Wilhelmina in London

by Barry Pain

It is quite possible to love a person whom one does not respect, of whom one even disapproves. I loved my father, but I certainly did not respect him. He did not even respect himself. When he married my mother, much against the wishes of his family, my grandfather bought him an annuity of two hundred a year, and desired to have nothing more to do with him. My mother died when I was quite a little girl, but I have a vivid recollection that she was just about as helpless as my father. In times of financial crisis—and, thanks to my father, these were very frequent—the two would sit staring at one another over the fire, and say that this was the beginning of the end, or exhort each other to hope and courage, but never, by any chance, take any practical way of dealing with the situation. On these gloomy occasions my father generally made a will. I do not think he, at any time, had anything to leave us worth mentioning, but the sonorous phrases and the feeling that he was doing something business-like seemed to give him a melancholy satisfaction. I have the last will that he made before me now. It "I, Bernard Castel, being of sound mind and understanding, and at peace with God and man, do hereby give and bequeath all my real and personal estate, of whatsoever kind, to my only beloved daughter, Wilhelmina." There followed directions as to the ways of disposing of this estate, supposing it should exceed twenty-five thousand pounds at the time of his death, and further directions if it should exceed fifty thousand. At that time we were as usual skating on the very edge of bankruptcy. I remember my father returned in triumph from dealing with the local tradesman who was his principal creditor. "I have done it, Wilhelmina," he said. "And I doubt if any other man in the world could have done it. Another coat of paint and there would have been a collision." I suppose he really loved me. He often told me, especially when a financial crisis was at its worst, that I was all he had in the world. But he never insured his life, and never made any provision for me after his death. After all, I believe that a father and a girl of sixteen, even if they happen to be gentle-folks, can live in the country on two hundred a year, and even put by a few pounds for insurance. The trouble was that my father could not let his income alone. Every quarter-day brought some new scheme, generally of a wildly speculative and gambling character. And before next quarter-day we were terribly hard up. At first my father confided these schemes to me, but I am quite practical, and I hated them, and told him so. Then he kept his schemes to himself, merely observing, in the deepest despondency when the bottom had dropped out of them, "Wilhelmina, I fear that I have made a fool of myself again." He sometimes earned a little money by writing, and I think might have earned more. He wrote stories of the most extreme sentimentality and of the most aggressively moral character; and one of the Sunday magazines used to publish them. He and I have screamed over them many a time. Shortly after one quarter-day he went down to a land auction in Essex and bought a small plot for ten pounds. When I remonstrated, he said feebly that an excellent free luncheon had been provided for all who attended the sale, and that, after all, much money had been made by poultry farming. I asked him if either he or I knew one single fact about poultry, except that they never laid as many eggs as one expected. He admitted it, and in a rare fit of remorse sat down at once and wrote a story about a girl with consumption which brought him in nearly enough to cover the difference between the price he had paid for the land and the price he sold it for a few days later.

93 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 1906

About the author

Born in Cambridge, Barry Eric Odell Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contributor to The Granta. He was known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light, amusing short novel, really more of a series of episodes.

The title character is newly an orphan. Her late father had an annuity of 200 pounds, provided by his father as his last act before otherwise cutting his son off for marrying Wilhelmina's mother. The parents had no ability to manage money; the mother died when Wilhelmina was small, and the father, unfortunately, got his annuity paid quarterly, and would inevitably sink it into some ridiculous scheme or gamble as soon as he got it, losing all or almost all of it, and then he and his daughter would have to live hand-to-mouth on his occasional earnings from writing and a great deal of credit until the cycle repeated.

Wilhelmina is determined to do better. She's a sensible young woman, but as a young woman alone in the world of the very early 20th century, she has limited options. Marriage is one, since she's pretty, but she rejects that as a solution and determines to make her own way somehow, and not in one of the few dead-end occupations open to women at the time.

She does so mostly by fortunately encountering people and situations that she can somehow turn to her financial advantage, though she's principled, honest, and proud and sometimes doesn't take as much advantage as she could have. She does do one thing proactively, though: she invests some of the money she earned by good fortune (combined with honesty, courage and insight, admittedly) into learning to be an auto mechanic or "engineer". Her argument to the proprietor of the car company is that if she demonstrates a car, people will think it's easy to manage if a young woman can do it; this proves to be the case.

It's a thoughtful book with a good deal of insight into the plight of an intelligent young woman with no family backing in the time period. The people and situations she encounters along the way are varied, amusing and well depicted without being absurd, and I enjoyed the journey and will probably read other books by the same author at some point.

[Abhik Gulati · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good.