4 - On the typewriter, In the Cage, at the Ouija board

Summary

Twenty million young women rose to their feet and said ‘We will not be dictated to’ and immediately became shorthand typists.

In 1897 Henry James began dictating to an amanuensis (his preferred word for secretary or literary assistant) who typed his works, and sometimes his letters, directly into a Remington typewriter. In his entertaining biography of James, Henry James at Home, H. Montgomery Hyde devotes some pages to describing James's relationship with his various secretaries, from his first assistant William Mac-Alpine, who typed stoically through The Turn of the Screw without, according to James, betraying the least frisson of fright or interest, to his replacement Mary Weld, who used to crochet during James's pauses in dictation, to her replacement, Theodora Bosanquet, who went on to make her mark as a Bloomsbury feminist and author. Theodora Bosanquet's relationship to James was more lasting than that of her predecessors – she began as a fan of his and worked for him until he died. James was apparently relieved to finally have a kindred spirit at his typewriter, saying to her: ‘Among the faults of my previous amanuenses – not by any means the only fault – was their apparent lack of comprehension of what I was driving at.’ One might argue that that particular lack of comprehension isn't specific to James's long-suffering secretaries. It could be levelled at a good portion of James's audience, then and now.