INTERVIEWER: Did you ever feel like arguing with James?

EDEL: Not often. I did like his balanced view of life, his calm, his general “cool” compared to my own impulsive way of approaching life. But I think I can best answer your question by telling you the one dream I had about him.I never dreamed about him when I was working on the biography. But when I had finished, I one day dreamed I was a journalist again and with a group of journalists at Lamb House, his country house in Sussex. | remember that in the dream I was worried what he might think about all I had written about him. I hung back, and when the rest of the press went away I walked into his study. He was sitting behind his desk. I sat down and said,“Mr. James, I must tell you, I’ve had great difficulties establishing the hierarchies of your friendships.” He looked sadly at me and replied, “You know, I never got them sorted out myself.’ ]think what I did in that dream was to give myself James’s blessing. The dream also enunciated a biographical truth. The subject of a biography has never had a chance to bring order to a life so constantly lived and involved in action. It is the biographer who finds the frame,sorts things out, and for better or worse tries to bring order into life story—create a sense of sequence and coherence.