A Berkshire sow similar to The Empress
of Blandings (but much thinner)
Empress of Blandings is a
fictional pig, featured in many of the
Blandings Castle novels and stories by
P. G.
Wodehouse.
Owned by the doting
Lord Emsworth, the Empress is an
enormous black Berkshire sow, who
wins many prizes in the "Fat Pigs" class at the local Shropshire
Agricultural Show, and is subject of many plots and
schemes, generally involving her kidnap for various
purposes.
Appearances
Once the pig bug has taken hold of her master, the Empress becomes
a regular feature in the Blandings books, playing some part in most
of the subsequent stories:
Keepers
In the course of the Blandings saga, the Empress is tended to by a
large and disparate bunch of pig-keepers, most of them rather
unappealing types who, unsurprisingly, smell strongly of pig.
-
George Cyril Wellbeloved, her first and best-known keeper, is a
rather unreliable sort, a little too fond of drink and lacking the
old feudal loyalty; he defects to the rival camp of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe for
a time, later returning to Blandings (in Service With a Smile), only to
further betray Emsworth by joining yet another plot to kidnap the
Empress.
- Edwin
Pott is an elderly, gnome-like man with no
roof to his mouth (rendering his speech rather hard to follow), who
appears in Full
Moon.
- Monica
Simmons, rather worryingly niece to Parsloe-Parsloe, is
nevertheless a highly capable girl despite referring to the Empress
as a "piggy-wiggy". Graduate of an Agricultural College, Amazonian Miss Simmons tends her charge well in
Pigs Have Wings, and
returns to the post in Galahad
at Blandings, only to elope at the end with a nephew of
Lord Emsworth.
Adventures
"
Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey", wherein we
first meet the noble beast, tells of how she misses her first
keeper, Wellbeloved, when he is sent to jail for a spell; her
pining is worrisome to her master, with the big show approaching,
until she is pepped up by
James Belford's hog-calling techniques, returning to her trough
with enough gusto to take her first Silver Medal.
Soon after, to Emsworth's disgust, Wellbeloved defects to
Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe,
whose own animal
the Pride of Matchingham is the Empress' biggest rival. In the
novels
Summer Lightning
and
Heavy Weather,
while she is under the care of Pirbright, she becomes subject of
various schemes; first stolen by
Ronnie
Fish (who has upset his uncle by bouncing a tennis ball on her
back and hopes to get back into his good books by "finding" her
again), she is stashed in a gamekeeper's cottage in the woods, and
fed by the admirable
Beach, but
later moved by
Hugo
Carmody to a
caravan owned by
Rupert Baxter.
In
Heavy Weather, she
finds
Galahad Threepwood's
notorious memoirs, hidden in her custom-built new sty by
Percy Pilbeam, and eats the whole
book, and not long afterward finds herself in the dicky of Ronnie
Fish's car, as he threatens to run off with her if her master
refuses to fund Fish's elopement. Throughout this, both Emsworth
and Gally suspect Parsloe-Parsloe of being behind all the foul
play.
In
Uncle Fred in the
Springtime, she is once again taken captive, and hidden in
a bathroom by the
Duke of Dunstable, but flees when
Lord Bosham lets off a shutgun in her vicinity.
In
Full Moon,
Bill Lister is twice hired to paint her portrait, and she is
put in
Veronica
Wedge's bedroom for a time by Gally, while in
Pigs Have Wings she spends some time at
Matchingham
Hall, home of Parsloe-Parsloe, having been stolen by the
turncoat Wellbeloved in response to Gally's cunning theft of
Parsloe's new pig,
the Queen of Matchingham. Her subsequent rescue leaves plenty
of time to return to form, before her triumphant third Silver
Medal.
In
Service With a
Smile, a Church Lad teases her with a potato on a piece of
string, and Dunstable once again schemes to take her away from Lord
Emsworth, planning to sell her to
Lord Tilbury, but the
plot (involving
Lavender
Briggs and Wellbeloved) is blocked by the dashing
Uncle Fred.
In
Galahad at
Blandings, dastardly
Huxley
Winkworth, feeling she is overweight, plots to release and give
her some exercise. When he finally gets past Monica Simmons able
guard, he finds her suffering a hangover,
Wilfred
Allsop having dropped a flask of
whisky
into her trough the day before; she bites his finger, and
Emsworth's fears that she may be in danger of infection prove
priceless to his own happiness.
External links
Wikis
Map
Search
