Author, author

Reference 1 being a pick-me-up from the Raynes Park platform library. BH read it first and enjoyed it so I thought I would give it a go. A fictionalised account of a London chunk of the life of Henry James, the chunk when he had a go at theatre. Nicely written, but which still manages to irritate in the usual way of such books in that it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction – this despite the author explaining in his acknowledgements (at the end) that has not taken many liberties with the truth and setting out what looks like a prodigious amount of background reading. 

A reasonably easy read, with just the occasional longueur. Organised as follows:

Part 1: in his London flat, nearing the end of his life

Part 2: eight chapters: theatrical ventures. Ending with deciding to give it one more year

Part 3: six chapters: the crash, Trilby, the recovery, the house in Rye

Part 4: back in his London flat. The end (in 1916). Followed by an authorial interjection about life after death and posterity – something, it seems, in which James took an interest. Perhaps following in his father’s footsteps, a man with curious beliefs.

A late work from Lodge and a rather incestuous one: a story about a famous novelist (Henry James) fretting about his declining powers and his uninspiring sales. The story of his trying his hand at writing plays and getting them put on, which ends in disaster. A disaster which was well rubbed in by his taking an unwise curtain call after an unsuccessful first night. 

The disaster happening towards the end of the nineteenth century, a time, it seems, when the working classes in the East End used to come west in the evening for the theatre and who were apt to be noisy about their likes and dislikes. A time also when (English) theatres had to pay their own way, without a helping hand from the government. 

We learn a lot about the trials and tribulations likely to be faced by an established, middle aged, sensitive and rather private man trying his hand in the hurly-burly, rough-and-tumble world of the theatre.

James’ friendship with George De Maurier – a very successful illustrator for Punch – and the author of the hit novel ‘Trilby’ – and his family being a thread running through most of the present book. In this telling, the fact of Trilby being a (female) artist’s model who poses naked is the big thing. Whereas Wikipedia seems more interested in Whistler’s complaints (which may well have served to boost the novel) and the anti-Semitism carried by Svengali. Whistler being a real artist and Svengali being Mr. Bad in the novel. 

A friendship which was strained by De Maurier’s success in James’ own line of business. Like Constable, I suspect James of preferred his close friends not to be competitors. That said, he must have been a very sociable man, for he led a very busy social life in London and elsewhere. While unlike Constable, after the disaster, he burned most of his extensive correspondence, hating the idea of critics and worse poring over such stuff, rather than the work he chose to publish.

Another friendship was with Constance Fenimore, another author from the US, a bit lighter than James but better at making money. James is portrayed at being rather ambivalent about her. Sadly, she ended by falling out of a window in Venice, about the time that James was wrestling with the theatrical world in London.

For an author not making a great deal of money, James appeared to have a rather extravagant lifestyle. Perhaps he had the knack of managing rather well on not very much. And then, he came from a family with money, so maybe he had some of that.

Other reading

Prompted by all this to have a go at the books, starting with the Kindle, which took a while to get going, not having used it for a while and I feared the worst. Was its time up?

Starting with the short story, Daisy Miller. The story of a good-looking daughter of a wealthy family who comes to grief in Rome. Partly because she is too free in her ways and too friendly with a well-dressed Italian courier. She actually dies of the Roman fever, mal-aria for bad air.

I then moved onto a somewhat longer story, Washington Square, as yet unfinished. The story of a plain but decent daughter of a widowed and wealthy society doctor in New York. Probably to be brought down by the machinations of a good-looking cad.

I rather like the James prose style of these stories, despite all the talk of his sentences being over-long and over-complicated. But the stories are perhaps better suited to lady than gentlemen readers – perhaps reflecting the readership of the magazines in which they were originally serialised.

The second story comes a few years after a similar story from Trollope, a sub-story in his novel ‘The Prime Minister’. In this case, the gold-digging cad has the added disqualification of having a Portuguese sounding name. Perhaps a well-used storyline at the time.

I also thought to let BH have a go, having read the present book, and was pleased to find that Epsom Library could offer a volume of stories, including Daisy Miller, from Penguin Classics. She liked this story well enough and she liked the notes at the end, but she ran out of puff on the second or third story.

Then thinking that James, along with Lawrence, was a big cheese in my English lessons in the 1960s, I thought to take a look at the chapter in Leavis’s ‘The Common Pursuit’ which did James – ‘Henry James and the function of criticism’ – Leavis being something of a master of this universe at that time. I have rarely got on well with literary criticism and fare better with literary biography, and Leavis was no exception: I think you need to be well versed in both James and the literary controversies of Leavis’s day to get much, let alone full, value. Far more dense on the page than James himself!

Notwithstanding, I come away with the impression that Leavis, while having a high regard for James, feels that he fell into the trap, perhaps an occupational hazard, of living too little and writing too much. With the lack of quality in the former mapping through to the latter, particularly in his late work.

Other matters

I wonder now about whether the financial prospects for a ‘quality’ novelist were better up to say the beginning of the second world war, than they have become since. Is the real money to be made as a ‘popular’ novelist? Supposing, that is, that it is possible or sensible to categorise novels in this way. How many novelists try to bridge the gap, to have it both ways, like Simenon? Or have the heavy novels of the late nineteenth century just fallen away; there are no longer the readers. Who reads ‘Middlemarch’ these days – once a favourite book of mine but not looked at for a good while now? Despite having hung onto a print copy for old times sake. And a fat biography of the author. Search suggests 10 notices in these pages over the years, but the only one I checked, from 2010, said nothing about reading the book.

A walk on part for ‘The good soldier’ of reference 3.

Conclusions

Another lucky find. I have read James in the past – and, as suggested above, I believe he was all the thing in my school days. But I have not read him for a long time and I don’t think I ever bothered to read about him, rather than read his books.

We will see how many I read now.

PS 1: a post constructed with ‘div’, for which see reference 12. But there not being a lot of pictures, not a great problem here, apart from the ugly vertical spacing. Possibly a side effect of copying the text, through Notepad, from a Word document.

PS 2: geek at work. 'div's now removed. Except in the one place where they were appropriate.

References

Reference 1: Author, author – David Lodge – 2004.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lodge_(author). 

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/09/mr-ford.html. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_du_Maurier. At least two of his five children died relatively young (Sylvia and Guy).

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby_(novel). 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Miller. 

Reference 7: https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2013/05/29/roman-fever-influence-infection-and-the-image-of-rome-1700-1870/. 

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/constable.html. 

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James. 

Reference 10: The Common Pursuit – F R Leavis – 1946.

Reference 11: Henry James and the New Jerusalem: Of Morality and Style – Quentin Anderson, Kenyon Review – 1946. Available from JSTOR. The top of the first page is snapped above.

Reference 12: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/testing.html.