Freddie Threepwood
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Honourable Frederick Threepwood is a fictional character in the Blandings stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Affectionately known as "Freddie", he is the second son of Lord Emsworth, a somewhat simple-minded youth who brings his father nothing but trouble.
Contents |
[edit] Life and character
Freddie's youth was a rather wild and reckless time. He was expelled from Eton for "breaking out at night and roaming the streets of Windsor in a false mustache", and was sent down from Oxford, where he had been good friends with "Beefy" Bingham, for "pouring ink from a second-story window on the junior dean of his college". Despite two years at an expensive London crammer's, he failed to qualify for the army. During this time he gathered a wide circle of shady and dubious friends, mostly involved in the turf, including the unpleasant Mr R Jones, and an equally broad set of gambling debts.
When Lord Emsworth is required to pay off £500 worth of said debts, Freddie is recalled to Blandings Castle, the family's traditional prison for straying youth, where he is kept for his own safety, despite the discomfort this causes his father; this is where we find him when we first meet Freddie, at the start of Something Fresh.
Freddie is an amiable chap, though not the sharpest of minds. He is fond of the cinema, and indeed at one point writes a film scenario, which he successfully sells to the Super-Ultra-Art Film Company for $1000. He is also a great lover of detective fiction, and is awed to meet Ashe Marson, creator of Gridley Quayle, Investigator.
A fan of a pretty face, at some point in his London days he fell for a girl on the stage, Joan Valentine, and bombarded her with letters and poetry to little avail, a fact which threatens to cause some embarrassment when he becomes engaged to American heiress Aline Peters. This engagement, miraculous in the eyes of the family, comes to nothing, however, as Freddie invites George Emerson, Aline's other suitor, to Blandings, and loses her to him.
Freddie's eye for a pretty girl is once again in evidence in Leave it to Psmith, where he is enamoured of Eve Halliday, another girl he loses to a better man, but in "The Custody of the Pumpkin" he woos and elopes with Aggie Donaldson, daughter of Donaldson the American dog-biscuit king.
He moves to America to work for his father-in-law, becoming a successful part of the Dog-Joy empire, only returning occasionally, to attend weddings or to push his products in the English market.
Freddie has one brother, George, and a sister, Mildred.
[edit] Appearances
Freddie appears in four Blandings novels and six shorts:
- Something Fresh (1915)
- Leave it to Psmith (1923)
- Full Moon (1947)
- "Birth of a Salesman"
- "Sticky Wicket at Blandings"
- Sunset at Blandings (1977)
[edit] Television
In several adaptations of Blandings shorts, made by the BBC and broadcast in 1967, Freddie was played by Derek Nimmo. Unfortunately, none of the episodes featuring Freddie remain in the BBC archive.
[edit] External links
- "Blandings Castle" (1967) at the Internet Movie Database
- "Blandings Castle" (1967) at the BBC Comedy Guide
