The Lone Hand: 'He was popular, as most extravagant men with a sense of humour are''

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.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Horse's Mouth
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839679391

Book preview

The Lone Hand by Darry 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.

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.

Index of Contents

Part I

Chapter I. Stranded

Chapter II. Mr. Nathan Gould

Chapter III. The Man of Means

Part II

Chapter IV. The Spirits of Hanford Gardens

Chapter V. Unrewarded

Part III

Chapter VI. A Queer Commission

Chapter VII. The Pegasus Car

Chapter VIII. A Loss and a Gain

Postscript

Barry Pain – A Concise Bibliography

Chapter I

Stranded

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 begins: 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 gentlefolks, 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.

He was popular, as most extravagant men with a sense of humour are, but his sense of humour had a blind point. He could never see that any of his wild-cat business was utterly ridiculous, or understand why sometimes in the middle of our deepest distress I could not help laughing at him. Yet he did not take his literary work seriously at all, and it used to be my chief amusement to get him to read out his own stories, with his own parenthetical comments. His popularity certainly served him at some of the times of crisis, and made his creditors lenient with him. During his last illness several people to whom he owed money, and had owed money for a long time, sent him presents. I thought it was rather touching. We were living then at a village called Castel-on-Weld, and we lived there simply and solely because my father happened to come upon the name in an old Bradshaw, and thought that it would be nice and hereditary to be Bernard Castel, Esq., of Castel-on-Weld. I am not aware that any of his ancestors had ever lived within a hundred miles of the place.

On the day after the funeral I got the only letter I ever received from my grandfather. It did not pretend to any grief over the dead, and it informed me, in a courteously acidulated way, that he did not wish to see me and that I had nothing to expect from him. But it enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, to cover present expenses and until I was able to get work

Now, I think a really fine and high-spirited girl out of a penny book would have torn that cheque in half and sent it back to him with a few dignified words. But I did not see why my butcher and baker and candlestick-maker should be called upon to finance my exhibition of a proud and imperious nature. That was what it would have come to, for we owed money to the butcher and the baker, and I do not doubt we should have owed it to the candlestick-maker as well but for the fact that there was no candlestick-maker in the village. So I wrote: Dear Grandpapa,—Thanks very much for the two hundred pounds, which will be most useful, but you don't seem to know how to write a letter to a girl who has just lost her father. I sha'n't bother you.—Your affectionate granddaughter, Wllhelmina.

Then the parson and the doctor came round, and they were two good men. The doctor said that medical etiquette did not permit him to make any charge to an orphan girl, and that if he took my money he would be hounded out of