LITMIR.BIZ

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came out, all cool and comfortable in a crisp, beige linen dress, which I had never seen her wear at the office. She apparently had dressed up for this meeting. She had done her hair differently, too, not all pulled back into a bun but with side curls, softer, more attractive. Since she was tall, taller even than I am (and I am nearly six feet tall myself), it seemed strange for her to look so delicate. I put my hand up to my hair and its combs and pins, afraid to think how I must look after my hot walk.

      Miss Petherbridge seemed more excited than usual. Her voice was high, and the words came fast.

      “No, no, my dear, you look fine, come in, don’t keep Mr. James waiting for you.” She held the door for me to go into the front parlour. Her introductions were quick. Then she was gone, and I was alone with Mr. James.

      I stood speechless in panic, but to my relief, I found I would have time to retrieve my composure, time even to study this great man, for he immediately began to speak at length, and apparently he expected no response, since he left no pauses.

      He was standing beside the fireless grate and gestured for me to join him and sit down. As we settled ourselves into the two chairs set facing each other, I noticed that he was dressed in a rather peculiar combination of the properly dark morning coat and trousers worn with a most un-British sort of soft and flowing silk tie in a brilliant red and blue spot, and with a broad, expansive waistcoat of a comforting yellow check. It made me wonder who chose his clothes. I knew he had never married, but it did make me feel a bit more relaxed to see his not-infallible taste displayed. Perhaps even Mr. James was a victim of his own enthusiasms; perhaps after all his years in England, he had still not quite got the hang of our English taste. Perhaps there was something I could do to help him.

      As he continued to express his apparently deep and long thoughts about his pleasure in making my acquaintance, I looked into his open face and was quite struck by his handsome, bright look. His eyes were clear, grey, penetrating and now were slightly twinkling at my own apparently staring, curious gaze. He was tan, quite burnt actually, and his light hair was only a fringe about his beautifully shaped, shining head.

      I wondered where he could have been travelling, to be so tan, and as if reading my mind, he went on, saying, “I’m just back from a month’s motor-flight with my dear friend, Mrs. Wharton, in her amazing automobile, speeding along that glorious hilly spine of Italy. With her usual good fortune, even on the voyage home we enjoyed the best weather.”

      I thought then that he had the look of an experienced sea captain, with his brown skin and those direct, sharp eyes, but I wondered at the mouth, such a sensitive, expressive feature. No, no sea captain would have survived with so much of his soul revealed as Mr. James. He was still talking in his beautifully resonant voice, with neither a British nor an American accent, I noticed.

      “Miss Bosanquet, I want to be sure you understand the special circumstances, the arrangements I require for someone to come to work for me. My home is in the most provincial and adorable of towns, the ancient village of Rye, on the Sussex coast, a perfect antique town, but very quiet, nothing there for a young woman to entertain herself. Well, there is golfing, I suppose, but then you perhaps don’t aspire to that most daunting of sports.”

      I was so amazed at his gentle, kind manner, his apologetic tone that I could barely pay attention to what he was saying. Was this the great novelist, the author of the terrifying “The Turn of the Screw,” the shockingly risqué “The Sacred Fount,” the deeply disturbing “The Golden Bowl”? Here was that looming presence, the mind that had put forth such monumental works, novels of such depths and heights—cathedrals, even. Now, was he asking if I desired to play golf? I could hardly believe my ears.

      Mr. James went on. “The work itself will not be too taxing, I trust. We will work every day, including Sundays, for three or four hours, from ten to one. There may be other typewriting projects for you after our mornings together, making clean copies, corrections, but those morning hours of ours will be sacrosanct. Perhaps Miss Petherbridge has told you of my current project, that I have embarked on a massive effort, the revised edition of all my most important works. I will include only the pieces I deem worthy, and there will be corrections and revisions to be made, but most of our time will be used to dictate the prefaces for each volume as I come to them. At present I have the first seven prefaces completed, but now I need to pick up the pace.

      “As you will find out, I like to write while standing up, moving about, dictating to a steady typewriting machine; I like the ease of speaking these essays of memory, these excursions into my thoughts about writing itself. I got into the habit of dictating about ten years ago, when I had something wrong with my right hand and arm. It happened part way through a short novella—‘The 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.

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