Uncle Fred - Background and Character

Background and Character

Uncle Fred is a tall, slim, distinguished-looking man, with a jaunty moustache, and an "alert and enterprising eye". As a child he gambolled at Mitching Hill, his Uncle Willoughby's estate just outside London, which later became the suburb of Valley Fields; it was there that he shot the gardener in the trousers seat with his bow and arrow, and threw up after his first cigar. He was a younger son, and therefore not expected to inherit his present title; he spent much time in America, working variously as a cowboy, a soda jerk, a newspaper reporter and a prospector in the Mojave Desert, before a number of deaths in the family left him heir to the Earldom. While in America, he was friends with James Schoonmaker, and his daughter Myra.

In later youth, he became a member of the riotous Pelican Club, and a good friend of Galahad Threepwood, in whose stead he is occasionally called to Blandings, to help Gally's brother Lord Emsworth out of a jam. He was also close to Claude "Mustard" Pott, the prominent bookie, and was favourite uncle to Pott's daughter Polly, who sported on the lawns of Ickenham Hall as a child.

His home is in Hampshire, where he lives quietly with his sponge Joyeuse and his wife Jane, who at first permits him the occasional day or two in town, but later takes control of the family finances, leaving him only enough for "golf balls, self-respect and tobacco", and insists he stay in the country. This injunction comes as a relief to his nephew Pongo, who considers him a troublemaker and dreads his trips to London.