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Henry James and his Tiger-Cat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

Carl J. Weber
Carl J. Weber*
Affiliation:
Colby College
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Extract

In Henry James's story, An International Episode, two English-men visit America. One of the visitors is Lord Lambeth, son of the Duke of Bayswater and brother of the Countess of Pimlico. In New York City and in Newport, the Englishmen are hospitably entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Westgate, not because the Americans are in any way obligated to the visitors but solely because of their open-hearted habits of hospitality and friendliness. After the Englishmen have returned to Great Britain, Mrs. Westgate and a Boston friend, Miss Bessie Alden, go to London; but on their arrival there, they find Lord Lambeth's family very slow in returning the courtesies he had been shown in America. Henry James remarks that “Bessie Alden . . . saw something of . . . English society . . . and . . . especially prized the privilege of meeting certain celebrated . . . authors and artists,”' but of the Duchess of Bayswater and the Countess of Pimlico she and Mrs. Westgate saw very little. At first they saw them not at all. And after the haughty English ladies had at last made a reluctant call on the visitors from America, Mrs. Westgate remarked: “They meant to overawe us. . . . They meant to snub us.” Bessie Alden observed that “their manners were not fine.” And Mrs. Westgate replied: “They were not even good!” Shortly after being snubbed in London, the Americans departed for the continent, leaving the reader with the impression that they were far greater ladies than the titled representatives of British ladyhood who had tried to overawe them in London.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1953 , pp. 672 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

1 An International Episode (New York: Harper tod Brother., 1879), p. 110.

2 Then letters are part of the Vernon Lee correspondence now in the Colby College Library, Waterville, Maine. They are here published by special permission of Mr. William James and of the literary agents of the James estate. Except in a few cases which will be hereafter noted to the contrary, all the letters quoted in this article have been transcribed from the original autographs in the Colby Library.

3 New York: Macmillan, 1934, p. 415. I am indebted to Mr. Burdett Gardner, of the Harvard Univ. Grad. School, for his calling this passage to my attention.

4 James did not write the year. Some one afterwards wrote “1890” in pencil on the auto-graph; bat whether Miss Paget did tins herself, in the course of the 50 years during, which she retained possession of the letter, or whether (as is more likely) it was added by some one else who attempted to date the letter during the 28 years since Miss Paget's death, one cannot now say. In either case, the year “1890” is clearly and demonstrably wrong, and I have therefore dated the letter as above. This is not the only instance in which a date subsequently added in pencil is incorrect, and in all such cases I have silently made the necessary change without taking up time and apace to parade all the evidence that supports the correction.

5 I at first thought that he did not write to her at all, for there are no James letters in the files at Colby for the latter part of 1884. I have leaned from Mr. Burdett Gardner, however, that James did write and that the letters are extant in England. Since Mr. Gard-ner has recently been permitted to make transcripts of these letters, I have suggested that he supplement my account and fill in the gap here. His inferences drawn from these letters are of course, his own.

6 See Leon Edel's “The Aspern, Papers: Great Aunt Wyckoff and Juliana Bordereau,” MLN, LXVII (June 1952), 392-395.

7 The Tragic Muse was published in London at the end of May 1890, in three volume., totaling 758 pages. In New York the novel was published on 7 June 1890, in two volumes.

8 Since this old friend of Violet Paget it to appear again on a later page, it may be well to identify her here. Born Louisa Erskine, she married (in 1867) Sir Garnet (later Viscount) Wolseley (1833-1913). Their daughter Frances, to whom James refers, was now 21 or 22 years old. Lord Wolseley was in command of the British forces at the Battle of Tel-el- Kebir, near Cairo, Egypt, on 13 Sept. 1882, which resulted in a decisive British victory. This was the kit battle in which British soldiers fought in red coats. James did not live to see the equestrian statue of Wolseley unveiled in Whitehall, London, in 1920.

9 John S. Sargent, the portrait painter, was born in Florence and became an early-boy-hood friend of Violet Paget. He eventually painted a portrait of her, as well as one of Henry James.

10 I am indebted to Dr. Leon Edel of New York University for my knowledge of this letter. I quote the pertinent passages from it by special permission of Mr. William James and of the literary agents of the James estate, and also by permission of Harvard College Library.

11 I am indebted to Dr. Leon Edel for my knowledge of the existence of this letter among the James Papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard, and I gratefully acknowledge his help also in deciphering some of Henry James's scrawled words. I quote from this letter by special permission of Mr. Williams James and of the literary agents of the James estate and by permission of Harvard College Library.

12 The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York: Scribners, 1920), I, 115.

13 This is the only letter of March 1893 which il quoted in the Letters of Williams James ed. by his son Henry James (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), and only about 210 words of the letter are quoted (I, 312)—a harmless passage (beginning with three dots and ending with three dots) in which William said to Henry: “I don't wonder that it seems strange to you that we should be leaving here [Florence] just in the glory of the year. Your view of Italy is that of the tourist.” Curiously enough, that is just what Violet Paget had said in Vanitasl But the tenor of that part of the letter which Henry James (son of William) did mot publish in 1920 may be gathered from Henry James's reply of 21 March 1893, as quoted above.