Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1962-11-04


grapher and subjectl by en-
raging the historian and
squirting him on to use high
er skills of deduction and
more art: it would create a
kind of parity between hunter
and hunted" James was a sly
dog, and a successful one, for
Mr.. Edel's work, the first
three Of the four volumes of
which have now appeared,
taking the story through
1895, is in the great tradition
Of American biography. Like
an early example, Thayer'S
Beethoven" and one of the
most recent, ELM ms
Joyce" the present Henry
James" is exhaustive, SYM
pathetic, and wonderfully
readable.
James was wholly an ar
fist, a self -conscious, trained
practitioner, who never in his
life Cat least in that part Of
it exposed to date by Mr..
EdeD worked at anything ex-
cept his fiction and his eS-
says, and who without regret
resigned a continuing assign
ment in Paris for the New
York Tribune, although he
needed the money, because
he knew his column did not
suit his meter. Yet how un-
like any other great writer
he seems to us today, how
curious and mystifying an ex-
ample of the artistic tenn
permanent!
What was the heart Of
his mystery which through
out many millions of words
he at the same time
exposed and secreted? Half
way through a long career
which had never known any
serious set-backs or dead
ends he achieved the success
he had determined upon from
youth-and he accepted it, if
not with complacency, at
least without any of the de-
monte Self-dissatisfaction one
associates with the true ar
fist.
AS a young man in Paris
he was an intimate in the
coterie which included Flau-
bert, Goncourt, lola, Daudet,
de Maupassant and Tur-
genev, yet he, a student Of
the craft Of writing, preferred
to settle in London, finding
Paris Of "bottomless super
ficiality." He was fond of
society and dinners, and a
canter on horseback, and
ladies much older than he.
married, and (if it is not I'M
gallant so to judge from their
pictures) plain, yet the read
er Of Mr.. EdePS book never
surprises James in any mo-
ment of emotional or intel
lectual joy, but rather sees
him at best comfortable and
happy, and at worst exacer-
bated by Invitations, such as
existence in Boston's "tepid
bath of democracy" fairly
easy to remedy, to appropri-
ate James favorite adverb.
Who would suspect this was
one of the most brilliant
creative intellects of the nine
teenth century, and not an
indolent, prudish and rather
conventional clipper of cou-
pons?
It has been widely believed
that the ''hurt" that James
sustained in a fire in his boy
hood was castration, but Mr..
Edel effectively disproves this
theory and suggests that the
injury lasting damage from
which the doctor pooh
poohed," was only a strained
back. That James died UNI
married and even $50 Mr..
Edel believes) celibate is a
result of his psychical, and
not his physical, constitution.
Women tended to be marmo-
real and vampire in James
mind. They drained the life
out Of men they loved and
if by chance a woman died
before her man, the survivor
was doomed to quick extinc-
ton.
But women were an i'm
portant factor Of James
existence as they are of his
fiction. He loved their So
ciety, their attitudes and
their conversation, but he
was careful never to become
involved in their lives. Mr..
Edel finds much autobiog-
raphy in James novels and
tales, especially in his mas
terpiece 1.-THE Aspern Papers"
One of the most amusing
episodes in James early life
in London concerns his deci-
sion to leave his rented
rooms and buy a house.
When his friends happily
suggested that the home was
perhaps preamble to a wife,
James was reused to q tor
rent Of disavowal. II shall
never marry; I regard that
now as an established fact,
and on the whole a very re-
spectacle one. Singleness
consorts better with my
whole view of existence (of
my own and of that of the
human race), my habits, my
occupations, prospects, tastes,
means, situation in Europe
and absence of desire to have
children :" Finally, the
heat of his rhetoric inspired
him with q sudden sense of
Of being very well off where
I am" and struck with GER
tain similarities of wife and