October 1907
If it be ever of interest and profit to put one’s finger on the productive germ of a work of art, and if in fact a lucid account of any such work involves that prime identification, I can but look on the present fiction as a poor fatherless and motherless [sic], a sort of unregistered and unacknowledged birth.
—Henry James
Preface to “The Tragic Muse” The New York Edition, volume 7
It seemed to take hours, but at last the train to Rye slowed and pulled around the final curve, and the tiny station came into view. I leaned over to look at it, almost a doll house of a station, lemon yellow with white trim, bright colours that would never survive in London. There, on that bright October morning, those colours looked just right.
I stood up eagerly, but I still had to wait with the other Rye passengers for the train to stop. I carried my bags and bundles down the steps after the guard had opened my compartment. I looked around and saw at once the large figure of Mr. Henry James coming towards me, his arms stretched high in the air, and I waved back, a small wave with my one free hand. As we met, he took my hand and shook it warmly.
“I’m so glad to see you made the train, so very glad, really, Miss Bosanquet, most glad.” His warm words made me feel conspicuously welcome as I stood awkwardly among the strangers at the station.
“Now, your things! Oh, yes, I hope you will not mind walking up the hill. It’s but a few steps. I always make my guests walk, to take in the feel of our wonderful Rye. Really, it’s so old, you know, quite ancient, nothing like it for venerable,” Mr. James went on as we passed out through the doors of the station. Once we reached the curb, I was startled to see an old man in soiled clothes coming directly towards us, noisily shoving his muddy wheelbarrow into our path, but Mr. James greeted him.
“Oh, good, George, here’s our Miss Bosanquet, and I expect her trunk is up waiting on the platform. Is that right, do you have a trunk?” He turned to me, and I was alarmed that my expression of confusion and repulsion was there for him to see. He went on quickly. “Oh, I am sorry, Miss Bosanquet, I forget that down here in the country we might look a bit rough to you city folk. I assure you that George is the gentlest of men, and he nearly always remembers to clean out the inside of our garden wheelbarrow before he brings it down to fetch my visitors’ things. Would you like to have your bundles carted up along with the trunk?” Mr. James took my bundles and lunch basket and gave them to the gardener, with instructions to take them to my room.
“I hope you don’t mind, Miss Bosanquet, but I’ve arranged for you to have your own tea waiting for you with your landlady, and so we’ll go straight to Marigold Cottage. I’m afraid that my domestic arrangements at Lamb House are not all that could be desired this afternoon. I have a very simple household with a housekeeper, who cooks for me, but she’s quite unreliable, and today appears to be a bad day. Then, there’s George to take care of the garden, and then of course there is little Burgess, my manservant—he came to me when he was a boy, and he’s not much bigger now—but you’ll meet them all soon enough. Now, then . . .” He led me across the wide street that ran beside the town’s high wall with its round, embedded stones.
“Is this not just the thing?” Mr. James patted the stones as we walked past. “They say that villagers began building the town wall on this side of Rye in 1194. Hard to think of those poor fellows over seven hundred years ago laying stone on stone right on this spot. And I think my work goes slowly, step by step! Not a patch on these fellows, I’m sure.”
At last, I was to hear something of the work to be done. I remember leaning eagerly towards Mr. James, listening to his smooth and endless flow of words as we climbed up the steep, cobbled street between the houses leaning side by side in the dusky October light.
The next day, that first morning, I found my way up to Lamb House. I realised, in spite of all my preparations, that I knew nothing of what was waiting for me beyond the heavy, copper-green door. I was afraid to knock. I had been too nervous to sleep well or eat a proper breakfast, worrying over that first day. Though I was confident of my skill with the typewriting machine, I was concerned how my bad ear, left over from a childhood illness, might affect my ability to typewrite correctly in an unfamiliar situation. I had always been the one at Miss Petherbridge’s secretarial bureau to set up the arrangements of table, chair, and machine in relation to the person giving dictation. I had hoped to arrive at Mr. James’ house early, but at least I was there at the appointed hour, ten-fifteen, in spite of the weather. My walk up the hill had been very short but very wet, with the steady rain obscuring all the house fronts and making the cobbled street quite treacherous. Now, I lifted the heavy brass knocker and thumped it twice.
I’d had to wait two months after the interview and Mr. James’ kind offer in his first letter before he could make the arrangements for me to come to him. I had answered yes and then waited until, at last, his second letter arrived. I felt ruffled at my flat in London that morning when the early post brought Mr. James’ reply, the heavy cream envelope with its Rye postmark and the smell of the leather writing desk and the sea. I opened it along the edge and slipped out a single, folded page.
His remarkable script seemed strong but shaky, the elegant black ink flowing smoothly over paper stippled cream in the light. The reassuring kindness was set out so that each word was distinguished, but the ending blurred and slid off into the ache of his fingers:
October 9th, 1907
Dear Miss Bosanquet,
I rejoice to hear of your arrival tomorrow & shall give myself the pleasure of meeting you at 1.28 at the Station. You shall have every facility of [sic] for trying my machine. I have just got a new & apparently admirable one.
Yours very truly,
Henry James
After what seemed like a long, silent wait, Mr. James’ copper-green door swung inward, and I was startled to see Mr. James himself. He was dressed less formally than for our first meeting, this time in a blue-belted jacket and bright, striped shirt with a cheerfully red spotted tie, his clean-shaved face shining pink out at me as I stood hesitating on the doorstep, while the rain poured down. He stepped back, inviting me in, and I stammered something in return to his warm welcome. Then, as I came in with my dripping coat and umbrella, I was so alarmed I could scarcely speak. Was I really meant to hand over my dripping umbrella to Mr. James? Was he really going to help me out of my very wet macintosh? As I hesitated, I was aware that I was dripping all over the black-and-white tiles of shining marble in the entrance hall.
It all seemed so unlike Miss Petherbridge’s secretarial bureau. Never before had a client greeted me. Instead, there had always been time to settle myself, to put away my street things and take on the appearance of calm assurance and competence that Miss Petherbridge had taught us girls. But as Mr. James hung my coat and umbrella on the hall stand, I wondered: Whatever was I to do about my wet galoshes? Pull them off right there, in that beautiful entrance hall? Mr. James noticed my discomfort and led me to the kitchen and to the chair where apparently he himself removed his muddy foot-wear; there was a paper spread, and so I was able to pull off my galoshes and collect myself, for the moment, while he spoke to his housekeeper. He introduced me to Mrs. Paddington and then went on to give her instructions for his lunch—to be ready at one-thirty, a moment that seemed endlessly in the future.
Mr. James then led the way back to the hall and up the front stairs to the large corner room where we would be working. I wondered again how it would be to work with Mr. James in such close quarters. Lamb House did not seem to be very large, and it looked as though Mr. James’ own bedroom was right across the hall from the room where we were to work. Quite convenient for him, I thought, when he had an idea for something in the middle of the night, but it did seem somewhat improper.
“We call this the Green Room,” Mr. James announced as he preceded me into the room, “from the colour of the paint on the wainscotting.” He went to one of the windows and pulled back the heavy curtains, making the room much brighter, much more welcoming. Hesitantly, anxiously, I waited, hardly able to take it all