Essays on London and Elsewhere

by Henry James

London.--James Russell Lowell.--Frances Anne Kemble.--Gustave Flaubert.--Pierre Loti.--The journal of the brothers de Goncourt.--Browning in Westminster Abbey.--Henrik Ibsen.--Mrs. Humphrey Ward.--Criticism.--An animated conversation.

305 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to being terribly under-read in Henry James. I've never been drawn by descriptions of his works; I've heard much praise of him, but what was praised did not engage me. He's been on my list of folks I "should" read, but not the list of those I feel the need to read. However, I was in Caliban Book Shop and they had a newly arrived copy of Essays in London & Elsewhere, so I picked it up. Then it sat in my office in school, where I read a couple of pages from time to time. Finally it came home, and I pressed through it seriously.
My reaction is mixed. The writing is elegant, and some of the content is interesting. His aesthetic evaluations, when he is clear about them, can be quite engaging. There were a couple of surprises. But much of the work here is written for an audience that knows all about the subject discussed (say, the works of Flaubert) and so he refuses to be clear. He pile periphrastic description on periphrastic description, and it amounts to meaningless blather. He rarely cites specific instances, so even if you DO know what he's talking about, the result is still a bit vague.
His homage to London, the first essay, is nice, but he resorts to periphrasis here, as well. When he does name things, and discusses the "mood" of the City, it's interesting. My two favorites were "Frances Anne Kemble" and "Henrik Ibsen." The Kemble is a surprise, because he takes it upon himself to say that she was a cultural hero, both for him and for the English language; and he boldly made this claim in an era when actresses were looked down upon by both society and academia. An actress who had more impact outside the theater, she made a career of travelling the world, reading the plays of Shakespeare to public audiences. One-woman performances, without stagecraft, that brought Shakespeare to the people. Amusingly she went through them in order, and would not vary. If you wanted "MacBeth," but "Love's Labour Lost" was next in order, you got the comedy. And he nailed the future of Ibsen, who was a problematical figure even then. James saw that Ibsen's under-writing of the characters gave actors a wide range of interpretation, and he predicted that theater people would love Ibsen far into the future, even if audiences were never large.
The essay on the release of The Journal of the Brothers de Goncourt has a lot of edge, despite his resort to periphrasis. He felt that it debased their earlier work, and couldn't fathom why the surviving brother would publish; and the debate gives the essay traction.
The final piece, "An Animated Conversation," left me cold. It reads like a poorly done knock-off of an Oscar Wilde dialogue, and I'm sure much of its meaning was contained in the breezy tone, whose context is pretty much lost to us. A complete waste of time. (I do wonder if, in its day, the readers could easily identify which speakers were American, and which British. It was not clear to me, and I'm usually good at that.)
I'll finish with two positives. In the essay on the des Goncourts, he refers to the myth that in order for Literature to be good, it must confound the bourgeois, and he makes it clear that this is foolishness. First, I was surprised that the 20th century disease was already notable in the 1880s, but second I was pleased to find him on the right side of the split.
Second, a wonderful rhetorical passage from the Fanny Kemble essay:

"The Alpine guides loved her — she knew them all,
and those for whom her name offered difficulties
identified her charmingly as "la dame qui va chantant
par les montagnes." She had sung, over hill and
dale, all her days (music was in her blood) ; but
those who had not been with her in Switzerland
while she was still alert never knew what admira-
ble nonsense she could talk, nor with what original-
ity and gayety she could invite the spirit of mirth,
flinging herself, in the joy of high places, on the
pianos of mountain inns, joking, punning, botaniz-
ing, encouraging the lowly and abasing the proud,
making stupidity everywhere gape (that was almost
her mission in life), and startling infallibly all prim-
ness of propriety. Punctually on the first of June,
every year, she went to Switzerland; punctually on
the first of September she came back. During the
interval she roamed as far and as high as she could ;
for years she walked and climbed, and when she
could no longer climb she rode. When she could
no longer ride she was carried, and when her health
ceased to permit the chaise-à-porteurs it was as if the
great warning had come. Then she moved and
mounted only with wistful, with absolutely tearful
eyes, sitting for hours on the balconies of high-
perched hotels, and gazing away at her paradise
lost. She yielded the ground only inch by inch,
but towards the end she had to accept the valleys
almost altogether and to decline upon paltry com-
promises and Italian lakes. Nothing was more touch-
ing at the last than to see her caged at Stresa or at
Orta, still slowly circling round her mountains, but
not trusting herself to speak of them. "