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
