LITMIR.BIZ

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been weeks, and my neck hurts, my fingers are sore, and my back aches. I actually like it when the machine breaks down. I know how to fix the blessed machine—but I don’t know how to use it.”

      “Now, now, Dora, you always underestimate yourself. You’re getting really good. Look at this!” Clara pulled a sheet from the waste-paper basket and read in her melodious voice, “Pap nap tap sap, pip nip tip sip, pop mop top sop. Not one mistake! Oh, look at this one!” Clara picked up several half-filled pages lying on the table beside the machine and read out loud,

       The Tattler Tells All

      The Huntsman’s Ball was honoured with our most brilliant young debutentes, Miss Georgina Sedly and Miss Maria Whitworth, but the person most talked about this lively season is the handsome raven-haired, blue-eyed Miss Margaret Haig Thomas. . . . It is rumoured that Miss Thomas, one of the wealthiest daughters of the land, may soon be leaving our glittering dinners and gorgeous balls for the less than brilliant weather of Oxford and the dingier halls of Somerville.

      “Dora, what made you type that one?”

      “I don’t know. It caught my eye, someone very rich who leaves the social scene to go to university—It seemed different.”

      “This is good typewriting. You’re getting better. The only mistakes here are in the spelling of ‘debutante’ and in the spacing.”

      I put the cover over the machine with one motion, then gave the cover an extra tug. “I hate the space bar. I hate the machine. I wish I could secure this job some other way.”

      I took Clara’s arm as we walked side by side down the long hall, past the empty rooms. “You know, Clara, there really are not enough jobs. Even if all of us go to university and complete our degrees, there will not be enough work for women unless men open up the rolls and hire women to teach in men’s classes, hire women to write and edit the newspapers and books, fill the publishing houses, hire women to be the lawyers and clerks and agents.”

      Clara stopped and turned to look at me. “Dora, you surprise—You, the shyest woman I know, you’re starting to sound like one of those militant Suffragettes.”

      “But, Clara, I’m stuck. I have no money of my own, only a little more than the hundred pounds a year my mother left me. And my old home is no longer my own, now that Father and his new bride are all caught up with planting the garden with exotic shrubs. The only future Father and Annie can imagine for me is to teach horrid little girls or find a husband or move about again and again to all the cousins. I guess Annie still believes I will find someone to marry someday. After all, I might have the same good luck she did, catching someone older and settled, like my father.”

      “Can you try to talk to them, tell them that what you want is different, that you want to be on your own?”

      “Oh, no, no. I feel muffled up and invisible when I’m there. I don’t dare even speak. But what I really want is to write. The real excitement of this typewriting business is that now I can typewrite my own stories and make them look quite professional, as if I had hired a secretary. It’s curious what the typewriting does. I can feel my writing all so much more clearly when I am typing my own words. It flows out of my fingers; it’s so different from writing with a pen. I even practise on the typewriter on pieces from my diaries. Maybe I’ll send them to you and Nora when I am with Mr. James. Oh, I don’t know how to express it, but taking this job seems to be changing everything.”

      Clara was a little breathless, trying to keep up with my longer legs as we walked quickly along the street towards the entrance to the Tube. “I’ve always liked what you write, Dora—your letters are wonderful, and your essays and stories. Someday you’ll be published, I know. Only, I wonder, if you do get the job, what will Mr. James think of another writer in his room?”

      “I would never tell him. I could never tell him. I imagine he will think I really don’t know very much, that I’m only a girl who happens to be there to be the extension for his hands. I don’t think I would want him to know much about me, about what I do know. That will be my secret.”

      “How can you keep yourself secret? You’re so obviously intelligent and capable.”

      “But you see, I wonder if he would want anyone for his amanuensis who was too smart, too able. My father used to say that I should hide what I think, that men never like it when a woman seems to know too much. Besides, it will be easy for me to be quiet with Mr. James. I probably will not be able even to speak around him for days.”

      3

      “What Maisie Knew”

      November 1907

      No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connexion of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt . . .

      —Henry James

      Preface to “What Maisie Knew” The New York Edition, volume 11

      When I began with Mr. James, I was not much of a typist, and I wonder whether that fact altered his method somewhat. With the others, the experienced Miss Weld, the very fast Mr. McAlpine, Mr. James apparently still worked out everything—every plot twist, even his layers and layers of language—in his notes based on jottings of initial inspirations in his note-books before he began dictation. With Miss Weld, Mr. James was working on the later novels; surely he must have prepared voluminous notes in addition to the note-books I had caught sight of when he used them to help him remember certain details of past compositions. The note-books were always stacked about the room when we were working on the prefaces.

      I always imagined the note-books to be filled with treasures, helpful techniques, and startling inspirations waiting for some ambitious young writer to find later. Perhaps I hoped it would be myself, for I was such an ambitious young writer. I had been writing for years, had even seen my essays in print in the weekly paper, but only in our little Uplyme, not down in Lyme Regis. I had tried stories and poems, even some plays, which we put on for the local children. I liked the feeling of seeing my words printed out and having my friends tell me how much they enjoyed my writing. Now, I was going to have the chance to learn more, right from Mr. James himself. But of course I certainly would not let Mr. James know anything about my own literary aspirations.

      Mr. James always spoke of his past amanuenses with affection and a little condescension. He was humourous and kind, but it was clear to him that they had never had the slightest idea what he was about, nor did he want them to. It was better, he explained, to have this blank wall echoing back his words exactly as he spoke them. He often told the story of the young woman typist who, sitting in for the ailing Miss Weld, apparently was uncomfortable with Mr. James’ long, thoughtful pauses (which could become excruciatingly long when he was struggling to find the right word). She became so concerned for the poor man’s agony that she made the shocking mistake of trying to help by suggesting a word to solve his dilemma.

      No, it was a blank object, not a person, whom Mr. James had expected when I first came to be his amanuensis, and so I made the effort to become a null, a nothing.

      How does one become a null? I think Miss Weld could do it because she had her whole other life away from Lamb House, away from writing altogether. Years later, after I was comfortably settled in Rye, I often met her friends, who told me of Miss Weld’s charming tea parties, her generosity to St. Michael’s Ladies’ Guild, her wonderful knitted garments distributed to the deserving poor, and the triumph of her happy marriage to the local young worthy who had been fortunate enough to win her over—a solicitor or a medical man, I’ve forgotten. It’s surprising that she and I never met over the years, but perhaps it’s that we were part of two very different circles of friends, even in tiny little Rye’s society.

      When I left my old friends behind in Chelsea to go to Rye and Mr. James, I still had my whole life’s work before me to figure out. Perhaps in my inexperience I was something of a null, but I had ambition, I felt pain, I had dreams. I knew I wanted to write, and I believed that working with Mr. James might help me become a writer. I came to listen,

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