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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68592fd --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63377 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63377) diff --git a/old/63377-0.txt b/old/63377-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 13ca262..0000000 --- a/old/63377-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1326 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Henry James at Work - -Author: Theodora Bosanquet - -Release Date: October 5, 2020 [EBook #63377] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY JAMES AT WORK *** - - - - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Hathi Trust.) - - - - - - -THE HOGARTH ESSAYS - - -HENRY JAMES AT WORK - - -BY - - - -THEODORA BOSANQUET - - - - -HENRY JAMES AT WORK - - - - -I - - -I knew nothing of Henry James beyond the revelation of his novels and -tales before the summer of 1907. Then, as I sat in a top-floor office -near Whitehall one August morning, compiling a very full index to the -Report of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion, my ears were struck by -the astonishing sound of passages from _The Ambassadors_ being dictated -to a young typist. Neglecting my Blue-book, I turned round to watch the -operator ticking off sentences which seemed to be at least as much of a -surprise to her as they were to me. When my bewilderment had broken into -a question, I learnt that Henry James was on the point of coming back -from Italy, that he had asked to be provided with an amanuensis, and -that the lady at the typewriter was making acquaintance with his style. -Without any hopeful design of supplanting her, I lodged an immediate -petition that I might be allowed the next opportunity of filling the -post, supposing she should ever abandon it. I was told, to my amazement, -that I need not wait. The established candidate was not enthusiastic -about the prospect before her, was even genuinely relieved to look in -another direction. If I set about practising typewriting on a Remington -machine at once, I could be interviewed by Henry James as soon as he -arrived in London. Within an hour I had begun work on the typewriter. By -the time he was ready to interview me, I could tap out paragraphs of -_The Ambassadors_ at quite a fair speed. - -He asked no questions at that interview about my speed on a typewriter -or about anything else. The friend to whom he had applied for an -amanuensis had told him that I was sufficiently the right young woman -for his purpose and he relied on her word. He had, at the best, little -hope of any young woman beyond docility. We sat in armchairs on either -side of a fireless grate while we observed each other. I suppose he -found me harmless and I know that I found him overwhelming. He was much -more massive than I had expected, much broader and stouter and stronger. -I remembered that someone had told me he used to be taken for a -sea-captain when he wore a beard, but it was clear that now, with the -beard shaved away, he would hardly have passed for, say, an admiral, in -spite of the keen gray eyes set in a face burned to a colourable -sea-faring brown by the Italian sun. No successful naval officer could -have afforded to keep that sensitive mobile mouth. After the interview I -wondered what kind of impression one might have gained from a chance -encounter in some such observation cell as a railway carriage. Would it -have been possible to fit him confidently into any single category? He -had reacted with so much success against both the American accent and -the English manner that he seemed only doubtfully Anglo-Saxon. He might -perhaps have been some species of disguised cardinal, or even a Roman -nobleman amusing himself by playing the part of a Sussex squire. The -observer could at least have guessed that any part he chose to assume -would be finely conceived and generously played, for his features were -all cast in the classical mould of greatness. He might very well have -been a merciful Cæsar or a benevolent Napoleon, and a painter who -worked at his portrait a year or two later was excusably reminded of so -many illustrious makers of history that he declared it to be a hard task -to isolate the individual character of the model. - -If the interview was overwhelming, it had none of the usual awkwardness -of such curious conversations. Instead of critical angles and -disconcerting silences, there were only benign curves and ample -reassurances. There was encouraging gaiety in an expanse of bright check -waistcoat. He invited me to ask any questions I liked, but I had none to -ask. I wanted nothing but to be allowed to go to Rye and work his -typewriter. He was prepared, however, with his statements and, once I -was seated opposite to him, the strong, slow stream of his deliberate -speech played over me without ceasing. He had it on his mind to tell me -the conditions of life and labour at Rye, and he unburdened himself -fully, with numberless amplifications and qualifications but without any -real break. It would be a dull business, he warned me, and I should -probably find Rye a dull place. He told me of rooms in Mermaid Street, -"very simple, rustic and antique--but that is the case for everything -near my house, and this particular little old house is very near mine, -and I know the good woman for kind and worthy and a convenient cook and -in short----." It was settled at once that I should take the rooms, that -I should begin my duties in October. - - - - -II - - -Since winter was approaching, Henry James had begun to use a panelled, -green-painted room on the upper floor of Lamb House for his work. It was -known simply as the green room. It had many advantages as a winter -workroom, for it was small enough to be easily warmed and a wide south -window caught all the morning sunshine. The window overhung the smooth, -green lawn, shaded in summer by a mulberry tree, surrounded by roses and -enclosed behind a tall, bride wall. It never failed to give the owner -pleasure to look out of this window at his charming English garden where -he could watch his English gardener digging the flower-beds or mowing -the lawn or sweeping up fallen leaves. There was another window for the -afternoon sun, looking towards Winchelsea and doubly glazed against the -force of the westerly gales. Three high bookcases, two big writing-desks -and an easy chair filled most of the space in the green room, but left -enough dear floor for a restricted amount of the pacing exercise that -was indispensable to literary composition. On summer days Henry James -liked better to work in the large "garden room" which gave him a longer -stretch for perambulation and a window overlooking the cobbled street -that curved up the hill past his door. He liked to be able to relieve -the tension of a difficult sentence by a glance down the street; he -enjoyed hailing a passing friend or watching a motor-car pant up the -sharp little slope. The sight of one of these vehicles could be counted -on to draw from him a vigorous outburst of amazement, admiration, or -horror for the complications of an age that produced such efficient -monsters for gobbling protective distance. - -The business of acting as a medium between the spoken and the -typewritten word was at first as alarming as it was fascinating. The -most handsome and expensive typewriters exercise as vicious an influence -as any others over the spelling of the operator, and the new pattern of -a Remington machine which I found installed offered a few additional -problems. But Henry James's patience during my struggles with that -baffling mechanism was unfailing--he watched me helplessly, for he was -one of the few men without the smallest pretension to the understanding -of a machine--and he was as easy to spell from as an open dictionary. -The experience of years had evidently taught him that it was not safe to -leave any word of more than one syllable to luck. He took pains to -pronounce every pronounceable letter, he always spelt out words which -the ear might confuse with others, and he never left a single, -punctuation mark unuttered, except sometimes that necessary point, the -full stop. Occasionally, in a low "aside" he would interject a few words -for the enlightenment of the amanuensis, adding, for instance, after -spelling out "The Newcomes," that the words were the title of a novel by -one Thackeray. - -The practice of dictation was begun in the nineties. By 1907 it was a -confirmed habit, its effects being easily recognizable in his style, -which became more and more like free, involved, unanswered talk. "I -know," he once said to me, "that I'm too diffuse when I'm dictating." -But he found dictation not only an easier but a more inspiring method of -composing than writing with his own hand, and he considered that the -gain in expression more than compensated for any loss of concision. The -spelling out of the words, the indication of commas, were scarcely felt -as a drag on the movement of his thought. "It all seems," he once -explained, "to be so much more effectively and unceasingly _pulled_ out -of me in speech than in writing." Indeed, at the time when I began to -work for him, he had reached a stage at which the click of a Remington -machine acted as a positive spur. He found it more difficult to compose -to the music of any other make. During a fortnight when the Remington -was out of order he dictated to an Oliver typewriter with evident -discomfort, and he found it almost impossibly disconcerting to speak to -something that made no responsive sound at all. Once or twice when he -was ill and in bed I took down a note or two by hand, but as a rule he -liked to have the typewriter moved into his bedroom for even the -shortest letters. Yet there were to the end certain kinds of work which -he was obliged to do with a pen. Plays, if they were to be kept within -the limits of possible performance, and short stories, if they were to -remain within the bounds of publication in a monthly magazine, must be -written by hand. He was well aware that the manual labour of writing was -his best aid to a desired brevity. The plays--such a play as _The -Outcry_, for instance--were copied straight from his manuscript, since -he was too much afraid of "the murderous limits of the English theatre" -to risk the temptation of dictation and embroidery. With the short -stories he allowed himself a little more freedom, dictating them from -his written draft and expanding them as he went to an extent which -inevitably defeated his original purpose. It is almost literally true to -say of the sheaf of tales collected in _The Finer Grain_ that they were -all written in response to a single request for a short story for -_Harper's Monthly Magazine._ The length was to be about 5,000 words and -each promising idea was cultivated in the optimistic belief that it -would produce a flower too frail and small to demand any exhaustive -treatment. But even under pressure of being written by hand, with -dictated interpolations rigidly restricted, each in turn pushed out to -lengths that no chopping could reduce to the word limit. The tale -eventually printed was _Crapy Cornelia_, but, although it was the -shortest of the batch, it was thought too long to be published in one -number and appeared in two sections, to the great annoyance of the -author. - - - - -III - - -The method adopted for full-length novels was very different. With a -clear run of 100,000 words or more before him, Henry James always -cherished the delusive expectation of being able to fit his theme quite -easily between the covers of a volume. It was not until he was more than -half way through that the problem of space began to be embarrassing. At -the beginning he had no questions of compression to attend to, and he -"broke ground," as he said, by talking to himself day by day about the -characters and construction until the persons and their actions were -vividly present to his inward eye. This soliloquy was of course recorded -on the typewriter. He had from far back tended to dramatize all the -material that life gave him, and he more and more prefigured his novels -as staged performances, arranged in acts and scenes, with the characters -making their observed entrances and exits. These scenes he worked out -until he felt himself so thoroughly possessed of the action that he -could begin on the dictation of the book itself--a process which has -been incorrectly described by one critic as re-dictation from a rough -draft. It was nothing of the kind. Owners of the volumes containing _The -Ivory Tower_ or _The Sense of the Past_ have only to turn to the Notes -printed at the end to see that the scenario dictated in advance contains -practically none of the phrases used in the final work. The two sets of -Notes are a different and a much more interesting literary record than a -mere draft. They are the framework set up for imagination to clothe with -the spun web of life. But they are not bare framework. They are -elaborate and abundant. They are the kind of exercise described in _The -Death of the Lion_ as "a great gossiping eloquent letter--the overflow -into talk of an artist's amorous design." But the design was thus mapped -out with the clear understanding that at a later stage and at closer -quarters the subject might grow away from the plan. "In the intimacy of -composition pre-noted proportions and arrangements do most uncommonly -insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always -improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open -always to something more right and _more_ related. It is subject to that -constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and -tentatively sketch."[1] - -The preliminary sketch was seldom consulted after the novel began to -take permanent shape, but the same method of "talking out" was resorted -to at difficult points of the narrative as it progressed, always for the -sake of testing in advance the values of the persons involved in a given -situation, so that their creator should ensure their right action both -for the development of the drama and the truth of their relations to -each other. The knowledge of all the conscious motives and concealments -of his creatures, gained by unwearied observation of their attitudes -behind the scenes, enabled Henry James to exhibit them with a final -confidence that dispensed with explanations. Among certain stumbling -blocks in the path of the perfect comprehension of his readers is their -uneasy doubt of the sincerity of the conversational encounters recorded. -Most novelists provide some clue to help their readers to distinguish -truth from falsehood, and in the theatre, although husbands and wives -may be deceived by lies, the audience is usually privy to the plot. But -a study of the Notes to _The Ivory Tower_ will make it clear that -between the people created by Henry James lying is as frequent as among -mortals and not any easier to detect. - -For the volumes of memories, _A Small Boy and Others, Notes of a Son and -Brother_, and the uncompleted _Middle Years_, no preliminary work was -needed. A straight dive into the past brought to the surface treasure -after treasure, a wealth of material which became embarrassing. The -earlier book was begun in 1911, after Henry James had returned from a -year in the United States, where he had been called by his brother's -fatal illness. He had come back, after many seasons of country solitude, -to his former love of the friendly London winter, and for the first few -months after his return from America he lodged near the Reform Club and -came to the old house in Chelsea where I was living and where he had -taken a room for his work. It was a quiet room, long and narrow and -rather dark--he used to speak of it as "my Chelsea cellar." There he -settled down to write what, as he outlined it to me, was to be a set of -notes to his brother William's early letters, prefaced by a brief -account of the family into which they were both born. But an entire -volume of memories was finished before bringing William to an age for -writing letters, and _A Small Boy_ came to a rather abrupt end as a -result of the writer's sudden decision that a break must be made at once -if the flood of remembrance was not to drown his pious intention. - -It was extraordinarily easy for him to recover the past; he had always -been sensitive to impressions and his mind was stored with records of -exposure. All he had to do was to render his sense of those records as -adequately as he could. Each morning, after reading over the pages -written the day before, he would settle down in a chair for an hour or -so of conscious effort. Then, lifted on a rising tide of inspiration, he -would get up and pace up and down the room, sounding out the periods in -tones of resonant assurance. At such times he was beyond reach of -irrelevant sounds or sights. Hosts of cats--a tribe he usually routed -with shouts of execration--might wail outside the window, phalanxes of -motor-cars bearing dreaded visitors might hoot at the door. He heard -nothing of them. The only thing that could arrest his progress was the -escape of the word he wanted to use. When that had vanished he broke off -the rhythmic pacing and made his way to a chimney-piece or book-case -tall enough to support his elbows while he rested his head in his hands -and audibly pursued the fugitive. - - -[Footnote 1: _The Ivory Tower_ (Collini, 1917), p. 341.] - - - - -IV - - -In the autumn of 1907, when I began to tap the Remington typewriter at -Henry James's dictation, he was engaged on the arduous task of preparing -his Novels and Tales for the definitive New York edition, published in -1909. Since it was only between breakfast and luncheon that he undertook -what he called "inventive" work, he gave the hours from half-past ten to -half-past one to the composition of the prefaces which are so -interesting a feature of the edition. In the evenings he read over again -the work of former years, treating the printed pages like so many -proof-sheets of extremely corrupt text. The revision was a task he had -seen in advance as formidable. He had cultivated the habit of forgetting -past achievements almost to the pitch of a sincere conviction that -nothing he had written before about 1890 could come with any shred of -credit through the ordeal of a critical inspection. On a morning when he -was obliged to give time to the selection of a set of tales for a -forthcoming volume, he confessed that the difficulty of selection was -mainly the difficulty of reading them at all. "They seem," he said, "so -bad until I _have_ read them that I can't force myself to go through -them except with a pen in my hand, altering as I go the crudities and -ineptitudes that to my sense deform each page." Unfamiliarity and -adverse prejudice are rare advantages for a writer to bring to the task -of choosing among his works. For Henry James the prejudice might give -way to half reluctant appreciation as the unfamiliarity passed into -recognition, but it must be clear to every reader of the prefaces that -he never lost the sense of being paternally responsible for two distinct -families. For the earlier brood, acknowledged fruit of his alliance with -Romance, he claimed indulgence on the ground of their youthful -spontaneity, their confident assurance, their rather touching good -faith. One catches echoes of a plea that these elderly youngsters may -not be too closely compared, to their inevitable disadvantage, with the -richly endowed, the carefully bred, the highly civilized and sensitized -children of his second marriage, contracted with that wealthy bride, -Experience. Attentive readers of the novels may perhaps find the -distinction between the two groups less remarkable than it seemed to -their writer. They may even wonder whether the second marriage was not -rather a silver wedding, with the old romantic mistress cleverly -disguised as a woman of the world. The different note was possibly due -more to the substitution of dictation for pen and ink than to any -profound change of heart. But whatever the reason, their author -certainly found it necessary to spend a good deal of time working on the -earlier tales before he considered them fit for appearance in the -company of those composed later. Some members of the elder family he -entirely cast off, not counting them worth the expense of completely new -clothes. Others he left in their place more from a necessary, though -deprecated, respect for the declared taste of the reading public than -because he loved them for their own sake. It would, for instance, have -been difficult to exclude _Daisy Miller_ from any representative -collection of his work, yet the popularity of the tale had become almost -a grievance. To be acclaimed as the author of _Daisy Miller_ by persons -blandly unconscious of _The Wings of the Dove_ or _The Golden Bowl_ was -a reason among many for Henry James's despair of intelligent -comprehension. Confronted repeatedly with Daisy, he felt himself rather -in the position of some _grande dame_ who, with a jewel-case of -sparkling diamonds, is constrained by her admirers always to appear in -the simple string of moonstones worn at her first dance. - -From the moment he began to read over the earlier tales, he found -himself involved in a highly practical examination of the scope and -limits of permissible revision. Poets, as he pointed out, have often -revised their verse with good effect. Why should the novelist not have -equal license? The only sound reason for not altering anything is a -conviction that it cannot be improved. It was Henry James's profound -conviction that he could improve his early writing in nearly every -sentence. Not to revise would have been to confess to a loss of faith in -himself, and it was not likely that the writer who had fasted for forty -years in the wilderness of British and American misconceptions without -yielding a scrap of intellectual integrity to editorial or publishing -tempters should have lost faith in himself. But he was well aware that -the game of revision must be played with a due observance of the rules. -He knew that no novelist can safely afford to repudiate his fundamental -understanding with his readers that the tale he has to tell is at least -as true as history and the figures he has set in motion at least as -independently alive as the people we see in offices and motor-cars. He -allowed himself few freedoms with any recorded appearances or actions, -although occasionally the temptation to correct a false gesture, to make -it "right," was too strong to be resisted. We have a pleasant instance -of this correction in the second version of _The American._ At her first -appearance, the old Marquise de Bellegarde had acknowledged the -introduction of Newman by returning his handshake "with a sort of -British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the -Earl of St. Dunstan's." In the later edition she behaves differently. -"Newman came sufficiently near to the old lady by the fire to take in -that she would offer him no handshake.... Madame de Bellegarde looked -hard at him and refused what she did refuse with a sort of British -positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of -St. Dunstan's." There were good reasons why the Marquise should have -denied Newman a welcoming handshake. Her attitude throughout the book -was to be consistently hostile and should never have been compromised by -the significantly British grip. Yet it is almost shocking to see her -snatching back her first card after playing it for so many years. She -was to perform less credible actions than shaking hands with an innocent -American, as her progenitor knew very well. He invited his readers, in -the preface to _The American_, to observe the impossible behaviour of -the noble Bellegarde family, but he realized that since they had been -begotten in absurdity the Bellegardes could under no stress of revision -achieve a very solid humanity. The best he could do for them was to let -a faint consciousness flush the mind of Valentin, the only detached -member of the family. In the first edition Valentin warned his friend of -the Bellegarde peculiarities with the easy good faith of the younger -Henry James under the spell of the magic word "Europe. My mother is -strange, my brother is strange, and I verily believe I am stranger than -either. Old trees have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets." To -this statement he added in the revised version: "We're fit for a museum -or a Balzac novel." A comparable growth of ironic perception was allowed -to Roderick Hudson, whose comment on Rowland's admission of his -heroically silent passion for Mary Garland, "It's like something in a -novel," was altered to: "It's like something in a bad novel." - - - - -V - - -But the legitimate business of revision was, for Henry James, neither -substitution nor re-arrangement. It was the demonstration of values -implicit in the earlier work, the retrieval of neglected opportunities -for adequate "renderings. It was," as he explained in his final -preface, "all sensibly, as if the clear matter being still there, even -as a shining expanse of snow spread over a plain, my exploring tread, -for application to it, had quite unlearned the old pace and found itself -naturally falling into another, which might sometimes more or less agree -with the original tracks, but might most often, or very nearly, break -the surface at other places. What was thus predominantly interesting to -note, at all events, was the high spontaneity of these deviations and -differences, which become thus things not of choice but of immediate and -perfect necessity: necessity to the end of dealing with the quantities -in question at all." On every page the act of re-reading became -automatically one with the act of re-writing, and the revised parts are -just "those rigid conditions of re-perusal, registered; so many close -notes, as who should say, on the particular vision of the matter itself -that experience had at last made the only possible one." These are words -written with the clear confidence of the artist who, in complete -possession of his "faculties," had no need to bother himself with doubts -as to his ability to write better at the end of a lifetime of hard work -and varied experience than at the beginning. He knew he could write -better. His readers have not always agreed with his own view. They have -denounced the multiplication of qualifying clauses, the imposition of a -system of punctuation which, although rigid and orderly, occasionally -fails to act as a guide to immediate comprehension of the writer's -intention, and the increasing passion for adverbial interpositions. -"Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt," was Henry -James's reply to a criticism which once came to his ears. - -It must be admitted that the case for the revised version relies on -other merits than simplicity or elegance to make its claim good. It is -not so smooth, nor so easy, nor, on the whole, so pretty as the older -form. But it is nearly always richer and more alive. Abstractions give -place to sharp definite images, loose vague phrases to close-locked -significances. We can find a fair example of this in _The Madonna of the -Future_, a tale first published in 1879. In the original version one of -the sentences runs: "His professions, somehow, were all half -professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left -something dimly ambiguous in the background." In the New York Edition -this has become: "His professions were practically somehow, all masks -and screens, and his personal allusions as to his ambiguous background -mere wavings of the dim lantern." In some passages it would be hard to -deny a gain of beauty as well as of significance. There is, for -instance, a sentence in the earlier account of Newman's silent -renunciation of his meditated revenge, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame: -"He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells chiming off, at long -intervals, to the rest of the world." In the definitive edition of _The -American_ the passage has become: "He sat a long time; he heard far-away -bells chiming off into space, at long intervals, the big bronze -syllables of the Word." - -A paragraph from _Four Meetings_, a tale worked over with extreme care, -will give a fair idea of the general effect of the revision. It records -a moment of the final Meeting, when the helplessly indignant narrator is -watching poor Caroline ministering to the vulgar French cocotte who has -imposed herself on the hospitality of the innocent little New Englander. - -"At this moment," runs the passage of 1879, "Caroline Spencer came out -of the house bearing a coffee pot on a little tray. I noticed that on -her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick vaguely -appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt that it signified -a sort of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world -who had been in France, I thought of the Countess. It made me extremely -uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the Countess was very possibly -the runaway wife of a little hairdresser. I tried, suddenly, on the -contrary, to show a high consideration for her." - -The "particular vision" registered on re-perusal reveals states of mind -much more definite than these wonderings and longings and vague appeals. - -"Our hostess moreover at this moment came out of the house, bearing a -coffee-pot and three cups on a neat little tray. I took from her eyes, -as she approached us, a brief but intense appeal--the mute expression, -as I felt, conveyed in the hardest little look she had yet addressed me, -of her longing to know what as a man of the world in general and of the -French world in particular, I thought of these allied forces now so -encamped on the stricken field of her life. I could only 'act,' however, -as they said at North Verona, quite impenetrably--only make no answering -sign. I couldn't intimate, much less could I frankly utter, my inward -sense of the Countess's probable past, with its measure of her virtue, -value and accomplishments, and of the limits of consideration to which -she could properly pretend. I couldn't give my friend a hint of how I -myself personally 'saw' her interesting pensioner--whether as the -runaway wife of a too-jealous hairdresser or of a too-morose -pastry-cook, say; whether as a very small bourgeoise, in fine, who had -vitiated her case beyond patching up, or even some character of the -nomadic sort, less edifying still. I couldn't let in, by the jog of a -shutter, as it were, a hard informing ray and then, washing my hands of -the business, turn my back for ever. I could on the contrary but save -the situation, my own at least, for the moment, by pulling myself -together with a master hand and appearing to ignore everything but that -the dreadful person between us _was_ a 'grande dame.'" - -Anyone genuinely interested in "the how and the whence and the why these -intenser lights of experience come into being and insist on shining," -will find it a profitable exercise to read and compare the old and the -new versions of any of the novels or tales first published during the -'seventies or 'eighties. Such a reader will be qualified to decide for -himself between the opinion of a bold young critic that "all the works -have been subjected to a revision which in several cases, notably _Daisy -Miller_ and _Four Meetings_, amounts to their ruin," and their writer's -confidence that "I shouldn't have breathed upon the old catastrophes and -accidents, the old wounds and mutilations and disfigurements wholly in -vain. . . . I have prayed that the finer air of the better form may -sufficiently seem to hang about them and gild them over--at least for -readers, however few, at all _curious_ of questions of air and form." - - - - -VI - - -Explanatory prefaces and elaborate revisions, short stories and long -memories, were far from being the complete tale of literary labour -during the last eight years of Henry James's life. A new era for English -drama was prophesied in 1907. Led by Miss Horniman, advocates of the -repertory system were marching forward, capturing one by one the -intellectual centres of the provinces. In London, repertory seasons were -announced in two West-end theatres. Actor-managers began to ask for -"non-commercial" plays and when their appeal reached Henry James it met -with a quick response. The theatre had both allured and repelled him for -many years, and he had already been the victim of a theatrical -misadventure. His assertions that he wrote plays solely in the hope of -making money should not, I think, be taken as the complete explanation -of his dramas. It is pretty clear that he wrote plays because he wanted -to write them, because he was convinced that his instinct for dramatic -situations could find a happy outlet in plays, because writing for the -stage is a game rich in precise rules and he delighted in the -multiplication of technical difficulties, and because he lived in -circles more addicted to the intelligent criticism of plays than to the -intelligent criticism of novels. The plays he wrote in the early -'nineties are very careful exercises in technique. They are derived -straight from the light comedies of the Parisian stage, with the -difference that in the 'nineties, for all their advertised naughtiness, -there were even stricter limits to the free representation of Parisian -situations on English stages than there are to-day. In _The Reprobate_, -a play successfully produced a few years ago by the Stage Society, the -lady whose hair has changed from black to red and from red to gold is -the centre of the drama, she holds the key to the position, but all her -complicating effect depends upon the past--pasts being allowed on every -stage comparative license of reference. The compromising evidence is all -a matter of old photographs and letters, and the play loses in vividness -whatever it may gain in respectability. Nobody knew better than the -author that _The Reprobate_ was not a good play. Terror of being cut -forbade him to work on a subject of intrinsic importance. With another -hour guaranteed, a playwright might attempt anything, but "he does not -get his hour, and he will probably begin by missing his subjects. He -takes, in his dread of complication, a minor one, and it's heavy odds -that the minor one, with the habit of small natures, will prove -thankless." - -Other early plays had been converted into novels or tales and so -published. One of these, written originally for Miss Ellen Terry but -never produced by her, had appeared as an incongruous companion to _The -Turn of the Screw_ in the volume entitled _The Two Magics._ A few -attentive readers had seen the dramatic possibilities of _Covering End_, -and when it was suggested to Henry James that he should convert it into -a three-act comedy for production by Mr. Forbes Robertson (as he was -then) and Miss Gertrude Elliot, he willingly consented. Flying under a -new flag, as _The High Bid_, the play was produced in London in -February, 1909, but only for a series of matinées, the prodigious -success of _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_ precluding the -possibility of an evening for any other production under the same -management. Under the inspiration of the repertory movement, other -material was re-cast for acting. _The Other House_ was re-dictated as a -tragedy. _Owen Wingrave_ became _The Saloon_, a one-act play produced by -Miss Gertrude Kingston in 1910. Finally an entirely new three-act -comedy, _The Outcry_, was written round the highly topical subject of -the sale of art treasures to rich Americans. It was not produced during -Henry James's life. At the time when it should have been rehearsed he -was ill and the production was postponed. On his recovery, he went to -the United States for a year, and when he came back the day of repertory -performances had died in a fresh night of stars. - -When _The Outcry_ was given by the Stage Society in 1917, it was evident -that the actors were embarrassed by their lines, for by 1909, when the -play was written, the men and women of Henry James could talk only in -the manner of their creator. His own speech, assisted by the practice of -dictating, had by that time become so inveterately characteristic that -his questions to a railway clerk about a ticket or to a fishmonger about -a lobster, might easily be recognized as coined in the same mint as his -addresses to the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature. -Apart from this difficulty of enunciating the lines, _The Outcry_ has -all the advantages over the earlier plays. The characters are real and -they act from adequate motives. The solution of the presented problem, -which requires, like most of the author's solutions, a change of heart, -is worked out with admirable art, without any use of the mechanical -shifts and stage properties needed in _The Reprobate._ It is not very -difficult to believe that if Henry James had been encouraged twenty -years earlier to go on writing plays he might have made a name as a -dramatist, but the faithful may be forgiven for rejoicing that the -playwright was sacrificed to the novelist and critic. - - - - -VII - - -Many men whose prime business is the art of writing find rest and -refreshment in other occupations. They marry, or they keep dogs, they -play golf or bridge, they study Sanskrit or collect postage stamps. -Except for a period of ownership of a dachshund, Henry James did none of -these things. He lived a life consecrated to the service of a jealous, -insatiable, and supremely rewarding goddess, and all his activities had -essential reference to that service. He had a great belief in the -virtues of air and exercise, and he was expert at making a walk of two -or three miles last for as many hours by his habit of punctuating -movement with frequent and prolonged halts for meditation or -conversation. He liked the exhilaration of driving in a motor-car, which -gave him, he said, "a sense of spiritual adventure." He liked a -communicative companion. Indeed the cultivation of friendships may be -said to have been his sole recreation. To the very end of his life he -was quick to recognize every chance of forming a friendly relation, -swift to act on his recognition, and beautifully ready to protect and -nourish the warm life of engendered affection. His letters, especially -those written in his later years, are more than anything else great -generous gestures of remembrance, gathering up and embracing his -correspondents much as his talk would gather up his hearers and sweep -them along on a rising flood of eloquence. - -But that fine capacity for forming and maintaining a "relation" worked, -inevitably, within definite limits. He was obliged to create impassable -barriers between himself and the rest of mankind before he could stretch -out his eager hands over safe walls to beckon and to bless. He loved his -friends, but he was condemned by the law of his being to keep clear of -any really entangling net of human affection and exaction. His contacts -had to be subordinate, or indeed ancillary, to the vocation he had -followed with a single passion from the time when, as a small boy, he -obtained a report from his tutor as showing no great aptitude for -anything but a felicitous rendering of La Fontaine's fables into -English. Nothing could be allowed to interfere for long with the labour -from which Henry James never rested, unless perhaps during sleep. When -his "morning stint of inventive work" was over, he went forth to the -renewed assault of the impressions that were always lying in wait for -him. He was perpetually and mercilessly exposed, incessantly occupied -with the task of assimilating his experience, freeing the pure workable -metal from the base, remoulding it into new beauty with the aid of every -device of his craft. He used his friends not, as some incompletely -inspired artists do, as in themselves the material of his art, but as -the sources of his material. He took everything they could give and he -gave it back in his books. With this constant preoccupation, it was -natural that the people least interesting to him were the comparatively -dumb. To be "inarticulate" was for him the cardinal social sin. It -amounted to a wilful withholding of treasures of alien experience. And -if he could extract no satisfaction from contemplating the keepers of -golden silence, he could gain little more from intercourse with the -numerous persons he dismissed from his attention as "simple organisms." -These he held to be mere waste of any writer's time, and it was -characteristic that his constant appreciation of the works of Mrs. -Wharton was baffled by the popularity of _Ethan Frome_, because he -considered that the gifted author had spent her labour on creatures too -easily comprehensible to be worth her pains. He greatly preferred _The -Reef_, where, as he said, "she deals with persons really fine and -complicated." - -We might arrive at the same conclusion from a study of the prefaces to -the New York Edition. More often than not, the initial idea for a tale -came to Henry James through the medium of other people's talk. From a -welter of anecdote he could unerringly pick out the living nucleus for a -reconstructed and balanced work of art. His instinct for selection was -admirable, and he could afford to let it range freely among a profusion -of proffered subjects, secure that it would alight on the most -promising. But he liked to have the subjects presented with a little -artful discrimination, even in the first instance. He was dependent on -conversation, but it must be educated and up to a point intelligent -conversation. There is an early letter written from Italy in 1874, in -which he complains of having hardly spoken to an Italian creature in -nearly a year's sojourn, "save washerwomen and waiters. This, you'll -say, is my own stupidity," he continues, "but granting this gladly, it -proves that even a creature addicted as much to sentimentalizing as I am -over the whole _mise en scène_ of Italian life, doesn't find an easy -initiation into what lies behind it. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the -pitifulness of this absurd want of reciprocity between Italy itself and -all my rhapsodies about it." Other wanderers might have found more of -Italy in washerwomen and waiters, here guaranteed to be the true native -article, than in all the nobility of Rome or the Anglo-Americans of -Venice, but that was not Henry James's way. For him neither pearls nor -diamonds fell from the lips of waiters and washerwomen, and princesses -never walked in his world disguised as goosegirls. - -Friendships are maintained by the communication of speech and letters. -Henry James was a voluminous letter-writer and exhaustively -communicative in his talk upon every subject but one, his own work, -which was his own real life. It was not because he was indifferent to -what people thought of his books that he evaded discussion about them. -He was always touched and pleased by any evidence that he had been -intelligently read, but he never went a step out of his way to seek this -assurance. He found it safest to assume that nobody read him, and he -liked his friends none the worse for their incapacity. Meanwhile, the -volumes of his published works--visible, palpable, readable proof of -that unceasing travail of the creative spirit which was always labouring -behind the barrier of his silence--piled themselves up year after year, -to be dropped on to the tables of booksellers and pushed on to the -shelves of libraries, to be bought and cherished by the faithful, -ignored by the multitude, and treated as a test of mental endurance by -the kind of person who organized the Browning Society. Fortunately for -literature, Henry James did not lend himself to exploitation by any -Jacobean Society. Instead of inventing riddles for prize students, he -scattered about his pages a number of pregnant passages containing all -the clues that are needed for keeping up with him. It was his theory -that if readers didn't keep up with him--as they admittedly didn't -always--the fault was entirely in their failure of attention. There are -revelations in his books, just as he declared them to be in the works of -Neil Paraday. "Extract the opinion, disengage the answer--these are the -real acts of homage." - - - - -VIII - - -From his familiar correspondence we need not hope to extract as -considered an opinion or as definite an answer as from the novels, but -his letters are extraordinarily valuable as sidelights, helping us to -see how it happened that any man was able to progress along so straight -a path from one end of his life to another. The two Volumes of memories -are clear evidence of the kind of temperamental make-up with which Henry -James was gifted, the two volumes of letters show how his life -contributed to preserve and enhance his rare capacity for taking and -keeping impressions. They show him too as unusually impervious to -everything which is not an impression of visual images or a sense of a -human situation. He was very little troubled by a number of ideas which -press with an increasing weight upon the minds of most educated persons. -Not until the outbreak of the Great War was he moved to utter a forcible -"opinion" about affairs outside his personal range. He was delightfully -free from the common delusion that by grouping individuals in arbitrary -classes and by twisting harmless adjectives into abstract nouns it is -possible for us to think of more than one thing at a time and to -conceive of qualities apart from their manifestation. What he saw he -possessed; what he understood he criticized, but he never reckoned it to -be any part of his business to sit in judgment on the deeds of men -working in alien material for inartistic ends, or to speculate about the -nature of the universe or the conflict or reconciliation of science with -religion. He could let Huxley and Gladstone, the combatant champions of -Darwinism and orthodox theology, enrich the pages of a single letter -without any reference to their respective beliefs. "Huxley is a very -genial, comfortable being . . . But of course my talk with him is mere -amiable generalities." Of Gladstone there is a little more, but again -the personal impression is the thing sought. "I was glad of a chance to -feel the 'personality' of a great political leader--or as G. is now -thought here even, I think, by his partisans, ex-leader. That of -Gladstone is very fascinating--his urbanity extreme--his eye that of a -man of genius--and his apparent self-surrender to what he is talking of -without a flaw. He made a great impression on me." One would like to -know what the subject was to which Gladstone had surrendered himself in -his talk with this entranced young American, who must surely, for his -part, have been as much reduced conversationally to "mere amiable -generalities" as on the occasion of his meeting Huxley. It is difficult -to think of a single likely point of contact between the minds of -Gladstone and Henry James. But that, for delicacy of registration, was -an advantage. The recording instrument could perform its work without -the hindrance of any distraction of attention from the man himself to -the matter of his speech, which did not presumably contain any germ for -cultivation into fiction. - -His nationality saved Henry James from the common English necessity of -taking a side in the political game; and in the United States nobody of -his world had expected him to be interested in politics. There is a -pleasant account in _The Middle Years_ of his blankness when he was -asked at a London breakfast-table for "distinctness about General -Grant's first cabinet, upon the formation of which the light of the -newspaper happened then to beat." The question was embarrassing. "There -were, it appeared, things of interest taking place in America, and I had -had, in this absurd manner, to come to England to learn it: I had had -over there on the ground itself no conception of any such -matter--nothing of the smallest interest, by any perception of mine, as -I suppose I should still blush to recall, had taken place in America -since the War." Nothing of any great public interest, by any perception -of his, was to take place in Europe until the outbreak of another war at -that time far beyond the range of speculation. But if cabinets and -parties and politics were and remained outside the pale of his -sensibility, he was none the less charmed by the customs of a country -where Members of Parliament and Civil Servants could meet together for a -leisurely breakfast, thus striking "the exciting note of a social order -in which everyone wasn't hurled straight, with the momentum of rising, -upon an office or a store." - - - - -IX - - -Henry James came to England to admire. But his early reverence for the -men and women of an island with so fine and ancient a historic tone as -Great Britain soon faded. He had forgotten, in the first passion of -acquaintance, that the English are born afresh in every generation and -are about as new as young Americans, differing from them chiefly in -having other forms of domestic and ecclesiastical architecture and -smoother lawns to take for granted. He looked at old stone castles and -Tudor brickwork, at great hanging eaves and immemorial gardens, and then -he looked at the heirs of this heritage and listened intently for their -speech. This was disappointing, partly because they spoke so little. "I -rarely remember," he wrote when he had lived through several London -months, "to have heard on English lips any other intellectual verdict -(no matter under what provocation) than this broad synthesis 'so -immensely clever.' What exasperates you is not that they can't say more -but that they wouldn't if they could." - -How different was this inarticulate world from the fine civilization of -Boston, from the cultivated circle that gathered round Charles Eliot -Norton at Shady Hill. To that circle he appealed for sympathy, -complaining that he was "sinking into dull British acceptance and -conformity. . . . I am losing my standard--my charming little standard -that I used to think so high; my standard of wit, of grace, of good -manners, of vivacity, of urbanity, of intelligence, of what makes an -easy and natural style of intercourse! And this in consequence of having -dined out during the past winter 107 times!" Great men, or at the least -men with great names, swam into his ken and he condemned them. Ruskin -was "weakness pure and simple." In Paris he found that he could -"easily--more than easily--see all round Flaubert intellectually." A -happy Sunday evening at Madame Viardot's provoked a curious reflection -on the capacity of celebrated Europeans to behave absurdly and the -incapacity of celebrated Americans to indulge in similar antics. "It was -both strange and sweet to see poor Turgenev acting charades of the most -extravagant description, dressed out in old shawls, and masks, going on -all fours, etc. The charades are their usual Sunday evening occupation -and the good faith with which Turgenev, at his age and with his glories, -can go into them is a striking example of the truth of that spontaneity -which Europeans have and we have not. Fancy Longfellow, Lowell, or -Charles Norton doing the like and every Sunday evening!" - -Whether or not all celebrated Americans behave with invariable decorum, -the astonished spectator of Turgenev's performance had no temptation to -"do the like." His appearance among a company of artists and writers -gathered together in a country village during the late summer of 1886 -has been characteristically recorded by Mr. Edmund Gosse. "Henry James -was the only sedate one of us all--benign, indulgent, but grave, and not -often unbending beyond a genial chuckle. . . . It is remembered with -what affability he wore a garland of flowers at a birthday feast, and -even, nobly descending, took part one night in a cakewalk. But mostly, -though not much our senior, he was serious, mildly avuncular, but very -happy and unupbraiding." - -By that time Henry James was at his ease in England. The inhabitants -were no longer either gods or imbeciles. Through the general British fog -he had perceived gleams of intelligence shining on his bewilderment. He -was no longer wholly dependent on Boston for refreshment. He could fall -back upon the company of Mr. Edmund Gosse and he had found a friend in -R. L. Stevenson. The little handful of Islanders possessed of a genuine -interest in the art of letters and the criticism of life emerged from -the obscurity, and he made out that, on the whole, there were perhaps -about as many civilized people in England as in his native land. Yet he -was a little troubled about his position. He wondered, while he reviewed -the past, whether the path he had so carefully chosen for himself was -the right one, whether he might not have missed more by leaving the -United States than he had gained by coming to England. He lamented; in a -letter written to his brother William in 1899, that he had not had the -kind of early experience that might have attached him to his own -country. He earnestly advised a different treatment for his nephews. -"What I most of all feel, and in the light of it conjure you to keep -doing for them, is their being _à même_ to contract local saturations -and attachments in respect to their _own_ great and glorious country, to -learn, and strike roots into, its infinite beauty, as I suppose, and -variety. . . . Its being their 'own' will double their _use_ of it." - -It was only after a visit to America in 1904 that he found, on his -return to Rye, that he had a home and a country. He was able after this -discovery to write to Mrs. Wharton that "your only drawback is not -having the homeliness and the inevitability and the happy limitation and -the affluent poverty, of a Country of your Own (comme moi, par -exemple!)"; and he could declare after taking the Oath of Allegiance to -the King of England in 1915 that "I was really too associated before for -any nominal change to matter. The process has only shown me what I -virtually _was_--so that it's rather disappointing in respect to acute -sensation. I _haven't_ any." Associated he certainly was, allied by -innumerable sympathies and affections to the adopted country. But he was -never really English or American or even Cosmopolitan, And it is too -difficult to suppose that even if he had passed all his youth in New -England and contracted all the local saturations and attachments he -urged for his nephews he could ever have melted comfortably into -American uniformity. He, who took nothing in the world for granted, -could surely never have taken New England for granted. - -To-day, with the complete record before us--the novels, criticisms, -biographies, plays, and letters--we can understand how little those -international relations that engaged Henry James's attention mattered to -his genius. Wherever he might have lived and whatever human interactions -he might have observed, he would in all probability have reached much -the same conclusion that he arrived at by the way of America, France, -and England. When he walked out of the refuge of his study into the -world and looked about him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures -of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of the -doomed, defenceless children of light. He had the abiding comfort of an -inner certainty (and perhaps he did bring that from New England) that -the children of light had an eternal advantage; he was aware to the -finest fibre of his being that the "poor sensitive gentlemen" he so -numerously treated possessed a treasure that would outlast all the -glittering paste of the world and the flesh; he knew that nothing in -life mattered compared with spiritual decency. - -We may conclude that the nationalities of his betrayed and triumphant -victims are not an important factor. They may equally well be innocent -Americans maltreated by odious Europeans, refined Europeans fleeced by -unscrupulous Americans, or young children of any race exposed to evil -influences. The essential fact is that wherever he looked Henry James -saw fineness apparently sacrificed to grossness, beauty to avarice, -truth to a bold front. He realized how constantly the tenderness of -growing life is at the mercy of personal tyranny and he hated the -tyranny of persons over each other. His novels are a repeated exposure -of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest -freedom of development, unimperilled by reckless and barbarous -stupidity. - -He was himself most scrupulously careful not to exercise any tyrannical -power over other people. The only advice he ever permitted himself to -offer to a friend was a recommendation to "let your soul live." Towards -the end of his days his horror of interfering, or seeming to interfere, -with the freedom of others became so overpowering that it was a misery -for him to suspect that the plans of his friends might be made with -reference to himself. Much as he enjoyed seeing them, he so disliked to -think that they were undergoing the discomfort of voyages and railway -journeys in order to be near him that he would gladly have prevented -their start if he could. His Utopia was an anarchy where nobody would be -responsible for any other human being but only for his own civilized -character. His circle of friends will easily recall how finely Henry -James had fitted himself to be a citizen of this commonwealth. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY JAMES AT WORK *** - -***** This file should be named 63377-0.txt or 63377-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/3/7/63377/ - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Hathi Trust.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Henry James at Work - -Author: Theodora Bosanquet - -Release Date: October 5, 2020 [EBook #63377] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY JAMES AT WORK *** - - - - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Hathi Trust.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/james_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - - -<h4>THE HOGARTH ESSAYS</h4> - - -<h3>HENRY JAMES AT WORK</h3> - - -<h5>BY</h5> - - -<h2>THEODORA BOSANQUET</h2> - - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4>HENRY JAMES AT WORK</h4> - -<p><br /></p> - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>I knew nothing of Henry James beyond the revelation of his novels and -tales before the summer of 1907. Then, as I sat in a top-floor office -near Whitehall one August morning, compiling a very full index to the -Report of the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion, my ears were struck by the -astonishing sound of passages from <i>The Ambassadors</i> being dictated -to a young typist. Neglecting my Blue-book, I turned round to watch the -operator ticking off sentences which seemed to be at least as much of a -surprise to her as they were to me. When my bewilderment had broken into -a question, I learnt that Henry James was on the point of coming back -from Italy, that he had asked to be provided with an amanuensis, and -that the lady at the typewriter was making acquaintance with his style. -Without any hopeful design of supplanting her, I lodged an immediate -petition that I might be allowed the next opportunity of filling the -post, supposing she should ever abandon it. I was told, to my amazement, -that I need not wait. The established candidate was not enthusiastic -about the prospect before her, was even genuinely relieved to look in -another direction. If I set about practising typewriting on a Remington -machine at once, I could be interviewed by Henry James as soon as he -arrived in London. Within an hour I had begun work on the typewriter. By -the time he was ready to interview me, I could tap out paragraphs of -<i>The Ambassadors</i> at quite a fair speed.</p> - -<p>He asked no questions at that interview about my speed on a typewriter -or about anything else. The friend to whom he had applied for an -amanuensis had told him that I was sufficiently the right young woman -for his purpose and he relied on her word. He had, at the best, little -hope of any young woman beyond docility. We sat in armchairs on either -side of a fireless grate while we observed each other. I suppose he -found me harmless and I know that I found him overwhelming. He was much -more massive than I had expected, much broader and stouter and stronger. -I remembered that someone had told me he used to be taken for a -sea-captain when he wore a beard, but it was clear that now, with the -beard shaved away, he would hardly have passed for, say, an admiral, in -spite of the keen gray eyes set in a face burned to a colourable -sea-faring brown by the Italian sun. No successful naval officer could -have afforded to keep that sensitive mobile mouth. After the interview I -wondered what kind of impression one might have gained from a chance -encounter in some such observation cell as a railway carriage. Would it -have been possible to fit him confidently into any single category? He -had reacted with so much success against both the American accent and -the English manner that he seemed only doubtfully Anglo-Saxon. He might -perhaps have been some species of disguised cardinal, or even a Roman -nobleman amusing himself by playing the part of a Sussex squire. The -observer could at least have guessed that any part he chose to assume -would be finely conceived and generously played, for his features were -all cast in the classical mould of greatness. He might very well have -been a merciful Cæsar or a benevolent Napoleon, and a painter who -worked at his portrait a year or two later was excusably reminded of so -many illustrious makers of history that he declared it to be a hard task -to isolate the individual character of the model.</p> - -<p>If the interview was overwhelming, it had none of the usual awkwardness -of such curious conversations. Instead of critical angles and -disconcerting silences, there were only benign curves and ample -reassurances. There was encouraging gaiety in an expanse of bright check -waistcoat. He invited me to ask any questions I liked, but I had none to -ask. I wanted nothing but to be allowed to go to Rye and work his -typewriter. He was prepared, however, with his statements and, once I -was seated opposite to him, the strong, slow stream of his deliberate -speech played over me without ceasing. He had it on his mind to tell me -the conditions of life and labour at Rye, and he unburdened himself -fully, with numberless amplifications and qualifications but without any -real break. It would be a dull business, he warned me, and I should -probably find Rye a dull place. He told me of rooms in Mermaid Street, -"very simple, rustic and antique—but that is the case for everything -near my house, and this particular little old house is very near mine, -and I know the good woman for kind and worthy and a convenient cook and -in short——." It was settled at once that I should take the -rooms, that I should begin my duties in October.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Since winter was approaching, Henry James had begun to use a panelled, -green-painted room on the upper floor of Lamb House for his work. It was -known simply as the green room. It had many advantages as a winter -workroom, for it was small enough to be easily warmed and a wide south -window caught all the morning sunshine. The window overhung the smooth, -green lawn, shaded in summer by a mulberry tree, surrounded by roses and -enclosed behind a tall, bride wall. It never failed to give the owner -pleasure to look out of this window at his charming English garden where -he could watch his English gardener digging the flower-beds or mowing -the lawn or sweeping up fallen leaves. There was another window for the -afternoon sun, looking towards Winchelsea and doubly glazed against the -force of the westerly gales. Three high bookcases, two big writing-desks -and an easy chair filled most of the space in the green room, but left -enough dear floor for a restricted amount of the pacing exercise that -was indispensable to literary composition. On summer days Henry James -liked better to work in the large "garden room" which gave him a longer -stretch for perambulation and a window overlooking the cobbled street -that curved up the hill past his door. He liked to be able to relieve -the tension of a difficult sentence by a glance down the street; he -enjoyed hailing a passing friend or watching a motor-car pant up the -sharp little slope. The sight of one of these vehicles could be counted -on to draw from him a vigorous outburst of amazement, admiration, or -horror for the complications of an age that produced such efficient -monsters for gobbling protective distance.</p> - -<p>The business of acting as a medium between the spoken and the -typewritten word was at first as alarming as it was fascinating. The -most handsome and expensive typewriters exercise as vicious an influence -as any others over the spelling of the operator, and the new pattern of -a Remington machine which I found installed offered a few additional -problems. But Henry James's patience during my struggles with that -baffling mechanism was unfailing—he watched me helplessly, for he was -one of the few men without the smallest pretension to the understanding -of a machine—and he was as easy to spell from as an open dictionary. -The experience of years had evidently taught him that it was not safe to -leave any word of more than one syllable to luck. He took pains to -pronounce every pronounceable letter, he always spelt out words which -the ear might confuse with others, and he never left a single, -punctuation mark unuttered, except sometimes that necessary point, the -full stop. Occasionally, in a low "aside" he would interject a few words -for the enlightenment of the amanuensis, adding, for instance, after -spelling out "The Newcomes," that the words were the title of a novel by -one Thackeray.</p> - -<p>The practice of dictation was begun in the nineties. By 1907 it was a -confirmed habit, its effects being easily recognizable in his style, -which became more and more like free, involved, unanswered talk. "I -know," he once said to me, "that I'm too diffuse when I'm dictating." -But he found dictation not only an easier but a more inspiring method of -composing than writing with his own hand, and he considered that the -gain in expression more than compensated for any loss of concision. The -spelling out of the words, the indication of commas, were scarcely felt -as a drag on the movement of his thought. "It all seems," he once -explained, "to be so much more effectively and unceasingly <i>pulled</i> -out of me in speech than in writing." Indeed, at the time when I began to -work for him, he had reached a stage at which the click of a Remington -machine acted as a positive spur. He found it more difficult to compose -to the music of any other make. During a fortnight when the Remington -was out of order he dictated to an Oliver typewriter with evident -discomfort, and he found it almost impossibly disconcerting to speak to -something that made no responsive sound at all. Once or twice when he -was ill and in bed I took down a note or two by hand, but as a rule he -liked to have the typewriter moved into his bedroom for even the -shortest letters. Yet there were to the end certain kinds of work which -he was obliged to do with a pen. Plays, if they were to be kept within -the limits of possible performance, and short stories, if they were to -remain within the bounds of publication in a monthly magazine, must be -written by hand. He was well aware that the manual labour of writing was -his best aid to a desired brevity. The plays—such a play as <i>The -Outcry</i>, for instance—were copied straight from his manuscript, -since he was too much afraid of "the murderous limits of the English -theatre" to risk the temptation of dictation and embroidery. With the short -stories he allowed himself a little more freedom, dictating them from -his written draft and expanding them as he went to an extent which -inevitably defeated his original purpose. It is almost literally true to -say of the sheaf of tales collected in <i>The Finer Grain</i> that they -were all written in response to a single request for a short story for -<i>Harper's Monthly Magazine.</i> The length was to be about 5,000 words -and each promising idea was cultivated in the optimistic belief that it -would produce a flower too frail and small to demand any exhaustive -treatment. But even under pressure of being written by hand, with -dictated interpolations rigidly restricted, each in turn pushed out to -lengths that no chopping could reduce to the word limit. The tale -eventually printed was <i>Crapy Cornelia</i>, but, although it was the -shortest of the batch, it was thought too long to be published in one -number and appeared in two sections, to the great annoyance of the -author.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>The method adopted for full-length novels was very different. With a -clear run of 100,000 words or more before him, Henry James always -cherished the delusive expectation of being able to fit his theme quite -easily between the covers of a volume. It was not until he was more than -half way through that the problem of space began to be embarrassing. At -the beginning he had no questions of compression to attend to, and he -"broke ground," as he said, by talking to himself day by day about the -characters and construction until the persons and their actions were -vividly present to his inward eye. This soliloquy was of course recorded -on the typewriter. He had from far back tended to dramatize all the -material that life gave him, and he more and more prefigured his novels -as staged performances, arranged in acts and scenes, with the characters -making their observed entrances and exits. These scenes he worked out -until he felt himself so thoroughly possessed of the action that he -could begin on the dictation of the book itself—a process which has -been incorrectly described by one critic as re-dictation from a rough -draft. It was nothing of the kind. Owners of the volumes containing <i>The -Ivory Tower</i> or <i>The Sense of the Past</i> have only to turn to the -Notes printed at the end to see that the scenario dictated in advance -contains practically none of the phrases used in the final work. The two -sets of Notes are a different and a much more interesting literary record -than a mere draft. They are the framework set up for imagination to clothe -with the spun web of life. But they are not bare framework. They are -elaborate and abundant. They are the kind of exercise described in <i>The -Death of the Lion</i> as "a great gossiping eloquent letter—the -overflow into talk of an artist's amorous design." But the design was thus -mapped out with the clear understanding that at a later stage and at closer -quarters the subject might grow away from the plan. "In the intimacy of -composition pre-noted proportions and arrangements do most uncommonly -insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always -improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open -always to something more right and <i>more</i> related. It is subject to -that constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and -tentatively sketch."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>The preliminary sketch was seldom consulted after the novel began to -take permanent shape, but the same method of "talking out" was resorted -to at difficult points of the narrative as it progressed, always for the -sake of testing in advance the values of the persons involved in a given -situation, so that their creator should ensure their right action both -for the development of the drama and the truth of their relations to -each other. The knowledge of all the conscious motives and concealments -of his creatures, gained by unwearied observation of their attitudes -behind the scenes, enabled Henry James to exhibit them with a final -confidence that dispensed with explanations. Among certain stumbling -blocks in the path of the perfect comprehension of his readers is their -uneasy doubt of the sincerity of the conversational encounters recorded. -Most novelists provide some clue to help their readers to distinguish -truth from falsehood, and in the theatre, although husbands and wives -may be deceived by lies, the audience is usually privy to the plot. But -a study of the Notes to <i>The Ivory Tower</i> will make it clear that -between the people created by Henry James lying is as frequent as among -mortals and not any easier to detect.</p> - -<p>For the volumes of memories, <i>A Small Boy and Others, Notes of a Son -and Brother</i>, and the uncompleted <i>Middle Years</i>, no preliminary -work was needed. A straight dive into the past brought to the surface -treasure after treasure, a wealth of material which became embarrassing. -The earlier book was begun in 1911, after Henry James had returned from a -year in the United States, where he had been called by his brother's -fatal illness. He had come back, after many seasons of country solitude, -to his former love of the friendly London winter, and for the first few -months after his return from America he lodged near the Reform Club and -came to the old house in Chelsea where I was living and where he had -taken a room for his work. It was a quiet room, long and narrow and -rather dark—he used to speak of it as "my Chelsea cellar." There he -settled down to write what, as he outlined it to me, was to be a set of -notes to his brother William's early letters, prefaced by a brief -account of the family into which they were both born. But an entire -volume of memories was finished before bringing William to an age for -writing letters, and <i>A Small Boy</i> came to a rather abrupt end as a -result of the writer's sudden decision that a break must be made at once -if the flood of remembrance was not to drown his pious intention.</p> - -<p>It was extraordinarily easy for him to recover the past; he had always -been sensitive to impressions and his mind was stored with records of -exposure. All he had to do was to render his sense of those records as -adequately as he could. Each morning, after reading over the pages -written the day before, he would settle down in a chair for an hour or -so of conscious effort. Then, lifted on a rising tide of inspiration, he -would get up and pace up and down the room, sounding out the periods in -tones of resonant assurance. At such times he was beyond reach of -irrelevant sounds or sights. Hosts of cats—a tribe he usually routed -with shouts of execration—might wail outside the window, phalanxes of -motor-cars bearing dreaded visitors might hoot at the door. He heard -nothing of them. The only thing that could arrest his progress was the -escape of the word he wanted to use. When that had vanished he broke off -the rhythmic pacing and made his way to a chimney-piece or book-case -tall enough to support his elbows while he rested his head in his hands -and audibly pursued the fugitive.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a><i>The Ivory Tower</i> (Collini, 1917), p. 341.</p></div> - - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>In the autumn of 1907, when I began to tap the Remington typewriter at -Henry James's dictation, he was engaged on the arduous task of preparing -his Novels and Tales for the definitive New York edition, published in -1909. Since it was only between breakfast and luncheon that he undertook -what he called "inventive" work, he gave the hours from half-past ten to -half-past one to the composition of the prefaces which are so -interesting a feature of the edition. In the evenings he read over again -the work of former years, treating the printed pages like so many -proof-sheets of extremely corrupt text. The revision was a task he had -seen in advance as formidable. He had cultivated the habit of forgetting -past achievements almost to the pitch of a sincere conviction that -nothing he had written before about 1890 could come with any shred of -credit through the ordeal of a critical inspection. On a morning when he -was obliged to give time to the selection of a set of tales for a -forthcoming volume, he confessed that the difficulty of selection was -mainly the difficulty of reading them at all. "They seem," he said, "so -bad until I <i>have</i> read them that I can't force myself to go through -them except with a pen in my hand, altering as I go the crudities and -ineptitudes that to my sense deform each page." Unfamiliarity and -adverse prejudice are rare advantages for a writer to bring to the task -of choosing among his works. For Henry James the prejudice might give -way to half reluctant appreciation as the unfamiliarity passed into -recognition, but it must be clear to every reader of the prefaces that -he never lost the sense of being paternally responsible for two distinct -families. For the earlier brood, acknowledged fruit of his alliance with -Romance, he claimed indulgence on the ground of their youthful -spontaneity, their confident assurance, their rather touching good -faith. One catches echoes of a plea that these elderly youngsters may -not be too closely compared, to their inevitable disadvantage, with the -richly endowed, the carefully bred, the highly civilized and sensitized -children of his second marriage, contracted with that wealthy bride, -Experience. Attentive readers of the novels may perhaps find the -distinction between the two groups less remarkable than it seemed to -their writer. They may even wonder whether the second marriage was not -rather a silver wedding, with the old romantic mistress cleverly -disguised as a woman of the world. The different note was possibly due -more to the substitution of dictation for pen and ink than to any -profound change of heart. But whatever the reason, their author -certainly found it necessary to spend a good deal of time working on the -earlier tales before he considered them fit for appearance in the -company of those composed later. Some members of the elder family he -entirely cast off, not counting them worth the expense of completely new -clothes. Others he left in their place more from a necessary, though -deprecated, respect for the declared taste of the reading public than -because he loved them for their own sake. It would, for instance, have -been difficult to exclude <i>Daisy Miller</i> from any representative -collection of his work, yet the popularity of the tale had become almost a -grievance. To be acclaimed as the author of <i>Daisy Miller</i> by persons -blandly unconscious of <i>The Wings of the Dove</i> or <i>The Golden -Bowl</i> was a reason among many for Henry James's despair of intelligent -comprehension. Confronted repeatedly with Daisy, he felt himself rather -in the position of some <i>grande dame</i> who, with a jewel-case of -sparkling diamonds, is constrained by her admirers always to appear in -the simple string of moonstones worn at her first dance.</p> - -<p>From the moment he began to read over the earlier tales, he found -himself involved in a highly practical examination of the scope and -limits of permissible revision. Poets, as he pointed out, have often -revised their verse with good effect. Why should the novelist not have -equal license? The only sound reason for not altering anything is a -conviction that it cannot be improved. It was Henry James's profound -conviction that he could improve his early writing in nearly every -sentence. Not to revise would have been to confess to a loss of faith in -himself, and it was not likely that the writer who had fasted for forty -years in the wilderness of British and American misconceptions without -yielding a scrap of intellectual integrity to editorial or publishing -tempters should have lost faith in himself. But he was well aware that -the game of revision must be played with a due observance of the rules. -He knew that no novelist can safely afford to repudiate his fundamental -understanding with his readers that the tale he has to tell is at least -as true as history and the figures he has set in motion at least as -independently alive as the people we see in offices and motor-cars. He -allowed himself few freedoms with any recorded appearances or actions, -although occasionally the temptation to correct a false gesture, to make -it "right," was too strong to be resisted. We have a pleasant instance -of this correction in the second version of <i>The American.</i> At her -first appearance, the old Marquise de Bellegarde had acknowledged the -introduction of Newman by returning his handshake "with a sort of -British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the -Earl of St. Dunstan's." In the later edition she behaves differently. -"Newman came sufficiently near to the old lady by the fire to take in -that she would offer him no handshake.... Madame de Bellegarde looked -hard at him and refused what she did refuse with a sort of British -positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of -St. Dunstan's." There were good reasons why the Marquise should have -denied Newman a welcoming handshake. Her attitude throughout the book -was to be consistently hostile and should never have been compromised by -the significantly British grip. Yet it is almost shocking to see her -snatching back her first card after playing it for so many years. She -was to perform less credible actions than shaking hands with an innocent -American, as her progenitor knew very well. He invited his readers, in -the preface to <i>The American</i>, to observe the impossible behaviour of -the noble Bellegarde family, but he realized that since they had been -begotten in absurdity the Bellegardes could under no stress of revision -achieve a very solid humanity. The best he could do for them was to let -a faint consciousness flush the mind of Valentin, the only detached -member of the family. In the first edition Valentin warned his friend of -the Bellegarde peculiarities with the easy good faith of the younger -Henry James under the spell of the magic word "Europe. My mother is -strange, my brother is strange, and I verily believe I am stranger than -either. Old trees have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets." To -this statement he added in the revised version: "We're fit for a museum -or a Balzac novel." A comparable growth of ironic perception was allowed -to Roderick Hudson, whose comment on Rowland's admission of his -heroically silent passion for Mary Garland, "It's like something in a -novel," was altered to: "It's like something in a bad novel."</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>V</h4> - - -<p>But the legitimate business of revision was, for Henry James, neither -substitution nor re-arrangement. It was the demonstration of values -implicit in the earlier work, the retrieval of neglected opportunities -for adequate "renderings. It was," as he explained in his final -preface, "all sensibly, as if the clear matter being still there, even -as a shining expanse of snow spread over a plain, my exploring tread, -for application to it, had quite unlearned the old pace and found itself -naturally falling into another, which might sometimes more or less agree -with the original tracks, but might most often, or very nearly, break -the surface at other places. What was thus predominantly interesting to -note, at all events, was the high spontaneity of these deviations and -differences, which become thus things not of choice but of immediate and -perfect necessity: necessity to the end of dealing with the quantities -in question at all." On every page the act of re-reading became -automatically one with the act of re-writing, and the revised parts are -just "those rigid conditions of re-perusal, registered; so many close -notes, as who should say, on the particular vision of the matter itself -that experience had at last made the only possible one." These are words -written with the clear confidence of the artist who, in complete -possession of his "faculties," had no need to bother himself with doubts -as to his ability to write better at the end of a lifetime of hard work -and varied experience than at the beginning. He knew he could write -better. His readers have not always agreed with his own view. They have -denounced the multiplication of qualifying clauses, the imposition of a -system of punctuation which, although rigid and orderly, occasionally -fails to act as a guide to immediate comprehension of the writer's -intention, and the increasing passion for adverbial interpositions. -"Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt," was Henry -James's reply to a criticism which once came to his ears.</p> - -<p>It must be admitted that the case for the revised version relies on -other merits than simplicity or elegance to make its claim good. It is -not so smooth, nor so easy, nor, on the whole, so pretty as the older -form. But it is nearly always richer and more alive. Abstractions give -place to sharp definite images, loose vague phrases to close-locked -significances. We can find a fair example of this in <i>The Madonna of the -Future</i>, a tale first published in 1879. In the original version one of -the sentences runs: "His professions, somehow, were all half -professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left -something dimly ambiguous in the background." In the New York Edition -this has become: "His professions were practically somehow, all masks -and screens, and his personal allusions as to his ambiguous background -mere wavings of the dim lantern." In some passages it would be hard to -deny a gain of beauty as well as of significance. There is, for -instance, a sentence in the earlier account of Newman's silent -renunciation of his meditated revenge, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame: -"He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells chiming off, at long -intervals, to the rest of the world." In the definitive edition of <i>The -American</i> the passage has become: "He sat a long time; he heard far-away -bells chiming off into space, at long intervals, the big bronze -syllables of the Word."</p> - -<p>A paragraph from <i>Four Meetings</i>, a tale worked over with extreme -care, will give a fair idea of the general effect of the revision. It -records a moment of the final Meeting, when the helplessly indignant -narrator is watching poor Caroline ministering to the vulgar French cocotte -who has imposed herself on the hospitality of the innocent little New -Englander.</p> - -<p>"At this moment," runs the passage of 1879, "Caroline Spencer came out -of the house bearing a coffee pot on a little tray. I noticed that on -her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick vaguely -appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt that it signified -a sort of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world -who had been in France, I thought of the Countess. It made me extremely -uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the Countess was very possibly -the runaway wife of a little hairdresser. I tried, suddenly, on the -contrary, to show a high consideration for her."</p> - -<p>The "particular vision" registered on re-perusal reveals states of mind -much more definite than these wonderings and longings and vague appeals.</p> - -<p>"Our hostess moreover at this moment came out of the house, bearing a -coffee-pot and three cups on a neat little tray. I took from her eyes, -as she approached us, a brief but intense appeal—the mute expression, -as I felt, conveyed in the hardest little look she had yet addressed me, -of her longing to know what as a man of the world in general and of the -French world in particular, I thought of these allied forces now so -encamped on the stricken field of her life. I could only 'act,' however, as -they said at North Verona, quite impenetrably—only make no answering -sign. I couldn't intimate, much less could I frankly utter, my inward -sense of the Countess's probable past, with its measure of her virtue, -value and accomplishments, and of the limits of consideration to which -she could properly pretend. I couldn't give my friend a hint of how I -myself personally 'saw' her interesting pensioner—whether as the -runaway wife of a too-jealous hairdresser or of a too-morose -pastry-cook, say; whether as a very small bourgeoise, in fine, who had -vitiated her case beyond patching up, or even some character of the -nomadic sort, less edifying still. I couldn't let in, by the jog of a -shutter, as it were, a hard informing ray and then, washing my hands of -the business, turn my back for ever. I could on the contrary but save -the situation, my own at least, for the moment, by pulling myself -together with a master hand and appearing to ignore everything but that -the dreadful person between us <i>was</i> a 'grande dame.'"</p> - -<p>Anyone genuinely interested in "the how and the whence and the why these -intenser lights of experience come into being and insist on shining," -will find it a profitable exercise to read and compare the old and the -new versions of any of the novels or tales first published during the -'seventies or 'eighties. Such a reader will be qualified to decide for -himself between the opinion of a bold young critic that "all the works -have been subjected to a revision which in several cases, notably <i>Daisy -Miller</i> and <i>Four Meetings</i>, amounts to their ruin," and their -writer's confidence that "I shouldn't have breathed upon the old -catastrophes and accidents, the old wounds and mutilations and -disfigurements wholly in vain. . . . I have prayed that the finer air of -the better form may sufficiently seem to hang about them and gild them -over—at least for readers, however few, at all <i>curious</i> of -questions of air and form."</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>VI</h4> - - -<p>Explanatory prefaces and elaborate revisions, short stories and long -memories, were far from being the complete tale of literary labour -during the last eight years of Henry James's life. A new era for English -drama was prophesied in 1907. Led by Miss Horniman, advocates of the -repertory system were marching forward, capturing one by one the -intellectual centres of the provinces. In London, repertory seasons were -announced in two West-end theatres. Actor-managers began to ask for -"non-commercial" plays and when their appeal reached Henry James it met -with a quick response. The theatre had both allured and repelled him for -many years, and he had already been the victim of a theatrical -misadventure. His assertions that he wrote plays solely in the hope of -making money should not, I think, be taken as the complete explanation -of his dramas. It is pretty clear that he wrote plays because he wanted -to write them, because he was convinced that his instinct for dramatic -situations could find a happy outlet in plays, because writing for the -stage is a game rich in precise rules and he delighted in the -multiplication of technical difficulties, and because he lived in -circles more addicted to the intelligent criticism of plays than to the -intelligent criticism of novels. The plays he wrote in the early -'nineties are very careful exercises in technique. They are derived -straight from the light comedies of the Parisian stage, with the -difference that in the 'nineties, for all their advertised naughtiness, -there were even stricter limits to the free representation of Parisian -situations on English stages than there are to-day. In <i>The Reprobate</i>, -a play successfully produced a few years ago by the Stage Society, the -lady whose hair has changed from black to red and from red to gold is -the centre of the drama, she holds the key to the position, but all her -complicating effect depends upon the past—pasts being allowed on -every stage comparative license of reference. The compromising evidence is -all a matter of old photographs and letters, and the play loses in -vividness whatever it may gain in respectability. Nobody knew better than -the author that <i>The Reprobate</i> was not a good play. Terror of being -cut forbade him to work on a subject of intrinsic importance. With -another hour guaranteed, a playwright might attempt anything, but "he does -not get his hour, and he will probably begin by missing his subjects. He -takes, in his dread of complication, a minor one, and it's heavy odds -that the minor one, with the habit of small natures, will prove -thankless."</p> - -<p>Other early plays had been converted into novels or tales and so -published. One of these, written originally for Miss Ellen Terry but -never produced by her, had appeared as an incongruous companion to <i>The -Turn of the Screw</i> in the volume entitled <i>The Two Magics.</i> A few -attentive readers had seen the dramatic possibilities of <i>Covering -End</i>, and when it was suggested to Henry James that he should convert it -into a three-act comedy for production by Mr. Forbes Robertson (as he was -then) and Miss Gertrude Elliot, he willingly consented. Flying under a -new flag, as <i>The High Bid</i>, the play was produced in London in -February, 1909, but only for a series of matinées, the prodigious -success of <i>The Passing of the Third Floor Back</i> precluding the -possibility of an evening for any other production under the same -management. Under the inspiration of the repertory movement, other -material was re-cast for acting. <i>The Other House</i> was re-dictated as -a tragedy. <i>Owen Wingrave</i> became <i>The Saloon</i>, a one-act play -produced by Miss Gertrude Kingston in 1910. Finally an entirely new -three-act comedy, <i>The Outcry</i>, was written round the highly topical -subject of the sale of art treasures to rich Americans. It was not produced -during Henry James's life. At the time when it should have been rehearsed -he was ill and the production was postponed. On his recovery, he went to -the United States for a year, and when he came back the day of repertory -performances had died in a fresh night of stars.</p> - -<p>When <i>The Outcry</i> was given by the Stage Society in 1917, it was -evident that the actors were embarrassed by their lines, for by 1909, when -the play was written, the men and women of Henry James could talk only in -the manner of their creator. His own speech, assisted by the practice of -dictating, had by that time become so inveterately characteristic that -his questions to a railway clerk about a ticket or to a fishmonger about -a lobster, might easily be recognized as coined in the same mint as his -addresses to the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature. -Apart from this difficulty of enunciating the lines, <i>The Outcry</i> has -all the advantages over the earlier plays. The characters are real and -they act from adequate motives. The solution of the presented problem, -which requires, like most of the author's solutions, a change of heart, -is worked out with admirable art, without any use of the mechanical -shifts and stage properties needed in <i>The Reprobate.</i> It is not very -difficult to believe that if Henry James had been encouraged twenty -years earlier to go on writing plays he might have made a name as a -dramatist, but the faithful may be forgiven for rejoicing that the -playwright was sacrificed to the novelist and critic.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>VII</h4> - - -<p>Many men whose prime business is the art of writing find rest and -refreshment in other occupations. They marry, or they keep dogs, they -play golf or bridge, they study Sanskrit or collect postage stamps. -Except for a period of ownership of a dachshund, Henry James did none of -these things. He lived a life consecrated to the service of a jealous, -insatiable, and supremely rewarding goddess, and all his activities had -essential reference to that service. He had a great belief in the -virtues of air and exercise, and he was expert at making a walk of two -or three miles last for as many hours by his habit of punctuating -movement with frequent and prolonged halts for meditation or -conversation. He liked the exhilaration of driving in a motor-car, which -gave him, he said, "a sense of spiritual adventure." He liked a -communicative companion. Indeed the cultivation of friendships may be -said to have been his sole recreation. To the very end of his life he -was quick to recognize every chance of forming a friendly relation, -swift to act on his recognition, and beautifully ready to protect and -nourish the warm life of engendered affection. His letters, especially -those written in his later years, are more than anything else great -generous gestures of remembrance, gathering up and embracing his -correspondents much as his talk would gather up his hearers and sweep -them along on a rising flood of eloquence.</p> - -<p>But that fine capacity for forming and maintaining a "relation" worked, -inevitably, within definite limits. He was obliged to create impassable -barriers between himself and the rest of mankind before he could stretch -out his eager hands over safe walls to beckon and to bless. He loved his -friends, but he was condemned by the law of his being to keep clear of -any really entangling net of human affection and exaction. His contacts -had to be subordinate, or indeed ancillary, to the vocation he had -followed with a single passion from the time when, as a small boy, he -obtained a report from his tutor as showing no great aptitude for -anything but a felicitous rendering of La Fontaine's fables into -English. Nothing could be allowed to interfere for long with the labour -from which Henry James never rested, unless perhaps during sleep. When -his "morning stint of inventive work" was over, he went forth to the -renewed assault of the impressions that were always lying in wait for -him. He was perpetually and mercilessly exposed, incessantly occupied -with the task of assimilating his experience, freeing the pure workable -metal from the base, remoulding it into new beauty with the aid of every -device of his craft. He used his friends not, as some incompletely -inspired artists do, as in themselves the material of his art, but as -the sources of his material. He took everything they could give and he -gave it back in his books. With this constant preoccupation, it was -natural that the people least interesting to him were the comparatively -dumb. To be "inarticulate" was for him the cardinal social sin. It -amounted to a wilful withholding of treasures of alien experience. And -if he could extract no satisfaction from contemplating the keepers of -golden silence, he could gain little more from intercourse with the -numerous persons he dismissed from his attention as "simple organisms." -These he held to be mere waste of any writer's time, and it was -characteristic that his constant appreciation of the works of Mrs. -Wharton was baffled by the popularity of <i>Ethan Frome</i>, because he -considered that the gifted author had spent her labour on creatures too -easily comprehensible to be worth her pains. He greatly preferred <i>The -Reef</i>, where, as he said, "she deals with persons really fine and -complicated."</p> - -<p>We might arrive at the same conclusion from a study of the prefaces to -the New York Edition. More often than not, the initial idea for a tale -came to Henry James through the medium of other people's talk. From a -welter of anecdote he could unerringly pick out the living nucleus for a -reconstructed and balanced work of art. His instinct for selection was -admirable, and he could afford to let it range freely among a profusion -of proffered subjects, secure that it would alight on the most -promising. But he liked to have the subjects presented with a little -artful discrimination, even in the first instance. He was dependent on -conversation, but it must be educated and up to a point intelligent -conversation. There is an early letter written from Italy in 1874, in -which he complains of having hardly spoken to an Italian creature in -nearly a year's sojourn, "save washerwomen and waiters. This, you'll -say, is my own stupidity," he continues, "but granting this gladly, it -proves that even a creature addicted as much to sentimentalizing as I am -over the whole <i>mise en scène</i> of Italian life, doesn't find an easy -initiation into what lies behind it. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the -pitifulness of this absurd want of reciprocity between Italy itself and -all my rhapsodies about it." Other wanderers might have found more of -Italy in washerwomen and waiters, here guaranteed to be the true native -article, than in all the nobility of Rome or the Anglo-Americans of -Venice, but that was not Henry James's way. For him neither pearls nor -diamonds fell from the lips of waiters and washerwomen, and princesses -never walked in his world disguised as goosegirls.</p> - -<p>Friendships are maintained by the communication of speech and letters. -Henry James was a voluminous letter-writer and exhaustively -communicative in his talk upon every subject but one, his own work, -which was his own real life. It was not because he was indifferent to -what people thought of his books that he evaded discussion about them. -He was always touched and pleased by any evidence that he had been -intelligently read, but he never went a step out of his way to seek this -assurance. He found it safest to assume that nobody read him, and he -liked his friends none the worse for their incapacity. Meanwhile, the -volumes of his published works—visible, palpable, readable proof of -that unceasing travail of the creative spirit which was always labouring -behind the barrier of his silence—piled themselves up year after -year, to be dropped on to the tables of booksellers and pushed on to the -shelves of libraries, to be bought and cherished by the faithful, -ignored by the multitude, and treated as a test of mental endurance by -the kind of person who organized the Browning Society. Fortunately for -literature, Henry James did not lend himself to exploitation by any -Jacobean Society. Instead of inventing riddles for prize students, he -scattered about his pages a number of pregnant passages containing all -the clues that are needed for keeping up with him. It was his theory -that if readers didn't keep up with him—as they admittedly didn't -always—the fault was entirely in their failure of attention. There -are revelations in his books, just as he declared them to be in the works -of Neil Paraday. "Extract the opinion, disengage the answer—these are -the real acts of homage."</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>VIII</h4> - - -<p>From his familiar correspondence we need not hope to extract as -considered an opinion or as definite an answer as from the novels, but -his letters are extraordinarily valuable as sidelights, helping us to -see how it happened that any man was able to progress along so straight -a path from one end of his life to another. The two Volumes of memories -are clear evidence of the kind of temperamental make-up with which Henry -James was gifted, the two volumes of letters show how his life -contributed to preserve and enhance his rare capacity for taking and -keeping impressions. They show him too as unusually impervious to -everything which is not an impression of visual images or a sense of a -human situation. He was very little troubled by a number of ideas which -press with an increasing weight upon the minds of most educated persons. -Not until the outbreak of the Great War was he moved to utter a forcible -"opinion" about affairs outside his personal range. He was delightfully -free from the common delusion that by grouping individuals in arbitrary -classes and by twisting harmless adjectives into abstract nouns it is -possible for us to think of more than one thing at a time and to -conceive of qualities apart from their manifestation. What he saw he -possessed; what he understood he criticized, but he never reckoned it to -be any part of his business to sit in judgment on the deeds of men -working in alien material for inartistic ends, or to speculate about the -nature of the universe or the conflict or reconciliation of science with -religion. He could let Huxley and Gladstone, the combatant champions of -Darwinism and orthodox theology, enrich the pages of a single letter -without any reference to their respective beliefs. "Huxley is a very -genial, comfortable being . . . But of course my talk with him is mere -amiable generalities." Of Gladstone there is a little more, but again -the personal impression is the thing sought. "I was glad of a chance to -feel the 'personality' of a great political leader—or as G. is now -thought here even, I think, by his partisans, ex-leader. That of -Gladstone is very fascinating—his urbanity extreme—his eye that -of a man of genius—and his apparent self-surrender to what he is -talking of without a flaw. He made a great impression on me." One would -like to know what the subject was to which Gladstone had surrendered -himself in his talk with this entranced young American, who must surely, -for his part, have been as much reduced conversationally to "mere amiable -generalities" as on the occasion of his meeting Huxley. It is difficult -to think of a single likely point of contact between the minds of -Gladstone and Henry James. But that, for delicacy of registration, was -an advantage. The recording instrument could perform its work without -the hindrance of any distraction of attention from the man himself to -the matter of his speech, which did not presumably contain any germ for -cultivation into fiction.</p> - -<p>His nationality saved Henry James from the common English necessity of -taking a side in the political game; and in the United States nobody of -his world had expected him to be interested in politics. There is a -pleasant account in <i>The Middle Years</i> of his blankness when he was -asked at a London breakfast-table for "distinctness about General -Grant's first cabinet, upon the formation of which the light of the -newspaper happened then to beat." The question was embarrassing. "There -were, it appeared, things of interest taking place in America, and I had -had, in this absurd manner, to come to England to learn it: I had -had over there on the ground itself no conception of any such -matter—nothing of the smallest interest, by any perception of mine, -as I suppose I should still blush to recall, had taken place in America -since the War." Nothing of any great public interest, by any perception -of his, was to take place in Europe until the outbreak of another war at -that time far beyond the range of speculation. But if cabinets and -parties and politics were and remained outside the pale of his -sensibility, he was none the less charmed by the customs of a country -where Members of Parliament and Civil Servants could meet together for a -leisurely breakfast, thus striking "the exciting note of a social order -in which everyone wasn't hurled straight, with the momentum of rising, -upon an office or a store."</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IX</h4> - - -<p>Henry James came to England to admire. But his early reverence for the -men and women of an island with so fine and ancient a historic tone as -Great Britain soon faded. He had forgotten, in the first passion of -acquaintance, that the English are born afresh in every generation and -are about as new as young Americans, differing from them chiefly in -having other forms of domestic and ecclesiastical architecture and -smoother lawns to take for granted. He looked at old stone castles and -Tudor brickwork, at great hanging eaves and immemorial gardens, and then -he looked at the heirs of this heritage and listened intently for their -speech. This was disappointing, partly because they spoke so little. "I -rarely remember," he wrote when he had lived through several London -months, "to have heard on English lips any other intellectual verdict -(no matter under what provocation) than this broad synthesis 'so -immensely clever.' What exasperates you is not that they can't say more -but that they wouldn't if they could."</p> - -<p>How different was this inarticulate world from the fine civilization of -Boston, from the cultivated circle that gathered round Charles Eliot -Norton at Shady Hill. To that circle he appealed for sympathy, -complaining that he was "sinking into dull British acceptance and -conformity. . . . I am losing my standard—my charming little standard -that I used to think so high; my standard of wit, of grace, of good -manners, of vivacity, of urbanity, of intelligence, of what makes an -easy and natural style of intercourse! And this in consequence of having -dined out during the past winter 107 times!" Great men, or at -the least men with great names, swam into his ken and he condemned -them. Ruskin was "weakness pure and simple." In Paris he found -that he could "easily—more than easily—see all round Flaubert -intellectually." A happy Sunday evening at Madame Viardot's provoked a -curious reflection on the capacity of celebrated Europeans to behave -absurdly and the incapacity of celebrated Americans to indulge in similar -antics. "It was both strange and sweet to see poor Turgenev acting charades -of the most extravagant description, dressed out in old shawls, and masks, -going on all fours, etc. The charades are their usual Sunday evening -occupation and the good faith with which Turgenev, at his age and with his -glories, can go into them is a striking example of the truth of that -spontaneity which Europeans have and we have not. Fancy Longfellow, Lowell, -or Charles Norton doing the like and every Sunday evening!"</p> - -<p>Whether or not all celebrated Americans behave with invariable decorum, -the astonished spectator of Turgenev's performance had no temptation to -"do the like." His appearance among a company of artists and writers -gathered together in a country village during the late summer of 1886 -has been characteristically recorded by Mr. Edmund Gosse. "Henry James -was the only sedate one of us all—benign, indulgent, but grave, and -not often unbending beyond a genial chuckle. . . . It is remembered with -what affability he wore a garland of flowers at a birthday feast, and -even, nobly descending, took part one night in a cakewalk. But mostly, -though not much our senior, he was serious, mildly avuncular, but very -happy and unupbraiding."</p> - -<p>By that time Henry James was at his ease in England. The inhabitants -were no longer either gods or imbeciles. Through the general British fog -he had perceived gleams of intelligence shining on his bewilderment. He -was no longer wholly dependent on Boston for refreshment. He could fall -back upon the company of Mr. Edmund Gosse and he had found a friend in -R. L. Stevenson. The little handful of Islanders possessed of a genuine -interest in the art of letters and the criticism of life emerged from -the obscurity, and he made out that, on the whole, there were perhaps -about as many civilized people in England as in his native land. Yet he -was a little troubled about his position. He wondered, while he reviewed -the past, whether the path he had so carefully chosen for himself was -the right one, whether he might not have missed more by leaving the -United States than he had gained by coming to England. He lamented; in a -letter written to his brother William in 1899, that he had not had the -kind of early experience that might have attached him to his own -country. He earnestly advised a different treatment for his nephews. -"What I most of all feel, and in the light of it conjure you to keep -doing for them, is their being <i>à même</i> to contract local saturations -and attachments in respect to their <i>own</i> great and glorious country, -to learn, and strike roots into, its infinite beauty, as I suppose, and -variety. . . . Its being their 'own' will double their <i>use</i> of it."</p> - -<p>It was only after a visit to America in 1904 that he found, on his -return to Rye, that he had a home and a country. He was able after this -discovery to write to Mrs. Wharton that "your only drawback is not -having the homeliness and the inevitability and the happy limitation and -the affluent poverty, of a Country of your Own (comme moi, par -exemple!)"; and he could declare after taking the Oath of Allegiance to -the King of England in 1915 that "I was really too associated before for -any nominal change to matter. The process has only shown me what I -virtually <i>was</i>—so that it's rather disappointing in respect to -acute sensation. I <i>haven't</i> any." Associated he certainly was, allied -by innumerable sympathies and affections to the adopted country. But he was -never really English or American or even Cosmopolitan, And it is too -difficult to suppose that even if he had passed all his youth in New -England and contracted all the local saturations and attachments he -urged for his nephews he could ever have melted comfortably into -American uniformity. He, who took nothing in the world for granted, -could surely never have taken New England for granted.</p> - -<p>To-day, with the complete record before us—the novels, criticisms, -biographies, plays, and letters—we can understand how little those -international relations that engaged Henry James's attention mattered to -his genius. Wherever he might have lived and whatever human interactions -he might have observed, he would in all probability have reached much -the same conclusion that he arrived at by the way of America, France, -and England. When he walked out of the refuge of his study into the -world and looked about him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures -of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of the -doomed, defenceless children of light. He had the abiding comfort of an -inner certainty (and perhaps he did bring that from New England) that -the children of light had an eternal advantage; he was aware to the -finest fibre of his being that the "poor sensitive gentlemen" he so -numerously treated possessed a treasure that would outlast all the -glittering paste of the world and the flesh; he knew that nothing in -life mattered compared with spiritual decency.</p> - -<p>We may conclude that the nationalities of his betrayed and triumphant -victims are not an important factor. They may equally well be innocent -Americans maltreated by odious Europeans, refined Europeans fleeced by -unscrupulous Americans, or young children of any race exposed to evil -influences. The essential fact is that wherever he looked Henry James -saw fineness apparently sacrificed to grossness, beauty to avarice, -truth to a bold front. He realized how constantly the tenderness of -growing life is at the mercy of personal tyranny and he hated the -tyranny of persons over each other. His novels are a repeated exposure -of this wickedness, a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest -freedom of development, unimperilled by reckless and barbarous -stupidity.</p> - -<p>He was himself most scrupulously careful not to exercise any tyrannical -power over other people. The only advice he ever permitted himself to -offer to a friend was a recommendation to "let your soul live." Towards -the end of his days his horror of interfering, or seeming to interfere, -with the freedom of others became so overpowering that it was a misery -for him to suspect that the plans of his friends might be made with -reference to himself. Much as he enjoyed seeing them, he so disliked to -think that they were undergoing the discomfort of voyages and railway -journeys in order to be near him that he would gladly have prevented -their start if he could. His Utopia was an anarchy where nobody would be -responsible for any other human being but only for his own civilized -character. His circle of friends will easily recall how finely Henry -James had fitted himself to be a citizen of this commonwealth.</p> - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY JAMES AT WORK *** - -***** This file should be named 63377-h.htm or 63377-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/3/7/63377/ - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Hathi Trust.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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