The Portable Henry James (7 page)

xxxiii
“inhumanity of Method”:
Henry James,
A Small Boy and Others
(1913), in
Autobiography
(New York: Criterion Books, 1956), 124.

xxxiii
“virtually in motion”:
Ibid., 122.

xxxiii
“our rootless & accidental childhood”:
Ruth Bernard Yeazell, ed.,
The Death and Letters of Alice James
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 148.

xxxiii
“a native of the James family”:
Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, eds.,
The Correspondence of William James: 1885-1889,
vol. 6 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 517 (letter to his sister).

xxxiv
“woof of time is every instant broken”:
“Of Individualism in Democratic Countries,” in Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America,
vol. II, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Knopf, 1989), 99.

xxxv
“sacred rage of his art”:
Blackmur, Op. cit., 1040.

xxxv
“Nothing could be allowed”:
Theodora Bosanquet,
Henry James at Work
(London: The Hogarth Press, 1924), 265.

xxxv
“that the Novel remains still”:
The
New York Edition
preface,
The Ambassadors;
subsequent citations from the preface to
Roderick Hudson.

xxxvi
“I live, live intensely”:
Leon Edel, ed.,
Henry James Letters: 1895-1916,
IV, 769-70.

xxxvii
“Life being all inclusion”:
New York Edition
preface,
The Spoils of Poynton.

xxxix
crack a walnut:
A. C. Benson,
Memories and Friends
(London: John Murray, 1924), 197.

xxxix
“the art of mountaining molehills”:
Desmond MacCarthy,
Portraits: I
(London and New York: Putnam, 1931), 152.

xl
“He sits at the harpsichord”:
Leon Edel, ed.,
Henry James: Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers
(New York: Library of America, 1984), 1210-11.

Chronology

1843
Henry James Jr. (the “Jr.” retained until after the death of his father) is born April 15 just off Washington Square in New York City to father Henry James Sr. (1811-1882), a religious thinker with strong Swedenborgian interests and a substantial income from an inheritance, and mother Mary Robertson Walsh James (1810-1882). Brother William James, born the previous year (1842-1910), would become a distinguished philosopher and psychologist (
The Principles of Psychology,
1890;
Varieties of Religious Experience,
1902;
Pragmatism,
1907). Thoreau visits the James home, and the two very young sons are taken to Europe.

1844
In England, life-changing “vastation” of Henry James Sr. takes place, caused by a “damnèd shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room.” Family travels to Paris.

1845-57
Returns to New York City, then spends two years in Albany. Three more siblings—Garth Wilkinson “Wilky” James (1845-1883), Robertson James (1846-1903), and Alice James (1848-1891)—are born. (Robertson’s later life is plagued by alcoholism, and Alice is diagnosed in youth as a “neurasthenic.”) Home is on 14th Street in New York, where Bronson Alcott, Horace Greeley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson—a good friend of Henry James Sr.—are frequent visitors. Family travels to Europe, with extended stays in Geneva, London, and Paris.

1858-62
Family returns to America and settles in Newport, Rhode Island. After trips to Geneva and Bonn, they return to Newport. Henry briefly studies art. Extinguishing a fire in 1861, he receives an “obscure hurt”; when drafted into the Civil War, he is excused for what is probably a related back injury. Spends a term at Harvard Law School. Brother “Wilky” is gravely wounded in battle.

1864
The unsigned “A Tragedy of Error,” James’s first published story, appears in the February
Continental Monthly.
Unsigned review of Nassau W. Senior’s
Essays on Fiction
appears in the October
North American Review
(James’s payment: $12.00).

1865
First signed publication, “The Story of a Year,” appears in the
Atlantic;
first signed review appears in the
Nation.

1866
Strong friendships develop with Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Dean Howells, and with acquaintances of his youth Thomas Sergeant Perry and painter John LaFarge. Meets Charles Dickens on his American tour. Travels to England; meets George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Charles Darwin; dines with John Ruskin. Visits France, Switzerland, and Italy.

1870
Cousin Minnie Temple dies at age twenty-four (“radiant and rare, extinguished in her first youth”); years later dedicates lengthy section of autobiographical
Notes of a Son and Brother
to her and asserts that her death marked “the end of our youth.”

1871
First novel,
Watch and Ward,
published (serialized in periodicals but not reprinted in book form until 1878). Visits Emerson at Concord.

1872-74
Accompanies aunt and sister Alice on European tour; writes regular travel essays for the
Nation.
Escorts Emerson through the Louvre (“His perception of art is not, I think, naturally keen”); meets Matthew Arnold in Rome. Revisits the United States.

1875-76
Publishes three books in three genres in one year—his first books:
A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales
(short stories),
Transatlantic Sketches
(travel essays), and
Roderick Hudson
(first novel in book form). Returns to Europe, where, except for visits to the United States, he will reside for the rest of his life. In Paris, develops close friendship with Ivan Turgenev (“the divine Turgénieff”), and an acquaintance with Gustave Flaubert. Meets Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Gustave Doré, and Émile Zola. Takes up residence in London on Bolton Street.

1877-78
Writes
The American. Daisy Miller
appears in
Cornhill Magazine
—a popular success (the greatest of his career) and soon pirated. Publishes first volume of critical essays,
French Poets and Novelists,
and
The Europeans.

1879
Confidence,
his weakest novel, earns popular approval and good royalties (one of several novels later excluded from the
New York Edition
). Has social success in London; meets Robert Browning, Tennyson, George Meredith, George du Maurier, Trollope, Edmund Gosse, T. H. Huxley, Robert Louis Stevenson, James McNeill Whistler, Holman Hunt, and Frederick Leighton.

1880-81
Writes
Washington Square.
In Italy, develops close friendship with Constance Fenimore Woolson; works on
The Portrait of a Lady
in Venice and Florence (published in 1881). Visits the United States.

1882
Mother dies during James’s American visit (“She was patience, she was wisdom, she was exquisite maternity”). Returns to London and travels to France (
A Little Tour in France,
1884); returns to United States on notice of father’s illness, but father dies while James is in transit (“The house is so
empty
—I scarcely know myself”). Reinstates younger brother’s inheritance (“Wilky” had been disinherited by James Sr. after he drained the family’s resources).

1883-84
Wilky dies; Turgenev dies. James turns over income from his own inheritance to sister Alice. With her companion Katharine Loring, Alice moves to England and eventually settles in London near her brother. James publishes “The Art of Fiction” (“the chamber of consciousness”) several months after brother William publishes on “consciousness a continuous stream.” Publishes
Portraits of Places
(collection of previously published travel essays).

1886-89
Moves to London’s De Vere Gardens.
The Bostonians
is criticized for satirizing reformer Elizabeth Palmer Peabody; brother William himself judges it “a pretty bad business.” Writes
The Princess Casamassima,
“The Aspern Papers,” and
The Reverberator
; essay collection,
Partial Portraits.
Alice James begins keeping diary.

1890-91
Publishes
The Tragic Muse.
Disappointed with fiction sales, turns attention to dramatic stage and rewrites
The American
as a play with a happy ending.
The American: A Comedy in Four Acts
opens to critical and popular success.

1892-94
Grieved by death of sister Alice (“I shall feel very lonely in England”) and by Constance Fenimore Woolson’s apparent suicide in Venice (“Before the horror and pity of it I have utterly collapsed”). Robert Louis Stevenson also dies (“that beautiful, bountiful being”). Katharine Loring publishes four copies of Alice James’s diary; Henry eventually destroys his copy.

1895
Disastrous first night of
Guy Domville
ends excursion into the theater.

1896-98
Develops powerful friendship with Joseph Conrad (“a beautiful and generous mind”). Publishes
The Other House, The Spoils of Poynton,
and
What Maisie Knew.
Takes a twenty-one-year lease on Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex, where he writes
The Awkward Age
and subsequent novels. Begins dictating his work. Writes
The Turn of the Screw.
Begins friendships with H. G. Wells and Stephen Crane.

1899
Publishes
The Awkward Age.
In Rome, meets young Norwegian-American sculptor Hendrik C. Andersen and begins an emotionally charged friendship (“I wish I could go to Rome and put my hands on you”). Purchases Lamb House.

1900-1901
Begins work on
The Sense of the Past,
which experiments with time travel (it remains unfinished at his death and is published posthumously). Publishes
The Sacred Fount.
William James writes parts of
Varieties of Religious Experience
while staying at Lamb House.

1902
Publishes
The Wings of the Dove,
“The Beast in the Jungle.” Travel essays are collected in
English Hours.

1903
Publishes
The Ambassadors
and the commissioned biography
William Wetmore Story and His Friends.
Important friendship develops with Edith Wharton.

1904
Publishes
The Golden Bowl.
Returns to the United States, in spite of discouragement of brother William (“You are very dissuasive—even more than I expected”), after a twenty-year absence. Tours as far south as Florida, as far west as California; lectures on “The Lesson of Balzac” and “The Question of Our Speech”; American press notes the visit and publishes caricatures of his supposed stupefaction at American customs.

1905
Returns to England; begins work on
The Novels and Tales of Henry James
; publishes edition generally known as the
New York Edition.

1906-9
Continues exhausting work on revisions and prefaces for the
New York Edition.
Publishes two travel volumes,
The American Scene
(1907), on his recent American tour, and
Italian Hours
(1909), collecting Italian essays written over thirty-five years. Writes “The Jolly Corner.” Initial
New York Edition
royalties amount to just over £40. Friendship with young Hugh Walpole. Begins work on
The Ivory Tower
(published incomplete and posthumously). Experiences bouts of depression; burns most letters he has received over the years.

1910
James has a nervous breakdown (“My
nervous
condition—trepidation, agitation, general dreadfulness”); alcoholic younger brother Robertson dies alone in Concord; James revisits the United States, where brother William soon dies (“my best & wisest of friends”). Henry James is the last alive of the five siblings (“I feel stricken & old & ended”).

1911
“Revises”
The Outcry,
written as a play in 1909, as a minor novel. Health improves; begins work on first autobiographical volume. Awarded honorary degree from Harvard. Wharton, Gosse, and Howells lobby unsuccessfully to have Nobel Prize awarded to him.

1912
Receives honorary doctorate from Oxford (
“fecundissimum et facundissimum scriptorem”
). Judging James’s finances as precarious, Wharton secretly arranges to have $8,000 of her Scribner’s royalties offered him as an “advance”; his spirits improved, returns to work on
The Ivory Tower.

1913
James’s seventieth birthday; distinguished John Singer Sargent portrait commissioned by almost three hundred friends. Publishes first autobiographical volume,
A Small Boy and Others.

1914
Publishes second autobiographical volume,
Notes of a Son and Brother
(final volume,
The Middle Years,
is published posthumously in 1917). Health troubles continue (“desiccated antiquity”). Devastated by outbreak of war (“black and hideous to me is the tragedy that gathers”). Supports Britain at war; visits soldiers in London hospitals. Meets the forty-year-old Winston Churchill.

1915
H. G. Wells launches satirical attack on James in
Boon.
James destroys more letters and personal papers. In support of wartime England, and after forty years in that country, is naturalized as a British citizen (“Civis Britannicus Sum!”). Suffers first stroke in December (“So it has come at last—the Distinguished Thing”).

1916
Receives the Order of Merit, January 1. Suffers final illness; dies February 28. Ashes are interred in James family plot in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Acknowledgments

Deep thanks to Anne Drury Hall, who reads Henry James just as he would have wished to be read. To David Wyatt, with whom talk about James, as about most things, calls up all my powers. To Peter Mallios, who sleeps with Emerson under his pillow. To Elizabeth Anania Edwards, back then and now. To K. C. Summers and Craig Stolz, who let me think Jamesian thoughts while wandering around Cambodia, Mali, Bolivia, and India. To Jackie DeCesaris, for her mind and fine spirit. The care, generosity, and constant good will of Michael Mill-man, Barbara Campo, and Cathy Dexter—my editors at Penguin Putnam—helped make this project an uncommon pleasure. My warm thanks also go to friends and colleagues who have given help and support in ways they may not always recall: Sylvie Bouvier, Glen Schroeder, Zoé, Taï, and Hugo, Kerry Armstrong, Marlene Ellin, Phil Reed, Ted Leinwand, Richard Cross, Kent Cartwright, Claudio Filippone, Sandra Morrison, Richard Fletcher, Todd McDaniel, Massimo Giuliani, Elizabeth Loizeaux, Sharon Kozberg, Michael Teitelman, William C. Hunter of Tokyo and far-off Belize, Alessandra Angelini of Rome—and of course her matchless Jambo. And this year in particular, in a special way I thank my brother, Steve Auchard.