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The Ivory Tower : The Cessation of Concern
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
Henry James's The Ivory Tower (1917) has suffered a similar fate to that of other incomplete last novels; most critical discussion has centred on the way it would have ended, taking into account resemblances with earlier works. This line of enquiry has not been very profitable; James's late style is too complex and rich to tempt anyone to continue The Ivory Tower in the way that ‘ Another Lady ’ has recently gone on with Sanditon. In any case one cannot legitimately say one wishes that James had lived to finish The Ivory Tower, since in fact he lived on without doing so; he had enough time to complete it if he had wanted. His general intentions were clear as we know from the ample notes he left. Why then did James give up? He stopped with the outbreak of the First World War, no doubt on the day war broke out. The really interesting critical question with regard to The Ivory Tower is: What is there in the novel, in its design as well as in its completed opening, which James found contradicted by war? James's imagination found the creative act of writing The Ivory Tower incompatible with war-time experience. He turned to other work, such as The Sense of the Past.
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References
1 James, Henry, The Ivory Tower (1917)Google Scholar, Preface by P. Lubbock.
2 The Letters of Henry James (ed. Lubbock, P., 1920), vol. II, p. 394Google Scholar.
3 Matthiessen, F. O., Henry James: The Major Phase (1944), p. 133Google Scholar. Buitenhuis, P., in his The Grasping Imagination (Toronto, 1970), p. 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar, agrees, stating that the novel, ‘ with its vision of implied evil, rapacity, and violence, is quite congruent with the appalling war that caught up with it’.
4 The Ivory Tower (1917), Notes, p. 287Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 328.
6 James, Henry, The American Scene (1907), pp. 95 and 178Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., pp. 236–7.
8 The Ivory Tower, Notes, p. 286.
9 The American Scene, ch. 6, pp. 211 and 224.
10 The Ivory Tower, Notes, p. 285.
11 We know from an anecdote of John Sargent's, told to John Bailey, that ‘fix it’ was an Americanism which James particularly hated; vide S. Nowell-Smith, The Legend of the Master (1947), p. 106.
12 The Ivory Tower, pp. 18 and 12.
13 Ibid., pp. 58–60.
14 Ibid., p. 56.
15 Putt, S. G. in his A Reader's Guide to Henry James (1966), pp. 406–7Google Scholar, argues that Howard [sic] Vint and Cissy Foy ‘are casting themselves, with an equally irresistible fascination for the lure of riches, in the role of Kate Croy and Merton Densher.’
16 The Ivory Tower, pp. 181–4.
17 Ibid., pp. 160–1.
18 Ibid., p. 32.
19 Ibid., p. 175, n.
20 The American Scene, p. 222.
21 Henry James Letters (ed. Edel, L., 1975), I, p. 252Google Scholar. (Letter to C. E. Norton of 16 January 1871.)
22 The Ivory Tower, Notes, p. 331.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 287.
25 Ibid., p. 288.
26 Ibid., p. 335.
27 Ibid., p. 309.
28 Ibid., p. 314.
29 In the very last of his tales, ‘A Round of Visits’ (1910), James expresses his horror of the New York world of larceny through the suicide of Newton Winch. On this episode, F. O. Matthiessen comments that James ‘had penetrated into a world so corrupted by money that the only escape seemed to be by violence’; vide his Henry James: The Major Phase, p. 117.
30 By Cargill, O. in his The Novels of Henry James (1961), p. 466Google Scholar.
31 The Ivory Tower, Notes, p. 341.
32 Ibid., p. 342. P. Buitenhuis quotes, from unpublished notes to Books III and IV in the Houghton Library at Harvard, further statements by James as to his intentions; he was not going to enter the consciousness of any character except Gray: even with Rosanna, James would abstain from speaking for what was behind and beneath. Buitenhuis interprets these notes as indicating that Gray's consciousness ‘was to become the reflector of all the others in the book’, op. cit., p. 241.
33 The Ivory Tower, pp. 71–2.
34 Cargill, O., in his The Novels of Henry James (1961), p. 475Google Scholar.
35 The Ivory Tower, pp. 108–109.
36 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
37 Ibid., p. 259.
38 Told to J. Bailey in 1916 by Lady Lyttelton; vide Nowell-Smith, S., The Legend of the Master (1947), p. 166Google Scholar.
39 The Letters of Henry James (ed. Lubbock, P., 1920), vol. II, p. 398Google Scholar.
40 Vide S. Nowell-Smith, op. cit., p. 162. The source is Shane Leslie.
41 New York Times, 21 March 1915.