28 February: Boreham on Henry James

A Seer of Sussex
We mark today the anniversary of the death of one of the most shadowy and mystifying figures in English literature. Henry James was born on April 15, 1843. Like a will-o-the-wisp, he always seems to elude us and envelops himself in a kind of golden haze. We pay our homage to the lustre of his name but we never visualise the man. We read his books, admire his style, fall in love with certain of his characters, but for some inscrutable reason we never find ourselves on familiar terms with the author himself. We seem to be mere listeners-in. We hear his voice, chuckle over his humour, feel the poignancy of his pathos and, generally, enjoy the entertainment he provides. But there is no television about it. We never see the man. This is a thousand pities, for those who knew him assure us he was well worth knowing. Mr. A. C. Benson loved to visit him, and to the end of his days cherished the memory of a prematurely-old, tired-looking man who simply radiated a spirit of courtesy, thoughtfulness, and genial hospitality.

Everybody in the district seemed to know and like him. An elderly clergyman paused to consult him; a youth on horseback rode up to greet him; a bevy of young girls flushed with pleasure as he paused for a chat; a little maiden of seven or eight came bounding up to him, throwing her arms about his neck and kissing him effusively; while all the dogs in the neighbourhood wagged their tails and fawned upon him as he patted, greeted and stroked them. Henry James was a cosmopolitan genius. In many respects a true and typical American, the dignity and antiquity of the European cities fascinated him. He spent the best years of his life hovering fitfully between the two shores of the Atlantic. London magnetised him, and the more classical cities of the continent rendered him positively delirious. "I go reeling through the streets of Rome," he says, "in a perfect fever of enjoyment. At last, for the first time, I live!"

Medley Of British And American Sentiment
As life wore on, the majesty of the old world asserted an ever-increasing authority over him. He saw less and less of America, and spent more and more time in England. He became intimate with illustrious Englishmen—Gladstone, Stevenson, Tennyson, Bright, Burne-Jones, Kipling, and many others. Little by little he caught the British atmosphere and fell under the spell of the Imperial tradition. The climax of this evolutionary process was reached when, in 1914, the war broke out stirring his intense nature to its profoundest depths. He was lost in admiration of British chivalry and British honour. He could not tolerate being an alien on English soil at so magnificent a moment, and so, a year before he died, he sought naturalisation, and became a British subject. There, then, he stands, a strange compound of Irish and Scottish blood, an odd medley of American and British sentiment. It is as a mixture—heterogeneous, incongruous, indefinable, and self contradictory—that he is destined to take his place in literature.

Mr. Chesterton compares him with George Meredith, but with this difference: the characters in George Meredith are gods while the characters in Henry James are ghosts. "We cannot but admire the figures that flit about his afternoon drawing-rooms," Mr Chesterton admits, "but they are figures that have no faces. Everybody treats everybody else in a manner which, in real life, would constitute itself an impossible intellectual strain." As a small boy Henry James wrote stories which greatly amused his elders on account of the picturesque descriptions of double-dyed villains and deeply-sophisticated heroines. They were all of a type that never did and never could exist, and to the end of his days his work was more or less disfigured by the same amiable frailty. For when everything has been said that can be said in eulogy of James' faultless technique, his psychological acumen, transparent sincerity, and passionate love of beauty, it still remains true that his creations are seldom convincing.

What Will Next Century Make Of It?
Will Henry James live? Mr. Benson felt certain that he will. His contention was that Henry James was born before his time. His art, he declared, is far ahead of us and we shall have to wait until the Twenty-First Century comes in before we catch it up and realise how supreme it really was. As the tribute of a disciple to the master whom he revered, this may be very impressive, but the affectionate intimacy between the older man and the younger one discounts to some extent the critical value of the judgment. The novels of Henry James were never remarkably popular, and to his sorrow, he knew it. He put all his soul into his manuscript and the result sadly disappointed him. He felt—and the conviction was like a knife at his heart—that his work was not appreciated. Mr. Benson thought that the world would gradually grow to Henry James. The stern truth is that it is more likely, to grow away from him.

We like to think of Henry James seated in his fragrant bower in his beautiful old-world garden in Sussex, dictating with intense concentration and meticulous precision the exquisite phrases that, he fondly hoped, would live for ever. We gladly accept the assurances of Mr. Benson, Mr. H. G. Wells, and others as to the charm of his personality. For all his depth of wisdom and his terrible clearness of vision he was, they tell us, one of the least formidable and most lovable of men. But such excellences secure for no man a throne among the immortals. By his work he must stand or fall. We are living in an age that grows increasingly insistent in its demand for transparent simplicity, in diction and expression. The characters that, moving across the elegant pages of Henry James, failed to convince our fathers, are scarcely likely to intrigue our children. It is, therefore, difficult to discover in the work of Henry James the qualities that will make an irresistible appeal to the men and women of the age that is to be.

F W Boreham

Image: Henry James