by David Lodge
A frown of disapproval passes across Mrs James’s face at this last phrase, but she contents herself with saying: ‘Well, I’m old enough to remember the Civil War, and all the fine young men who were killed then. I just hope America has the sense to keep out of this one.’
‘Henry would, of course, disagree with you vehemently,’ says Gosse.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,’ says Mrs James.
There is a pause in the conversation.
‘I think perhaps I should leave you now,’ says Gosse, rising to his feet. ‘I take it that there is no possibility of Henry’s being able to receive his honour from the King at Buckingham Palace?’
‘None at all, I’m afraid,’ says Mrs James, and Peggy concurs.
‘Very well, I’ll pass that on to the appropriate quarter,’ says Gosse. ‘No doubt some arrangement can be made to confer the honour here.’
So on the 19th of January Lord Bryce, former British Ambassador to the United States, and a personal friend of Henry’s, comes to Carlyle Mansions to deliver the insignia of the Order of Merit at Henry’s bedside. The recipient is barely conscious throughout the simple ceremony, and Mrs James has to make a brief and rather awkward speech of thanks on his behalf. She feels ill-at-ease in this role, and not just because of her republican principles. She doesn’t know quite what to make of the fuss that is being made about Henry’s O.M., and the deluge of telegrams and letters from prominent persons that it triggered. She has always considered that she was married to the more distinguished of the two brothers. William’s international fame as a philosopher and psychologist had come relatively late in life, but it never faltered. Whereas Henry had struggled to maintain his early success as a writer – at least, his letters were always full of complaints about poor sales, stupid reviews, and the indifference of the reading public to his work. Why he ever expected to be a best-selling author was a mystery. The unreadability of his later books – anything later than The Portrait of a Lady as far as she herself was concerned – was something of a family joke. William more than once urged him to write more simply and directly if he wanted to attract more readers, but instead Henry’s style grew more and more elaborate and obscure, and he had ruined his early work by revising it for the New York Edition, which, not surprisingly, had been a complete flop. As to his doomed attempt to make himself into a playwright, the less said about that the better. By any objective standards, his career, taken all in all, has been a story of failure and disappointment, but the way people have reacted to his O.M. would make one think he was a Great Writer, as eminent in his own sphere as William in his. Alice is puzzled and irritated by the paradox. She loves her brother-in-law, of course – she wouldn’t be here in war-worn London if that wasn’t the case – but she can’t bear to see him put on a pedestal at the same level as her dear William.
At the end of January Alice’s son Harry arrives at Carlyle Mansions. He is a lawyer by training, an administrator by temperament and choice. Manager of the Rockefeller Medical Foundation in New York at the outbreak of the war, he has been working in Europe ever since as a member of the Rockefeller Commission for the relief of non-combatants. He is a vigorous energetic bachelor in his mid-thirties, striking in appearance, with hair already going white, but a black moustache, and a strong, jutting jaw-line. He immediately assumes executive control of the household, and although his mother has been given power of attorney over Henry’s affairs she defers to her son’s judgement in most matters. He has much the same attitude to his uncle’s literary status as she has: pleasure in the credit it brings to the family, mingled with some bafflement and scepticism about the artistic value of his writings, and a pragmatic concern to protect their monetary value. His brisk, practical, masculine leadership disperses some of the volatile emotional atmosphere that has accumulated in a space occupied mainly by women. Since it is obvious that Henry is not going to recover, Harry sees no point in waiting sentimentally for the end to come before beginning the formidable task of sorting out his estate. The immediate beneficiary is Theodora, who is soon given work to do, making lists of Henry’s manuscripts, and thus gains access to the flat again. Harry himself goes down to Lamb House and makes inventories of its contents. He finds a bundle of letters from George Du Maurier in a cabinet drawer in the Green Room, and brings them back to London.
‘I don’t understand why there aren’t more letters, either here or in Rye,’ he says to Theodora, after his return. ‘Uncle Henry must have received hundreds – thousands – in his lifetime, many of them from famous people. They would be valuable.’
‘He burned them,’ says Theodora. ‘He burned them in the garden at Lamb House.’
‘Why?’
‘He was depressed. It was late in 1909, just before you came over to see him.’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Harry, remembering. His father was still alive then, and had been so alarmed by the despairing tone of the letters he was receiving from Henry that he dispatched Harry across the Atlantic to discover what was the matter. Harry had found his uncle prostrate, unable or unwilling to get out of bed, and scarcely able to take nourishment. He sat by his side, holding his hand, distressed and embarrassed as Henry sobbed and mumbled scarcely intelligible sentences about the futility of his life, the total absence of hope and joy, and how he longed for an end to the pain of consciousness, all mixed up with obscure references to Aunt Alice and ‘Fenimore’, who Harry thought must be Constance Fenimore Woolson. When he reported by letter to his father, William diagnosed a nervous breakdown of possibly suicidal severity, and set off immediately with Alice for England, passing Harry’s returning ship in mid-Atlantic. They took Henry away from Lamb House to Bad Nauheim, and by midsummer he had fully recovered, more by virtue of their kindness and company than the waters of the spa. It was William whose condition deteriorated, and he died shortly after getting home, tenderly accompanied by Henry as well as Alice, the brothers’ roles now reversed, and by the invaluable Burgess Noakes. Harry had met the little party off the boat at Quebec, in pouring rain, and escorted them by rail and road to the family’s country house at Chocorua, New Hampshire, where his father died a week later. ‘Yes, yes, it all comes back to me now,’ Harry says to Theodora. ‘But I didn’t know he had destroyed all his letters. Why?’
‘I think he had lost the will to live, at the time,’ she says, ‘and he didn’t want to leave any private papers behind. He has an obsession about privacy. He hates the idea of people prying into his life after he is dead.’
‘What about the letters he received since then?’ Harry asks.
‘I believe he burned them too, when he went down to Lamb House last October. Kidd told me he had a big bonfire of papers in the garden.’
‘So these letters from Du Maurier are something of a rarity?’
‘They’re probably the only complete – or fairly complete – set of letters from one of his friends in existence.’
‘What a shame,’ Harry sighs. ‘He knew so many distinguished people.’
‘He knew everybody,’ says Theodora.
They fall silent, both struck simultaneously with the uncomfortable realisation that they are already speaking of him in the past tense.
The letters from George Du Maurier are all out of sequence, and pages from different letters are mixed up, as if they were bundled together carelessly or hastily, so after dinner that day Harry asks his mother and sister if they would like to put them in order. They find the task interesting, though the letters themselves are rather less so, except for the little sketches which rather endearingly illustrate them. Du Maurier was obviously a nice man, and devoted to Henry, but not a great mind, nor a great prose stylist, to judge from the correspondence. He was humbly deferential to Henry’s literary knowledge, and dutifully reported his reading of French authors recommended by his friend in conversations on Hampstead Heath. ‘It is often my custom of an afternoon to sit on the bench where we talked of Flaubert and Zola and Daudet,’ he wrote early in their relationship. He
praised Henry’s novels generously, but the shorter non-fiction pieces were clearly more to his taste: ‘when dealing with people and places your work is more delightful than that of anyone else I can think of.’ The warmth of their friendship is obvious from the letters – ‘I’m told you are coming on Sunday – hooray!’ he wrote, typically, in September ’88 – but its chemistry remains elusive.
Then Mrs James makes an unexpected discovery: a letter, dated September 23rd, 1910, not from Du Maurier, who had long been dead by then, but from his widow, to ‘My dear Mr James’, evidently thanking Henry for a letter of condolence he had written on the death of her daughter, Sylvia. ‘I quite know how sincerely and deeply you must feel for me in this very great sorrow that has come to me, and I was so glad to get your kind letter so full of sympathy,’ it begins. Having heard the sad history of Sylvia very recently, Alice finds it easy to enter into Emma Du Maurier’s situation and to empathise with her – especially when the letter goes on to refer to the death of her own beloved William. ‘It was on my way home from Devonshire on August 29th that I read in the papers of your brother’s death, and I do feel very grieved for you dear Mr James, for I know how devoted you were to each other and this great sorrow came to you at a time when you were less able to bear it.’ Immediately this releases a stream of poignant memories for Alice, of the spring and summer of 1910 – Henry’s nervous breakdown, their errand of mercy to Europe, the stressful return journey to America, William’s sudden decline and death in his beloved house in New Hampshire. Henry had stayed on after the funeral to keep her company, so . . .
‘Henry must have received this letter at Chocorua!’ she exclaims. ‘How very extraordinary.’ She passes the letter to Peggy.
‘Yes, I remember Uncle Henry mentioning Sylvia’s death at the time,’ Peggy says when she has perused the letter. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No. And if he did, I wouldn’t have paid any attention – I had enough grief of my own to cope with. What was Sylvia Du Maurier – or Sylvia Something-Davies – to me?’
But now it is different. Going to see Peter Pan, hearing from Edmund Gosse the story behind it, finding this letter written at the time of her own husband’s death, addressed to the brother-in-law who now lies dying in another room, reading Emma Du Maurier’s slightly wistful account of Barrie’s offer to take care of the orphaned Davies boys – ‘I am too old to be really of any use to them. He is unattached and his one wish is to look after them in the way Sylvia would have wanted,’ and knowing that the eldest boy, George, was killed in the war five years later at the age of only twenty-one – the convergence of all these circumstances seems to make a kind of pattern, linking up separate lives and deaths in a way that novels do, with an effect of contrived but irresistible pathos. Alice finds herself unexpectedly weeping.
‘What’s the matter, Mother?’ Peggy asks anxiously.
Mrs James shakes her head, sniffs and wipes her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I don’t know. It all seems so sad.’
‘Mrs James is crying,’ Minnie reports to the kitchen. ‘I never seen that before.’
‘The doctor was here this afternoon,’ says Joan Anderson. ‘He must have told her something.’
‘I don’t think so,’ says Burgess. ‘Mr James was just the same as usual today.’
‘He can’t last much longer, though,’ says Joan. ‘I heard the nurses saying.’
‘Sayin’ what?’ says Minnie.
‘Saying that,’ says Joan. ‘And then – what will happen to us?’
At last the subject, the question secretly pondered by all of them for weeks, is out in the open, on the table for discussion.
‘You’ll be all right, Joan,’ says Burgess. ‘There’s always work for a good cook.’
‘What about yourself?’ says Joan.
Burgess shrugs. ‘I s’pose I’ll report back to the regimental depot.’ He has heard nothing from the War Office about a discharge.
‘They’ll never send you back to the Front, will they?’ says Minnie.
Burgess doesn’t hear the question, or perhaps pretends not to hear it.
‘I’ll get a job in a factory,’ says Minnie. ‘A munitions factory.’
‘Minnie – you’d never!’ says Joan Anderson, shocked.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Minnie says defiantly. ‘The pay’s good – and I’d be doing my bit for the war effort.’
‘But they’re terrible places, those factories,’ says Joan. ‘I’ve got a niece who tried it once – she couldn’t stand it. The swearing, the smutty talk, the goings on. And you have to wear trousers.’
‘I wouldn’t mind wearing trousers,’ Minnie says.
‘It’s dirty, dangerous work, Minnie,’ says Burgess. ‘It’s not for you.’
‘What is for me, then?’ she says, looking him directly in the eye. ‘What do you think I should do, Burgess?’
He strokes his moustache thoughtfully. ‘You could train to be a nurse,’ he says. ‘You’d make a good nurse.’
‘Yes, Minnie, you’ve had plenty of practice,’ says Joan Anderson.
‘True enough,’ says Minnie. ‘But I don’t like the sight of blood.’
‘Ah, well, that would be a drawback in a field hospital,’ says Burgess, nodding.
The next morning Burgess is sorting out the morning’s first delivery of mail in the kitchen when he comes across an official envelope from the War Office addressed to himself. He freezes so suddenly that Minnie, who is preparing Mrs James’s breakfast tray, notices.
‘What is it, Burgess?’
He is staring at the envelope, lying on the deal table, as if it is an unexploded bomb. Minnie comes over and sees what it is.
‘Oh, Burgess!’ she exclaims. ‘It’s your discharge! Open it!’
‘Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,’ he says.
Joan comes across from the kitchen range to look. ‘Open it and see.’
‘I’ll open it for you, if you like,’ says Minnie.
‘No, I’ll do it.’ He rips open the envelope, unfolds the letter inside and quickly scans it. ‘Discharged on medical grounds,’ he says, looking up, and grins.
Minnie screams, throws her arms round him and kisses him.
‘Here, steady on!’ he says.
Minnie sits down abruptly on the nearest chair and bursts into tears. Joan Anderson gives Burgess a hug.
‘I must tell the old toff,’ says Burgess.
The night nurse is getting ready to go off duty, and the day nurse has not yet arrived. Burgess tells the night nurse to go, and sits down beside the bed. The curtains have been drawn back, and a cold grey light slants through the north-facing windows from an overcast sky. The author is lying on his back, with his eyes closed, breathing regularly, the sheet and blanket turned down neatly under his chin by the nurse. He seems to be asleep, but who knows?
‘Mr James, sir,’ Burgess says quietly, ‘my discharge has come through.’
The author opens his eyes, looks up at Burgess and smiles faintly. ‘Burgess,’ he murmurs.
‘My discharge came through, sir,’ Burgess repeats, a little louder. ‘I got the letter this morning. I thought you’d like to know.’ The author closes his eyes again. ‘And I want to thank you, with all my heart,’ says Burgess. ‘First for getting me the extended leave, and now this. I’d be dead by now if they’d sent me back to the Front. Dead, or crippled, or doolally. And that’s the truth.’ He is not sure whether his master hears or understands or even whether he is fully awake, but it doesn’t matter. He can feel the tension that has gripped him ever since he returned to England, the fear of being sent back to the Front, uncoiling inside him like a powerful spring. He has never told anybody about what it was really like, but the time has come to unburden himself, and it suits him to have a patient, silent listener who will not interrupt or ask questions or pass comment.
‘It weren’t gettin’ wounded that was the worst part. In a way that was the best part. We’d just relieved the Second Battalion in the trenches near Cambrin
. There was no real fightin’ at the time, but the Huns lobbed over the occasional mortar bomb just to be aggravatin’. One landed in my trench after breakfast one morning. I didn’t know what hit me till I woke up in the field ambulance and the orderly said something I couldn’t hear, but he smiled so I knew I couldn’t be hurt too bad. He gave me a cigarette, and it was the best fag I ever smoked. I thought to myself: “I’m going to get out of it. I’ll be sent home.” And I was, thank God.
‘No, the worst part was two weeks before that, the battle of Aubers Ridge. That’s what they called it in the papers. We didn’t know what it was called at the time. It weren’t much of a ridge – just a gentle slope risin’ up out of the plain, nothin’ like Point Hill at home. Our orders was to clear the Huns out of the trenches in front of it and occupy the high ground. It was the first real action we saw in the Fifth Battalion. The first and the last for a lot of the lads. We didn’t know it, but up till then it’d been a cakewalk for us – a lot of marchin’ and just a bit of shellin’ and sniper fire. Mostly we was kept in reserve while the Second Battalion did the fightin’ – they’re Regulars of course. A tough lot. “The Iron Regiment,” the Germans call ’em. Anyway, this time we was in support of the Second. They was to go over the top first, and we was to be the second wave – “mopping up”, that was what Captain Courthope said we’d be doin’. Some ’opes. Captain Courthope was OC “C” Company, which I was in.
‘It was the 9th of May, a Sunday, a beautiful Sunday morning. Not a cloud in the sky as the sun came up. You could hear the birds singing. Then at half past five all hell let loose as our artillery started shelling the German lines. The idea was that the barrage would destroy the German defences, kill ’em in their trenches and dugouts, blow away their wire, and all we would have to do was to run across No Man’s Land and . . . finish ’em off. There was only three hundred yards of No Man’s Land. Three football pitches. That’s what Captain Courthope said, to encourage us like. Three football pitches laid end to end – even with a rifle and pack you could cover it in under a minute, he said. And when the whistles went for the attack, and the men went over the top, with the officers waving their red marking flags like linesmen, you might have thought it was a game, and looked for the ball . . . But it weren’t a game.