Eliza: 'I believe there are but few people who could give you an accurate description of themselves''
By Barry Pain
()
About this ebook
Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children.
He was educated at Sedbergh School and then Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
In 1889, Cornhill Magazine published his short story ‘The Hundred Gates’. This opened the way for Pain to advance his literary career on several fronts. He became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, as well as joining the staff of both the Daily Chronicle and Black and White.
Pain was also a noted and prominent contributor to The Granta and from 1896 to 1928 a regular contributor to the Windsor Magazine.
It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was a master of disturbing prose but was also able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness.
Barry Pain died on 5th May 1928 in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
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Eliza - Barry Pain
Eliza by Barry Pain
Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children.
He was educated at Sedbergh School and then Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he read classics and contributed too and edited Granta.
Four years of service as an Army coach followed before he moved to London. In 1889, Cornhill Magazine published his short story ‘The Hundred Gates’. This opened the way for Pain to advance his literary career on several fronts. He became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, as well as joining the staff of both the Daily Chronicle and Black and White.
In 1897 he succeeded Jerome K Jerome as editor of To-Day but still contributed regularly, until 1928, to the Windsor Magazine.
It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was also a master of disturbing prose but able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness.
Despite applying his talents to several genres and forms today Pain is more readily thought of, especially during the first decade of the 20th Century, as perhaps the leading British humourist of his day.
Barry Pain died on 5th May 1928 in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
ILLUSTRATED BY WALLACE GOLDSMITH
Index of Contents
Eliza's Husband
The Cards
Eliza's Mother
Miss Sakers
The Orchestrome
The Tonic Port
The Gentleman of Title
The Hat
My Fortune
Shakespeare
The Unsolved Problem
The Day Off
The Mushroom
The Pleasant Surprise
The Mopworths
The Pen-wiper
The 9.43
The Conundrums
The Ink
The Public Scandal
The Christian Martyr
The Pagrams
Promotion
Barry Pain – A Concise Bibliography
ELIZA'S HUSBAND
Suppose,
I said to one of the junior clerks at our office the other day, you were asked to describe yourself in a few words, could you do it?
His answer that he could describe me in two was no answer at all. Also the two words were not a description, and were so offensive that I did not continue the conversation.
I believe there are but few people who could give you an accurate description of themselves. Often in the train to and from the city, or while walking in the street, I think over myself—what I have been, what I am, what I might be if, financially speaking, it would run to it. I imagine how I should act under different circumstances—on the receipt of a large legacy, or if for some specially clever action I were taken into partnership, or if a mad bull came down the street. I may say that I make a regular study of myself. I have from time to time recorded on paper some of the more important incidents of our married life, affecting Eliza and myself, and I present them to you, gentle reader, in this little volume. I think they show how with a very limited income—and but for occasional assistance from Eliza's mother I do not know how we should have got along—a man may to a great extent preserve respectability, show taste and judgment, and manage his wife and home.
The more I think about myself, the more—I say it in all modesty—the subject seems to grow. I should call myself many-sided, and in many respects unlike ordinary men. Take, for instance, the question of taste. Some people would hardly think it worth while to mention a little thing like taste; but I do. I am not rich, but what I have I like to have ornamental, though not loud. Only the other day the question of glass-cloths for the kitchen turned up, and though those with the red border were threepence a dozen dearer than the plain, I ordered them without hesitation. Eliza changed them next day, contrary to my wishes, and we had a few words about it, but that is not the point. The real point is that if your taste comes out in a matter of glass-cloths for the kitchen, it will also come out in antimacassars for the drawing-room and higher things.
Again, ordinary men—men that might possibly call themselves my equals—are not careful enough about respectability. Everywhere around me I see betting on horse-races, check trousers on Sunday, the wash hung out in the front garden, whiskey and soda, front steps not properly whitened, and the door-handle not up to the mark. I could point to houses where late hours on Sunday are so much the rule that the lady of the house comes down in her dressing-gown to take in the milk—which, I am sure, Eliza would sooner die than do. There are families—in my own neighbourhood, I am sorry to say—where the chimneys are not swept regularly, beer is fetched in broad daylight, and attendance at a place of worship on Sunday is rather the exception than the rule. Then, again, language is an important point; to my mind nothing marks a respectable man more than the use of genteel language. There may have been occasions when excessive provocation has led me to the use of regrettable expressions, but they have been few. As a rule I avoid not only what is profane, but also anything that is slangy. I fail to understand this habit which the present generation has formed of picking up some meaningless phrase and using it in season and out of season. For some weeks I have been greatly annoyed by the way some of the clerks use the phrase What, ho, she bumps!
If you ask them who bumps, or how, or why, they have no answer but fits of silly laughter. Probably, before these words appear in print that phrase will have been forgotten and another equally ridiculous will have taken its place. It is not sensible; what is worse, it is not to my mind respectable. Do not imagine that I object to humour in conversation. That is a very different thing. I have made humourous remarks myself before now, mostly of rather a cynical and sarcastic kind.
I am fond of my home, and any little addition to its furniture or decorations gives me sincere pleasure. Both in the home and in our manner of life there are many improvements which I am prevented by financial considerations from carrying out. If I were a rich man I would have the drawing-room walls a perfect mass of pictures. If I had money I could spend it judiciously and without absurdity. I should have the address stamped in gold on the note-paper, and use boot-trees,