LETTERS, FICTIONS, LIVES This page intentionally left blank LETTERS, FICTIONS, LIVES Henry James and William Dean Howells MICHAEL ANESKO New York Oxford • Oxford University Press *997 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog ing-in-Publicat ion Data James, Henry, 1843-1916. [Correspondence. Selections] Letters, fictions, lives : Henry James and William Dean Howells / [edited by] Michael Anesko. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-506119-5 (cloth) i. James Henry, 1843-1916—Correspondence. 2. Authors, American—igth century—Correspondence. 3. Authors, American—aoth century—Correspondence. 4. Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920— Correspondence. 5. Novelists, American—i9th century— Correspondence. 6. Novelists, American—2oth century—Correspondence. 7. Critics—United States—Correspondence. 8. Fiction—Authorship. I. Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. II. Anesko, Michael. III. Title. PS2I23-A435 1997 813'.4—dc2i [B] 97-11832 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book commemorates the unabbreviated friendship of S. and S. This page intentionally left blank Prologue hronologically at least, Howells had the last word, but time has favored CJames. At the hour of his death in 1920, Howells characteristically was at work, preparing a piece for Harper's Monthly ("The American James") in which he intended to commemorate their early friendship in Cambridge, their rambles at Fresh Pond, their beginning dialogue about "methods of fiction . . . the art we both adored." Howells honestly admitted that in those days he was much James's "junior" in such matters, a stance from which few critics have chosen to depart. As early as 1919 one comparative summary of their work curtly suggested that Howells "nowhere has the distinction of Henry James; and it may be doubted whether much of his fiction will long survive the test of changing inter- ests and tastes."! The present volume of documents and commentary makes no particular claim to reverse this long-accepted priority, though it does seek to reveal new aspects of a vitally important literary friendship. Those aspects sug- gest that the personal and professional relationship between James and Howells was considerably more complex than is commonly believed. Epigrams have had a tendency to displace evidence, a point best illustrated by George Moore's fa- mous quip that "Henry James went to France and read Tourgueneff," while "Howells stayed at home and read Henry James."2 With very few exceptions, most critics have accepted Moore's logic of implied influence, assuming that a cosmopolitan James learned much more about the art of fiction from his Euro- pean contemporaries than he ever could have gleaned from sources closer to home. In recent years sufficient allowance has been made for Hawthorne, but the full reach of James's American appropriations has not yet been measured. His was, after all, an admittedly grasping imagination. If James went to France and read Turgenev, he also read William Dean How- ells and remained unusually attentive to the complicated evolution of that writ- er's literary career. Neither James nor Howells came quickly to the writing of fiction, a fact that the modern reader (perhaps even desperately aware of their combined productivity) might easily overlook. Before that long, groaning shelf of novels was ever begun, both men served extended literary apprenticeships as viii Prologue travel writers and reviewers for the still relatively new American magazines of the post-Civil War era. Indeed, from 1865 to 1881 Howells's fortunes were di- rectly linked to the Atlantic Monthly, the editorial ranks of which served as rungs on his literary ladder (and from which he frequently extended a helping hand to James). With varying degrees of interest, curiosity, and envy, each followed the other's tentative advances toward independent authorial professionalism. In her still useful study of James's early career, Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley antici- pated that "a task awaiting the future historian of American literature [would be] to determine not only Howells's early influence upon James but James's in- 3 fluence upon Howells." This volume attempts to perform that task by recon- structing and evaluating documentary and textual evidence of their literary cross-fertilization. In different ways both Howells and James yearned for a realm of imaginative freedom, that "country of the blue" so tenderly evoked by James in the pages of "The Next Time." As their ongoing correspondence will show, neither man could find security in the competitive literary marketplace they jointly inhabited. Plagued by a restlessness that was more bourgeois than bohe- mian, Howells and James could only wander—and they could write. They did much of both, even to the extent of trespass. This book maps the paths of their transgressions, their achievements, and their careers. To observe Henry James's sesquicentennial in 1993, hundreds of the writer's devotees from around the world converged on New York's Washington Square for a remarkable five-day series of lectures, symposia, dramatic readings, and other celebratory acts. From start to finish, those in attendance voiced their frustration over the limited range of James's letters currently available to schol- ars; in fact, the need for a complete edition of the Master's correspondence became virtually the sole topic on which critics of divergent theoretical persua- sions could agree. This volume alone cannot satisfy their reiterated demand, but it may help to establish a new standard of scholarship for the presentation of James's epistolary texts, documents that have not always received the careful 4 editorial attention they deserve. Of the 151 letters included in this volume—representing most of the extant correspondence between the two men—only half (76) have been printed else- where. The items previously unpublished are all James's (75). To a reader unfa- miliar with James's peculiar habits, the fact that only 32 letters from Howells appear might be misleading. This lopsided tally does not relegate him to an inferior status among James's many correspondents. In fact, the reverse is true; scant as the number may seem, James preserved more letters from Howells than from anyone else outside his immediate family. As Leon Edel has shown, the Master's fireplace was his favored repository for correspondence; typically, he destroyed letters as soon as he answered them. On at least two occasions, with the ruthless deliberation of Savonarola, he made bonfires of others' postal vani- 5 ties. Howells, fortunately, was less incendiary. When (after much debate) James's heirs finally gave permission for Percy Lubbock to assemble the first edition of the writer's correspondence—The Letters of Henry James, in two volumes (1920)—Howells eagerly pledged his support. "I have kept everything," he as- Prologue ix sured the family; "there must be some thousands of pages." In a postscript he added, "I am glad the letters will be allowed to tell the Life of H. J." Nothing 6 else, he urged, "would have been fit." Although Howells probably overesti- mated his true holdings, he had indeed preserved a run of James's letters that 7 was almost unique in depth, longevity, and literary significance. Letters: from time to time, both men complained of their necessity. "God knows they are impossible," James lamented, "the great fatal, incurable, unpump- able leak of one's poor sinking bark." Still, he kept afloat, buoyed up by an epistolary energy that can only seem astonishing to our telephonic (and cyber- netic) age. In spite of James's disclaimer that "letters, in the writing life, are the last things that get themselves written," scholars estimate that the Master com- posed more than twelve thousand of them; and his portion to Howells rank among the best. Even the occasional notes, dashed off at hurried moments, flicker with wit and style—which explains why they were lovingly preserved. The full record of their relationship, however, cannot be traced exclusively in private correspondence. In reviewing each other's work, James and Howells were, in effect, writing public letters that even the prevailing habit of magazine anonymity could not entirely conceal. When read in sequence, their letters and published commentary provide a more complete record of critical response and reciprocity. The selection included in this volume represents each writer's most significant criticism of the other. To publish these documents together is not merely a matter of convenience: this new collection provides a valuable tool for 8 historically informed comprehension and appreciation of both men's work. Notes 1. Walter C. Bronson, A Short History of American Literature, rev. ed. (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1919), 307. 2. George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (1889; rpt. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1972), 152. 3. Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley, The Early Development of Henry James (1935; rev. ed. Ur- bana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 75. 4. The accuracy of the most comprehensive edition now available, the four-volume Henry James Letters, edited by Leon Edel, has been questioned since the first installment appeared more than twenty years ago. In a summary view of the project, Philip Home has concluded that Edel's work "is essential but inadequate. It is in his far-reaching unre- liability that Professor Edel makes a comprehensive scholarly edition, daunting project as it is, an urgent necessity—despite the bulk of his four fat volumes. With a writer of the stature of Henry James his failings are a distressing anomaly, an error in need of correc- tion" (Cambridge Quarterly 15 [1986]: 141). Also pertinent to the material published here is Christoph K. Lohmann and George Arms's "Commentary" (Nineteenth-Century Fiction 31 [1976-77]: 244-47); their critique of Edel's editorial procedure is based specifically on his published texts of letters addressed to Howells. It should be noted that Howells's sesquicentennial celebration in 1987 also drew a crowd to Cambridge, Massachusetts: a gathering less numerous than James's, but still sufficiently eager to hear John Updike assess the Dean's career as an "anti-novelist." Ironically, Howells may be less popular, but his correspondence has been better served.