by Murray Hedgcock

"Wodehouse enthusiasts are making their pilgrimage to Dulwich College", said a rather well-put article in A Certain Newspaper t'other day - and for once, you could believe what you read in the Press. Because there we were, a grand band of 33 braving the vagaries of the November weather, the uncertainties of today's privatised railways, and the stentorian rebukes of the chairman if we didn't keep up with his Bersaglieri-like trot o'er the hills and dales of Valley Fields.

Norman Murphy faces a fresh problem every time he leads one of his legendary Dulwich walks - that more and more buildings are definitely post-Plum, so that he is reduced to saying: "There USED to be the pond where the swans Edgar and Percy mused on the frailties of human life", or somesuch.

But no matter: there is always Acacia Grove, where the houses still endure, sphinxes guarding their doors, enshrined in the Valley Fields stories as Mulberry Grove's Peacehaven and The Nook and Castlewood.

It's hard to know what the locals think of these periodic groups of usually damp but absorbed wanderers, paying less attention to the traffic than they should, clustering wide-eyed outside innocent front gardens to stare like those privileged to see a leprechaun or a unicorn or a victorious England Ashes captain.

No matter: we wended our way down the thoroughfare where Lord Hoddesdon ran into the local peasantry (objecting to these City clurks swanking about in top-hats), and crossed the road to the little gate in the fence to the College playing fields, Mike's brief refuge and consolation from the harsh reality of barren digs.

Norman had little more time than to chastise (verbally) the stragglers, and point out the trees between the two main playing fields which had been saved from removal by a virtual school rebellion in 1895, before the rain, which had sportingly kept off for the early stage of our meander, decided to hasten proceedings.

Moving at a trot to satisfy even our demanding leader, we reached the main entrance, your reporter accompanied by one pilgrim who confided that he was getting married on Saturday and this was a sort of alternative stag afternoon. He had been at Dulwich in the Seventies, had not seen it for many years, and felt the pilgrimage to be an appropriate marking of his changinglife. You could only applaud his sense of priorities.

Being early, we were invited to ascend briefly into the hallowed Wodehouse Library exhibition area, where front-runners grouped in the doorway, gazing in rapture at the treasures spread before us and establishing a logjam before pressure bounced the blockers into the room like so many corks shot out of a fizzing bottle.

Archivist Dr Jan Piggott, an old friend to the Society, and the man who with our own Nick Townend had set up the display, welcomed us, advising that in three minutes tea and biscuits would be served in the Lower Hall but suggesting it might be best not to venture down there right now as we ran the risk of running into the stampede of departing scholars.

It seemed good advice, so we took a preliminary ramble round the exhibition, whose delights Jan helpfully outlined - books, books, yet more books, first editions, inscribed editions, dedicated editions, dustjackets to stun the collector, magazines, bound volumes of The Captain and its ilk, letters, manuscripts, copies of The Alleynian, photographs, caps. Name it, and it was there.

Thirty-three pilgrims, we speedily discovered, were simply too many: the ideal size of a party here would be about five - but no one could be so churlish as to deny fellow enthusiasts entry to Aladdin's Cave. So we edged forward, and stood back, and shuffled sideways, and trod on one another's toes, and met old friends and fell into animated debate, or exchanged greetings with unknown Wodehouseans who promptly – as always happens – became new friends.

Then Jan said the word, and we sped downstairs for preliminary refreshment. More meetings and greetings, more chat, more basking in that most amiable of atmospheres - the Wodehousean world - and then we were called to order for the march out into the drizzle to the Old Library, that intriguing building which stands sentinel over the main gates. Here we sat back and listened to Jan Piggott offer us a lecture (more another chat, really), on "Wodehouse, Dulwich and the School Stories".

He reminded us how Plum had genuinely loved his time at Dulwich, which became almost his substitute family as his own background mostly involved being shunted from aunt to aunt rather than living full-time with father and mother and brothers ("his Mater become his Alma Mater" - or was it the other way round?).

The style of Victorian Dulwich was evoked, not least the mighty A.H. Gilkes, the greatest head in College history – all six feet six inches of him, complete with flowing beard, and a tendency to be irritated by Plum's erratic behaviour, but still pronouncing him "a very useful boy in the school ... one is obliged to like him in spite of his vagaries". Jan hit a serious note in pointing out that Plum may have greatly enjoyed Dulwich – but he was not totally in favour of Gilkes, on the grounds that he tended to vacillate and switch too easily from disciplinarian to benevolent compromiser. Snatches from the school stories and anecdotes of Plum's time at the college were set into the narrative – and if much of it was familiar territory, then it gained extra authority and resonance by being delivered by a genuine real-life Dulwich (or Wrykyn) master. What we had perhaps not so far appreciated were Jan's talents as an impressionist. His rendering of the timid ramblings of Mr Outwood welcoming resentful Mike at despised Sedleigh with a long discourse on the Cluniac Priory near Mike's home, which he felt would be much to the new boy's benefit, was - well, masterly.

Jan's versatility in this field was underlined by his switch to the character of Miss Florence Beezley, an intimidating blue-stocking sadistically browbeating the innocent MacArthur (known as The Babe) on his knowledge, or lack of same, of the poet Browning. A switch into Teutonic dialect for the much put-upon German master Herr Steingruber perhaps echoed the Goons in their heyday – while, as Jan admitted, his impression of the plaintive Ram from Calcutta demanding better food from a dumbstruck housemaster, tended to stray into Welsh overtones rather than stay with the Sub-Continent. No matter: we lapped it up.

Straw hats on the piano at Jan's side suggested we might expect a song-and-dance act, but it was more serious stuff. The song, "Hybrias the Cretan", translated from the Greek, was sung by Plum at the school concert, and today by Mark Aldham accompanied by Thomas Hewitt-Jones, with brio and rare musicianship.

It was a pointer to the quality of Dulwich music to learn that pianist Thomas Hewitt-Jones had been awarded an organ scholarship to Caius College, Cambridge, and had been elected at 17 an unusually young Associate of the Royal College of Organists. Light baritone Mark Aldham, now in fact enjoying a gap year, had held a Choral Scholarship and was formerly Head Chorister.

We threatened the (elegant) plaster with our applause, both for lecturer and musicians, and then faced the drizzle again for official time in the Exhibition, when we were all too often tempted into serious debate on Wodehousean matters, rather than making a purposeful study of what was so lavishly on offer. Many vowed to return as individuals and try again, taking our time to tour, to study, and to imbibe.

Finally it was down to the Masters' Old Common Room, or Masters' Library - a stunning high-ceilinged apartment covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a gallery around three sides of the room also book-packed, and vast picture-windows looking out on serene Dulwich (the suburb rather than the College).

Browsing and sluicing of most agreeable standard, more meetings, more introductions, more reminiscences, more chat - and then watches began to be studied with increasing intent and little groups to break away towards the lesser pilgrimage target of West Dulwich Station.

One distinguished group found all exit doors locked and had to turn to a porter to be released. As one remarked - "We know there may be teacher shortages, but it's a bit rough to be locked up and no doubt press-ganged as recruits for the staff". In truth, we all felt it would be rather splendid to be a Dulwich master, provided of course you were charged with studying Wodehouse - and required to lecture on him. What pilgrim could ask for more?