The Constant Listener
published with a grant Figure Foundation
The Constant Listener
Henry James and Theodora Bosanquet
an imagined memoir
Susan Herron Sibbet
with Lady Borton
Swallow Press * Ohio University Press * Athens
Swallow Press
An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2017 by David Sibbet
All rights reserved
Afterword © 2017 by Lady Borton
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Jacket art: Photograph of Lamb House and Henry James courtesy Wikimedia Commons Photograph of Theodora Bosanquet © National Trust / Charles Thomas
Jacket design by Beth Pratt
Printed in the United States of America
Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sibbet, Susan Herron author. | Borton, Lady author.
Title: The constant listener : Henry James and Theodora Bosanquet—an imagined memoir / Susan Herron Sibbet with Lady Borton.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023530| ISBN 9780804011839 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780804040785 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: James, Henry, 1843-1916—Fiction. | James, Henry, 1843-1916—Friends and associates—Fiction. | Novelists, American—Fiction. | Bosanquet, Theodora—Fiction. | Book editors—United States—Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction | Historical fiction
Classification: LCC PS3569.I24 C57 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023530
To all the listeners and
creative support people in the world,
for their invaluable roles in helping
make great art possible
We who knew him well know how great he would have been if he had never written a line.
—Edith Wharton, letter to amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, March 1, 1916 (two days after Henry James’s death)
A Note about Style
Attentive readers of Susan Herron Sibbet’s imagined memoir will notice British spelling, the unusual contractions and punctuation of quotations from fiction by Henry James as published more than a century ago, and the inconsistency of that published style with the style of James’s concurrent handwritten letters, with James’s plays published three decades after the Master’s death, and with the narrative style used by Theodora Bosanquet writing in the late 1950s. Attentive readers will also notice that the afterword, acknowledgments, and notes bring the reader up to modern times through the use of current US style.
Lady Borton
Contents
10. “The Lesson of the Master”
Afterword. An Amanuensis for an Amanuensis for an Amanuensis: The Story behind This Book
1