Sunrise with Seamonsters (59 page)

One of the disappointments that Maisie's parents have to face is that their daughter is totally unlike them. It seems clear that they would have been happier if she had been a burden—an armful—who would have been unwelcome in the enemy camp. But she is not. Maisie is tactful, compassionate, forgiving, and oddly objective. She notices that her unreliable mother had never been loved but only disliked by everyone,
and she pities her for it. Maisie is no use in battle, and what her parents get is just what they deserve—a reproach to their stupidity, a kindly child who does not need them and who has a perfect memory: long after they have gone on to new people Maisie is still stubbornly there to remind them of their jilts. Maisie herself is independent: she can live perfectly well without her parents—perhaps too well. She is unscathed. Today, the emphasis in such a novel would be on the harm the divorce had done to her—"the needless destruction of a young life," that sort of thing. James does not see this. He is pleased with himself, he is proud of Maisie; his tone is bright as he savors what he takes to be huge and harmless ironies. Why should a child who is indestructible need the protection of parents or any adults?

But Maisie does not wish to live alone. The trouble is that the two characters in the book with whom she has a genuine sympathy—and more than that, an attraction bordering on attachment—both pose problems for her. Mrs Wix is not so bad as she first appears, nor is Sir Claude so good as Maisie believes him to be. The conundrum, which is the plot of
Maisie,
is established fairly early on (you can see the short book in this longish one), but the length of the book—its amplitude, as James might say—depends on the ambiguity of Mrs Wix and Sir Claude. James lets them linger so that Maisie will understand the hopelessness of her situation.

Mrs Beale, the former Miss Overmore, is not very important to the conundrum, I don't think. Her only virtue is that she loves Maisie, in spite of the fact that she is a paid governess, a manhandled mistress and only briefly a step-mother; but in other respects she is not very interesting—not half so interesting or so passionate as Ida. Mrs Beale's main function is first to be seduced and married by Beale Farange, and then to show him up and cast her spell—flesh and promises—upon Sir Claude.

Maisie sees Mrs Wix as a mother. It is her first impression, and an essential one. Mrs Wix is wall-eyed, badly dressed, dim, dogmatic and sad. She is probably a widow and her own daughter was killed in a road accident. She is "safe"—the sort of woman who is described as a dear old thing—but she is also a worrier. Her worrying is quite in key with her religion—it is probably true to say that worrying is at the bottom of her religion, almost an article of faith. Much has been made by critics of Mrs Wix's poor vision, and her reliance on "straighteners"—her spectacles. Like Ida's billiards and bosom, it is a wonderful metaphor and provides plenty of opportunity for speculation, but in this rich novel it is necessary to know what has been stated before one can begin to know what is being suggested; and the various implications of the strabismus and the eyeglasses seem to me less important than Mrs Wix's dogmatism or motherliness, or her sorrowful cry, when she envisages Maisie taken from
her, "What will become of me?" It is an example of the singlemindedness of the novel that even Mrs Wix doesn't see that the principal concern ought to be: What will become of Maisie?

By degrees, Mrs Wix asserts herself—losing her cranky certitude and growing less irritating as she becomes familiar, but never, I think, becoming a wholly reliable refuge for Maisie. She can hardly be that, for in a clumsy way she too has fallen for Sir Claude, and persists in her rivalry and pathos (Maisie remembers the cry and says at the end of Mrs Wix "Where will she go?... What will she do?"). One of the problems of the novel—for me at least—is that there is no let-up in Mrs Wix's rather terrifying zeal or her moralizing. And of course the more this frumpy old governess in her snuff-coloured dress suppresses her squinting love for Sir Claude the more horribly she bangs on about morality. It is excellent psychology on James's part, but it gives the later stretches of the novel an atmosphere of arid arguing about irreconcilable differences.

It is crucial to remember that Sir Claude is young. Maisie calculates that he is of a different generation from her mother. He is probably in his twenties—a scandalous liaison for Ida, but it brings him closer in spirit to Maisie. He is quite firm in his determination to be a father—we understand that his marriage to Ida fails because she dislikes children, and his love for Mrs Beale is fuelled by the thought that she will bear him a child (and he has been influenced by her love for Maisie). None the less, Sir Claude is a most ambiguous character, and it is one of the triumphs of the novel that James puts us in Maisie's position and makes us overlook—almost—Sir Claude's weaknesses. He is not a villain and yet there is something roguish about him. We see him peering with interest at the backs of bonnets during church services, and distracted by a black-haired lady with a lapdog in the Folkestone hotel, and in Boulogne talking with Maisie but keeping his eyes on "the fine stride and shining limbs of a young fishwife who had just waded out of the sea with her basketful of shrimps" (James leaves us to imagine the damp clinging blouse on the snouts of her breasts, and her skirts hitched-up against her flanks). Sir Claude has a roving eye, which is amazing, considering the tangle he is already in as a result of his amorous nature. He is very generous, open-hearted and kind. He alludes a number of times to his fear.—afraid of women, he says, afraid of Ida, afraid of Mrs Beale; but no, we are told, in one of the helpful suggestions that occur frequently in this lucid novel, that he is probably afraid of himself, of his weakness for women, his sentimentality. He is a cheerier and younger but just as devastating Edward Ashburnham from Ford Madox Ford's
The Good Soldier,
always doing his duty while at the same time fantasizing about an ambitious elopement.

Sir Claude's magic works on most of the women we see in the book, including Maisie. He is forgiven everything—never blamed, never seen as unfaithful, never depicted as a tempter. And he might be, because, for much of the novel, his relationship with Maisie is plainly sexual and his tone a kind of bantering intimacy with its "dear boys" and "old mans." At times he talks to her as if she is his mistress or his catamite. He courts her. At one point he undresses her efficiently—but in the presence of Mrs Wix. He says "I'm always talking to you in the most extraordinary way"—he means bluntly; he is surprised by his frankness, and so he should be. In an earlier place he says significantly, "I should be afraid if you were older."

In his notebooks and in his Preface to this novel, James is emphatic about the ironies that attracted him and continued to sustain his interest in this story. It is true that the novel has a heroine, but it does not really have a villain. Beale and Ida are merely a little ahead of their time in making their divorce much more imaginative than their marriage. It is an indulgent novel about right and wrong, not good and evil. "Morality" is something Mrs Wix harps on, but James repeatedly draws our attention to the fact that morality is not the same thing as love and that only an old-fashioned conscience is likely to muddle the issue. In any case, Mrs Wix by the end is biased and pretty passionate herself, and one never quite believes that she has awakened Maisie's "moral sense." The implication is that James is joshing the notion of conventional morality—finding it limited, narrow and harsh; indeed, finding it a source of irony.

The idea of money—or poverty and wealth—provides many ironies, too. It is at the very heart of the bargain that Ida has struck with Beale. A satisfactory financial settlement would have meant no quarrel and no battle over Maisie: Maisie stands for the money Beale cannot raise—the
£2,600
that Ida wanted refunded to her. We are given the impression that the Faranges married for money and were disappointed in each other's fortunes. Money is a factor in their divorce and something of an aphrodisiac in their love affairs. Libido alone cannot keep these liaisons going. It is specifically noted that Miss Overmore is a lady and yet "awfully poor," which is obviously part of her failure with Beale. Mr Perriam's wealth guarantees his success with Ida, but eventually he has been exposed as a crook. At the end of the novel Ida and Beale are living off other people—money matters to them enormously—and at the same time the moneyless Sir Claude, Mrs Beale, Mrs Wix and Maisie debate the question of morality in Boulogne, while the idea of money is at the back of everyone's mind—everyone except Maisie.

Maisie is the eternal exception. It is easy to see why James found her so beguiling and why he is at such pains in his Preface to explain how she
redeems the story and makes the sorriest incident easy to take. She is at once the freest and most dependent character in the novel—that is, spiritually free but in fact tied down. The idea of freedom becomes part of the conundrum in the plot. And the repeated word "free" acquires low associations and nuances of immorality as the narrative proceeds until, at last, Mrs Beale's declaration, "I'm free!" has a genuinely vicious sound. Freedom means doing exactly what you want, which is fine for Maisie's natural goodness, and essential to the others' restless greed; but freedom is a condition that strikes terror into the heart of Mrs Wix, whose Christian conscience tells her that freedom creates occasions of sin.

Maisie knows better. Her innocence and decency allow her to find peace in the notion of freedom. It is her fascination and impartiality that aid her in knowing, and knowing gives her the detachment and calmness that enable her to understand. She doesn't blink, she doesn't take sides, she remembers, she is uncommonly curious, she is tactful, she is solitary: she has the makings of a writer. Even here, she often seems like a grown-up novelist rendered small and fitted into a frock and given a taste for chocolates and an ability to play dumb. One of Maisie's great skills is being able to pretend not to know: "She practised the pacific art of stupidity." And when Mrs Wix says, "Well, my dear, what you
don't
know ain't worth mentioning!" we can only agree. "Oh yes, I know everything!" Maisie says to her father, when he asks her about her "brute of a mother". It is not quite true—Maisie is trying to please him—but in the course of the book her knowledge increases. No one bothers to conceal anything from her.

As she was condemned to know more and more, how could it logically stop before she should know Most? It came to her in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was distinctly on the road to know Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what in the world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that soon she should have learned All.

It is her knowledge of human affairs that makes the last chapters so melancholy. She is less animated as she grows in experience, and when she and Sir Claude seem to be bargaining awkwardly at the end like passionate uncertain lovers, the implications are not lost on Mrs Beale, whose outrage has a shrillness that makes her sound like a sexual rival. "I love Sir Claude—I love
him,
" Maisie replies to the furious Mrs Beale. It is a plaintive cry. It is the strongest wish Maisie voices in the whole novel—in Sir Claude she would have a father and a lover. Of course the wish is
unfulfilled, and for the simple reason of bad timing: Maisie is too young in years. Sir Claude lets her down; Mrs Wix, who is now superfluous as a protector, gathers her up; and the novel ends on a note of failure and thwarted hope. Maisie now knows everything, and that knowledge is the death of childhood.

The boat slid down the bank and without a splash into the creek, which was gray this summer morning. The air was wooly with mist. The tide had turned, but just a moment ago, so there was still no motion on the water—no current, not a ripple. The marsh grass was a deeper green for there being no sun. It was as if—this early and this dark—the day had not yet begun to breathe.

I straightened the boat and took my first stroke: the gurgle of the spoon blades and the sigh of the twisting oarlock were the only sounds. I set off, moving like a water bug through the marsh and down the bendy creek to the sea. When my strokes were regular and I was rowing at a good clip, my mind started to work, and I thought: I'm not coming back tonight. And so the day seemed long enough and full of possibilities. I had no plans except to keep on harbor-hopping around the Cape, and it was easy now going out with the tide.

This was Scorton Creek, in East Sandwich, and our hill—one of the few on the low lumpy terminal moraine of the Cape—was once an Indian fort. Wampanoags. The local farmers plowed this hill until recently, when the houses went up, and their plow blades always struck flints and axe heads and beads. I splashed past a boathouse the size of a garage. When they dug the foundation for that boathouse less than twenty years ago they unearthed a large male Wampanoag who had been buried in a sitting position, his skin turned to leather and his bones sticking through. They slung him out and put the boathouse there.

Three more bends in the creek and I could see the current stirring more strongly around me, A quarter of a mile away in the marsh was a Great Blue Heron—five-feet high and moving in a slow prayerful way, like a narrow-shouldered priest in gray vestments. The boat slipped along, carrying itself between strokes. Up ahead on the beach was a person with a dog—one of those energetic early-risers who boasts "I only need four hours' sleep!" and is probably hell to live with. Nothing else around—only the terns screeching over their eggs, and a few boats motionless at their moorings, and a rather crummy clutter of beach houses and
No Trespassing
signs, and the ghosts of dead Indians. The current was so
swift in the. creek I couldn't have gone back if I tried, and as I approached the shore it shot me into the sea. And now light was dazzling in the mist, as on the magnificent Turner "Sunrise with Seamonsters".