No More Learning

"Le Realisme n'a pas en eflfet I'unique mission de decrire ce qui est bas, ce qui est repugnant. . . .
"Nous avons commence, nous, par la canaille, parce que la femme et I'homme du peuple, plus rapproches de la nature et de la sauvagerie, sont des creatures simples et peu compliquees, tandis que le Parisien et la Parisienne
' de la societe, ces civilises excessifs, dont I'originalite tranchee est faite toute de nuances, toute de demi-teintes, toute de ces riens insaisissables, pareils aux riens coquets et neutres avec lesquels se fagonne le caractere d'une
' toilette distinguee de femme, demandant des annees pour qu'on les perce, pour qu'on les sache, pour qu'on les attrape--et le romancier du plus grand genie, croyez- le bien, ne les devinera jamais ces gens de salon, avec les racontars d'amis qui vont pour lui a la decouverte dans le monde. . . .
"Ce projet de roman qui devait se passer dans le grand monde, dans le monde le plus quintessencie, et dont nous rassemblions lentement et minutieusement les elements delicats et fugaces, je I'abandonnais apres la mort de men frere, convaincu de I'impossibilite de le reussir tout seul. "
But this particular paragraph could have had little to do with the matter. "French Poets and Novelists" was published in '78 and Edmond De Goncourt signed theprefaceto"LesFreresZemganno"in'79. Thepara- graphs quoted are interesting, however, as showing De Goncourt's state of mind in that year. He had prob- ably been preaching in this vein long before setting the words on paper, before getting them printed.
If ever one man's career was foreshadowed in a few
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sentences of another, Henry James's is to be found in this paragraph.
It is very much as if Ije said: I will not be a mega- therium botcher like Balzac ; there is nothing to be said about these De Goncourts, but one must try to be rather more interesting than they are in, let us say, "Madame Gervaisais. " *
Proceeding with the volume of criticism, we find that "LeJeuneH. "simplydidn't"get"Flaubert; thathewas much alive to the solid parts of Turgenev. He shows himself very apt, as we said above, to judge the merits of a novelist on the ground that the people portrayed by the said novelist are or are not suited to reception into the household of Henry James senior; whether, in short, Emma Bovary or Frederic or M. Arnoux would have spoiled the so delicate atmosphere, have juggled the so fine susceptibilities of a refined 23rd Street family at the time of the Philadelphia "Centennial. "
I find the book not so much a sign that Henry James was "disappointed," as HuefFer puts it, as that he was simply and horribly shocked by the literature of his con- tinental forebears and contemporaries.
It is only when he gets to the Theatre Franqais that he finds something which really suits him. Here there is order, tradition, perhaps a slight fustiness (biit a quite pardonable fustiness, an arranged and suitable fustiness having its recompense in a sort of spiritual quiet) ; here, at any rate, was something decorous, something not to be found in Concord or in Albany. And it is easy to imagine the young James, not illuminated by De
* It is my personal feeling at the moment that La Fille Elisa is worth so much more than all Balzac that the things are as out of scale as a sapphire and a plum pudding, and that Elisa, despite the dull section, is worth most of James's writing. This is, however, aside from the question we are discussing.
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Goncourt's possible conversation or writing, not even following the hint gvven in his essay on Balzac and Balzacian furniture, but sitting before Madame Nathalie in "Le Village" and resolving to be the Theatre Frangais of the novel.
A resolution which he may be said to have carried out to the great enrichment of letters.
II
Strictures on the work of this period are no great detraction. "French Poets and Novelists" gives us a point from which to measure Henry James's advance. Genius showed itself partly in the escape from some of his original limitations, partly in acquirements. His art at length became "second nature," became perhaps half unconscious; or in part wholly unconscious; in other partsperhapstoohighlyconscious. Atanyrateinsun- nier circumstances he talked exactly as he wrote, the same elaborate paragraph beautifully attaining its ? cli- max; the same sudden incision when a brief statement
could dispose of a matter.
Be it said for his style : he is seldom or never involved
when a direct bald statement will accurately convey his
Style apart, I take it that the hatred of tyrannies was as great a motive as any we can ascribe to Galileo or Leonardo or to any other great figure, to any other mythic Prometheus ; for this driving force we may well overlook personal foibles, the early Bostonese bias, the heritage from his father's concern in commenting Swedenborg,
He is not usually, for all his
own meaning, all of it.
wideleisure,verbose. Hemaybehighlyandbewilder- ingly figurative in his language (vide Mr. Hueffer's re- marks on this question).
? HENRY JAMES 129
the later fusses about social caution and conservation of furniture. Hueffer rather boasts about Henry James's innocence of the classics. It is nothing to brag of, even if a man struggling against natural medievalism have entrenched himself in impressionist theory. If James had read his classics, the better Latins especially, he would not have so excessively cobwebbed, fussed, blath- ered,worriedaboutminormundanities. Wemaycon- spuer with all our vigor Henry James's concern with furniture, the Spoils of Poynton, connoisseurship, Mrs. Ward's tea-party atmosphere, the young Bostonian of theimmatureworks. Wemayrelegatethesethingsmen- tally to the same realm as the author's pyjamas and coIt lar buttons, to his intellectual instead of his physical valeting. There remains the capacious intelligence, the searching analysis of things that cannot be so relegated to the scrap-heap and to the wash-basket.
Let us say that English freedom legally and tradition- ally has its basis in property. Let us say, a la Balzac, that most modern existence is governed by, or at least interfered with by, the necessity to earn money; let us also say that a Frenchman is not an Englishman or a German or an American, and that despite the remark that the aristocracies of all people, the upper classes, are the same everywhere, racial differences are au fond dif- ferences; they are likewise major subjects.
Writing, as I am, for the reader of good-will, for the bewildered person who wants to know where to begin, I need not apologize for the following elliptical notes. James, in his prefaces, has written explanation to deafti
(with sometimes a very pleasant necrography) . Leav- ing the "French Poets and Novelists," I take the novels and stories as nearly as possible in their order of publi-
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cation (as distinct tr(jui their order as rearranged and partially weeded out m the collected edition).
1875. (U. S. A. ) "A Passionate Pilgrim and other Tales. " "Eugene Pickering" is the best of this lot and most indicative of the future James. Contains also the title story and "Madame de Mauves. " Other stories inferior.
1876. (U. S. A. ) "Roderick Hudson," prentice work. First novel not up to the level of "Pickering. "
1877. "The American"; essential James, part of the permanentwork. "WatchandWard,"discardedbythe author.
1878. "French Poets and Novelists," already dis- cussed.
1878. "Daisy Miller. " (The big hit and one of his best. ) "An International Episode," "Four Meetings," good work.
1870. Short stories first printed in England with additions, but no important ones.
1880. "Confidence," not important.
1881. "Washington Square," one of his best, "putting America on the map," giving us a real past, a real back- ground. "PensionBeaurepas"and"BundleofLetters," especially the girls' letters, excellent, already mentioned.
1881. "The Portrait of a Lady," one of his best. Charming Venetian preface in the collected edition.
1884. "Tales of Three Cities," stories dropped from the collected edition, save "Lady Barbarina. "
1884. "Lady Barbarina," a study in English blank- ness comparable to that exposed in the letters of the English young lady in "A Bundle of Letters. " There isalsoNewYorkoftheperiod. "Butiftherewasone thing Lady Barb disliked more than another it was de- scribing Pasterns. She had always lived with people
--
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who knew of themselves what such a place would be, without demanding t;hese pictorial effects, proper only, as she vaguely felt, to persons belonging to the classes whosetradewastheartsofexpression. LadyBarbof course had never gone into it ; but she knew that in her own class the business was not to express but to enjoy, not to represent but to be represented. "
"Mrs. Lemon's recognition of this river, I should say, was all it need have been; she held the Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying New Yorkers with poetical feelings, helping them to face comfortably occasions like the present, and in general, meet foreigners with confi- dence. . . . "
"He believed, or tried to believe, the salon now pos- sible in New York on condition of its being reserved en- tirely for adults; and in having taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions were rich and ancient he had done something toward qualifying his own house so splendidly qualified in all strictly material respects . . . to be the scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed only to the best on each side, as Lady Beau- chemin said, what mightn't she achieve by being at home --always to adults only--in an easy early inspiring com- prehensive way and on the evening of the seven, when worldly engagements were least numerous ? He laid this philosophy before Lady Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short acquaintance she couldn't fail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in the New York mind--not so much indeed in its lit- erary, artistic, philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness and nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an indispensable neat block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The New York mind would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if
--
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she would only give it a chance; for it was thoroughly bright, responsive and sympathetic. If she would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most convenient and luxurious way, without, as it was, getting up from her chair; if she would only just try this graceful . good-natured experiment--which would make every one like her so much too--he was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady Barb didn't rise at all to his conception and hadn't the least curiosity about the New Yorkmind. Shethoughtitwouldbeextremelydisagree- able to have a lot of people tumbling in on Sunday eve- ning without being invited, and altogether her husband's sketch of the Anglo-American salon seemed to her to suggest crude familiarity, high vociferation--she had al- ready made a remark to him about 'screeching women'
--andrandomextravagantlaughter. Shedidn'ttellhim --for this somehow it wasn't in her power to express and, strangely enough, he never completely guessed it that she was singularly deficient in any natural, or in- deed, acquired understanding of what a salon might be. She had never seen or dreamed of one--and for the most part was incapable of imagining a thing she hadn't seen. She had seen great dinners and balls and* meets and runs and races; she had seen garden-parties and
bunches of people, mainly women--who, however, didn't screech--at dull stuffy teas, and distinguished companies collected in splendid castles ; but all this gave her no clew to a train of conversation, to any idea of a social agree- ment that the interest of talk, its continuity, its accu- mulations from season to season shouldn't be lost. Con- versation, in Lady Barb's experience, had never been
;
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133
continuous; in such a case it would surely have been a bore. It had been occasional and fragmentary, a trifle jerky, with allusions that were never explained; it had a dread of detail--it seldom pursued anything very far or kept hold of it very long. "
1885. "Stories Revived," adding to earlier tales "The Author of Beltraffio," which opens with excess of thie treading-on-eggs manner, too much to be borne for twen- ty-four volumes. The pretense of extent of "people" in- terested in art and letters, sic : "It was the most complete presentation that had yet been made of the gospel of art it was a kind of aesthetic war cry. 'People' had endeav- ored to sail nearer "to truth,' etc. "
He implies too much of art smeared on limited multi- tudes. One wonders if the eighties did in any great aggregate gush up to this extent. Doesn't he try to spread the special case out too wide?
The thinking is magnificently done from this passage up to page sixteen or twenty, stated with great concision. Compare it with "Madame Gervaisais" and we find Henry James much more interesting when on the upper reaches. Comparehisexpressiveness,theexpressiveness of his indirectness with that of constatation. The two methods are curiously mixed in the opening of "Beltraf- fio. " Such sentences as (page 30) "He said the. most interesting and inspiring things" are, however, pure waste, pure "leaving the thing undone," unconcrete, un- imagined; just simply bad writing or bad novelisting. As for his special case he does say a deal about the au- thor or express a deal by him, but one is bothered by the
fact that Pater, Burton, Hardy, Meredith were not, in mere history, bundled into one ; that Burton had been to the East and the others had not; that no English novel- ist of that era would have taken the least notice of any-
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thing going on in foreign countries, presumably Euro- pean, as does the supreme author of "Beltraffio. "
Doubtless he is in many ways the author Henry James would have liked to meet and more illustrative of certain English tones and limitations than any historical portrait might have been. Still Henry James does lay it on . . . more, I think, than the story absolutely requires. In "Beltraffio" he certainly does present (not that he does not comment to advantage) the two damn'd women ap- pended to the gentlemanly hero of the tale. The most violent post-Strindbergian school would perhaps have called them bitches tout bonnement, but this word did not belong to Henry James's vocabulary and besides it is of too great an indistinctness. Author, same "bloody"
(in the English sense) author with his passion for "form" appears in "Lesson of Master," and most of H. J. 's stories of literary milieux. Perpetual Grandisonism or Grandisonizing of this author with the passion for form, all of 'em have it. Ma che! There is, however, great intensity in these same "be-deared" and be-"poor- old"-edpages. Hehasreallygotamaintheme,agreat theme, he chooses to do it in silver point rather than in the garish colors of,--well, of Cherbuliez, or the terms of a religious maniac with three-foot long carving knife.
Novel of the gilded pill, an aesthetic or artistic message, dogma, no better than a moral or ethic one, novel a (Cumbrous camouflage substitute not for "that parlor game" * the polite essay, but for the impolite essay or conveyance of ideas; novel to do this should completely
incarnate the abstraction.
Finish of "Beltraffio" not perhaps up to the rest of it.
Not that one at all knows how else . . . *T. S. Eliot.
----
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Gushonpage42*frombothconversationalists. Still an adumbration of the search for the just word emerges on pages 43-44, real cut at barbarism and bigotry on the bottom of page 45 (of course not labeled by these mon- strous and rhetorical brands, scorched on to their hides and rump sides). "Will it be a sin to make the most of that one too, so bad for the dear old novel? " Butler and James on the same side really chucking out the fake ; Butler focused on Church of England ; opposed to him the fakers booming the Bible "as literature" in a sort of last stand, a last ditch; seeing it pretty well had to go as history, cosmogony, etc. , or the old tribal Daddy- slap-'em-with-slab of the Jews as anything like an ideal :
"He told me more about his wife before we arrived at the gate of home, and if he be judged to have aired overmuch his grievance I'm afraid I must admit that he had some of the foibles as well as the gifts of the artistic temperament; adding,however,instantlythathitherto,to the best of my belief, he had rarely let this particular cat out of the bag. 'She thinks me immoral--that's the long and short of it,' he said, as we paused outside a moment and his hand rested on one of the bars of his gate; while his conscious, expressive, perceptive eyes the eyes of a foreigner, I had begun to account them, much more than of the usual Englishman--viewing me now evidently as quite a familiar friend, took part in the declaration. 'It's very strange when one thinks it all over, and there's a grand comicality in it that I should like to bring out. She's a very nice woman, extraordi- narily well-behaved, upright and clever and with a tre-
mendous lot of good sense about a good many matters. Yet her conception of a novel--she has explained it to
* Page numbers in Collected Edition.
135
--I
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me once or twice, and she doesn't do it badly as exposi- tion--is a thing so false that it makes me blush. It's a thing so hollow, so dishonest, so lying, in which life is so blinked and blinded, so dodged and disfigured, that it makes my ears burn. It's two different w^ays of looking at the whole affair,' he repeated, pushing open the gate. 'And they're irreconcilable ! ' he added with a sigh. We went forward to the house, but on the walk, halfway to the door, he stopped and said to me : 'If you're going into this kind of thing there's a fact you should know beforehand; it may save you some disappointment. There's a hatred of art, there's a hatred of literature-- meanofthegenuinekinds. Oh,theshams thosethey'll swallow by the bucket ! ' I looked up at the charm- ing house, with its genial color and crookedness, and I answered with a smile that those evil passions might exist, but that I should never have expected to find them there. 'Ah, it doesn't matter, after all,' he a bit nervously laughed ; which I was glad to hear, for I was reproaching myself with having worked him up. "
Really literature in the XlXth and the beginning of the XXth centuries is where science was in the days of Galileo and the Inquisition. Henry James not blinking it, neither can we. "Poor dears" and "dear olds" always a little too plentiful.
1885. (continued) "Pandora," of the best. Let it pass as a sop to America's virginal charm; as counter- weight to "Daisy Miller," or to the lady of "The Por- trait. " Henry James alert to the German.
"The process of enquiry had already begun for him, in spite of his having as yet spoken to none of his fellow passengers; the case being that Vogelstein enquired not only with his tongue, but with his eyes--that is with his spectacles--with his ears, with his nose, with his palate,
? HENRY JAMES
withallhissensesandorgans. Hewasahighlyupright young man, whose only fault was that his sense of comedy, or of the humor of things, had never been spe- cifically disengaged, from his several other senses. He vaguely felt that something should be done about this, and in a general manner proposed to do it, for he was on his way to explore a society abounding in comic aspects. This consciousness of a missing measure gave him a certain mistrust of what might be said of him; and if circumspection is the essence of diplomacy our young aspirant promised well. His mind contained several millions of facts, packed too closely together for the light breeze of the imagination to draw through the mass. He was impatient to report himself to his superior in Washington, and the loss of time in an English port could only incommode him, inasmuch as the study of English institutions was no part of his mission. On the other hand the day was charming; the blue sea, in Southampton Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement but that of its infinite shimmer. Moreover, he was by no means sure that he should be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an important question and that happiness was an un- scientific term, such as a man of his education should be ashamed to use even in the silence of his thoughts. Lost none the less in the inconsiderate crowd and feeling himself neither in his own country nor in that to which he was in a manner accredited, he was reduced to his mere personality; so that during the hour, to save his importance, he cultivated such ground as lay in sight for a judgment of this delay to which the German steamer was subjected in English waters. Mightn't it be proved, facts, figures and documents--or at least
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watch--in hand, considerably greater than the occasion demanded ?
"Count Vogelstein, was still young enough in diplomacy to think it necessary to have opinions. He had a good many, indeed, which had been formed without difSculty; they had been received ready-made from a line of an- cestors who knew what they liked.
This was of course --and under pressure, being candid, he would have ad- mitted it--an unscientific way of furnishing one's mind. Our young man was a stiff conservative, a Junker of Junkers; he thought modern democracy a temporary phase and expected to find many arguments against it in the great Republic. In regard to these things it was a pleasure to him to feel that, with his complete training, he had been taught thoroughly to appreciate the nature of evidence. The ship was heavily laden with German emigrants, whose mission in the United States differed considerably from Count Otto's. They hung over the bulwarks, densely grouped; they leaned forward on their elbows for hours, their shoulders kept on a level with their ears: the men in furred caps, smoking long- bowled pipes, the women with babies hidden in remark- ably ugly shawls. Some were yellow Germans and some were black, and all looked greasy and matted with the sea-damp. They were destined to swell still further the huge current of the Western democracy; and Count Vogelstein doubtless said to himself that they wouldn't improve its quality. Their numbers, however, were striking, and I know not what he thought of the nature of this particular evidence. "
For further style in vignette
"He could see for himself that Mr. and Mrs. Day had not at all her grand air. They were fat plain serious
? HENRY JAMES
"
people who sat side by side on the deck for hours and looked straight before them. Mrs. Day had a white face,largecheeksandsmalleyes; herforeheadwassur- rounded with a multitude of little tight black curls; her lips moved as if she had always a lozenge in her mouth. She wore entwined about her head an article which Mrs. Dangierfield spoke of as a 'nuby,' a knitted pink scarf concealing her hair, encircling her neck and having among its convolutions a hole for her perfectly expres- sionless face. Her hands were folded on her stomach, and in her still, swathed figure hier bead-like eyes, which occasionally changed their direction, alone represented life. Her husband had a stiff gray beard on his chin and a bare spacious upper lip, to which constant shaving had imparted a hard glaze. His eyebrows were thick and his nostrils wide, and when he was uncovered, in the saloon, it was visible that his grizzled hair was dense and perpendicular. He might have looked rather grim and truculent hadn't it been for the mild familiar ac- commodating gaze with which his large light-colored pupils--the leisurely eyes of a silent man--appeared to consider surrounding objects. He was evidently more friendly than fierce, but he was more diffident than friendly. He liked to have you in sight, but wouldn't have pretended to understand you much or to classify you, and would have been sorry it should put you under an obligation. He and his wife spoke sometimes, but seldom talked, and there was something vague and pa- tient about them as if they had become victims of a wrought spell. The spell, however, was of no sinister cast ; it was the fascination of prosperity, the confidence of security, which sometimes makes people arrogant, but which had had such a different effect on this simple
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satisfied pair, in whom further development of every kind appeared to have been happily arrested. "
Pandora's approach to her parents
"These little offices were usually performed deftly, rapidly, with the minimum of words, and when their daughter drew near them. Mr. and Mrs. Day closed their eyes after the fashion of a pair of household dogs who expect to be scratched. "
The tale is another synthesis of some of the million reasons why Germany will never conquer the world, why the Hun is impossible, wh}- ''boche"' is merely "bursch. " The imbecility of a certain Wellsian journalist in treat- ing this gem is again proof that it is written for the relatively-developed American, not for the island ecaillere. If Henry James, as Ford jMadox Hueffer says, set out to civilize the United States, it is at least an easier job than raising British Suburbia to a bearable level. From that milieu at least we have nothing of value to learn; we shall not take our tonality from that niveau.
In describing "Pandoras'' success as "purely personal,"' Henry James has hit on the secret of the Quattrocento, 1450 to 1550, the vital part of the Renaissance. Aris- tocracy decays when it ceases to be selective, when the basis of selection is not personal. It is a critical acute- ness, not a snobbism, which last is selection on some other principle than that of a personal quality. It is servility to rule-of-thumb criteria, and a dullness of per- ception, a timidity in acceptance. The whole force of the Renaissance was in the personality of its selection.
There is no faking the amount of perceptive energy concentrated in Henry James's vignettes in such phrases
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as that on the parents like domestic dogs waiting to be scratched, or in the ten thousand phrases of this sort which abound in his writings. If we were back in the time of Bruyere, we could easily make a whole book of "Characters" from Henry James's vignettes* The vein holds from beginning to end of his work; from this writing of the eighties to "The Ivory Tower. " As for example, Gussie Braddon:
"Rosanna waited facing her, noting her extraordinary perfection of neatness, of elegance, of arrangement, of which it couldn't be said whether they most handed over to you, as on some polished salver, the clear truth of her essential commonness or transposed it into an element that could please, that could even fascinate, as a supreme attestation of care. 'Take her as an advertisement of all
the latest knowledges of how to "treat" every inch of the human surface and where to "get" every scrap of the personal envelope, so far as she is enveloped, and she does achieve an effect sublime in itself and thereby
"
absolute in a wavering world. '
We note no inconsiderable progress in the actual writ-
ing, in maestria, when we reach the ultimate volumes. 1886. "Bostonians. " Other stories in this collection
mostly rejected from collected edition.
"Princess Casamassimaj" inferior continuation of
"Roderick Hudson. " His original subject matter is be- ginning to go thin.
* Since writing the above I find that some such compilation has been attempted; had indeed been planned by the anthologist, and, in plan, approved by H. J. : "Pictures and Passages from Henry James" selected by Ruth Head (Chatto and Windus, 1916), if not exactly the book to convince the rising generation of H. J. 's powers of survival, is at any rate a most charming tribute to our subject from one who had begun to read him in "the eighties".
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1888. "The Reverberator," process of fantasia begin- ning.
Fantasia of Americans vs. the '"old aristocracy," "The American"withthesexesreversed. Possiblythetheme shows as well in "Les Transatlantiques," the two meth- ods, give one at least a cenain pleasure of contrast.
1888. "Aspern Papers," inferior. "Louisa Pallant," a study in the maternal or abysmal relation, good James. "Modern Warning," rejected from collected edition.
1-889. "A London Life. " "The Patagonia. "
"ThePatagonia,"notamasterpiece. Slowinopening, excellent in parts, but the sense of the finale intrudes all along. It seems true but there is no alternative ending. One doubts whether a story is really constructed with any mastery when the end, for the purpose of making it a story, is so unescapable. The effect of reality is pro- duced, of course, by the reality of the people in the opening scene; there is no doubt about that part being "to the life. "
"The Liar" is superb in its way, perhaps the best of the allegories, of the plots invented purely to be an expo- sition of impression. It is magnificent in its presenta- tion of the people, both the old man and the Liar, who is masterly.
"Mrs. Temperly" is another such excellent delineation and shows James as an excellent hater, but G. S. Street expresses a concentration of annoyance with a greater polish and suavity in method ; and neither explains, theorizes, nor comments.
James never has De Maupassant's reality. His (H. J. 's) people almost always convince, i. e. , we believe implicitly that they exist. We also think that Henry
James has made up some sort of story as an excuse for writing his impression of the people.
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One sees the slight vacancy of the stories of this period, the short clear sentence, the dallying with jeu d'esprit, with epigram no better than, though not inferior to, the run of epigram in the nineties. It all explains James's need of opacity, his reaching out for a chiaro- scuro to distinguish himself from his contemporaries and in which he could put the whole of his much more com- plex apperception.
Then comes, roughly, the period of cobwebs and of excessive cobwebs and of furniture, finally justified in "The Finer Grain," a book of tales witli no mis-fire, and the style so vindicated in the triumphs of the various books of Memoirs and "The American Scene. "
Fantasias : "Dominic Ferrand," "Nona Vincent" (tales obviously aimed at the "Yellow Book," but seem to have missed it, a detour in James's career). All artists who discover anything make such detours and must, in the
course of things (as in the cobwebs), push certain ex- periments beyond the right curve of their art. This is not so much the doom as the function of all "revolu- tionary" or experimental art, and I think masterwork is usually the result of the return from such excess. One does not know, simply does not know, the true curve until one has pushed one's method beyond it. Until then it is merely a frontier, not a chosen route. It is an open question, and there is no dogmatic answer, whether an artist should write and rewrite the same story (a la Flaubert) or whether he should take a new canvas.
"The Papers," a fantasia, diverting; "The Birthplace," fairy-godmother element mentioned above, excellent. "Edmund Orme," inferior; "Yellow Book" tale, not ac- cepted by that periodical.
1889-1893. Period of this entoilment in the "Yellow
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Book," short sentences, the epigrammatic. He reacts from this into the allegorical. In general the work of. this period is not up to the mark. "The Chaperon," "The Real Thing," fantasias of "wit. " By fantasias I mean sketches in which the people are "real" or convince one of their verity, but where the story is utterly unconvinc- ing, is not intended to convince, is merely a sort of exag- geration of the fitting situation or the situation which ought to result in order to display some type at its apo- gee. "The Real Thing" rather better than other stories in this volume.
Thus the lady and gentleman model in "The Real Thing. " London society is finely ladled in "The Chape- ron," which is almost as a story, romanticism.
"Greville Fane" is a scandalous photograph from the life about which the great blagueur scandalously lies in hispreface(collectededition). Ihavebeentoodiverted comparing it with an original to give a sane view of its art.
1890. "The Tragic Muse," uneven, full of good things but showing Henry James in the didactic role a little too openly. He preaches, he also displays fine per- ception of the parochialism of the British political ca- reer. It is a readable novel with tracts interpolated.
(Excellent and commendable tracts arguing certainly for the right thing, enjoyable, etc. ) Excellent text-book for young men with ambitions, etc.
1892. "Lesson of the Master" (cobweb). "The Pu- pil," a masterpiece, one of his best and keenest studies. "Brooksmith" of the best.
1893. "ThePrivateLife. "Titlestory,wasteverbiage at the start, ridiculous to put all this camouflage over something au fond merely an idea. Not life, not peo- ple, allegory, dated to 'Yellow Book" era. Won't hold
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against "Candide. " H. J. 's tilting against the vacuity of the public figure is, naturally, pleasing, i. e. , it is pleasing that he should tilt, but the amusement partakes of the nature of seeing cocoanuts hurled at an aunt sally.
There are other stories, good enough to be carried by H. J. 's best work, not detrimental, but not enough to have "made him": "Europe" (Hawthorny), "Paste," "The Middle Years," "Broken Wings," etc. Part of the great man's work can perhaps only be criticized as "etc. "
1895. "Terminations, Coxon Fund," perhaps best of this lot, a disquisition, but entertaining, perhaps the germ of Galsworthy to be found in it (to no glory of either author) as perhaps a residuum of Dickens in Maisie's Mrs. Wix. Verbalism, but delightful verbalism in Coxon affair, sic:
"Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular,"
or
"a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproach-
able and insufferable person" 1 or (for the whole type)
"put such ignorance into her cleverness? "
Miss Anvoy's echo concerning "a crystal" is excel- lently introduced, but is possibly in the nature of a sleight of hand trick (contemporary with "Lady Windemere's Fan"). Does H. J. 's "politics" remind one of Dizzy's scribbling, just a little? "Confidence, under the new Ministry, was understood to be reviving," etc.
Perhaps one covers the ground by saying that the James of this period is "light literature," entertaining if onehavenothingbettertodo. Neither"Terminations" nor (1896) "Embarrassments" would have founded a reputation.
1896-97. Improvement through "Other House" and
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"Spoils of Poynton. " I leave the appreciation of these, tome,detestableworkstoMr. Hueffer. Theyseemto me full of a good deal of needless fuss, though I do not mean to deny any art that may be in them.
1897. Theemergencein"WhatMaisieKnew. "Prob- lem of the adolescent female. Carried on in:
1899. "The Awkward Age," fairy godmother and spot- less lamb and all the rest of it. Only real thing the im- pression of people, not observation or real knowledge. Action only to give reader the tone, symbolizing the tone of the people. Opening tour de force, a study in punks, a cheese souMe of the leprous crust of society done to a turn and a niceness save where he puts on the dulcis- simo, vox humana, stop. James was the dispassionate observer. He started with the moral obsession ; before he had worked clear of it he was entoiled in the ob- session of social tone. He has pages of clear depiction, even of satire, but the sentimentalist is always lurking just round the corner. This softens his edges. He has not the clear hardness, the cold satiric justness that G. S. Street has displayed in treating situations, certain struggles between certain idiocies and certain vulgarities. This book is a specialite of local interest. It is an etude in ephemera. If it contained any revelation in 1899, it no longer contains it. His characters are reduced to the status of voyeurs, elaborate analysis of the much too
special cases, a bundle of swine and asses who cannot mind their own business, who do not know enough to mind their own business. James's lamentable lack of the classics is perhaps responsible for his absorption in bagatelles. . . . He has no real series of backgrounds of moeurs du passe, only the "sweet dim faded lavender" tune and in opposition to modernity, plush nickel-plated, to the disparagement, naturally, of the latter.
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Kipling's "Bigod, now-I-know-all-about-this manner," is an annoyance, but one wonders if parts of Kipling by the sheer force of content, of tale to tell, will not outlastmostofJames'scobwebs. Thereisnosubstitute for narrative-sense, however many diiferent and en- trancing charms may be spread before us.
"The Awkward Age" might have been done, from one point of view, as satire, in one-fourth the space. On the other hand, James does give us the subtly graded atmos- pheres of his different houses most excellently. And indeed, this may be regarded as his subject.
If one were advocate instead of critic, one would definitely claim that these atmospheres, nuances, im- pressions of personal tone and quality are his subject; that in these he gets certain things that almost no one elsehaddonebeforehim. Thesetimbresandtonalities are his stronghold, he is ignorant of nearly everything else. It is all very well to say that modern life is largely made up of velleities, atmospheres, timbres, nuances, etc. , but if people really spent as much time fussing, to the extent of the Jamesian fuss about such normal trifling, age-old affairs, as slight inclinations to adultery, slight disinclinations to marry, to refrain from marrying, etc. , etc. , life would scarcely be worth the bother of keeping on with it. It is also contendable that one must depict such mush in order to abolish it. *
* Most good prose arises, perhaps, from an instinct of nega- tion ; is the detailed, convincing analysis of something detesta- ble; of something which one wants to eliminate. Poetry is the assertion of a positive, i. e. , of desire, and endures for a longer period. Poetic satire is only an assertion of this positive, in- versely, i. e. , as of an opposite hatred.
This is a highly untechnical, unimpressionist, in fact almost theological manner of statement; but is perhaps the root differ- ence between the two arts of literature.
Most good poetry asserts something to be worth while, or
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The main feeling in "The Awkward Age" is satiric.