Henry James

(1843–1916)

I have an inalienable mistrust of the great ones of the earth and a thorough disbelief in any security with people who have no imagination.

(quoted in Edel, Henry James: A Life)

At first glance, the fiction of Henry James appears to be about people at the center of high society. On closer examination, many of James’s characters struggle to enter high society from less fortunate backgrounds. Some do enter the privileged social center, while others remain marginalized. James’s own life appears privileged from the outside, but examined closely, he, as his characters, wandered between the social center and its margins. James lived among people who possessed great wealth, held positions of power and influence, married, and had families—all hallmarks of success in mainstream Western society. James himself never married and never had a family; he always worried about money, he held no positions of authority, and his writing never achieved popular success equal to the writing of his peers.

Fortunately for his fiction, these experiences instilled in James a sense of difference and complexity, viewing high society as he did from both within and without. He appreciated in a way few male writers of his or any time did the lives of women and could write about them in a style that still wins critical acclaim even from feminists. But he could also write about men who do not participate in the social center, who do not themselves marry or have families, or who are afflicted with physical abnormalities that prevent them from living out the expected life of a male.

Henry James, Jr., was born in New York City on April 15, 1843, the son of Henry James and Mary Robertson Walsh. James was raised in a home where money was not a concern. James’s father had inherited a fortune of several million dollars, and so work for him could be more of a diversion than a necessity. Henry, Sr., spent much of his life experimenting with different religious experiences, abandoning the strict Calvinism of his father and finally settling on the teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg. Rather than promoting a particular religious dogma, James’s father invited open discussion and debate on a wide variety of issues. He also allowed his children to decide whether or not to attend church. Henry, Jr., would later lament that he wished for more direction from his father, but the result was that James grew up free to experiment with ideas and ways of living. He was not trapped in a particular mode of thought but could observe styles of life different from his own and appreciate them for what they were. This gift of appreciation for people and experiences other than one’s own would become a signifi cant theme in his fiction.

Henry, Jr., had an older brother, William, who would achieve greatness as a psychologist and philosopher. Henry idolized his older brother, who epitomized for him the successful American male. More than one biographer has argued that Henry was taught from an early age to be submissive, while William favored an active role. Henry tried to match William’s achievements in grade school and later at the university, but was often left feeling inadequate. In retrospect, Henry described his mimicking of William as picking up the “crumbs” of his brother’s “feast” and listening to the “echoes” of his accomplishments. William remained in America, close to home, choosing a life in the rugged mountains of New Hampshire. He enjoyed the comforts of a wife and several children, in addition to considerable fame and wealth during his lifetime as a philosopher and psychologist. Compounding Henry’s sense of inadequacy, William offered biting criticism of Henry’s written work. William clearly enjoyed his position as adviser and severe critic of his younger sibling, simultaneously placing high expectations on Henry and reminding him of his inferiority.

Meanwhile, James had been observing as his father, Henry, Sr., a man secure in his position in society, tried for years to recover from a severe emotional crisis that occurred when the younger Henry was only a year old. The source of his father’s crisis was not external but internal. Henry James, Sr., called his crisis a “vastation” and described the experience as follows: “The thing had not lasted ten seconds before I felt myself a wreck; that is, reduced from a state of firm, vigorous, joyful manhood to one of helpless infancy”. As in Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places, ” James learned firsthand as a boy that the things that terrorize one the most are rooted in the mind. A person can feel on top of the world one moment and crash into despair the next. This sense of precariousness would haunt the younger James, who later in life experienced something akin to what his father had, in the form of a nervous breakdown.

When James was less than one year old, his family moved to Europe, living in London and then Paris for nearly two years. Then again in his early teens, James accompanied his family to London and Switzerland, living in Europe for about three years. James was deeply affected by what he saw and experienced; the greenery of England, the lights of Paris, the majesty of the Alps, all provided scenery that would color nearly all of his fiction. Unfortunately while in Europe the young Henry took ill, suffering from one of several illnesses that would afflict him throughout his life. Unlike his brother, William, who was robust and active, Henry led a life of relative physical incapacity, suffering at various times from typhus, gout, shingles, constipation, nervousness, and depression.

James would return with his family to Europe and then alone as an adult, determining in his late twenties to reside there permanently. Once again James assumed a position more at the margin than at the center. As an expatriate, he joined an elite group of people who had left their native land, in some cases never to return. This status worked to great advantage artistically, for James acquired a unique vantage point, allowing him to view American culture from a distance and at the same time experience in depth the much older culture of Europe. He could write with facility about either Europe or America and work literary wonders when mixing the two cultures together, as he did to great effect in much of his fiction.

While James admired America for its energy and innocence, for himself he chose Europe for its lack of innocence. Europe provided an escape from the confines of a still Puritanical America. As Leon Edel, James’s great biographer, wrote, James decided that America “could not offer him the sense of freedom he had won for himself abroad”. At some level James shared a prevailing prejudice held by American elites, especially expatriates, that Americans lacked any measurable culture when compared with Europeans. Europe offered the American expatriate of James’s day supreme freedom; one could lose one’s self in the vast history of Europe, whereas America’s relatively shallow history could imprison a person. In Europe the expatriate American male could roam wherever he wished in a sea of visual, physical, and emotional delights.

What really piqued James’s curiosity, and what would be reflected in his writing, were people like him, American expatriates. These were the people he knew who would fill his fiction: beautiful young women who went to Europe with their families and in the process fell in love with European men. Or handsome American men who fell in love with wealthy European women, some of whom were royalty. In many cases, the American would be wealthier than the European suitor, giving to the relationship newly won American dollars to replace the fading fortunes of old-money European families. American expatriates fell in love with Europe and European ways or were terrified by the tremendous difference, but in either case were forced to confront it. On the other side, Europe was fascinated by Americans, with their energy and vitality and above all their innocence.

At the time of the Civil War, while living in New York City, James suffered another bout with ill health, this time in the form of a physical wound. In helping to fight a fire, he injured himself. The details of the injury are notoriously vague, leaving biographers scrambling to determine its true nature. The intentional vagueness of the injury reveals much about James. He created an identity that revolved around the wound. James had, after all, wanted to fight in the Civil War, but his father had discouraged him from military service. The wound, however slight, allowed him to identify at least in his imagination with the men who did participate in the war. The wound seals his identity as a person of marginal health and illustrates the use he made of his imagination in his life as well as in his fiction.

James never married, though he fell in love with one woman, oddly enough, after her death. His cousin Minny Temple suffered from a severe lung disorder, and during James’s visits to Europe, they would correspond with each other, he from Europe, she from her sickbed in the United States. He felt deeply saddened when she died at the age of 24 and wrote in a letter to his mother shortly thereafter, “It comes home to me with irresistible power, the sense of how much I knew her and how much I loved her. It is no surprise to me to find that I felt for her an affection as deep as the foundation of my being, for I always knew it.” He also wrote, “Twenty years hence we shall be living with your love and longing with your eagerness and suffering with your patience”. James’s biographer Leon Edel interprets this letter as evidence that Minny and in fact most women posed a threat to James in life but in death could be worshipped as “an idea, a thought, a bright flame of memory”. He was a young man and Minny a young woman when she died, and the intensity of emotion he felt for her increased after her death and would remain with him throughout his life.

He developed strong emotional ties to several women in his adult life, but as at least two biographers, Leon Edel and Fred Kaplan, have noted, these women functioned for him much as they would in his fiction, as confidantes, people in whom he could confide. These women friends affirmed his sense of himself. Some offered deep affection and admiration, others simply listened, and others entertained him. Some may have anticipated romance where none could be found. His confidantes included Grace Norton, with whom he enjoyed vivid correspondence; Isabella Gardner, who shared James’s passion for the fine arts; Fanny Kemble, a source for his novel Washington Square; and Edith Wharton, a writer of considerable fame and fortune and the beloved companion of James’s later life.

Another friend, Constance Fenimore Woolson, the grandniece of the American adventure novelist James Fenimore Cooper, offers a particularly interesting glimpse into James’s relations with women. Woolson sought out the company of James for his knowledge of Europe, and moreover his brilliance as a writer, as she herself had ambitions to become a writer. This relationship epitomized James’s relations with women. He basked in their admiration but could not return even a hint of romantic inclination. The friendship with Woolson continued for over a decade, until Woolson began to expect more attention than James could give. This strained their relationship; then, some years later, tragedy struck in the form of her apparent suicide. While suffering from influenza, Woolson threw herself from a second-story window in Italy. This tragedy affected James for years after as a painful reminder of expectations he could never fulfill.

In some ways, James preferred the company of men. He was deeply fond of his brilliant older brother, William, and in later life James surrounded himself with men his own age and also some much younger. At least one of these men fell in love with James, but out of respect for social mores, James felt unable to return the young man’s love physically. Looking over the span of James’s life, it was in his elder years, from about age 60 on, that James felt comfortable enough with his feelings to allow himself to enjoy the company of these male friends. From that time forward, James acted more honestly, even courageously for his day. He allowed himself to find comfort in a community that society would not recognize—a community of bachelor men in England who surrounded him with love and affection. These men, young and old, provided for him a sense of domesticity. One friend, Howard Sturgis, could embroider and knit with skill: “He would sit with his thick golden hair beautifully brushed, his small feet daintily crossed, working on some large golden-threaded design”. With men such as Sturgis, James discovered a form of home life that he had heretofore lacked. He sought respectability through most of his life, though less so in later years. He held that one’s perception in the community as upstanding and well mannered was one of the greatest virtues. Respectability was important in itself because it meant one respected social mores on which the fabric of society depends. This may be why he has the reputation of being a bit of a prude. What went on behind closed doors was not of concern to James, but what went on in public should be discreet, exhibiting good taste. Manners meant the world to him. He understood their value in the high society he enjoyed in life, the same society he preferred to write about in his fiction. But James also saw respectability as useful, as social capital. As James was not particularly wealthy, his good manners assisted him in circulating in a society that would otherwise have been forbidden to him. His infinite respectability also allowed him to go to the aid of people who had forsaken social mores in divorce or adultery. James could vouch for their good character because of his own good name.

As much as James sought respectability, he never yearned for power. He feared the “great ones” of the earth. Theodora Bosanquet, his secretary, said that of all the people she knew, James was the least tyrannical. He went out of his way not to assert his authority over other people. He would, if asked, give his advice, but he would never coerce or even cajole. It was not his way. He held tyranny to be one of the greatest sins of humankind, as people exert their force over someone else simply because they can. His books are filled with characters who act without tyranny. In fact, their great struggle is to avoid becoming pawns of other people, to say in effect, “I will not let you do this to me.” James was this kind of person himself, not coercing others, but also wary of people who do impose their will on others.

James never realized financial success from his literary work. He once wrote that in business matters he felt “like an old maid against the wall on her lonely bench.” He always felt inadequate when he compared himself with his social peers. James knew from his youth financial dependency, first on his parents and then, embarrassingly, on his older brother, William. James’s sense of financial crisis reached a fevered pitch when he decided to purchase a residence called Lamb House in a remote coastal region of England. His brother, who handled all James’s financial affairs, condemned the purchase as extravagant. In one of his few assertive acts against William’s will, he purchased the house anyway. His comments at the time tell much about his sense of financial precariousness when he compared himself to his literary peers: “My whole being cries out loud for something I can call my own when I look round me at the splendour of so many of the ‘literary’ fry”

One of these “literary fry, ” his good friend Edith Wharton, profi ted enormously from her literary work. Whereas James sold some 404 copies of The Ambassadors in the United States and England, Wharton’s The House of Mirth sold more than 100, 000 copies, earning its author some $20, 000 in 1905 dollars and becoming a best seller. In a humorous anecdote, James purportedly said that with the proceeds of another of Wharton’s books she had purchased a new Packard automobile, while with the proceeds of his The Wings of the Dove he had “purchased a small go-cart, or handbarrow, on which my guest’s luggage is wheeled from the station to my house.” He continued, “It needs a coat of paint. With the proceeds of my next novel I shall I have it painted”.

James attained critical but not popular success. Even his greatest achievements in the eyes of critics never became best sellers. James’s failure to achieve popular success triggered his depression. An emotional low point occurred for him with the critical and popular failure of his one attempt at playwriting, Guy Domville. On opening night James did not attend his own play but instead attended a production of Oscar Wilde’s critical and popular success An Ideal Husband. He witnessed the enthusiastic response of the audience to Wilde’s play, and then heard that his own play, Guy Domville, had been booed out of the theater. Apparently when the last light of the play went out and the line “I’m the last, my lord, of the Domvilles! ” was delivered, someone in the audience jeered, “It’s a bloody good thing y’are”. James subsequently descended into what he called some of “the most horrible hours of my life”

He would on one other occasion experience such emotional lows, with the publication of the New York edition of his novels. These beautifully bound editions, complete with prefaces written by the author, failed to achieve any measure of popular readership, after which Edith Wharton recalls finding James a broken man. “I could hardly believe it was the same James” as he “cried out to me his fear, his despair, his craving for the cessation of consciousness, and all his unspeakable loneliness and need of comfort, and inability to be comforted”. James had experienced a nervous breakdown.

His writing of fiction continued up until the end of his life, long after he developed a pain in his right wrist that prevented him from writing. The typewriter became widespread by the 1880s, and in early 1896 James engaged a stenographer, William MacAlpine, who soon started taking dictation on the typewriter. James wrote to his friend Morton Fullerton about his fascination with composing fiction and correspondence with the typewriter: “I can address you only through an embroidered veil of sound. The sound is that of the admirable and expensive machine that I have just purchased for the purpose of bridging our silences”. Arguably his greatest novels were written in this period of dictation. James ultimately could not create without the soothing sound of the typewriter keys. Some people criticized James for relying on dictation through a scribe and typewriter. Without a doubt, James’s fiction became even more circuitous, more labyrinthine, even more identifiably Jamesian, through dictation. As Leon Edel has noted, dictation permitted “verbal music, ” greater use of colloquialism, and further elaboration of metaphor. These years resulted in works of astonishing sophistication: What Maisie Knew, The Turn of the Screw, The Ambassadors, Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl.

In his last years, James anguished over the reluctance of the United States to enter World War I. His anguish translated into a desire to change his citizenship from American to British. In an unpopular move, James became a British citizen a few months prior to his death. He died in Great Britain in 1916.

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