...TO MY LOVELY WIFE, HELEN

This piece is one in a series "My Reading Life" first appearing in
The Record Review of Bedford, New York.


Works mentioned in this piece: "Middlemarch," by George Eliot "
"Beggars" and "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth; a poem by Lynn
Peters; an essay by Jenny Diski; "The Honorable Schoolboy" by John LeCarre; "Cold Granite" by Stuart MacBride;


TO MY LOVELY WIFE, HELEN

    

    “…and to my lovely wife, Helen, without whose patience in typing countless manuscripts, this book would not have been possible.”

    Are these some of the most pathetic words in literature?  The wife (or female secretary) has long been an Acknowledgement cliché but happy to say, you don’t see it (much) any more. What you get now are those interminable blurbs where the author takes up a couple of pages at the beginning or at the end of the work, thanking anyone who has ever even answered the phone, plus the dog and the cat and everybody in the fifth lunch, for their unstinting support --  and,  in the course of this yak, you learn everything there is to know about the person who wrote the book.

    In fiction as well as in real life, the genius and amanuensis have been around for a long time. Think about Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” (1871) who helps her dithering ass husband to organize his futile “Key To All Mythologies.”  Here is an interesting story that goes beyond organizing papers and taking dictation. Dorothea Brooke’s nutty desire to serve the awful Mr. Casaubon, “selflessly” produces a situation where the man allows the woman to step aside while he takes the credit.

    A real-life Dorothy, Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), the sister of William, has been the subject of speculation about the extent to which she influenced her brother as intellectual companion. Eventually, he married her best friend but she didn’t attend the wedding because she knew she would be too upset; the post-marital ménage included Dorothy. She was a constant keeper of journals, most of which have been preserved, and in them one can find concordances with poems written by William. Her brother’s poems, such as “Beggars” and “Daffodils” use her precise descriptions

    As often is the case when two lives are so intertwined, “Oh, William, William! You drive me to the very edge of distraction!” (Journal, Easter Sunday, 1802) it is difficult to tell where one mind takes up and where the other one leaves off. There are thousands and thousands of Google references to Dorothy and to William Wordsworth and by accident, I found this one in a site called “Purple Elephant” which I can’t locate again because there are more than two million purple elephants.

    Why Dorothy Wordsworth is Not as Famous as her Brother
                    by Lynn Peters
            (For Poetry Week -- April, 2005)

            "I wondered lonely as a ...
            They're in the top drawer, William,
            Under your socks –
            I wondered lonely as a -    
            No not that drawer, the top one.
            I wondered by myself -
            Well wear the ones you can find.
            No, don't get overwought my dear,
            I'm coming
            "One day I was out for a walk
            When I saw this flock -
            It can't be too hard, it had three minutes.
            Well put some butter in it.
            - This host of golden daffodils
            As I was out for a stroll one -
            "Oh you fancy a stroll, do you?
            Yes all right, William, I'm coming.
            It's on the peg. Under your hat.
            I'll bring my pad, shall I, just in case
            You want to jot something down?"


     As a favorite writer, Jenny Diski, points out in “My Word, Miss Perkins” (London Review, August, 2005) a review of a book about literary secretaries, “…these days the author and writer are one and the same. Obviously we have to make an exception for industrial novelists like the late Robert Ludlum, who has a team who writes the books as well as others who type them before they add their authorial name, so that there are three layers to the finished manuscript – or possibly four if you include the ‘ideas’ officer…”

     In 1977, John Le Carré, concluding the Foreword to “The Honorable Schoolboy” (Knopf), said: “And for Miss Nellie Adams, for her stupendous bouts of typing, no praise is enough.”

     And here is a beaut from 2005: “Most of all, thanks to my naughty wife, Fiona; cups of tea, grammatical pointers, spelling, refusing to read the book in case she didn’t like it, and putting up with me all these years.” Stuart MacBride “Cold Granite” (St Martin’s). Naughty?

     Nowadays, most writers key their own manuscripts on the computer, the re-casting and re-drafting made easy by word programs, so there isn’t all that much for Miss Adams to do. When the work is finished, it can simply be fired off to the publisher by pressing “Send.” No more need to put the manuscript in the refrigerator for safekeeping.

    Diski says,  “Learning shorthand and typing was once a way for a young man to have an exciting career as a journalist, or, like Dickens and his shadow, David Copperfield, to become a parliamentary reporter.” During the First World War, an army of clerks went to war and an army of women took over their office jobs, at lower wages than the men had been getting, of course. As Tillie the Toiler, the working girl either married the boss or, if she was Katharine Hepburn, or Melanie Griffith, wound up in an office with a window and a secretary of her own.




Elinore Standard
ehstandard@gmail.com