Author, Author

by David Lodge

  Looking after Mr James has certainly brought them closer together, especially since he had the strokes, and Burgess is always kind and appreciative towards her and tells her they make ‘a good team’, but he has never shown a sign of romantic interest. Is this, she wonders, because she is not pretty enough, or because she is older than him (though nobody could tell, now, to look at them), or because he thinks her greater height would make them look ridiculous as a couple (he made a joke to her once about such an ill-matched pair of lovers who they saw from the sitting-room window down on the Embankment)? Or is it because, like the man in Mr James’s story, he simply hasn’t noticed that she loves him?

  In the late evening of New Year’s Eve Mrs James summons the servants to the sitting room. She asks Burgess to make sure the nurse is in the master bedroom, and that the door of the sitting room is firmly shut. Then she tells them she was privately informed a few days ago that Mr James is going to be awarded the Order of Merit in the New Year’s Honours List. It will be in The Times the next morning. Till then the information is confidential, and she has decided not to tell Mr James himself until it can be talked about openly, in case he should get over-excited. A very old friend of his, the writer Edmund Gosse, who knows about the award, has asked if he could have the privilege of telling Mr James the good news and he would be calling early tomorrow morning for that purpose.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs James,’ says Burgess, after a pause. ‘But this Order of Merit . . . Is it a medal, like?’

  ‘I understand it’s a very high honour, recommended by the Prime Minister to the King,’ says Mrs James. At the word ‘King’ a little tremor of excitement passes through her audience. ‘Something like a knighthood, but without the “Sir” attached,’ she goes on, in a cool, almost off-hand tone of voice. Her own feelings about the news are ambivalent. As an American and a republican she regards all royal patronage with suspicion, and like most members of her family she deplored Henry’s decision to exchange his American citizenship for British. On the other hand she cannot but take pride in what is obviously a very exceptional public recognition of her brother-in-law’s achievements. Looking at the eager interested faces before her she allows herself a smile of tribal satisfaction. ‘Mr Gosse told me it is actually more distinguished than a knighthood, because only twenty-four people can hold the Order of Merit at any one time.’

  ‘Well, jolly good for Mr James, I say!’ Burgess exclaims, grinning broadly, and Joan and Minnie murmur their agreement.

  Back in the kitchen they excitedly discuss the news.

  ‘I think she should have told him,’ says Joan Anderson. ‘Suppose he died tonight.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say it!’ says Minnie.

  ‘The old toff isn’t going to pop off yet,’ says Burgess. ‘I just hope he can take it in, when they tell him tomorrow. Anyway, we ought to drink to his health, eh? What do you fancy, Mrs Anderson?’

  Joan says she always enjoys a glass of port. Minnie, who seldom indulges in alcoholic drinks, thinks it safest to follow suit. Burgess goes to the pantry and brings back a bottle of vintage port, and scotch whisky for himself. ‘We can see the New Year in at the same time,’ he says.

  Joan Anderson lays out some biscuits and cheese and pickle while Burgess pours the drinks. They sit round the table and raise their glasses as Burgess says: ‘To Mr James, God bless him.’ Minnie feels a warm glow spread through her whole body as she sips the heavy crimson wine. Relaxed by the whisky, Burgess reminisces about his years of service with Mr James, his experiences in America, and in the great country houses of England. Even the usually taciturn Joan Anderson becomes almost skittish. ‘You didn’t have a moustache in those days, Burgess,’ she says after one anecdote. ‘It suits you.’ ‘Aye,’ he says, with a chuckle. ‘When the battalion was marching from Calais to the front all ranks was ordered to grow moustaches. I reckon it was to make us look older – most of the lads was quite young, you see, years younger’n me. Some of ’em looked like schoolboys. Well, I was finding the marching hard going, I don’t mind telling you, what with my short legs, but I had no trouble growing a moustache in under a week. I out-moustached them all!’ He chuckles.

  ‘Your legs ain’t so short, Burgess,’ Minnie blurts out, and then blushes furiously.

  He glances curiously at her. ‘Well, there’s advantages in being short in a trench,’ he says. ‘You’re less likely to show your head over the top when you get up on the fire step.’

  ‘So how was you wounded, then?’ Minnie asks boldly.

  ‘Well, that were a mortar bomb.’ He mimes with his hand the steep trajectory of a mortar round, up high in the air and down again. ‘You can’t duck one of them if they get the range right. You can hear it coming in but you don’t have time to move.’

  He has never said so much about his war experiences before. Minnie is eager to hear more, but Burgess changes the subject. It is nearly midnight, and at his suggestion they creep into the sitting room (Mrs James has gone to bed, and the night nurse is dozing beside her patient in the master bedroom), turn out the lights and open the sash windows so that they will hear the clocks striking twelve. It takes a little while for their eyes to accommodate to the darkness. The gaslamps along Chelsea Embankment are dim because of the lighting restrictions, and the vessels moving up and down the river show only navigation lights. The silhouette of the Albert Bridge, downstream to their left, outlined with electric light bulbs in peacetime, is scarcely visible. At intervals the doors of the King’s Head and Eight Bells pub on the corner of Cheyne Walk and Cheyne Row open and shut, expelling a gust of voices and piano music into the damp night air. Licensing hours have been extended according to tradition, in spite of official concern about the effect of excessive drinking on the war effort (according to The Times, the Royal Family have given up alcohol for the duration). Looking down at the little public garden that separates the entrance of Carlyle Mansions from the Embankment, Minnie sees pairs of lovers taking advantage of the darkness, embracing under the leafless trees. She moves closer to Burgess until she is brushing against him, willing him to put his arm around her waist, but he doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity. The church clocks begin to chime midnight – from Chelsea behind their backs, from Battersea across the river, and faintly but distinctly in the background they hear the gong-like sound of Big Ben.

  ‘Happy New Year, Joan!’ says Burgess, and kisses her gallantly on the cheek. He turns to salute Minnie in the same manner, but she gives him a hug and angles her head to kiss him on the mouth, feeling the soft cushion of his moustache yield against her lips and his body stiffen in surprise.

  ‘Happy New Year, Burgess,’ she gasps, and hurries from the room.

  Edmund Gosse, versatile man of letters, poet, critic, essayist, translator, recently retired Librarian to the House of Lords, who has known Henry James for thirty-five years, calls as arranged, a little after ten the next morning.

  ‘Happy New Year, Kidd,’ he says as she takes his hat and gloves in the hall, and helps him off with his grey overcoat. His suit is grey, matching his grey hair and drooping grey moustache. But for the bright blue eyes behind his steel-rimmed spectacles he might be an incarnation of the fog rising from the river outside.

  ‘Thank you, sir. And the same to you, sir.’

  ‘You know why I’ve come so early?’

  ‘Oh yes! But I don’t know as whether he’ll understand you, sir,’ Minnie says. ‘He’s very poorly this morning. Barely conscious, you might say.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  Minnie shows him into the master bedroom. For the sake of James’s lungs the curtains are drawn as insulation against the cold damp air outside, and a single shaded table lamp is the only illumination. It is so dark in the room that Gosse has almost to grope his way to the bedside. The author is lying on his back, breathing heavily, his eyes shut.

  ‘Is he asleep?’ Gosse whispers to Minnie. There is no nurse on duty today.

  ‘Perhaps, sir. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
’

  Gosse stoops over the recumbent form. ‘Henry, this is Edmund – can you hear me?’ he says, in a tone that he tries to make both quiet and penetrating. ‘Great news. They’ve given you the O.M.’ No change of expression on the sunken features indicates that the message has been received. ‘Congratulations, my dear chap,’ Gosse adds. The face remains impassive. Gosse looks at Minnie. Minnie shrugs. In the silence of the room they hear the foghorns lowing mournfully to each other on the river. A little dispirited by this anticlimax to his announcement Gosse exits quietly from the bedroom, while Minnie stays behind to adjust the bedclothes. As the door closes behind Gosse, the author opens his eyes and murmurs: ‘Turn out the light, Kidd, and spare my blushes.’

  Later in the day James shows more animation, as messages of congratulation pour into the flat, by telegram, telephone, and special delivery. Theodora Bosanquet calls to deliver her congratulations in person and shares the lift to the fourth floor with a boy from the telegraph office who has a great sheaf of telegrams for Flat 21 in his leather satchel. She helps Mrs James open the envelopes and read out the messages – for there is a temporary truce between the two ladies in the excitement of the hour. The names are a roll-call of Henry James’s wide and distinguished acquaintance, especially in the world of letters: Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, Hugh Walpole, Arnold Bennett, Max Beerbohm, Mrs Humphry Ward . . . The telegrams, letters and discarded envelopes litter the counterpane of James’s bed. He sits up, propped by pillows, smiling benignly above the mound of paper like (it occurs to Theodora) a Buddha receiving the written petitions of his worshippers.

  Not all the names receive a pleased nod of recognition. The name of H. G. Wells draws a frown – the wound inflicted by his Boon, a satirical jeu d’esprit published earlier that year, with its cruel caricature of HJ’s late style (‘It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den’), has not healed. Theodora is unsurprised, having typed HJ’s hurt letters to the younger writer, whom he had previously counted a friend and admirer. But it is another name that provokes the strongest negative reaction, and the biggest surprise, when Theodora reads it out: ‘Warmest congratulations on your much deserved honour. I am proud to have been the producer of Guy Domville, even though it was not a success. Sir George Alexander.’

  James’s face darkens, his brow beetles, the sparse hairs on his head seem to bristle. He positively scowls. ‘Alexander,’ he says quite distinctly, ‘is a shit.’

  The two ladies glance at each other in dismay. Never, ever, has either of them heard Henry James utter this word, or anything remotely comparable in crude indecency. It is a measure of his mental deterioration that he should use it in their presence. In fact it is hard to believe that he has ever used it before in any company. Perhaps he overheard the word as he passed a group of rough men loitering at a street corner, or in the smoking room of some club less respectable than his own Reform, and, buried in his memory, it has risen to his lips unimpeded by the filter of his usual fastidious manners. Or perhaps it was a verbal slip, replacing some other intended word. Or perhaps he didn’t utter it at all – perhaps they misheard him. The two ladies are just about to make a tacit contract to ignore the offending expletive, when he says: ‘A treacherous shit.’

  ‘Henry!’ Mrs James exclaims. ‘For shame! Such shocking language.’

  Henry seems indifferent to the reproof. Theodora hastens to find some distraction from this unhappy interruption to the flow of good will. ‘Here’s another,’ she says, ripping open an envelope. ‘Let’s see who it’s from . . . Gerald Du Maurier! “Heartiest congratulations, the Governor would have been delighted.”’

  ‘Du Maurier’s dead,’ says Henry.

  ‘No, no, Henry,’ says Mrs James. ‘That was your old friend, George Du Maurier. This is from his son, I presume.’

  ‘Yes, Gerald, the actor,’ Theodora joins in. ‘“The Governor” must mean his father.’

  ‘They said it was matter around the heart,’ says Henry. ‘But it was Trilby that was the matter.’

  ‘That was George Du Maurier, Henry,’ says Mrs James. ‘This message is from his son Gerald.’

  ‘You remember him, Mr James,’ says Theodora. ‘We met him one day about a year ago in Fortnum and Mason, and you talked about old times in Hampstead when he was a boy. He was Christmas shopping with his little girl, Daphne.’

  ‘I don’t recall a Daphne,’ he says. ‘There was Trixy, and Sylvia, and May. And two boys, Guy and . . . and Gerald. Gerald became an actor.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ says Mrs James. ‘It is he who has sent you the telegram, Henry.’

  ‘He was the original Captain Hook, if I am not mistaken,’ says Henry.

  ‘Very good!’ Theodora claps her hands.

  ‘Tick tock,’ says Henry, with a strange leering grin. His drooping eyelid looks like a heavy wink.

  ‘What does he mean?’ says Mrs James.

  ‘I believe it’s an allusion to the crocodile in Peter Pan,’ says Theodora.

  ‘An awfully big adventure,’ says Henry, and closes both his eyes.

  ‘I think perhaps we should let him rest now,’ says Mrs James.

  In the hall, as Theodora is putting on her topcoat and her gloves preparatory to leaving, Mrs James says: ‘I would be obliged, Miss Bosanquet, if you would forget that my brother-in-law ever uttered that word.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs James. I will expunge it from my memory. He was not himself.’

  ‘Quite so . . . But the telegram from the Alexander man was tactless. There was a very unpleasant episode at the first night of Guy Domville. Did you know?’

  ‘Well, I have heard it spoken of,’ says Theodora. ‘We never discussed the matter.’

  ‘Henry blamed Alexander for it. He wrote to William at the time, that they were the most horrible hours of his life. Those were his very words. “The most horrible hours of my life.” I’m afraid I thought to myself, well Henry, if that’s the worst thing you experience in life, you’ll be lucky.’

  ‘But it’s hard for authors,’ says Theodora. ‘They have to put up with being criticised all the time. And when the criticism is especially rude or unfair, then . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘I know all about that,’ says Mrs James. ‘I was married to one.’

  ‘It’s strange how his memory comes and goes,’ says Theodora, pulling on her sensible calfskin gloves. She notes a split seam on the left-hand one which needs to be repaired. ‘The way he rattled off the names of all those Du Mauriers . . . I wonder what he meant by saying – about George Du Maurier – “Trilby was the matter”.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ says Mrs James. ‘It was the most tremendous success in its day – in America, anyway. Henry was very attached to him, I believe, but William could never understand what he saw in the little man.’

  Minnie approaches to open the front door for Theodora.

  ‘You look pale, Kidd,’ says Mrs James. ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you, ma’am. I was up late last night.’

  ‘It’s probably all the excitement,’ says Theodora with a smile. She extends her hand to Mrs James. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs James. It’s been a great day. Thank you for letting me share it.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Bosanquet,’ says Mrs James, shaking her hand without warmth.

  Minnie shuts the door behind Theodora.

  ‘I am going to my room to rest, Kidd,’ says Mrs James. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Ask Burgess to sit with Mr James. He seems to like to find Burgess there when he wakes up.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ says Minnie.

  PART TWO

  1

  IN the 1880s, if he was in town on a Sunday and the weather was dry, he would often walk from his rooms in Bolton Street, Piccadilly, or later from his more commodious quatrième in De Vere Ga
rdens, South Kensington, up to the heights of Hampstead, to visit George Du Maurier. Their acquaintance had begun much earlier – indeed on Henry’s side it had begun before they ever met, as he liked to explain to the Du Maurier children, who listened politely to his elucidation of this paradox. A mutual friend had shown him some of their father’s illustrations in the magazine Once a Week as early as 1862, when he was a student at the Harvard Law School. He had been much taken with them, and followed with keen interest and appreciation the artist’s subsequent progress, especially his drawings for Punch, in which the Du Maurier children often figured, sometimes identified by their real names. ‘So you see, my dear Trixy,’ (or my dear Guy, or my dear Sylvia, or whoever it was he happened to be addressing) he would say, ‘I met you all in the pages of Punch – met you two-dimensionally as it were – long before I saw you in the, ah – in person. And on that – on that memorable – on that auspicious day, you were all just as I expected – though a little bit more grown up, of course. Only Chang looked exactly the same as in his pictures – and he still does, you know.’ Chang was the family’s giant St Bernard, who also made occasional appearances in Du Maurier’s drawings.