Book Return

Long Overdue

They’re being unconscionably withholding, these two volumes for whom I have so many questions: The Ambassadors and The Portrait of a Lady, in Houghton Mifflin’s paperback Riverside Editions. Shockingly withholding, since their author, Henry James, had SO MUCH to say. But not these two recalcitrants, who are conspiring to tell me almost nothing that I really want to know.

But let me back up a year – or 50.

I have a friend in Dayton, Ohio. Only one. And, as the decades have passed, we’ve drifted apart a bit. We met in St. Louis in 1972, were “close” for a while, then less so. But “that was in another country,” as the saying goes. (Though lucky for us, neither is yet dead!)

He moved away; then I did, in a different direction. I visited once, let’s say 30 years ago – the last time I saw either him or Dayton. Though still our occasional phone calls are like picking up again after a pause to see who’s at the door. But to state the facts, the calls have become SO occasional that I hadn’t heard from him (or he from me) in years, until …

A while ago he texted with some shocking news: in a Dayton thrift store he’d come across two books together with my name written in them!

This seemed improbable – two together, with my name in, happening to be taken off the shelf and looked into by the only person within a thousand miles (2000 even) who would know whose name it was!

So I pressed him for details, suspecting he might have gone gaga with age. After all, he is “that older man” my mother had puzzled about all those years ago (though she didn’t really want details).

He texted photos. OMG! It WAS my name. And written by ME, no question!

Being still the good friend, even if slighted for decades, he bought the books – 50 cents each – and mailed them to me. Wouldn’t even let me pay. How embarrassed I am that I’d been so inattentive all that time.

When the books were in my hands, yellowed with age, coffee stained, but holding together pretty well, still readable after all those years – then the questions really started popping: When? Where? How? and (most intriguing) Why? – Why had they come back to me after so long away?

When I checked my shelf, I found replacement copies of both. These were important books for me, for the development of my mind and craft (such as it has been), so of course I replaced them. One replacement even has the purchase receipt still inside: “05/30/78, $1.95, Tax $ .10, Total $2.05, cash.”

So the now-returned copies must have gone on their journey by 1978; why else would I have bought replacements? But when, precisely, did they depart?

There are a few clues.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I had a close friend then, Claudia, Lesbian Writer, as her posthumous collected poems and stories are titled. We corresponded often until her death in 1979, by suicide. So often that there are hundreds of letters between us. Her former lover, a thoughtful soul, sent my letters to Claudia back after her death, to put with Claudia’s own to me, as a memorial to our deep (though too short) friendship.

We wrote about our reading, as well as our writing and our loves – loves so often lost, for both of us, and so often cried over, until new loves arrived. At the time, these two James novels were as important to Claudia as to me, so we wrote about them too. Someday I may edit our correspondence for publication. For now, I’ve mined the letters for clues, for mentions of what must be these same prodigal volumes:

July 29, 1970, Lubbock – Dear Claudia - I've fallen in love with … Portrait of a Lady, which I'd never read before this week.

May 13, 1971, New Haven - Dear Claudia - I have been writing every morning and reading in the afternoon and evening. God I read so slowly! I've been on Portrait of a Lady for three days now and am only half way through it.

October 14, 1972, St. Louis – Dear Claudia - ... it's certainly nothing nearly so rigorous as what James did with Strether [in The Ambassadors].

June 16, 1974, St. Louis - Dear Claudia - I too have begun a rereading of Portrait of a Lady, prompted by your praise of the book on second reading and by a look at the first edition in the [Washington University] Library collection (what is it about first editions that so attracts people?). Yes, it is at least as delightful as it was the first time.

June 21, 1974, St. Louis - Dear Claudia - Portrait keeps getting better and better. The last hundred and fifty pages give every indication of being the best hundred and fifty I've read in some time. I'd forgotten so much …

October 16, 1974, St. Louis - Dear Claudia - I'm rereading The Ambassadors now as a prelude to an attack on the 18th century novel. Don't ask me how it works as a prelude. It simply seems natural.

My attack on the 18^th Century novel only partially succeeded; it’s a formidable fortress. But, in light of the letters, and the receipt in that replacement copy, perhaps the two volumes went wandering sometime between 1974 and 1978. That may be as close to the WHEN as I’m likely to get.

The WHERE? Likely St. Louis, which is where I lived through those years. Though who knows where else I might have taken, and lost or left, books with such ongoing interest to me.

Lost or left may answer the HOW? – or lent, perhaps, since that’s how my thoughtfully annotated copy of the stories of DH Lawrence left, lent to a “true love” of the moment, who kept the book as his own when he departed – kept the book in preference to my broken heart!

And then the WHY? Not the why of departing so much as the why of coming back. They could have stayed away forever (like the Lawrence filching lover, and so many others), but they chose to return to me.

I’m not overly given to the mystical: no crystal balls or tarot cards or mediums for me, not so far. But it can’t be coincidence that they’ve come back. I’m sure they’ve returned for a reason, these prodigal sons (or make that daughter, for the Lady) – though I’m the one who’s been prodigal, with all the time that’s passed since they’ve been away.

I know there must be something here that I need to figure out, something profound, at least to me.

Is it the reminder that time flies? At 75, I know that too well already.

Is it to take me back again to Claudia, as though I need any more reminders to think back to her? Claudia, who, with her death bequest, put the plot of Portrait of a Lady in motion for me and half a dozen others: no fortune, as in Portrait, but a nut large enough, at a crucial time, to impact my direction, to help me discover if I could “meet the requirements of [my] imagination,” to borrow from Henry James. (I wonder if Claudia thinks I’ve done that, if she thinks her chance on me succeeded.)

Or is it something else entirely, something that may (or may not) come clear to me as I live with the volumes for whatever time I have left? Because this time I won’t let them go. They’re resilient; they’ve proved that by surviving. They likely will have lives of their own long after I’ve left them. But while both they and I all still have some time, we’ll spend that time together. We’re getting started on yet another re-reading now. It’s time. I suspect that we’ll all soon be saying, “I’d forgotten so much …”

PS: It’s now two years since I wrote this piece, now revisited and revised. I still don’t know the full story of these books. Probably I never will. But now I know that they did come back to me for a reason. Because it’s thanks to them, to the jolt of their return, that I set into this new, late phase of my writing life - which has so far spun into hundreds of Substack and other pieces, and hundreds of thousands of words.

And even though I’m still not given to mystical thinking (unless ALL thinking is mystical!), I suspect even more now that somehow Claudia did bring them back to me - even though another of her former lovers (not the one who sent back the letters) curtly replied to my email inquiry: “You know, Claudia’s been dead 50 years!”

Yes, her body has been. But her spirit, in my memory at least, is as alive as ever.

Though she chose to cut her own writing life short, for her own reasons, too painful for her to face, perhaps she suspected what I needed “to meet the [hopes] of [my] imagination” when she found a way to send the books back, as she had when she left me that legacy long ago. Call that mystical thinking if you wish. I’ll just call it my good friend’s gift - make that "friends’,” not to slight Dayton friend again - and thank them profusely for it. And keep writing.