Story: A Tragedy of Error
Published: 1864
Length: 8,000 words, 21 pages
Genre: mistaken identity and death
Library of America volume: Complete Stories, 1864-1874
Henry James’ first short story, A Tragedy of Error, was published in the long-defunct Continental Monthly in February, 1864. Published anonymously, Henry James never admitted that this story was his, and it was Leon Edel who “discovered” it. This story, with its love triangle, mistaken identity, and death, was inspired by Léone Léoni, by George Sand, one of James’ favorite authors. It harkens forward to the stories of Guy de Maupassant, which often contain paradoxes of identity and confusion, and whose denouements appear often in the final sentence of the stories.
Louis Auchincloss, in Reading Henry James, says that of the early stories (that is, those up to Daisy Miller), except for three of them, A Passionate Pilgrim, The Madonna of the Future and Madame de Mauves, “none of them would be apt to be included in any discriminating anthology of American short stories.” While this may be true, and these early stories are not among the best written in America, we’ll see that some of them are very good, and many of them are fine examples of the type of work Henry would do later.
Henry introduces himself as the narrator in the very first paragraph:
A low English phaeton was drawn up before the door of the post office of a French seaport town. In it was seated a lady, with her veil down and her parasol held closely over her face. My story begins with a gentleman coming out of the office and handing her a letter.
It is interesting that in the first paragraph of Henry’s first story he puts himself in the spotlight, presenting himself as the storyteller. (Not by name, of course, but as a first-person narrator who is not a character.) While this may be seen as a gauche procedure by a novice author, it has significance for the importance Henry holds, throughout his career, of the “narrator.”
The story itself is simple. An adulteress, Hortense Bernier, and her lover, Vicomte Louis de Meyrau, are in a French seaport town, and the woman receives a letter from her crippled husband, saying he is returning after two years’ absence. She hires a boatman to fetch the husband from his ship and kill him, but the “tragedy of error” is that the boatman kills Louis instead of the husband.
This sounds trite, but on the third page of the story, we see a glimpse of Henry’s subtle observations, which would later become his stock in trade. “There are moments of grief in which certain aspects of the subject of our distress seem as irrelevant as matters entirely foreign to it.”
Later, as Hortense is asking a boatman to take her across the water, he says the fare will be fifteen sous. Hortense says she will pay one hundred, and the boatman says nothing. “Silence was probably the most dignified manner of receiving a promise too munificent to be anything but a jest,” James writes to explain his lack of reply.
Hortense chats with the ferryman to find out whether he is capable of the deed she is contemplating, even asking if he had killed men before. He had, he explained, when he was a seaman in other parts of the world. She offers to “help” him – he supports a mother, sister and three nephews – and asks, “Are you a bold man?” The following paragraphe is vintage Henry:
Light seemed to come into this question. The quick expansion of his features answered it. You cannot touch upon certain questions with an inferior but by the sacrifice of the barrier which separates you from him. There are thoughts and feelings and glimpses and foreshadowings of thoughts which level all inequalities of station.
After promising the boatman a large sum of money to commit the crime, murdering her husband who will ask to be taken to the Bernier house, Hortense returns home. But the next morning, it turns out that the Vicomte decided to go to the ship and meet the husband. When he gets there, he finds that M. Bernier is gone, so, seeing a boat from town, he asks to be taken to the Bernier house. The boatman says, “you’re just the gentleman I want.” The story ends as Hortense looks from her garden and sees a man come limping toward her with outstretched arms.
Melodramatic? For sure, but not without subtlety and some fine turns of phrase, as I pointed out above. While this is certainly not a great story, it is well-written, well-paced, has excellent character depiction, and no fat at all. In fact, this shows that Henry was not just an apprentice, but truly did understand his craft.
Interestingly, this first James story takes place in France – a country Henry knew well – with French characters. It was as if Henry was not yet ready to write about his own country, as he would do in his next story, The Story of a Year. Fred Kaplan notes that the lame husband in the story may represent Henry James Sr. (who had lost part of his right leg), and a symbolic murder of the father. But I’ll leave the psychoanalyzing to others.
Whatever subconscious intentions Henry had, this first story, written at the age of twenty-three, showed a great deal of promise, and is far from forgettable.
It occurred to me just now, reading the start of this story, that there is maybe a parallel with the first page of The Golden Bowl, written some thirty years later:
“The young man’s movements, however, betrayed no consistency of attention — not even, for that matter, when one of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces shaded, as they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribboned hats, or more delicately tinted still under the tense silk of parasols held at perverse angles in waiting victorias.”
Same image and diction, as if the Prince had been one one the bystanders in A Tragedy of Error whose attention had been arrested by the lady with the parasol in the carriage! I’m sure this parallel has been noted before, maybe by Kaplan or Leon Edel, but I don’t know it. There seems to be a lot of recurrence of images and “situations” in Henry James, which makes reading him so fun. You know, I thought at first that your starting at the very beginning of Henry would be tedious; now I’m not so sure! So thank you for that.
Interesting comment, thanks for pointing it out.
Tedious, eh? I didn’t really think that myself, and having read both A Tragedy of Error and The Story of a Year today, with the awareness of all the James that I’ve read up until the end, I’m actually quite surprised by the consistency (within limits) of his technique, of the familiarity of images and methods. I’ll have more to say about that when I post about The Story of a Year, but even at the beginning, in this period derided by many, Henry was laying the signposts of what was to come. Not intentionally, of course, but the “germ” of the later Henry is visible in these early works.
I agree completely now. It’s actually a revelation to me, and something that seems not to be remarked on in more “academic” studies, which perhaps emphasize the later and more complex novels. So that is my compliment to you. It is really interesting that it takes a non-academic approach to illuminate this. It’s just that the style changed so radically! But not the sensibility, of course. But I do think that Henry is very much a writer of emotional states in particular “situations” and that plot, which you emphasize, is not central to understanding him as it is in Wharton or Conrad or Galsworthy, etc. But since sensibility is key, and emotion, and place, then so is biography, which you are sensitive to. All of which to say, I have new respect for your approach, and am happy you’re back at it!
And I think you’re right, it was not a “deliberate” echoing of image, all those years later. I just think the image of the beautiful woman with the parasol meant something to him emotionally. I just wonder what. Suffice it to say it was beautiful to him, and he wanted to begin things with an image of beauty.)
Thanks for the kind words. I am, indeed, not an academic, just an avid reader who has read all of Henry’s fiction once, and who likes it so much that I wanted to share that. There won’t be many people posting comments here, which is fine; it’s the process of the reading, reflecting and writing that I’m interested in.
Yes, sensibility is, indeed, at the heart of Henry’s work. And looking as closely as I have at the first three stories has shown me that this is indeed present from the earliest works. I find it surprising that these early stories are sometimes derided; especially the third story, A Landscape Painter, which is, in my opinion, a minor masterpiece.
Thanks for sharing this journey with me.
I’m with you also. HJ has been my favorite author for more years than I ought, perhaps, to disclose. I have over fifteen shelves in my library devoted exclusively to James & have been on pilgrimages over decades to places lived in or visited by him. A copy of Sargent’s portrait of him, aged 70, actual size, hangs in my upstairs library. Thank you for your oh-so-welcome exploration into the early stories. You have prodded me into re-reading them.
Wow, Sally, you seem to be even more of a Henry James fan than me! I hope you’ll contribute your thoughts here.
I wish I could find a good copy if the Sargent portrait. I had a friend get me a copy from the National Portrait Gallery in London, but it’s very dark, and not very big. (For those interested, you can find it here.) Looking now, though, they have larger sizes that aren’t too expensive; maybe I should get one…
BTW, 15 shelves? Can you tell us some of the more interesting books about Henry that you have?
I am, as usual, bringing up the rear, but I’ve just, FINALLY, obtained a copy of the Library of America collection of these short stories. I pulled the package from the mailbox, and didn’t even go into the house, just immediately began reading ATOE. Oh, the wonderful image at the beginning, remarked upon above, the mysterious lady with the parasol! To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this first story, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. So Jamesian (probably not the correct word), the initial conversation between the clandestine lovers, especially the part about drowning. Well, I’m not expecting any responses, as everyone else has undoubtedly moved on to the next stories, but I will continue to post my reactions. Thank you, Kirk, for this website, I have wanted to read James in chronological order for so long, but without this impetus, probably wouldn’t have had the discipline to follow through. One more inconsequential observation – was NOT expecting this ending!