Minny Temple sat in the garden and at first listened silently to Henry’s father, who was addressing most of his remarks to William, nodding at times in the direction of Henry and the Temple sisters. There was a jug of lemonade and some glasses on the low garden table, and it might have been an ordinary, easy summer gathering of cousins amusing themselves at the feet of the older generation. Everything his father said had been uttered many times before, but despite this William grinned in encouragement as his father began now to discuss women and their deep inferiority and the need for them to remain not only subservient but patient.
‘By nature,’ he spoke quickly and emphatically, ‘woman is inferior to man. She is man’s inferior in passion, his inferior in intellect and his inferior in physical strength.’
‘My father has many convictions,’ William said amiably. He smiled at Minny, but she did not return his smile. Her gaze was still and serious. She sat up straight, seeming unrelaxed as if poised to speak. His father noticed her discomfort, and looked at her impatiently. For a few moments, the group was silent, waiting to see if she would say something. Her voice was low when she eventually began so that the old man had to strain to hear her.
‘Perhaps it is my very inferiority,’ she said, ‘which causes me to wonder.’
‘Wonder what?’ William asked.
‘Do you really wish to know?’ she asked. She almost laughed.
‘Say it out,’ the father said.
‘Very simply, sir, I wonder if what you are saying is true.’ Suddenly, her tone was direct and clear.
‘Do you mean you don’t agree with it?’ William asked.
‘No, I don’t mean that,’ Minny said. ‘If I had meant that I would have said it. I meant what I said. I wonder if it is true.’ A sharpness had entered her tone.
‘Of course it’s true.’ The old man’s eyes displayed his anger now. ‘A man is physically stronger than a woman. That much is clear, that much is true, if true is the word you want. And in passion a man is stronger, as I have said. And in intellect. Plato was not a woman, nor Sophocles, nor Shakespeare.’
‘How do we know Shakespeare was not a woman?’ William interjected.
‘Does what I have said satisfy you, Miss Temple?’ the father asked.
Minny did not answer him.
‘It is a woman’s job,’ he went on, ‘to be submissive. To see to her needlework and her cooking and her preparation to become the sleepless guardian of her husband’s children. We judge a woman by her obedience and her attention to duty.’
His voice had become rancorous and he was obviously annoyed.
‘Thus spake our father,’ William said.
‘Is that settled then?’ the old man asked Minny.
‘Not at all, sir. Nothing is settled.’ She smiled at him. Her expression was almost condescending as she continued. ‘Very simply, I do not know if being physically weaker than man means we understand less, or live less intelligently in the world. You see, I have the evidence close at hand which is my own weak mind, but I do not think it is weaker than anyone else’s.’
‘Women must live in Christian humility,’ Henry senior said.
‘Is that in the Bible, sir, or is it one of the Commandments, or did you learn it at school?’ Minny asked.
By suppertime the news had spread. Mrs James, Aunt Kate and Alice had been alerted to the outrage which had occurred.
‘She will not mind women cooking for her and keeping house for her,’ Henry’s mother said to him as they met in the hallway. ‘She has not been disciplined and she has not been cultivated, and we must pity her because her future will be grim.’
IN THE SUMMER of 1865, the Civil War over and his first two stories published, Henry prepared to spend the month of August with the Temples in New Hampshire. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had refused an invitation to Newport, agreed to go to North Conway, where the Temples were staying, once he discovered that there would be abundant female company. He was to travel with Henry, and John Gray, also fresh from the Civil War, was to follow. Henry wrote to Holmes to tell him that Minny Temple, after superhuman efforts, had ferreted out a single room, the only one in the area, and that the wretch who owned the room had, despite Minny’s protests and her charm, refused to furnish the room with two beds.
They would, Henry told him, pull the fellow’s own bed out from under him. In the meantime, Minny had her eye peeled for another bed, or indeed another room. Holmes seemed thrilled at the idea of an enemy who could be made to hand over his bed to his visitors. As they travelled to North Conway, he listed the tactics they could use, mentioning several technical terms and placing himself in the foreground as leader and hero and placing Henry, two years younger than he and not a veteran of any war, merely as a decoy. He did not seem to mind when Henry fell asleep.
They were to go for supper, as invited, at the house where the Temple girls were being chaperoned by their great-aunt, who looked, in Henry’s opinion, like George Washington. But first, on arrival at North Conway, they set out to find directions to their lodgings, and, after several wrong turns, they discovered a large and surly landlord who managed instantly to express his dislike for people who were not born and bred in North Conway and its immediate surroundings. Neither Holmes’s uniform, which he was wearing, nor his moustache, seemed to impress him. The landlord did not look at Henry. One bed, he said, that’s what he had told the lady, and one bed it was, but the room had a nice clean floor and you could sleep a whole regiment there, he added insolently as he gave them the key.
The room was bare, except for a washstand, a jug and basin, a closet and a small iron-framed bed covered by a strangely beautiful coloured quilt out of keeping with the spartan decor. They left their luggage at the door, as if unsure that they were going to stay.
‘I believe we should call for reinforcements and attack him forthwith,’ Holmes said.
Henry tested the bed, which sagged in the middle.
‘Perhaps it is the sort of room which benefits from its inhabitants remaining outdoors,’ Henry said.
He picked up a small lamp from the floor.
‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that every moth in New Hampshire has visited this shrine. It looks as though it came with the founding fathers.’
‘Is your cousin Minny wise?’ Holmes asked.
‘Yes, she is,’ Henry said.
‘In that case, I am sure she has found us another room.’
Henry went to the small window and looked out. The day was still bright and the smell of pine filled the air.
‘In the meantime,’ he turned to Holmes laughing, ‘I don’t mind if you don’t, as the lady said when the puppy dog licked her face.’
‘It is, I fear, going to be a long month,’ Holmes said.
MINNY AND TWO of her sisters were sitting on chairs on the back lawn when their cousin and his friend arrived. Henry was deeply conscious now of what Minny must look like to Holmes. She was not beautiful, he thought, until she spoke, or until she smiled. And then she managed a sympathy for her company and exuded a deep seriousness and a high good humour at the same time. Henry instantly thought that Holmes preferred her two sisters, Kitty and Elly, who were more conventionally pretty, more polite and shy than their sister.
As soon as they sat down, Henry noticed that Holmes became a military man, a Civil War veteran who had seen many battles and come close to death. Suddenly, military tactics were no longer a joke. The three Temple girls, whose brother William had been killed in the war, and their great-aunt stared at the soldier sadly and admiringly. Henry watched Minny carefully to see if all Holmes’s talk impressed her as much as it seemed to, but she gave nothing away.
After supper the two young men walked back to their room, happy with the news that Minny had found them other quarters to which they could move when John Gray arrived. Holmes was in good spirits; he had enjoyed the girls’ company and knew that he had a receptive audience, young and graceful and cheerful, for the duration of his stay. He made jokes and laughed, working out further methods of unsettling the landlord and winning the battle for the extra bed.