The Little Locksmith: A Memoir - Softcover

Butler Hathaway, Katharine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558612394 ISBN 13: 9781558612396

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2000

Synopsis

This early 20th century memoir of a woman’s faith in the face of debilitating disease is a “remarkably un-self-pitying book remains poignant and truthful” (Publishers Weekly).

In 1895, a specialist straps five-year-old Katharine Hathaway, then suffering from spinal tuberculosis, to a board with halters and pulleys in a failed attempt to prevent her from becoming a “hunchback” like the “little locksmith” who does odd jobs at her family’s home. Forced to endure her confinement for ten years, Katharine remains immobile until age fifteen, only to find that none of it has prevented her from developing a deformity of her own.

The Little Locksmith charts Katharine’s struggle to transcend physical limitations and embrace her life, her body, and herself. Her spirit and courage prevail as she expands her world far beyond the boundaries prescribed by her family and society: she attends Radcliffe College, forms deep friendships, begins to write, and in 1921, purchases a house of her own that she fashions into a space for guests, lovers, and artists. Revealing and inspirational, The Little Locksmith stands as a testimony to Katharine’s aspirations and desires—for independence, love, and the pursuit of her art.

About this title

About the Author

Katharine Butler Hathaway (1890-1942) grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. After attending Radcliffe College, she lived and wrote in Maine, and later in New York City and Paris, where she was a part of the vibrant artists' culture of the 1920s. In the early 1930s she returned to Maine with her husband. The Little Locksmith was published a year after her death.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Little Locksmith

By Katharine Butler Hathaway

Feminist Press

Copyright © 2000 Katharine Butler Hathaway
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781558612396

Foreword

In the early 1980s, soon after I had moved alone to the coastof Maine where my life unexpectedly expanded and deepened,my daughter gave me a copy of The Little Locksmith.Behind the misleading title (this is definitely not a children'sbook), among the discards in the forty, eight-cent bin of NewYork City's largest secondhand bookstore, she had discerneda rare treasure and, after reading it, inscribed it to me formy birthday. The story of a woman who, in defiance of allexpectations for someone of her circumstances and gender,buys a house on the Maine coast and transforms a lifeof doom into one of triumph was a perfect gift to me.

    Holding its own among the best spiritual autobiographiesof our time, this "story of the liberation of a humanbeing, as its author describes it, so moved me that Iwanted to shower copies of it on my friends, promote itsrepublication, teach it to my students, and find out all I couldabout its author, her life and work. Fortunately, secondhandcopies were easy to come by since the book had beena bestseller in 1943 and a main selection of the Book-of-the-MonthClub and had even been excerpted in theAtlantic Monthly before publication, during the darkdays of World War II. But like so many valuable literaryworks by women, not many years after the author's death(at age fifty-two, on the very eve of the publication of hermemoir), the book languished in attics and was forgotten.I began to buy up enough copies to supply my classes, blessmy friends, and quell my fear of running out. But sometimesI found myself down to my last copy and had to begincollecting again. It is therefore with relief, as well asenthusiasm, that I now, these many years after my firstmemorable encounter with The Little Locksmith, relish theconfesses, "I love this book and can hardly bear to leaveit." Rereading it yet again, I know just what she means.

    There is in fact much more to know of Katharine ButlerHathaway after the events of the final chapter of thisbook (for which she planned two sequels): the long deniedsexual fulfillment, a stint in expatriate Paris among theavant-garde artists and bohemians she considered hertrue peers, romance and marriage, and finally the literaryrecognition she craved. But although another volume ofher writing does exist?a posthumously edited miscellanyof journal entries, poems, letters, and drawings?thereis no sequel to The Little Locksmith.

    No matter. This single profound work is treasureenough.

Alix Kates Shulman Long Island, Maine September 1999

Chapter One

THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH

I have an island in the palm of my right hand. Itis quite large and shaped like an almond. Tomake this island, the fate line splits in two in themiddle, then comes together again up toward theMount of Jupiter. I don't know what an island meansin palmistry. No two people ever interpret it alike.But it looks to me, and that is enough for me, as if itmeant that a quiet respectable fate were suddenlygoing to explode in the middle of life into somethingentirely new and strange, and then be folded togetheragain and go on as quietly as it began. Andbecause something of this kind has happened to meI get a rather foolish magic-loving satisfaction frombelieving that my island represents that period, thecycle of precious experience which befell me andwhich I am going to write about in this book. I treasurethat little thing in my hand. I pore over it reminiscently,gratefully. I like to know it is there. It is thelucky coin that saved me. It is the wafer of beneficentmagic that made everything all right at last. Itis the yeast that made my life rise.

    When I was young I was so sure of the marvelousway my life was going to unfold that I never wastedmy time looking for signs and portents. But somethingwent wrong. The future I expected didn'tcome, and so I began to be superstitious and sometimestook a furtive look at the palm of my handwhen I was alone. And there I found the curious andpossibly hopeful island. If the subject of fortune-tellingcame up in a roomful of people I secretlyhungered for my turn. I put on a cool, superior airas I watched the others, and I made an exaggeratedpretense of being reluctant and skeptical when myturn came-while inwardly of course I was no morereluctant and skeptical than any other ambitiouswillful people are in the late twenties, and then inthe early thirties, and then in the middle thirties, iftheir lives are being held at a complete standstillduring those heartbreakingly precious years. Asfoolishly and fiercely as I had believed in myself, sofoolishly and fiercely I came to believe in gypsies,astrologers, card-readers, crystal-gazers, or anyoneelse who would give me any hope. And as each yeardropped off my life I felt an almost unbearable longingto know what the great thing could be that wasgoing to happen to me when I reached that amazingisland in the palm of my hand.

    Now I know What it was. It has happened. And itreally was an island. The things that happened theremade a period that was complete in itself, and soseparate from the rest of my life that it was almostunrecognizable as mine. It was a period that seemedunreal and half enchanted, because it was so foreignto me and to everything that I had thought and beenbefore. It floated like an island in the rest of my life.

    Since then I have been thinking about islands,those explosions of apparently uncharacteristic experiencethat occur in certain lives. Most of the peoplewe know are terribly afraid of such islands. They seeone looming ahead and they hurriedly, steer off inanother direction. In order to save one's life, as hasbeen said, one must be willing to let it be tossedaway, and not many of us are willing. All well-brought-uppeople are afraid of having any experiencewhich seems to them uncharacteristic ofthemselves as they imagine themselves to be. Yetthis is the only kind of experience that is really aliveand can lead them anywhere worth going. New,strange, uncharacteristic, uncharted experience,coming at the needed moment, is sometimes as necessaryin a person's life as a plough in a field. Yetthose people who are most capable of continuousdevelopment, because of their rich and fastidiousand subtle natures, seem to feel a passionate fearand resentment of any really new experience.Change must always come, to them and in them,evenly and slowly and always in a given direction.If it takes a sudden sharp turn, or seems to be leadingthem into a place that they think is not fit forthem, they refuse to follow it. Oh, lucky beyondmost human beings is the refined and well-brought-upperson who comes upon an utterly unfamiliarisland flat in the middle of his fate line, and who isbold and crazy enough to defy the almost overwhelmingchorus of complacency and inertia andother people's ideas and to follow the single, fresh,living voice of his own destiny, which at the crucialmoment speaks aloud to him and tells him to comeon.

    Then what happens is like the Japanese fairy taleof the man who visited a lady in her palace underthe sea. It is romance, and it becomes legend. Onereaches the island, is tossed ashore and stays one'sallotted time, and one leaves the island in the end.One leaves it, but the island floats there still, separatefrom all the rest of one's life, foreign and almostincredible. But there it is, and it is enough that it isthere, even though one can never go back to it again.As one looks back upon it, it comes to seem like anallegorical tale. It throws light on everything thatwent before, and on everything that comes afterward.One recognizes it as the true heart of one's life, forwithout it one's life would have been empty. Somefortunate lives unfold without obstruction or flaw,and these do not need islands.

Chapter Two

I was coming very close to my own island whenI reached the quiet refined age of just past thirty.And by that time I had lost all interest in the littlemark in my hand as a promise of adventure orchange for me. By that time change was the thingI wanted least of all. I had suffered an unbearablethirst and hunger for experience, and I had beencaught and held by my predicament in such a waythat I could not seek what I needed and it could notcome to me. Therefore at last I turned my back onmyself and my predicament in the hope of turningmy back on any more unbearable disappointmentand despair.

    I decided that I would be a writer, and I determinedto be the kind of writer, like Flaubert, whoremoves everything from his life except his writingin order that his writing may live and he may live init. I even killed in myself any desire that writingshould bring me success or fame. I would never riskagain any sort of disappointment. Personal obscurityand infinite patience and infinite devotion wereto be my program. I knew very well that out of theseI could build and maintain a delight as intense asthe mystic delight of any nun who has renouncedthe world.

    And so I combined an absolutely uneventful outwardpersonal life with a vivid life of imaginary experience.I filled notebook after notebook with ideasfor stories and things in Nature I had noticed andadored, and all kinds of things, minute and spectacular,that I saw happening in other people's lives.As they grew, my notebooks became as secretly preciousto me as their slowly growing honeycomb mustbe to a hive of bees. And I adored, idolized even, thepiece of work which was always in progress-the onewhole imaginary experience in the form of a novelor a long short story, which was always in the processof unfolding before the intensely fascinated gazeof my mind's eye. This mysteriously organic growingthing held the essence of life for me, as I concentratedupon it all the skill I had and all my love. Iclung to it the way a bee clings to a flower, clutchingat it with my whole body and mind, absorbing it andbeing absorbed by it as though I would die if I letgo. And it seemed as if I would die, if I lost it or lostmy power to cling to it. When I was separated from itfor a few days, or sometimes even for a single day,my life became an abyss which terrified me, an unfamiliarplace where I had a sense of never being athome, of never really belonging there. Because ofthis queer unnatural suffering, I feared and dreadedany external change which might threaten to preventme from clinging tight to my great anesthetizingflower of dreams. And when I began to entertainat first mildly and then eagerly the innocent ideathat it would be very nice to have a house of my ownit was mainly for the sake, I thought, of making thissecret life of mine safer still from external interference.I was intending to make it very hard indeedfor anything to dislodge or disturb me.

Chapter Three

So I began to peer among lilac bushes and oldapple trees as I went along country roads lookingfor my house. I thought I knew the sort of houseI wanted and that would be suitable for me. It wouldbe dark and weather-beaten on the outside and havesmall curved windowpanes and a mossy roof. Ididn't go to any real-estate dealers because I knewthey would try `to force the wrong thing on me andmake me horribly uncomfortable. I knew that whenthe destined moment came I should find my house.But it must be let alone, I thought, to happen byitself like a friendship or a love affair.

    Nevertheless, I was sure that I saw it in my mind'seye very much as it would turn out to be. Unquestionably,for me, a very small childish spinster, itshould be small, something mignonne and doll-like.I had thought of an old Cape Cod cottage with atrumpet vine, or a cluster of outbuildings on some oldTopsfield or Ipswich farm?a creamhouse, cobbler'sshop, and woodshed all fastened together by narrowpassages and made into something fascinating anddoll-size. I had once seen a house like that which itsowner called The Thimbles because each buildingwas no bigger than a thimble. After that, thimblewas the word used by me and my family to describethe thing that was supposed to be suitable for me,for my size and my needs, and it was understoodand approved by everybody that sooner or later Ishould find and buy myself a thimble. Thereforewhen I noticed the FOR SALE sign on a very largehigh square house on Penobscot Bay overlooking theBagaduce River and the islands and the Cape Rozierhills, and when just out of casual curiosity I steppedinside to look at it, I was awestruck by the force ofdestiny. I didn't recognize this huge house at all. Ihad never seen it in my mind's eye. But I knew thatwhether I liked it or not this at last was my house.It frightened me very much. And filled me withastonishing joy, quite out of keeping with my sizeand my spinsterhood.

    The owner's wife showed us over it and said shedidn't know what price her husband was asking forit. My sister-in-law laughed scornfully at the ideaof an unattached person like me in rather fragilehealth buying that enormous place. It would havebeen more suitable for her with her family of chil-

Continues...

Excerpted from The Little Locksmithby Katharine Butler Hathaway Copyright © 2000 by Katharine Butler Hathaway. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1558612394
• ISBN 13: 9781558612396
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272