Winifred Watson and Miss Pettigrew

Last week I picked up this book by Winifred Watson, “Miss Pettigrew lives for a day”, wanting something light to read on the bus. 

Winifred was from Newcastle and spent all her life there.  She only wrote a few novels, and this one seems to be the only one that is easily available, as it was republished a few years ago and made into a film.

Her father was a businessman but lost money in the Depression, so she wasn’t able to attend University as she had hoped.  She trained as a secretary and during her first jobs, she had little to do.   Her brother in law jokingly dared her to try to write herself, as she had complained that the novel she was then reading was rubbish... So she wrote “Fell Top” a rural melodrama of the kind that was popular in the 1920s and 30s.

Having written it she put it away for some time and only offered it to a publisher when her sister saw an advertisement looking for new material.  Methuen accepted it and it was published in 1935, and they asked to see more of her work.  She was about to get married, but she produced another novel Odd Shoes.

Miss Pettigrew was her third novel and her most popular.  It is a comic fantasy about a middle aged spinster governess who accidentally goes to the flat of a pretty young actress and singer, for a job interview.  When there, she gets involved in the girl’s tangled love life and she herself begin to realise that life can be fun…She drinks, goes to a nightclub and helps the girl decide which of her suitors to marry.   

She finds that in spite of having lived a very narrow life, she is able to cope with a lot of unusual situations and she slips away from her father’s rigid morality.   It is a rather light work, entertaining but not deep.  In fact it is downright improbable, but I think with good acting, it would probably work very well as a frothy feel good kind of film.

I’d like to try and find some of the other works, as I think she certainly had writing talent and I might enjoy her more serious works more.

However she gave up writing during the War.  Her house was bombed and her baby son had a narrow escape from death.  After that, she moved into a house with her mother in law, and found it very difficult to write, when she was “never alone”.  She devoted herself to motherhood and gave up on writing.

Winifred died in Newcastle in 2002.  She was very pleased that her favourite novel had been re printed and had had a belated success.