by David Lodge
‘Me?’ said Henry, disconcerted. ‘And how did he do that, pray?’
‘Well, you know you have a rather distinctive way of speaking, especially when you’re animated. Gerald had it off to a T.’
‘Did he, indeed?’ said Henry, rather stiffly.
‘I’m afraid you’re offended,’ said Du Maurier anxiously.
‘Not at all,’ said Henry, though he was a little. ‘But I am curious to know – what features – that is to say – what were the distinctive characteristics – the idiosyncrasies of vocabulary or syntax – to the “T”s – not that I profess to understand precisely what a T is in this, this . . .’ He felt himself momentarily in danger of losing the thread of his sentence, but triumphantly caught it by the tail: ‘. . . to the Ts of which your – your precocious offspring so remarkably approximated?’
‘Like that, Henry,’ said Du Maurier, laughing. ‘He did you exactly like that.’
Henry had to smile himself, but at dinner that evening he kept a wary eye on Gerald, who was at home for the Christmas holidays, and contributed less than usual himself to the conversation.
He did not see Du Maurier again for two or three months. A wave of illness – not his own, fortunately, but other people’s – seemed to engulf him in the New Year. There was an influenza epidemic in London, to which the Smiths succumbed, and for a week or so he had to dine at his club and at other times forage pathetically for himself in the kitchen at De Vere Gardens. Carrie Balestier’s mother and sister were both stricken, and absent from her marriage to Kipling in consequence, though this was not a cause of real regret, since it made the wedding an even smaller, briefer and more restrained affair than had been planned, and he was able to perform his function, pay his respects, and promptly depart, without the demonstrations of bonhomie usually expected on such occasions. Fenimore wrote to say that she was suffering terribly from headache and ear-ache, apparently the result of trying out ‘false ear-drums’ recommended by her doctor to improve her hearing. Not surprisingly, this experience had cast her into depression again. And of course there was always Alice, sinking slowly but inevitably towards death.
He called almost daily, but it was stressful to sit at her bedside and hold her hand and see her wan worn face smiling bravely up at him from the pillow, knowing she was in pain and being helpless to relieve it. The sainted Katharine was the guardian of the morphia that made Alice’s suffering just tolerable. ‘She knows I would give her as much as she wants, even if its effect should be to curtail her life,’ Katharine confided in him one day, ‘but she has made the decision to live her death by degrees, to the very end.’ Henry admired his sister’s courage, but wondered at it too. He did not think he would want to extend his own life in the same circumstances. It was like being present at some poignant, unbearably drawn-out final act in a tragedy, and he could not conceal from himself that he longed for the curtain to come down, to release them all from the tension. He tried to distract himself with work, developing ideas for plays, sending out drafts and scenarios to likely managers, and writing short stories and articles while he waited for their always dilatory responses. He had resolved to write no more full-length novels while he was trying to establish himself as a playwright.
Henry was surprised to receive a letter from Du Maurier in February telling him that he had started another novel, dictating it to Emma as before. He had assumed that his friend was one of those people who had one novel ‘in him’, and having got it out of his system would be content; but the modest success of Peter Ibbetson had evidently encouraged him to try again. The subject was the story he had once offered to Henry, about the young girl who could only sing under hypnotism, ‘la chanteuse magnétisée’ as Du Maurier referred to her in his letter. This was written entirely in French, appropriately enough, because he had decided to set the story in Paris, thirty-odd years ago, drawing on his memories of being an art student in the Latin Quarter. He claimed to be enjoying the writing ‘énormément’ and in a postscript scribbled on the back of the envelope hinted at a certain raciness in the material: ‘Nouveau roman n’est pas pour les petites filles.’ Henry had not given any thought to writing the story himself for years, but now that the possibility was closed for ever he felt a perverse and childish pang of deprivation. Du Maurier of course had no inkling that this narrative ‘germ’, as Henry liked to call the starting point of a work of fiction, had been buried in the dark humus of his notebook, awaiting the day when it would be transplanted to the foolscap sheets of his writing pad. The only way he could rid himself of futile regret for the lost opportunity was by resolving instantly to make use of another idea that Du Maurier had given him, the anecdote of the genteel couple who had come to him looking for work as models, and failed abysmally to imitate their own type. The story came easily, and he finished it in little more than a week. He called it ‘The Real Thing’, and sent it to the magazine Black and White, whose editor accepted it promptly for publication in April.
If only putting on plays were so quick and simple! Hare, who had accepted Mrs Vibert with such gratifying praise nearly a year ago, had procrastinated and prevaricated ever since, even though Henry had revised the play, now retitled Tenants, in accordance with his suggestions. Henry was beginning to lose faith in him. Meanwhile Compton had failed to rise to the bait of scenarios and draft first acts for two other comedies he had offered him in recent months. This lack of enthusiasm was perhaps understandable given the commercial failure of The American, but Henry now believed that that project had been doomed from the start. It had been a mistake to subject a complex and subtle novel to the inevitable compressions and compromises of theatrical adaptation. Those who knew the novel were dissatisfied with the play and those who didn’t were puzzled by elements in the story which could not be properly developed for lack of time. Henry was convinced that he would only conquer the English stage with an idea that was conceived as a play from the beginning.
He now went to the theatre no longer as a disinterested consumer of more or less pleasurable experiences, but as a sharp-eyed, tight-lipped professional, looking out for likely actors and producers, studying the dramaturgical tricks of successful playwrights, and measuring himself against other newcomers to the field. An occasion of special interest was the first night of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, at the St James’s Theatre. Henry had no great liking for Wilde either as a man or as a writer. Ten years ago, when one of his private visits to America coincided with one of Wilde’s grand lecture tours, and encouraged by a reported remark of Wilde’s to the effect that no contemporary English novelist could hold a candle to James and Howells, he had called on him at his hotel in Washington, only to be disgusted by Wilde’s manners. Wilde patronised him, capped his remarks with silly epigrams, dropped the names of people with whom Henry was much better acquainted than himself, and generally behaved in a vain and exhibitionist manner. Henry also felt there was something leering and unwholesome about Wilde’s person and personality, a whiff of the moral decadence he had encountered in a more flagrant form when he visited Zhukovski in Naples. Henceforward he had kept his distance from Wilde, whose détermination à épater les bourgeois in his life as in his writings more and more confirmed the wisdom of this decision. London society hummed with rumours of his neglect of his wife in favour of dubious male companions.
There was no question, however, that the man was clever, as Lady Windermere’s Fan demonstrated. The plot was not substantial or credible enough to bear a moment’s serious consideration, but it was all so wittily managed, with such an abundance of amusing mots, batted back and forth across the stage like so many shuttlecocks, that one scarcely noticed. Certainly the first-night audience didn’t. How they laughed! And how they clapped at the end. Needless to say, Wilde was not backward in responding to the calls of ‘Author! Author!’ With a green carnation in the lapel of his evening dress, and holding a cigarette in one mauve-gloved hand, he gave a long speech, concluding: ‘The actors have given us a charming rendering
of a delightful play, and your appreciation has been most intelligent. I congratulate you on the great success of your performance, which persuades me that you think almost as highly of the play as I do myself.’ Although a typical provocation, and received as such with much laughter, these immodest sentiments were, Henry reflected, quite sincere and largely true. He certainly agreed with Wilde about the performances. George Alexander, the actor-manager responsible for mounting the play, had been particularly good as Lord Windermere. He had been a popular jeune premier in Henry Irving’s company, specialising in romantic costume roles which displayed his handsome looks to advantage, but had since shown himself to be, as Oscar might have said, more than just a pair of pretty legs. A couple of years ago, at the age of only thirty-two, he had set himself up as a manager, taken a lease on the St James’s Theatre, installed electric lighting and refurbished the seating, and began to put on new plays which had commercial appeal and suitable leading roles for himself, but were not devoid of artistic merit. So far he had been very successful. Henry was impressed by the meticulous care that had obviously gone into every aspect of his latest production, and made a mental note of Alexander as a potential producer of his own work.
Alice died on March 5th. Before she lapsed into a coma, she dictated a cable to Henry to send to William: ‘Tenderest love to all. Farewell. Am going soon. Alice.’ Later Henry applied his writerly gifts to fill out those spare, poignant words with the dense specificity of the event. ‘Towards the end, for about an hour, the breathing became a constant sort of smothered whistle in the lung,’ he wrote in a letter to William. ‘The pulse flickered and went, ceased and revived a little again, and then with all perceptible action of the heart, altogether ceased to be sensible before the breathing ceased. At three o’clock a blessed change took place – she seemed to sleep – I mean to breathe – without effort, gently, peacefully and naturally, like a child. This lasted an hour, till the respirations, still distinct, paused, intermitted, and became rarer – at the last for seven or eight minutes, only one a minute, by the watch.’ Henry paused in his task. Some might think so minute an observation of his sister’s dying was almost callous, but William, the scientist, would understand and appreciate the effort to be truthful and exact. Nevertheless he decided to put in a little more human feeling. ‘Her face then seemed in a strange, dim, touching way, to become clearer. I went to the window to let in a little more of the afternoon light (it was a bright, kind, soundless Sunday), and when I came back to the bed she had drawn her last breath.’ He read the paragraph through again, struck out the cliché ‘last breath’, and substituted ‘the breath that was not succeeded by another’.
For some weeks subsequently he was preoccupied with making arrangements and writing letters connected with Alice’s death. She had asked to be cremated, a typically unconventional choice, necessitating a railway journey to the crematorium at Woking, but one that seemed appropriate to the small number of mourners – just himself, Katharine, and Alice’s devoted nurse, Annie Richards – and the experience quite converted him to this funerary method. Everything was simple, seemly and dignified. It was a cold, sleety day, and he was glad to be taking his sister’s ashes back to London, for eventual translation to their parents’ grave in America, rather than leaving her remains to moulder in the dank earth of what had always been for her a foreign country.
Then there was Alice’s will to be read and administered. She had divided her estate equally between Henry, William and Katharine, passing over Bob on the grounds that he had married into a rich family and had less need than his brothers. Henry predicted trouble from this exclusion – quite correctly as it turned out. Bob, who hated his financial dependence on his father-in-law, vigorously protested, and was only pacified when Henry offered to give him $5,000 of his own share.
‘You are very generous,’ Katharine said to Henry when she heard of his gesture.
‘For some reason the Jameses always squabble over wills – I find it very distressing,’ Henry replied, pretending his motive was to bring the dispute to a swift conclusion. In fact he was seeking to expiate a certain measure of transferred guilt about Bob and his dead brother Wilky – transferred from their father, and going back to the Civil War. Henry James Sr. had discouraged his two eldest sons from volunteering for the war at the outset, and given them every support in claiming medical exemption, on the grounds that no cause, however honourable, was worth dying for before a young man had had a chance to taste what life – especially love and marriage – could offer. But with typical inconsistency he seemed to change his mind after a year or two, and urged his two younger sons to volunteer when they were hardly more than boys – Wilky at seventeen and Bob, who lied about his age, at sixteen. Both of them had seen action, and behaved with great courage. Both had been wounded, and Wilky had nearly died – one of the stretcher-bearers carrying him from the field of battle had had his head blown off by an exploding shell. They were, in short, heroes, by whom Henry felt humbled, and almost shamed, at the time. Yet their subsequent lives, personal and professional, had been one long, doleful tale of failure, disappointment, and broken health. The traumatic experience of war had, it seemed, permanently incapacitated them for life in peace, and eventually brought Wilky’s to a premature conclusion, while he himself and William, who had lived in ignoble safety as students throughout the conflict, had prospered and achieved distinction in their respective fields. To give Bob a substantial proportion of his share of Alice’s estate hardly compensated for this inequality of fortune, but it eased Henry’s conscience somewhat. He did not ask or expect William, who had four children to look after, to do the same, nor did his brother offer to do so.
William, however, agreed happily with Henry that Alice’s bequest to Katharine, treating her on an equal footing with her brothers, was entirely right and proper, considering the care and devotion she had received from her friend over many years. But Henry was surprised to read in the will that Alice also bequeathed her journal to Katharine. He hadn’t been previously aware that she kept a journal, and the information set off a small reaction of alarm in his mind at such a private document passing out of the control of the family.
‘She began it about three years ago, when we moved to Leamington,’ Katharine told him. ‘Lately, when she was too weak to write, she used to dictate her thoughts to me, so I feel as if I had a share in them. It will certainly be my most precious relic of her.’ When Henry hinted that he would be interested to read the journal, Katharine was uncooperative. ‘Alice told me she would like to have it type-copied, so I’m sure she wanted it to be read, eventually,’ she said. ‘But I feel it’s too soon to show it to anyone, even to you, Henry. And, to be honest, it’s so precious to me I couldn’t bear to let it out of my possession, even for a few hours. When it’s been copied, then of course you and William may read it.’
Another intriguing piece of information he obtained from the same source was that in the last week or so of her life Alice had asked Katharine to read her a story of Fenimore’s called ‘Dorothy’, recently published in Harper’s. ‘She thought very highly of it,’ said Katharine. ‘I’m glad to say that we finished it shortly before she died.’ Henry naturally read the story himself at the first opportunity. It was a typical product of Fenimore’s pen, an artfully angled glance at the mysteries and vagaries of women’s emotional lives, a comedy of manners from which a sentimental tragedy unexpectedly emerged. Henry immediately recognised the principal setting as a lightly fictionalised version of the Villa Castellani at Bellosguardo, with its glorious views and dizzying balconies, where a group of American expatriates variously flirted and yearned. Dorothy, an attractive, Daisy Millerish young American girl, surprised everyone by marrying the rich but middle-aged Mackenzie. When he died suddenly, not long afterwards, it was assumed she would make a second, more brilliant and more romantic marriage, but in the event she died herself, apparently of grief. The appeal of the story for Alice was presumably the value it placed upon death as an id
ea, or aspiration, inexplicable to the common herd. In Fenimore’s work it took its place in a long series of fictions about women who showed their nobility of character by renouncing the prospect of ordinary worldly happiness.
He paid a visit to Fenimore in Oxford not long afterwards, and looked forward to telling her of Alice’s admiration for her story. She would be surprised and pleased, and it would provide a convenient excuse for avoiding discussion of more complicated emotions connected with Alice’s death. He blurted out his discovery almost as soon as Fenimore had greeted him in her little parlour in Beaumont Street, and was disconcerted when she coolly replied:
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You know? How?’
‘Your sister sent me a message, just before she died, through Miss Loring,’ said Fenimore. ‘That was part of it.’
Henry could barely restrain himself from rudely asking what the other part consisted of. He had not been aware that they were in contact by correspondence, and said as much.
‘We were not,’ said Fenimore. ‘But of course we were aware of each other’s existence, through our common intercourse with you. I knew that she was jealous of me – I mean of the time you spend with me – not that it is so very much.’ Fenimore blushed a little at this, and turned her head to glance out of the window at a rag-and-bone merchant’s horse and cart grinding past in the street, its driver uttering a hoarse, unintelligible cry to attract attention. ‘But I understood how she felt, given her unfortunate circumstances. I bore her no grudge. But I think, as her end grew near, she felt a wish for – not reconciliation, for we had never quarrelled – but you know what I mean.’
‘I think so,’ said Henry, though he was still puzzled, and felt that Fenimore was keeping something back about Alice’s message. She eyed him in a thoughtful, but slightly abstracted way, as their conversation shifted to more banal topics: the tranquillity of the college precincts in the Easter vacation, the riches of the Bodleian where she had been fortunate enough to secure a reader’s ticket, the splendid singing of the choir in Christ Church Cathedral on Sundays which she could appreciate even with her impaired hearing.
