The Coming of Bill

Superb physical specimen and independently wealthy Englishman Kirk Winfield lives the bohemian life of an aspiring painter in New York, sparring with his prizefighting friend Steve and daubing at canvases, until his life is upended by a chance encounter with Lora Delane Porter, an autocratic author of books on eugenics and hygiene. She determines at once that he will marry her niece Ruth Bannister, the daughter of a Wall Street business magnate, and that their child will be raised according to her own unsparing principles. When their son Bill arrives, Kirk and Ruth must discover a way to navigate their new life together against the currents of her family’s wealth, his artistic aspirations, and Lora’s meddling. Along with The Little Nugget, written around the same time, this is one of Wodehouse’s few non-comedy novels, written for serial publication at the behest of Munsey’s Magazine editor Bob Davis and published there first as The White Hope. In the United States it was published as Their Mutual Child, and in the United Kingdom with its present title.