Eddies: Mainwethering III

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

We meet Mainwethering of the Time Patrol London office in 1894, the year before the publication of HG Wells' The Time Machine.

So far, I have discussed Mainwethering's work and place of work but not the man himself. He is large and pompous with bushy side whiskers, a monocle, an air of strength and an almost unintelligible Oxford accent. I have reread this story many times but have consistently forgotten the monocle which, of course, would be constantly before us in any dramatization of the story. He quotes Latin and was shocked to visit the unBritish twenty first century.

He would like to hire a private inquiry agent to help with the work but the only worthwhile one might be canny enough to deduce the fact of time travel. There is a pretense that Everard, who after all has read the reference to the singular contents of an ancient British barrow, does not know which inquiry agent Mainwethering is referring to:

"'I'll bet he's the same man who's working on the Addleton case...'" (p. 22)

Mainwethering is something of an American author's stereotypical British character, like a similar figure in "Delenda Est":

"A nineteenth-century Britisher, competent but with elements of Colonel Blimp...
"'And here the Romans stood -'
"'I say...I thought I'd have the privilege.'
"'But dash it all -'" (p. 222)