Mrs. Scholfield - Tom Travers

Tom Travers

Thomas "Tom" Portarlington Travers is the husband of Aunt Dahlia and thus Bertie Wooster's uncle. Travers, known to Bertie as Uncle Tom, made a fortune doing business in the Far East. Although reluctant to part with money—his wife describes him as howling for weeks after paying his income taxes— he provides the funds for her rarely-profitable magazine Milady's Boudoir, which he refers to as "Madame's Nightshirt". Milady's Boudoir is eventually sold to Lemuel Trotter, a newspaper and magazine owner from Liverpool.

Travers also suffers from severe digestion problems, which are only allayed by the cooking of his French chef Anatole.

Tom Travers's biggest hobby is collecting old silver, in which his biggest rival is Sir Watkyn Bassett, the proprietor of Totleigh Towers in Totleigh-in-the-Wold and a retired magistrate, who had once fined Bertie five pounds for stealing a policeman's helmet on Oxford University boat race night.

The rivalry between Travers and Bassett forms a major part of the plot of The Code of the Woosters, in which they are both seeking to purchase a rare eighteenth century cow creamer (a cream jug in the shape of a cow). Aunt Dahlia sends Bertie to inspect the creamer and attempt to lower the price by claiming that it's not a genuine antique, but rather of modern Dutch origin. Bertie contrives to bungle the assignment; Sir Watkyn arrives just as Bertie, attempting to read the hallmark on the base of the creamer in the better light outside the shop, trips over the shopkeeper's cat, and immediately concludes that Bertie is trying to steal the creamer. Bertie is obliged to flee, pursued by a policeman, leaving Sir Watkyn free to buy the creamer.