Sebastian Beach
Sebastian Beach is a recurring fictional character in stories and novels by the British writer PG Wodehouse and, alongside Bertie Wooster's valet Jeeves, is one of the most famous servants in the work of Wodehouse. Beach is the butler at Blandings Castle , Lord Emsworth's country estate , who eats, sleeps, dreams only of pigs and only with Butler Beach's help can he escape all the strokes of fate that upset his peaceful life.
characterization
Beach has been employed at Blandings Castle for many years, where he started out as a simple servant. He's still a bachelor, but turned out to be a heartbreaker, at least in his time as a servant. So important is it to life at Blandings Castle that Lord Emsworth cannot even think about life without Beach. There he rules with majestic calm. Jerry Vail, brief secretary to Lord Emsworth, is very impressed by his colleague at Blandings Castle:
“It is only an extremely fearless young man who can look at an English butler continually and completely without feeling the humility of a worm. All of Jerry's previous encounters with Beach - in the hallways, in the hall, at lunch and dinner - had left him with the impression that his, Jerry's feet were too big, his ears too red, and that his social status was somewhere between that of a teenager Criminal and a badly dressed leper. "
One of the few who are unimpressed by Beach's charisma is the cross-eyed swine keeper George Cyril Wellbeloved, who tends to drink heavily, and who has long been entrusted with the care of Lord Emsworth's favorite fattening pig, the Empress of Blandings .
“Unlike most others who faced that godlike human, he was not afraid of Beach. He was of the opinion - and had fearlessly expressed his opinion again and again in the taproom of the Emsworth Arms - that Beach was an old busybody. "
Nothing suggests that Beach once won the choir boys' cycle race as a teenager. His appearance suggests that he is on the verge of suffering a stroke. PG Wodehouse compares his voice to that of Tawny Portwein , who has become audible. His health is not for the best: he has corns , ingrown toenails, swollen joints, nervous headaches, a weak stomach, and weak eyes. Besides that, he fears few things as much as socialism. Thanks to Freddie Threepwood, he has the best collection of crime novels there is in Shropshire. Much like Jeeves , Wodehouse's famous valet, Beach is a solid rock for his employers who can be relied on to ensure that all entanglements end well. But while Jeeves floats so silently "like a healing zephyr " through Bertie Wooster's apartment, Butler Beach cannot be ignored:
"Outside booming noises could be heard, caused by a stout butler who scores a good time in the tiled corridor"
As a butler, Beach heads his employer's household and carries out this office with serious rigor. Every evening shortly before half past seven he leaves the dining room, where the diners are then only looked after by the second butler Merridew and the servants James and Alfred. Only when it is time to serve the liqueur and the cigars will he return to the stately dining room. In the meantime, in a mirror image of the strictly observed hierarchy on the upper floors, he leads the highest-ranking servants, who waited in housekeeper Twemlow's room, in a servant-hierarchy procession into her dining room, because “Blandings was not one of these houses - or should we say huts - in which the top servants were required to gather in the room in which they also dined. "
Beach is a friend of all of Lord Emsworth's nieces and nephews. As long as they are still children, he is sometimes a bear, sometimes a hippopotamus, to entertain them. He also provides food for the Empress of Blandings when one of Lord Emsworth's nephews comes up with the idea of kidnapping this employer's favorite pig. He supplies his nieces and nephews, who have grown up to be adults, with port wine to help them through life's crises. Port wine is also his elixir of survival when events precipitate, but he also resorts to brandy as a consolation in moments of crisis.
"No more loyal man than Beach has ever drowned in port wine ..."
says the Honorable Galahad 'Gally' Threepwood of him.
On many events at Blandings Castle, Lord Emsworth's brother Galahad Threepwood , who the Threepwood sisters consider to be the eyesore of a proud family, is his collaborator. His niece Maudie doesn't just send ambiguous postcards to Butler Beach. It is also characterized by a lot of what can be described as "only for adults". She worked as a barmaid under the name Maudie Montrose and inherited a private detective agency from her first husband. So great is her attraction that Lord Emsworth even asked for her hand in writing. However, he can withdraw his marriage promise in time after he discovers that Maudie is a blood relative of Beach and that he would then have to address his butler as Uncle Sebastian in the future. Maudie eventually marries Lord Emsworth's (alleged) opponent Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe and thus becomes Lady Parsloe, who resides in Matchingham, the country estate in the neighborhood of Blandings Castle.
watch TV
In the BBC was series from 1967, in which several short stories about Blandings Castle filmed, played Stanley Holloway to Butler Beach. In the 1995 film adaptation of His Lordship and the Pig (Heavy Weather), Beach was portrayed by Roy Hudd . In 2013 there were other TV series that play on Blandings Castle. The role of Butler Beach was played in the first series by Mark Williams and in the second series by Tim Vine .
Novels with Beach as the butler
- Something Fresh (1915); German title: In old freshness
- Summer Lightning (1929); German title: Sommerliches Schlossgewitter
- Heavy Weather (1933); German title: His Lordship and the Pig ; Be and pig
-
Uncle Fred in the Springtime ; German title: Schloss Blandings in the storm of feelings
- New edition: Onkels Erwachen , newly translated by Thomas Schlachter, Edition Epoca, Zurich 2010 ISBN 978-3-905513-53-0
- Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend
- Full moon ; German title: Full moon over Blandings Castle
- Uncle Dynamite ; German title: Onkel Dynamit
- Pigs have wings ; German title: Schwein oder nichtschwein
- Service with a Smile (1961); German title: Always at your service
- 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
- Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935); German title Herr auf Schloß Blandings
- Leave It to Psmith (1923); German title Psmith macht alles ; A lord in need
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
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 83.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig . P. 187
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig . P. 187.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig . P. 93.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig, p. 187
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: In old freshness .
- ↑ Usborne: Plum Sauce. A PG Wodehouse Companion. P. 43.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Jeeves takes the helm
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 47.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Something fresh . P. 137
- ↑ Usborne: Plum Sauce. A PG Wodehouse Companion. P. 99
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig . P. 148
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 71.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 11.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 75.
- ↑ PG Wodehouse: Pig or not pig , p. 149.