“Have you got everything you need?” she asked me. “I do,” I said, “I have my man.” Michael, who often missed parts of conversation, asked, “What’s he got?” I repeated Emma’s question and my answer. “Ah,” Michael said. I don’t think he understood that I was leading up to something.
I started out in as disarming a fashion as possible: “I’m going to tell you what I think of Jill’s book [Daughters of Dissent].” I told him how impressed I was with the writing. Although the book was not complete, Jill had done a good deal of revising as she went along. I then began to discuss autobiographical aspects of the book, passages that dealt with wives of politicians and women with homes and careers. I read Michael a passage where Jill expressed her regret that biographers had so little to say about their subjects’ private lives: “Consequently, we are left with the impression that the Fawcetts were rare specimens who knew nothing of personal tests and fluctuating emotions. Clearly, much more was happening beneath this artificial surface.”“Jill is raising the issue of what biography is,” I said to Michael. “Yes,” he answered. Listening to the tape recording of his response now, I seem to detect the faintest note of resignation in his voice. “You bet she is,” Michael said. I commented on the reticence of Victorian biography, in particular the trouble Froude encountered when he attempted to be candid.2 Michael broke in with “Yah, yah. Yes. He made Jane Welsh, in effect, right, I suppose.”
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