Portrait of A Novel
Page 43
249—“That is the highest”: E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 45.
249—“shallow optimism”: LC1, 65.
249—“on the principle”: To William Dean Howells, 21 February 1884.
250—Child wrote: “Contributors’ Club,” Atlantic (May 1884), 724–27.
250—“evaporate”: To Auguste Monod, 17 December 1905.
250—“had as yet”: “Contributors’ Club,” 726.
250—“galley-slaves”: To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 13 February 1884.
250—“tepid soap”: To William Dean Howells, 21 February 1884.
250—Mario Vargas Llosa: See his Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary, trans. Helen Lane (1975; repr., New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986), 220.
251—“moral passion”: LC1, 63.
251—“the great American”: To William Dean Howells, 21 February 1884.
251—“brutal indecency”: LC2, 861.
252—“timidity”: LC2, 880.
252—“hard and fast”: LC2, 549.
252—“carnal side of man”: LC2, 548.
253—“the constant world-renewal”: LC1, 107.
253—“deeply in the quiet”: LC1, 109.
253—“impeded by the”: Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women,” in The Death of the Moth (London: Hogarth Press, 1942); the essay originated as a talk given to the National Society for Women’s Service in 1931.
253—“falsify the total show”: LC2, 964. See also David McWhirter, “Saying the Unsayable: James’s Realism in the Late 1890s,” Henry James Review 20 (1999).
PART FIVE: PUTTING OUT THE LIGHTS
CHAPTER 20: THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
257—“Darling old father”: WJL5, 227.
258—“worn and shrunken”: N, 229.
258—“ought to be”: N, 216.
259—“hand to its”: N, 225.
259—“old world—my choice”: N, 214.
260—“have ceased to suffer”: To Mary James, 29 January 1882.
260—“all that has gone”: N, 229.
260—“sweetness and beneficence”: N, 229.
260—“neither ideal nor ethereal”: E3, 38.
261—“the most supremely”: Letter to William James of 30 July 1891; in Ruth Bernard Yeazell, ed., The Death and Letters of Alice James (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 186.
261—“tensions and emotions”: E3, 38.
261—“obscene bird of night”: Henry James, Sr., Substance and Shadow (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863), 75.
262—“beneficent hush”: N, 232.
262—“a way of his own”: To Mrs. Francis Mathews, 13 February 1882.
262—“Here lies a man”: From the entry for 24 June 1891 in The Diary of Alice James, ed. Leon Edel (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 217.
263—“softening of the” . . . “almost natural”: To William James, 26 December 1882.
263—“heard somewhere” . . . “my belief”: To William James, 1 January 1883.
264—“feeling somewhat unprotected”: WJL5, 228.
265—“let her off easy”: CS4, 217.
265—“complete appreciation”: LC1, 1333.
265—“a past which is”: LC1, 233.
265—“When the mortal”: LC2, 1006.
265—“an air of”: LC2, 1016.
266—“I bade him”: LC2, 1026.
266—“ruled by a”: CS4, 450.
267—“do something great”: N, 233.
CHAPTER 21: “I WAS PERFECTLY FREE”
268—“in small pieces”: P, 654.
268—“enough to do”: P, 653.
269—“visibly happy”: P, 705.
269—“direct opposition” . . . “of marriage”: P, 667.
269—“I can’t publish”: P, 694.
269—“have to take”: P, 667.
269—“that had once”: P, 724.
269—“old Rome into”: P, 723–24.
270—“through the veil”: Ibid.
270—“I was perfectly”: P, 694.
271—“free and separate”: Iris Murdoch, “Against Dryness,” Encounter, January 1961.
272—“when one is”: P, 721.
272—“Let him off”: P, 723.
272—“mocking voice” . . . “destiny”: P, 720.
272—“Who are you” . . . “Everything”: P, 723.
273—“the man in the world”: P, 725.
273—“that the worst”: P, 726.
273—“the great historical”: P, 725.
274—“aim high”: P, 689.
274—“in the old way”: P, 555.
274—“a chance for”: P, 736.
274—“It’s dishonourable”: P, 744.
275—“malignant”: P, 743.
275—“pure mind”: P, 749.
275—“some one else’s wife” . . . “property”: P, 750–51.
276—“I have watched”: P, 752.
276—“no longer the lover”: P, 751.
277—The critic Arnold Kettle: See his chapter on the Portrait in An Introduction to the English Novel, vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1953).
278—“a high door”: P, 756.
279—“dull un-reverenced tool”: P, 759.
279—“your cousin” . . . “match”: P, 766.
CHAPTER 22: WORKING IN THE DARK
280—“despite the constant”: N, 232.
281—“local” . . . “New England”: N, 19.
281—“down to the deep”: Diary of Alice James, 230. See Jean Strouse’s Alice James: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980) for details of her relationship with Katherine Loring.
282—“dishabituated to the”: CS2, 246.
284—“inexplicable injury”: To William Dean Howells, 2 January 1888. For James’s earnings, see Anesko, Friction with the Market.
284—“anyone to be”: E3, 211.
285—“shrinking opportunity”: CS4, 337.
285—“last manner”: CS4, 350.
285—“second chance” . . . “of art”: CS4, 355.
286—“flooded with light”: To William James, 9 March 1886.
286—“of about the length”: To William James, 1 October 1887.
287—“half a dozen”: N, 52. Edel’s biography remains the best source for details of James’s theatrical career; see also his edition of the Complete Plays of Henry James (1949) with its introductions to each work.
288—“pure situation”: N, 53.
289—“dip my pen”: N, 77.
289—“the quantity of tailoring”: E4, 26.
290—“repulsive and fatuous”: To Isabella Stewart Gardner, 23 January 1882.
290—“clumsy, feeble” . . . “a success”: To Mr. and Mrs. William James, 2 February 1895.
290—“the last” . . . “y’are”: E4, 78.
291—“audible defeat”: Ibid.
291—“an abominable quarter”: To William James, 9 January 1895.
292—“need say” . . . “I will”: N, 109.
CHAPTER 23: THE SECOND CHANCE
294—“march of an action”: N, 167.
295—“denounced”: To Edmund Gosse, 28 August 1896.
296—“long-unassuaged desire”: To Mrs. William James, 1 December 1897.
296—“not too-delusive”: Ibid.
297—“wide, sheep-studded greenness”: E4, 160.
298—“come back next”: To Hendrik Andersen, 7 September 1899.
298—“without thinking”: Ibid.
298—“their bellies and bottoms”: To Hendrik Andersen, 31 May 1906.
299—“squalid violence”: To William James, 26 April 1895.<
br />
299—“absolutely holding”: To W. Morton Fullerton, 2 October 1900.
300—“pendulous” . . . “two stockings”: Max Beerbohm, “The Mote in the Middle Distance,” in A Christmas Garland (London: Heinemann, 1912).
301—“It wasn’t till” . . . “great decorated surface”: The Golden Bowl, in Henry James, Novels, 1903–1911 (New York: Library of America, 2010), 733. My account of James’s late style is indebted to Ian Watt’s classic “The First Paragraph of The Ambassadors,” Essays in Criticism (1960), and Ruth Bernard Yeazell’s introduction to the most recent (2009) Penguin edition of The Golden Bowl.
302—“apertures and outlooks”: Ibid.
302—Many critics: F. O. Matthiessen, Henry James: The Major Phase (1944); Dorothea Krook, The Ordeal of Consciousness (1962); Laurence Holland, The Expense of Vision (1964).
302—“people’s moral scheme”: LC2, 1312.
305—“hugely and ingeniously” . . . “molehill”: To Sarah Butler Wister, 21 December 1902.
306—“steel-souled”: CTW1, 418.
306—“expensively provisional”: CTW1, 420.
306—“distressful, inevitable waste”: CTW1, 540.
306—“the moral identity” . . . “point of view”: CTW1, 525–26.
307—“triumph of the superficial”: CTW1, 736.
307—“Do New York!” . . . “waits for”: To Edith Wharton, 20 August 1902.
307—“Would You Care”: Quoted in Home, Henry James and Revision.
308—“as to expression” . . . “native city”: To Charles Scribner’s Sons, 30 July 1905.
CHAPTER 24: ENDGAME
309—“rushing hotels”: CTW1, 689.
309—“hot-looking stars”: CTW1, 710.
310—“filthily”: To Brander Matthews, 24 March 1915.
310—“fit for appearance”: Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, 40.
310—“values implicit”: Ibid., 42.
310—“incapable of stupidity”: PNY, 183.
311—“she grew impatient”: P, 777.
311—“nervous and scared”: PNY, 560.
311—“wide brown rooms”: P, 777.
311—in the first systematic study: F. O. Matthiessen, “The Painter’s Sponge and Varnish Bottle,” in Henry James: The Major Phase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944). Reprinted in Bamberg.
311—“private thrill”: PNY, 263.
311—“time and the weather”: LC2, 1045.
312—“a few buried”: LC2, 1046.
312—“latent”: LC2, 1335.
312—“the march of”: LC2, 1329.
312—“the inner life”: Nina Baym, in Bamberg, 620.
313—“Are you going” . . . “is over”: P, 785.
313—“a scene that”: P, 773.
313—“life would be”: P, 769.
314—“very bad” . . . “of me”: P, 781–82.
314—Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative: The standard account of Kant’s relevance to the novel belongs to William Gass, “The High Brutality of Good Intentions,” Accent 18 (Winter 1958). Reprinted in Bamberg. My quotation from the philosopher is drawn from Gass.
314—his secondary characters: See Alex Woloch, The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
316—“have all eternity”: P, 783.
316—“lost all her shame”: P, 784.
316—“I never thanked”: P, 784.
316—“that was not” . . . “ruined”: P, 785.
317—“I shall be”: P, 784.
318—“a sort of”: To William Dean Howells, 17 August 1908.
318—“self-occupied”: LFL, 422; the friend in question was Charles Eliot Norton’s daughter Sally.
319—October 1908 his first royalty statement. James notes the figure in a letter to J. B. Pinker, 1 April 1909.
319—“black and heavy”: To William Dean Howells, 27 May 1910.
320—“the frustration of all”: E5, 440.
320—“William cannot”: E5, 442.
320—“Bad day[s]”: N, 314–15.
320—“wholly unfit”: To Edith Wharton, 10 June 1910.
321—morphine and milk: For details of William’s death, see Richardson, William James, 520.
321—“His extinction” . . . “pride”: To Thomas Sergeant Perry, 2 September 1910.
321—“ramification of old”: To Henry James III, 16 July 1912.
321—“difficult & unprecedented”: To Mrs. William James, 13 November 1911.
321—“I recover it”: A, 207.
322—“the past” . . . “memories”: To Henry Adams, 21 March 1914.
322—“undo everything”: To Rhoda Broughton, 10 August 1914.
322—“what the treacherous”: To Howard Sturgis, 4 August 1914.
323—“attachment and devotion”: To H. H. Asquith, 28 June 1915.
323—“bad sick week”: To Edmund Gosse, 25 August 1915.
323—“a regular hell”: To Hugh Walpole, 13 November 1915.
324—“sketchy state” . . . “sister”: For what is called the “Deathbed Dictation,” see N, 581ff.
324—“over the counterpane”: E5, 559.
324—“a dim, hovering” . . . “nothing”: P, 787.
325—“lying on”: Ibid.
325—“postponing, closing” . . . “obligations”: P, 789.
325—“Lady Flora”: P, 780.
326—“something important” . . . “purpose”: P, 794.
326—“that ghastly form”: P, 797.
326—“the world is all”: P, 798.
327—“The world is very small”: Ibid.
327—“to get away” . . . “feet”: P, 797.
327—“the confusion” . . . “free”: P, 799.
327—“but she knew”: Ibid.
328—“this was different” . . . “strange”: PNY, 580.
328—Goodwood’s kiss is no longer: PNY, 581. The best account of Isabel’s relation to sexual passion, and of the novel’s conclusion as well, belongs to Dorothea Krook. See also Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
331—“he looked up at her”: P, 800.
331—“liaison with her rejected lover”: Hutton in Gard.
331—“with an end”: Oliphant in Bamberg.
331—“feels the full force”: N, 15. James’s 1883 words about the ending were recorded in a copy of the novel by its owner. See Supino, Henry James: A Bibliographical Catalogue, 135.
331—“only to guess”: PNY, 582.
332—“started for Rome”: P, 800.
332—“obvious criticism”: N, 15.
332—“Really, universally”: LC1, 1041.
333—“complete in itself”: N, 15.
333—“all too faint”: To A. C. Benson, 11 March 1898.
333—“Nothing is my”: To Jane Hill, 15 June 1879.
333—“raise the individual”: Henry James, “London Pictures,” in The Painter’s Eye, 213.
334—“there is no greater”: “John S. Sargent,” in The Painter’s Eye, 227–28.
334—“There is really too much to say”: PNY, 17.
INDEX
Abolitionism, 17, 18, 99, 126, 209
Acton, Lord, 61
Adam Bede (Eliot), 57, 64–65, 195, 216
Adams, Clover Hooper, 40–42, 102, 143, 148, 258, 259
Adams, Henry, 40–41, 98, 102, 139, 143, 148, 149, 244, 258, 259
Adams, John, 115
Adriatic Sea, 166, 172
adultery, 90, 199, 303, 326–27
in Gustave Flaubert, 68, 195, 303
Aeneid (Virgil), 231
>
aestheticism, 83, 84, 138
Agassiz, Louis, 18
Age of Innocence, The (Wharton), 91, 149, 206–7
Albany, N.Y., 321
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 166, 173, 208
Alexander, George, 289–91
Allied powers, 323
Alps, 33, 101
American Academy, Rome, 319
American exceptionalism, 36, 114–15, 278
American literature, 17
British reaction against, 244–49, 267
future of, 31–32
literary history of, 34
local color and regionalism in, 129, 178, 246
novel of manners and, 26
The Portrait of a Lady as, xvii
realist, 25–26
romances in, 36, 69
sentimental, 25
William Dean Howells on, 26
analytical method of characterization, 242–43
Andersen, Hendrik, xxii, 88, 297–98, 299, 304, 328
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 113, 271, 303, 332
Anne, Queen of England, 99
Antietam, Battle of, 19
Archer, Isabel (char.), xv, xvii, 8, 81, 85–86, 103, 121, 131, 149, 151, 171–72, 173, 196, 198, 207, 214, 243, 244, 310–17, 321
American newness of, 270
appearance of, 7
character of, 6–11, 66–67, 75, 105–6, 115, 116–17, 242
clothes conversation of, 113–15, 163
as desiring to depart from past, 114
elements of HJ in, 50, 270
Europe’s meaning to, 126, 223
George Eliot’s influence on, 66
Gilbert Osmond’s fascination for, 134–37, 155–59, 162–64, 276, 311, 328, 329
Gilbert Osmond’s restrictions on, 162–64, 225, 230–31, 232–33, 234, 238, 269, 273, 274–75, 313, 325, 326
independence of, 4, 6, 51–54, 71, 75–76, 158, 161, 163, 223, 252, 315, 329–30
inner life of, 9, 175, 311, 313, 334
as a “lady,” 10–11, 224
limits on freedom of, xviii–xix, 69, 76, 111–12, 223–24, 238, 270–73, 277–79, 283, 295, 326–27
marriage of, 136, 159–61, 164, 166, 214, 221, 222–38, 271–77, 303–4
marriage plot resisted by, xviii, 9, 69–76, 106–7, 109, 112, 113, 157, 160
Minny Temple as original of, 27, 46–50
power of knowledge for, 279
Ralph Touchett’s bequest to, 110–11, 114, 125, 134, 137, 162, 225, 272–73, 279, 316–17, 327