(1882-1888)
AFTER his long absence Henry James had a few crowded months of American
impressions, during the winter of 1881-2, in Boston, New York, and
Washington. He was as sociable as usual, where-ever he went, and he used
to the full the opportunity of reviving old memories and creating new.
It will be seen that he confesses to having enjoyed "a certain success";
since the publication of Daisy Miller, three years before, he had known
what it was to be a well-known author in London, but it was a fresh
sensation on his native ground. Unhappily this interesting episode was
cut short by the first great sorrow that had fallen upon his house. His
mother died suddenly, in February 1882. To the end of his life Henry
James was to remember this loss as the deepest stroke he had ever
received; though she appears but little in his reminiscences there is no
doubt that her presence, her completely selfless devotion to her husband
and children, had been the greatest of all facts in their lives. Her
care, her pride in them, the surrender of her whole nature and will to
her love for them, had accompanied and supported all their doings; her
husband, during the long years in which he poured out the strange fruits
of his thought to a steadily indifferent world, had rested unreservedly
on her true and gentle companionship. Her second son's letters to her
from Europe will already have shewn the easy and delightful relation
that existed between her and her children; they confided in her and
leaned on her and rallied her, with an intimacy deepened by the almost
unbroken union of the whole household throughout their youth. Henry
James stayed by his father for some months after her death, and would
have stayed longer; but his father was anxious that he should return to
his own work and life. He sailed for England accordingly in May 1882.
A summer in London was followed by the autumn excursion to Touraine and
Provence portrayed in _A Little Tour in France_. At Tours he had the
company of Mrs. Fanny Kemble and her daughter; and as usual he spent a
few weeks in Paris before going home. He arrived in London in December
to receive almost at once a message announcing that his father was
seriously ill. He started immediately for America, but it was already
too late; his father had died, so they felt, from mere cessation of the
will to live bereft of their mother. "Nothing--he had enabled himself to
make perfectly sure--was in the least worth while without her; this
attested, he passed away or went out, with entire simplicity, promptness
and ease, for the definite reason that his support had failed." So Henry
James wrote, thirty years later, in the _Notes of a Son and Brother_,
and his letters of the time confirm the impression. "There passes away
with him," he says in one of them, "a certain sense of inspiration and
protection which had, I think, accompanied each of us even to middle
life." Thenceforward it was to his elder brother that Henry James always
looked for something of the same kind of support, and many letters will
shew how close the bond remained. In the mere prose of business William
took complete charge of his brother's share in the family affairs, for
which the younger never claimed the smallest aptitude. But during the
months that followed their father's death William was in Europe, and it
fell to Henry to be occupied with the details of their property, for
perhaps the first and last time. The patrimony consisted mainly of
certain houses in the town of Syracuse, N. Y., where their grandfather
had had interests, and where "James Street" is still one of the
principal thoroughfares. Henry was kept in America by the necessity of
taking part in some rather complicated dispositions arising out of the
terms of their father's will; and also by his care for the future of his
sister Alice, the youngest of the family. Her health was very insecure,
and he proposed that she should join him in Europe; but for the present
she preferred to settle in Boston, where he helped her to instal
herself. He did not finally return to London until the following August,
1883.
This was his last visit to America for more than twenty years. He now
subsided once more into the life of London, with its incessant round of
sociability and its equally incessant accompaniment of creative work.
Gradually his tone in regard to his English setting is modified and
deepened. In the correspondence of these middle years it is no longer
the interested but slightly rebellious immigrant who speaks; it is
rather the old-established colonist, now identified with his
surroundings, a sharer in the general fortunes and responsibilities of
the place. If he still regards himself as an observer from without and
is still capable, as he once says, of "raging against British density in
hours of irritation and disgust," it is none the less noticeable that
English difficulties, English wars and politics and social troubles, of
all of which these years were very full, begin to affect him as matters
that concern his pride and solicitude for the country. There mingles
with his exasperation an ardent desire that the English race may
continue to stand high in the world, in spite of the many voices
prophesying decadence and disaster. He writes as one who now has a stake
in an old and honourable institution, and who feels a personal interest
in its well-being and its good fame. Not indeed that he took, or ever
for a moment wished to take, any share in the common life of the place
but that of the most private fellowship; he resolutely avoided the least
appearance of publicity, always refused to be drawn into popular
functions, organisations, associations of any sort, and clung more and
more, in the midst of all distractions, to the secrecy and seclusion of
his work. And for that inner life these years were a very important
turning-point. He now reached a period of his development when an
immensely enlarged world of art seemed to open before him; and at the
same time he made the discovery--one that had a deep and special effect
upon him--that he was not the kind of writer who is rewarded with a big
audience. Both these matters are heard of in the letters of this time,
but their consequences do not appear fully until somewhat later. They
were various and far-reaching, and some of them can hardly be called
fortunate.
Meanwhile the outward incidents of his life were as few and simple as
ever. The stream of social engagements remained indeed at its height,
notwithstanding his protests of withdrawal from the world; but otherwise
there is little to chronicle but the publication of his books and his
yearly journeys abroad. Early in 1884 he spent some weeks in Paris,
where the death of Turgenev had made a gap that he greatly felt. For the
rest of the year he was occupied in writing The Bostonians, and went no
further from London than to carry his manuscript into lodgings at Dover
for August and September. A little later his sister Alice arrived from
America, to make the experiment of life in Europe for the benefit of her
now confirmed ill-health. Her presence near at hand, for the few years
that remained to her, was a source of much pleasure, and also of
constant anxiety, to her brother. She was a woman of rare talent and of
strongly marked character; but the life of an invalid, which proved to
be all she was capable of, prevented her from using her opportunities
and from taking the place that would have been open to her. She lived in
great retirement, at first in London, afterwards chiefly at Bournemouth
and Leamington. Henry James was unwearied in his care for her; he
visited her constantly, and never without keen delight in her company
and her vigorous talk. His brotherly attention had yet a further reward
in the summer of 1885, when she was at Bournemouth. To be near her he
spent several weeks there, and was able at the same time to cultivate
the society of another imprisoned invalid, close by, with whom he had
already had some acquaintance. This was Robert Louis Stevenson, and the
intimacy that thus arose very fortunately still survives in many
admirable letters of each to the other. Stevenson's side of the
correspondence, edited by Sir Sidney Colvin, is well known, and Henry
James's can now be added to it; there could be no more illuminating
interchange between two fine artists, so unlike in everything but their
common passion.
By this time The Bostonians was beginning to appear in an American
magazine, and a little later, again at Dover, The Princess Casamassima
was finished. For two years Henry James now wrote nothing but shorter
pieces (among them The Aspern Papers, The Lesson of the Master, The
Reverberator,) with growing disconcertment as he found how tardily they
seemed to appeal to editors, American or English. In the autumn of 1885
he spent his accustomed month in Paris, after which he scarcely stirred
from London for another year. Early in 1886 he at last accomplished a
move from his Bolton Street lodging, never a very cheerful or convenient
abode, to a flat in Kensington (13 De Vere Mansions, presently known as
34 De Vere Gardens), close to the palace and the park, where he had much
more agreeable conditions of light and air and quiet. He was planning,
however, for another long absence in Italy, away from the interruptions
of London, and this he secured during the first seven months of 1887.
For most of the time he was at Florence, where he took rooms in a villa
overhanging the view from Bellosguardo; and he paid two lengthy visits
to Venice, staying first with Mrs. Bronson, in the apartment so often
occupied by Browning, and later with Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Curtis in the
splendid old Palazzo Barbaro, where years afterwards he placed the
exquisite and stricken heroine of The Wings of the Dove, for the climax
of her story. He returned to England, late in the summer, to settle down
to the writing of The Tragic Muse--the first time, as he mentions, that
he had attacked a purely English subject on a large scale. "I am getting
to know English life better than American," he writes in September 1888,
when he was still working upon the book, " ...and to understand the
English character, or at least the mind, as well as if I had invented
it--which indeed," he adds lightly, "I think I could have done without
any very extraordinary expenditure of ingenuity." The end of the summer
of 1888 was spent in an hotel at Torquay, which became one of his
favourite retreats; and later in the autumn he was for a short while
abroad, at Geneva and Paris, with a flying dip into Northern Italy. The
letter to his brother, written from Geneva, with which this section
closes, lucidly sums up the conclusions he had by now drawn from the
experience of a dozen years of England. At the age of forty-five he
could feel that he had exhausted the study of the old international
distinctions, English and American, that had engaged him for so long. He
was indeed to return to them again, later on, and to devote to them the
final elaboration of his art; but that lay far ahead, and now for many
years he faced in other directions.
A vivid glimpse of Henry James at this time is given in the following
note of reminiscence, kindly written for this page by Mr. Edmund Gosse:
In the late summer of 1886 an experience, more often imagined than
enjoyed, actually took place in the shape of a party of friends
independently dispersed in the hotel or in lodgings through the
Worcestershire village of Broadway, but with the home of Frank
Millet, the American painter, as their centre. Edwin Abbey, John S.
Sargent, Alfred Parsons, Fred Barnard and I, and others, lived
through five bright weeks of perfect weather, in boisterous
intimacy. Early in September Henry James joined us for a short
visit. The Millets possessed, on their domain, a medieval ruin, a
small ecclesiastical edifice, which was very roughly repaired so as
to make a kind of refuge for us, and there, in the mornings, Henry
James and I would write, while Abbey and Millet painted on the
floor below, and Sargent and Parsons tilted their easels just
outside. We were all within shouting distance, and not much serious
work was done, for we were in towering spirits and everything was
food for laughter. Henry James was the only sedate one of us
all--benign, indulgent, but grave, and not often unbending beyond a
genial chuckle. We all treated him with some involuntary respect,
though he asked for none. 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 cake-walk. But mostly, though
not much our senior, he was serious, mildly avuncular, but very
happy and un-upbraiding.
In those days Henry James wore a beard of vague darkish brown,
matching his hair, which had not yet withdrawn from his temples,
and these bushy ornaments had the effect of making him in a sense
shadowy. Almost every afternoon he took a walk with me, rarely with
Sargent, never with the sedentary rest; these walks were long in
time but not in distance, for Henry was inclined to saunter. He had
not wholly recovered from that weakness of the muscles of his back
which had so long troubled him, and I suppose that this was the
cause of a curious stiffness in his progress, which proceeded
rather slowly. He had certain preferences, in particular for the
level road through the green landscape to the ancient grey village
of Aston Somerville. He always made the same remark, as if he had
never noticed it before, that Aston was "so Italian, so Tuscan."
His talk, which flowed best with one of us alone, was enchanting;
with me largely it concerned the craft of letters. I remember
little definitely, but recall how most of us, with the ladies,
spent one long rollicking day in rowing down the winding Avon from
Evesham to Pershore. There was much "singing in the English boat,"
as Marvell says, and Edwin Abbey "obliged" profusely on the banjo.
Henry James I can still see sitting like a beneficent deity, a sort
of bearded Buddha, at the prow, manifestly a little afraid that
some of us would tumble into the river.
_To Miss Henrietta Reubell._
Metropolitan Club,
Washington, D. C.
Jan. 9th, 1882.
My dear Miss Reubell,
I have never yet thanked you for the amiable note in which you kindly
invited me to write to you from the Americas; and the best way I can do
so now is to simply respond to your invitation. I am in the Americas
indeed, and behold I write. These countries are extremely pleasant, and
I recommend you to come and see them au plus tot. You would have a great
career here, and would return--if you should return at all--with a
multitude of scalps at your slim girdle. There is a great demand for
brilliant women, and I can promise you that you would be intimately
appreciated. I shall return about the first of May--but without any
blond scalps, though with a great many happy impressions. Though I
should perhaps not linger upon the point myself, I believe I have had a
certain success. As for ces gens-ci, they have had great success with
me, and have been delightfully genial and hospitable. It is here that
people treat you well; venez-y voir. You have had a great many things, I
know; but you have not had a winter in the Americas. The people are
extremely nice and humane. I didn't care for it much at first--but it
improves immensely on acquaintance, and after you have got the right
point of view and _diapason_ it is a wonderfully entertaining and
amusing country. The skies are as blue as the blotting paper (as yet
unspotted) on which this scrawl reposes, and the sunshine, which is
deliciously warm, has always an air de fete. I have seen multitudes of
people, and no one has been disagreeable. That is different from your
pretentious Old World. Of Washington I can speak as yet but little,
having come but four days ago; but it is like nothing else in the old
world or the new. Enormous spaces, hundreds of miles of asphalte, a
charming climate and the most entertaining society in America. I spent a
month in Boston and another in New York, and have paid three or four
visits in the country. All this was very jolly, and it is pleasant to be
in one's native land, where one is someone and something. If I were to
abide by my vanity only I should never return to that Europe which
ignores me. Unfortunately I love my Europe better than my vanity, and I
appreciate you, if I may say so, better than either! Therefore I shall
return--about the month of May. I am thinking _tremendously_ about
writing to Mrs. Boit--kindly tell her so. My very friendly regards to
your dear Mother, and your Brother. A word to _Cambridge, Mass._ (my
father's) will always reach me. It would be very _charming_ of you to
address one to yours very faithfully,