…all talking, all singing, all dancing, all lolcats
The Doclopedia #280
Wascally Wobots: Clankwell
Oh, well, the whole Clankwell thing started in 1921, didn’t it? It was Puggy’s (that’s Alden Pugwell-Flint, dontcha know) Uncle Harold who invented him…or would that be invented it? Rather blurs the bally line when a machine can talk and think…and think damned well, let me tell you…doesn’t it?
Anyway, the gang was halfway through the annual darts tournament at the Pound Club when this wispy haired old chap strolls in with some sort of mechanical man thingy. Why, it caused Biffo Lumley to miss his shot and very nearly put the dart in his bulldog, Jasper. Well, as you might cogitate, we all had to investigate the why and wherefore of all this.
It seems Uncle Harold had created this robotic gentleman’s gentleman and then realized that he was now without that which makes the world go ’round. As a result, he had come by the club hoping that Puggy might either float him a loan or, that not being possibly, buy old Clanky. A fair thought, that last, since Puggy had been without a man since old Franklin left to go head up the staff at Oldenham Manor for old Lord Dwibden.
Bad go for all concerned then when Puggy admitted that he was overextended at the betting parlors due to some beastly poor decisions regarding horses. Well, actually, there was a bally good deal more to it than that, since Puggy’s information about said horses came from…
Ladies and Gentlemen, loathe as I am to interrupt the undoubtedly thrilling adventures of Mr. Eggbertson-Gormly (Eggy to his friends and, like most of his subclass, not a man overburdened with intellect), I feel that I might be able to address the subject at hand with a good deal more succinctness.
My name is Dunsmore and I am, like Mr. Clankwell, a gentleman’s gentleman, although I am of the more standard organic variety. I have known and admired Clankwell for well over 40 years now and can assure you that he is, beyond being a marvel of science, as fine a fellow as one could hope to meet. He is a member in good standing of the Mercury Club and has, in fact, been both President and Treasurer more than once.
As stated above, Clankwell was created by Professor Harold Witterman in 1921. Due to unfortunate financial circumstances, the good professor did indeed sell Clankwell that same year for a sum of four hundred Pounds to one Wicky Wickenbotham.
Over the course of the next seven years, Clankwell was sold, traded, gambled away and loaned to nearly every member of the Pound Club, all of whom he served well and most of whom he kept free or incarceration, marriage or both. He also devoted his great observational skills towards learning as much about the so called “idle rich” as he could. As it turned out, this was far more than most of us at the Mercury Club would have believed possible.
It was in 1928 (after Clankwell had secured a job with young Mr. Spiffington-Woolsley) that he gathered us all together at the club to ask our opinion of a plan he had formulated. Simply put, he would aid us in keeping our employers out of trouble if we all agreed to place any gratuities we might get from our efforts into a fund set up at the club’s bank. Clankwell would then use his nigh limitless calculating powers to invest this fund in enterprises that would provide all of us with a comfortable retirement. To this, we all readily agreed.
Despite some perilous monetary times in the early 1930s, Clankwell managed the money splendidly. By the end of the war, many club members retired to quite comfortable lives of leisure.
Of course, to earn the money we contributed, we had to run a veritable minefield of ill placed bets, spur of the moment romances, poorly thought (if, indeed, thought ever entered the picture) out business schemes, contraventions of the law, drunken revelries, angry relatives and hazard filled voyages abroad. I dare say that without Clankwell’s deep knowledge of them, many of our employers would have not lived to see 40.
Most of us are now long since retired. Of Clankwell himself, I am happy to say that not only did he have himself upgraded several times, but in 1949, he had a Mrs. Clankwell constructed. The two of them retired in 1957 to California, where they now own and operate a small hotel in Carmel.
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