This story, which has not been republished since 1928, charts a development in Grand’s style of writing, from the domestic realism that her novels embraced, and which she maintained to greater or lesser degree in her short stories, to a self-reflexivity much more in keeping with the modernism of its time.
If you have ever been asked to write a little paper on any subject you like, only it must be in by a given date, and have promised to do it if you possibly can, you will understand my dilemma as I sit here at my desk, pen in hand, pressed for time, trying frantically to find something to write about. Concentrating on a given subject is easy enough. Given a title and one’s thoughts begin to flow; but choosing for oneself in haste has quite the opposite effect. At the present moment it is just as if my mind were up against a stone wall, with all the subjects I know anything about on the other side of it. Though I am a busy woman, it seemed but a trifle to promise with the date of delivery far ahead. I forgot all the other things that would have to be thought about and attended to first; so it has come to be now or never, and I am not prepared. I have promised to do it if I possibly can. A conditional promise. For a cowardly moment I glance at that loophole of escape. But can I honestly say that it was not possible? No, I cannot without making an effort. Poor Mrs Dombey!1 But I musn’t think about poor Mrs Dombey. What am I to think about? As if the question had summoned them, subjects innumerable come crowding into my mind. They make me feel like a child in a toyshop with leave to choose only one toy. The Modern Girl, Brown Bread versus White, The League of Nations, The Parlous Condition of the Land, Journalism as a Career for Women, Are Athletic Sports being overdone? Food, Cooking, Health and Beauty, Fiction, Christmas, Christmas time, Holiday time… It should be something suitable, seasonable, something cheery—
‘Beg pardon, madam, I did knock,’ the little maid gasps out of breath. (She will run up those four flights of stairs.) ‘Somebody at the telephone.’
‘Tell them to hold on.’
And it was only to make sure that I hadn’t taken cold last night. Most kindly meant, but O dear! just as I had got it – almost. Where on earth is that paper I was jotting my thoughts down on?
Knock at the door. Cook this time. Apologetic. Knows she’s sinning, but can’t think what to get for a change that I’ll eat. ‘Get a bullock and boil it’ expresses my feelings. But she is inured to that form of expression on like occasions and, ignoring the interruption, goes on stolidly ‘And you didn’t eat your breakfast, and if you don’t eat—.’
‘Oh, do go away, you bold, bad woman! Not another word or I’ll eat you.’
I am reminded of Carford by the way she takes that (Carford was a great dear too) – that morning when she was brushing my hair, and I woke up out of a reverie, suddenly, because the brushing had ceased, and saw her in the glass standing off with the brush in her hand, in a despairing attitude, patiently waiting till I had done rubbing my head with both hands, a habit I have when I’m thinking hard.
‘Won’t it do if I brush it?’ she meekly remonstrated.
‘I should like to throw something at you, Carford,’ I exploded.
‘Well, do, madam, please, if it’s any help,’ said Carford, twinkling, and we laughed.
Poor Carford! It was hard to part with her when I went to America, and had to have an ‘experienced travelling maid, good packer, hairdresser, dressmaker’ (as per advertisements). Carford was all that, but a bad traveller, and too delicate to stand a strenuous time anywhere. There was no help for it, we had to separate, but it was only to be until my return. I found her a temporary place that appeared to be all that was desirable. The lady was not an acquaintance of mine, but a friend who was intimate with her, and whose judgement I had no reason to doubt, vouched for it that she was extremely nice. Unfortunately, hers was not the kind of niceness that would have considered the health of an obviously delicate maid. She put Carford into a cold, dark room on the ground floor, and kept her there when the floods were out, with the water seeping up through the floor, and the walls streaming with the damp. When at last one of the other servants called in a doctor, he found Carford suffering from rheumatic fever, and ordered her to be moved into a suitable room and kept warm in bed for at least a fortnight. Instead, her mistress packed her off on the spot by train, some hours’ journey in the depth of winter, to her home. She survived the exposure, but was crippled for life. When I think of her, I am in sympathy with the pious people who used to look forward to having their bliss in heaven enhanced by a full view of the unregenerate in torment in the other place. There is one woman, at any rate, that I should like to see there.
When the writing mood is not on me, and has to be induced, I find the best way is not to try to think. One’s mind has a perverse trick of immediately doing what it is not wanted to do. I sit pen in hand; there is a blank interval; then, on a sudden, there comes an idea, a reflection, a recollection; it is not what I want for my immediate purpose, but I jot it down, because I have often found that a stray thought was a clue. In the same way the letter B may turn out to be a clue when you are trying to remember the name of a flower. If such irrelevant words as battle and burn and bee and brute present themselves to your mind, and you seize on the B as a clue, you are bound to arrive at begonia sooner or later, which was the word you wanted…
O bother! another interruption! Lady on the telephone, says she must speak to me, most important, won’t keep me a minute, is sure I won’t mind when I hear who it is. Won’t mind! And her minutes as uncertain in length as one of the six days which were devoted to the creation of the universe… Back at my writing table. She only wanted to remind me of my promise… as if I had no engagement book to refer to, or as if anyone who answered the telephone couldn’t have been entrusted with such a message. I shall be frothing with irritation directly. Ah, these talk, talk, talkers!… The word acts on my mind like the blotting out of one picture by another on the Cinema screen. The picture now is a close up of a plump little, good little, smiling little woman, wife of the incumbent of a big poverty-stricken parish in a manufacturing town. But oh! how she talked. It was as if, in the absence of the usual receptacle in which thoughts are stored up in silence, she was forced to utter aloud all that occurred to her. And the wonder was that mortal woman had ever been able to talk so incessantly without ever saying anything to anybody’s hurt, absent or present. She was a hard worker too, and an intelligent observer. It was she who discovered for me the reason that the mill-girls were better behaved than the fustian cutters. The uproar of the machinery in the mills makes talking impossible, she pointed out; in the fustian cutting rooms the silence promotes conversation, and conversation, led by the more daring spirits in such a company, is far from edifying. The mill-girls and fustian cutters who swarmed about the dear little lady had good reason to bless her. She spared no pains to promote their well-being in every respect, and they were grateful. I was present on the occasion of a presentation they made her. Only on this occasion and in church had I ever seen her sit silent. I thought she would make up for it when it was her turn to speak. There were speeches in her honour overflowing with the milk and honey of praise. She was deeply moved. When at last the time came for her to reply, we had no fears for her fluency, but it was with an obvious effort that she began. ‘My dear friends,’ she faltered, ‘I am a worker, I am not a talker—’. For the next few minutes the hall rocked with shouts of laughter and applause.
Here again the magic word ‘talkers’ switched my thoughts off to another episode. We were a party of intimate friends sitting down to a schoolroom tea, the kind of people who don’t break a party up into bits by talking together in pairs, each on a different subject, instead of listening so that one at a time may speak and be heard, and joining in with a contribution to the topic, when they can, which will help to make the conversation general. As a hostess I want to hear what everybody has to say. It bores me to have my whole attention claimed in turn by the guests on my right and on my left. All my friends but one present that day understood sociability on these occasions as a fair game of give and take. The first remark made was like a ball tossed to us all. It was caught and tossed again by someone at the opposite end of the table who tossed it on. A good hit that time, to judge by the laughter; but I had missed the joke because my guest on the left was babbling confidentially as if she and I were alone together.
‘Well, but what is the greatest pleasure in life?’ was the next remark that I caught.
‘Talk,’ I plunged.
Dissentients shot objections at me from all sides. That all the trouble in the world is made by talk was the conclusion at which they were arriving, when someone asked me to define talk. Did I mean conversation?
‘I fall between two stools,’ I replied. ‘ “Conversation” suggests pedantic discussions, and “talk”, as you took it, deserves all the objections you levelled at it. Still, I do mean talk, good talk, sprinkled with wit and humour, laughter-provoking; sweetened with sympathetic insight, heart-expanding; the kind of talk that acts as a tonic, mentally, morally and physically, without being didactic. Talk is the pleasure to ourselves which at the same time gives most pleasure to others; it may be enjoyed from the beginning of life till the end, and it never palls. The Fine Art of Conversation—.’
I threw down my pen. There it was, my subject, at last, but too late. No time left for it now. But at least I have an honest excuse for not fulfilling my promise. These notes are a proof that the failure is my misfortune rather than my fault.