Alaric, Duke of Dunstable
Ill-tempered, irascible, and in the opinion of many quite insane, Dunstable is an elderly peer, who in his youth had something of a dalliance with Lady Constance (they "whispered together in dim conservatories"), which came to nothing as the Duke was shipped abroad in his youth, having made England too hot for him. By the time we first hear of him, in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, Wiltshire-dwelling Dunstable is somewhat overweight, bald of head and wears a moustache like a walrus; Lord Emsworth has disliked him, in a dreamy sort of way, for 47 years.
He is nevertheless a fairly frequent visitor to the Castle, having apparently been there the previous summer, and has no qualms about demanding special accommodation (he is put in the luxurious Garden Suite). He is working on a history of his family, and employs as his secretary Emsworth's former employee Rupert Baxter, whom he treats with little respect, suspecting him of going on "toots", and directs his ill-temper towards whoever it may be who whistles "The Bonny Banks o' Loch Lomond" outside his windows (on one occasion this is Baxter, who receives a well-aimed egg in the face). His sanity is questioned even by his old friend Connie, who calls in Sir Roderick Glossop to inspect him. He later has the Empress kidnapped and hidden in his bathroom.
In Service With a Smile, he once again comes up against Uncle Fred, and once again schemes to take Emsworth's pig away from him, hiring Lavender Briggs to do the dirty work and hoping to make a tidy profit by selling her to Lord Tilbury, whom he knows from younger days as "Stinker" Pyke. He is bizarrely befriended by George Threepwood, who is fascinated by the Duke's moustache, but despite George's help is once more scuppered by Uncle Fred.
He also appears in A Pelican at Blandings, returning to Blandings after sn electrical fire left his house smelling of smoke. He tries to make money out of Wilbur Trout, by buying a painting he knows Wilbur wants, and is persuaded by Connie to propose to Vanessa Polk in writing, a move which puts him into the hands of the incomparable Gally. We learn that in his youth he was soundly blackballed by the members of the Pelican Club, and that he broke off his engagement to Connie when the marriage settlement failed to live up to his expectations.
Read more about this topic: List Of Minor Blandings Characters
Famous quotes containing the words duke and/or dunstable:
“The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)