It was a silver cow. But when I say ?cow?, don?t go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence. It was about four inches high and six long. Its back opened on a hinge. Its tail was arched, so that the tip touched the spine thus, I suppose affording a handle for the cream lover to grasp. The sight of it seemed to take me into a different and a dreadful world.

The Code of the Woosters, 1938

The silver cow creamer - that charming evocation of Georgian whimsy - has always enjoyed a special place in the affections of antique silver collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. But to P.G. Wodehouse it appears to have represented all that was batty about Uncle Tom, that shadowy figure over whom looms large the imposing figure of Bertie?s Aunt Dahlia. While Lord Emsworth?s love for his pig, the Empress of Blandings, and Gussie Fink-Nottle?s obsession with newts are both accepted as part of the natural order of things, for Bertie Wooster collecting old silver seems to be beyond the pale:

I don't mind confessing I?m not much of a lad for old silver; and though I?ve never pained him by actually telling him so, I have always felt that Uncle Tom?s fondness for it is evidence of a goofiness which he would do well to watch and check before it spreads.

The Code of the Woosters, 1938

Luckily for us, Uncle Tom?s silver collection - and perhaps most importantly his quest for a genuine cow creamer - provides Wodehouse with endless plots, ploys and sub-ploys, as when Aunt Dahlia, always ready to exploit Uncle Tom?s weakness for old silver in order to get him into a good mood, telephones Bertie to ask him a favour:

? ... all I wanted to tell you was to go to an antique shop in the Brompton Road - it's just past the Oratorv - you can?t miss it and sneer at a cow creamer.?
I did not get her drift. The impression I received was that of an aunt talking through the back of her neck.
?Do what to a what??
?They?ve got an eighteenth-century cow-creamer there that Tom?s going to buy this afternoon.?
The scales fell from my eyes.
?Oh, it?s a silver whatnot, is it??
?Yes. A sort of cream jug. Go there and ask them to show it to you and when they do, register scorn.?
?The idea being what??
?To sap their confidence, of course, chump. To sow doubts and misgivings in their mind and make them clip the price a bit ...?

Aunt Dahlia, obviously a seasoned negotiator, has picked up quite a bit about old silver from Uncle Tom?s activities:

? ... Oh yes, and tell them you think it?s modern Dutch."
?Why??
?I don?t know. Apparently it?s something a cow-creamer ought not to be.?

How true, for to be totally genuine a Georgian cow creamer should bear the maker?s mark of one of a just a handful of London silversmiths, all working in the 1750s and 60s. The most common one found is that of John Schuppe who appears, according to Arthur Grimwade in his London Goldsmiths, to have been a Dutchman working in London. It is clear that the cow creamer enjoyed only a brief vogue of a few years; it is easy to imagine the delighted stir they must have caused when produced at a fashionable tea table but, perhaps understandably, their popularity was brief and none appears to have been produced after about 1770. A hundred years later, however, the Dutch revived the form as tourist knickknacks and, as Aunt Dahlia is quick to point out, for a purist silver collector, that is just what a cow creamer ought not to be.

There are hairy cow creamers, and others, curiously, that appear to be totally hairless. Most have bees quite inexplicably resting on their backs. The cream pours out of the slit that forms the cow?s mouth, often curved upwards in a broad smile and it seems that it was this facial expression more than anything else that drove Wodehouse to rave; one, described in a later Wooster tale, is described as having

a juvenile-delinquent expression in its face, a cow that looked as if it were planning, next time it was milked, to haul off and let the milkmaid have it in the lower ribs

How Right You Are, Jeeves, 1960

In this story, Bertie makes no bones about his horror of the thing:

Why anyone should want such a revolting object has always been a mystery to me, it ranking high up on the list of things I would have been reluctant to be found dead in a ditch with, but apparently they liked that sort of jug in the eighteenth century and. coming down to more modern times, Uncle Tom was all for it ...

- as indeed are many collectors today. In recent years exceptionally fine examples have sold for as much as $26,400 at Christie?s in New York, but for the ghosts of John Schuppe and his friends perhaps Bertie Wooster's diatribes have perhaps been the most astounding.

Christopher Hartop, ‘Secrets of Modern Dutch Revealed,’ Plum Lines: The Magazine of the Wodehouse Society, vol. XV, no. 2, p. 18