work went on in fits and starts to the bottom of the page—my page, for his page seemed to be bottomless.
As he passed behind my chair, he continued, “. . . and I remember well the particular chill Comma, at last Comma, of the sense of my having launched it in a great grey void from which no echo or message whatever would come back Full Stop.”
He paused, as he seemed to notice that it was time for a new sheet of paper.
“Let’s halt here,” he said, “and see how it’s going. By the way, at least for some months, you and I will be working on prefaces for a New York edition of my collected works in more than twenty volumes. Since the publisher is in the United States, we’ll use American double inverted commas—what the Americans call ‘quotation marks’—as a small concession, but wouldn’t you agree that we should honour accepted British spelling and use a space before semicolons and colons?”
I was very glad to have that breather with his directions and his nod to our British style, for I was feeling terribly out of sorts, perspiring, even shaking from the strain of working his new machine and from the hugeness of Mr. James’ presence. I hurriedly rolled out the sheet, glad to be done with that page at least. But in looking over the typed sheet, I was horrified to find so many misspelt words, over-struck letters, uneven and faint letters, and smudges.
Mr. James took the sheet from my hand and made an unconscious grimace at the messy page. I looked away and bent to the machine, struggling to put a fresh sheet in place.
“It feels good,” he said, “to be dictating again this way after so long. I lost my last amanuensis, Miss Weld—perhaps you know her—when she decided to marry. And then I went travelling for many months without being settled enough to dictate. It is a great relief to me now to hear the tap-tap of the typewriting machine, Miss Bosanquet. I have become accustomed to this method. In the old days when I would be writing a serial like ‘The Tragic Muse,’ I would write out my text in longhand with my favourite dip-pen and inkwell and send out a section of it as it was written, off on the first boat to the New York publishers, and they would have it typeset and send the galleys back by return boat.
“And so, it might be a month or more before I would see my work again. Of course, I could correct only the most glaring errors that way, and of course by then I was hard at work on the next instalment. Think of it, weeks between—really, it is most remarkable that these old pieces fit together at all. Now, it is all so pleasant—I write out my notes, dictate from them in the morning, and then I have the typewritten pages even with a copy so that I can correct and amplify the pages that night, almost before the ink has dried. Well, of course, the typewritten word doesn’t have quite that glorious damp and fresh-ink smell of my old pages, but really it is a most remarkable system.”
He had been pacing back and forth across the room while he was talking and apparently keeping a close eye on my progress with reloading the machine, for as soon as I was done, he said, “Ready then, Miss Bosanquet? Onward:
“Capital I It seemed clear that I needed big cases Dash—small ones would practically give my central idea away Semicolon ; and I make out now my still labouring under the il-lu-sion that the case of the sacrifice for art Underline can . . .”
I was stumped again. How was I to underline? Oh, yes, the upper-case dash—but now, where—Oh! Had he stopped when the machine stopped? I hoped so.
“. . . can ever be Comma, with truth Comma, with taste Comma, with discretion involved Comma, apparently and show-i-ly Quotation “big Full Stop, End Quotation.””
It all went smoothly for several more pages, even past Mr. James’ spelling out in a low aside, “‘The Newcomes’—one word,” as if I had never heard of Thackeray or the other characters and titles Mr. James used so often as examples. It made me wonder what impossible sorts of secretaries he had been accustomed to. And yet I was glad that I had done my homework, had spent the month waiting for that job by reading over his novels, especially “The Tragic Muse,” so that the names of his characters, of the reluctant artist, Nick Dormer, and the aspiring actress, Miriam Rooth, and their strange friend, Gabriel Nash, would land safely from my fingers, even if Mr. James had not carefully spelt out their names.
I was surprised, after the first panic had subsided, that I was able to do this, to take his dictated words and, yes, too slowly, and, yes, with too many errors, place them on the typewritten page. I was surprised, too, that I could understand him, could follow his argument as he dictated, and see what he was trying to communicate. Oh, not at first, when I could not even find the right keys, but soon enough I could listen and think and typewrite simultaneously. I was thrilled to be there, to hear his words and thoughts before anyone else, to be their engraver, their recorder, even sometimes their midwife.
It is true that at times Mr. James would stop dictating suddenly and, instead, pace the room, struggling to improve a word or phrase. That first day, I was extremely uncomfortable with his long, weighty pauses, since I had no way to tell if this was one of the times when he would prefer me to be engaged otherwise, rather than panting like an eager retriever at the hunt, waiting for Mr. James to throw his words out again. I had brought the Bourget to the table, so I leafed through the pages and tried not to look up at the tense figure across the room. Happily, these pauses were brief because he had prepared most of his text for that first day.
Later that week, when I was retyping those first smudged and much corrected pages, I remembered how at times his words or phrases surprised me. Sometimes, my disquiet was caused by his phrases, such as calling “The Tragic Muse,” the unpopular book before us, his “maimed or slighted, the disfigured or defeated, the unlucky or unlikely child.” Suddenly my mind flew away to home and my poor little brother, Louis.
Or when he proclaimed that the book’s best points to him were things I had barely noticed in my reading—its “preserved tone.” Mr. James was most happy not with the novel’s pacing, its balanced treatment of the interesting artists and the Paris theatre scene but, rather, that he had succeeded in hiding what he saw as a flaw in the book’s composition. He thought he had gone on too long in the first parts, where he set the stage, the scene, and supporting characters so that the last act—the real story—could be enacted. He went on at great length to explain that what he had really cared about was his theme. After all, nothing should be more important to Miriam or Nick or any aspiring artist than to be free to create art.
I was surprised at the vehemence of his language when describing his characters’ sacrifice for art: “Capital T There need never Comma, at the worst Comma, be any difficulty about the things advantageously chuckable for art Semicolon;”
He went on, and then he startled me: “Nothing can well figure as less Quotation “big Comma, End Quotation,” in an honest thesis Comma, than a marked instance of somebody’s willingness to pass mainly for an ass Full Stop.”
I believe that moment was the first time I had ever typed any language remotely like “ass.” I must have looked up, and he did seem a little embarrassed, but he did not stop. Clearly, this book and its theme of what a man must sacrifice for his art had meant something important and, to him, perhaps even disturbing.
I wondered at his assurance. It was easy for him to talk about artists suffering for their art while he was there in his lovely house filled with antiques and oriental rugs, snug in quiet Rye, easily visited by all his famous, wealthy friends. For me, it was different: I wanted my writing, my art, to be out there, to make a noise, so that I could become famous myself. What, then, was I doing with my own life, there with Mr. James?
But in the midst of his words I had no moment to pursue
