Instigations Part 21

There is no faking the amount of perceptive energy concentrated in Henry James's vignettes in such phrases as that on the parents like domestic dogs waiting to be scratched, or in the ten thousand phrases of this sort which abound in his writings. If we were back in the time of Bruyere, we could easily make a whole book of "Characters" from Henry James's vignettes.[9] The vein holds from beginning to end of his work; from this writing of the eighties to "The Ivory Tower." As for example, Gussie Braddon:

"Rosanna waited facing her, noting her extraordinary perfection of neatness, of elegance, of arrangement, of which it couldn't be said whether they most handed over to you, as on some polished salver, the clear truth of her essential commonness or transposed it into an element that could please, that could even fascinate, as a supreme attestation of care. 'Take her as an advertis.e.m.e.nt of all the latest knowledges of how to "treat" every inch of the human surface and where to "get" every sc.r.a.p of the personal envelope, so far as she _is_ enveloped, and she does achieve an effect sublime in itself and thereby absolute in a wavering world.'"

We note no inconsiderable progress in the actual writing, in _mistria_, when we reach the ultimate volumes.

1886. "Bostonians." Other stories in this collection mostly rejected from collected edition.

"Princess Casama.s.sima" inferior continuation of "Roderick Hudson." His original subject matter is beginning to go thin.

1888. "The Reverberator," process of fantasia beginning.

Fantasia of Americans vs. the "old aristocracy," "The American" with the s.e.xes reversed. Possibly the theme shows as well in "Les Transatlantiques," the two methods, give one at least a certain pleasure of contrast.

1888. "Aspern Papers," inferior. "Louisa Pallant," a study in the maternal or abysmal relation, good James. "Modern Warning," rejected from collected edition.

1889. "A London Life." "The Patagonia."

"The Patagonia," not a masterpiece. Slow in opening, excellent in parts, but the sense of the finale intrudes all along. It seems true but there is no alternative ending. One doubts whether a story is really constructed with any mastery when the end, for the purpose of making it a story, is so unescapable. The effect of reality is produced, of course, by the reality of the people in the opening scene; there is no doubt about that part being "to the life."

"The Liar" is superb in its way, perhaps the best of the allegories, of the plots invented purely to be an exposition of impression. It is magnificent in its presentation of the people, both the old man and the Liar, who is masterly.

"Mrs. Temperly" is another such excellent delineation and shows James as an excellent hater, but G.S. Street expresses a concentration of annoyance with a greater polish and suavity in method; and neither explains, theorizes, nor comments.

James never has De Maupa.s.sant's reality. His (H.J.'s) people almost always convince, i.e., we believe implicitly that they exist. We also think that Henry James has made up some sort of story as an excuse for writing his impression of the people.

One sees the slight vacancy of the stories of this period, the short clear sentence, the dallying with _jeu d'esprit_, with epigram no better than, though not inferior to, the run of epigram in the nineties. It all explains James's need of opacity, his reaching out for a chiaroscuro to distinguish himself from his contemporaries and in which he could put the whole of his much more complex apperception.

Then comes, roughly, the period of cobwebs and of excessive cobwebs and of furniture, finally justified in "The Finer Grain," a book of tales with no mis-fire, and the style so vindicated in the triumphs of the various books of Memoirs and "The American Scene."

Fantasias: "Dominic Ferrand," "Nona Vincent" (tales obviously aimed at the "Yellow Book," but seem to have missed it, a detour in James's career). All artists who discover anything make such detours and must, in the course of things (as in the cobwebs), push certain experiments beyond the right curve of their art. This is not so much the doom as the function of all "revolutionary" or experimental art, and I think masterwork is usually the result of the return from such excess. One does not know, simply does not know, the true curve until one has pushed one's method beyond it. Until then it is merely a frontier, not a chosen route. It is an open question, and there is no dogmatic answer, whether an artist should write and rewrite the same story (a la Flaubert) or whether he should take a new canvas.

"The Papers," a fantasia, diverting; "The Birthplace," fairy-G.o.dmother element mentioned above, excellent. "Edmund Orme," inferior; "Yellow Book" tale, not accepted by that periodical.

1889-1893. Period of this entoilment in the "Yellow Book," short sentences, the epigrammatic. He reacts from this into the allegorical.

In general the work of this period is not up to the mark. "The Chaperon," "The Real Thing," fantasias of "wit." By fantasias I mean sketches in which the people are "real" or convince one of their verity, but where the story is utterly unconvincing, is not intended to convince, is merely a sort of exaggeration of the fitting situation or the situation which ought to result in order to display some type at its apogee. "The Real Thing" rather better than other stories in this volume.

Thus the lady and gentleman model in "The Real Thing." London society is finely ladled in "The Chaperon," which is almost as a story, romanticism.

"Greville Fane" is a scandalous photograph from the life about which the great blagueur scandalously lies in his preface (collected edition). I have been too diverted comparing it with _an_ original to give a sane view of its art.

1890. "The Tragic Muse," uneven, full of good things but showing Henry James in the didactic role a little too openly. He preaches, he also displays fine perception of the parochialism of the British political career. It is a readable novel with tracts interpolated. (Excellent and commendable tracts arguing certainly for the right thing, enjoyable, etc.) Excellent text-book for young men with ambitions, etc.

1892. "Lesson of the Master" (cobweb). "The Pupil," a masterpiece, one of his best and keenest studies. "Brooksmith" of the best.

1893. "The Private Life." t.i.tle story, waste verbiage at the start, ridiculous to put all this camouflage over something au fond merely an idea. Not life, not people, allegory, dated to "Yellow Book" era. Won't hold against "Candide." H.J.'s tilting against the vacuity of the public figure is, naturally, pleasing, i.e., it is pleasing that he should tilt, but the amus.e.m.e.nt partakes of the nature of seeing cocoanuts hurled at an aunt sally.

There are other stories, good enough to be carried by H.J.'s best work, not detrimental, but not enough to have "made him": "Europe"

(Hawth.o.r.n.y), "Paste," "The Middle Years," "Broken Wings," etc. Part of the great man's work can perhaps only be criticized as "etc."

1895. "Terminations, c.o.xon Fund," perhaps best of this lot, a disquisition, but entertaining, perhaps the germ of Galsworthy to be found in it (to no glory of either author) as perhaps a residuum of d.i.c.kens in Maisie's Mrs. Wix. Verbalism, but delightful verbalism in c.o.xon affair, sic:

"Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular,"

or

"a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproachable and insufferable person"

or (for the whole type)

"put such ignorance into her cleverness?"

Miss Anvoy's echo concerning "a crystal" is excellently introduced, but is possibly in the nature of a sleight of hand trick (contemporary with "Lady Windemere's Fan"). Does H.J.'s "politics" remind one of Dizzy's scribbling, just a little?" Confidence, under the new Ministry, was understood to be reviving," etc.

Perhaps one covers the ground by saying that the James of this period is "light literature," entertaining if one have nothing better to do.

Neither "Terminations" nor (1896) "Embarra.s.sments" would have founded a reputation.

1896-97. Improvement through "Other House" and "Spoils of Poynton." I leave the appreciation of these, to me, detestable works to Mr. Hueffer.

They seem to me full of a good deal of needless fuss, though I do not mean to deny any art that may be in them.

1897. The emergence in "What Maisie Knew." Problem of the adolescent female. Carried on in:

1899. "The Awkward Age," fairy G.o.dmother and spotless lamb and all the rest of it. Only real thing the impression of people, not observation or real knowledge. Action only to give reader the tone, symbolizing the tone of the people. Opening _tour de force_, a study in punks, a cheese _souffle_ of the leprous crust of society done to a turn and a niceness save where he puts on the _dulcissimo, vox humana_, stop. James was the dispa.s.sionate observer. He started with the moral obsession; before he had worked clear of it he was entoiled in the obsession of social tone.

He has pages of clear depiction, even of satire, but the sentimentalist is always lurking just round the corner. This softens his edges. He has not the clear hardness, the cold satiric justness that G.S. Street has displayed in treating situations, certain struggles between certain idiocies and certain vulgarities. This book is a specialite of local interest. It is an etude in ephemera. If it contained any revelation in 1899, it no longer contains it. His characters are reduced to the status of _voyeurs_, elaborate a.n.a.lysis of the much too special cases, a bundle of swine and a.s.ses who cannot mind their own business, who do not know enough to mind their own business. James's lamentable lack of the cla.s.sics is perhaps responsible for his absorption in bagatelles.... He has no real series of backgrounds of _murs du pa.s.se_, only the "sweet dim faded lavender" tune and in opposition to modernity, plush nickel-plated, to the disparagement, naturally, of the latter.

Kipling's "BiG.o.d, now-I-know-all-about-this manner," is an annoyance, but one wonders if parts of Kipling by the sheer force of content, of tale to tell, will not outlast most of James's cobwebs. There is no subst.i.tute for narrative-sense, however many different and entrancing charms may be spread before us.

"The Awkward Age" might have been done, from one point of view, as satire, in one-fourth the s.p.a.ce. On the other hand, James does give us the subtly graded atmospheres of his different houses most excellently.

And indeed, this may be regarded as _his_ subject.

If one were advocate instead of critic, one would definitely claim that these atmospheres, nuances, impressions of personal tone and quality _are his subject;_ that in these he gets certain things that almost no one else had done before him. These timbres and tonalities are his stronghold, he is ignorant of nearly everything else. It is all very well to say that modern life is largely made up of velleities, atmospheres, timbres, nuances, etc., but if people really spent as much time fussing, to the extent of the Jamesian fuss about such normal trifling, age-old affairs, as slight inclinations to adultery, slight disinclinations to marry, to refrain from marrying, etc., etc., life would scarcely be worth the bother of keeping on with it. It is also contendable that one must depict such mush in order to abolish it.[10]

The main feeling in "The Awkward Age" is satiric. The dashes of sentiment do not help the work as literature. The acute observer is often referred to:

Page 131. "The ingenious observer just now suggested might even have detected...."

Page 133. "And it might have been apparent still to our sharp spectator...."

Page 310. "But the acute observer we are constantly taking for granted would perhaps have detected...."

Page 323. "A supposit.i.tious spectator would certainly have imagined...."

(This also occurs in "Ivory Tower." Page 196.)

This scrutinous person wastes a great deal of time in pretending to conceal his contempt for Mrs. Brook, Vanderbank, the other punks, and lays it on so _thick_ when presenting his old sentimentalist Longdon, who at the one critical moment behaves _with a stupidity,_ with a lack of delicacy, since we are dealing with these refinements. Of course neither this stupidity of his action nor the tone of the other characters has anything to do with the question of _maestria_, if they _were_ dispa.s.sionately or impartially rendered. The book is weak because all through it James is so manifestly carrying on a long _tenzone_ so fiercely and loudly, a long argument _for_ the old lavender. There is also the constant implication that Vanderbank ought to want Nanda, though why the devil he should be supposed to be even mildly under this obligation, is not made clear. A basis in the cla.s.sics, castor oil, even Stevenson's "Virginibus Puerisque" might have helped matters. One's complaint is not that people of this sort don't exist, that they aren't like everything else a subject for literature, but that James doesn't anywhere in the book get down to bed-rock. It is too much as if he were depicting stage scenery not _as_ stage scenery, but as nature.

All this critique is very possibly an exaggeration. Take it at half its strength; I do not intend to defend it.

Epigrammatic manner in opening, compare Kipling; compare De Maupa.s.sant, superb ideas, verity, fantasia, fantasia group, reality, charming stories, poppyc.o.c.k. "Yellow Book" touches in "The Real Thing," general statements about their souls, near to bad writing, perfectly lucid.