Count Bunker

Count Bunker is a comic satirical novel by the Scottish author and historian J. Storer Clouston (1870–1944), first published in 1906. It is the sequel to Clouston's breakthrough book The Lunatic at Large, and its full title is Count Bunker: Being a Bald Yet Veracious Chronicle Containing Some Further Particulars of Two Gentlemen Whose Previous Careers Were Touched Upon in a Tome Entitled "The Lunatic at Large." The story opens as Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, a German baron, arrives in London with his English wife, a daughter of the distinguished Gelye family, to take up his post as attaché at the German Embassy at the Court of St James's. With the baron's estate comparable to an English county, his descent from one of Europe's oldest noble houses, this marriage connection, and the Derby favorite he has just bought, high society is abuzz for some time. Yet amid the round of calls and dinners the baron misses his old carefree days and seeks out his old friend Count Bunker, notorious as a mischief-maker. Borrowing false titles, the two invade English country houses and generate one misunderstanding and laugh after another amid proposals, duels and banquets: German solemnity collides with English absurd etiquette, and the latter keeps stumbling against the frame of English propriety. The novel lampoons aristocratic vanity and red tape in a light tone without losing its warm portrayal of character, discussing the conflict of identity, tradition and personal freedom within rigid social roles. Its English farce technique, a decade ahead of Wodehouse, makes the book an amusing specimen of Edwardian comic fiction.