450
PARTISAN REVIEW
his novels and tales. Critics have assailed the rigorous censorship to
which the earlier writings were subjected in this process, but James's
action is understandable if one compares the revision and the revisit
as attempts equally to reclaim the past and reshape it while there was
yet time. In the careful review of all his past work which the prepara–
tion of the collected edition entailed, James must again have come
upon "The Story of a Year"-this time paginally. But he did not in–
clude this tale. What one does find there- psychologically instead–
is a new story, "The Jolly Corner," which was first published in
1908
and was probably written during the arduous process of the collective
revision. This tale was plainly based on the American visit, yet it no
doubt also represented a retelling of the omitted "The Story of a Year"
-the most radical revision of them all. For in "The Jolly Corner"
one finds a coalescence of revisit and revision which satisfactorily ex–
plains the complementary relationship of this story to the first ever
written. Through marking the persistence of the trend one comes to
see that, despite the wishful reworking, "The Story of a Year" was
nevertheless the story of a life.
Towards the end of
1909
and for nearly a year thereafter, Jan1es
suffered from a severe nervous depression which completely incapa–
citated him for work. This illness must in the foregoing context be
taken as a reaction to the failure of his restitutive efforts. Neither the
supernatural tales nor the American return nor the definitive revision
of his works had achieved the solution he desperately sought, and des–
pair overtook him. His brother William's death toward the end of
1910
removed a mainstay of his life and deepened his misery. Further
illness in
1912
made the end seem tragically near.
But through everything he held on, actuated still by the same
forward impetus that had unfailingly declared itself before. He was
unwittingly preparing for the final and highest adventure of his life.
For with the outbreak of World War I in
1914,
this reticent man of
seventy-one, until now without any obvious interest in political affairs,
of a sudden identified himself with
social action.
He recognized the
cost that might be involved when he compared himself to the quiet
dweller in a tenement upon whom the question of "structural improve–
ments" is thrust and he feared for his "house of the spirit" where
everything had become for better or worse adjusted to his familiar
habits and use. But this "vulgar apprehension" could not deter him;
and, as he says, "I found myself before long building on additions
and upper stories, throwing out extensions and protrusions, indulging
even, all recklessly, in gables and pinnacles and battlements-things
