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 humorist P. G. Wodehouse. It is a gentlemen's club in London. Many of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Blandings Castle stories feature the club or its members.

Various members of the club appear in stories included in the "Drones Club series," which contains stories not already included in other series. Most of the Drones Club stories star either Freddie Widgeon or Bingo Little. The club is initially introduced in Wodehouse's 1920 novel Jill the Reckless and makes its final appearance in 1972's Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin.

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

Overview

The Drones Club is located in Dover Street, off Piccadilly, in London's Mayfair district. A drone being a male bee that does no work, living off the labour of others, it aptly describes the stereotype of rich, idle young club members.

Wodehouse based the Drones Club on a combination of three real London clubs: the Bachelors' Club, Buck's Club, and the Bath Club. The fictional Drones barman, McGarry, shares the surname with the Buck's first bartender, Mr. McGarry, who created the Buck's Fizz and Sidecar cocktails.

Stories

The "Drones Club series" is a loose set of separate stories told by various narrators about members of the Drones Club. Many of the stories are told at the club or have some events happening at the club. The main canon consists of 21 short stories, as eventually collected in the omnibus:

• Tales from the Drones Club (1982), later The Drones Omnibus (1991)

Six novels feature the Drones Club members as main protagonists, including:

• Money for Nothing (1928)
• The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)
• Laughing Gas (1936)
• Barmy in Wonderland (1952)
• Ice in the Bedroom (1961)
• Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972)

Members

The total number of members is not established, but at the Drones Club weekend in Le Touquet, France, there were "about 87 members."

Confirmed Drones members include:

• Samuel Galahad "Sam" Bagshott
• Charles Edward "Biffy" Biffen
• Montague "Monty" Bodkin
• Godfrey "Biscuit" Brent, Lord Biskerton
• "Tubby", Lord Bridgnorth
• Frederick "Freddie" Bullivant
• Hugo Carmody
• Freddie Chalk-Marshall
• G. D'Arcy "Stilton" Cheesewright
• Nelson Cork
• Dudley Finch
• Ronald Overbury "Ronnie" Fish
• George "Boko" Fittleworth
• Cyril "Barmy" Fotheringay-Phipps
• Hildebrand "Tuppy" Glossop
• Richard "Bingo" Little
• Algernon "Algy" Martyn
• Archibald "Archie" Mulliner

• Horace Pendlebury-Davenport
• Judson Phipps
• Tipton Plimsoll
• Claude Cattermole "Catsmeat" Potter-Pirbright
• Alexander "Oofy" Prosser
• Rupert "Psmith" Smith
• William "Bill" Belfry, 9th Earl of Rowcester
• Adolphus "Stiffy" Stiffham
• Reginald "Reggie" Tennyson
• Frederick "Freddie" Threepwood
• Reginald "Pongo" Twistleton
• Hugo Walderwick
• Frederick "Freddie" Widgeon
• Percy Wimbolt
• Harold "Ginger" Winship
• Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
• Algernon "Algy" Wymondham-Wymondham

Real Drones Clubs

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

• The Drones Club, a private club in Point Judith, Rhode Island (USA), was established in the late 1930s.
• A "Drones" restaurant existed in the early 1970s in London at 1 Pont Street off Knightsbridge. This "Drones Club" moved to 12 St. George Street in Mayfair and was purchased in 2004 by businessman Ben Goldsmith and turned into a members-only dining club.

References

This article "Drones Club" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Drones Club. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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