Aunt Agatha

Aunt Agatha
Aunt Agatha (Mary Wimbush) and Arthur Prysock (John Cassady) (Jeeves and Wooster - Introduction on Broadway)
First appearance	Introduction on Broadway
Created by	P. G. Wodehouse
Portrayed by	Mary Wimbush
Information
Gender	female

Agatha Gregson, née Wooster, later Lady Worplesdon, is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being best known as Aunt Agatha, Bertie Wooster's least favourite aunt, and a counterpoint to her sister, Bertie's Aunt Dahlia. Fearsome and strong-willed, she is always trying to get Bertie married, though without success, thanks to Jeeves's interference. She is known as "the nephew-crusher". Bertie would avoid her if he could, but far too often finds himself bent to her indomitable will.

The original of Aunt Agatha, "the nephew-crusher", was Wodehouse's aunt Mary Bathurst Deane, his mother's older sister. In a letter dated 14 January 1955, Wodehouse wrote "Aunt Agatha is definitely my Aunt Mary, who was the scourge of my childhood." According to Richard Usborne, a leading Wodehouse scholar, "His Aunt Mary (Deane) harried and harassed him a good deal, and blossomed later into Bertie's Aunt Agatha. Aunt Mary honestly considered that her harrying and harassing of the young Pelham was for his good; and she may have been right."

Agatha had at first been affianced to Percy Craye, though upon reading in the papers of his behaviour at a Covent Garden ball, she had ended the engagement. She then married Spenser Gregson, who is her husband for most of the Wodehouse canon, though he dies in time for her to marry Craye, who had by then become Lord Worplesdon, Earl of Worplesdon, whereupon she becomes Lady Worplesdon. She has one son, Thomas Gregson, (Thos.). She is also the stepmother of Lord Worplesdon's daughter, Florence Craye.

Her pet dog McIntosh, a West Highland white terrier, was the centre of the plot of Episode of the Dog McIntosh and its TV adaptation Tuppy and the Terrier, in which Bertie almost lost it to a Broadway producer.