Portrait of A Novel

by MICHAEL GORRA

  78—That emphasis suited: See Michael Anesko, Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).

  78—“a smile”: CTW2, 338–40.

  78—“dim sense”: Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius (New York: Morrow, 1992), 300.

  78—“a most tender” . . . “friendship”: To Alice James, 24 May 1876.

  78—“strange” . . . “oddity”: LFL, 471.

  78—“verbal passion”: Kaplan, 300.

  79—“undersized . . . men”: Theodore Roosevelt, “What Americanism Means.” Quoted in Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979), 480.

  79—“separate, not unworkable”: Philip Larkin, “The Importance of Elsewhere” (1955).

  79—“the deepest thing”: To W. Morton Fullerton, 2 October 1900.

  80—“Londonized”: To Charles Eliot Norton, 17 November 1878.

  80—“Mrs. James”: To William James, 1 May 1878.

  80—“as if it were”: To William James, 23 June 1878.

  80—“of all the men”: E. S. Nadal, “Personal Recollections of Henry James,” Scribner’s Magazine, July 1920, 94.

  81—“This last report”: To Mary James, 31 October 1880.

  81—“generally felt . . . all to myself”: To Grace Norton, 7 November 1880.

  82—“the gospel”: CS2, 865.

  82—“most objectionable”: CS2, 886.

  83—“poor S.’s wife”: N, 25.

  83—“the innermost” . . . “covert”: To Edmund Gosse. 9 June 1884.

  83—“somdomite” [sic] . . . “vicious”: See Graham Robb’s Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), an exemplary synthesis of research in the field, albeit one that concentrates on the lives and situations of the articulate and the intellectual. Its accounts of Symonds and Wilde are especially useful.

  84—“band of the emulous”: To Edmund Gosse, 7 January 1898.

  84—“mild cultured man”: To William James, 28 February 1877.

  85—“who love”: To J. A. Symonds, 22 February 1884.

  85—“unclean beast”: E3, 31.

  85—“He was never”: To Edmund Gosse, 8 April 1895.

  85—“a position in society”: Nadal, 90.

  85—“being what I am” . . . “second best”: The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds, ed. Phyllis Grosskurth (New York: Random House, 1984), 184–85.

  86—“She made”: P, 782.

  86—“always based”: Tzvetan Todorov, “The Secret of Narrative,” in The Poetics of Prose (1971), trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 145. Both this essay and its companion piece in the same volume, “The Ghosts of Henry James,” are among the most suggestive things ever written about James’s work.

  87—“name for everything”: Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919). The standard translation is by James Strachey.

  88—“loved his friends”: Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work (1924; repr., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006, ed. Lyall H. Powers), 48.

  89—“darlingest Hugh!”: E5, 409.

  89—“I can’t!”: See the introduction to Leon Edel, Henry James Letters, vol. 4, 1895–1916 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), xix. Edel presents the story as a form of urban legend, with Walpole telling it to Somerset Maugham, who told it to everyone.

  89—“a horror” . . . “physical love”: Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 724–25.

  89—biographer Sheldon Novick: See his Henry James: The Young Master (New York: Random House, 1996), 109–10.

  89—L’initation première: N, 238.

  89—“regret a single”: To Hugh Walpole, 21 August 1913. L4 680.

  90—“supposed that he was” . . . “visible the face”: Gosse, Aspects and Impressions, 42–43.

  91—“oasis” . . . “distingué”: To William James, 25 April 1876. The novelist always referred to his friend by the French version of his family name—Joukowsky. On their relations, see, in addition to Novick, Peter Brooks’s Henry James Goes to Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  91—“extreme purity” . . . “him”: To Alice James, 24 May 1876.

  92—“musical séance” . . . “failure”: To Henry James, Sr., 11 November 1876.

  92—“peculiar”: To Henry James, Sr., 30 March 1880.

  92—“sturdy, thickset”: Cosima Wagner, Diaries, ed. Martin Gregor Dellin and Dietrich Mack, trans. Geoffrey Skelton (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978–80) vol. 2, 432.

  92—“rescued”: Wagner, 439.

  93—“opposed to those” . . . “nothing else”: To Grace Norton, 9 April 1880.

  93—“vileness” . . . “immoralities”: To Alice James, 25 April 1880.

  93—Kaplan suggests: See pp. 223–24 of his biography.

  94—“Non ragioniam”: N, 216.

  CHAPTER 8: A LONDON LIFE

  95—“murky metropolis”: To Mary James, 6 August 1877.

  95—“and Paris was”: N, 215.

  95—“if I sometimes”: CTW2, 720.

  96—“I don’t like”: To William Dean Howells, 28 May 1876.

  96—“say nothing”: To William James, 13 October 1876.

  97—“beyond expression”: To Mary James, 24 December 1876.

  98—Lionel Trilling: “The Princess Casamassima,” in The Liberal Imagination (New York: Viking Press, 1950).

  98—“came to know”: N, 218.

  99—“better sort”: This is the title James gave to a 1903 collection of stories.

  99—“conversing affably”: To William James, 29 March 1877.

  99—“agreeable” . . . “form of life”: N, 217–18.

  100—“You can do”: Letter of 28 October 1885. In The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Booth and Mehew (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), vol. 5, 143.

  100—“the traces”: CTW1, 118.

  100—“the dingy, British”: CTW1, 296.

  100—“modern conversation”: CTW1, 190.

  101—“cabinets and parties”: Bosanquet, 52.

  101—“insidious, perfidious” . . . “good deal”: To William Dean Howells, 18 April 1880.

  101—“himself . . . too hard”: To Mary James, 4 July 1880.

  101—“tremendous material bribe”: WJL5, 121.

  101—“inscrutable”: WJL5, 105.

  102—“dinners and parties” . . . “few points”: WJL5, 121.

  102—“transitory” . . . “show them”: To Mary James, 4 July 1880.

  103—“the whole of”: To William Dean Howells, 20 July 1880.

  103—“tant bien”: N, 219.

  103—“for a sniff” . . . “to work”: To Alice James, 9 October 1880, unpublished.

  104—“with such tact”: To Mary James, 28 November 1880.

  104—“steadily, but very slowly”: N, 220.

  CHAPTER 9: THE ENVELOPE OF CIRCUMSTANCES

  105—“strictures on” . . . “so much”: To William Dean Howells, 5 December 1880.

  106—“entertainment of seeing”: P, 344.

  106—“whether this or that”: P, 418.

  106—“stubbornest fact”: P, 309.

  107—“remember what”: P, 357.

  107—“She had done”: P, 359.

  107—“You are drifting” . . . “immoral novel”: P, 361.

  107—“I shall have”: P, 374.

  108—“if certain things”: P, 377.

  108—“never prevaricated”: P, 374.

  108—“Daddy” . . . “miss you”: Ibid.

  109—“cloven foot”: The Spectator’s review was by R. H. Hutton and appeared on 26 November 1881; reprinte
d in Roger Gard, Henry James: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).

  109—“I take” . . . “veiled acuteness”: P, 378.

  109—“to marry for a support”: P, 379.

  109—“immoral”: P, 381.

  109—“see her going”: P, 380.

  109—“hovered before him”: PNY, 5.

  110—“to see what”: P, 378.

  110—and bank stock: See Elliot M. Schrero, “How Rich Was Isabel Archer?” Henry James Review 20.1 (1999).

  111—“should so strongly”: P, 368.

  111—“I am Madame Merle”: P, 369.

  111—“deeply recognises”: PNY, 15–16.

  111—“woman of ardent impulses”: P, 371.

  111—“too perfectly”: P, 388.

  112—“to see what”: P, 384.

  112—“preposterous”: P, 396.

  112—“yours was” . . . “his house”: P, 397.

  112—“When you have lived”: P, 397–98.

  113—“I think just”: Ibid.

  113—“What she wore”: In the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), 79.

  114—“of a new adventure”: R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 5.

  114—“to leave the past”: P, 222.

  114—“the supremacy of the individual”: LC1, 383.

  114—“you think” . . . “called I”: Emerson, “The Transcendentalist” (1841). Like both “History” and “Self-Reliance,” it forms a chapter in Emerson’s Essays: First Series.

  115—“ripe unconsciousness of evil”: LC1, 254.

  115—“no special providence”: Quoted in Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters (New York: Penguin, 2006), 181.

  115—“a man’s Me”: The passage comes in Chapter XII. See William James: Writings, 1878–1899 (New York: Library of America, 1992), 174–75. I am grateful to Bill Brown’s A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) for making this connection between the work of the two brothers.

  116—“the self as known” . . . “as knower”: William James: Writings, 1878–1899, 174.

  116—“empirical aggregate” . . . “be an aggregate”: William James: Writings, 1878–1899, 208.

  116—“Whatever I may”: William James: Writings, 1878–1899, 174.

  PART THREE: ITALIAN JOURNEYS

  CHAPTER 10: BELLOSGUARDO HOURS

  121—“well spoken of”: Baedeker’s Northern Italy, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1879), 342.

  122—“If you’re an aching alien”: CTW2, 403.

  122—“big enough”: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Letters, 1857–1864 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987), 150–51.

  122—“a little grassy” . . . “front”: P, 423.

  123—“colored a dull”: From Roderick Hudson in Henry James, Novels, 1871–1880 (New York: Library of America, 1983), 455.

  123—“peeping up”: CTW2, 520.

  124—“incommunicative” . . . “no eyes”: P, 423.

  124—“We are a wretched” . . . “anywhere”: P, 392.

  125—“He is Gilbert” . . . “no anything”: P, 393.

  125—“American absentees”: P, 408.

  125—“can you get”: P, 411.

  126—“unsatisfactory life”: Nathaniel Hawthorne, French and Italian Notebooks, ed. Thomas Woodson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980), 437.

  126—“sombre kind”: Ibid., 442.

  126—“hardly spoken to”: To Grace Norton, 14 January 1874.

  127—“had been exactly” . . . “unemployed”: CTW2, 396–97.

  127—“a rounded pearl”: To William James, 27 December 1869.

  128—“the clatter of”: LC2, 1043.

  128—“easy, friendly”: To Catherine Walsh, 3 May 1880, unpublished.

  128—“one is liable”: To Alice James, 25 April 1880.

  128—“an unconventional”: PLHJ, 151.

  129—“my true country”: Leon Edel prints the four surviving letters from Woolson to James in vol. 3 of his edition of James’s letters. See Henry James Letters, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), 551.

  129—“if your sentence”: “Miss Grief,” in Lippincott’s Magazine, May 1880. Repr., in Constance Fenimore Woolson, Selected Stories and Travel Narratives, ed. Victoria Brehm and Sharon L. Dean (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), 209.

  130—“amiable, but deaf”: To Alice James, 25 April 1880.

  130—“authoress” . . . “intense”: To Catherine Walsh, 3 May 1880, unpublished.

  130—“horrible ignorance”: Letter from spring 1880 to a Mrs. Crowell, in Five Generations, Part Second—Constance Fenimore Woolson, arranged and edited by Clare Benedict (London, 1930), 188. This is a privately printed collection of letters and papers from Woolson’s extended family, compiled by her niece.

  130—“likes to be”: From “A Florentine Experiment,” in Woolson, Selected Stories, P. 228.

  131—“the two destroyed”: Henry James Letters, vol. 3, 524.

  131—“that sweet young American”: Ibid., 545.

  132—“you said, in answer”: Ibid., 539.

  CHAPTER 11: MR. OSMOND

  133—“pass for anything”: P, 425.

  133—“for the consideration”: P, 463.

  133—“not to strive”: P, 462.

  134—“approached each other”: P, 437.

  134—“I know plenty”: P, 437.

  134—“it seem more”: P, 445.

  135—“as if, once”: P, 451.

  135—“to types which”: PNY, 459.

  135—“studious life” . . . “fatherhood”: P, 476.

  136—“she is a little”: P, 464.

  136—“that man”: P, 474.

  136—“coarse imputation” . . . “by selfishness”: P, 504.

  136—“wilful renunciation”: P, 462.

  137—“good humour”: P, 502.

  137—“are perfect”: P, 439.

  137—“for a cabinet”: CTW2, 360.

  138—“mental constitution”: To Alice James, 25 April 1880.

  139—“Italianate bereft” . . . “Gilbert Osmond”: A, 522.

  139—“traditionary”: P, 425.

  139—“as the only”: P, 439.

  140—“looking very well”: P, 437.

  140—“the girl is not” . . . “sacrificed”: P, 483–84.

  CHAPTER 12: STRANIERI

  141—“passing travellers”: Augustus Hare, Walks in Rome (New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1873), 1.

  142—“the fresh, cool”: P, 485.

  143—“a young lady”: The Letters of Henry Adams, vol. 1: 1858–1868, ed. J. C. Levenson et al. (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 135.

  143—“as if it were Clapham”: P, 490.

  143—“I have first or last”: To William James, 9 April 1873.

  143—“a double ruin”: Journals of John Cheever, ed. Susan Cheever (New York: Knopf, 1991), 72.

  144—“palpable imaginable”: LC2, 1177.

  144—“what the grand”: Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1903), vol. 1, 341.

  145—“cleverness” . . . “is greater”: To Charles Eliot Norton, 31 March 1873.

  145—“precursors”: William Wetmore Story and His Friends, vol. 1, 3.

  145—“consciousness of the complicated”: Ibid., 6.

  146—The historian John Pemble: These figures, and Pemble’s explanation, come from personal correspondence, an email of 23 September 2007.

  146—travel writer Bayard Taylor: See Life and Letters of Bayard Tay
lor, ed. Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder. 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895), vol. 2, 490.

  146—“Americans Abroad”: Lippincott’s, May 1894, 679.

  146—Murray and Baedeker: The picture of the Anglo-American business community here is a composite drawn from the following editions: A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs, 5th ed. (London: John Murray, 1858), 11th ed. (1872), 12th ed. (1881); Central Italy and Rome, 9th ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1886).

  147—“remarkably ugly”: To Alice James, 10 February 1873.

  148—“at all regret”: To Henry James, Sr., 4 March 1873.

  148—“I doubt that”: To William James, 9 April 1873.

  148—“in the position”: To Mary James, 24 March 1873.

  149—“without relations”: To Mary James, 26 January 1873.

  149—“curl up, like”: Letters of Henry Adams, vol. 5, p. 524.

  149—“It seems stupid”: Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, ch. 24.

  150—“with its economical”: CTW2, 392.

  150—“the ruins of”: P, 723

  151—“imported” . . . “moral responsibility”: LC1, 363.

  152—“dingy drollery”: CTW2, 416.

  153—“a terrible game”: CTW2, 421.

  153—“I made no vows”: The Prelude, Book IV, ll. 341–42.

  153—“close seat”: To Mary James, 24 March 1873.

  153—“the very source”: CTW2, 440.

  153—“unbroken continuity” . . . “one else.”: CTW2, 444.

  CHAPTER 13: AN UNCERTAIN TERRAIN

  155—“I didn’t come”: P, 493.

  155—“good fellow” . . . “he’s not”: P, 495.

  156—“Does she” . . . “horribly”: PNY, 298.

  156—“qualified herself”: P, 501.

  157—“one ought to”: P, 507.

  157—“that I find”: P, 509.

  157—“immense sweetness”: P, 509.

  157—“ought to have”: Ibid.

  158—“the sharpness of the pang”: PNY, 310.

  158—“behind bolts”: P, 222.

  158—Matthew Arnold: “The Buried Life,” ll. 84–85.

  158—“everything that’s proper” . . . “itself”: P, 511.

  158—“agitation” . . . “treacherous”: P, 512.

  159—ellipses in its narrative: I borrow this word from Millicent Bell, and my argument is indebted to her account of Isabel’s resistance to and acceptance of plot.