by Paul Theroux
Late in 1895 he told the editor of the Yellow Book to expect a story of about ten thousand words. The "Hurters" were now the "Faranges". (He got many of his characters' names from the social pages of The Times, where the weddings, births and deaths are announced.) In his notebook entry for December, 1895, he set out the structure of the story in detail—his notebooks are full of Maisie ruminations, and as a result we know more about its composition than any of his other novels. He began to see how symmetrical a story it was; he was determined to make it subtle, to blur its edges. He became interested in the possibilities of the governesses, particularly Mrs Wix, whom he calls "the frumpy governess." He saw the core of the drama as "the strange, fatal, complicating action of the child's lovability," and considering the powerful material and the steamy incidents he made another bold decision: everything—every important action or word in the novel—would take place in the child's presence. He said, "That is the essence of the thing."
He got going on the actual writing of the story in the summer of 1896, roughly four years after he had heard the divorce story over dinner. All that time he had been puzzling out the details in his notebook. He was a great rehearser of his novels and he used his notebooks to remind himself of what he knew and to correct his impressions. In October 1896 he told himself, "I have brought this little matter of Maisie to a point at which a really detailed scenario of the rest is indispensable for a straight and sure advance to the end." He proceeded for a number of pages to summarize the plot and he prefaced his summary with a remark on the form he wanted the book to have. He saw the symmetries, the parallel lives and reduplicated actions and he warned himself not to slacken in his "deep observance of this strong and beneficent method—this intensely structural, intensely hinged and jointed preliminary frame."
He was the man who said that many great novels were "loose and baggy monsters," but Maisie is anything but that. It is a most precise novel; it is finely balanced and four-square with a recurring situation that might be summed up in the sentence, "What are you doing here?" It is clear from the notebooks that James was certain he was onto something and that the elements of his story, if they were treated artfully, would yield him a fascinating novel. He pondered the matter, but always pleasurably and with confidence: Maisie was a novel made out of calculation and conscious decisions. It contains some of his best comedy and some of his most melancholy insights. Nearly every critic has seen it—James saw it himself—as a pivotal book. It shows the onset, the sudden dappled shadow, of his later manner. It is the book in which, at Chapter Seventeen, I think—though the matter is open to dispute—he got writer's cramp and began to dictate to a secretary, and the purification of that eloquent hemming and hawing is for most readers the essential Henry James. Though it is less a novel than an enlarged story, and it is in many senses an in-between book, Maisie embodies everything that James excelled at in fiction.
Whatever love, warmth, brightness, or humanity is in the book is due to the presence of Maisie; she is the whole point. And it is not really that she is a sweet child with the function of triggering a mechanism to soften our hearts. In most respects she is shrewder and more clear-sighted than the adults around her. What is most curious—it is certainly one of the sticking-points in the book for me—is her angelic nature, which is in complete contrast to her parents' nastiness. How can two such utterly empty people have been responsible for bringing this lovely child into the world? There is a great deal of name-calling in this novel: "abominable little horror," "horrid pig," "fiend," and so forth, but where these severe names are used to describe Beale or Ida Farange the reader can only agree that pig and fiend are about right.
Maisie is said (by Sir Claude) to have a "fatal gift of beauty." We know where this comes from, for, if nothing else, she has inherited physical beauty. Her parents, ugly in every other way, are physically striking. (The ugliest characters in the novel, Mr Perriam and the Countess—the former Ida's lover, the latter Beale's—are also the wealthiest.) Beale is tall, luxuriously bearded, and has a habit of showing his large glittering teeth. He is boisterous, vulgar, showy, priapic and materialistic. He cannot tell the truth. He has dreadful friends who, in the context of this book, seem like child-molesters. We are given to understand that Beale is intensely clubbable and probably a gambler. He is certainly a liar. He is a failed diplomat, hollow at the core, and like many spineless people rather prickly and devious.
This novel is full of counterparts—balancing scenes and perfect echoes. Ida Farange is so similar to Beale she is almost shocking—but she has more lovers. We are told explicitly about her bosom, which becomes one of the landmarks of the novel, like a familiar headland, heaving one minute, cushioning Maisie's head the next, with its "wilderness of trinkets." On the question of her cleavage James tells us that she wears her dresses cut "remarkably low" and there is explicit salacity in "the lower the bosom was cut the more it was to be gathered she was wanted elsewhere." She has the talkative person's moodiness and bad temper, but she has a compensating charm. Like her ex-husband, she is flashy (she "bristled with monograms"), very tall, vindictive and has awful friends. Seven of her lovers are named in the book; we see quite a bit of three of them, and she is said to have "quantities of others."
In choosing Maisie's parents, James invented a couple who are both handsome and extraordinarily unpleasant, and his artful touch was to make them unpleasant in exactly the same ways. In one respect Ida is different from Beale: she is physically violent and given to sudden lunges—at least where Maisie is concerned. We are told that Ida is addicted to extremes—either she is silent or else wildly gesturing. Usually we see her in motion—"she surged about." The verb is perfect for this amazing woman. I spoke earlier about this being a novel of thrusting hands. One thinks of all the hands in all the plackets. But it is also Ida's thrustings. Maisie is "hurled," "tossed," "snatched," "thrust," "dashed," and "ejected" by her mother at various points in the novel; most of all she is pushed. Ida is a tremendous pusher—and why should she not be? After all, she is a champion billiard player.
This is one of the brightest touches—Ida the billiard champ. It was "her great accomplishment" and we are told of her "celebrated stroke." One of her infidelities is disguised as a match she is playing abroad, and in an aside James—unconsciously of course—makes one of the clearest statements of her sexual character and leaves us with a bewitching image of "other balls that Ida's cue used to send flying."
One could easily overwork this pretty motif, but it seems apparent that the billiard cue is a potent example of Ida's masculinity, and virtually all we need to know of her virile ambition and her competitive instincts. It is as if James is determined to make her identical to Beale, for the billiard cue is not just a convenient phallicism but also a weapon and a career.
Billiards is also the perfect game to illustrate the typical movement in the novel. The three balls—one red and two white—represent both the characters and the action. It is a novel of threes—three characters battling at any one time (and Maisie is always one of them), three parks (Hyde Park, Regent's Park, Kensington Gardens), three settings (London, Folkestone, Boulogne). Ida will have had three husbands and Beale three wives; and Maisie comes under the protection of three men—her father, the Captain and Sir Claude; and three women—her mother, Mrs Beale and Mrs Wix. If one were to search for a word to describe the way in which Maisie passes from person to person, colliding and rebounding, the best term would come from the game of billiards: she does not simply go—she caroms.
How Maisie manages to be so bright and brave—so sensible without being prissy or pious—is a question we cannot answer on the evidence provided. We know about her spotless soul and her kindly nature. But James in describing the slam-bang of her upbringing has given us every reason for her turning out crazy, vengeful or anti-social. As it is, she never puts a foot wrong. She is stimulated by the bustle of these sinners, and she has a child's fearful thrill at the prospect of change. I don't think the reader is ev
er really worried that she will be spoiled or harmed: this could be the single weakness in the novel. Even when she is described repeatedly as a "pet," a "poor little monkey," a shuttlecock or a football, we see her as fully human, putting on a courageous smile and offering reassurance or advice: "You're both very lovely," "You're free," "Don't do it for just a little ... Do it always." Often, she is no more than parroting another character's words, but her detachment and her directness ("Mamma doesn't care for me") and her good sense give her a confident aura of independence.
We know Maisie is a child, and James is artful in conveying her childish perceptions in appropriate imagery: the adult faces in close-up with eyebrows like skipping ropes (Miss Overmore) or eyebrows like moustaches (Mr Perriam) or her being in Boulogne "among the barelegged fishwives and the red-legged soldiers"—a shy and not very tall girl would naturally notice the legs of foreigners rather than their faces. For the others Maisie's sensitivities are pretty much ignored. True, if they were taken into account and pandered to there would be no novel; but they say such wild things to her! It is bad enough that, for example, she sees her mother flirting with the odious millionaire, Mr Perriam (James portrays his Jewishness like a particularly nasty vice) but the rest is stated too: he is "in and out of the upper rooms." Maisie is told everything, often very bluntly, and the fact that many of the crude accusations are distortions or plain lies only makes matters worse. But Maisie continues to gaze on this disorder and noise with understanding eyes and peacemaking instincts.
One of the disappointments that Maisie's parents have to face is that their daughter is totally unlike them. It seems clear that they would have been happier if she had been a burden—an armful—who would have been unwelcome in the enemy camp. But she is not. Maisie is tactful, compassionate, forgiving, and oddly objective. She notices that her unreliable mother had never been loved but only disliked by everyone, and she pities her for it. Maisie is no use in battle, and what her parents get is just what they deserve—a reproach to their stupidity, a kindly child who does not need them and who has a perfect memory: long after they have gone on to new people Maisie is still stubbornly there to remind them of their jilts. Maisie herself is independent: she can live perfectly well without her parents—perhaps too well. She is unscathed. Today, the emphasis in such a novel would be on the harm the divorce had done to her—"the needless destruction of a young life," that sort of thing. James does not see this. He is pleased with himself, he is proud of Maisie; his tone is bright as he savors what he takes to be huge and harmless ironies. Why should a child who is indestructible need the protection of parents or any adults?
But Maisie does not wish to live alone. The trouble is that the two characters in the book with whom she has a genuine sympathy—and more than that, an attraction bordering on attachment—both pose problems for her. Mrs Wix is not so bad as she first appears, nor is Sir Claude so good as Maisie believes him to be. The conundrum, which is the plot of Maisie, is established fairly early on (you can see the short book in this longish one), but the length of the book—its amplitude, as James might say—depends on the ambiguity of Mrs Wix and Sir Claude. James lets them linger so that Maisie will understand the hopelessness of her situation.
Mrs Beale, the former Miss Overmore, is not very important to the conundrum, I don't think. Her only virtue is that she loves Maisie, in spite of the fact that she is a paid governess, a manhandled mistress and only briefly a step-mother; but in other respects she is not very interesting—not half so interesting or so passionate as Ida. Mrs Beale's main function is first to be seduced and married by Beale Farange, and then to show him up and cast her spell—flesh and promises—upon Sir Claude.
Maisie sees Mrs Wix as a mother. It is her first impression, and an essential one. Mrs Wix is wall-eyed, badly dressed, dim, dogmatic and sad. She is probably a widow and her own daughter was killed in a road accident. She is "safe"—the sort of woman who is described as a dear old thing—but she is also a worrier. Her worrying is quite in key with her religion—it is probably true to say that worrying is at the bottom of her religion, almost an article of faith. Much has been made by critics of Mrs Wix's poor vision, and her reliance on "straighteners"—her spectacles. Like Ida's billiards and bosom, it is a wonderful metaphor and provides plenty of opportunity for speculation, but in this rich novel it is necessary to know what has been stated before one can begin to know what is being suggested; and the various implications of the strabismus and the eyeglasses seem to me less important than Mrs Wix's dogmatism or motherliness, or her sorrowful cry, when she envisages Maisie taken from her, "What will become of me?" It is an example of the singlemindedness of the novel that even Mrs Wix doesn't see that the principal concern ought to be: What will become of Maisie?
By degrees, Mrs Wix asserts herself—losing her cranky certitude and growing less irritating as she becomes familiar, but never, I think, becoming a wholly reliable refuge for Maisie. She can hardly be that, for in a clumsy way she too has fallen for Sir Claude, and persists in her rivalry and pathos (Maisie remembers the cry and says at the end of Mrs Wix "Where will she go?... What will she do?"). One of the problems of the novel—for me at least—is that there is no let-up in Mrs Wix's rather terrifying zeal or her moralizing. And of course the more this frumpy old governess in her snuff-coloured dress suppresses her squinting love for Sir Claude the more horribly she bangs on about morality. It is excellent psychology on James's part, but it gives the later stretches of the novel an atmosphere of arid arguing about irreconcilable differences.
It is crucial to remember that Sir Claude is young. Maisie calculates that he is of a different generation from her mother. He is probably in his twenties—a scandalous liaison for Ida, but it brings him closer in spirit to Maisie. He is quite firm in his determination to be a father—we understand that his marriage to Ida fails because she dislikes children, and his love for Mrs Beale is fuelled by the thought that she will bear him a child (and he has been influenced by her love for Maisie). None the less, Sir Claude is a most ambiguous character, and it is one of the triumphs of the novel that James puts us in Maisie's position and makes us overlook—almost—Sir Claude's weaknesses. He is not a villain and yet there is something roguish about him. We see him peering with interest at the backs of bonnets during church services, and distracted by a black-haired lady with a lapdog in the Folkestone hotel, and in Boulogne talking with Maisie but keeping his eyes on "the fine stride and shining limbs of a young fishwife who had just waded out of the sea with her basketful of shrimps" (James leaves us to imagine the damp clinging blouse on the snouts of her breasts, and her skirts hitched-up against her flanks). Sir Claude has a roving eye, which is amazing, considering the tangle he is already in as a result of his amorous nature. He is very generous, open-hearted and kind. He alludes a number of times to his fear.—afraid of women, he says, afraid of Ida, afraid of Mrs Beale; but no, we are told, in one of the helpful suggestions that occur frequently in this lucid novel, that he is probably afraid of himself, of his weakness for women, his sentimentality. He is a cheerier and younger but just as devastating Edward Ashburnham from Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, always doing his duty while at the same time fantasizing about an ambitious elopement.
Sir Claude's magic works on most of the women we see in the book, including Maisie. He is forgiven everything—never blamed, never seen as unfaithful, never depicted as a tempter. And he might be, because, for much of the novel, his relationship with Maisie is plainly sexual and his tone a kind of bantering intimacy with its "dear boys" and "old mans." At times he talks to her as if she is his mistress or his catamite. He courts her. At one point he undresses her efficiently—but in the presence of Mrs Wix. He says "I'm always talking to you in the most extraordinary way"—he means bluntly; he is surprised by his frankness, and so he should be. In an earlier place he says significantly, "I should be afraid if you were older."
In his notebooks and in his Preface to this novel, James is emphatic about the iron
ies that attracted him and continued to sustain his interest in this story. It is true that the novel has a heroine, but it does not really have a villain. Beale and Ida are merely a little ahead of their time in making their divorce much more imaginative than their marriage. It is an indulgent novel about right and wrong, not good and evil. "Morality" is something Mrs Wix harps on, but James repeatedly draws our attention to the fact that morality is not the same thing as love and that only an old-fashioned conscience is likely to muddle the issue. In any case, Mrs Wix by the end is biased and pretty passionate herself, and one never quite believes that she has awakened Maisie's "moral sense." The implication is that James is joshing the notion of conventional morality—finding it limited, narrow and harsh; indeed, finding it a source of irony.
The idea of money—or poverty and wealth—provides many ironies, too. It is at the very heart of the bargain that Ida has struck with Beale. A satisfactory financial settlement would have meant no quarrel and no battle over Maisie: Maisie stands for the money Beale cannot raise—the £2,600 that Ida wanted refunded to her. We are given the impression that the Faranges married for money and were disappointed in each other's fortunes. Money is a factor in their divorce and something of an aphrodisiac in their love affairs. Libido alone cannot keep these liaisons going. It is specifically noted that Miss Overmore is a lady and yet "awfully poor," which is obviously part of her failure with Beale. Mr Perriam's wealth guarantees his success with Ida, but eventually he has been exposed as a crook. At the end of the novel Ida and Beale are living off other people—money matters to them enormously—and at the same time the moneyless Sir Claude, Mrs Beale, Mrs Wix and Maisie debate the question of morality in Boulogne, while the idea of money is at the back of everyone's mind—everyone except Maisie.