Henry James

by Henry James

  This volume presents the texts of the original printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce nontextual features of their typographic design. The texts are presented without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 14.28, Waverley; 149.18, appeciated; 231.16, areh-refinemnet,; 237.22, that; 254.6 (and passim), Katherine; 323.13, instrinsic; 331.1, of the of the; 397.7, vegatable; 422.26, gynmastic; 489.35, revéille; 533.25, dont; 533.26, it Things; 592.38, i had; 598.6, others’; 645.22, eat; 684.24, from black; 698.35, esthethic; 707.1, it it; 716.30, contribute; 726.23, the the; 738.2, Dasiy.

  Notes

  In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume (the line count includes chapter headings). Biblical quotations are keyed to the King James Version. Quotations from Shakespeare are keyed to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). For further biographical context, see A Small Boy and Others: A Critical Edition, ed. Peter Collister (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011); Notes of a Son and Brother and The Middle Years: A Critical Edition, ed. Peter Collister (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011); Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years, 1843–1870 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1953) and Henry James: The Conquest of London, 1870–1881 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962); Alfred Habegger, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994); Philip Horne, Henry James: A Life in Letters (New York: Viking, 1999); R.W.B. Lewis, The Jameses: A Family Narrative (New York: Doubleday, 1991); and Sheldon M. Novick, Henry James: The Young Master (New York: Random House, 1996). The editor would like gratefully to acknowledge the wise advice of Oliver Herford and Michael Anesko; and the kind permission of Bay James to quote unpublished Henry James material.

  A SMALL BOY AND OTHERS

  3.2 From a daguerreotype taken in 1854] At the New York City studio of American photographer Mathew Brady (1822–1896); see p. 56.

  6.38–39 “criticism of life”] The English poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), admired by James, declared in his essay “The Study of Poetry” (1880) that “poetry is the criticism of life.”

  7.7–10 the novels . . . Mrs. Trollope and Mrs. Gore, of Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Hubback and the Misses Kavanagh and Aguilar] Popular British novelists: Frances Trollope (1779–1863), author of travel books and thirty-five novels, including The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837) and The Old World and the New (1849), and mother of novelist Anthony Trollope; Catherine Gore (1798–1861), prolific writer whose novels include The Hamiltons (1834) and The Banker’s Wife, or Court and City (1843); Anne Marsh Caldwell (1791–1874), author of Emilia Wyndham (1846); Catherine Anne Hubback (1818–1877), niece of Jane Austen whose own novels include The Younger Sister (1850) and Malvern, or The Three Marriages (1855); Julia Kavanagh (1824–1877), author of Madeleine, A Tale of Auvergne (1848), Adèle (1858), and many other works; Grace Aguilar (1816–1847), writer on Jewish subjects and author of popular novel Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters (1847) and six posthumously published novels.

  7.17–19 so-called Stephen Dewhurst . . . Literary Remains of Henry James] Henry James Sr. wrote a short fictionalized autobiography in the persona of Stephen Dewhurst. Unpublished during his lifetime, it was collected in a volume edited by William James, The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James (1885).

  9.26–29 in a collection of other pages than these . . . work of imagination).] In James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881), young Isabel Archer refuses to go back to the Dutch House after spending a single day at school there. The Albany house where Isabel lives was based on James’s grandmother’s house.

  10.20 “glimmering squares”] From the third stanza of Tennyson’s elegiac “Tears, Idle Tears” in The Princess (1847): “Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns / The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds / To dying ears, when unto dying eyes / The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; / So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.”

  11.33–34 our uncle . . . son of Mr. Martin Van Buren] Smith Thompson Van Buren (1817–1876), son of the eighth American president, married James’s aunt Ellen King James (1813–1849) in 1842.

  14.22–29 in certain notes on New York . . . vanished social order.] See “New York Revisited” in The American Scene (1907): “The shabby red house, with its mere two storys, its lowly ‘stoop,’ its dislocated iron-work of the forties, the early fifties, the record, in its face, of blistering summers and of the long stages of the loss of self-respect, made it as consummate a morsel of the old liquor-scented, heated-looking city, the city of no pavements, but of such a plenty of politics, as I could have desired.”

  15.16 the celebrated Casimir] French playwright and poet Jean-François Casimir Delavigne (1793–1843), author of the comedy L’École des vieillards (1823; The school for old men).

  15.19–20 the royal crown of Frédégonde or Brunéhaut] Long-feuding Merovingian Frankish queens Fredegund (d. 597), wife of Chilperic of Neustria who ruled as regent for her son Chlotar II, and Brunhilde (d. 613), wife of Sigebert of Austrasia.

  15.26 Louis Philippe] French king (1773–1850, ruled 1830–48).

  15.27 Gavarni] Pseudonym of French graphic artist, illustrator, and caricaturist Sulpice-Guillaume Chevalier (1804–1866).

  15.30 Béranger] Widely read French poet Pierre-Jean Béranger (1780–1857).

  15.34 Nash’s lithographed Mansions of England in the Olden Time] Four-volume edition (1839–49) of lithographs by the English artist Joseph Nash (1809–1878).

  22.39–40 Fort Lafayette, the Bastille of the Civil War] Fortress built on an island off Brooklyn at the entrance to New York Harbor, which was used as a military prison during the Civil War.

  23.20 Dr. Beattie’s poem] The Minstrel (1771) by Scottish poet and philosopher James Beattie (1735–1803).

  24.22 town of Coppet] Town in Switzerland in the canton of Vaud, at the western end of Lake Geneva near the border with France.

  24.32–33 Chateaubriand declaiming Les Natchez at Madame Récamier’s] Les Natchez (1826) was a popular romance of American Indian life by François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), French writer and statesman who was a friend and admirer of Juliette Récamier (1777–1849), hostess of an eminent Paris salon.

  25.25 il se fit fort] French: he declared himself able.

  28.2 féronnière] French: frontlet (decorative band on forehead).

  30.12 the “German”] The German cotillion, popular social dance in nineteenth-century America.

  31.5–6 Ultima Thule] Medieval geographers’ term for a place at the northernmost limit of the known world.

  31.6–7 supposedly ample scheme of the regular ninth “wide” street.] North of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, wide streets (Fourteenth Street, Twenty-Third Street, Thirty-Fourth Street, and thereafter at irregular intervals) alternate irregularly with narrower streets.

  31.20 trait de mœurs] French: feature of manners.

  35.2–3 Rond-Point . . . Jardin d’Hiver] A point on the Champs-Elysées from which avenues radiate; large public greenhouse and winter garden, from 1846 a fashionable venue for entertainments and gathering place for Parisians.

  35.4–5 the ancient lodges of the octroi . . . Barrière de l’Étoile?] Temple-like buildings at one of the customs posts where a tax (octroi) levied on goods entering Paris was collected.

  35.7–8 the assault on Sumner by the South Carolina ruffian of the House.] In his antislavery speech, “The Crime Against Kansas,” delivered in the Senate May 19–20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner (1811–1874) of Massachusetts described Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina as having chosen “the harlot, Slavery” as his “mistress.” On May 22 South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks (1819–1857), a cousin o
f Senator Butler, approached Sumner as he sat at his desk in the Senate chamber, accused him of libeling South Carolina and Butler, and beat him unconscious with a cane. After a measure to expel him from the House failed to win the necessary two-thirds majority, Brooks resigned his seat and was reelected by his district. Sumner did not return regularly to the Senate until December 1859.

  37.11 souvenir] French: memory.

  38.24 fond] French: here, basis.

  38.30–31 raid and the capture of John Brown, of Harper’s Ferry fame] Abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859) and a group of his followers seized the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), on October 16, 1859, with the purpose of arming slaves and starting an insurrection. Fifteen people were killed during the raid. Brown was captured, convicted of treason, and hanged on December 2, 1859.

  38.35 pages of “Punch,”] English illustrated comic magazine founded in 1841.

  39.2 John Leech’s] English illustrator John Leech (1817–1864), Punch’s most popular cartoonist.

  39.3 Lords Brougham, Palmerston and John Russell] Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868), English lawyer, man of letters, and politician who served as Lord Chancellor, 1830–34; Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), British prime minister, 1855–58, 1859–65; John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878), British prime minister, 1846–52, 1865–66.

  39.13–14 he had decently provided] See Chronology, 1843.

  40.5–7 Tom Hicks . . . Darley] American artist Thomas Hicks (1823–1891), Irish-born American artist Paul Duggan (d. 1861), American artist and writer Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892), and American artist and illustrator F.O.C. Darley (1822–1888).

  40.10 landscapist Cropseys and Coles and Kensetts] The American Hudson River School painters Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900), Thomas Cole (1801–1848), and John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872).

  40.11 bust-producing Iveses and Powerses and Moziers] American sculptors Chauncey Ives (1810–1894), Hiram Powers (1805–1873), and Joseph Mozier (1812–1870).

  40.15–16 George Curtis and Parke Godwin and George Ripley and Charles Dana and N. P. Willis] American journalist, travel writer, and editor George William Curtis (1824–1892); American journalist and editor Parke Godwin (1816–1904); American journalist, literary critic, and social reformer George Ripley (1802–1880); American journalist, poet, playwright, travel writer, and magazine editor Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867).

  41.6–8 wife of the painter of the piece, Mr. Osgood . . . friend of the unhappy Mr. Poe.] American poet Frances Sargent Osgood (née Locke, 1811–1850), whom Poe befriended in 1845 and wrote three poems to, as well as praising her in a short essay in Godey’s Lady’s Book; she was the wife of American artist Samuel Stillman Osgood (1808–1885), who painted Poe’s portrait.

  41.9 Queen Constance on the “huge firm earth”] See Queen Constance’s lines in Shakespeare, King John, III.i.71–73: “my grief’s so great / That no supporter but the huge firm earth / Can hold it up.”

  41.20–21 the shipwreck of Margaret Fuller . . . (Fire Island] Traveling back to the United States on the merchant freighter Elizabeth after a three-year stay in Italy, American writer, social reformer and feminist Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), was drowned after the ship ran aground in a storm on a sandbar off Fire Island on July 19, 1850.

  41.31–32 National Academy, then confined to scant quarters] New York arts institution founded in 1825, which held its exhibitions at Broadway and Leonard Street in Lower Manhattan before moving in 1850 to 663 Broadway, opposite Bond Street.

  41.32–33 small full-length portrait of Miss Fuller] By Thomas Hicks, painted in 1848.

  42.1 new bride of the artist] Hicks married Angelina D. King (1834–1917) in 1855.

  43.8–9 Barnum’s great American Museum by the City Hall] Exhibition hall with “lecture-room” theater at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street founded by American entrepreneur P. T. Barnum (1810–1891), a popular attraction for its educational displays and curiosities from its opening in 1841 to 1865, when it was destroyed by fire.

  43.21 Phiz’s illustrations to Dickens] “Phiz” was the pseudonym of English artist Hablot Knight Browne (1815–1882), who illustrated many of Charles Dickens’s novels.

  43.29 Godey’s Lady’s Book] American monthly magazine, 1830–98, influential on taste and fashion.

  43.32–34 Joey Bagstock’s . . . Dombey and Son] Major Joseph Bagstock is a grotesque character in Dickens’s novel Dombey and Son (1846–48).

  45.8 repaire] French: den, haunt.

  46.3 to the extent of here reproducing] On the frontispiece to A Small Boy and Others; see p. 3.

  46.13 abords] French: outskirts.

  46.37–38 Where . . . d’antan?] Phrase recalling the line “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” (“Où sont les neiges d’antan?”) from the poem “Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis” by French poet François Villon (1431–after 1463).

  49.14–16 Théâtre Français . . . coreligionary Rachel] The Théâtre Français or Comédie Française, official home of the classical French theater, founded in 1600; the French actors known as Madame Judith (Julie Bernat, 1827–1912) and as Mlle. Rachel (Élisa Rachel Félix, 1821–1858), who were both Jewish.

  49.33–34 Robinson . . . “Hot Corn”] A series of loosely interrelated short stories by American journalist Solon Robinson (1803–1880) were first published in the New-York Tribune, then collected in Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated (1854). Set in Manhattan’s Five Points slum, the book was a popular success and the basis of several stage adaptations such as C. W. Taylor’s Little Katy; or, The Hot Corn Girl.

  51.11–12 The Seven Gables] Novel The House of the Seven Gables (1851), published the year after his Scarlet Letter by American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864).

  51.16 The Lamplighter] Best-selling novel (1854) by American novelist Maria Susanna Cummins (1827–1866).

  51.33 The Initials] Novel (1850) by Irish-born novelist Jemima Montgomery, Baroness von Tautphoeus (1807–1893), who spent most of her life in Bavaria.

  52.4 Boon Children] Child actors Isabella (b. 1842) and Charlotte (b. 1848?) Boone.

  52.7–8 history of the long-legged Mr. Hamilton and his two Bavarian beauties] In The Initials, the young Englishman Alfred Hamilton boards with the Rosenberg family in Munich and becomes entangled romantically with Rosenberg’s two daughters from his first marriage: the younger daughter Cresencz falls in love with Hamilton, who then falls in love with the older daughter Hildegarde, whom he marries at the end of the novel.

  52.35–53.2 The little Batemans . . . later and more grateful appreciation.] The sisters Kate (1842–1917) and Ellen Bateman (1844–1936) performed as child actors managed by P. T. Barnum from 1849 to 1856. Two other Bateman sisters, Virginia (1853–1940) and Isabel (1854–1934), also made their theatrical debuts as children. Kate, who had a long acting career as an adult, played the villainous Marquise de Bellegarde in James’s stage adaptation (1891) of his novel The American directed by Virginia’s husband Edward Compton (1854–1918). Virginia Compton played the heroine Claire de Cintré until she was replaced by Elizabeth Robins.

  54.36–38 small periodical . . . The Charm] Illustrated children’s monthly, 1852–54, published by English publisher, writer, and photographer Joseph Cundall (1818–1895).

  56.12–13 establishment of Mr. Brady] At 205 Broadway (see note 3.2).

  57.11 great Mr. Thackeray had come to America to lecture] English writer William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), author of Vanity Fair (1848), visited the United States on a lecture tour, October 1852–May 1853.

  58.9–10 our distinguished friend’s secretary, who was also a young artist] English painter Eyre Crowe (1824–1910), who worked as Thackeray’s secretary and amanuensis and accompanied him on his American tour. He painted Henry James Sr.’ s portrait
.

  59.10 Colonel Newcome] One of the central characters in Thackeray’s novel The Newcomes (1855).

  61.15 the New York Hotel] At 721 Broadway, between Washington Place and Waverly Place.

  63.8 “our” house, just acquired by us] At 58 West Fourteenth Street.

  64.5–6 ancient name of the Parade-ground still hung about the central space] The Washington Military Parade Grounds and an adjoining public park opened to the public in 1826 on what is now Washington Square.

  65.19 badaud] French: gawker, bystander.

  66.35–36 Mr. William Burton] British-born actor and theater manager William Evans Burton (1804–1860), proprietor of the popular Chambers Street Theatre and its successor, Burton’s New Theatre.

  66.37 the Park] City Hall Park, bounded by Chambers Street on its northern side.

  67.11 the Dromios] The identical twins Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

  67.11 agreeable Mrs. Holman] English-born singer, actor, and opera company manager Harriet Holman (1822–1897).

  67.14 Miss Mary Taylor] American comic actor and singer (1827–1866).

  67.18 Miss Malvina] Malvina Pray (born Anna Pray, 1830–1906), dancer and comic actor later known as Malvina Pray Florence after her marriage to the American actor William J. Florence (1831–1891), with whom she frequently performed.

  67.21–22 Paul Pry, as Mr. Toodles and as Aminadab Sleek in The Serious Family] Comic roles often performed by Burton: Paul Pry, the titular character of an 1825 farce by English playwright John Poole (1786–1872); Timothy Toodles in The Toodles (1848), Burton’s adaptation of The Farmer’s Daughter of the Severnside; or, The Broken Heart (1831) by English comic playwright Richard John Raymond; Aminadab Sleek in The Serious Family (1849), play by English playwright Morris Barnett (1800–1856) adapted from Le mari à la campagne (The Husband in the Country, 1844) by French playwright Jean-François Bayard (1796–1853).