without protection. Everyone claims to admire the New Woman, but then no one knows what to make of us. What do we want? And what does it mean when we’re brought up among such contradictions, when we are encouraged to try for good jobs and independent incomes, then required to give it all up if we ever marry? Or we’re supposed to remain innocent and pure yet can attend university with our brothers and argue about biology and economics, educating ourselves, but for what? For glorious disappointment. And now we have those impossibly idealistic Suffragettes, trying to persuade the public that all women, except the Irish, should have the Vote. They make beautiful speeches with their classical allusions, their goddesses and martyrs and glorious hand-embroidered banners—and all the time they’re divided among themselves as to when or whether they should blow up Parliament. Oh, it’s all so confusing—But I know that when I read Mr. James, I feel safe, I feel understood. Working beside him, I feel useful, I even feel a little like I might somehow learn to understand myself.”
After my outburst, Aunt Emily shook her head, and I changed the subject to ask after the new baby cousins I was sorry to have missed at the holidays. My aunt stayed on to share the tea Mr. James had arranged. I gave her sandwiches and a cup of tea, but probably it was not her usual flavour. I am afraid that the sort of biscuits Mr. James usually provided seemed rather small, and his sharp-flavoured cheese crumbled. I can see her familiar, exquisite gesture as she brushed the crumbs off her delicate fingers with her handkerchief, then folded her hands in her lap and looked around, still silent. In the face of all my words, she was too perplexed to speak.
But later that day, when Aunt Emily had gone and Mr. James had returned from his afternoon away, I realised that something had changed. Somehow, my aunt’s unspoken questions had been answered. It was not by anything I had said, I was sure. Perhaps it was Mr. James’ lovely home, Lamb House itself, with its solid evidence of rank and presence and position, that reassured her. Before she left, we took a turn up and down the gravel paths of his walled, formal garden and looked at the neatly labelled beds of perennials, the prize-winning rose-beds, and his awards (earned by his gardener, George!) proudly hung on the wall of the glass house, each medallion engraved to “Mr. H. James, Esquire.” There, in the cool winter afternoon’s light, surrounded by the grey stone and ancient pale-rose brick walls, everything was orderly and snug in Mr. James’ well-tended and protected winter garden.
And so, my aunt left me with a long hug, pressing a specially wrapped package into my hands, insisting that I open it after she had left. It contained several of her large, and justly famous, plump currant scones along with her hastily written note explaining that I was to share the scones with my employer.
5
“The Spoils of Poynton”
1908
The horizon was in fact a band of sea; a small red-roofed town, of great antiquity, perched on its sea-rock, clustered within the picture off to the right; while above one’s head rustled a dense summer shade, that of a trained and arching ash, rising from the middle of the terrace, brushing the parapet with a heavy fringe and covering the place like a vast umbrella. Beneath this umbrella and really under exquisite protection “The Spoils of Poynton” managed more or less symmetrically to grow.
—Henry James
Preface to “The Spoils of Poynton” The New York Edition, volume 10
As it turned out, after the excitement and strain of Aunt Emily’s visit, I was needed to help Mr. James keep on the narrow track, back to the prefaces. As the dark winter days shortened, our work seemed to slow. We were poring over several volumes containing all his short stories, struggling mightily to fit them into a new arrangement. The publisher thought the volumes would be too long with the way Mr. James had so carefully divided them.
Some mornings, I could see that Mr. James was tired, even when we started. From the quantity of new work he had readied for us by hand, apparently the night before, I wondered if he had slept at all. It was on one such morning that he seemed to be having more of a struggle to locate the exact word, and his usual slow pacing before the windows became halting, even agonisingly blocked. Finally, he stood at the mantel, his bent back to me, apparently thoroughly stumped for the word, audibly searching among the many possibilities, ones that sounded the same, ones that had the same rhythm of syllables, ones that meant somewhat the same:
“. . . the air as of a mere disjoined and lass—lassitudinous . . . asinine . . . [long silent pause] . . . acerbated . . . exacerbated . . . exasperated . . . aspiration . . . aspirated . . . [longer silent pause] . . . ulcerated . . .”
Through that struggle, my mind began to wander, since my chosen book that morning had not been good enough for such a long pause. I looked down at my shirtwaist, with its crisp white pleats, and tried to brush away a smudge from the carbon paper.
Mr. James spoke. “Now I’ve got it: disjoined and lacerate-d lump of life . . .” Then he went back to his notes, and we marched endlessly on.
Shortly after one in the afternoon, Mr. James put away his notes. His tone was kindly. “I believe that’s a goodly amount for today, Miss Bosanquet. I wouldn’t want to appropriate your afternoon as well. We’ll begin again tomorrow at this spot.”
I pulled the cover over the typewriting machine and stacked the good copies and carbons.
And then I was free to return to my rooms and try to wash out the smudge, for this was my last clean shirtwaist, and I had no time or money for the laundry.
I had been well trained by Miss Petherbridge to watch every detail of my appearance. I was most particular whenever I went to Mr. James. I had only a small dresser mirror in my dark little room at the back of the house. I could slant the mirror up to fix my hair or slant it down to try to see if my hem was straight or my stockings had gone baggy and wrinkled. I never have wanted for much of a mirror, but I remember that room and that mirror as a particular trial. Getting ready in the morning, I would actually change my shirtwaist several times and turn back and forth before the mirror in that cramped room, trying for the best effect, that desired combination of crisp, tailored efficiency and tender, helpful femininity. In those days, I still had hopes for some possible combining of the two very distinct and combative parts of my nature.
“My nature”—What a strange phrase that is, implying so much of what I was born with, like a wild animal, and yet also with a meaning of what I myself added, what I brought on myself.
“My nature”—I am flooded with all that phrase contains—my family and how they struggled with my wild nature, how my mother tried to make me appear sweeter, smaller than I was, bedecking me in frilly dresses, pulling me close in those old photographs. And my wild behaviour: No one could rein me in, not even when my mother was ill, not even after she had died. I roamed the cliffs and hills of Lyme Regis, met my friends secretly and helped them to write and perform plays.
I was a puzzle to my parents. Only my cousin Queenie really understood. Once when we were all together at our grandfather’s, she told my fortune, using the latest fad, phrenology, to read my character from the bumps on my head. Meanwhile, she helped me do my hair, putting it up for the first time. It was that sad, lost Christmas when my mother was quite ill, and so I had gone to Queenie for help. She was the girl cousin closest to me in age, one year older but much more experienced. She lived in London, and she went to parties all the time.
I can remember the feeling of her brushing and brushing my unruly hair, and then she surprised me by her comments, saying I had an interesting head, and that she could read my character from its shape and its various bumps.
I held very still, and she moved her soft, delicate hands through my hair, gently massaging and
