Winifred Watson / Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day / Has naughtiness ever been so nice?

Frances McDormand, left, as Miss Pettigrew and Amy Adams as Miss LaFosse in the 2008 adaptation. Photograph: Allstar/Focus Features

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: has naughtiness ever been so nice?

This wonderfully warm classic is full of delicious innuendo and risqué fun – all thought up by Winifred Watson while she did the dishes

Sam Jordison
10 September 2019

Here’s something you may not expect to read in a bestselling book from 1938 about a virginal governess:

“But he’s a grand lover,” said Miss LaFosse wistfully.

“No doubt,” said Miss Pettigrew. “All practice makes perfect.”

“He reaches marvellous heights,” pursued Miss LaFosse pleadingly.

“What interests me,” said Miss Pettigrew,” is the staying power.”

“Oh!” said Miss LaFosse.

Oh, indeed. This innuendo is made all the more delicious because the lovely Miss Pettigrew is almost certainly unaware of what’s being implied. Perhaps her original readers were equally oblivious, although I’m hoping that they laughed as much as me at this passage. Winifred Watson had done a commendable job of priming them for naughtiness by this point in the book. As Miss Pettigrew’s unexpectedly enjoyable day develops, and she finds herself swept up into Miss LaFosse’s louche world, she encounters all kinds of taboos. There have been jokes about cocaine and Miss LaFosse’s three lovers. There have been impressive amounts of daytime drinking, wailing saxophones and nightclubs. There has, in other words, been a lot of fun.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is charming, but it is also racist

Difficult questions … Amy Adams (left) and Frances McDormand in the 2008 film of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

READING GROUP

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is charming, but it is also racist

Winifred Watson’s daffy characters are inclined to cheerful antisemitism, at a time when Nazism was taking over Europe. Can we still enjoy it?

Sam Jordison

17 September 2019

In last week’s article on Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, I started with a silly but sweet bit of innuendo. It seemed a good way to introduce a book that is, for most of its 233 pages, a light, frothy delight and widely loved as a feelgood read, so much so that it was chosen as our “fun” book for September.

I understand readers’ affection; for the most part, I share it. But there’s no getting around the feel-bad aspects of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, specifically – as a few of you have pointed out – some distinctly racist passages.

Obituaries / Winifred Dawson

 'How beautiful you were, and near, and young,' Larkin wrote of Winifred Dawson

Winifred Dawson obituary

Ann Thwaite
Thu 28 Aug 2014 15.34 BST

First published on Thu 28 Aug 2014 15.34 BST

Winifred Dawson, who has died unexpectedly aged 85, after a stroke, was much loved and will always be remembered for one early relationship. As a young woman in Belfast in the 1950s, Winifred inspired five of Philip Larkin's poems – more than did any of the other women in his life. The "sweet girl-graduate" (in Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album) was also the subject of Latest Face and of Maiden Name (with "its five light sounds"), of He Hears That His Beloved Has Become Engaged and, written on the day of her wedding, Long Roots Moor Summer to Our Side of Earth.

Winifred Watson / Nigthclubs, coctails and casual sex

Winifred Watson

NIGHTCLUBS, COCTAILS 

AND CASUAL SEX

Novelist who, like her heroines, had a second chance

Henrietta Twycross-Martin
Wed 14 Aug 2002 17.35 BST

Winifred Watson, who has died at the age of 95, wrote six well-reviewed novels in the 1930s and early 1940s, and was then forgotten until she came to renewed fame 18 months ago with the republication of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, a comic fantasy about a middle-aged governess unexpectedly encountering - and approving of - the louche London world of nightclubs, cocktails and casual sex.

Forgotten Authors No 45 / Winifred Watson

Winifred Watson

Forgotten Authors

No. 45

Winifred Watson

Christopher Fowler
Sunday 3 January 2010 01:00

When it comes to literary success, timing is everything. Before JK Rowling's boy wizard there had been a virtual industry of magic-schoolboy tales, but Harry Potter was the one that clicked. Winifred Watson's literary career was curtailed by three major events; the depression, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Blitz.

Watson was born in 1906 in Newcastle upon Tyne, and remained there all her life. Due to follow her sisters into higher education, she found the way blocked when her father's shoe shops failed in the Depression of 1929. She wrote her first book, the Northumbrian historical drama Fell Top, in dull days stuck behind a secretarial desk, after her boss suggested bringing in knitting to keep herself amused. Finishing it in six weeks, she stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it until she spotted an advert from Methuen looking for new writers. The novel was critically well-received and became a radio play. Watson was young and pretty, and got local coverage, so the publishers asked her for more. The result was Odd Shoes, produced in a different style that benefited from proper research.

Her third book horrified Methuen. Instead of being serious, it was fun, and she was writing on subjects she knew nothing about. The book was Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, about a frumpy governess who is accidentally sent by her agency to work for a louche actress and nightclub singer running a complicated love life. Watson said: "I didn't know anyone like Miss Pettigrew. I just made it all up. I haven't the faintest idea what governesses really do. I've never been to a nightclub and I certainly didn't know anyone who took cocaine."

The book was an immediate hit, and a Hollywood musical was planned starring Billie Burke, the good witch from The Wizard Of Oz. The bombing of Pearl Harbor put paid to that. "I wish the Japanese had waited six months," she said later.

Watson married and wrote every day, but when the house next door was blown up in the war, her family was forced to move into one room with her parents, making writing impossible.

Persephone Books persevered with the republication of Miss Pettigrew, and the book found its way on to Hollywood desks once more. A rather charming film version starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams finally appeared in 2008, six years after Watson's death.

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