"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."
This is the maxim of celebrated author Henry James and one which his typist Frieda Wroth tries to live up to. Admiring of the great author, she nevertheless feels marginalized and undervalued in her role. But when the dashing Morton Fullerton comes to visit, Frieda finds herself at the center of an intrigue every bit as engrossing as the novels she types, bringing her into conflict with the flamboyant Edith Wharton, and compromising her loyalty to James.
The Typewriter's Tale by Michiel Heyns is a thought-provoking novel on love, art and life fully lived.
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."
This is the maxim of celebrated author Henry James and one which his typist Frieda Wroth tries to live up to. Admiring of the great author, she nevertheless feels marginalized and undervalued in her role. But when the dashing Morton Fullerton comes to visit, Frieda finds herself at the center of an intrigue every bit as engrossing as the novels she types, bringing her into conflict with the flamboyant Edith Wharton, and compromising her loyalty to James.
The Typewriter's Tale by Michiel Heyns is a thought-provoking novel on love, art and life fully lived.
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Overview
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."
This is the maxim of celebrated author Henry James and one which his typist Frieda Wroth tries to live up to. Admiring of the great author, she nevertheless feels marginalized and undervalued in her role. But when the dashing Morton Fullerton comes to visit, Frieda finds herself at the center of an intrigue every bit as engrossing as the novels she types, bringing her into conflict with the flamboyant Edith Wharton, and compromising her loyalty to James.
The Typewriter's Tale by Michiel Heyns is a thought-provoking novel on love, art and life fully lived.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250119018 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Press |
| Publication date: | 04/16/2025 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 763 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Typewriter's Tale
By Michiel Heyns
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2005 Michiel HeynsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-11901-8
CHAPTER 1
8th November 1907
The worst part of taking dictation was the waiting.
'She found herself for a moment looking up at him from as far below as ...'
She waited, Frieda Wroth, watching his broad back retreat to the far end of the room; turning, he resumed the slow tread down the length of the room. She reflected, not for the first time, on the piquancy of her situation, transmitting, through efficient fingers, the emanations of a writer celebrated for his sympathetic recording of just such disregarded lives as hers. Mr James himself had never shown any apprehension of this quiet enough irony: however preternaturally attuned his sensibilities were to the muffled chord of despair as sounded in the elliptical intercourse of his characters, in her he took for granted, apparently, a prompt attention and a cheerful readiness to assist merely mechanically at the slow processes of his deliberations and contemplations.
It had not occurred to her, in presenting herself for this position, that she would be treated quite so much as an undistinguished and indistinguishable appurtenance of the Remington she operated. It was not a matter of her working conditions – these were as pleasant as he knew how to make them – it was, really, only the metaphysical implications of her identity as a typewriter. She could not have formulated any confident theory on the nature and function of the human spirit, but she knew instinctively that it could not have been intended to serve as the animating principle for a machine. There were times when she veritably envied Mr James's fictional characters for the consideration he bestowed upon them, the vivid identities he invented for them, next to which her own pure functionality seemed abjectly utilitarian. To him she did not represent a potential or real subject: she was the typewriter, appointed to that task and confined to that identity.
Mr James paused in front of the fireplace, often but not always a prelude to utterance. Encouraged to 'read something' while he ruminated, she could yet never altogether concentrate on her book, anxious lest in her absorption she might miss the first fine utterance of his deliberations, as she had once done, to his evident but unexpressed irritation. Generally the most equable of men, he tolerated no interruption of his train of expression: for such a slow-moving vehicle, it was surprisingly prone to breakdowns. She thus preferred to amuse herself by trying to predict the outcome of his rumination, though so far she had succeeded only once, when the elusive word had turned out to be thing. This time, since it was a simile he was hunting, she knew only that when it came it would be almost exactly the opposite of what she anticipated, but she tried nevertheless to pre-empt this perversity: from as far below as ... a mountaineer all strainingly shading his eyes against the vertiginous slope of Mont Blanc?... an adventurer beneath some tower sung in legend in which a golden-haired princess is incarcerated?
'... as the point from which the school-child, comma, with eyes raised to the wall, comma, gazes at the particoloured map of the world. Full stop.' He resumed his slow, deliberate dictation and she clattered obediently after him, then halted, while he resumed his treading of the carpet. At the window he paused, a slight bow on his part signalling his acknowledgement of a passerby possibly unaware of the courtesy being extended from the window projecting above the street. His politeness was such that it did not insist on a sentient object: Frieda had once, during a walk on Camber Sands, seen him doffing his hat to a passing ship in mid-Channel.
In the midst of such courtesy and consideration – the chocolate bars left on her machine in the course of his perambulations, the flowers sent to her room whenever George Gammon could spare any of the profusion from the garden – it seemed ungrateful to want for more. In undertaking the task of translating the inspirations of genius into legible characters, it had not been her idea, naturally, that genius should defer to her convenience; but she had dared to hope that it might in a manner share with her the secret of composition, afford her on rare but precious occasions a glimpse into the furnace of art blazing fiercely under the great brow. Subsequent experience had rendered her sceptical of the temperature of that conflagration: it was not, intellectually speaking, a glow at which one could warm one's frozen fingers; one could but marvel that so much light should produce so little heat.
She had ended by asking herself what then she had expected, a question that she at various times answered variously – amongst which variety, however, a family resemblance could be discerned in the form of a small ungrateful subjectivity, a consciousness of a hunger unappeased, like some orphan in legend obstinately refusing to feast on the banquet spread before her by a prince. She was, in short, conscious of being just sweetly disregarded, a state which until recently she would have found preferable, at least, to some others – more particularly to the chronic regard of Mr Dodds, whose placid but persistent courtship she had been fleeing in betaking herself to this small seaside town so far from Bayswater. It was in that unimpeachable part of London that Mr Dodds dispensed his medicines from an apothecary's shop smelling always of tincture of iodine. There hovered about his presence, even in the Kensington Gardens where he took her on fine Sundays, the spectre of tincture of iodine. It was with her a moot point whether she was just where she was most in pursuit of enlightenment or in flight from tincture of iodine.
For the moment, however, this question had to yield before the resumption of the slow and yet fluent dictation: 'Yes, it was a warmth, comma, it was a special ...'
Gift? Grace?
'... benignity, comma, that had never yet dropped on her from any one, comma, and she wouldn't for the first few moments have known how to describe it or even quite what to do with it ... My dear Fullerton!' The keys of her machine were still rattling, lagging slightly behind the voice, but her eyes were free to take in the sight of the novelist spreading his arms in welcome, a gesture that she had witnessed at the front door of Lamb House, but had not expected to see in the Garden Room. For Mr James to allow, much less welcome, anybody into the inner retreat of his genius was not so much unusual as unprecedented, and his young employee would have been at a loss to account for this deviation from custom had her wonder not been much more actively engaged in contemplating the cause and occasion of it. Of the man standing in the doorway extending in turn his arms to the novelist, it would have been possible to say many things, but none of them as simplifyingly, comprehensively true as that he was beautiful. Frieda had never before thought of men as beautiful. Mr Dodds, she had been told by her mother, was a fine figure of a man, and Mr Dodds was in the habit of stealing glances at himself in the mirror behind the counter of his apothecary's shop with a complacency suggesting that he shared her mother's high opinion; but he had never inspired in her anything other than a guilty but unrepentant sense of not being able to share the public estimate, such as she remembered cherishing on behalf of an aged aunt whom others affected to find Wonderful for her Age, and whom she had found simply Difficult. Mr Dodds was not particularly wonderful for his age, that age being hardly more advanced than her own; but he had Done Very Well for Himself, which was the same thing, morally speaking, in that it placed him beyond light-minded censure, and was assumed to render the size of his nose, which was considerable, irrelevant.
This newcomer, whom Frieda gathered to have returned very recently from America, and who was now with lively self-deprecation apologising for violating the sanctuary of sanctuaries, needed no such excuse for his nose or any other feature. One could admire him without consulting a list of his virtues and accomplishments. She wondered indeed whether he had any virtues and accomplishments: it seemed to her that to look like that was to be able to dispense with such things. The blue brilliance of his glance, the strong, humorous lines of the mouth, the very agility of the hands, spoke of a nature quick rather than solid (Mr Dodds was celebrated in Chelsea and Bayswater for his solidity), a temperament attuned to the enjoyment of others rather than to the cultivation of the self. She would have been at a loss to estimate the age of the visitor: next to Mr James he looked very young, too young to have been a friend of the older man's for as long as their mutual familiarity suggested. It was likely, then, that he was not as young as he seemed, and even this reflection enhanced rather than detracted from the interest he evoked in the young woman: anybody, in their allotted time, could be young; to have lived and yet to have retained the freshness of youth was a far rarer achievement. All this Frieda took in, as they say, at first sight; or so it seemed to her later in recalling his so unexpected entry into, as it were, her life.
The two men were too deeply involved in the intricacies of establishing how gratified Mr James was at this proof of the confidence placed in him by his friend, to register the presence of a female typewriter; but having at some length settled the matter, her employer, with his habitual courtesy, introduced the newcomer to the young woman as his 'very good friend, Mr Morton Fullerton,' adding, as if in self-evident explanation, 'Mr Fullerton is from Paris.'
The blue glance was turned upon her, and Frieda felt that she had never been looked at before: he seemed to be taking in not so much an impression of her as an impression of her impression of him, to register by some preternatural agency the confusion which prevented her from making any but the most conventional response to the introduction. There seemed little of force or originality to be said for the advantages of inhabiting the French capital, and Frieda did not make the attempt.
Mr James, perhaps conscious of a certain blankness in his amanuensis, apparently thought that more information would stimulate her to a more intelligent response. 'Mr Fullerton is the Paris correspondent for The Times,' he informed her. 'You will often have read his dispatches.' Then, as this still left her mutely gaping, he elaborated: 'The trial of the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus now, no doubt you followed that? That was the work of my friend Fullerton.'
The visitor laughed. 'My dear Henry, I only reported the case, I didn't conduct it.'
Mr James was insistent. 'Ah, but to report so unflinchingly, so ... so heroically, must have played its little part in the outcome of that tangled affair.'
Upon this Mr Fullerton turned to Frieda. 'You see, Miss Wroth, what it is to have friends who are determined to cast one in the heroic mould!'
His tone was jocular, but to Frieda's sense or fancy there was in the short glance that passed between them more than the acknowledgment of a common social situation: there was the recognition of a shared plight. Through the gaiety of his manner she discerned a consciousness of being confined to a role he found uncongenial, of, in a manner of speaking, also taking dictation.
That, however, was for later reflection. Mr James meanwhile had moved on, and was addressing her with just the slightest blush of consciousness. 'Miss Wroth, since our labours have been so pleasantly interrupted, I find I need not detain you any longer today. Let us declare this a half-holiday in honour of Mr Fullerton's visit.'
She glanced at her watch. It was only twelve o'clock, almost two hours short of Mr James's usual time; furthermore, in the past, on such rare occasions as he had terminated his dictation early, he had always had revisions for her to type. She sensed that the visit was of such import to Mr James that he did not want the distraction of a typewriter rattling away in the Garden Room, an apprehension that Frieda was rational enough not to take personally. Mr James was once again addressing his favoured guest: 'Great as is my pleasure, Fullerton, in seeing you here so long before you were expected, I do regret the loss of the little ceremony of awaiting you at the station. Rye Station has rather a grand little air about it, don't you think, as if it were forever expecting to welcome visiting royalty?'
'Ah, then I thoughtlessly forewent the brass band and the schoolgirls' choir that you doubtless had organised against my arrival. I can offer no excuse other than my haste to see you. My ship docked at Liverpool several hours early; so, sacrificing your convenience to my impatience, I took the first train from Charing Cross.'
The two men passed into the garden discussing the relative merits of the Campania and the Lusitania, and Frieda gathered her effects for her premature return to her lodgings. To get to the street she had to pass through the door set into the wall separating the garden from the desultory traffic of West Street. She had at first, in her ignorance, passed through the house to reach the street, but had gradually become conscious of the unspoken disapproval of Mrs Paddington, Mr James's housekeeper. The privilege of unlimited access to the house, Frieda was to discover, was jealously guarded, as part of an implication of distinctions and boundaries, differences subtle but strong between 'living in' servants and 'living out': to be the latter was to be a kind of tradesperson, like the coal merchant who stayed only long enough to deliver his wares and then return to his proper setting. Thus, as neither guest nor servant, Frieda moved within firmly if not explicitly drawn margins.
Before unlocking the street door, Frieda paused for a moment to take in, as she often did, the beauty of the garden, which now, in the mild November sunshine, was a blend of mellow tones and soft accents. Her eyes wandered from the varied hues of the vegetation to the rich brick of the house and the old wall enclosing the garden; and then came to rest on the prodigious guest, now arrested on the lawn in conversation with his host. In the sunshine his hair shone a deep black, and when he suddenly laughed, startlingly in the still space of the walled garden, the sound was as a declaration of youth. As she put her hand on the doorknob, she looked back; and she found that he had turned and was regarding her with an expression which she had experienced only once before, on the Underground in London. On that occasion it had compelled her to leave the train at the next station; it now made her open the door quickly and escape into the street.
CHAPTER 21906
Frieda did not have strong views on the question of heredity, which Mr Dodds had denounced to her as the futile fabrication of a godless age. But if the years with her mother in penurious Chelsea, after the inconvenient death of her inconvenient father, had taught her anything, it was that she was, after all, the daughter of the man who had, so her mother grimly assured her, 'done for' them, through 'not having what it takes'. In response to Frieda's queries as to the identity of this exacting force, her mother had replied tersely: 'Life.' As this ominously adumbrated entity gradually took shape for Frieda, revealing itself to be a matter of dark corridors and thin soup, of clothes 'done over' and furniture propped up, of importunate tradesmen and inadequate relations, she concluded that, like her paternal parent, she did not have what it takes. Like him, too, she turned, when she reached the age of discretion, her back upon the fray, and found refuge in Literature, indeed in the very volumes that, as her mother periodically mentioned in an aggrieved tone, were all that he had left his wife and daughter with which, in her phrase, to bless themselves. Whether for the benefit of this benediction or purely for the redoubt it offered, Frieda from an early age took possession of her meagre patrimony, and found there, if not the solution to the many quandaries attendant upon What it Takes, then at least a consolation for not having found it. Literature was at worst less expensive than Life, and at best more amusing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Typewriter's Tale by Michiel Heyns. Copyright © 2005 Michiel Heyns. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Reading Group Guide
1. Frieda Wroth is referred to throughout the novel as Henry James’s “typewriter,” reflecting the author’s choice to use this word rather than the more modern term, “typist.” What is the effect of this somewhat archaic word choice on the way we view Frieda Wroth and James’s relationship?
2. Henry James is of course a historical figure, while Frieda is a fictitious character (the only one in the book). How—if at all—did this convergence of fact and fiction affect the way you read the story?
3. Though Frieda admires her employer, she is somewhat discontented with her position as his “amanuensis.” What are the grounds for her dissatisfaction? Do these seem reasonable to you, and how do you think you would feel in her place?
4. The book explores the connections between novel-writing and “automatic writing,” which was very popular in the early 20th Century, when the book is set, and is described in the Edith Wharton quote from A Backward Glance on page vii. What are the similarities and differences between the two styles? How does each come into play in The Typewriter’s Tale?
5. Frieda attends a meeting addressed by one of the suffragettes agitating for votes for women. Discuss the novel’s depiction of these activists. How do their aims and methods compare with those of various social justice movements today?
6. Is Frieda’s decision to find Morton Fullerton’s letters for him justified? Would you act similarly to her, if you were in her place?
7. Why does Frieda burn the letters in the end?
8. On page 255, Henry James says to Frieda: “The truth is, my dear, that I have realised afresh the incompatibility of one’s art with what most people would call life.” Discuss the relationship between art and life as it is dramatized in the novel.
9. Edith Wharton was, in reality, a much more successful novelist than Henry James. Does this novel suggest why this should have been so, through its presentation of the two writers?
10. Frieda decides at the end of the novel not to travel to Paris to see Mr. Fullerton. Are you satisfied with her decision? Do you think you would have made the same choice?
11. Mr. Fullerton says to Frieda (or she imagines him saying to her), “If mistake is the basis of all tragedy, it is also the soul of comedy” (page 261). What mistakes does Frieda make over the course of the novel? Do they seem tragic to you, or comical?
12. Consider Frieda in alongside some of Henry James’s heroines: the telegraphist in the short story “In the Cage,” for instance, or the heroines of Washington Square, The Spoils of Poynton, The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove. Is what ways is she a typical Jamesian heroine? In what ways not?