Drones Club

Buck's clubhouse at 18 Clifford Street, London, one of the clubs on which The Drones was based.

The Drones Club is a recurring fictional location in the stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. It is a gentlemen's club in London. Many of his Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories feature the club or its members.

The name "Drones" has been used by several real-life clubs and restaurants.

Overview

The Drones Club is in Mayfair, London, located in Dover Street, off Piccadilly. A drone being a male bee that does no work, living off the labour of others, it aptly describes the contemporary Edwardian stereotype of rich, idle young club members. At the same time, though, it should be pointed out that many prominent members had useful occupations. Pongo Twistleton, for example, was reading for the Bar, and other members were mentioned as holding down jobs.

Wodehouse based the Drones Club on a combination of three real London clubs: the Bachelors' Club (existed around the turn of the century), then mostly Buck's Club (established 1919), and a dash of the Bath Club for its swimming pool's ropes and rings. The fictional Drones barman, McGarry, has the same surname as the Buck's first bartender, a Mr McGarry (Buck's barman from 1919 to 1941, credited with creating the Buck's Fizz and Sidecar cocktails). However Evelyn Waugh declared that the Drones did not resemble any real club in 1920s London.[1][2]

A real club has been based at 40 Dover Street since 1893, The Arts Club. Other gentlemen's clubs which have existed on Dover Street, but are now dissolved, include the Bath Club, the Junior Naval and Military Club, and the Scottish Club, as well as two mixed-sex clubs, the Albemarle Club and the Empress Club. None of these were ever considered among London's 'premier' clubs of the kind found on St James' Street and Pall Mall, and so their ambience often had something of the raucous informality of the fictional Drones Club.

About a dozen club members are major or secondary recurring characters in the Wodehouse stories. In addition to Bertie Wooster (Jeeves stories), Pongo Twistleton (Uncle Fred stories), Rupert Psmith (Psmith stories), and Freddie Threepwood (Blandings stories), prominent recurring drones include Bingo Little and Freddie Widgeon, plus Monty Bodkin, Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Tuppy Glossop, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, Archibald Mulliner, and the club millionaire Oofy Prosser.

Events

Stories

Among the Wodehouse works, what was later dubbed the "Drones Club series" is a loose set of separate stories told by various narrators, which are either told at the club, or have some events happening at the club, or a club member for protagonist.

Main canon

The main canon consists of 21 short stories (eight Freddie Widgeon, eight Bingo Little, one Bingo and Widgeon, and four other Drones, including the one introducing Pongo Twistleton and his Uncle Fred), as eventually collected in the omnibus:

The same set of short stories is also available in their original collections:

Freddie Widgeon

Bingo Little

Other

Additional short stories

Can be added the three interlocking Archibald-and-Aurelia short stories about Drones member Archibald Mulliner (the first one starting at the Club), also part of the Mr Mulliner series:

Additional novels

Can be added five novels about the adventures of Drones as main protagonist:

Related stories

Related are all stories about those Drone members already part of another series (Jeeves and Bertie, Uncle Fred and Pongo, Psmith, Blandings's Freddie Threepwood), but more especially:

Relatable stories

Relatable is one story, featuring the Club or Drones as secondary characters:

Of course, many more stories simply include Drones member in some scenes, or being mentioned.

Not included

Not included are all identical stories published under other titles (in magazines or U.S. versions), or "recycled" stories, especially:

Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets

Most of the Drones short stories are also "Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets stories", as Wodehouse divides the club members into "Eggs", "Beans", and "Crumpets". This is allegedly based on the habit they have of addressing each other as "old egg", "old bean", or "my dear old crumpet" ... although, in fact, no character in the stories actually addresses another character by these nicknames.

A few later stories introduce a fourth subset of Drones Club members known as "Piefaces".

Many of the Drones Club stories begin with unnamed members of The Drones Club talking about the latest exploits of Freddie Widgeon, Pongo Twistleton, Bingo Little, or another of their number. The story then transitions into a particularly well-informed Crumpet detailing the specifics of tale to an uninformed Egg or Bean:

"Beau Widgeon?" said the Egg, impressed. "What ho!" A Crumpet shook his head. "You won't catch Freddie joining any Foreign Legion, once he gets on to the fact that it means missing his morning cup of tea. [...]" (in "Noblesse Oblige")
"[...] I allude, of course, to the Bella Mae Jobson affair." The Bean asked what the Bella Mae Jobson affair was, and the Crumpet, expressing surprise that he had not heard of it, said that it was the affair of Bella Mae Jobson. (in "The Editor Regrets")
"He can't do that here," said an Egg, [...] "Hoy!" he went on, addressing the Crumpet, who had entered as he spoke. (in "The Word in Season")

Wodehouse had already used this technique in the stories told by his Mr Mulliner, who refers to his anonymous interlocutors by the name of their drink.

Members

The total number of members is not established. At the Drones Club weekend in Le Touquet, France, were "about 87 members",[6] and not all of them crossed the Channel (such as Pongo Twistleton and Horace Pendlebury-Davenport). Comparatively, only a few Drones have been depicted:

Confirmed Drones members include
Possible Drones members include
Club staff includes
Virtual Drones members include

Real Drones Clubs

Some real "Drones" clubs or restaurants exist or have existed, including:

See also

References, notes and sources

References and notes
  1. ↑ Alexander-Sinclair, Ian (report) (2007). "Bertie Wooster's Mayfair". Norman Murphy's talk at Wodehouse Week 2007 (The PGW Society UK). Archived from the original on 11 August 2007. Norman [Murphy] explained that Dover Street was the street of new clubs in the 1920s and 30s. So here Wodehouse found the ideal site for the fictional Drones Club, originally based on the real Bachelors' Club, but subsequently the source of the Drones was transferred to Buck's Club, founded in 1919 by Herbert Buckmaster in nearby Clifford Street. Buck's had by then replaced the Bachelors' as the young man's club. But the Drones Club's swimming pool, complete with its notorious ropes and rings, was taken from the Bath Club, also in Dover Street, at Number 34, amongst whose founders was one of Wodehouse's many uncles. Tuppy Glossop's mean trick on Bertie of looping back the last ring "causing me to plunge into the swimming b. in the full soup and fish" (i.e., full evening dress) was based on fact – it happened all the time in the Bath Club pool.
  2. ↑ Ring, Tony (October 1999). "Life of P G Wodehouse". Wooster Sauce, the Journal of The PG Wodehouse Society UK (at Wodehouse.ru). Archived from the original on 11 August 2007.
  3. ↑ Hutchinson/London (publisher) (September 1982). "Contents of Tales from the Drones Club (The Drones Omnibus)". CyberSpace Spinner.
  4. ↑ Stone-Tolcher, Charles (29 June 2006). "Re: The Ordeal of Bingo Little". alt.fan.wodehouse Usenet thread. Archived from the original on 21 July 2007. – First-hand information posted by a Wodehouse fan.
  5. 1 2 Reggie (8 July 2007). ""Wodehouse stories: Unpleasantness at Kosy Kot" (sic)". Blandings, a Companion to the Works of P. G. Wodehouse. Archived from the original on July 23, 2007.
  6. ↑ Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, chapter one.
  7. ↑ Psmith confirmed in Leave It to Psmith, chapters IV and VI.
  8. ↑ Stiffham's membership is disputed (Reggie, op. cit.), but his short story "The Luck of the Stiffhams" is part of the omnibus canon (Hutchinson/London, op. cit.).
  9. ↑ Hugo Walderwick confirmed in Leave It to Psmith, chapters IV and V.
  10. ↑ The Renaissance Club, Directory, Restaurants, Drones
  11. ↑ London Online, London Restaurants, Drones
  12. ↑ Drones Club.com Archived September 21, 2007, at the Wayback Machine., official website.
  13. ↑ Kay, Richard (27 June 2007). "Gamble too far for Ben Goldsmith". Daily Mail. Archived from the original on 11 August 2007.
  14. ↑ Drones Fenwick.com Archived August 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine., restaurant website.
  15. ↑ The Drones Club of Belgium, Drones.be
Sources (members and stories)



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