In 1904, James visited the United States again - his first visit since a long absence and he was unpleasantly surprised at how the country had been changed by a fierce form of capitalism. He paid his way by giving lectures and traveled extensively through the whole country, also visiting California. Of course this all resulted in a book: The American Scene (1907). While this American travelogue is rather on the complaining side, James also collected memories about his beloved Italy in the charming Italian Hours.
James had always been obsessed with his literary legacy, and this resulted in a revised edition, with long and detailed prefaces, of his Collected Works - the works that he himself wanted to preserve for posterity. He even rewrote parts of his early novels for this republishing event.
This 24 volume collection was published by Scribner in New York, and is therefore known as "The New York Edition." As highbrow literature of the highest level, James' books had never sold very well (although not worse than those by other literary authors), although they had generally been praised by the critics. In that sense, this new edition resulted also in a new disappointment: sales were extremely slow and one could say that it cost James money instead of improving his financial situation.
Editing this huge collection took up much of James' time; he finished no new novels in the last twelve years of his life (he worked on The Ivory Tower, but left it unfinished) and only wrote 7 short stories.
As James was making up the balance of his life, he now turned to autobiography, finishing two volumes (A Small Boy and Others from 1913 and Notes of a Son and Brother from 1914); a third volume, The Middle Years, was left unfinished. In these years James also received honorary degrees from Harvard and Oxford.
James was shocked by the outbreak of the Great War. He was also angry that the U.S. refused to come to the aid of England and in 1915, as a sort of declaration of loyalty (but also for practical reasons), he became a British citizen. At the end of that year James became seriously ill after suffering a series of strokes and he died in early 1916. His ashes were interred at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What are the themes of James' late tales?
- The obsession with ‘literary remains’ and posthumous reputation ("The Real Right Thing")
- The stupidity of letting life slip by without having a life ("Europe," "The Beast in the Jungle")
- "fear of marriage" ("Flickerbridge")
- James' negative reaction to the changes he saw in New York (a harsh money society) after an absence of some two decades.
"Europe" [1899]
First published in Scribner's Magazine, June 1899. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
A black comedy about a Puritanical Boston family, mother and three daughters. The mother has been able to visit Europe when she was young, and has implanted the notion of 'Europe' in the minds of her daughters as a sort of cultural ideal. The daughters want to visit Europe but miss their chance - they have to stay in Boston to care for their old and infirm mother - and grow old themselves in the process. Only the youngest daughter manages to slip away to the Old Continent, and she never comes back. A story about the folly of letting life slip by without having a life.
Wikisource - State University of New York, New Paltz
"The Great Condition" [1899]
First publication in The Anglo-Saxon Review, June 1899. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900.
On the transatlantic boat back home, two Englishmen fall in love with an unattached American lady, a widow. They don't know anything about her past and therefore suspect she has one - showing the strict morals imposed unilaterally on woman at that time. It also shows the difference between Europe and the U.S.: the upper class in Europe formed a tight social group in which a person’s circumstances would be known to members of the group. Marriage was very much a financial arrangement. The American widow agrees to marry the man who promises not to ask her about her past for the first six months of the marriage. One of them (the wealthy one) thinks he will be unable to do that, so he compulsively travels around the world trying to unearth something about her (finding nothing). The other man (in more modest circumstances) marries her and never asks her about her past - and of course in the end it becomes clear that she has no past (but no fortune either).
Wikisource
"The Real Right Thing" [1899]
First published in Collier's Weekly, December 1899. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
The spirit of a deceased writer, haunting his wife and her chosen biographer, ensures that they give up the idea of publishing a ‘Life,’ by telling them that in his writings he has left enough of himself for the world to know. A strong statement of James' opinion that all that counts is the surviving work of the artist and that it is no use - even "not done," almost as if it were a kind of desecration - to delve into personal and intimate circumstances. As in The Turn of the Screw, it remains ambiguous whether there really was a ghost. This is one of shortest of the tales James wrote, and one of the weaker as James didn't develop all its possibilities.
Wikisource
"Paste" [1899]
First published in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, December 1899. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
James conceived this story as a clever reversal of Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" ("La Parure"). Henry James was a personal friend of De Maupassant and wrote a critical essay about his work. An inherited string of pearls, thought to be just paste, turns out to be real and thereby reflects uncomfortably on the morals of the woman who left them behind (she must have received them from a gentleman in return for certain unmentionable favors).
Wikisource; State University of New York, New Paltz
"The Great Good Place" [1900]
First published in Scribner's Magazine, January 1900. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
The story portrays George Dane, a successful writer harried by visitors and an overload of duties. In this social whirlwind, he has no time left for introspection. A young man who is another of his visitors hypnotically wafts him to the Great Good Place - a sort of resort for tired intellectuals where they can recharge themselves while talking with "Brothers." Dane finds his inner balance again and awakes refreshed at the end of the day, to notice that the young man has even brought order to his study. A strange piece of fancy, with homoerotic overtones: for James heaven is clearly a place filled with beautiful young men.
Wikisource - State University of New York, New Paltz
"Maud-Evelyn" [1900]
First published in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1900. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900.
Marmaduke has just seen his marriage proposal refused and therefore makes a trip on the continent. There he meets an English couple who have lost their daughter, Maud-Evelyn, when she was only fifteen. They have a fantasy that Maud-Evelyn is still alive and construct fanciful memories about her, with the help of Marmaduke, who - without ever having known her - becomes the "phantom" fiancé and then "husband" of the deceased daughter. He then wears mourning for her and devotes the rest of his life to her memory.
Wikisource
"Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie" [1900]
First published in Cornhill Magazine, May-June 1900. First book edition in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
A short and lighthearted story. A young American woman, Lily Gunton of Poughkeepsie (of all places), is engaged to an Italian Prince. She is waiting for an invitation from his mother to come and visit, but the Prince, on the contrary, asks her to write first to his mother (the right thing to do in status-conscious 19th c. Europe) - which the democratic lady refuses. When the wait lasts too long, she returns to America and breaks off the engagement. A story of cultural differences.
Wikisource
"The Tree of Knowledge" [1900]
First published in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
A sharp story about a sculptor who believes himself to be a great artist, and his friend, who knows better but keeps silent as he loves the wife of the sculptor and doesn't want to make her unhappy. But when the son later studies art in Paris, he realizes that his father was not a real artist but a fraud and tells his mother. She, of course, knew so all the time, but kept quiet out of love for her husband.
Project Gutenberg (Victorian Short Stories); Wikisource
"The Abasement of the Northmores" [1900]
First published in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
The pompous Lord Northmore has always overshadowed his friend Mr Hope, although Hope possessed the greater talent. After both men are dead, the widow of Lord Northmore publishes her husbands' correspondence, showing inadvertently what a nobody he really was. Mrs Hope then decides to posthumously publish the old correspondence between herself and her husband to show posterity where true greatness was present. A rather hurriedly written story in which nothing is dramatized.
Wikisource
"The Third Person" [1900]
First published in The Soft Side, London / New York, 1900.
Two old ladies, who are related, one a spinster, the other a widow, together inherit a cottage in a quaint English town (very much like James' Rye) and decide to go and live there. They discover one of their common ancestors was a smuggler who was hanged for his offenses - and then the ghost of the man appears to defend himself from these accusations. An amusingly satirical ghost story.
Wikisource
"The Special Type" [1900]
First published in Collier's Weekly, June 1900. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903.
Alice Dundene is a "special type" of woman, who is rather misused by her environment. One Brivet uses his supposed affair with her to give his wife cause for divorce, so that he can marry the woman he really loves, a Mrs. Cavenham. All is well: the wife marries someone else, the husband marries Mrs. Cavenham. But all poor Alice gets is the portrait of Brivet... their relations have always been wholly innocent.
Wikisource
"The Tone of Time" [1900]
First published in Scribner's Magazine, November 1900. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903.
The story turns on the coincidence that two women who were once rivals for the same man recognize each other via the effect his portrait has upon them. Mary Tredick is commissioned by a woman she has never seen to paint a portrait of her deceased husband. Mary paints with art and hatred the image of a man she has once loved and whom another woman has taken from her. When the commissioner sees the portrait she wants it so badly that she agrees (through the narrator) to double the price. But the painter discovers that her patron is "the other woman" and will not part with her work to her rival. After both are dead, the narrator gets it in his possession, ironically never learning the name of the man who has been painted here.
Wikisource
"Broken Wings" [1900]
First published in Century Magazine, December 1900. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
This story presents a man and a woman, one a painter and the other a writer, each of whom discovers that the other is no longer successful, whereas it was in the old days each other's success that kept them apart. Hesitantly but inevitably
they now come together, with the words "And now to work!"
Wikisource
"The Two Faces" [1900]
First published in Harper's Bazar, December 1900. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
Mrs Grantham has been jilted by Lord Gwyther. While her new admirer, Mr Sutton, is with her, Lord Gwyther makes the faux pas of visiting her to ask her to introduce his young, foreign wife (so in fact, Mrs Grantham's successor and rival) into London society. Mrs. Grantham makes her young rival ridiculous by overloading her with clothes - a gaffe from which the young woman will never recover.
Wikisource
"Mrs. Medwin" [1901]
First published in Punch, August-September 1901. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
Mrs, Medwin (1903) is to be engineered into society by Mamie Cutter, social secretary, through the special favor of Lady Wantridge. But Scott Cutter, her big American brother, turns up and the sister is afraid the crude boy will upset things. However, he is just the man that Lady Wantridge likes, and through him Mrs. Medwin gets invited into the charmed circle.
Project Gutenberg (Some Stories); Wikisource
"The Beldonald Holbein" [1901]
First published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1901. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
A story about artists. An obscure American woman, Mrs Brash, who is supposedly very ugly, is employed by the vain Lady Beldonald to act as a contrast to her own good looks. But the painter-narrator and his friend see in Mrs Brash an unappreciated beauty of a kind they liken to a portrait by Holbein. The narrator wants to paint Mrs Brash's portrait but she refuses. All the same, this episode is enough for Lady Beldonald to ship Mrs Brash back to the United Sates.
Project Gutenberg; Wikisource
"The Story in It" [1902]
First published in Anglo-American Magazine, January 1902. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
Colonel Vogt says that romance implies a developed relation which cannot spell innocence. Mrs. Blessingbourne takes the view that romance may consist in a suppressed relation. She herself, we learn, has for the Colonel just such an innocent feeling. In this way, the story in a very modern way comments ingenuously on its own subject.
Project Gutenberg; Wikisource
"Flickerbridge" [1902]
First published in Scribner's Magazine, February 1902. First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
Another "fear of marriage" story. Frank Granger, a painter living in Paris, is engaged to the successful journalist Addie, but has second thoughts. When he is painting a portrait in London he falls ill. Addie then sends him a letter of introduction to Miss Wenham, the caretaker of the beautiful old Flickerbridge estate in the countryside, so that he can go there to recuperate. Frank enjoys himself and regains his health, but suddenly receives news that Addie is also planning to come to Flickerbridge from Paris. He immediately leaves for Oxford, as a sign that he is breaking off the engagement.
Project Gutenberg; Wikisource
"The Birthplace" [1903]
First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
A satirical dig at the "heritage industry." Morris Gedge and his wife are stationed at the birthplace of England's greatest poet, and expect to peddle exaggerations to the gullible visitor. At first Morris is understated and ironical, and is reprimanded by the Board; later he goes to the other extreme, and gets his salary raised. But the story also contains within it a quite serious element of literary theory: critical attention should be focused on the works themselves, not their authors or the author's biographical elements, as there is no way to prove a causal link between the life of an author and the works he produces.
Wikisource
"The Beast in the Jungle" [1903]
First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
One of James' finest short narratives. John Marcher has once told May Bartram that he lives under a fear of some undefined calamity: he believes that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." Ten years later, they meet again. May is romantically interested in him, but he believes that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his "spectacular fate." They keep meeting now and then, for the theater or an occasional dinner, as May is curious what fate has in store for him. And so time passes, and Marcher allows the best years of his life to slip by, taking down May as well, until the denouement where he learns that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding! As James has said elsewhere: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?" This great story, in which almost nothing happens (and that is exactly the crux!), has been subjected to an enormous amount of critical commentary. Sometimes it is seen as an early expression of "existential angst," or it is interpreted psychologically, as the story of a man imprisoned in a solipsistic world. And finally, here, too, we find James "fear of marriage"...
Project Gutenberg; Wikisource.
"The Papers" [1903]
First book publication in The Better Sort, London / New York 1903.
A story in which James deals with all the unsavory features now associated with contemporary media – cynical journalism, image manipulation, empty celebrity culture, and what we now call ‘spin doctoring’ – he shows how all elements are already alive and working smoothly at the start of the 20th century. Part of the story is rather bitter in tone, as if James had to get something off his chest.
Wikisource
"Fordham Castle" [1904]
First publication in Harper's Magazine, Dec. 1904. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
The middle-aged American Abel Taker has been exiled to Geneva by his wife while she conquers aristocratic England under an assumed name while staying at Fordham Castle. He finds comfort in the similar plight of Mrs Magaw, a lady who has been hidden to further her daughter’s desire to marry into British aristocracy (again under a more resounding name than that of her mother). But in Geneva both Mr Taker and Mrs Magaw also live under assumed names, and they speak about their previous identities as dead things. After Mrs Magaw's daughter has succeeded in getting engaged to Lord Dunderton, she asks her mother to come over. When Mrs Magaw is leaving, she asks if Mr Taker wants to come with her, but he refuses - he doubts he will get a similar invitation from his wife and continues in his situation of a "dead" person.
Wikisource
"Julia Bride" [1908]
First publication in Harper's Magazine, March-April 1908. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
Julia Bride is a beautiful single young American girl with a chequered past (she has a score of six broken off engagements); on top of that, her mother has been twice divorced and is living apart from her third husband. Julia wants to marry the rich young son of a wealthy traditional family, Basil French, so she needs a clean slate. She appeals to Mr. Pitman, one of her stepfathers, to aid her, but he, wanting in turn to marry Mrs. Drack and her millions, prevails on her to help him from her side - both have to tell lies on behalf of the other. Julia also asks the help of Murray Brush, the most serious of her old suitors, who is now engaged to a perfect young lady. Murray is willing to talk to Mr French (lying to him that he and Julia were never engaged, but only friends), but it is clear to Julia he only wants to do that only to further the prospects of himself and his wife - it never hurts to know an important family. The story has an open ending, but it is clear that Julia Bride won't find success in the upper echelons of old-fashioned American society. She will always be a Bride but never get married. There are some echoes in this story from The House of Mirth by James' good friend Edith Wharton.
Project Gutenberg (Great English Short Story Writers)
"The Jolly Corner" [1908]
First published in The English Review, December 1908. Later also included in The New York Edition (1907-09).
One of Henry James' most-anthologized stories, a combination of a classical ghost story with a psychological tale, and therefore open to a variety of different interpretations - we can see it as a story of guilt, of redemption, or of wish-fulfillment. Spencer Brydon returns to New York after thirty-three years in Europe. He visits the now-empty New York house where he grew up, on the corner of a block. There he encounters the ghost of himself (his double) as he would have been had he remained at home as a business man - he sees a figure who is rich, but also made horridly ugly by the egoistic life he has led. He passes out because of the shock and is found the next day by his old friend Alice Staverton, who has taken a sympathetic interest in his concerns.
Project Gutenberg; Wikisource.
"The Velvet Glove" [1909]
First published in The English Review, March 1909. First book edition in The Finer Grain, London / New York, 1910.
A story perhaps inspired by James' relation with Edith Wharton, who had asked him to write a preface to one of her lesser novels, something James refused, telling her she didn't need commercial success - in fact Wharton was much more successful than James and her The House of Mirth had become a big bestseller. She also earned more than James and once took him on a tour around France in her large automobile.
Project Gutenberg;
"Mora Montravers" [1909]
First published in The English Review, August-September 1909. First book edition in The Finer Grain, London / New York, 1910.
On a subject which was very popular around that time – the new woman. Since the 1880s and 1890s women had been fighting for independence, voting rights, and reform of the divorce laws. Alongside these larger political matters, they had also been claiming the right to make their own life choices. James deals here with these issues in his characteristically ambiguous manner. Mora Montravers leaves the dull household of her relatives, the Traffles, and establishes herself in the studio of a young painter, Mr. Puddick. Mrs. Traffle offers to settle four hundred and fifty pounds a year on Mora if Puddick will marry her. He is embarrassed, but Mr. Traffle (whose drab life with Mrs. Traffle has been agreeably jarred by Mora) learns later that the two are now married. But Mora wishes to be free, gets the money settled on her husband and seeks a divorce so that she may marry Sir Bruce Bagley. Underneath it all lies the story of the tensions in the Traffle marriage, an emotional power struggle won by Mrs Traffle.
Public Library UK (PDF)
"Crapy Cornelia" [1909]
First published in Harper's Magazine, October 1909. First book edition in The Finer Grain, London / New York, 1910.
A combination of two important themes for James: "fear of marriage" and "lost opportunity." A third theme are the unwelcome changes in American society.
The protagonist, White-Mason, contemplates asking the much younger Mrs. Worthingham's in marriage. In her drawing room, he meets his old friend Cornelia and thereafter frequents her house. Cornelia is of the same generation and has the same memories of New York, so they hit it off. White-Mason gives up marriage with the much younger woman, but he also refuses Cornelia - they both are old, he says, an he just wants to be her friend.
Project Gutenberg
"The Bench of Desolation" [1909]
First published in Putnam's Magazine, Oct. 1909-Jan. 1910. First book edition in The Finer Grain, London / New York, 1910.
A story that starts in a gloomy mood but ends with a rather improbable, fairy-tale-like solution. Herbert Dodd, seller of prints and old books, and Kate Cookham become estranged; and to ward off a breach of promise suit, he agrees to pay her four hundred pounds. He then has a separate life in which he marries, but also looses his family again, and finally is bankrupted. That is the situation in which he day in day out sits on a bench overlooking the sea, and there Kate Cookham finds him. She has invested his money and more than quadrupled it; she has always loved him; their estrangement was based on a misunderstanding; they marry.
Project Gutenberg
"A Round of Visits" [1910]
First published in The English Review, April-May 1910. First book edition in The Finer Grain, London / New York, 1910.
James' last short story, again about the impression he received of the United States after living in Europe for a long time. James had left the traditional (Puritanical and paternalistic) New York of the 1870s, and he was rather shocked by the ‘new’ America (harsh and materialistic) he found on revisiting 25 years later. The protagonist of the story has returned from Europe to New York after discovering that a friend in New York has embezzled his
money. This is symbolic for James' own situation: he felt swindled out of his identity by the huge changes for the worse he saw in American society.
Project Gutenberg
The best stories among the above are in my view:
- The Beast in the Jungle
- The Jolly Corner
- A Round of Visits
If you prefer to read the stories in book form, the recommended edition is that of the Complete Stories of Henry James, in five volumes, in The Library of America. Collections of stories are also available, for example in two volumes in Everyman's Library, or in Penguin Classics.
The definitive biography on James has been written by Leon Edel, The Life of Henry James, in five volumes (1955-1972). There is also a shortened version: Henry James, A Life (1985) - which still runs to above 700 pages.
Information on James' stories at the internet:
The Ladder (Archived)
James - Tales (at Mantex)
Henry James Scholar's Guide to Websites
*****
Previous articles in this series:
James (Stories 2): "The Conquest of London," 1875-1884
James (Stories 3): "The Middle Years," 1885-1891
James (Stories 4): "The Treacherous Years," 1892-1898