seemed to have little to give in return for what it offered except
his social adaptability, his pleasant and still formal amenity,
and his admirable capacity for listening. It cannot be repeated too
clearly that the Henry James of those early days had very little of
the impressiveness of his later manner. He went everywhere, sedately,
watchfully, graciously, but never prominently. In the winter of 1878-79
it is recorded that he dined out in London 107 times, but it is highly
questionable whether this amazing assiduity at the best dinner-tables
will be found to have impressed itself on any Greville or Crabb
Robinson who was taking notes at the time. He was strenuously living
up to his standard, "my charming little standard of wit, of grace, of
good manners, of vivacity, of urbanity, of intelligence, of what makes
an easy and natural style of intercourse." He was watching the rather
gross and unironic, but honest and vigorous, English upper-middle-class
of that day with mingled feelings, in which curiosity and a sort of
remote sympathy took a main part. At 107 London dinners he observed
the ever-shifting pieces of the general kaleidoscope with tremendous
acuteness, and although he thought their reds and yellows would have
been improved by a slight infusion of the Florentine harmony, on the
whole he was never weary of watching their evolutions. In this way the
years slipped by, while he made a thousand acquaintances and a dozen
durable friendships. It is a matter of pride and happiness to me that I
am able to touch on one of the latter.
It is often curiously difficult for intimate friends, who have the
impression in later years that they must always have known one another,
to recall the occasion and the place where they first met. That was
the case with Henry James and me. Several times we languidly tried to
recover those particulars, but without success. I think, however, that
it was at some dinner-party that we first met, and as the incident is
dubiously connected with the publication of the _Hawthorne_ in 1879,
and with Mr. (now Lord) Morley, whom we both frequently saw at that
epoch, I am pretty sure that the event took place early in 1880. The
acquaintance, however, did not "ripen," as people say, until the summer
of 1882, when in connection with an article on the drawings of George
du Maurier, which I was anxious Henry James should write--having heard
him express himself with high enthusiasm regarding these works of
art--he invited me to go to see him and to talk over the project. I
found him, one sunshiny afternoon, in his lodgings on the first floor
of No. 3 Bolton Street, at the Piccadilly end of the street, where the
houses look askew into Green Park. Here he had been living ever since
he came over from France in 1876, and the situation was eminently
characteristic of the impassioned student of London life and haunter of
London society which he had now become.
Stretched on the sofa and apologising for not rising to greet me, his
appearance gave me a little shock, for I had not thought of him as an
invalid. He hurriedly and rather evasively declared that he was not
that, but that a muscular weakness of his spine obliged him, as he
said, "to assume the horizontal posture" during some hours of every day
in order to bear the almost unbroken routine of evening engagements.
I think that this weakness gradually passed away, but certainly for
many years it handicapped his activity. I recall his appearance, seen
then for the first time by daylight; there was something shadowy
about it, the face framed in dark brown hair cut short in the Paris
fashion, and in equally dark beard, rather loose and "fluffy." He was
in deep mourning, his mother having died five or six months earlier,
and he himself having but recently returned from a melancholy visit
to America, where he had unwillingly left his father, who seemed far
from well. His manner was grave, extremely courteous, but a little
formal and frightened, which seemed strange in a man living in constant
communication with the world. Our business regarding Du Maurier was
soon concluded, and James talked with increasing ease, but always
with a punctilious hesitancy, about Paris, where he seemed, to my
dazzlement, to know even a larger number of persons of distinction than
he did in London.
He promised, before I left, to return my visit, but news of the
alarming illness of his father called him suddenly to America. He wrote
to me from Boston in April, 1883, but he did not return to London
until the autumn that year. Our intercourse was then resumed, and,
immediately, on the familiar footing which it preserved, without an
hour's abatement, until the sad moment of his fatal illness. When he
returned to Bolton Street--this was in August, 1883--he had broken
all the ties which held him to residence in America, a country which,
as it turned out, he was not destined to revisit for more than twenty
years. By this means Henry James became a homeless man in a peculiar
sense, for he continued to be looked upon as a foreigner in London,
while he seemed to have lost citizenship in the United States. It
was a little later than this that that somewhat acidulated patriot,
Colonel Higginson, in reply to some one who said that Henry James was
a cosmopolitan, remarked, "Hardly! for a cosmopolitan is at home even
in his own country!" This condition made James, although superficially
gregarious, essentially isolated, and though his books were numerous
and were greatly admired, they were tacitly ignored alike in summaries
of English and of American current literature. There was no escape from
this dilemma. Henry James was equally determined not to lay down his
American birthright and not to reside in America. Every year of his
exile, therefore, emphasised the fact of his separation from all other
Anglo-Saxons, and he endured, in the world of letters, the singular
fate of being a man without a country.
The collection of his private letters, therefore, which is announced
as immediately forthcoming under the sympathetic editorship of Mr.
Percy Lubbock, will reveal the adventures of an author who, long
excluded from two literatures, is now eagerly claimed by both of them,
and it will display those movements of a character of great energy
and singular originality which circumstances have hitherto concealed
from curiosity. There was very little on the surface of his existence
to bear evidence to the passionate intensity of the stream beneath.
This those who have had the privilege of seeing his letters know
is marvellously revealed in his private correspondence. A certain
change in his life was brought about by the arrival in 1885 of his
sister Alice, who, in now confirmed ill-health, was persuaded to make
Bournemouth and afterwards Leamington her home. He could not share
her life, but at all events he could assiduously diversify it by his
visits, and Bournemouth had a second attraction for him in the presence
of Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he had by this time formed one of
the closest of his friendships. Stevenson's side of the correspondence
has long been known, and it is one of the main attractions which
Mr. Lubbock holds out to his readers that Henry James's letters to
Stevenson will now be published. No episode of the literary history of
the time is more fascinating than the interchange of feeling between
these two great artists. The death of Stevenson, nine years later than
their first meeting, though long anticipated, fell upon Henry James
with a shock which he found at first scarcely endurable. For a long
time afterwards he could not bring himself to mention the name of R. L.
S. without a distressing agitation.
In 1886 the publication of _The Bostonians_, a novel which showed an
advance in direct or, as it was then styled, "realistic" painting
of modern society, increased the cleft which now divided him from
his native country, for _The Bostonians_ was angrily regarded as
satirising not merely certain types, but certain recognisable
figures in Massachusetts, and that with a suggestive daring which
was unusual. Henry James, intent upon making a vivid picture, and
already perhaps a little out of touch with American sentiment, was
indignant at the reception of this book, which he ultimately, to my
great disappointment, omitted from his Collected Edition, for reasons
which he gave in a long letter to myself. Hence, as his works now
appear, _The Princess Casamassima_, of 1886, an essentially London
adventure-story, takes its place as the earliest of the novels of his
second period, although preceded by admirable short tales in that
manner, the most characteristic of which is doubtless _The Author of
Beltraffio_ (1885). This exemplifies the custom he had now adopted
of seizing an incident reported to him, often a very slight and bald
affair, and weaving round it a thick and glittering web of silken
fancy, just as the worm winds round the unsightly chrysalis its
graceful robe of gold. I speak of _The Author of Beltraffio_, and after
thirty-five years I may confess that this extraordinarily vivid story
was woven around a dark incident in the private life of an eminent
author known to us both, which I, having told Henry James in a moment
of levity, was presently horrified and even sensibly alarmed to see
thus pinnacled in the broad light of day.
After exhausting at last the not very shining amenities of his lodgings
in Bolton Street, where all was old and dingy, he went westward in
1886 into Kensington, and settled in a flat which was both new and
bright, at 34 De Vere Gardens, Kensington, where he began a novel
called _The Tragic Muse_, on which he expended an immense amount of
pains. He was greatly wearied by the effort, and not entirely satisfied
with the result. He determined, as he said, "to do nothing but short
lengths" for the future, and he devoted himself to the execution of
_contes_. But even the art of the short story presently yielded to a
new and, it must be confessed, a deleterious fascination, that of
the stage. He was disappointed--he made no secret to his friends of
his disillusion--in the commercial success of his novels, which was
inadequate to his needs. I believe that he greatly over-estimated
these needs, and that at no time he was really pressed by the want of
money. But he thought that he was, and in his anxiety he turned to the
theatre as a market in which to earn a fortune. Little has hitherto
been revealed with regard to this "sawdust and orange-peel phase"
(as he called it) in Henry James's career, but it cannot be ignored
any longer. The memories of his intimate friends are stored with its
incidents, his letters will be found to be full of it.
Henry James wrote, between 1889 and 1894, seven or eight plays, on
each of which he expended an infinitude of pains and mental distress.
At the end of this period, unwillingly persuaded at last that all his
agony was in vain, and that he could never secure fame and fortune, or
even a patient hearing from the theatre-going public by his dramatic
work, he abandoned the hopeless struggle. He was by temperament little
fitted to endure the disappointments and delays which must always
attend the course of a dramatist who has not conquered a position which
enables him to browbeat the tyrants behind the stage. Henry James
was punctilious, ceremonious, and precise; it is not to be denied
that he was apt to be hasty in taking offence, and not very ready to
overlook an impertinence. The whole existence of the actor is lax and
casual; the manager is the capricious leader of an irresponsible band
of egotists. Henry James lost no occasion of dwelling, in private
conversation, on this aspect of an amiable and entertaining profession.
He was not prepared to accept young actresses at their own valuation,
and the happy-go-lucky democracy of the "mimes," as he bracketed both
sexes, irritated him to the verge of frenzy.
It was, however, with a determination to curb his impatience, and
with a conviction that he could submit his idiosyncrasies to what he
called the "passionate economy" of play-writing, that he began, in
1889, to dedicate himself to the drama, excluding for the time being
all other considerations. He went over to Paris in the winter of
that year, largely to talk over the stage with Alphonse Daudet and
Edmond de Goncourt, and he returned to put the finishing-touches on
_The American_, a dramatic version of one of his earliest novels. He
finished this play at the Palazzo Barbaro, the beautiful home of his
friends, the Daniel Curtises, in Venice, in June, 1890, thereupon
taking a long holiday, one of the latest of his extended Italian
tours, through Venetia and Tuscany. Edward Compton had by this time
accepted _The American_, being attracted by his own chances in the
part of Christopher Newman. When Henry James reappeared in London, and
particularly when the rehearsals began, we all noticed how deeply the
theatrical virus had penetrated his nature. His excitement swelled
until the evening of January 3rd, 1891, when _The American_ was acted
at Southport by Compton's company in anticipation of its appearance
in London. Henry James was kind enough to wish me to go down on this
occasion with him to Southport, but it was not possible. On the
afternoon of the ordeal he wrote to me from the local hotel: "After
eleven o'clock to-night I _may_ be the world's--you know--and I may be
the undertaker's. I count upon you and your wife both to spend this
evening in fasting, silence, and supplication. I will send you a word
in the morning, a wire if I can." He was "so nervous that I miswrite
and misspell."
The result, in the provinces, of this first experiment was not
decisive. It is true that he told Robert Louis Stevenson that he was
enjoying a success which made him blush. But the final result in
London, where _The American_ was not played until September, 1891, was
only partly encouraging. Henry James was now cast down as unreasonably
as he had been uplifted. He told me that "the strain, the anxiety,
the peculiar form and colour of the ordeal (not to be divined in the
least in advance)" had "sickened him to _death_." He used language
of the most picturesque extravagance about the "purgatory" of the
performances, which ran at the Opera Comique for two months. There was
nothing in the mediocre fortunes of this play to decide the questions
whether Henry James was or was not justified in abandoning all other
forms of art for the drama. We endeavoured to persuade him that, on the
whole, he was not justified, but he swept our arguments aside, and he
devoted himself wholly to the infatuation of his sterile task.
_The American_ had been dramatised from a published novel. Henry James
now thought that he should do better with original plots, and he wrote
two comedies, the one named _Tenants_ and the other _Disengaged_, of
each of which he formed high expectations. But, although they were
submitted to several managers, who gave them their customary loitering
and fluctuating attention, they were in every case ultimately refused.
Each refusal plunged the dramatist into the lowest pit of furious
depression, from which he presently emerged with freshly-kindled hopes.
Like the moralist, he never was but always to be blest. _The Album_
and _The Reprobate_--there is a melancholy satisfaction in giving life
to the mere names of these stillborn children of his brain--started
with wild hopes and suffered from the same complete failure to satisfy
the caprice of the managers. At the close of 1893, after one of these
"sordid developments," he made up his mind to abandon the struggle.
But George Alexander promised that, if he would but persevere, he
really and truly would produce him infallibly at no distant date, and
poor Henry James could not but persevere. "I mean to wage this war
ferociously for one year more," and he composed, with infinite agony
and deliberation the comedy of _Guy Domvile_.
The night of January 5th, 1895, was the most tragical in Henry James's
career. His hopes and fears had been strung up to the most excruciating
point, and I think that I have never witnessed such agonies of
parturition. _Guy Domvile_--which has never been printed--was a
delicate and picturesque play, of which the only disadvantage that I
could discover was that instead of having a last scene which tied up
all the threads in a neat conclusion, it left all those threads loose
as they would be in life. George Alexander was sanguine of success,
and to do Henry James honour such a galaxy of artistic, literary, and
scientific celebrity gathered in the stalls of the St. James's Theatre
as perhaps were never seen in a playhouse before or since. Henry James
was positively storm-ridden with emotion before the fatal night, and
full of fantastic plans. I recall that one was that he should hide in
the bar of a little public-house down an alley close to the theatre,
whither I should slip forth at the end of the second act and report
"how it was going." This was not carried out, and fortunately Henry
James resisted the temptation of being present in the theatre during
the performance. All seemed to be going fairly well until the close,
when Henry James appeared and was called before the curtain only to be
subjected--to our unspeakable horror and shame--to a storm of hoots and
jeers and catcalls from the gallery, answered by loud and sustained
applause from the stalls, the whole producing an effect of hell broke
loose, in the midst of which the author, as white as chalk, bowed
and spread forth deprecating hands and finally vanished. It was said
at the time, and confirmed later, that this horrible performance was
not intended to humiliate Henry James, but was the result of a cabal
against George Alexander.
Early next morning I called at 34 De Vere Gardens, hardly daring
to press the bell for fear of the worst of news, so shattered with
excitement had the playwright been on the previous evening. I was
astonished to find him perfectly calm; he had slept well and was
breakfasting with appetite. The theatrical bubble in which he had lived
a tormented existence for five years was wholly and finally broken, and
he returned, even in that earliest conversation, to the discussion of
the work which he had so long and so sadly neglected, the art of direct
prose narrative. And now a remarkable thing happened. The discipline of
toiling for the caprices of the theatre had amounted, for so redundant
an imaginative writer, to the putting on of a mental strait-jacket.
He saw now that he need stoop no longer to what he called "a meek and
lowly review of the right ways to keep on the right side of a body
of people who have paid money to be amused at a particular hour and
place." Henry James was not released from this system of vigorous
renunciation without a very singular result. To write for the theatre
the qualities of brevity and directness, of an elaborate plainness, had
been perceived by him to be absolutely necessary, and he had tried to
cultivate them with dogged patience for five years. But when he broke
with the theatre, the rebound was excessive. I recall his saying to
me, after the fiasco of _Guy Domvile_, "At all events, I have escaped
for ever from the foul fiend Excision!" He vibrated with the sense of
liberation, and he began to enjoy, physically and intellectually, a
freedom which had hitherto been foreign to his nature.
(_To be concluded_)
A CASE FOR RECORDS
By HILARY JENKINSON
It has long been a commonplace of depreciation to say that England
possesses more valuable collections of historical documents than any
other country, and displays more indifference to them. "_En Angleterre
tout est en désordre_," says an eminent French critic: and the _Times
Literary Supplement_ quotes him.[32] Since the middle of last century
the declared classes of public records in this country (those of the
Central Government) have, it is true, had a settled habitation, a staff
to look after them, and a good deal of attention from a small section
of the public; also a considerable, though relatively small, number
of publications has been devoted to them and some of the clamorous
interests, the genealogist's, for example, fed if not sated. The same
amount of good fortune, except by the hazard of their coming into the
hands of an enthusiast, has not in many cases befallen the records
belonging to local bodies; still less has it come to the enormous
private collections originally accumulated in connection with the
descent of real property, and now, since the invention of "short
title," no longer in any demand for their primary purpose. If the
public records of the past may in our day be considered to have found
safety, it is still possible to witness in this country the unedifying
spectacle of the museum or the rich collector buying up the pretty
specimen from a collection of manorial records, while the remainder, of
which it should form an integral part, after the lesser lights of the
collecting world have taken gradual toll of it, goes without protest
from any one to the tambourine-maker or the glue merchant. It is as
though an anatomist, having exhumed his great-grandfather, should add
to that injury the insult of preserving an interesting metacarpal in
his cabinet, while he distributes the rest of the body to various
colleagues, with remainder to the manufacturer of fertilisers: one is
tempted to send science to blazes and wish the poor old gentleman might
have been left intact, if useless, underground.
[32] November 27th, 1919.
I have spoken in this first paragraph of the unhappy state of the small
collections in England because that state is an obvious and striking
result of the same cause which has produced most of our mistakes in the
preservation, sorting and editing of documents in the past; because
the distinction at present existing between the public and the private
collections is so symptomatic of our worst failure in this field: in
effect, in all these years during which historical documents have met
with a certain amount of appreciation, it has apparently never occurred
to us to make definite search for the essential features common to all
records, high or low, and to apply to all records a treatment based
on the examination of those features. But the most interesting archive
question of the present time seems to me to be the question of the
records we ourselves are producing. If our shortcomings as owners of
archives have affected adversely our treatment of what the past has
left to us, are they not capable of doing quite as much harm to that
which we ourselves are to bequeath to the future? And, further, if
England, owing to its wealth of records, provides a particularly large
number of examples of things to be avoided, is it not possible that the
application of the warning derived from these may prove to be common to
other countries? It is, indeed, no new criticism of the French School,
the acknowledged leader of the world in this matter, to say that the
circumstances under which the French national collections were put
together have led it sometimes to consider the isolated _document_
rather to the exclusion of that _record_ which forms only a single link
in a long chain.
We are led, therefore, to inquire how far certain generalisations,
based on the character of our existing English records, maybe applied
as criteria to the treatment of those records which are accumulating in
our own time in England and perhaps in other countries.
A record, if we may venture here to give definition to a loosely-used
word, is a document drawn up, or at any rate made use of, in the
course of an administrative process, of which itself forms a part,
and subsequently preserved in his own custody for his own reference
by the administrator concerned or his successors. The process and the
administration may be as important or unimportant as you please; the
result may be the Rolls of Chancery or the deed-box of a manor: the
essential features are the same in both cases--the administrative
origin, the administrative reason for preservation, the preservation
in administrative custody: so also are the results the same from the
point of view of the subsequent 'ologist--the two priceless qualities
of authenticity and impartiality; the first proceeding from the fact
that the records have been always in custody,[33] and in a certain
relationship one with another, the second derived from the fact that
they were not drawn up for the information of posterity,[34] and,
therefore, have no bias to one side or the other of posterity's
problems. Any number of interesting instances[35] might be adduced
from the records of the past, both of the value of these qualities
and of the ease with which they may be flawed; but let us here leave
for the time consideration of the records the past has bequeathed to
us and inquire how far the qualities which, with all its historical
faults, it gave us in most of its documents are going to be found by
our descendants in those we leave to them. The unprecedented mass of
documents which the various executive departments must have accumulated
during the war may well frighten us into a serious consideration of
this subject at the present moment.
[33] The licence of high officials has sometimes violated
this, a practice much to be deprecated. I refer to
this again below.