Awkward Age,’ I believe—and the new procedure seemed an aid to my imagination. I liked it, though there are those who don’t agree. My brother says he can tell exactly where my dictating began.”
I could only nod my understanding, my appreciation of his problems then, his huge project now, but some small voice was niggling away in me, asking: What was I letting myself in for? How many years would I spend doing someone else’s work when all I really wanted was to work on my own writing? Ever since my dearest friend, Ethel, had encouraged me to use my brain, to follow my aspirations, I had dreamed of writing. I did not know what, exactly, but I knew that I would have to earn my own way, and it would be a struggle. But now, should all my time and energy be given to someone else’s writing, even to someone as famous as Mr. James? Yet I wanted to be there, I wanted to learn, to be inspired in his presence. I wanted to be generous, and so I pushed those thoughts away, and with my whole being, I kept nodding, agreeing, ignoring that little, selfish voice.
Mr. James described the arrangements he had undertaken for the comfort of his amanuensis: There was a boarding house called Marigold Cottage quite nearby, with an accommodating landlady, Mrs. Holland, whom he understood to be a good cook and who would provide me with a room and meals. We would work at Lamb House. He had arranged for delivery of a fine, new typewriting machine, a Remington, the best, he had been told, all in order to make my work even easier. He went on in his quite charming way, in spite of my shy, frozen silence in response.
Soon enough I was back outside on the dusty, bright London street, having agreed to everything, even the very low rate of pay he was offering. I knew nothing of payment—I had never yet been paid for any of the work I had done on the indexing, since I was still in training. In fact, I had no idea of whether Mr. James’ arrangements were good or even proper. Should a single young woman go to a man’s rooms, even such an older man, to take dictation to his typewriter (as we stenographers were called in those days)? It was all a new business to me, for I had only worked for a few months with Miss Petherbridge and her “girls,” as she called us.
In 1907, Miss Petherbridge found us girls, or sometimes we found her. We were that new phenomenon: university-educated young women, women who wanted more from life than to wait at home and pull taffy until we married. We were what the newspapers called the “New Woman.” No one quite knew what to make of us.
The infernal typewriting machine was changing everything. At first, the machines were a mere substitute for the local printer down the street or the copyist who worked late nights to ensure that a court brief or financial agreement had the correct number of copies. But as more typewriting machines appeared, the arrangements of work-rooms and offices had to shift, because the stenographers became women willing to work for lower rates than male secretaries and copyists.
Previously, most novelists, including Mr. James, had written quickly in longhand, with the first version the final version. They were accustomed to sending their pages straight to the publisher to have the lines typeset; perhaps even Mr. James was never truly sure what he had written until the galleys came back as proofs to be corrected. Now, with the typewriting machine, all that had changed. Thoughts of personality, handwriting, and female circumstances meant nothing when a man could dictate to the typewriter. We would take down all the man’s words and arrange them into one clean copy ready for his immediate corrections and our retyping.
This was the new method Mr. James was in love with, the machinery he wanted me to be his agent for, yet when he interviewed me, I still had not learnt more than the rudiments of that process or how to use a typewriting machine.
I went to Miss Petherbridge the next morning to report on my interview and to hear from her what the financial arrangements to which I had agreed really meant.
“Oh, dear, Miss Bosanquet, you have let him take advantage of you, if I do say so myself. Even if he is my old friend, I am surprised at him. What did you ask?”
“I didn’t ask anything. In fact, I think I hardly spoke a word; he seemed to do enough talking for the both of us.”
“Well, perhaps I should have prepared you. When Mr. James came to me, asking for a special sort of young woman to be his amanuensis, he even admitted that it was because a woman would be less expensive than a man. This enormous project of his—it’s weeks, months, perhaps years of work! Poor Mr. James was concerned how much it would finally cost, and a woman does require far less, after all, than a man who might have a family to provide for. But my dear, I am glad for you! You must have made a good impression to have him make up his mind so quickly. Well done! Congratulations!”
“But Miss P., there is one difficulty—I’ve only the barest idea of how to use the machine. Can you suggest someone to give me lessons or perhaps a book I could use? Can I learn to typewrite quickly enough? He wants me to come to him in a few weeks.”
“I know what you need,” Miss Petherbridge said in her usual brisk way, and soon enough I was seated in a private office at the end of the hall before the large, shiny, black-and-gold apparatus, and a book, “The Curtis Method to Speed Typewriting,” open to “Lesson One: Familiarise Yourself with the Machine.”
I prided myself on being good with machines. At my home near Lyme Regis, it was my responsibility to keep the bicycles in good working order. I kept my own tools, wrenches, grease can, and oil can in the tool shed, and many times I would go out there when I wanted some quiet, away from my father and his little voice practising his sermons or reading out articles of interest from the weekly paper. In the tool shed, I could take my bicycle apart, spread the pieces all over the floor, and work for hours, happily forgetting all about his demands. Because I was famous for my knowledge of bicycles and other machines, even my most proper friend, Ethel Allen, and her sister often asked me to come down to St. Andrew’s to look at their bicycles. Usually it was some mechanical problem, nothing very complicated, often a loose chain or brake pads to be tightened. I always dropped my own tasks and sped down the hill from Uplyme for any chance to be with Ethel.
I suppose in those days, still in the reign of Queen Victoria, it was unusual for a girl to be interested in machines, but I always had been. They made sense to me, somehow—logically constructed, beautifully put together. Unlike with people, if something went wrong with a machine, using attention and patience, I could figure out the problem and make everything right.
This machine I was facing was formidable but not daunting. I soon learnt that I would have more time to practise, for Mr. James could not arrange for my room and board with Mrs. Holland until October.
“The Curtis Method” seemed very clear and logical. Soon enough, as instructed, without looking at the keys, I was practising away, typewriting, but only the silly nonsense words for those first lessons. I opened the book:
bab cab dab fab gab
bob cob dob fob gob
I thought how strange English letters and words could be. Whatever makes us speak as we do? My mind would wander off, my hands would slip to the wrong keys, and I would have to start again:
cat cot cut dot dat dut
This project was becoming less and less appealing. I did want to work for Mr. James, even for his low rate of pay, but why did the typewriting have to be so boring?
However, I did improve as the days of practise went on. Soon, I was ready to try sentences, paragraphs, even whole pages, but I found that going for speed had its disadvantages. Not looking at the keys but, instead, using the home keys was actually quite difficult. One slip and my typewriting turned into
qw294lit rqw5, e3lig34q53ly,
2ihou5 e3lidqdy, 5 h3 435u4n.
What
