The imagined woman

Every time you open your mouth you create something.

Frank Baker, Miss Hargreaves

Genesis tells us God created man by speaking a few words. What if man could, at least once, do the same thing? In a 1940 novel called Miss Hargreaves, republished a decade ago, Frank Baker imagines just that.

Young Norman Huntley, a cathedral organist, and his friend Henry are having a lark in Ireland when Henry insists they enter an old church, where a proud caretaker gladly gives them a tour. The pair have always enjoyed making up stories together, each contributing something outrageous to the tale. So when their guide mentions a revered former vicar named Archer, Norman invents an old woman named Constance Hargreaves whom he says he knows very well and who was once a dear friend of the late vicar. Henry adds details, and soon Miss Hargreaves is a poet who likes to travel with her harp and her own bathtub.

They no sooner return home than Norman finds his slightly addled father reading a book of poetry called Wayside Bundle by one Constance Hargreaves. Then a harp arrives at the family home with a message that Miss Hargreaves is on her way.

Miss Hargreaves turns out to be everything Norman imagined. She and his father get along famously, but Norman is terrified. Where did she come from? How is it possible that she actually exists? How can he get rid of her?

Norman finds himself in a love-hate relationship with this 83-year-old woman — loving his creation while hating the way she has taken over his life. He discovers he can still fill in the blanks of her history. When someone asks if she has ever been to Scandinavia she can't remember until Norman nods. Suddenly she recalls the details of her visit there. When he unwisely refers to her as Lady Hargreaves, she quickly turns pompous and insists on the title wherever she goes.

Baker sprinkles poems from Wayside Bundle throughout the novel. Most of them are delightfully atrocious, but a few lines from one poem prove revealing.

I sometimes feel that I am but a thought,/A piece of thistledown, a thing of naught;/Rocked in the cradle of a craftsman's story/And destined not for high Angelic glory.

As real as she seems to everyone around her, Miss Hargreaves senses that she is but a figment of someone's imagination. For her sake, as well as his own, Norman must find a way to imagine her out of existence.

Miss Hargreaves is an amusing and imaginative novel that provokes thought while it entertains. One thought I had is that scientists who hold the multiple-universe theory seem to believe that each of us create not just people but entire universes by the choices we make and the words we speak.

That sounds like another good reason to be careful what we say.