The young writer Amy Lee may be a fictional character, but she is in many ways a classic, textbook case. She shares many attributes and experiences with people featured on here. She needs solitude; she lives to read and write.
A new life for the young orphan Amy Lee
Luckily for Amy her father has left a small amount of money, enough to cover her expenses until she leaves school.
She moves downstairs to live with her landlady Mrs Beeding, a tough but kindly Yorkshirewoman, and the rest of the Beeding family:
“Their only fault as a family was their inability to imagine a human being who might sometimes wish to be alone; and in this they were not unique.”
Amy has to share a bedroom with one of the Beeding girls; luckily it is not that dreadful young drama queen Mona, who is always poking into Amy’s affairs!
Family life benefits Amy in some ways. She is well fed, well clothed and well treated. Her worst fears are not realised: she even manages to get some time to herself and a place to read:
“For a week after Tim’s funeral Amy was able to escape for a little while every evening up to the flat and read or dream (she did not dare to write, for fear of interruption and consequent discovery)..."
Amy starts to resettle herself into her secret world:
“The Beedings were used to her ways and left her in peace except for an occasional friendly shriek up the stairs, explaining her taste for solitude to one another by saying that Aime was a great reader, for none of them knew that she was also a great writer.”
Amy’s landlady is on her side, at least when it comes to reading:
“Nor was Mrs. Beeding completely insensitive to Amy’s nature and tastes. She had no intention of trying to make the little girl different all at once. She knew, of course, that Amy liked being alone with a nice book, and she saw no harm in that, provided it did not happen too often and make her mopier still.
She frequently sent Mona off with a flea in her ear when the latter was worrying Amy to come out on a boy-hunt in the Fields or sit and knit on the side doorstep, telling her daughter to leave the child alone while she was quiet.”
Mona’s behaviour has its funny side, but anyone who has suffered from being pestered to do things they don’t want to do and having demands made on them that they can’t or don’t want to meet will understand the effect that Mona has on Amy. Anyone who had no one on their side at the time will envy Amy for being lucky enough to have someone to stand up for her and look after her interests in this way.
Finding the time and a place for her writing is still a very big problem. Once again, Amy is lucky; she has a helpful headmistress.
Amy’s school and a helping hand
Amy Lee still has three years of school to go. She attends one of the best possible schools for someone of her temperament and situation. It is a good place for a dreamer.
The headmistress sees something in Amy and gives her the sole use of a small room in the school to do her writing and keep her note-books in. This reminds me of the librarian who gave me unlimited access to the stockroom.
Her headmistress sees that Amy has no ideas about what she wants to do when she leaves school and understands:
“You just want to be left alone to scribble, isn’t that it?”
Some habits die hard, and there is still the need to lead a double life and think of plausible explanations.
When Amy Lee finally leaves school for the world of work, she lies when she tells her classmates that the large parcel of her stories she is carrying home on her last day is a batch of school magazines. She says that they are for Mrs Beeding to use as paper spills to light the fire and gas with!
She tells Mrs Beeding that the parcel contains school books, and gets permission to store them upstairs.
Motivation and coping with life
Amy Lee sometimes envisions herself doing something before taking action:
“She often imagined herself doing things, and then did them, like that.”
I don’t know how common it is to see oneself doing something before actually doing it, but it is something I do a lot to get myself moving.
Amy Lee has a fearful and sensitive personality. She hates the strong smells in the shops (no supermarkets with plastic wrappings in those days!) and is afraid of buses and cars.
Amy tries to toughen herself up for the sake of her dead mother, who encouraged her to be brave. She was brought up on stories of heroes, and she reminds herself of and tries to emulate those brave men when faced with horrible sights, in the butcher's shop for example, and difficult situations such as her first ever job interview, at which she is initially very nervous.
While some people might try mantras, Amy Lee sees herself talking easily to the as yet unmet interviewer; the fear dissolves and she thinks of herself as Laurence of Arabia or Lindbergh:
“I must be cool and wary and betray nothing. Bluff wins.”
She gets the job!
Amy Lee and the world of work
Having a job to go to has a positive effect on Amy:
“She soon became at home in the office—as much, that is, as she was at home anywhere in the real world—and liked being there. Of course she would sooner have been at home in the big-top-front, writing, or in the old exam room at the Anna Bonner (her old school), writing, but she liked getting away from the Beedings for nine hours or so every day and enjoyed the journey to and from the City...”
Amy still has to lead that double life and tell more lies from time to time. Once again, she needs somewhere to write her stories: the office is out of the question. She settles on spending her lunch hour in nearby St. Paul’s Cathedral and writing there. She thinks of a plausible story to tell the verger about why she is always scribbling.
She comes up with a good cover story when she asks someone for advice about receiving letters secretly – she is planning to submit one of her adventure stories to a magazine for the first time and doesn't want anyone to see the reply.
No more subterfuge for Amy Lee
Amy goes on to sell her first story, followed by many others. Her writing is a great success and she becomes rich and famous. She now has a beautiful luxury flat of her own to write in and no longer needs to conceal and lie about her activities.
This the point where for me Amy's story becomes much less interesting and much less convincing; she soon moves to America and marries the boy she first met as a child at Kenwood.
Some remaining material of interest from the London scenes in My American will be covered in future articles
An early edition of the book, showing Amy and her American boy together first at Kenwood and later as adults in America:
