Anyone out there who has never read a Henry James? Is it because you believe he's inaccessible, boring, difficult, over-long, too fixated on minutiae, too exhausting for the brain?
He is known to be a writer who takes his sweet time to tell a story. Although James writes with a deep and finely detailed eye, he moves his novels along at the pace of a growing bramble shoot. No matter – his style inveigles you, and before you know it, you're chapters in. His writing voice gets 'into your head' and it's not hard to become involved and absorbed.
James was well known in his life as a critic and a scholar – he was enthusiastic and exacting about the craft and theory of writing fiction. His theories work to this day – in fact, he's one of the best teachers, both through his acclaimed manual The Art of Fiction and through the example of his fiction. James is the past master of character development, plot construction, authentic dialogue, and structural timing – he places the where and when of each event and incident in their perfect place.
Above all, his stories are dark. Each of his characters has a 'shadow side'. Through his books, he examines and exposes some of the worst traits of human nature.
I've loved Henry James since my twenties. I'm not alone. Nigella Lawson explains, in her 1998 cookbook How to Eat:
When I was in my teens, I loved Henry James. I read him with uncorrupted pleasure. Then, when I was eighteen or so, and had just started The Golden Bowl, someone – older, cleverer, whose opinions were offered gravely – asked me whether I didn’t find James very difficult, as she always did. Until then, I had no idea that I might, and I didn’t. From that moment, I couldn’t read him but self-consciously; from then on, I did find him difficult. I do not wish to insult by the comparison, but I had a similar, Jamesian mayonnaise experience. My mother used to make mayonnaise weekly, twice weekly; we children would help. I had no idea it was meant to be difficult, or that it was thought to be such a nerve-racking ordeal. Then someone asked how I managed to be so breezy about it, how I stopped it from curdling. From then on, I scarcely made a mayonnaise which didn’t split. It’s not surprising: when confidence is undermined or ruptured, it can be difficult to do the simplest things, or to take any enjoyment even in trying...
For my Read Classic series this time, I'm looking at The Wings of the Dove. In lockdown, our village hall always had a box of free books in the porch and this Henry James was tucked in there, waiting for a new reader.I plucked it out because I knew this novel would end up in Venice, a city I love. I read it over the winter, snuggling in front of roaring fires, and tucked into bed on a mound of soft pillows.
On the first page you meet Kate, waiting for an interview with her unloved and unloving father – a wastrel who lives in poverty. Beautiful and full of style, it's fair to say that Kate is a designing young woman who does not want to end up poor like her dad, so has thrown her hand in with her Aunt, Maud Lawder, who is a rich widow able to show her niece off to polite London society.
There's no stopping love, though; Kate has fallen so deeply for Merton Densher that she engages herself to him 'forever'. All this is kept a secret from Aunt Maud, because Merton is a poor working journalist, with nothing to recommend him as a husband – no fortune, in other words.
Into the story steps Milly Theale, an American girl, bereaved of all her family and so in possession of a vast fortune. Milly arrives in London with her companions, young Susan Shepherd, and the more mature Mrs Stringham, who is an old school-mate of Kate's aunt. Milly strikes up a friendship with Kate, and she is already linked to Densher; she met and fell in love with him when he visited the states for his work.
Milly learns she is dying. She asks her physician 'what shall I do?' and he says…'live, live.' Milly is fatally ill, but she's not unwell; she is a vivacious, very genuine girl although of course, a little naive, so when she visits the grand estate of Maud Lowder, she is wooed by Lord Mark, who Mrs Lowder had hoped would be a suitor to Kate. He's an unpleasantly shallow man, and gets rejected by both of them.
Kate, however, is devising a dastardly plan. She knows Milly loves Densher and encourages him to pay court to Milly. It is at this moment in the book that clever dialogue is everything. Kate wants Densher to believe her idea is primarily a ruse to cover his relationship with Kate, so the reader is not told outright that Kate's true plan is for Millie to marry Densher, before she dies, or at least, leave him an inheritance, so that they can marry in comfort. And Densher does worry about the subtextual implications Kate's not talking about. At this point in the story, the reader is no wiser than Densher – unless they have (like me!) turned to Google to check what is actually going on. Perhaps that is the 21st C equivalent of 'reading the last page', and it did colour my understanding, but not my enjoyment.
Milly goes to Venice and the sun of Northern Italy, to enjoy 'her life' with her companions, and Kate and Densher follow. Milly can afford to rent an entire waterside palace, Palazzo Leporelli. This was modelled on the real Palazzo Barbaro, which was owned by friends of Henry James. And, according to Wikipedia, Milly herself is based on Minny Temple (1845–1870), James' beloved cousin who died from tuberculosis. In his autobiography James said that The Wings of the Dove was his attempt to wrap her memory in the 'beauty and dignity of art'. Milly's illness is never openly diagnosed. It's not tuberculosis, at least not in its final stages. James may not have cared about the nicety of a diagnosis; it was the prognosis that occupied his writing.
Back in London, Kate and Densher face the fact that their relationship has been irreparably damaged by their misadventure with Milly. Milly does leave him a large amount of money, but Densher wants to believe that Kate would marry him, rich or poor. He tells Kate that they should refuses the bequest. The book ends with this glorious exchange;
He heard her out in stillness, watching her face, but not moving. Then he only said: "I'll marry you, mind you, in an hour."
"As we were?”
"As we were.”
But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. "We shall never be again as we were!"
The lovers have been over-shadowed and separated forever by the wings of the dead dove.
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