Reading Henry James

Published: 1865
Length: 16,300 words, 44 pages
Genre: life and love during wartime
Library of America volume: Complete Stories, 1864-1874
Etexts: The Henry James Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites, Project Gutenberg edition of the March, 1865, Atlantic Monthly

Henry begins The Story of a Year with this simple introduction:

My story begins as a great many stories have begun within the last three years, and indeed as a great many have ended; for, when the hero is despatched, does not the romance come to a stop?

This is then followed by a space, clearly setting the introduction off from the remainder of the story. Again, as in A Tragedy of Error, Henry puts himself forward, using first-person narration in this story, but, again, as in his first story, the narrator is not a character.

The “last three years” refers to the Civil War, which was to end a month after this story was published. Henry and his brother William did not fight in this war, but his other brothers Bob (Robertson) and Wilky (Wilkinson), did go off to fight. The smart brothers stayed home while the other two went to spill blood. Wilky was, in fact, seriously wounded during the war, while serving with the famous Massachusetts 54th, one of the first black infantry regiments in the war. This story may be Henry’s way of coming to terms with Wilky’s wounds and suffering. But it was also a way of writing a story that would resonate with the American world around him, after his first story which was set in France. And, perhaps, ever the market-savvy writer, it could be that Henry was writing about the zeitgeist in order to create a story that had a good chance of selling.

This story seems to be influenced by Hawthorne’s fables, at least in the beginning, with a tone that is much more florid than that of Henry’s first story, A Tragedy of Error. Here’s a long excerpt from the beginning of the story, that gives a good idea as to how Henry’s language is different:

They made their way up a long swelling mound, whose top commanded the sunset. The dim landscape which had been brightening all day to the green of spring was now darkening to the gray of evening. The lesser hills, the farms, the brooks, the fields, orchards, and woods, made a dusky gulf before the great splendor of the west. As Ford looked at the clouds, it seemed to him that their imagery was all of war, their great uneven masses were marshalled into the semblance of a battle. There were columns charging and columns flying and standards floating,—tatters of the reflected purple; and great captains on colossal horses, and a rolling canopy of cannon-smoke and fire and blood. The background of the clouds, indeed, was like a land on fire, or a battle-ground illumined by another sunset, a country of blackened villages and crimsoned pastures. The tumult of the clouds increased; it was hard to believe them inanimate. You might have fancied them an army of gigantic souls playing at football with the sun. They seemed to sway in confused splendor; the opposing squadrons bore each other down; and then suddenly they scattered, bowling with equal velocity towards north and south, and gradually fading into the pale evening sky. The purple pennons sailed away and sank out of sight, caught, doubtless, upon the brambles of the intervening plain. Day contracted itself into a fiery ball and vanished.

While there are hints of Henry’s future style, the prose here is overly Romantic; it’s overdone, full of adjectives, and, frankly, a bit mushy.

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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.

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Dear readers, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to begin my reading of Henry James. Work and other things kept me very busy, and only now has my plate cleared enough to begin reading and commenting on Henry’s works. You’ll find above a discussion of Henry’s first story, A Tragedy of Error, and more will come soon.

Buy from Amazon.com

This slim book, whose title was not the inspiration for the name of this web site, is described as a “companion to Henry James.” Auchincloss, who passed away last week, long admired James, as well as Edith Wharton (he edited a couple of volumes of Wharton for the Library of America). In this book, Auchincloss gives uncritical overviews of many of James’ works, paying particular attention to the later novels, but also discussing James’ notebooks, his theater, and his late American tour.

Dedicated to “Leon Edel, fiend and mentor,” this book has a decidedly Edelian feel. Written in 1972, James’ was more or less “owned” by Edel, the author of the first serious biography of Henry. I won’t go into this book in detail, but I will refer to it from time to time when I discuss Henry’s works. I would recommend that any serious fan of James grab a copy, especially because used copies are available from Amazon.com for just a few dollars. I doubt this book will ever be reprinted, unless, perhaps, the Library of America decides to published some of Auchincloss’ work.

The Washington Post is reporting that author Louis Auchincloss has died at age 92. I’ve never read his fiction, but he is the author of a slim book, Reading Henry James, which is a sort of reader’s guide to the fiction of James. It’s not very deep, but gives a nice overview of James’ fiction. (It’s not why I chose the name for this blog, in case you’re asking.)

I was planning on reviewing this book soon, as I got a used copy from an on-line bookseller. It’s been out of print for some time, but used copies seem to be widely available.

Oddly, much of Auchincloss’ work is out of print, including his fiction. He’s written dozens of books, and a quick search on Amazon shows only a few available.