The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-03-08
An English Critic on Henry James.

(LOnuon ASpectatOr) - W
Mr.. Henry James is always more or less en-
barrassed by what he very likely regards as
the artificial necessity of making q whole. If
you may trust him as your guide. even human
passion is not commonly dramatic. 1t ends Of
tener in a ravelled thread than in a true denou-
ment. And whether that be true or false it in
terests him much more to paint the various
aimless ways in which human beings get al
most involuntarily into sort Of ENHANCEMENT
with each other, than to paint the course of q
series of events which show the natural devel-
opment of strong character, and the naturai
resultant of the encounter between conflicting
purposes and complicaced circumstances. II,
indeed, you may believe Mr.. Henry James
the result of such encounters is much more
frequently indeterminate than not In his
pictures most passions fade away; most infu-
enoes fail Of their characteristic effect; most
comedies are spoiled; most tragedies break
down before the tragic crisis; most catastro-
phes, as the Irishman would say, never come
off; while that which fulflls its function most
completely in the world is the power, inherent
in most of us, to spoil or hamper the life of
other people, an agency the conspicuous sue
cess of which almost all Mr.. James's writings
commemorate. 5ne0 ganillIl ui7iIaI siii cu
There has never been more adequate Illus
tration Of this tendency Of Mr.. Henry Jamess
than the dismal tale entitled Washington
Square" in which there is no agreeable char
acter, only one likeable character,-7we mean
the plain, mute, tenacious heroine, of whom
we are told that "she knew she was obstinate,
and it gave her certain joy,"-no very detes-
table character, nothing but commonplace
affectionateness, commonplace and even vul-
gar selfshness, somewhat more than common
place cruelty and cynicism, very commonplace
insincerity, and very commonplace misery.
Mr. Henry James seems to take quite pleasure
in making us study this leaden-colored group
of emotions, and to take home to our hearts
that life, even among. well-to-do New Workers
who have some5hing like culture, and care to
study Europe, is like that--a scene where a
girl may make a romance to herself out of the
selfish love-making of a thoroughly indifferent
and underbred man, where her only near rela-
tions will be likely to injure her by false senti-
mentality or cruel scorn, where each phase of
| her disappointment is more miserable than the
last, where she loses her love for her father in
| fighting for a worthless lover, and loses her
! love for her lover by the exposure caused by
her fathers refusing to give her his money,
| meaner by her fade sentimental falsehood, and
yet is never sufficiently found out to be got rid
| of and sent away. In short, Washington
| Square" might be described as the story Of how
a dull girls nature was lit up by passion for a
mock-hero, how the father tried to cut it out of
her, as he would have performed surgical op-
| Grafton, and only succeeded in cutting out of
| her all love for himself: how the aunt famed
the flame with her fancy falsehoods, and made
it burn brighter and brighter, till the object Of
| the passion showed himself in his true colors;
and howiafter that it smoldered away and
| went out, leaving the life in which it had been
lit little blunter, little duller, and little
more tolerant of bare surroundings than it
| found it. I.f,-.I b.. .......,..I..5 ....
| The story is marvellously clever. To our
minds, nothing more unique in the presenting
| of human nature than DR.. Sloper's cold-heart-
| ed experiments on his daughters nature, and
utter failure to do anything except rob her Of
her admiration for him, has ever been given
us; nor is Mrs. Penniman's silly love of in
trigue, and her brothers scornful treatment of
it less admirably drawn. GATHERINGS dumb,
| slow, tenacious nature, too,-which, In spite
of its occasionally rather needless and mean
| ingless lapses into falsehood, affords us the
only glimpe of Anything tolerable in the tale,
is fine study of its sort. But why is the
whole painted against that blank, leaden sky,
not merely of absolute hopelessness, but abso-
Lutte Indifference to hope? Why are We made