The Geopolitics of Literature: the Shifting International Theme in the Works of Henry James

Abstract This article demonstrates how changes in Henry James' handling of the international theme, that is Europeans and Americans compared, can be correlated to alterations in the international position of the United States itself. It argues that, whereas in his novels and stories of the 1870s/early 1880s (Roderick Hudson, Daisy Miller, The American, The Europeans, Portrait of a Lady), it is the Americans who are generally the innocents and victims (albeit sometimes victims of deracinated, cosmopolitan, Europeanized Americans), when James returned to that theme on a major level in the early 1900s (The Ambassadors, Wings of the Dove, Golden Bowl), in many ways one can argue it is now the Europeans or Europeanized Americans who are the victims of the Americans. This change can be correlated with James' own perceptions of the growing international power of the US, as shown in the Venezuela crisis and the Spanish-American War, and his comments on the wealth of Americans, including such wealthy J P Morgan-style collectors as Adam Verver in The Golden Bowl. Although one rarely thinks of James as a political novelist, in reality at this time he commented extensively on the changing international scene, particularly in correspondence with his brother William, the pragmatist philosopher, who was a strong anti-imperialist and spoke out vigorously against American policies. The article ends by commenting on James' final, including his unfinished works, written after he visited the US in 1904-5. It also highlights some resonances with James' own life, particularly in terms of the cosmopolitan American expatriates (some admirable, some quite the reverse) who feature so largely in his novels. Fleeing to Europe was in some ways an escape for him, distancing him from family pressures to settle down and marry, and perhaps from a family and milieu that, however much he loved them, he found stifling and suffocating. Europe, by contrast, gave him not just the artistic material he needed, but also a refuge where he could live a life he found far more congenial. Again, one can argue that, in his later novels, the expatriates are now largely victims rather than the villains they have often rather spectacularly been in earlier works. It is the Americans, armoured in wealth and innocence, who are now by far the more dangerous protagonists. Keywords: Henry James; transatlantic relations; Imperialism Acknowledgements Material included in a shorter version of this article, published as “Henry James and British Power” in Wm. Roger Louis, ed., Resurgent Adventures with Britannia (London and Austin, 2011), is reprinted with the editor's permission. Research for this article was generously supported by a grant from the Committee on Research and Conference Grants of the University of Hong Kong. Notes 1. E. Tennant, Felony: The Private History of the ‘Aspern Papers’ (London, 2002); C. Toibín, The Master: A Novel (New York, 2004); D. Lodge, Author, Author (London, 2004). 2. M. Grimes, Dust (New York, 2007); and Donna Leon's entire series of Guido Brunetti detective novels. 3. R. Liebmann-Smith, The James Boys: A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers (New York, 2008). 4. H. James, Autobiography, ed. F.W. Dupee (London, 1956), 559–60, first quotation from 560, second from 559. 5. L. Edel, Henry James, 5 vols. (New York, 1953–72); Edel (ed), Henry James Letters, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1974–84); Edel, Selected Letters of Henry James (New York, 1955); Edel (ed), Henry James: Selected Letters (Cambridge, MA, 1987); F. Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius (New York, 1992). 6. P.A. Walker, Henry James on Culture: Collected Essays on Politics and the American Social Scene (Lincoln and London, 1999). 7. C. Mawes, Sensuous Pessimism: Italy in the Work of Henry James (Bloomington, 1973). 8. A.R. Tintner, The Cosmopolitan World of Henry James: An Intertextual Study (Baton Rouge, 1991); P. Brooks, Henry James Goes to Paris (Princeton, 2007). 9. J. Tambling, Henry James (New York, 2000). 10. H. James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Literary Criticism (New York, 1984), 351–2. 11. William James to Alice James, 29 July 1889, quoted in Kaplan, Henry James, 362. 12. Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. xxxi. 13. Kaplan, Henry James, 291. 14. Henry James to William James, 2 Oct. 1988, in I. K. Skrupskelis and E.M. Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, Vol. 2: William and Henry 1885–1896 (Charlottesville, 1993), 96–7; cf. James to Edmund Gosse, 28 June 1888, in R.S. Moore (ed), Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse 1882–1915: A Literary Friendship (Baton Rouge, 1988), 57–9. 15. William James to Henry James, 26 Apr. 1885, 18 Nov. 1888, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley, eds., The Correspondence of William James, ii. 17, 99. 16. William James to Henry James, 15 Feb. 1891, 19 Feb. 1892, 16 June 1895, Henry James to William James, 6 Feb. 1892, 10 Aug. 1894, 20 Aug. 1895, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, ii. 174–5, 200, 202, 322, 364, 376–7; Henry James to Gosse, 6 Aug. 1889, 25 June 1894, 8 Nov. 1896, 5 Feb. 1897, 28 Feb. 1899, in Moore, ed., Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse 1882–1915, 60, 113, 152, 154, 165; James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 21 Mar. 1890, 12 Jan., 30 Oct. 1891, James to Rhoda Broughton, 5 Dec. 1890, James to Ariana Curtis, 14 July 1893, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iii. 272, 308, 327–8, 360, 361, 421; James to Grace Norton, 25 Dec. 1897, James to Rudyard Kipling, 16 Sept. 1899, 30 Oct. 1901, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 70, 119–20, 209–11; Kaplan, Henry James, 396. 17. Henry James to William James, 23 Oct. 1876, in I. K. Skrupskelis and E. M. Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, Vol. 1: William and Henry 1861–1884 (Charlottesville, 1992), 274. 18. James to William James, 28 Jan. 1878, ibid., 297–8. 19. Henry James, Novels 1881–1886 (New York, 1985), 392. 20. James to Grace Norton, 24 Jan. 1885, in Leon Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iii. 66–7. 21. James to Grace Norton, 9 May 1885, ibid., 83. 22. James to Sir John Clark, 13 Dec. 1891, ibid., 367. 23. James to William James, 1 May 1878, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, i. 301. 24. James to Gosse, 1 July 1903, in Moore (ed), Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse 1882–1915, 204. 25. On the US market for European art, see C. Saltzman, Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures 1880–World War I (New York, 2008); on the visits of his American friends, see Kaplan, Henry James, 399–401. 26. James, notebook entry, 15 July 1895, in L. Edel and L.H. Powers (eds), The Complete Notebooks of Henry James (New York, 1987), 126. 27. W. Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a Great Power (New York, 2002). 28. G. Monteiro (ed), The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams, 1877–1914 (Baton Rouge, 1992); George Monteiro (ed), Henry James and John Hay: The Record of a Friendship (Providence, 1965). 29. Kaplan, Henry James, 183, 219, 245. 30. Marian Adams to Robert William Hooper, 4 Apr. 1880, in Monteiro (ed), The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams, 5. 31. Theodore Roosevelt, as reported in the New York Times, 19 Oct. 1884, cited in P. Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters (London, 1999), 163; Horne, ‘Henry James and “the forces of violence”: On the Track of “big game” in “The Jolly Corner”’, Henry James Review 27 (2006), 239; Kaplan, Henry James, 265. 32. Horne, ‘Henry James and “the Forces of Violence”’, 240. 33. Roosevelt to Brander Matthews, 29 June 1984, quoted in Horne, ‘Henry James and the “Forces of Violence”’, 240. 34. Quoted in Kaplan, Henry James, 488. 35. Quoted in Edel, Henry James: The Master 1901–1916, 266. 36. Kaplan, Henry James, 488; Horne, ‘Henry James and the “Forces of Violence”’, 240–1. 37. James to Jessie Allen, 19 Sept. 1901, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 202. 38. William James to Henry James, 21 Sept. 1901, in I.K. Skrupskelis and E.M. Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, Vol. 3: William and Henry 1897–1910 (Charlottesville, 1994), 180–1. 39. Henry James to William James, 23 Dec. 1895, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, ii. 384. 40. Henry James to William James, 9 Jan. 1896, ibid., 383. 41. Henry James to W.E. Norris, 4 Feb. 1896, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 27. 42. Henry James to William James, 21 Feb. 1896, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, ii. 393. 43. Henry James to Henrietta Reubell, 17 Apr. 1898, Henry James Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 44. Henry James to William James, 22 Apr. 1898, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, iii. 32. 45. Henry James to William James, 11 Oct. 1898, ibid., 47. 46. Henry James to Norton, 26 Dec. 1898, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 98. 47. Henry James to William James, 2 Apr. 1899, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, iii. 59. 48. Henry James to William James, 3 June 1899, ibid., 62–3. 49. James to William James, 11 Oct. 1898, ibid., 47. 50. James to Gosse, 28 Oct. 1899, in Moore (ed), Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse 1882–1915, 170. 51. James to Gosse, 12 Nov. 1899, ibid., 172. 52. James to William James, 18 Nov. 1899, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, iii. 92. 53. Kaplan, Henry James, 434. 54. James to Charles Eliot Norton, 28 Nov. 1899, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 124. 55. James to Mrs Everard Cotes, 26 Jan. 1900, ibid., 132. 56. James to William James, 2 Feb. 1900, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, iii. 100. 57. James to William James, 10 Feb. 1900, ibid., 101. 58. James to William James, 24 Mar. 1900, ibid., 107. 59. James to Clara and Clare Benedict, 22 Jan. 1901, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 180–1. 60. James to Ariana Curtis, 3 Feb. 1901, in Edel, Henry James: Selected Letters, 328–9. 61. James to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 20 Feb. 1901, ibid., 184. 62. Quotations from Henry James, What Maisie Knew (London, 1985), 156–7. For a stimulating appraisal of this figure, see Kendall Johnson, Henry James and the Visual (Cambridge, 2007), ch. 4. 63. James to William Dean Howells, 17 May 1890, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iii. 284. 64. Kaplan, Henry James, 471–4. 65. James to Sarah Butler Wister, 29 Jan. 1900, in Kaplan, Henry James, 434; also James to Katharine Prescott Wormeley, 8 Feb. 1900, in Edel (ed), Henry James: Letters, iv. 136. 66. James to James B. Pinker, 25 July 1900, ibid., 154–5. 67. James to Mrs. Humphry Ward, 15 Mar. 1901, ibid., 185–6. 68. Page numbers cited here are to The Toby Press edition of 2004. 69. William James to Henry James, 29 Jan. 1903, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley (eds), The Correspondence of William James, iii. 225–6. James wrote of Rockefeller that he was ‘reputed the richest man in the world, and he certainly is the most powerfully suggestive personality I have seen. A man 10 stories deep, and to me quite unfathomable. Physionomie de Pierrot (not a spear of hair on head or face) flexible, cunning, quakerish, superficially suggestive of naught but goodness and conscientiousness, yet accused of being the greatest villain in business whom our country has produced, a hater of cities and lover of the open (playing golf & skating all the time at Lakewood) etc.’ 70. See Brooks, Henry James Goes to Paris, ch. 7; W. Righter, American Memory in Henry James: Void and Value (Aldershot, 2004), chs. 10–17; Edel, Henry James: The Master 1901–1916, 209–23; D. McWhirter, Desire and Love in Henry James (Cambridge, 1989), chs. 6–7; M. Nussbaum, ‘“Finely Aware and Richly Responsible”: Moral Attention and the Moral Task of Literature’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxxii (1985), 516–29; Nussbaum, ‘Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy’, New Literary History, xv (1983), 25–50; Nussbaum, ‘Reply to Richard Wollheim, Patrick Gardiner, and Hilary Putnam’, New Literary History, xv (1985), 201–8; H. Putnam, ‘Taking Rules Seriously: A Response to Martha Nussbaum’, New Literary History, xv (1985), 193–200. 71. Maves, Sensuous Pessimism, 125–49. 72. See F.R. Leavis, The Great Tradition (London, 1948), 184–6; Tambling, Henry James; Mark Seltzer, Henry James and the Art of Power (Ithaca, 1984), ch. 2; W.A. Hart, ‘Martha Nussbaum and The Golden Bowl’, Essays in Criticism, lvii (2007), 195–216; M. Sabin, ‘Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl’ in The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, ed. Jonathan Freeman (Cambridge, 1998), 204–23, and several other works listed in n. 18 of this study; J. Kimball, ‘Henry James's Last Portrait of a Lady: Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl’, American Literature, xxviii (1957), 449–68; Richard Wollheim, ‘Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and the Plausibility of Literature as Moral Philosophy’, New Literary History, xv (1983), 185–91. 73. G. Vidal, introduction to Penguin edition, Henry James, The Golden Bowl (London, 1985), 16. 74. Kimball, ‘Henry James's Last Portrait of a Lady’, 449–68, likewise suggests that Charlotte is speaking nothing less than the truth to Maggie. 75. Henry James, The Outcry (New York, 2002), 99. On US art collecting, see also Saltzman, Old Masters, New World; and Tintner, The Twentieth-Century World of Henry James, ch. 1. 76. H. James, The Ivory Tower (New York, 2004), see esp. introduction, vii–xiv; Edel, Henry James: The Master 1901–1916, 501–5.