by Amanda Cross
“But,” Kate said, “you notice that we are discussing Middlemarch and not Savello. What, after all, is there to discuss about that dreary play?”
“I don’t think that matters,” Luellen said, with more audacity and confidence than she had shown before. “It’s by George Eliot, and that makes it both valuable and interesting apart from its inherent defects.”
“George Eliot would probably not want you to publish it,” Kate said.
Luellen shrugged. There was no real answer to that. What George Eliot would have thought of most of the criticism her works had inspired was anybody’s guess, but her opinion did not matter in the least. In any case, criticism is dissolved by time, but literature remains.
“What, then, do you want from me?” Kate asked. “Beyond my reading the play and talking to you about it?”
“I hoped you’d write an introduction to it. That would give it cachet and get it noticed by the right people. I do want something more than an article in the newspapers. I don’t mind if you say you think it’s a lousy play. After all, George Eliot did decide not to publish it. But you might suggest why the plot would have appealed to her in the first place.”
“Perhaps it only appealed to Lewes, and she went along for his sake.”
“But he had obviously thought it up because he believed that writing it would help her. You could discuss all that, and anything else that intrigued you. You’d get an honorarium of course, and some of the royalties. I’d like to make this splash in the company of a critic I admire, a woman critic. I’ve about decided that men don’t really understand Eliot; not even Haight understands her altogether.”
“Let me think about it,” Kate said. “I’ll call you when I’ve decided.”
And so Luellen left her telephone number with Kate and went away.
ALTHOUGH KATE, BY this stage in her academic career, had acquaintances on many campuses around the country, the university where B. Franklin worked included none of them. Kate had long been aware of Franklin as a critic of Victorian literature, but a quick scroll through the library computer revealed no recent publication of his, certainly nothing on male Victorian novelists. His last work, on George Eliot, had appeared twelve years ago. Perhaps he had been writing articles not yet gathered between book covers, but the search for these, while requiring the help of a reference librarian, and a student of Kate’s who happened to run into her in the library, revealed nothing. Was that odd or wasn’t it? Some professors, though happily not too many, having gained tenure, ceased to produce. Of these, some were hard-working members of their university community and highly competent teachers; others, alas, had simply dwindled into sloth.
Kate abandoned Franklin and went in search of Luellen Sampson’s dissertation on George Eliot’s idea of work. Although not published, hers, like all dissertations, was on microfilm and available. Kate arranged to have it sent to her, not on microfilm, which was hideous to read, but bound in a small volume.
None of this really satisfied her. It would have been obvious to anyone involved in whatever scheme was under way that she would check out the major players in exactly this way; their tracks must have been otherwise covered. Furthermore, she had no doubt that an expensive search in England, undertaken by a private investigator she knew there, would establish the reality of the house where the descendants of Helen Faucit lived, their decision to remodel the attic, and permission given to someone for the papers in the attic to be examined by a scholar. Nor, as she had told Reed, did she doubt that the paper and the type on which the play was written would prove to be the right paper and right type for 1863.
By paying for Federal Express and pleading for special favors, Kate got the dissertation within a week. Franklin was listed as the sponsor, with a number of other signatures appended. Kate settled down to read it with appreciation.
The dissertation was carefully argued and well-written; it was also decidedly familiar, yet Kate could not quite pin down what made it seem so familiar. That problem gnawed at her as the days went by. Still unable to solve the puzzle, she called Luellen to suggest another meeting about peripheral matters, saying she had not yet made a decision. Luellen, though with evident reluctance, agreed.
“I NEED A few more details,” Kate said, when Luellen had sat down in Kate’s office. “You said you wanted me to write an introduction. What exactly did you intend to contribute to the book, in addition to the play itself?”
“Well, nothing,” Luellen said. “I was going to tell you that. In fact, it wasn’t really me who found the play. That was an untruth, but I had, that is, I needed … I didn’t see how I could approach you if I wasn’t talking about my own project.”
“B. Franklin found the play, is that it?” Kate asked.
“Well, yes. I suppose my story about an English teacher having heard of me wasn’t very convincing. But of course he had heard of B. Franklin, and called him. The rest was all true, I swear.”
“So I am to write an introduction to a book of B. Franklin’s?”
“Well, yes.” It was, Kate thought, to Luellen’s credit that she made that admission concisely.
“Why didn’t he talk to me himself?” Kate asked.
“Well, he knew your reputation as a feminist, and I guess he thought that you would be likelier to do a favor for a younger woman.”
“But surely he would have to surface sooner or later and I would know I wasn’t doing the favor for a younger woman.”
Luellen looked unhappy. “I guess he hoped that that revelation would occur only after the book was so far along that you wouldn’t refuse to continue. And after all, it is exciting to have a play by George Eliot, isn’t it? It’s a project anyone would be glad to be connected with, isn’t it?”
Kate gazed at Luellen steadily, until the woman dropped her eyes. “I’ll still have to think about it,” Kate said. “I’ll be in touch.” And Luellen had no choice but to depart, even had she been able to think of anything else to say, which Kate strongly doubted.
SHE OUTLINED THE situation to Reed that night.
“I’d been wondering what happened to that Don Juan type,” he said. “Have you decided to blow the gaff? Are you going to take Luellen to task for suggesting that George Eliot could write such a poor play?”
“Reed, do you know someone who could do a bit of academic sleuthing for me? I need to know more about B. Franklin and I don’t want to be the one to ask, or even the one to ask someone else to ask.”
“There’s a law student in my clinic at the moment who was obviously born to be a detective. He uncovered something … well, I’ll leave that for another time. What do you want him to do?”
“Go to Franklin’s university, to Franklin’s department. Mosey around, ask questions, pretend to be a someone planning to enroll there, whatever sounds workable. I want to know the gossip, as much of the truth as he can uncover, and Franklin’s present status and situation. Is that possible?”
“We can but try. I gather I’m not to say it’s for you; I’ll think up some explanation. And upon our man’s return, you’ll tell me all?”
“More than you’ll want to hear. Before I’m halfway done, you’ll be saying, ‘How about sending out for some Chinese food?’ ”
“It’s a bargain.”
SOME DAYS LATER Reed came home with the report from what he had taken to calling “the Franklin undercover operation.” He threw himself onto the couch and demanded that Kate provide them both with a drink before he would utter so much as a syllable. She plied him with an excellent single malt Scotch and announced that she was waiting with bated breath.
“How does breath become bated?” Reed maddeningly asked. Kate reached over and grabbed his Scotch.
“All right,” he said, taking it back. “I’m only stalling because I’m sure the report is exactly what you expected, probably in every detail. B. Franklin hasn’t produced anything in years; he toils not, neither does he spin. I gather he’s been spending most of his time alternating between prescripti
on drugs and drink. It didn’t take very long to find all of this out. But, together with his lack of publication and collegiality, he’s missed enough classes so that there’s been some move to try and get him out, either through retirement or by sterner measures. He has in the last months straightened up a bit and is even talking about publishing something. That something is still a great secret in his department, but you and I can guess what it is.”
“Yes,” Kate said, “I rather thought that was how it would be. Furthermore, he was a very clever writer before he started slipping down the drain, certainly clever enough to forge that George Eliot play, especially since she wasn’t very good at verse plays and he had a model in The Spanish Gypsy. Besides, all the really awful lines could be attributed to poor George Henry Lewes. But he had to launch it properly, if his new reputation was to be made. Perhaps he was really clever, and planted some slight suggestion in a preface of possible forgery to which he could point if and when the band began to play.”
“But why involve you? Well, I can answer that: he wanted a foreword by a recognized critic to lend verisimilitude. But why not ask you himself? Why involve Luellen Sampson?”
“Men like Franklin never really understand women, and women who have a reputation for being feminist least of all. He no doubt considered that I couldn’t resist such a request from a young woman making her way. I must say, she did put on a good act. He also counted on the fact that once I’d written the introduction I wouldn’t be likely to let it go to waste just because the other person in the bargain changed identity. He assumed, quite rightly, that no academic lets any serious piece of writing go unpublished. And how else might I publish it but in his book?”
“Good answer,” Reed said. “I like the way you work it all out. But the real mystery is still unsolved: Why did Luellen Sampson lend herself to this shoddy scheme? Is she in love with him? Has he promised her unknown goodies as reward? Or has he a hold on her?”
“Oh, yes, he has a hold all right,” Kate said. “She didn’t write her dissertation; she plagiarized it. Franklin was probably too strung out at the time to even bother reading it with care, but eventually the penny dropped. He decided not to ‘out’ her, as they say today, but to make use of her. At least, that’s the way I think it went.”
“You mean she didn’t tell you?”
“Oh, no. You see, she quoted a speech from Middlemarch to me, a speech from her dissertation. And somehow, it didn’t sound quite right. I spent more time than I care to admit leafing through the novel until I realized the speech wasn’t there at all. The words belonged to someone writing about Mr. Farebrother and, lo and behold, she had altered one word in that. She had changed the word ‘vocation’ to ‘one’s work.’ She didn’t want to use the word ‘vocation’ because that is in the title of the book she plagiarized: George Eliot and the Novel of Vocation by a man named Alan Mintz. The words she quoted were his, not Mr. Farebrother’s. Mintz’s book was published by the Harvard University Press in 1978, when Luellen was still in school. She no doubt stole it from the library and trusted that no one would remember the book.”
“But you remembered it?”
“Eventually, yes. It was a good book. And as you know, the whole question of vocation has always intrigued me. Alas, poor Luellen thought she had a vocation for literary criticism but, like some other graduate students, she only had an affection for literature. As Mintz points out, Adam Bede’s work as a carpenter is good because it produces objects ‘that are the direct result of his own labor.’ Poor Luellen failed that definition of vocation. The very essence of vocation is that it can’t be had by cheating.”
“You seem rather sanguine about this whole thing. Are you going to let it go with a polite refusal to write the introduction?”
“I rather think so. I was damn pissed at first. But, truthfully, I can’t wait to see whether or not Franklin actually goes through with his plan to publish the play. And besides, I’ve begun to suspect that there was a bit more to the relationship between Franklin and Luellen than she has let on. I mean, I’ve come to suspect that my function in this whole stupid plot, even if I didn’t write the introduction, was to get rid of Luellen for him. He doesn’t want to have to decide on her tenure and all the rest of it. He hoped that I’d get rid of her for him by exposing her plagiarism and getting her struck from the rolls. Well, if he’s got himself in a mess with her, as I suspect, I’m going to let him stew in it.”
“So you’re not going to ‘out’ Luellen?”
“She knows she’s published a dissertation she didn’t write. I can’t rescue her from that, and I don’t think she needs any reprimands from me. And I bitterly resent having my feminist sympathies manipulated in so corrupt a way. Oh, the hell with it!”
“Good,” Reed said. “How about sending out for some Chinese food?”
GUILTILY, KATE RETURNED her attention to the young man being examined, still making his way through the medieval love lyrics. He was quoting one that Kate was happy to discover she had long known and loved–anonymous, of course, and therefore, as Virginia Woolf had said, probably written by a woman. This one, at least, he could not have fooled her by making up:
Western Wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!
A good student, gaining confidence as he made his way through an excellent exam. He was unlikely to fall into the snares that had entrapped B. Franklin and Luellen Sampson. But who could tell? What, Kate wondered, can one ever tell about these promising young people?
*Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
THE BARONESS
The invitation to dinner at the House of Lords was startling enough, and the more so in that the Baroness knew perfectly well I was in New York City and would have to make my way to Parliament and the Peers’ Entrance at considerable expense and effort. True, she had no reason to doubt that I could afford both the time and the money, but that hardly served to minimize my astonishment. Phyllida–though I liked, since her elevation, to call her My Lady, exhibiting an American’s scorn for British titles–must have had something very serious on her mind, the more so since she had been in New York not many weeks before, and we had met then, although for a shorter visit than we usually allowed ourselves: Phyllida was on some sort of business visit and had almost to do a turnabout. She well understood–I had known her through five decades–that I would come at even a moment’s notice if summoned by her. As it happened, being essentially old-fashioned in the best sense–that is, regarding electronics and not morals–she had written a short letter and sent it by ordinary post. (I can never convince Phyllida how unreliable New York mail is; I shudder to think the letter might never have arrived.)
She had written simply enough, in her pleasant, legible hand:
“My dearest Anne,
“Please come to dinner at the House of Lords in a month, about a fortnight after you are likely to receive this letter. I must talk to you, and somehow the terrace at the House of Lords seems the place. (I shall also offer you dinner, though the food, I warn you, is quite uninspired. But I seem to remember that you always liked what you call ‘plain English food.’ You will get it.) Do not disappoint me. I shall await you at six-thirty [and she gave the date] at the Peers’ Entrance. If you cannot come, a message can be left for me at …”
Dear, dear Phyllida. Her extraordinary tact had only matured, like wine, with the years. She knew that a letter left me time to think and to refuse if I had to; she knew that a more direct message would, were refusal necessary, have required immediate personal explanations and apologies. Phyllida, my dearest friend.
Of course I went–was, if truth be told, glad to go. I lead an extraordinarily pleasant life, but a sudden summons is exactly what it needs from time to time for spice and the right amount of excitement. One does not want too much excitement in one’s sixties; certainly
I don’t. On the other hand, the occasional adventure, if sufficiently benign, is not to be lightly shunned. The question of how benign this adventure would be was one I determined not to engage with.
• • •
I WAS EARLY at the Peers’ Entrance, partly because–since England was having one of its regular railroad strikes, thus putting extra pressure on London taxis–I had left more than ample time, and partly because I rather anticipated having, if early, a chance to look around. I found I could not imagine what the Peers’ Entrance or, for that matter, the House of Lords would be like; the House of Commons, through films and television news, was a far more familiar ambience.
I was early, as it turned out, and watched the lords come and go, all smoking, all assertively male, all moving under the watchful eye of a man in white tie and stiff shirtfront, with a large round medallion hanging round his neck. Sitting there, I contemplated England, which I had left–permanently, however often I visited–at the age of twenty. Phyllida and I, friends since the age of ten, had married brothers; mine had immediately decamped with me for the United States. Both brothers had been obsessed by flying since boyhood, but hers, remaining in England, had managed fatally to crash himself and his plane some ten years after my departure, leaving her with children to support and no professional preparation for supporting them. My husband, although he too remained enamored of planes, had gone to work in a small airfield and ended up owning both the field and an airline or two. I was a wife and mother, as they used to say before the women’s movement, but both Phyllida and I had the usual Englishwoman’s competence, then (and I suspect still) too often revealed only in the comfort and success of her husband.
Phyllida went to work for the government, eventually achieving one of those administrative positions that run the whole show and do not change with elections or parties. She became immensely valuable, if underpaid, and when, after the women’s movement, they wanted one or two women on various important boards and such, she was appointed. Phyllida, as I never ceased to remind her, was a natural conservative and did not, therefore, flutter the dovecotes–that is to say, frighten the men. She was firm but gracious, ladylike and, more to the point, with a natural deference to the male and his need to dominate, or appear to dominate. We argued the point frequently, but Phyllida might have been said to have won when England showed its appreciation of her opinions and capabilities by making her a baroness.