Читать книгу The Constant Listener - Susan Herron Sibbet - Страница 12

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“What Maisie Knew”

November 1907

No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connexion of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt . . .

—Henry James

Preface to “What Maisie Knew” The New York Edition, volume 11

When I began with Mr. James, I was not much of a typist, and I wonder whether that fact altered his method somewhat. With the others, the experienced Miss Weld, the very fast Mr. McAlpine, Mr. James apparently still worked out everything—every plot twist, even his layers and layers of language—in his notes based on jottings of initial inspirations in his note-books before he began dictation. With Miss Weld, Mr. James was working on the later novels; surely he must have prepared voluminous notes in addition to the note-books I had caught sight of when he used them to help him remember certain details of past compositions. The note-books were always stacked about the room when we were working on the prefaces.

I always imagined the note-books to be filled with treasures, helpful techniques, and startling inspirations waiting for some ambitious young writer to find later. Perhaps I hoped it would be myself, for I was such an ambitious young writer. I had been writing for years, had even seen my essays in print in the weekly paper, but only in our little Uplyme, not down in Lyme Regis. I had tried stories and poems, even some plays, which we put on for the local children. I liked the feeling of seeing my words printed out and having my friends tell me how much they enjoyed my writing. Now, I was going to have the chance to learn more, right from Mr. James himself. But of course I certainly would not let Mr. James know anything about my own literary aspirations.

Mr. James always spoke of his past amanuenses with affection and a little condescension. He was humourous and kind, but it was clear to him that they had never had the slightest idea what he was about, nor did he want them to. It was better, he explained, to have this blank wall echoing back his words exactly as he spoke them. He often told the story of the young woman typist who, sitting in for the ailing Miss Weld, apparently was uncomfortable with Mr. James’ long, thoughtful pauses (which could become excruciatingly long when he was struggling to find the right word). She became so concerned for the poor man’s agony that she made the shocking mistake of trying to help by suggesting a word to solve his dilemma.

No, it was a blank object, not a person, whom Mr. James had expected when I first came to be his amanuensis, and so I made the effort to become a null, a nothing.

How does one become a null? I think Miss Weld could do it because she had her whole other life away from Lamb House, away from writing altogether. Years later, after I was comfortably settled in Rye, I often met her friends, who told me of Miss Weld’s charming tea parties, her generosity to St. Michael’s Ladies’ Guild, her wonderful knitted garments distributed to the deserving poor, and the triumph of her happy marriage to the local young worthy who had been fortunate enough to win her over—a solicitor or a medical man, I’ve forgotten. It’s surprising that she and I never met over the years, but perhaps it’s that we were part of two very different circles of friends, even in tiny little Rye’s society.

When I left my old friends behind in Chelsea to go to Rye and Mr. James, I still had my whole life’s work before me to figure out. Perhaps in my inexperience I was something of a null, but I had ambition, I felt pain, I had dreams. I knew I wanted to write, and I believed that working with Mr. James might help me become a writer. I came to listen, pay attention, be involved with his work and, by that labour, take to myself something of his methods and inspiration, which might be helpful to me in my own struggle.

I wonder what he saw in me those first days. When did he first suspect that I was not another sweet, smart, pliable Miss Weld (only taller) but some other order of young woman altogether? Oh, he was so observant. I’m sure he knew from our first interview that I was different—How could he not see? It was not simply my height, for I was always the tallest of any group of girls. No, everything about me was the opposite of the “dear girls” I was expected to resemble, with their sweet faces, dimples, soft and agreeable smiles, tender and delicate voices, quiet manners, graceful movements—Oh, no, I was much more than tall.

I was strong, with good shoulders (from my days of championship matches in tennis and cricket) and good, strong legs (I could bicycle steadily the mile and a half up the hill from Lyme to Uplyme without breathing heavily). Of course, my usual complexion was brown and shiny from some outdoor escapade, my hair would never stay neatly up, and I wore no jewellery or ribbons or powder. I was a plain, solid, practical girl and proud of my strong, boyish ways. I think I would have been glad for him to see all that, but not my ambition. No, that I tried to hide for a long time.

At first, Mr. James went very slowly, word by word, from his elaborately written notes. He usually paced back and forth, never looking my way, especially for those first weeks. But one morning I noticed our relationship undergoing a change as we were working with the novella “What Maisie Knew,” that heartbreaking story of a tender, young girl. I remember that I was uncomfortable with his discomfort. He kept looking at me—what was he thinking, imagining? Now, when I look back over my old copies of the prefaces, re-read the words, I can almost hear his voice.

That day had begun rather badly. When I first arrived, the house was in turmoil. The housekeeper met me at the door, saying, “Mr. James is not ready, he will not be ready for you for quite some time—” and then she was interrupted by a frantic Burgess, the valet, hurrying through the front hall, rushing past me, still in his shirt-sleeves, his thin arms and legs flying, shouting back over his shoulder to an invisible Mr. James, apparently not yet downstairs, “I’ll get him back for you, sir, the little monster,” and then Burgess was past me, out through the still-open front door.

Maximillian, Mr. James’ precious little long-haired dachshund, terribly quick for all his short legs and round belly, had got loose again. Then Mr. James appeared, buttoning his waistcoat, his tie flapping loose. “Miss Bosanquet, I am so sorry, there’s been a terrible tragedy, our little Maximillian has escaped again, and it takes at least two of us to corner him.”

Mrs. Paddington handed him the leash, and he started past me.

“Shall I come too?” I found myself saying to my surprise. “I used to be good at catching my father’s little dog when she got out.”

Mr. James spoke over his shoulder, “Yes, come on, then. You take Church Street, Burgess usually goes up by the Wall, and I’ll take the lower regions,” and off he went breathlessly calling out for Maximillian.

I tried to imagine what a round-bellied, short-legged little dog like Max might be drawn to on a cool, wet morning. I remembered that it was delivery day at the butcher’s down on Queen Street and headed off in that direction. Sure enough, there Max was with the other, bigger town dogs but apparently accepted as one of them in spite of his elevated status in Mr. James’ household. Max was so preoccupied with his ruffian friends that I was able to scoop him up.

In triumph, I brought Max back to a still distraught Mr. James, who apparently had already given up the search as a lost cause yet was waiting hopefully at the open door. He was exceedingly grateful to me, and then he took Max in his arms and simultaneously declared that Max was the worst blackguard, while feeding him blackmailing bits of biscuits from the tin open on the stairs. After a few minutes of this, Mr. James handed the little rascal to Burgess, and we went upstairs to try to do some work.

Once we were settled, the morning had a different feeling to it. Mr. James was dictating from a handful of notes, and now for the first time he glanced down at me while he dictated. Oh, he still paced back and forth, and clearly there was an ending he kept looking towards, but now the meanderings were more noticeable and dominated our proceedings.

I was unsure at times on that morning as to whether Mr. James was “writing” his preface or talking to me about his memories of the ways he used to work and of his methods those many years before.

He was working on that volume with its two novellas, “What Maisie Knew” and “In the Cage,” plus one long short story, “The Pupil.” I was already familiar with “Maisie,” which had puzzled me when it first came out, whereas “In the Cage” had been a favourite of mine since it first appeared. When I look back over that preface for “Maisie,” I hear again his conspiratorial tone reciting those humourous and yet somehow revealing anecdotes. I still thrill to remember how he spoke directly to me, dictating to me as if he and I—we—were in this together with the struggle of the author, as he dictated,

“Capital T That is we feel it when Comma, in such tangled connexions Comma, we happen to care Full Stop. I should n’t really go on as if this were the case with many readers Full Stop.”

No, he went on that way because I was there. I felt it in his pause, his shuffling of pages before he moved on to the next story. Even now, thinking back, it seems as though he is still here with me, something my friends these days probably cannot even imagine.

In the Master’s careful, meticulous prose, I can still hear his striving always to be fair and just and even modest in his self-examinations and yet celebratory about his triumphs over the slightest difficulties of scale or point of view (often self-inflicted). Always, there was the struggle to keep to his “small” subject, to produce the necessary “short” story, a struggle that so often had ended in failure. His stories inevitably became novellas, and the novellas grew to novels, never the other way around.

That day, he was proud of his process, using young Maisie to tell her own story, keeping it all within her own limited, muddling consciousness. He dictated:

“I have already elsewhere noted, I think, that the memory of my own work preserves for me no theme that . . . has n’t signally refused to remain humble Comma,” and then he referred to the very large theme of little Maisie’s story with a charming image drawn from our morning adventure. I remember how impishly he looked at me and then dictated,

“Once Quotation “out Comma, End Quotation,” like a house-dog of a temper above confinement Comma, it defies the mere whistle, it roams, it hunts, it seeks out and Quotation “sees End Quotation” life Semicolon ; it can be brought back but by hand and then only to take its futile thrashing Full Stop.”

We shared a good laugh over that clever bit, both of us in on the joke.

What was remarkable about those days and stories recorded in my diary and letters, why I can remember them even now, fifty years later, is the shift in Mr. James’ manner towards me. We were to become better, closer allies as time went on, but it was that early exchange, working there on those stories about modern young women struggling to make their way in this treacherous world that we became—Oh, “collaborators” is not quite the word. It’s more as if it felt like we were co-conspirators.

We both understood something about Mr. James’ story, his theme, his characters, and their inner worlds, which others did not. And so, I became his constant listener, his faithful companion as he struggled ever deeper into the mire of explanations of his processes, his themes, his ambitions for those ignored works.

I was aware of his understanding, and he was aware of mine from a look or a phrase. We knew that we were somehow united on the same side, even as different as we were, separated by age, by temperament, by nationality. We knew that each of us had watched, felt, suffered, understood. During his dictations, we went about the business of getting others to see what he saw, and to understand.

For, you see, what I sometimes forget now in the world’s acclamation of Henry James—the Master, as his friends referred to him—is that when I came to him in 1907, he was hardly read. Not the previous books, not the new collections. Not by the great public, not even by book reviewers. No, he had become that terrible spectre of the famous Great Man left behind in his immense age and stature with no audience. It was to be several painful months before I would wholly understand his desolation and the bitter taste of ash—all that was left of his great fame and power. In my first enthusiasms, I believed his friends read his books, as I read them, and that seemed enough.

Well, almost enough. At first, I did have some doubts about myself. Did I truly understand his work? But also I began to have my doubts about Mr. James. Did he understand what I needed as an amanuensis? It was true my speed increased with each day, and I slowly brought my nerves under control. My hand no longer shook while Mr. James read over each finished page, and soon enough, he simply paused while I pulled out the typed page and rolled in the fresh paper.

With each new page, I was exhilarated. There were so many wonders. Mr. James poured out ideas that burst on me like fireworks, stories that broke my heart—lost loves, secrets revealed. I happily typed away, silent as Patience sitting on a monument, usually content and waiting for the next surprise.

But not always. No matter what I have said about my thrill at being there, there was still a part of me that was young, proud, well educated, knowing everything, thinking I knew even more than Mr. James. I had studied my rhetoric, I had read the ancients, I knew what good writing sounded like, and I felt sometimes that this old man was off on some extravagant escapade of language or memory. Of course, I would take it all down because, after all, he was paying me to, but there was that proud part of me who knew better, who wanted to correct his excesses.

Sometime during our first weeks, his love of alliteration got to me. Mr. James apparently adored the sound of words, especially how his own words sounded in his own voice with repeating letters, and even with certain letters—L’s were a favourite, and those pesky P’s. I remember one of the first prefaces. It was for “The Awkward Age,” and he was speaking of his first idea, the “germ” of his story. I was quietly tapping away, imagining along with him,

“The seed sprouted in that vast nursery of sharp appeals and concrete images which calls itself, for blest convenience, London Semicolon;”

Some layer of my mind was agreeing with his description, Yes, that’s it, London is filled with possibilities.

“. . . it fell even into the order of the minor Quotation “social phenomena End Quotation” with which, as fruit for the observer, that mightiest of the trees of suggestion bristles Full Stop.”

But now, I was lost. “Nursery” . . . and then “fruit”? And now, a tree with “bristles”? Yet, nevertheless, my fingers tapped correctly in automatic response to his endless voice.

“It was presumably present Comma, a fine purple peach.”

His voice went on, but my mind was growling: Peaches are not purple, Mr. James. There’s too much of the letter P, Mr. James. But of course I kept on going, never saying a word. At least, I was cautious enough for that.

The very next day, Mr. James came back with his corrections inked over the words from the day before. It was as if he had overheard the distaste in my mind for his alliteration, for he had changed that purple phrase, though it took a double negative to get him out of trouble, and he had kept most of the P’s, had even added to them: “It was not, no doubt, a fine purple peach, but it might pass for a round ripe plum . . .”

I felt a surge of pride, my judgement exonerated.