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The Constant Listener. Susan Herron Sibbet
Читать онлайн.Название The Constant Listener
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780804040785
Автор произведения Susan Herron Sibbet
Жанр Контркультура
Издательство Ingram
From the moment I had heard his words being dictated to a typist down the hall all those months before, I had dreamed of sitting there beside Mr. James, helping him to achieve his dream and learning from the experience how to become a successful writer. Perhaps I might someday show him some of my work, but for now I was happy watching him exclaim proudly about every difficulty he had overcome, about how he had met all the challenges he had set for himself, handling such a large canvas combining art and politics in the same novel, steering his complex story through to its conclusion.
He had paused and then gone on. “Capital I I fairly cherish the record as some adventurer in another line may hug the sense of his inveterate habit of just saving in time the neck he ever [sic] undiscourageably risks . . .” There Mr. James was, the adventurer, pacing our small room or even sitting or standing at his desk—I could imagine him in the role, and my ambition increased with each new revelation, each new discovery.
It was inspiring to hear him talk of his two main characters—Nick Dormer, painter and politician, and the beautiful actress, Miriam—who, against all odds, fell in love. Mr. James seemed almost to be channelling his actress’s quandary, with his—or was it her?—impassioned speeches:
“Capital S She is in the uplifted state to which sacrifices and submissions loom large Comma, but loom so just because they must write sympathy Comma, write passion Comma, large Full Stop.”
I felt that, without being aware of it, Mr. James this time was speaking directly to me and my aspirations: art, passion, sympathy—What wasn’t I capable of?! Those words made me wonder what sacrifices I might have to make for the life of writing.
He paused, his hand in mid-air, as if he were an orchestra conductor stopping in mid-beat. “Miss Bosanquet, it seems you’re so attentive that you hear my voice drop for each parenthetical phrase, and you catch the silent beats in a compound sentence. I think I don’t need to dictate each and every comma but only the other punctuation and unusual commas. And a full stop surely alerts you to a capital for the next word.” With that, he went on:
“Her measure of what she would be capable of for him Dash—capable, that is, of Underline not asking of him Dash—will depend on what he shall ask of Underline her, but she has no fear of not being able to satisfy him Comma, . . .”
He paused, and I thought to myself: Ah! If only life could be like that.
But there was no time to think, for he continued:
“. . . even to the point of Quotation “chucking End Quotation” for him, if need be, that artistic identity of her own which she has begun to build up Full Stop.”
I felt a little shiver of apprehension and typed to the end of the page.
2
“In the Cage”
August 1907
The action of the drama is simply the girl’s “subjective” adventure—that of her quite definitely winged intelligence; just as the catastrophe, just as the solution, depends on her winged wit.
—Henry James
Preface to “In the Cage” The New York Edition, volume 11
It was no accident that Henry James and I met in the summer of 1907, though I had known nothing of him beyond the revelation of his novels and tales. That heavy morning in August 1907, as I sat in a top-floor office near Whitehall, compiling a very full index to the “Report of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion,” my ears were struck by the astonishing sound of passages from “The Ambassadors” being dictated to a young typist. Neglecting my Blue-book, I turned around to watch the typewriting-machine operator ticking off those splendid sentences, which seemed to be at least as much of a surprise to her as they were to me.
When my bewilderment had broken into a question, I learnt that the novelist, Henry James, was on the point of returning from Italy, that he had asked to be provided with an amanuensis to typewrite his dictations, and that the lady at the typewriter was making acquaintance with his style. Without any hopeful design of supplanting her, I lodged an immediate petition that I might be allowed the next opportunity of filling the post, supposing she should ever abandon it. I was told, to my amazement, that I need not wait. The established candidate was not enthusiastic about the prospect before her and was even genuinely relieved to look in another direction. If I set about practising on a Remington typewriting machine at once, I could be interviewed by Henry James himself as soon as he arrived in London. Within an hour, I had begun work on the machine.
Of course, that morning, when I first heard of the possibility of working for Mr. James and went after the job with all my heart, I’d had little experience of working for anyone. I had graduated from university the year before, with my degree in geology but without any clue as to how I was to make my living. I was only very sure that I did not want to become a teacher as my friends Nora and Clara from Cheltenham Ladies College had reluctantly trained to be. No, I had already tried the local dame school while waiting to pass my university entrance exams, and I knew I could never do that again. Like Nora and Clara (and unlike most of my other classmates at Cheltenham), I knew that I would not be marrying any time soon, if at all. Instead, when we finished our training, Nora, Clara, and I went to London and shared a flat. While Nora became the administrator of a small girls’ school, Clara and I looked for other possibilities.
It was Clara who found Miss Petherbridge and her establishment to train educated females for practical jobs in the Whitehall government offices that were now at last opening up to young women seeking employment. Miss P. was a middle-aged spinster, ambitious and kind, who happily kept us practising away in rooms she had found near Whitehall. No matter what level of education we had upon arrival, Miss P. started us all at work on the very lowliest of government tasks, and so I was there training to be an indexer—not a stenographic typist or any sort of typist.
Saying that I knew nothing of Mr. James beyond the revelation of his novels and tales actually means that I knew quite a bit about him. Mr. James had been part of my life ever since I was able to read his work by myself. His characters were my friends, his heroines aspired to the same high goals I did and had the same wishes and dreams that I did. I eagerly devoured each new book as it came out, delivered to us by Mudie’s Lending Library.
I remember the lost afternoons when I first found “The Portrait of a Lady” and devoured it, lying in my bedroom, weeping silently, feeling the great promise of that brave girl and how the cruel and more experienced, unscrupulous friends surrounded her with their selfish schemes and blinded her to what might bring her happiness. I loved all Mr. James’ poor, blighted young girls—Daisy and Nanda and Maisie and Fleda Vetch, even poor little wild Flora in “The Turn of the Screw.” I believed Mr. James gave me, with his stories of the pain and power of cruelty and of love, of open deceit and agreeable divorce, of new and old wealth, a more realistic idea of what went on in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia and maybe in the girls’ bedrooms at Cheltenham than had any sermons in my father’s church.
And so, after I went to Miss Petherbridge to ask for the chance to work with her esteemed client, Mr. James, she agreed that if I would practise and be patient, soon enough she would arrange for the promised interview with the famous author.
Our offices near Whitehall were too noisy and public for meeting prospective clients. Because Miss P. and Mr. James were old acquaintances, she arranged for our appointment to be at her flat late one afternoon on a long, hot August day. I walked the few blocks in the hopes that stretching my legs would calm me. The hot sun glared off the hard, white house fronts; as I climbed the steps, I could feel my shirtwaist sticking to my back, where the heat had made it quite damp. I banged the knocker and was shown into a sort of anteroom to wait. Miss Petherbridge and Mr. James were talking; I could hear their low voices from beyond the closed door, and then the door opened.