BOOKS
615
The second volume of them
(1975)
covered, by contrast with
the first, only eight years, for with James's settling in London in
1875
the communications with home grew voluminous, fully report–
ing for the later biographer James's exploration of the Victorian
social world and his first encounters with French intellectual circles,
his discovery of the glamor of Italy, as well as the progress of his
career climaxing in
The Portrait oj a Lady.
Though there is no letter to
Turgenev in the series, and only one formal note to Flaubert, we
know, from the letters to others, how much he was impressed by
these masters. Other relationships fail to find clear definition. Edel
makes something in the biography-not much-of James's rides in
the Campagna with five American ladies, but there are no letters to
any except Lizzie Boott, a friend of Minny Temple's of whom he had
always been benignantly fond. And there is none to Elena Lowe,
though Edel counts five allusions to her as sweet or mysterious,
hardly basis for the conclusion that she is the fascinating Christina
Light of
The Princess Casamassima
and that "Elena Lowe seems to
have haunted Henry for he was to love Christina as he loved few of
his heroines . "
And now we have the third volume of the
Letters,
belonging to
the busy span
1883-1895.
They are addressed to many more people
than those of the previous volumes; with the death of his parents and
the migration of his sister Alice to England, James's transatlantic
mail was reduced to the slender, important stream to his brother
William and to a few old friends like the Nortons and Howells.
These, like the letters to Americans settled abroad and to new conti–
nental and English friends, reflect his participation in diversified
social settings and his membership in the fraternity of international
letters. It is true that we have no letters to Zola, but we learn in his
other letters how much Zola challenged and stimulated him.
We do have the letters to Stevenson, a remarkable series, the
communication of one literary genius to another nearly his equal,
and far more important than the equally numerous letters to such a
literary hack as Edmund Gosse. James, moreover, not only
respected Stevenson's art but felt his personal charm, and when
Stevenson abandoned England for the South Seas he sincerely
mourned the loss of his company. And yet even this friendship shows
no more evidence of close personal interaction than we can imagine
for James's visits to Turgenev, whose private life as a member of
Mme. Viardot's household in Paris he really observed only with
astonished incomprehension. His ease at the Stevenson fireside was
