but never for personal monetary gain. While the comical metaphors and observations that are a Wodehouse trademark are amply present, to me what stands out is the complexity of the plot machinations and the speed with which the novel races through them. My head hurt trying to keep track of the first four or so chapters, and I think the same may have been true for Wodehouse. Characters such as Howard, Lord Emsworth, and Polly, introduced show more early in the novel, and critical links in several causal chains, have basically left the stage by the two-thirds point. As a result, the concluding chapters are clear and resolved, but I was left with many "but what about...?"

Recommended but not as a first Wodehouse book. show less

Another delightful Wodehouse novel, combining the setting of Blandings Castle, with Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance, Beach, Baxter and the Empress of Blandings as backing characters, and the anarchy that is Uncle Fred (5th Earl of Ickenham) and his unfortunate nephew, Pongo Twistleton.
The main story, to the extent that it is important, involves Horace Pendlebury-Davenport (a poet and friend of Pongo) who needs a sum of money (starting at £500 but reduced later to £250) to purchase an onion soup bar, so that he has an income and can marry Polly Pott.
Now the Duke of Dunstable (uncle of Horace and the man with the money to fund the soup bar purchase) has invited himself to stay at Blandings Castle. Uncle Fred views Polly Pott as a show more surrogate daughter and so wants to be able to introduce Polly Pott to the Duke of Dunstable and for him to think well of her, so that he will let Horace have the money to purchase the soup bar.
To achieve this, Uncle Fred impersonates Sir Roderick Glossop to get himself (and Polly Pott impersonating his daughter) invited down to Blandings Castle by Lord Emsworth.
Lord Emsworth invites Uncle Fred (posing as Glossop) as he wants to evict the Duke of Dunstable, who has shocked him by advising that he wants to take the Empress of Blandings (an enormous, prize winning black Berkshire sow) to make her fit.
Uncle Fred (posing as Glossop) is to certify that the Duke of Dunstable is insane, as he throws eggs at gardeners (and others) who whistle or sing The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond,
All of this is the recipe for one of the most delightful and amusing stories that I have ever read.
Even less than with any of the other Wodehouse novels that I have read is the plot important. The complicated plot and numerous characters just form a structure upon which Wodehouse can place vastly humorous scenes and incidents. It is extremely silly and very funny.
I particularly enjoyed the character of Claude "Mustard" Pott, a private detective and former bookie, and having checked Wikipedia am somewhat disappointed that this was Wodehouse's only outing of this character.
However, although this is a very funny novel, this is not where to start reading Wodehouse, as the novel benefits from the inclusion of minor characters from other novels, mainly the earlier Blandings novels, so that you appreciate the full humour of some of the scenes with Lord Emsworth, Baxter and Beach, by knowing their previous exploits. There is also a colliding of fictional universes with the cameo appearance of Sir Roderick Glossop, who appears in several Jeeves and Wooster short stories and novels .
Highly recommended for those already well acquainted with Wodehouse's timeless stories. show less

This is a so-so story from Wodehouse. It has the usual set of people, country house, engagements on and off, loopy uncle, brain doctors, butlers and aunts. And they are doing the kinds of thing that only really happen in Wodehouse novels. Kidnapping pigs, betting on outfits, deceiving dukes and generally behaving in a manner unbecomming. This story lets itself down in that the last we see of the Empress of Blandings, she is trotting out of a ground floor bedroom suite. Does she make it to her sty? Will she be pig-napped again? It all becomes rather far-fetched.
And yet, despite all that, it remains fun and the light hearted spirit in which these stories are told went a long way to enliven a dreadfully long return train journey. Not the show more best, I think the Jeeves books have that edge, but I've read many a worse book. show less