Galahad Threepwood

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Honorable Galahad "Gally" Threepwood is a recurring fictional character in stories and novels by the British writer PG Wodehouse , which are set at Blandings Castle . This series of novels by Wodehouse, along with the one in which Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves are the main protagonists, is one of the best-known stories in Wodehouse's extensive oeuvre.

characterization

Galahad is the younger brother of Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth , the scatterbrained and scattered head of the Threepwood family, whose manor is Blandings Castle. The literary critic Richard Usborne called Lord Emsworth one of the most likable lords in English literary history, but Lord Emsworth does not have the best reputation in his own family. In its eccentricity, eating, sleeping and dreaming of pigs, of which the Empress de Blandings is his favorite pig, is his main occupation. According to his brother's assessment, Lord Emsworth's IQ is about thirty points below that of a poorly gifted tadpole, and only with the help of his brother and loyal staff like his butler Beach is he able to avoid all the strokes of fate that upset his peaceful life .

His younger brother is completely different: the fun-loving Galahad is one of London's celebrities, he is always a welcome guest in variety theaters, on racecourses and in all restaurants where something is going on. In certain circles of the metropolis he is considered a legendary figure. When he has had enough of his happy life in London, he returns to visit Blandings Castle. He then appears with the expression of a "affable monarch who walks happily around his kingdom after years of struggling with pagans in distant lands". Not everyone is really pleased with his visit - least of all his sister, Lady Constance Keeble, who already feels beaten enough by Lord Emsworth.

"Galahad! I remember when we were children, "said Lady Constance wistfully," I saw Galahad fall into the deep pond in the kitchen garden. And just as it was going down for the last time, one of the gardeners came over and pulled him out, ”she added with a kind of wild regret.

Galahad's fortune is extremely modest compared to that of Lord Emsworth. As a younger brother, he lives on the little that his comparatively small inheritance throws off. The Empress of Blandings , Lord Emsworth's beloved fattening pig with its considerable abundance and multiple top honors at the Shrewsbury Agricultural Show, is, in his opinion, the only one in the family who has ever achieved fame.

Like his brother, Galahad is just under sixty. He is characterized by robust health, even if his way of life does not suggest this.

"At a time when most of his peers reluctantly tossed in the towel and retired to the Harrogate and Buxton baths to cure their gout, [Galahad] had carried on briskly, climbing to new heights with each whiskey-soda."

“Although eyesore of a proud family, like his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his sister Dora and all of his other sisters, meant he could have been a teenage teetotaler who ate yogurt, brewer's yeast, wheat germ, and sugar syrup from childhood. He himself attributed his health to consistent smoking, constant consumption of alcohol and his lifelong motto that it is a sign of bad behavior to go to bed before three in the morning. "

-

Galahad's intervention is usually necessary to ensure the love happiness of various nephews and nieces who have chosen love partners who encounter the displeasure of their mothers and / or their aunts. He could not marry his great love, the revue dancer Dolly Henderson. In order to prevent an inglorious connection, Sir Galahad was summarily sent to South Africa by his family. Galahad Threepwood himself now has a relaxed attitude towards love affairs. He comments on the brief engagement of his nephew Freddie Threepwood to the beautiful Veronica Wedge with the words that this happened during a stay on Blanding, in which it rained all the time and at some point you would have had enough of backgammon. However, not all are always delighted with Galahad's active help. Jerry Vail in Pig or Not Pig not only finds a huge pig in the kitchen of his newly rented house, first has to bribe a curious pigkeeper, but also fend off a very curious police officer and then actively help to swap this pig for another. It is not without good reason that Jerry Vail remembers the advice his uncle Major Basham once gave him on his journey through life:

“If you ever find yourself involved with Galahad Threepwood, my boy, there is only one thing; commend your soul to God and try to get away with life .. "

Galahad Threepwood shares with his brother Lord Emsworth the aversion to Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe , whom they both regularly wrongly suspect of harming both the pigs at Blandings Castle and the pumpkins intended for the award ceremony. Sir Gregory's sins of the past are only two, however: In a bet with Galahad, whose dog could kill the most rats, the young Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe overfed his opponent's dog with roast beef, thereby incapacitating the dog. Sir Gregory has also succeeded in luring Lord Emsworth pigkeeper George Cyril Wellbeloved, who once looked after Lord Emsworth's favorite pig, the Empress of Blandings, into his service with the prospect of a higher salary. Otherwise, Sir Gregory today is only guilty of a penchant for overeating. However, Sir Gregory looks back on a wild youth. The thought that Galahad would publish his memoirs and thereby reveal his scandalous youth to the public leads to Sir Gregory hiring a private detective in Sommerliches Schlossgewitter to steal this manuscript.

Unlike his brother, Galahad Threepwood is characterized by a certain presence of mind. A young painter who, for reasons of love, would like to be near Blandings Castle, gets his brother to commission a portrait of the famous fattening pig, Empress of Blandings. He suggests to his brother that it is Edwin Landseer , who achieved great fame with the "Roaring Stag" ( Monarch of the Glens , 1851). The fuzzy brother escapes the fact that Edwin Landseer has been dead for several decades. This does not apply to his sister Constance - which is why he explains that it is another painter who became known with the Roaring Pig . But a roaring pig seems strange even to Lord Emsworth, whereupon Galahad explains:

“It wouldn't do that if you'd been around the world a little. Then you would know that Rørende is a village in Denmark where a famous type of pig is raised. On one of his art trips through Denmark, Landseer painted such a pig and of course called it the Rørende pig. "

Trivia

  • PG Wodehouse repeatedly named the protagonists of his novels and stories after places with which he was familiar. Lord Emsworth was named after the small town of Emsworth in the English county of Hampshire . which is located directly on the south coast of the British Isles. Wodehouse spent some time there in 1903 and later rented a small house there called “Threepwood Cottage”. He used the latter name as Lord Emsworth's family name. Correspondingly, Galahad's last name is Threepwood.
  • The scandalous memoirs by Galahad Threepwood, which have to be made to disappear before their publication, are the plot motifs in Summer Castle Storm and its serialized novel Sein und Schwein . PG Wodehouse took up this idea in the short story Jeeves Takes the Rule , published in 1916 . Here Bertie Wooster's fiancée Florence Craye makes it a condition of marriage that Bertie's uncle's memoirs not be published. Bertie's valet Jeeves , who thinks Florence Craye is an unsuitable partner for his employer, ensures that the memoirs reach the publisher successfully.

Novels by PG Wodehouse starring Galahad Threepwood

Galahad appears in seven novels by PG Wodehouse.

  • Summer Lightning (1929); German title: Sommerliches Schlossgewitter
  • Heavy Weather (1933); German title: His Lordship and the Pig (translated by Christiane Trabant-Rommel); Be and pig
  • Full moon ; German title: Vollmond über Blandings Castle , translated by Harald Raykowski, dtv 1983
  • Pigs have wings ; German title: Schwein oder nichtschwein
  • Galahad at Blandings (1965); German title: Wealth does not protect against love
  • A Pelican at Blandings (1969); German title: A pelican in the castle
  • Sunset at Blandings

He is also mentioned in the novel Uncle's Awakening , in which Lord Ickenham has to rush to help instead of his Lord Emsworth.

literature

  • Frances Donaldson: PG Wodehouse: A Biography . London 1982, ISBN 0-297-78105-7 .
  • Richard Usborne: Plum Sauce. A PG Wodehouse Companion. Overlook, Woodstock / NY 2003, ISBN 1-58567-441-9 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Usborne: Plum Sauce. A PG Wodehouse Companion. P. 42.
  2. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 83.
  3. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 110.
  4. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 50.
  5. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 117.
  6. ↑ PG Wodehouse. Pig or not pig , p. 153.
  7. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 146.
  8. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 51.
  9. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 71.
  10. ↑ PG Wodehouse: The World of Blandings (anthology), p. 633
  11. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Full moon over Blandings Castle , p. 92.
  12. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 200.
  13. ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 153.
  14. ^ A b Norman Murphy: In Search of Blandings . Secker & Warburg , London 1986, ISBN 0-436-29720-5 .