Gussie Fink-Nottle
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Augustus "Gussie" Fink-Nottle is a fictional character who appears in several of P. G. Wodehouse's novels. A lifelong friend of Bertie Wooster, he is "a teetotal bachelor with a face like a fish", wears horn-rimmed spectacles, and devotes his life to the study of newts.
Gussie met Bertie at Malvern House Preparatory School, where they were schoolmates; growing up, he took up residence in a remote part of Lincolnshire to pursue his beloved newt studies. When, in Right Ho, Jeeves, he first sees Madeline Bassett, he falls immediately in love with her; however, too shy to tell her himself, he convinces Bertie to break the news for him. Madeline misunderstands Bertie, thinking that he loves her and is trying to tell her indirectly, and when, later in the book, she becomes engaged to Gussie, she promises to marry Bertie if ever Gussie leaves her. Consequently, Bertie spends a great deal of time keeping Gussie engaged to Madeline.
A threat to their continued engagement is the constant presence of Roderick Spode, a friend of Madeline's father Sir Watkyn Bassett. Having loved her in silence for years, but convinced of his unsuitability for her, Spode is nevertheless anxious to protect her from heartbreak or wrongdoing by any of her fiancees, and eager to beat any man to a pulp who does not treat her properly. Gussie feels Spode's wrath on several occasions. Gussie never actually marries Madeline, instead eloping with the daughter of an American millionaire, leaving his longtime fiancee to marry Spode.
The scene in Right Ho, Jeeves in which Gussie, thoroughly inebriated due to Jeeves's lacing his orange juice with gin, gives a speech at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School is sometimes cited as among the finest vignettes of English comic literature.
Gussie also appears in The Code of the Woosters, The Mating Season, and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.