The Junior Ganymede Club in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse

A club for gentlemen's personal gentlemen

While Bertie Wooster’s Drones Club is best-identified with P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories - and also links many characters in the Wodehouse canon - it is far from being the only club in the canon. Jeeves himself belongs to a Mayfair establishment, the Junior Ganymede Club, for gentlemen’s personal gentlemen - and it plays a key role in the plot of three novels.

Name

We first hear of the Club half-way through The Code of the Woosters (1938), when Jeeves remarks:

“I was thinking of the Junior Ganymede, sir. It is a club for gentlemen’s personal gentlemen in Curzon Street, to which I have belonged for some years.”

The Club takes its name from Ganymede, a classical Greek hero who served as cup-bearer to Zeus. It is an appropriate name for a club made up of servants, and London clubs were often keen to play up classical allusions, as reflected in internal and external architecture.

Real-life inspiration

It is worth noting that the Junior Ganymede’s real-life inspiration was not a club, but a pub: The Running Footman (now simply The Footman) on Charles Street, off Berkeley Square.

A pub of that name has stood on the site since 1749, though the present building dates to 1935, as part of the wider road clearance and construction work carried out in the early 1930s, which demolished the Eastern front of Lansdowne House (incidentally creating the Lansdowne Club), so as to improve road access to the south-west corner of Berkeley Square.

Wodehouse himself acknowledges the link to a pub, by having Bertie Wooster tell us:

“I had known, of course, that at nights, after serving the frugal meal, Jeeves would put on the old bowler hat and slip round the corner, but I had always supposed his destination to have been the saloon bar of some neighbouring pub. Of clubs in Curzon Street I had had no inkling.”

The old Running Footman building, pictured in the 1920s, as it would have appeared prior to Wodehouse permanently leaving the UK in 1923. (Photo credit: A London Inheritance blog.)

The Junior Ganymede Club in the canon

Aside from passing references, the Junior Ganymede merits three detailed descriptions, in The Code of the Woosters (1938), Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954), and the penultimate Jeeves & Wooster novel, Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971).

The first and last of these appearances used the Club’s famous book as one of the main MacGuffins driving the plot, in each case offering a solution, but also throwing up complications.

The Junior Ganymede Club book, as depicted in 1991, in the television series Jeeves & Wooster.

The Junior Ganymede Club book

The Club’s main value to Wodehouse is a narrative one: we learn relatively little about the Club itself, such as its age or committee - just as we learn relatively little about Jeeves himself, with his first name (Reginald) not even being disclosed until 1971.

It is the Junior Ganymede Club’s book which is of most interest to Wodehouse. It is first described by Jeeves in The Code of the Woosters:

“The personal attendant of a gentleman of Mr. Spode’s prominence would be sure to be a member, and he would, of course, have confided to the secretary a good deal of material concerning him, for insertion in the club book.”

“Eh?”

“Under Rule Eleven, every new member is required to supply the club with full information regarding his employer. This not only provides entertaining reading, but serves as a warning to members who may be contemplating taking service with gentlemen who fall short of the ideal.”

A thought struck me, and I started. Indeed, I started rather violently.

“What happened when you joined ?”

“Sir?”

“Did you tell them all about me ?”

“Oh, yes, sir...The members like to have these things to read on wet afternoons.”

When we see the Junior Ganymede Club book in the 1990-3 television series, it is reverently placed on a bookstand so that members calling it up for consultation may safely browse it over dinner, without damaging the book.

Members are not permitted to hold back from disclosures for the Club book. Jeeves explains in Much Obliged, Jeeves!:

“The rules with reference to the club book are very strict and the penalty for omitting to contribute to it severe. Actual expulsion has sometimes resulted.”

We learn in Much Obliged, Jeeves! that the book is usually kept in the Club Secretary’s office.

In The Code of the Woosters, Jeeves is even able to telephone the Club Secretary and be given fulsome details from the highly confidential information contained within. However, he is scrupulous in not disclosing it beyond other club members, even when his master is filled with curiosity - although he does highlight a loophole:

“Tell me all.”

“I fear I cannot do that, sir. The rules of the club regarding the dissemination of material recorded in the book are very rigid.”

“You mean your lips are sealed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what was the use of telephoning ?”

“It is only the details of the matter which I am precluded from mentioning, sir. I am at perfect liberty to tell you that it would greatly lessen Mr. Spode’s potentiality for evil, if you were to inform him that you know all about Eulalie, sir.”

“Eulalie?”

“Eulalie, sir.”

“That would really put the stopper on him ?”

“Yes, sir.”

I pondered. It didn’t sound much to go on,

“You’re sure you can’t go a bit deeper into the subject ?”

“Quite sure, sir. Were I to do so, it is probable that my resignation would be called for.”

This offers up a commentary on the idea of how a club deals with confidential information: on the one hand, considering it a matter of honour; on the other hand offering considerable leeway for a proverbial nod and a wink to sharing some of that information, in a limited way.

There are also strong prohibitions against the book being tampered with. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Bertie and Jeeves have this exchange:

“You couldn't tear the Wooster material out of that club book, could you, Jeeves?”

“I fear not, sir.”

“It contains matter that can fairly be described as dynamite.”

“Very true, sir.”

“Suppose the contents were bruited about and reached the ears of my Aunt Agatha?”

“You need have no concern on that point, sir. Each member fully understands that perfect discretion is the sine qua non.”

“All the same, I'd feel happier if that page -”

“Those eleven pages, sir.”

“- if those eleven pages were consigned to the flames.”

These prohibitions about tampering with the book do not, however, stop Jeeves altogether. By the time of Much Obliged, Jeeves!, Bertie’s entry has grown to 18 pages, and there follows this exchange between the two:

“The Junior Ganymede Club book is still in existence, That is what tempers my ecstasy with anxiety...I know it is too much to ask you to burn the beastly thing, but couldn’t you at least destroy the eighteen pages in which I figure?”

“I have already done so, sir...”

“Much obliged, Jeeves.”

“Not at all, sir.”

Nevertheless, the mysterious Rule Eleven seems to be surprisingly all-embracing. After an embarassing predicament in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Bertie asks Jeeves:

“And after that, I suppose you will go racing round to the Junior Ganymede to enter this spot of bother of mine in the club book.”

“I fear I have no alternative, sir. Rule Eleven is very strict.”

Jeeves does, however, feel free to share frivolous information from the book which is not deemed particularly sensitive: he indicates that the gossip about G. D'Arcy “Stilton” Cheesewright is no more serious than his saying “Ho!” a lot, and doing Swedish exercises in the nude before breakfast each morning.

Rule Eleven is not limited in scope to the Club Book, but to the management of sensitive information on a servant’s employer more generally. Jeeves cites the case of the valet for Mr. Lemuel Gengulphus Trotter, one Mr. Worple, who had retrieved a sensitive letter by his employer from the wastepaper basket:

“He had recently become a member of the Junior Ganymede, and in accordance with Rule Eleven he forwarded the document to the secretary for inclusion in the club archives.”

This raises the question of how much information on employers is gathered and archived by the members. The scope could be considerable. Are the contents of the archive merely past iterations/editions of the book, or further documentation? The Club seems to have no qualms about providing Jeeves with a photocopy of the sensitive document, despatched by post. And certainly, Harold “Ginger” Winship’s description of Rule Eleven makes it sound like a spy’s directive to gather all information on employers:

“One of the rules there is that members have to record the doings of their employers in the club book.”

Finally, in Much Obliged, Jeeves, the Junior Ganymede Club book plays a central role as the MacGuffin of the plot, once the unscrupulous well-to-do former valet Bingley (also called Brinkley, for reasons too convoluted to go into here) uses his membership of the Club to steal the book for blackmail material. Bingley does not see it that way, though. When accused of pinching the book from the Club, he retorts:

“I wish you wouldn't use that word ‘pinch’, I simply borrowed it because I needed it in my business. They’ll get it back all right.”

Given the flagrant scope for abuse of the setup around the Club Book, it is a minor miracle that this had not happened earlier in the series.

Jeeves saves Bertie Wooster from being run over outside the Junior Ganymede Club, in Paul Cox’s front & back cover illustration for the 1996 Folio Society edition of Much Obliged, Jeeves. The background is an accurate depiction of the north side of Curzon Street (the distinctive Third Church of Christ Scientist is easy to spot on the front cover, and to its left are G. F. Trumper, and Heywood Hill bookshop), suggesting the Club would be on the south side, to the west of the junction with Half-Moon Street. It also reflects the placement of the scene in the 1993 TV adaptation in Jeeves & Wooster (see below).

Wodehouse’s portrayal of the Club

The Club itself is something of a secondary setting - until a brief exposition scene at the start of Much Obliged, Jeeves!, it had gone unseen.

It is in no way supposed to be a second-rate establishment. Bertie Wooster remarks in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit:

“Jeeves belongs to a rather posh club for butlers and valets called the Junior Ganymede, situated somewhere in Curzon Street, and I knew that after his absence from the metropolis he would be all eagerness to buzz round there and hobnob with the boys, picking up the threads and all that sort of thing.”

The Club also appears to be rather selective. It is certainly not a repository for all valets, since the purpose of the Club Book is ostensibly to caution members against going into service for unworthy employers. Moreover, Jeeves seems fairly confident of the character of his fellow members, insisting, in Much Obliged, Jeeves!:

“There are no men of ill will in the Junior Ganymede, sir.”

Given Bingley’s subsequent theft of the Club Book, that assertion is sorely tested.

On first entering the Junior Ganymede in Much Obliged, Jeeves!, Bertie settles into “a well-stuffed chair in the smoking-room”, and downs a whisky-and-soda, while observing:

“An extremely cosy club it proved to be. I didn’t wonder that he liked to spend so much of his leisure there. It lacked the sprightliness of the Drones. I shouldn't think there was much bread and sugar thrown about at lunch time, and you would hardly expect that there would be when you reflected that the membership consisted of elderly butlers and gentlemen’s gentlemen of fairly ripe years, but as regards comfort it couldn’t be faulted.”

In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Bertie asks Jeeves:

“Tell me, Jeeves, what do you do at this Junior Ganymede of yours ?”

“Well, sir, many of the members play a sound game of bridge. The conversation, too, rarely fails to touch a high level of interest. And should one desire more frivolous entertainment, there are the club books.”

Note that by this second appearance, we have gone from there being one club book, to the admission that there is enough material to fill several volumes.

The Club’s value for insightful gossip is clearly not limited to the Club Book, but to the constant insights to which valets are privy; one is reminded of the repeated observations in Yes, Minister that the most informed people in Whitehall are the drivers of ministerial cars.

The Club holds a monthly luncheon, and in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, it is Jeeves’ turn to take the chair, with a speech to members being one of the duties. Bertie Wooster beams that it is, “A well-deserved honour.”

Bertie Wooster seems to regard the Club as rather more Bacchanalian than the other evidence suggests, perhaps seeing it as a parallel to his beloved Drones Club:

“On his return, forsooth! When would that be? Late at night, probably, because the gang at a hot spot like the Junior Ganymede don't break up a party at the end of lunch. I know what happens when these wild butlers let themselves go. They sit around till all hours, drinking deep and singing close harmony and generally whooping it up like a bunch of the boys in the Malemute saloon.”

Jeeves’s supposition that, “The personal attendant of a gentleman of Mr. Spode’s prominence would be sure to be a member,” suggests a reasonably large membership - at least in the high hundreds, and quite possibly in the thousands - so that it is not a club so small that he can immediately reel off the top of his head who is and is not a member.

The age of the Club

The use of the “Junior” prefix in the Club’s name suggests that it is in the tradition of London’s “Junior” clubs: these were created when a club with a particular theme had been hopelessly oversubscribed, with a decades-long waiting list, and so a larger, more ‘popular’ club with similar objectives (and often grander facilities) was created. The first of London’s “Junior” clubs was the Junior United Service Club in 1827; but it was not until the 1860s and 1870s that the name was popularised, with establishments such as the Junior Athenaeum, Junior Carlton Club, and Junior Army & Navy Club. New “Junior” clubs continued to be created until the 1890s, so it can be guessed that the Club most likely dated from the 1860s to the 1890s.

The age of the Club is, however, obfuscated. In Much Obliged, Jeeves!, the title character observes:

“The Junior Ganymede club book is a historic document. It has been in existence more than eighty years.”

In theory, all of Wodehouse’s books were set in the present (giving rise to all manner of anachronisms - not to mention contradiction, as events from books published decades ago were recalled as happening only a few months ago; and to characters who never seemed to age). If the 1971 publication date of Much Obliged, Jeeves! is used as a starting point, then the Club dates to at least 1890. On the other hand, if the ‘present’ is the first mention of the book in The Code of the Woosters (1938), which is clearly set in the inter-war years, then the Club could date to the 1850s, making it London’s second-oldest “Junior” club. Of course, just because the Club Book is over 80 years old, it does not follow that the Club is over 80 years old - it could be that the Club had informal beginnings, as a gathering of valets who compiled books on their employers, and later evolved the society into a club, with club facilities.

The use of the “Junior” prefix does, however, imply that there is a “senior” Ganymede Club which came first, most likely as part of the “club boom” of the 1830s. It would be interesting to speculate what the relationship is between the two clubs, and how cordial or cool relations may be.

Our first onscreen glimpse is this small, darkened, wood-panelled dining room. It is unclear whether the Club’s dining is centred around this particularly intimate setup, or whether it is merely meant to depict a function in a private dining room.

Onscreen appearances

The 1990-3 television series Jeeves & Wooster gives us two episodes which show the Junior Ganymede Club onscreen. The first of these, series 2’s opening ‘Jeeves Saves the Cow Creamer’, is the first half of a two-part adaptation of The Code of the Woosters. Unlike the novel, in which Jeeves merely telephones the Club from Totleigh Towers for information from the book, the TV adaptation has Jeeves motoring into town to personally consult the Club Book. (This incident is borrowed from the later novel Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, in which Bertie lends Jeeves “the two-seater” to drive to the Junior Ganymede for lunch.) Onscreen, we see Jeeves attending a black tie dinner with his fellow members, all of them ‘gentlemen’s personal gentlemen’. It is a solemn, self-satisfied affair, with members being condescending about their masters over cigars and port.

First valet: “Of course, one can’t get proper gentlemen nowadays.”

[Murmurs of agreement.]

Second valet: “They’re not what they were, certainly. The one I’ve got at the moment insists on calling me by my first name!”

[Snorts of derision]

First valet: “Well, one tries to be tactful, of course. But one is simply swimming against the tide. I blame their parents. How’s yours now, Jeeves?”

Jeeves: “Oh, really quite promising. I always suspected I could make something of him, and such is proving to be the case…”

Third valet: “Well, I must say, mine is coming along very nicely, very nicely indeed. You remember I had to be quite severe with him about wearing a soft hat before Goodwood?…[background cackles]…Good as gold now, good as gold...”

Second valet: “I’m really quite concerned about this first-name business.”

Fourth valet: “I think they pick it up from the cinema!”

First valet: “Why don’t you try not answering him, when he calls you?”

Second valet: “Oh, I don’t think I could carry that off. One doesn’t like to hurt their feelings, does one?”

First valet: “No.” [Pensive pause.]

The Junior Ganymede’s second screen appearance comes in the show’s finale at the end of series 4, ‘The Ties That Bind’, a very loose adaptation of Much Obliged, Jeeves! Here, Jeeves sees Bertie Wooster nearly run over by Brinkley’s car just outside the Club, and invites him in for a restorative drink.

Bertie Wooster is nearly run over in front of the Junior Ganymede Club, on the corner of Curzon Street with Half-Moon Street.

The location is confirmed as the junction of Half-Moon Street with Curzon Street - compare the above screenshot of the stretch of street in front of the Club with the above 1996 Folio Society edition book cover portraying the same scene, showing Curzon Street’s same distinctive Third Church of Christ Science building in the background.

The building used to portray the Junior Ganymede Club in the series is 25 Half-Moon Street: “The Junior Ganymede” plaque onscreen conceals the real-life number “25” by the entrance. (Note the choice of location is slightly at odds with Jeeves’s description in The Code of the Woosters, that the Club was “in” Curzon Street, not perpendicular to it.) Like many real-life clubhouses in the vicinity, it is a Listed building, whose Listing is described as:

“Terrace house. Mid C18. Brown brick with channelled stucco ground floor, slate roof. 4 storeys and basement. 3 windows wide. Semi- circular arched doorway to right with architrave case and consoles carrying a cornice over. Revealed sash windows, no glazing bars, under flat gauged red brick arches. Bracketed cornice over 2nd floor, parapet with coping. Cast iron area railings.”

The Junior Ganymede Club building as briefly glimpsed onscreen (left), and the real-life film location used, 25 Half-Moon Street, as seen in 2024 on Google Maps’ street view (right). The building on the right of the picture forms the corner with Curzon Street, and is numbered as part of Curzon Street.

It is a relatively small building - a converted Georgian townhouse, along the lines of Buck’s (which was also one of the real-life inspirations for the Drones). Yet it is quite feasible for a club of the Junior Ganymede’s type.

We also see what is described in the book as the Smoking Room: a beautifully ornate if imposing dark-panelled room with an elaborately moulded plaster ceiling trimmed in gold leaf, and a profusion of antequarian books. I am unclear where this interior scene was filmed, but it was obviously a location shoot (possibly in a Mayfair mansion?); the detailing from floor to ceiling seems too elaborate to have been a studio set constructed for such a brief appearance.

The interior of the Junior Ganymede Club, as seen in the last episode of the TV series Jeeves & Wooster (1993).

In this scene, Bertie Wooster’s comments echo the sentiments from the book, as he is suitably impressed by the premises:

“So, this is your famous Ganymede Club, is it? Jolly nice place!”

“It is good of you to say so, sir.”

“Do you have to be a valet or a butler to get in, is that it?”

“Quite so, sir.”

In both onscreen appearances, the male staff of the Club wear white jackets - dinner jackets over dinner, mess jackets in the Smoking Room. In the latter scene, the Smoking Room attendant spontaneously - and silently - proffers Bertie Wooster with a whisky.

Aside from the slight flexibility of the location just off Curzon Street, rather than on Curzon Street, what little we see of the Junior Ganymede Club onscreen is incredibly well-rendered, with a plausibly realistic interior and exterior, and members and staff presenting exactly as you would expect of them. This is a very faithful rendering of Wodehouse’s vision.

Further reading

• P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters (London: Herbert Jenkin, 1938)

• _______________, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (London: Herbert Jenkin, 1954)

• _______________, Much Obliged, Jeeves (London: Barrie & Jenkin, 1971).

You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.