Tales from a Master's Notebook

by Various

  Colm Tóibín’s story mainly draws on the next passage, used by him as an epigraph, which promptly follows the other, and seems to have been written on the same day.

  Another incident – ‘subject’ – related to me by Lady G. was that of [the] eminent London clergyman who on the Dover-to[-]Calais steamer, starting on his wedding tour, picked up on the deck a letter addressed to his wife, while she was below, and finding it to be from an old lover, and very ardent (an engagement – a rupture, a relation, in short,) of which he had never been told, took the line of sending her, from Paris, straight back to her parents – without having touched her – on the ground that he had been deceived. He ended, subsequently, by taking her back into his house to live, but never lived with her as his wife. There is a drama in the various things, for her, to which that situation – that night in Paris – might have led. Her immediate surrender to some one else, &c, &c, &c. x x x x x x x x x

  It reminds me of something I meant to make a note of at the time – what I heard of the W.B.’sfn9 when their strange rupture (in Paris too) immediately after their almost equally strange marriage became known. He had agreed, according to the legend, to bring her back to London for the Season, for a couple of months of dinners – of showing, of sitting at the head of his table and wearing the family diamonds. This, in point of fact, he did – and when the season was over he turned her out of the house. There is a story, a short story, in that. x x x x x x x x x x x x

  ROSE TREMAIN

  Is Anybody There?

  Rose Tremain’s tale takes off from two notebook subjects recorded twenty years apart.

  Jan. 22d [1879] Subject for a ghost-story.

  Imagine a door – either walled-up, or that has been long locked – at which there is an occasional knocking – a knocking which – as the other side of the door is inaccessible – can only be ghostly. The occupant of the house or room, containing the door, has long been familiar with the sound; and regarding it as ghostly, has ceased to heed it particularly – as the ghostly presence remains on the other side of the door, and never reveals itself in other ways. But this person may be imagined to have some great & constant trouble; & it may be observed by another person, relating the story, that the knocking increases with each fresh manifestation of the trouble.

  Rome. Hotel de l’Europe. May 16th [1899]

  Note the idea of the knock at door (petite fantaisie)fn10 that comes to young man (3 loud taps &c) everywhere – in all rooms & places he successively occupies – going from one to the other. ‘I’ tell it – am with him: (he has told me;) share a little (though joking him always) his wonder, worry, suspense. I’ve my idea of what it means. His fate &c. ‘Sometimes there will be something there – some one.’ I am with him once when it happens. I am with him the 1st time – I mean the 1st time I know about it. (He doesn’t notice – I do; then he explains: ‘Oh, I thought it was only –.’ He opens: there is some one – natural & ordinary. It is my entrée en matière.)fn11 The dénoûment is all. What does come – at last. What is there. This to be ciphered out.

  JONATHAN COE

  Canadians Can’t Flirt

  [1879] A subject.

  The Count G. in Florence (Mme T. told me the other night) married an American girl, Miss F., whom he neglected for other women, to whom he was constantly making love.fn12 She, very fond of him, tried to console herself by flirting with other men; but she couldn’t do it – it was not in her – she broke down in the attempt. This might be related from the point of view of one of the men whom she selects for this purpose & who really cares for her. Her caprices, absences, preoccupations, &c – her sadness, her mechanical, perfunctory way of doing it – then her suddenly breaking it off & letting him see that she has a horror of him – he meanwhile being very innocent & devoted.

  TESSA HADLEY

  Old Friends

  Oct. 22d 1891 (34 De Vere Gdns.)

  What of this idea for a very little tale? – The situation of a married woman who during her husband’s lifetime has loved another man and who, after his death[,] finds herself confronted with her lover – with the man whom, at least, she has suffered to make love to her, in a certain particular way. The particular way I imagine to be this: the husband is older, stupider, uglier, but she has of course always had a bad conscience. I imagine a flirtation between her and the younger man, who is really in love with her, which she breaks off on becoming aware that her husband is ill & dying. He is kind, indulgent, unsuspicious to her and she is so touched by his tenderness and suffering that she is filled with remorse at her infidelity and breaks utterly with her lover. She devotes herself to her husband, nurses and cherishes him – but at the end of a short time he dies. She is haunted by the sense that she was unkind to him – that he suspected her – that she broke his heart – that she really killed him. In this state she passes 6 months, at the end of which she meets again the man who has loved her and who still loves her. His hope is now that she will marry him – that he has gained his cause by waiting, by respecting her, by leaving her alone. x x x x x x x x

  GILES FODEN

  The Road to Gabon

  [Rome, 1899]

  The coward – le Brave. The man who by a fluke has done a great bravery in the past; knows he can’t do it again & lives in terror of the occasion that shall put him to the test. Dies of that terror.

  LYNNE TRUSS

  Testaments

  [Lamb House, Rye. September 1900]fn13

  Note on some other occasion the little theme suggested by Lady W[olseley]’s account of attitude & behaviour of their landlord, in the greater house, consequent on their beautiful installation in the smaller & happy creation in it – beyond what he could have dreamed – of an interesting & exquisite milieu.fn14 Something in the general situation – the resentment by the bewildered & mystified proprietor – of a work of charm beyond anything he had conceived or can, even yet, understand. It’s a case – a study [of] a peculiar kind of jealousy, the resentment of supersession. The ugly hopeless, helpless great house – the beautiful, clever, unimitable small one. The mystification – the original mistake.

  AMIT CHAUDHURI

  Wensleydale

  Vallombrosa.fn15 July 27th. 1890.

  Subject for a short tale: a young man or woman who, in a far Western city – Colorado or California – surrounds himself with a European ‘atmosphere’ by means of French & English books – Maupassant, Revue des 2. Mondesfn16 – Anatole France, Paul Bourget, Jules Lemaitre, &c; &, making it really very complete, & a little world, intense world of association & perception in the alien air, lives in it altogether. Visit to him of narrator, who has been in Europe & knows the people (say narrator is a very modern impressionist painter;) & contrast of all these hallucinations with the hard western ugliness, newspaperism, vulgarity – democracy. There must be an American literary woman, from New England, ‘pure & refined,’ thin & intense. The sketch, picture, vision – à la Maupassant. The point that, after all, even when an opportunity offers to go over & see the realities – go to Paris & there know something of the life described – the individual stays – won’t leave: held by the spell of knowing it all that way – as the best. It isn’t much of a ‘point’ – but I can sharpen it; & the situation, & what one can bring in, are the point.

  SUSIE BOYT

  People Were So Funny

  April 25th 1911 (95 Irving St.)

  And then there is the little fantasy of the young woman (as she came into my head the other month,) who remains so devoted to her apparently chronically invalid Mother, so attached to her bedside and so piously & exhaustedly glued there, to her waste of youth & strength & cheer, that certain persons, the doctor, the friend, or two, the other relation or two, are unanimous as to the necessity that something be done about it – that is that the daughter be got away, that she be saved while yet there is time.

  PHILIP HORNE

  The Troll

  November 18th 1894 (34 De Vere Gdns. W.)

  Isn’t there perhaps th
e subject of a little – a very little – tale (de moeurs littérairesfn17) in the idea of a man of letters, a poet, a novelist, finding out, after years, or a considerable period, of very happy, unsuspecting & more or less affectionate intercourse with a ‘lady-writer,’ a newspaper-woman, as it were, that he has been systematically débiné,fn18 ‘slated’ by her in certain critical journals to which she contributes? He has known her long & liked her, known of her hack-work &c, and liked it less; and has also known that the éreintementsfn19 in question have periodically appeared – but he has never connected them with her or her with them, and when he makes the discovery it is an agitating, a very painful revelation to him. Or the reviewer may be a man & the author anonymously and viciously – or at least abusively – reviewed may be a woman. The point of the thing is whether there be not a little supposable theme or drama in the relation, the situation of the two people after the thing comes to light – the pretension on the part of the reviewer of having one attitude to the writer as a writer, & a totally distinct one as a member of society, a friend, a human being. They may be – the reviewer may be – unconsciously, disappointedly, rageusement,fn20 in love with the victim. It is only a little situation; but perhaps there is something in it.

  JOSEPH O’NEILL

  The Poltroon Husband

  [Lamb House, Rye. September 1900]

  Alicefn21 related a day or two ago another little anecdote, of New England, of ‘Weymouth’ origin, in which there might be some small very good thing. Some woman of that countryside – some woman & her husband – were [waked] at night by a sound below-stairs which they knew, or believed, must be burglars, and it was a question of the husband’s naturally going down to see. But the husband declined – wouldn’t stir, said he wasn’t armed, hung back &c, & his wife declared that in that case she must. But her disgust & scorn. ‘You mean to say you’ll let me?’ ‘Well, I can’t prevent you. But I won’t –!’ She goes down, leaving him, & in the lower regions finds a man – a young man of the place – whom she knows. He’s not a professional housebreaker, naturally, only a fellow in bad ways, in trouble, wanting to get hold of some particular thing, to sell, realise it, that they have. Taken in the act, & by her, his assurance fails him, while hers rises, & her view of the situation. He too is a poorish creature – he makes no stand. She threatens to denounce him (he keeps her from calling,) & he pleads with her not to ruin him. The little scene takes place between, & she consents at last, this first time, to let him off. But if ever again – why, she’ll [do] this: which count[s] all the more against him – so, look out! He does look out; she lets him off & out, he escapes, & she returns to her husband. He has heard the voices below, making out, however, nothing, & he knows something has taken place. She admits part of it – says there was somebody, & she has let him off. Who was it then? – he is all eagerness to know. Ah, but this she won’t tell him, & she meets curiosity with derision & scorn. She will never tell him; he won’t be able to find out; & he will never know – so that he will be properly punished for his cowardice. Well, his baffled curiosity is his punishment, & the subject, the little subject, would be something or other that this produces and leads to. Tormenting effect of this withholding of his wife’s – & creation for him, by it, of a sense of a relation with (on her part,) the man she found. There is something in it; but for very brief treatment, for the simple reason that the poltroon of a husband can’t be made to have a consciousness in wh. the reader will linger long. x x x x x x

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  Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Compilation, introduction and ‘The Troll’ copyright © Philip Horne 2018

  Foreword copyright © Michael Wood 2018

  ‘Father X’ copyright © Paul Theroux 2018

  ‘Silence’ copyright © Colm Tóibín 2010. First published in The Empty Family: Stories by Colm Tóibín (Viking, 2010). Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  ‘Is Anybody There?’ copyright © Rose Tremain 2018

  ‘Canadians Can’t Flirt’ copyright © Jonathan Coe 2018

  ‘Old Friends’ copyright © Tessa Hadley 2018

  ‘The Road to Gabon’ copyright © Giles Foden 2018

  ‘Testaments’ copyright © Lynne Truss 2018

  ‘Wensleydale’ copyright © Amit Chaudhuri 2018

  ‘People Were So Funny’ copyright © Susie Boyt 2018

  ‘The Poltroon Husband’ copyright © Joseph O’Neill 2018

  Cover illustration © Cassie Byrnes

  The contributors have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This collection first published in Great Britain by Vintage Classics in 2018

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Appendix

  fn1 James’s friend Benson (1862–1925), a poet, critic and scholar most noted now for his Diary, was the son of Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave James the subject for ‘The Turn of the Screw’.