F. W. Dupee
HENRY JAMES IN THE GREAT GREY BABYLON*
The idealistic formula of James's early fiction proved lesd
workable after 1880, partly because he had worked it so much. But
it sustained
him
through
The
Portrait of
a Lady,
holding its own
against the sheer magnitude of that work, the considerable realism
of the settings and portraits, the attractions that lay
du cot
~
de chez
Warburton.
He thoroughly knew those attractions himself when he
wrote the novel.
Daisy Miller
had made
him
something of a celebrity;
his
acquaintance now ranged from Tennyson to F.anny Kemble, from
George Moore to Lord Rosebery, and in a single London winter hle
dined out 107 times. Recalling the anxious years in America , he wrote
in
his notebook: "Now that life has brought something, brought a
measurable part of what
r
dreamed of then, it is touching enough to
look back. I knew at least what I wanted then-to see something
of the world. I have seen a good deal of it, and I look a
t
the past
in
the light of this knowledge. What strikes me
is
the definiteness, tlle
unerringness of those longings. I wanted to do very much what I
have done, and success;
if
I may say so, now stretches back a tender
hand to its younger brother, desire."
A success of happiness, a success on
his
own high tenns. It was
as the poet-the ironic poet, to be sure-of American innocence
that he was making his way in worldly old England. He was a "lion,"
however modest, on the strength of a tale about a Schenectady girl
who would not herself have been invited anywhere. In
this
pleasant
paradox many things were vindicated: his European residence, his
love of the world, the persuasiveness of his
art.
It
is
true that james's "perturbed spirit," as he called it, was al-
*
From a forthcoming life of Henry James to be published in the American
Men of Letters Series by William Sloane Associates.
