The Coming of Bill

Last updated

The Coming of Bill
TheComingOfBill.jpg
First edition (UK)
Author P. G. Wodehouse
LanguageEnglish
PublisherUS: Boni & Liveright
UK: Herbert Jenkins Ltd
Publication date
US: 5 August 1919
UK: 1 July 1920
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint

The Coming of Bill is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse. It was published as Their Mutual Child in the United States on 5 August 1919 by Boni & Liveright, New York, and as The Coming of Bill in the United Kingdom on 1 July 1920 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, London. The story first appeared in Munsey's Magazine (US) in May 1914 under the title The White Hope. [1]

Contents

The novel tells the story of Kirk Winfield, his wife Ruth, and their young son, Bill. Bill's upbringing is interfered with by Ruth's busybody aunt, Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, who is an author of books intended to uplift the public mind.

Unlike most of Wodehouse's novels, it is not a comic novel. According to publisher Penguin Books, The Coming of Bill "is the nearest Wodehouse ever came to a serious novel, although the influence of the musical comedies he was writing at the time is never far away." [2]

Plot

In New York, Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, domineering writer of books about eugenics and germs, drives too fast and hits George Pennicut, whose leg is injured. George is a man-of-all-work employed by Kirk Winfield, an amiable though unsuccessful artist who lives on modest private means. Kirk carries George into his apartment and calls in a doctor. George will recover completely after a couple of days. Mrs. Porter notices that Kirk is healthy and physically fit, and decides he should marry her niece Ruth Bannister, daughter of wealthy financier John Bannister. Ruth believes in her aunt's views on eugenics, in contrast to her brother Bailey Bannister, John Bannister's son and junior partner, who thinks Mrs. Porter is a bad influence on Ruth. Mrs. Porter introduces Ruth to Kirk, and they fall in love. Percy Shanklyn, an unemployed actor who borrows money from Kirk, does not want him to marry Ruth, so he tells Bailey about Kirk and Ruth. Bailey suspects Mrs. Porter's interference. He objects to Mrs. Porter and Ruth that Kirk is a nobody and an outsider. He also confronts Kirk, but inadvertently reveals to him that Ruth returns his feelings. Kirk's friend Steve Dingle, self-described roughneck and retired boxer who is employed as physical instructor for the Bannisters, advises him to elope with Ruth to avoid trouble with her controlling father. Mr. Bannister rejects Ruth after she marries Kirk.

Some months later, Kirk is happily married to Ruth, though she forbids him from employing models. She decides to pose for Kirk once but faints, and it is revealed that she is pregnant. Time passes, and Kirk and Ruth have a son, "Bill", William Bannister Winfield. Steve, Bill's godfather, wants the baby to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world and encourages this by calling him the "White Hope". Steve is also in love with his old friend Mamie, Bill's nurse. Mrs. Porter feels that Bill must not be exposed to germs and his nursery should be sterilized, though Ruth dismisses this. When Bill is three years old, Kirk's private income drops when a stock he invested in fails. Bailey's fiancée Sybil Wilbur, a friend of Ruth's, wants Kirk to paint her portrait. Kirk has lost his skill due to not working and the portrait turns out badly. Bailey accuses Kirk of being an idle waster. Kirk sees the truth in this and joins his friend Hank Jardine mining gold in Columbia.

A year later, Kirk returns to New York, his trip to Columbia a failure. He nearly died of fever in Columbia, and Hank Jardine did die. Kirk is glad to see Ruth again. He is surprised that they are now rich, because John Bannister died and Ruth inherited half his money. Ruth now agrees with Mrs. Porter about germs, since Bill became extremely ill once. Bill lives in a sterilized environment and is not supposed to be hugged, which Kirk finds absurd. Steve visits Mamie in Bill's nursery without permission from Mrs. Porter, but does not manage to confess his feelings for her and she helps him escape when Mrs. Porter comes with a doctor to show her the sanitized nursery. Kirk and Ruth drift apart, since Ruth has been changed by her father's money and has devoted herself to high society life. Kirk notices that Ruth is not really concerned about germs and thinks that she is keeping her distance from Bill because she is bored with him. Kirk hires an old acquaintance, artist Robert Dwight Penway, to teach him painting, and starts selling illustrations.

Bailey still dislikes Kirk but he hates Basil Milbank, a man who once came close to marrying Ruth, and warns Kirk that Ruth has been associating with Basil. Kirk suggests to Ruth they go with Bill to Kirk's shack in Connecticut, but Ruth refuses. Kirk, upset with Ruth for being distant and allowing Mrs. Porter to interfere, leaves. Steve, hoping to reunite Kirk and Ruth, decides to kidnap Bill. Bill happily goes with him to Connecticut. Steve leaves a note for Mamie. She tells Kirk, and they follow Steve. Meanwhile, Ruth, who has realized Kirk was right, goes to see Bailey. He is very ill due to stress from work. Bailey recovers, but his financial risks have failed and he and Ruth have lost their money. Ruth is glad the money is gone, and has new respect for Bailey, since she sees how much his wife Sybil cares about him. Ruth assures Sybil that Bailey will be successful again. Mrs. Porter, thinking Kirk has run off with Mamie, finds Ruth and brings her to Connecticut. In Connecticut, Mrs. Porter is defeated when Steve says Mamie is his fiancée and Ruth reconciles with Kirk. Kirk looks forward to living a happy, simple life with her and Bill.

Style

Much of Wodehouse's work combines elements of romance and humour or farce, including even the relatively serious stories The Coming of Bill and The Little Nugget . One example in The Coming of Bill of a "typically Wodehousian" farcical remark is a quote which makes light of Mrs. Porter's views on heredity, after she drives too fast and hits George Pennicut with her car (in chapter I.1): "She was incensed with this idiot who had flung himself before her car, not reflecting in her heat that he probably had a pre-natal tendency to this sort of thing inherited from some ancestor who had played "last across" in front of hansom cabs in the streets of London." [3]

Background

In The Coming of Bill, a butler named Keggs is employed by the Bannisters and later by the Winfields. A butler named Keggs appears in several other Wodehouse stories, though it is unclear which of these characters are the same. Other stories with such a character include the 1909 novella The Gem Collector and the 1910 short story “The Good Angel” (collected in The Man Upstairs ). There is a landlord and retired butler named Augustus Keggs in Something Fishy (1957) and Ice in the Bedroom (1961), [4] who was a butler in the 1919 novel A Damsel in Distress . [5]

Wodehouse married his wife Ethel in 1914 and gained a step-daughter, Leonora; when Wodehouse first met Leonora in 1915, they immediately became close, and he formally adopted her later that year. According to writer Sophie Ratcliffe, this meant that "Wodehouse's 1914 satire on the fashion of eugenic family planning (The White Hope) was oddly prescient. Family, for Wodehouse, was forged through love, not genetics. Leonora – or "Snorky" – as she soon became, was far more precious to Wodehouse than any of his biological relations." [6]

Publication history

Wodehouse stated in a letter in 1964 that he got the plot of the story from Munsey's Magazine editor Bob Davis. As Wodehouse wrote in the letter concerning the story: "It was written in 1910 in the days when Bob Davis edited the Munsey pulps and we young authors used to go to him for plots. He would take a turn around the room and come up with a complete plot for a serial, usually horrible but of course saleable to Munsey's! He gave me the plot of this one and I wrote it, but I have never thought highly of it". [1]

The story was first published in May 1914 in one issue of Munsey's Magazine under the title The White Hope, with illustrations by E. M. Ashe. [1] It was one of two Wodehouse stories published in Munsey's Magazine, the other being The Little Nugget, which was published in the magazine in 1913. [7]

Adaptations

A silent film version titled Their Mutual Child was released in 1920.

Related Research Articles

<i>Laughing Gas</i> (novel) 1936 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Laughing Gas is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 25 September 1936 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 19 November 1936 by Doubleday, Doran, New York. Written in first person narrative, the story is set in Hollywood in the early 1930s and is, compared to, say, Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), a light-hearted and exclusively humorous look at the film industry and in particular at child stars. Both Schulberg and Wodehouse describe the methods of all those would-be screenwriters and actors hunting for jobs, but Wodehouse's depiction is not at all serious or critical.

<i>Ring for Jeeves</i> 1953 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Ring for Jeeves is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 22 April 1953 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 15 April 1954 by Simon & Schuster, New York, under the title The Return of Jeeves.

<i>Plum Pie</i> 1966 short story collection by P. G. Wodehouse

Plum Pie is a collection of nine short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 22 September 1966 by Barrie & Jenkins, and in the United States on 1 December 1967 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York. The collection's title is derived from P. G. Wodehouse's nickname, Plum.

<i>Leave It to Psmith</i> 1923 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Leave It to Psmith is a comic novel by English author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 30 November 1923 by Herbert Jenkins, London, England, and in the United States on 14 March 1924 by George H. Doran, New York. It had previously been serialised, in the Saturday Evening Post in the US between 3 February and 24 March 1923, and in the Grand Magazine in the UK between April and December that year; the ending of this magazine version was rewritten for the book form.

<i>Eggs, Beans and Crumpets</i> 1940 short story collection by P. G. Wodehouse

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on April 26, 1940 by Herbert Jenkins, London, then with a slightly different content in the United States on May 10, 1940 by Doubleday, Doran, New York.

<i>The Clicking of Cuthbert</i> 1922 short story collection by P. G. Wodehouse

The Clicking of Cuthbert is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, all with a golfing theme. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 3 February 1922 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd of London. It was later published in the United States by George H. Doran of New York on 28 May 1924 under the title Golf Without Tears. The short stories were originally published in magazines between 1919 and 1922.

<i>Piccadilly Jim</i> 1917 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Piccadilly Jim is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 24 February 1917 by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, and in the United Kingdom in May 1918 by Herbert Jenkins, London. The story had previously appeared in the US in the Saturday Evening Post between 16 September and 11 November 1916.

<i>The Man Upstairs</i> (short story collection) 1914 short story collection by P. G. Wodehouse

The Man Upstairs is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 23 January 1914 by Methuen & Co., London. Most of the stories had previously appeared in magazines, generally Strand Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan or Collier's Weekly in the United States. Although the book was not published in the US, many of the stories were eventually made available to US readers in The Uncollected Wodehouse (1976) and The Swoop! and Other Stories (1979).

<i>Uneasy Money</i> (novel) 1917 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Uneasy Money is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 17 March 1916 by D. Appleton & Company, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 4 October 1917 by Methuen & Co., London. The story had earlier been serialised in the U.S in the Saturday Evening Post from December 1915, and in the UK in the Strand Magazine starting December 1916.

<i>A Damsel in Distress</i> (novel) 1919 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

A Damsel in Distress is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 4 October 1919 by George H. Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 15 October 1919. It had previously been serialised in The Saturday Evening Post, between May and June of that year.

<i>The Small Bachelor</i> 1927 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

The Small Bachelor is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 28 April 1927 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the United States on 17 June 1927 by George H. Doran, New York.

<i>Hot Water</i> (novel) 1932 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Hot Water is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published on August 17, 1932, in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, and on the same date in the United States by Doubleday, Doran, New York.

<i>Doctor Sally</i> 1932 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Doctor Sally is a short novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 7 April 1932 by Methuen & Co., London. In the United States, it was serialised in Collier's Weekly from 4 July to 1 August 1931 under the title The Medicine Girl, and was included under that name in the US collection The Crime Wave at Blandings (1937).

<i>Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit</i> 1954 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1954 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 23 February 1955 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under the title Bertie Wooster Sees It Through. It is the seventh novel featuring Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves.

<i>Something Fishy</i> 1957 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Something Fishy is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 18 January 1957 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 28 January 1957 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under the title The Butler Did It.

<i>Service with a Smile</i> 1961 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Service with a Smile is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 15 October 1961 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on 17 August 1962 by Herbert Jenkins, London. A condensed version of the story had previously been published in two parts in the Toronto Star Weekly, on 26 August and 2 September 1961.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reggie Pepper</span> Fictional character in P. G. Wodehouse stories

Reginald "Reggie" Pepper is a fictional character who appears in seven short stories by English author P. G. Wodehouse. Reggie is a young man-about-town who gets drawn into trouble trying to help his pals. He is considered to be an early prototype for Bertie Wooster, who, along with his valet Jeeves, is one of Wodehouse's most famous creations.

<i>Spring Fever</i> (novel) 1948 novel by P. G. Wodehouse

Spring Fever is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published on 20 May 1948, in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, and on the same date in the United States by Doubleday and Co, New York. Although not featuring any of Wodehouse's regular characters, the cast contains a typical Wodehousian selection of English aristocrats, Stoker family relations, wealthy Americans, household staff and imposters.

Come On, Jeeves is a comedic play co-written by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. The play was written in the summer of 1952, and toured the English provinces in the summer of 1954. Wodehouse adapted the play into the novel Ring for Jeeves, which was first published in April 1953, a year before the play reached production. Come On, Jeeves is still occasionally produced and was presented as recently as December 2017.

<i>Their Mutual Child</i> (film) 1920 film

Their Mutual Child is a lost 1920 American silent comedy-drama film directed by George L. Cox and starring Margarita Fischer, Joseph Bennett and Margaret Campbell. It was based on the 1919 novel of the same name by P. G. Wodehouse.

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 3 McIlvaine (1990), pp. 34–35.
  2. ↑ "The Coming Of Bill". Penguin Books UK. 2019. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  3. ↑ Hall (1974), pp. 11–12.
  4. ↑ "Series Characters". Madame Eulalie. 2019. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  5. ↑ Hall (1974), p. 16.
  6. ↑ Wodehouse, P. G. (2013). Ratcliffe, Sophie (ed.). P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters. London: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   978-0-7864-2288-3.. Stated by editor Sophie Ratcliffe, p. 93.
  7. ↑ McIlvaine (1990), D.41.1–2, p. 153.
Bibliography
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.