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    What Maisie Knew
    What Maisie Knew
    What Maisie Knew
    Ebook340 pages5 hours

    What Maisie Knew

    By Henry James

    3.5/5

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    After her parents’ divorce, young Maisie’s divides her time between living with her mother and father. Beale and Ida are frivolous and irresponsible parents, treating Maisie as a go-between and paying little attention to her other than to use her against one another. With growing awareness of the situation, Maisie matures into a precocious and disillusioned young woman whose views of the world are impacted by her parents’ neglect and the dysfunctional relationships she has witnessed throughout her life.

    Originally published serially in the Chap-Book and later in the New Review before being published as a single volume, What Maisie Knew is author Henry James’s exploration of childhood and family dysfunction that continues to be relevant today.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9781443429306
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James (1843–1916) was an American writer, highly regarded as one of the key proponents of literary realism, as well as for his contributions to literary criticism. His writing centres on the clash and overlap between Europe and America, and The Portrait of a Lady is regarded as his most notable work.

    Read more from Henry James

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    Reviews for What Maisie Knew

    3.5/5

    296 ratings23 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Not sure what it was about this one but thus far my favourite of the James novels I've read. The story of Maisie stuck between her parents vitriol was somehow beautiful.
    • 3/5
      I found it interesting reading about parents as messed up as my own, and thanks to my own screwy family, I could relate to Maisie's plight very well. She and I have a lot in common. But, while I could relate to the story, I couldn't always precisely follow the story. In this book, Henry James uses so much current slang and pretentious, overly verbose language that it is a chore keeping up with what is going on in this book. In addition, while I sympathize with poor, dear Maisie, I must point out that she lives a very fancy,comfortable life despite the terrible misery James seems to be trying to describe. For readers in the 1900's or 1920's, especially well-to-do readers from conservative backgrounds, I am sure this book made a lot more sense. For me, as a modern 2014 reader who grew up in similar circumstances to the main character's, the choices Maisie makes and the circumstances for them come across a bit differently. I do think that Maisie did well in choosing as she did, because the possibility of her being drawn into a romance of her own, if she had chosen the other option she was given, would have been very awkward and jarring even to my modern moral sense.

      Did I like this book? Not exactly. But, I do think it would make a great book to read and discuss in a class or a book club setting. There would be plenty to discuss.
    • 2/5
      I've only read a couple of books by Henry James, but I've enjoyed them. What Maisie Knew was a chore. The premise is horrible - a child used by her divorced parents in a horrible game of revenge, forced into an adult frame of mind she barely understands but somehow manages to embrace. There were long passages where nothing happened that were described by James in verbose and repetitive language. It should not have taken me 11 days to get to the end, but I found myself doing anything and everything rather than sitting down to read this monstrosity.
    • 2/5
      I have finally finished this book. I decided to read a second Henry James novel just to see if it was the book or if I just was not a fan of his work. I can now say I am not a fan of his work.

      The story line is the raising of a small girl by her divorced parents. Both parents dislike each other and use the child to find out what each other is doing and use that information to further their mutual dislike and share their feelings with the young child whenever the child is residing with one of the parents.

      The parents remarry and the child is introduced to her step-parents. The step-parents each develop a relationship with the child. They become more caring and concerned with her well-being and enjoy spending time with her, unlike her biological parents.

      There is also a governess in the cast. She also develops relationship with the child and each of the step-parents.

      James' writing style is quite verbose and makes it difficult to understand the relationships and what each adult is trying to accomplish in their relationship with the child. James writes in long, winding sentences that seem to go forward and then double back on themselves to add extra information or explanation of what the meat of the sentence is.

      I have read Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens and others and enjoyed them. Perhaps if I had read this while attending a lit class focused on James I might have a better opinion of his work. As it is...this is my last attempt at reading Henry James.
    • 2/5
      I didn't give up, I did NOT give up!!!! 307 pages - easy . .I can read that in 2 sittings - but this 307 pages, had only about 400 sentences, or so I could swear. And swear, I did - because I had to read every one of those sentences at least 3 - 4 times . . thus making this the longest book I've read in ages!!!
      Mr. James is a well known author of many familiar classic titles. Obviously, my non-classical literary background did not prepare me for this one. Don't be fooled by the soft cover book on the "new books" shelves with the photo from last year's movie of the same title - this book was written in 1897 and is shockingly contemporary in it's premise of a horrible custody battle.
      The prose is not contemporary, however, and even having been partnered with TWO precisely speaking (albeit sometimes 'wordy')juris doctorates, did not make this a quick read for me.
      I did enjoy the book - enjoy the book - enjoy the book. Just wish I would have been able to read it with more ease. Tried to "google" a question of the average words per sentence, but all I saw were all the reports of convoluted sentences. Might have been smarter to have noticed that before I began.
      I didn't give up!!! (Hope the movie is decently done - it's a good story and the reason I picked up the book, was to read before the movie . . )
    • 4/5
      I didn't expect this to be so funny- like a drawing room comedy. Then you think, wait, is it still funny when one of the main characters is a young girl? And then you think, wait, is she clueless or just completely and utterly starving for love? And I'm not sure that was ever resolved. Would you rather live with people who use you for their own sexual ends, or a person who uses you for her own messed up moral ends? Funny, and then suddenly really, really sad.
    • 4/5
      The tangled tale of a small girl called Maisie and the adults that like a group of satellites surround and interact with her.None of the characters are at all sympathetic with the sole exception of Maisie. Not one of this authors better works by any means,it is in truth rather tedious.
    • 2/5
      I think this serves as an object lesson in why some people shouldn't be allowed to have children. Maisie is the daughter of parents who go through an acrimonious divorce. Part of the settlement is that she'll spend 6 months with each parent. They both use Maisie as a weapon to continue to wound the other. Maisie takes refuge in the governesses that populate her young life. They are almost equally at war with each other as her parents are. She ends up being pushed from one house and life to the other at increasing intervals. As the parents acquire new partners, so they have an increasing impact on Maisie's life. For the most part the adults are all self absorbed and irresponsible, while Maisie is of indeterminate age and clings to whoever shows her kindness and affection (however false that affection might be). This is an odd book. I can't say I enjoyed it. At times my ear was caught by a turn of phrase, but for the most part the language was flowery, the text melodramatic and most of the characters thoroughly unlikeable. I also found it impossible to place Maisie in age, at times she sounded very young, at others too old and knowing. Not so bad as I'll never try James again, but not good enough to rush out and read more. OK is as good as it gets.
    • 4/5
      The heartbreaking 2013 movie, and an evocative paperback cover by Edward Gorey, brought me to this 1908 novel. Custody of Maisie, a six year old daughter of divorce, is shared by her venal father, vain mother, a nanny, and her mother's paramour. Maisie herself tries again and again to predict the actions of this horrible tribe of alleged adults before she falls between the cracks. It's kind of astounding that Henry James wrote a novel of this very same situation at least some sixty years before Kramer vs Kramer. Also progressive for the time period is that blame falls equally to both parents, and there's no automatic assumption that every woman possesses a maternal instinct - in fact, it's the mother's boyfriend who seems to be the most responsible adult in the room - until he isn't. The outdated, overly florid language makes for a very difficult read, but there are gems of forgotten verbiage - "animadvert", "peccant" - that make for tiny treasure hunt moments.
    • 4/5
      Henry James heard about a divorce case in which a young child had become a pawn and decided to write about it from the child's point of view. Thus we see the story through Maisie's experience (not first person, but from her perspective and limited knowledge). The courts have awarded her to each parent for 6 months of the year, and it seems neither really wants her. The use her at every transfer. even at the age of 6, to convey hostile messages to each other, and Maisie learns to play stupid to extricate herself from these furies. Each parent provides a governess (of varying quality), and each says there is no money to send her to a day or boarding school. Poor kid.Eventually each parent has a new spouse, but the pattern is set. One, Sir Claude, is loving but weak, the other, the once-governess at Maisie's father's house, now Mrs. Beale, has accomplished her goal of marriage and is not so interested anymore in Maisie. Maisie bonds most with Sir Claude, and when the opportunity comes to essentially run away with him, she takes it.But more confusion reigns. Neither second marriage is happy, Sir Claude has fallen for Mrs. Beale, and these two plus the governess Mrs. Wix arrive in France, trying to sort out what will become of them all. At the end, it is Maisie who determines her own future.What, after all this mistreatment, can a girl of 10 or 12 know?
    • 3/5
      Divorces are painful, especially when there are children involved. But divorces become extremely ugly when parents use the child as a weapon to hurt their former spouse. Maisie is a young girl when her parents Ida and Beale Farrange split up. Both parents are self-absorbed narcissists and are too selfish to have the commitment to stay in a relationship, let alone have the skills or the desire to be a good parent. Both parents don’t want to release their claim on Maisie as part of a power struggle with their partner, but since neither wants to really take care of her, they each farm her out to governesses. And here is where the plot becomes complicated. Mrs. Farrange hires a pretty young governess who falls in love and eventually marries Maisie’s father. Maisie’s mother also remarries – a wonderful and caring Sir Claude, but both Maisie’s mother and father lack the fidelity or desire to stay in any lasting relationship. And with a plot twist that you might expect from a Hollywood blockbuster, Maisie’s step parents – you guessed it – fall for each other. In the center of all of this romantic entanglement is poor Maisie. From the title of this book, What Maisie Knew, I was dreading some awful secret that the young girl would discover. But sadly, it seems like the lessons that Maisie learns are to not trust the adults in her life and that no relationship ever lasts. Good story. One comment about the audio narration. The book I listened to was performed by Maureen O’Brian. Her voices were good for most of the characters, except for Maisie. In the story, Maisie is a young girl – maybe in the range of 5 to 10 years old. She gives her a very high squeaky voice – almost what you would expect from a pixie or fairy. I found it slightly disconcerting and a distraction from the overall story.
    • 3/5
      I didn't like this very much. The story revolves around a young child whose wealthy parents get a divorce and, after using her as a bargaining chip in their divorce, basically abandon her to their respective new spouses and then again abandon Maisie to those stepparents. The problem for me is that the entire novel revolved around these events with little attempt at side stories or character development. Maisie, a small child, is seen only in relation to her reactions to these adult events. I'm sure for its time, this was controversial and shocking, but it seemed, sadly, sort of old news at this point. I've really loved some of James's other novels, but this one didn't work for me.
    • 4/5
      Book Circle Reads 43Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Book Description: What Maisie Knew (1897) represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue. In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child's capacity for intelligent wonder, James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie inspires James to dwell with extraordinary acuteness on the things that may pass between adult and child. In addition to a new introduction, this edition of the novel offers particularly detailed notes, bibliography, and a list of variant readings.My Review: Ida and Beale Farange, Maisie's parents, resemble Winter and Dick Derus, my own parents, very very closely. When I read this book in 1996, I was smacked in the teeth by the eerie similarities between the parenting styles of the adults. I'm still a widge unnerved by it. I am completely certain my father's never read the book since I've never ever seen or heard tell of him reading a novel, and I'm pretty confident that my mother wouldn't have read it, being as she was a thoroughgoing anti-Victorian in her reading preferences.But it's as if they absorbed it from the aether and used it as a how-to manual. Poor Maisie!My opinion of the book, then, is strongly colored by the coincidence of its resemblance to my own life. I rate it and respond to it based on that resonance; but that would, all other things being equal, put this much closer to five stars than I rate it here.I've cut a star off because I, unlike most of the professional critics who have discussed the book, find the long ending section set in Maisie's teenaged years (or so we all think, it's never made explicit) unconvincing and a lot too long to be anything by hamfistedly didactic and tendentious. Maisie faces a decision that no child should have to face and she handles it with an aplomb that I found convincing...for a while...because it was so clearly prefigured in the adults who surrounded her behaving so badly. But James was a moralist, and he grafted his Moral Point onto the logical, inevitable ruminations Maisie goes through to make her horrible decision, and ends up crashing the narrative car into the brick wall of Conviction.I do so hate that.
    • 3/5
      This was my first read of a book by Henry James and I thought I might not even get that far after struggling through his almost impenetrable preface to the 1909 American publication of the book. Finally I got to the novel itself, but there was no time to relax, as I plunged back into some intense verbiage and obfuscation as I tried to make sense of what was going on. A friend who recommended the book to me had labelled James as “Mr Wordy” and I could see what he meant, but it is not just the volume of words; in paragraphs that can stretch over two pages that is the real problem; it is the syntax itself. I have read that James’s style was a precursor to modernism and the stream of conscious technique and where there is some evidence of this in the novel, the impression I got was that James was looking back to the 19th century rather than forward to the 20th century. A difficult reading experience then, but was it worth the effort?The Story is a good one. We first meet Maisie as a young child who is subject to a court order following divorce proceedings. Her parents finally agree to have Maisie for half a year each, not we are told in consideration of each other, or of Maisie, but because of their ill feeling, they wish to saddle each other with the burden of the child. Maisie finds herself under the supervision or protection of two very different governesses. Her mother; Ida employs Mrs Wix; a widower whose concerns are mainly with Maisie’s moral welfare, while her father Mr Beale employs the beautiful Miss Overmore. Maisie’s parents are both in James’s words immoral characters who exude charm to all who meet them and it is no surprise that Miss Overmore soon becomes the second Mrs Beale and that Ida marries the equally charming Sir Claude. Maisie now has a step mother and a step father, but the real complications begin when these two step parents meet and start an affair of their own. Little Maisie grows up within this whirlwind of meetings and love affairs {Ida is soon seen with other men and Mr Beale is not far behind with seeing other women) and James shows us Maisie’s world through the eyes of this somewhat precocious child: though thankfully not in the first person..It is the world seen through Maisie’s eyes that gives this book it’s feeling of modernism, and James does this so well. He conveys her fears, her confusion, her gullibility, her sinless character, her desire to make the right choices and to please everybody around her. Maisie’s main concern especially in her most childish phase is to please everyone, but as the novel develops so does Maisie until faced with her difficult choice at the end of the novel she is empowered to do so. She is always careful and thoughtful about what she says and does and even when she fails to understand much of what is happening she manages to not cause too much upset. The brilliance of this novel is James’s ability to make us believe in all these facets of a young child character, we as readers can see and feel more than Maisie ever can about her situation and although she sometimes makes us cringe with the things she says, we admire her natural common sense.A child surrounded by charming manipulative characters as Maisie is, cannot herself fail to be charmed and we very rarely witness any bad behaviour towards the child, in fact quite the opposite and in Sir Claude’s case it may be that his love for his mistresse’s step daughter goes beyond the bounds of propriety. This lurking fear for Maisie’s safety is the hook that will ensure many readers will finish the novel, as well as some brilliant passages of prose and insights into the characters that are presented before us. I particularly enjoyed the sojourn to the channel port of Boulogne on the North coast of France, where Maisie’s future must eventually be decided. James captures for me the essence of this French town at the turn of the century and the hotel life of English ex-pats, who look wistfully back across the channel.For me it is Henry James’s moral standpoint that places his novel with both feet firmly in the 19th century. He tends to scream out moral rectitude to his readers. Mrs Wix is the moral force in the novel, it is she that has the task of saving Maisie from the charming people around her and although James is careful to present Mrs Wix character to us with warts and all (she is also hopelessly charmed and a little in love with Sir Claude), it is her moral viewpoint that will prevail, it is she that will scold Maisie that will force her to sort right from wrong. “Haven’t you really and truly any moral sense” she says in exasperation to Maisie and this reader felt that Henry James was addressing this question directly to him. It would be overstepping the mark to say that there is a brilliant novel here struggling to get out, because at times James writing style does enhance the confusion and fears of Maisie, however it also buries the story a little too deep to make this a comfortable reading experience. I found it difficult to concentrate fully at times and sleep inducing at others, but then I would wake up with a start; coming across a brilliant passage and find myself thinking “how good is that” I suppose therefore I am ambivalent about Henry James as a writer and certainly about this novel. I would not wish to read it through again, but it has made me wish to try another of his works, but not just yet. This was for me a three star read.
    • 2/5
      At a young age Maisie's parents decide to tell her they're getting a divorce. From that point on, life as she knows it will never be the same. She is traded back and forth among them and forced to put up with their constant bickering. So despicable are her parents they even use this poor child as a messenger to pass along insults. Fortunately, Maisie finds allies in her parents new spouses, Claude and Mrs. Beale and her governess Mrs.Wix, though their own motives may not be so clear. Throughout it all Maisie is simply trying to find her place in an indifferent and cruel adult world.This book, though short, seemed to drag on forever! It is so verbose, disengaging and talk about run on sentences! It would often take me a couple re-reads through a sentence to figure out exactly what was going on. Even once I figured out what was going on I found the book couldn't hold my attention. Upon reflection I can determine this is only because I did not care about a single character in this book. I felt bad for Maisie because her parents are absolutely despicable and their spouses may love Maisie but there so shallow and self absorbed you have to wonder if they're really any better. Even Maisie herself wasn't such a great character. I found her annoying the way she automatically fell in love with everyone she met. She's supposed to be innocent but even innocent characters tend to learn something and by the end of the book I found myself wondering if she knew anything at all.It is clear that James has an amazing command of the English language. But this particular book is a little disorientating and not one I found myself getting lost in. It does put forth some interesting ideas and is a disturbing look at how horrible and selfish adults can be. In actuality the book may actually have been enjoyable if it just wasn't so overwritten.
    • 4/5
      A tough but very rewarding read. Maisie has the unenviable lot of being born to a handsome but worldly couple unready for either marriage or parenthood and is used by both parents as fodder for their contentious divorce and subsequent perpetual warfare. One might think this would be a very dark book ( it was written just after The Turn of the Screw) but that would be without reckoning with Maisie who is a marvel, a little genius, and ultimately a heroine. Some say she is a bit of a self portrait of HJ himself. Her stepfather, Claude is also very memorable, funny and likable.
    • 4/5
      It's a difficult book but genius in construction. To me, the subject matter that was more cringe-inducing than the writing. It's written in third person, yet purely from the POV of Maisie, who thinks she knows a lot but doesn't because she's a child, surrounded by manipulative and selfish adults who think they are worldly and cunning and know nothing of themselves or other people. It's about knowledge, lack of, gaining of, and it takes a while to get to the point where we can understand the novel. This doesn't lessen my love for Henry James. (Kind of increased it, actually.)
    • 1/5
      Painful. I choked down about 200 of the 280 pages and then couldn't take anymore. At the risk of offending a Henry James afficionado (21-year-old goof or otherwise), I have to say, I am not a big fan of his. It's ironic, I love his friend Edith Wharton and will have to type up a few reviews raving about her. All this negativity gets me down.Anyway, Henry just always seems to get in the way of himself with his own commentary, and his books, including this one, are way too dense. 10 year old fruitcake dense. Osmium dense. George W. Bush dense. (Hey if I'm going to offend, why not cast the net wide :-) At his best his character's dialogue speaks for itself; unfortunately, this is rare, and at his worst, his long, awkward sentences need to be re-read to be remotely understood. But I'm sure it's just a personal taste thing and I'll be promptly corrected by a legion of erudite James lovers.What I liked about "What Maisie Knew":1. Concept of writing about divorce and awful adult behavior through a child's eyes in 1908 was well ahead of its time.2. Concept of rescuing this little paperback from 1954 from a Library book sale. Don't you love those? The cover alone did it.3. Nothing else. Oh, wait, one more. Finally deciding to put it down without finishing it. I felt too guilty to do so at page 70 when the urge first hit me. As I picked it up nightly and continued dutifully slogging through it like a condemned man, a little horned devil on one shoulder kept whispering to me, "don't finish it, you don't like it, there are so many books to read, so little time, why go on...". Naturally a little angel on the opposite shoulder appeared in James' defense, saying "don't listen to him, James was a genius, watch for the deft psychological touches, I'm sure the story will become compelling eventually, and oh by the way what will your LibraryThing friends say if you review something you didn't even finish...". What can I say? I think the last he was seen, the angel was nodding off out of boredom and had drool dangling out of his mouth, while the devil had gone from whispering to shouting, "life is too short! Go get another book!" So I did.
    • 3/5
      A classic novel, extensively researched, written about, and commented on. Maisie is the first fictional child to be the product of a broken home. Her parents hate each other, and treat Maisie as a weapon, something all to familiar to modern readers. Maisie ends up as a pawn between not only her parents but her stepparents and a governess. An awful mess, but a good read.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps the pivotal work in the evolution of James's style and the first of the "difficult" ones, the book considers a young girl tossed among separated parents and their lovers and spouses. The story is told from her point of view, so there are elements that never do become understood. Wonderful conversations and arguments in well-depicted settings; this novel owes much to James's recent preoccupation with the theater. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      James brings the reader back in time. It is unbelievable how the events are presented surrounded by that mist of misunderstanding and uneasiness only a child can experience when faced with the illogical adult world. Shockingly real.
    • 4/5
      This is the beginning of Henry James' style of impartation through obfuscation. Everything that happens in this novel is either in front of the young child Maisie, or offstage, referred to in polite, avoiding conversations. This doesn't work as strongly as it would in the 19th century. Divorces, and the usage of children as weapons before and after the proceedings, are now a relatively common event. So Maisie's being ping-ponged between parents, or even the parents' affairs, are not as shocking to the current reader as Henry James would have as an effect. This doesn't detract from the pure cleverness of the novel, however, as it shows us a young girl learning from her environment, and the adults, perhaps, learning from her.
    • 4/5
      This is the beginning of Henry James' style of impartation through obfuscation. Everything that happens in this novel is either in front of the young child Maisie, or offstage, referred to in polite, avoiding conversations. This doesn't work as strongly as it would in the 19th century. Divorces, and the usage of children as weapons before and after the proceedings, are now a relatively common event. So Maisie's being ping-ponged between parents, or even the parents' affairs, are not as shocking to the current reader as Henry James would have as an effect. This doesn't detract from the pure cleverness of the novel, however, as it shows us a young girl learning from her environment, and the adults, perhaps, learning from her.

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    What Maisie Knew - Henry James

    Chapter I

    The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something had happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously out for the effects of so great a cause. It was to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than she at first understood, but also even at first to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric—strange shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for her—a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the sacrifice but the modesty of her youth.

    Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. Even at that moment, however, she had a scared anticipation of fatigue, a guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, feeling the charm of the violence with which the stiff unopened envelopes, whose big monograms—Ida bristled with monograms—she would have liked to see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through the air. The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with which she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and the proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her features had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually nipped by the gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke of whose cigarettes went into her face. Some of these gentlemen made her strike matches and light their cigarettes; others, holding her on knees violently jolted, pinched the calves of her legs till she shrieked—her shriek was much admired—and reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in her mind and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She found out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the production of a substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a short ugly name, a name painfully associated at dinner with the part of the joint that she didn’t like. She had left behind her the time when she had no desires to meet, none at least save Moddle’s, who, in Kensington Gardens, was always on the bench when she came back to see if she had been playing too far. Moddle’s desire was merely that she shouldn’t do that, and she met it so easily that the only spots in that long brightness were the moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her rushing back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the Gardens, but there was a difference even there; she was impelled perpetually to look at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if they were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said: Oh my dear, you’ll not find such another pair as your own. It seemed to have to do with something else that Moddle often said: You feel the strain—that’s where it is; and you’ll feel it still worse, you know.

    Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. A part of it was the consequence of her father’s telling her he felt it too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself: Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been dreadfully put about. If the skin on Moddle’s face had to Maisie the air of being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented that appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn’t make it hurt more than usual; but it was only after sometime that she was able to attach to the picture of her father’s sufferings, and more particularly to her nurse’s manner about them, the meaning for which these things had waited. By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had criticised her calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable—images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn’t yet big enough to play. The great strain meanwhile was that of carrying by the right end the things her father said about her mother—things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of objects of this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled up too with the things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said about her father.

    She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day brought nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and this would have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle hadn’t written on a paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that she would enjoy at the other house. These promises ranged from a mother’s fond love to a nice poached egg to your tea, and took by the way the prospect of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in question dressed, in silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle’s direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawing room on the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father had just said, cried aloud: You ought to be perfectly ashamed of yourself—you ought to blush, sir, for the way you go on! The carriage, with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who was there, who was always there, laughed out very loud; her father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: My dear woman, I’ll settle you presently!—after which he repeated, showing his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so fully conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle’s sudden disrespect and crimson face; but she was able to produce them in the course of five minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said to her: And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving mamma? Then it was that she found the words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her mother’s appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little innocent lips. He said I was to tell you, from him, she faithfully reported, that you’re a nasty horrid pig!

    Chapter II

    In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child’s mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all stories are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was the absolute, the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father’s bidding punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. Like the letter it was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called the real good, don’t you know? of the child. The only thing done, however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she fortunately wasn’t all the year round where she happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in.

    The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognize something her nurse described as the important letter haitch. Miss Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as almost too pretty, and someone had asked what that mattered so long as Beale wasn’t there. Beale or no Beale, Maisie had heard her mother reply, I take her because she’s a lady and yet awfully poor. Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do people mean?

    Maisie didn’t know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could say the multiplication table. She privately wondered moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also never spoke. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger curled out. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched her particularly at that one. I think you’re lovely, she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with her now being big, knowing of course that nursery governesses were only for little girls who were not, as she said, really little. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart out. Everything that had happened when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her pudding or her bath and her nap.

    "Does he know he lies?"—that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in her life.

    Does he know—? Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, graceful.

    Why papa.

    That he ‘lies’?

    That’s what mamma says I’m to tell him—‘that he lies and he knows he lies’. Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. "Am I to tell him? the child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. I can’t say no, they replied as distinctly as possible; I can’t say no, because I’m afraid of your mamma, don’t you see? Yet how can I say yes after your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for half an hour? Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore’s lovely eyes that incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn’t had at the time, and this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn’t mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: I’ve only to look at you to see you’re a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter. Maisie’s ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn’t diminish the pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling together as in some wild game of going round."

    Chapter III

    She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to her in connection with something to be done before her next migration: You understand of course that she’s not going with you.

    Maisie turned quite faint. Oh I thought she was.

    It doesn’t in the least matter, you know, what you think, Mrs. Farange loudly replied; and you had better indeed for the future, miss, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself. This was exactly what Maisie had already learned, and the accomplishment was just the source of her mother’s irritation. It was of a horrid little critical system, a tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders, that this lady suspected her, liking as she did, for her own part, a child to be simple and confiding. She liked also to hear the report of the whacks she administered to Mr. Farange’s character, to his pretensions to peace of mind: the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came back. The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other—a sort of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn’t show to advantage. The prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which she held she had never failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour of which several persons felt the effect. She determined that Beale at any rate should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the study of how to be odious to him she must never give way. Nothing could incommode him more than not to get the good, for the child, of a nice female appendage who had clearly taken a fancy to her. One of the things Ida said to the appendage was that Beale’s was a house in which no decent woman could consent to be seen. It was Miss Overmore herself who explained to Maisie that she had had a hope of being allowed to accompany her to her father’s, and that this hope had been dashed by the way her mother took it. She says that if I ever do such a thing as enter his service I must never expect to show my face in this house again. So I’ve promised not to attempt to go with you. If I wait patiently till you come back here we shall certainly be together once more.

    Waiting patiently, and above all waiting till she should come back there, seemed to Maisie a long way round—it reminded her of all the things she had been told, first and last, that she should have if she’d be good and that in spite of her goodness she had never had at all. Then who’ll take care of me at papa’s?

    Heaven only knows, my own precious! Miss Overmore replied, tenderly embracing her. There was indeed no doubt that she was dear to this beautiful friend. What could have proved it better than the fact that before a week was out, in spite of their distressing separation and her mother’s prohibition and Miss Overmore’s scruples and Miss Overmore’s promise, the beautiful friend had turned up at her father’s? The little lady already engaged there to come by the hour, a fat dark little lady with a foreign name and dirty fingers, who wore, throughout, a bonnet that had at first given her a deceptive air, too soon dispelled, of not staying long, besides asking her pupil questions that had nothing to do with lessons, questions that Beale Farange himself, when two or three were repeated to him, admitted to be awfully low—this strange apparition faded before the bright creature who had braved everything for Maisie’s sake. The bright creature told her little charge frankly what had happened—that she had really been unable to hold out. She had broken her vow to Mrs. Farange; she had struggled for three days and then had come straight to Maisie’s papa and told him the simple truth. She adored his daughter; she couldn’t give her up; she’d make for her any sacrifice. On this basis it had been arranged that she should stay; her courage had been rewarded; she left Maisie in no doubt as to the amount of courage she had required. Some of the things she said made a particular impression on the child—her declaration for instance that when her pupil should get older she’d understand better just how dreadfully bold a young lady, to do exactly what she had done, had to be.

    "Fortunately your papa appreciates it; he appreciates it immensely—that was one of the things Miss Overmore also said, with a striking insistence on the adverb. Maisie herself was no less impressed with what this martyr had gone through, especially after hearing of the terrible letter that had come from Mrs. Farange. Mamma had been so angry that, in Miss Overmore’s own words, she had loaded her with insult—proof enough indeed that they must never look forward to being together again under mamma’s roof. Mamma’s roof, however, had its turn, this time, for the child, of appearing but remotely contingent, so that, to reassure her, there was scarce a need of her companion’s secret, solemnly confided—the probability there would be no going back to mamma at all. It was Miss Overmore’s private conviction, and a part of the same communication, that if Mr. Farange’s daughter would only show a really marked preference she would be backed up by public opinion" in holding on to him. Poor Maisie could scarcely grasp that incentive, but she could surrender herself to the day. She had conceived her first passion, and the object of it was her governess. It hadn’t been put to her, and she couldn’t, or at any rate she didn’t, put it to herself, that she liked Miss Overmore better than she liked papa; but it would have sustained her under such an imputation to feel herself able to reply that papa too liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had particularly told her so. Besides she could easily see it.

    Chapter IV

    All this led her on, but it brought on her fate as well, the day when her mother would be at the door in the carriage in which Maisie now rode on no occasions but these. There was no question at present of Miss Overmore’s going back with her: it was universally recognized that her quarrel with Mrs. Farange was much too acute. The child felt it from the first; there was no hugging nor exclaiming as that lady drove her away—there was only a frightening silence, un-enlivened even by the invidious enquiries of former years, which culminated, according to its stern nature, in a still more frightening old woman, a figure awaiting her on the very doorstep. You’re to be under this lady’s care, said her mother. Take her, Mrs. Wix, she added, addressing the figure impatiently and giving the child a push from which Maisie gathered that she wished to set Mrs. Wix an example of energy. Mrs. Wix took her and, Maisie felt the next day, would never let her go. She had struck her at first, just after Miss Overmore, as terrible; but something in her voice at the end of an hour touched the little girl in a spot that had never even yet been reached. Maisie knew later what it was, though doubtless she couldn’t have made a statement of it: these were things that a few days’ talk with Mrs. Wix quite lighted up. The principal one was a matter Mrs. Wix herself always immediately mentioned: she had had a little girl quite of her own, and the little girl had been killed on the spot. She had had absolutely nothing else in all the world, and her affliction had broken her heart. It was comfortably established between them that Mrs. Wix’s heart was broken. What Maisie felt was that she had been, with passion and anguish, a mother, and that this was something Miss Overmore was not, something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma was even less.

    So it was that in the course of an extraordinarily short time she found herself as deeply absorbed in the image of the little dead Clara Matilda, who, on a crossing in the Harrow Road, had been knocked down and crushed by the cruelest of hansoms, as she had ever found herself in the family group made vivid by one of seven. She’s your little dead sister, Mrs. Wix ended by saying, and Maisie, all in a tremor of curiosity and compassion, addressed from that moment a particular piety to the small accepted acquisition. Somehow she wasn’t a real sister, but that only made her the more romantic. It contributed to this view of her that she was never to be spoken of in that character to anyone else—least of all to Mrs. Farange, who wouldn’t care for her nor recognize the relationship: it was to be just an unutterable and inexhaustible little secret with Mrs. Wix. Maisie knew everything about her that could be known, everything she had said or done in her little mutilated life, exactly how lovely she was, exactly how her hair was curled and her frocks were trimmed. Her hair came down far below her waist—it was of the most wonderful golden brightness, just as Mrs. Wix’s own had been a long time before. Mrs. Wix’s own was indeed very remarkable still, and Maisie had felt at first that she should never get on with it. It played a large part in the sad and strange appearance, the appearance as of a kind of greasy greyness, which Mrs. Wix had presented on the child’s arrival. It had originally been yellow, but time had turned that elegance to ashes, to a turbid sallow un-venerable white. Still excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of which the poor lady appeared not yet to have recognized the supersession, with a glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the top of the head, and behind, at the nape of the neck, a dingy rosette like a large button. She wore glasses which, in humble reference to a divergent obliquity of vision, she called her straighteners, and a little ugly snuff-coloured dress trimmed with satin bands in the form of scallops and glazed with antiquity. The straighteners, she explained to Maisie, were put on for the sake of others, whom, as she believed, they helped to recognize the bearing, otherwise doubtful, of her regard; the rest of the melancholy garb could only have been put on for herself. With the added suggestion of her goggles it reminded her pupil of the polished shell or corslet of a horrid beetle. At first she had looked cross and almost cruel; but this impression passed away with the child’s increased perception of her being in the eyes of the world a figure mainly to laugh at. She was as droll as a charade or an animal toward the end of the natural history—a person whom people, to make talk lively, described to each other and imitated. Everyone knew the straighteners; everyone knew the diadem and the button, the scallops and satin bands; everyone, though Maisie had never betrayed her, knew even Clara Matilda.

    It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low pay, really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had accompanied her into the drawing room and left her, the child heard one of the ladies she found there—a lady with eyebrows arched like skipping ropes and thick black stitching, like ruled lines for musical notes on beautiful white gloves—announce to another. She knew governesses were poor; Miss Overmore was unmentionably and Mrs. Wix ever so

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